The End Of The Week That Was

17

The End Of The Week That Was

    The phone rang and after a few seconds Livia remembered she’d sent Amy away and snatched it up.

    “Oh—it’s you,” she said, sitting down on the pale blue satin eiderdown.

    “Sorry if I’ve interrupted the sartorial deliberations, darling!” said Adam with a laugh.

    “What? No, I was just wondering what to wear... How are you, Adam, darling?” returned Livia with an effort.

    He’d known she was dumb, but— Adam made a little face at the phone. “Are you all right?” he said cautiously.

    “Considering this dreadful humidity, yes. Why didn’t you tell me how hot this dump gets?”

    “I did. At least five hundred times. You appeared not to believe me, so I finally thought the breath’d be better used on the porridge. Isn’t that hotel air-conditioned?”

    “The hotel is, dear, yes. The streets aren’t, though, and nor is the beastly country,” said Livia on an acid note.

    “Country? As in pays or in paysage?” he replied with a smile in his voice.

    “Look, Adam , if you only called to show off, you can ring off right now, we all know what a clever little fellow it is!”

    Adam replied meekly: “I was trying not to make the inquiry too obvious. ’Cos I thought maybe it was a very silly one. Have you actually been on a country outing, then?”

    “Yes. This afternoon. No, all day, really, we left at ten in the morning.”

    “Ten in the morning!” gasped Adam in horror.

    “Look, SHUT UP!” screamed Livia.

    “Sorry,” he said limply. “Er—apologies for not meeting at airports in blazes of publicity, etcetera, darling.”

    In spite of the considerable resentment she had felt on this point during most of the last three days, Livia returned dully: “What? Oh, that’s all right, Jacky arranged everything.”

    “Er—yes.”

   There was a short pause.

    “What is wrong, then, if isn’t me?” said Adam meekly.

    “I— Never mind.”

    “Didn’t Uncle Maurie come up to scratch after all?” he asked with a laugh in his voice.

    He’d expected either a laughing rebuttal of this allegation or possibly, since she seemed to be really ratty, a scream of rage—or even a scornful rejection of the entire notion. What he hadn’t expected was Livia to say dully, as she did: “Of course he did, don’t be absurd.”

    “What in God’s name’s up, then?” he said limply.

    “Nothing.”

    “Darling, something is, tell your Uncle Adam all about it!”

    “Don’t be absurd, I’m old enough to be your mother,” said Livia sourly.

    Hell’s teeth, had the face-lift dropped? Or, worse, the boobs? “Yes, but some of us never thought we’d live to hear you admit it, dear.”

    “When you say ‘dear’ like that, Adam, you sound exactly like that silly little gay, Joel Thring. I’d watch it if I was you, especially considering the sort of part Derry Dawlish casts you in. Once you get a reputation for being one of Them, nobody in the theatre is going to take you seriously, you know!” she said with satisfaction.

    “Gielgud?” whispered Adam.

    Livia gave an angry tinkle of silver laughter. “Darling, lovely though you are, you are not the Gielgud of the Eighties, even darling Derry has never claimed that for you!”

    “Nineties,” corrected Adam with a grin. “If you’re not going to tell me what’s up I think I’ll ring off, Ma’s got supper waiting for me.”

    “Are you home, then?”

    “Mm.”

    “Well, where have you been these past few days?” demanded Livia.

    “For a lovely country outing: what else, darling!” he gurgled.

    “With company, I presume?” she said acidly.

    “Er—yes. Delightful company.”

    “I’m sure it was.”

    There was a short pause.

    “You’ve met the Carranos, haven’t you?” she said.

    Adam rolled his eyes at his parents’ hall ceiling. Fallen for Sir Jake with mad pash? Even if she’d been silly enough to let herself—which he very much doubted—one look at him and Polly together must have warned her it was no go, surely?

    “Mm,” he said.

    “Well, have you met a friend of his called Wallace Briggs?” demanded Livia.

    Adam raised his eyebrows very high. “No, why? Is he too lovely for words, darling?”

    “No, as a matter of fact he’s quite ugly, he looks like one of those droopy dogs: beagles, is it?”

    “Er... Possibly. Possibly bulldogs?”

    “B— He doesn’t look like a bulldog!”

    “Winston Churchill did,” said Adam, trying not to laugh.

    “Have you MET him?” screamed Livia.

    “No. –You don’t mean a basset hound, do you? I know an actor who looks exactly like a basset hound, he was in—”

    “Shut UP, Adam!” screamed Livia.

    Adam shut up. After a while, since she didn’t offer anything more, he said meekly: “See you at rehearsal tomorrow, then?”

    “I’ve got fittings most of the day.”

    “So have I, and while one concedes this is the most important event noted in one’s diary, one also concedes that Mac may possibly manage to fit a little Shakespeare in between the sartorial—”

    Livia slammed the phone down.

    “—deliberations,” said Adam with a grin. He wandered off into the living-room and asked his father if he’d ever heard of Wallace Briggs and was astounded when Christopher told him who Briggs was.

    “Cor, could Livia have bumped off the downtrodden Amy in a careless moment?” he wondered, sitting down.

    Georgy was on the rug at Christopher’s feet. She looked up and said: “A careless moment?”

    “She wouldn’t bother to do it a-purpose-like, Amy is not that significant a factor in her life.”

    “You’re encouraging him,” warned Christopher.

    “Yes, it was silly of me, wasn’t it?” said Georgy with a smile.

    “Well, he sounds as if he’ll be able to cart Livia round the town in the style to which she’s accustomed, anyway,” decided Adam, dismissing the subject.

    “Unless he’s tied up in court all day,” agreed Georgy.

    “Can’t be, the papers aren’t full of any gruesome details,” said Christopher.

    “What on earth about?” asked Melinda, coming in with a tray of sherry glasses. “Someone else could have got these out of the dishwasher,” she noted.

    “We’re not used to these up-market appliances round the family home, Ma,” drawled Adam with his glinting smile.

    “Rubbish, Adam, that flat of yours has got so many gadgets it look like the inside of a Japanese television factory.”

    “She has, of course, been inside many a—”

    “That’ll do,” said his father. “Gruesome details of Wal Briggs’s latest case,” he explained to Melinda.

    “The criminal lawyer?” she asked in some surprize.

    “So they tell me,” they both drawled.

    “Ooh!” gasped Georgy.

    “Yes,” said Melinda, twinkling at her. “Isn’t it?”

    “Ooh, yes!” she gasped, giggling.

    “Anyway, why?” pursued Melinda.

    “Eh? Oh—Livia seems to have met him,” said Adam.

    “Oh, was that her you were talking to on the phone just now, dear?” said Melinda artlessly.

    “Well, it certainly wasn’t Amy, she’s apparently lying stiff and stark on the Axminster where she landed after the flying shoe hit that precise spot on the temple—”

    “If that’s a joke it isn’t funny and if it isn’t a joke it isn’t funny,” noted Christopher, pouring sherry. “You’ll like this,” he promised Georgy.

    She twinkled up at him. “I’m afraid I never do, when men say that about drinks.”

    “Those’d be mere men,” replied Christopher, unruffled.

    “Of course: the men from the meres,” agreed Georgy.

    Adam choked, and Christopher smiled to himself. “Well, has she clobbered this Amy dame?” he said, handing his son a glass.

    “No. Well, may have, who knows? No, I think she must have fallen for this Briggs. Though I can’t see why, she said he was ugly,” he said without much interest, sitting down.

    Melinda sipped sherry. “This isn’t too dry, good,” she said.

    “This isn’t too sweet, good,” agreed Christopher in the same tone.

    Georgy bit her lip.

    “Un joli-laid,” said Melinda drily to her son.

    “Can you have those?” asked Georgy dubiously.

    “Yes,” she said definitely. “Well, look at Yves Montand.”

    “Yes— I mean— Well, of course, he is. No, it was just that I hadn’t realized it could be a masculine noun. I mean, I’d only seen the feminine form.”

    Adam began “Whose fem—” but his father said “That’ll do, this isn’t Adam of the Remove, you know.”

    Georgy sipped her sherry and peeped at him. “If I said David of Ki—?”

    “YES!” shouted Christopher. “By God, isn’t it a doozy?”

    “Yes, it’s one of my all-time favourites,” agreed Georgy, beaming at him.

    “Have you got it?”

    “No, I found it in the library in town, only the next time I looked for it, it wasn’t in the catalogue,” she said sadly.

    Christopher leapt up. “Hang on!”

     Melinda sighed.

    “You ought to suggest it to Derry Dawlish as an alternative to a film of Maurice,” Georgy said slyly to Adam.

    Adam choked into his sherry.

    “You’d be too old for the hero, though,” she said sadly.

    Adam grinned. “I’ll definitely suggest it, then!”

    Georgy giggled. Then she said—on a cautious note which Melinda Black, at least, didn’t fail to register: “Did you say Livia seems to have fallen for this lawyer man?”

    “Why else would Livia ask about a man?”

    Georgy looked at him doubtfully.

    “Darling, that isn’t bitchiness, that’s the simple truth.”

    “Ye-es... She might want to make a will, or something.”

    “I don’t think he does that sort of thing, he only does court work,” said Melinda.

    “Oh. But didn’t you say she was—um—having a thing with your Uncle Maurice?” she said to Adam, not looking in Melinda’s direction.

    “It’s all right, Georgy: the whole family knows about Maurice’s goings-on,” said Melinda kindly. “Of course, the Blacks never admit it, but they all know.”

    “As far as I can see, the whole country knows,” said Adam laconically.

    “That’ll do. Anyway, that wouldn’t stop her,” said Melinda.

    “Far from it,” he agreed in a bored voice.

    “But...” Georgy swallowed. “I suppose I’m being naïve or unsophisticated or something,” she said resignedly. “Only what about his feelings?”

    “Maurice hasn’t got feelings, he’s only got instincts!” choked Adam.

    Georgy went very pink. “Well, what about the other man?”

   Adam shrugged. “Have to learn to take the rough with the smooth if he’s going to get mixed up with Livia, won’t he? Come to think of it, what about the Aryan Rudi?”

    “Well, what?” said Georgy doubtfully.

    “The man who gave her the pearls?” asked Melinda with interest.

    “Darling Ma, you really must stop reading those mags at your hairdresser’s, they addle the brain.”

    At this point Christopher returned, waving a faded volume. “Found it!” he said triumphantly.

    “Ooh, good!” cried Georgy.

    Christopher sat down and opened it eagerly. Georgy knelt up by his knee and began reading eagerly.

    Melinda sighed and finished her sherry. “I was going to serve dinner,” she noted, sadly.

    “What is it?” asked Adam.

    “Brandied chicken livers. You do like them, don’t you?”

    “Yes. What with, Little Ma?”

    “Potatoes. With their skins on, before you ask. Done in the microwave, before you ask. Were you this faddy and picky up at the bach, dare I enquire?”

    “I never said a word!” he gasped.

    Melinda got up. “No, but your look spoke volumes. Come on, you can come and make the salad dressing. I’d hate to run the risk of it not being as good as yours.”

    “Considering it’s my one culinary achievement, I think that’s a bit on the nose!” objected Adam, getting up.

    They hadn’t spoken privately since Adam and Georgy arrived back from the bach about an hour earlier. Georgy had been home, showered and changed but had reported when Adam rang her that her mother had disappeared—presumably to Ross and Ngaio’s, she often did on a Sunday. Ngaio was trying not to let it develop into a regular thing, as neither she nor Ross liked the idea of never being able to call their Sunday evenings their own.

    Once in the kitchen Melinda began busily tossing the chicken livers in butter, but said as she did so: “It was all right, then?”

    Adam held up the bottle of olive oil and looked at it dubiously. “What in God’s name am I supposed to say to that?”

    “‘Yes’ or ‘no’ would do.”

    “Yes.”

    Melinda gave him a hard look.

    “Of course I can’t speak for the other party with one hundred percent confidence but I can say with ninety-nine—”

    “All right, no trumpets need be blown in this kitchen, thanks.”

    “Sire Roland, car sonnez votre oliphan pour faire venir de l’huile d’olive,” murmured Adam. “Is this all that’s left?”

    “Apparently, yes.”

    “Perhaps I should pop over the road, Mrs Robinson’ll be sure to—”

    “That’ll do. Use some of that other stuff.”

    He picked it up. “Vege-table oil,” he read slowly. “Ugh.” He put his head in the cupboard.

    “There—is—no—more—oil. We’re having butter, anyway: you don’t need oil.”

    “I definitely need oil on my salad. On the other hand, I don’t need butter, ta.”

    Melinda sighed. “Picky, what did I say?”

    “Picky. Also, er, faddy?”

    “What did you eat up there, for God’s sake? If Georgy can cook, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

    “Um... We had fish and chips a couple of times. And a nice American gave us some fresh fish one day, that was lovely, we just grilled it. And one night I took her to the Royal Kingfisher. It’s just like that dump Uncle Evan took us to, but at least it’s air-conditioned. Um... Dunno, really. Scrambled eggs and toast, mainly. And peaches, off the Harrises’ tree.”

    “Vegetables?” said Melinda faintly.

    “Tomatoes.”

    “Greens?” said Melinda wildly.

    “Definitely not greens. Swadlings’ shop does not have greens. Very dead lettuces: yes, sometimes. And May Swadling assures me that Mr Heinz’s bottled mayonnaise, though the dearest, is very tasty. Or there’s a recipe on the Highlander condensed milk tin that’s very easy to make,” he said blandly.

    “Who’s— Never mind.”

   Adam grinned. “It’s terrifically go-ahead, is Carter’s Bay. To the extent of having closed its Bank of New Zealand and its Post Office.”

    “But— Good grief. Well, I knew it was a dump, but... What about the pensioners who want to draw their pension or—or post a parcel to their grandchildren, or something?”

    “Georgy wondered that. I’m afraid I can only tell you what I told her: I have no idea. Possibly they back-pack all the way in to Puriri.”

    “That’s absolutely terrible!” gasped Melinda.

    “You wanted to come back here,” replied Adam callously. “Can I pour the brandy on?”

    “What? No,” said Melinda, hastily taking the pan off the heat. “I think you’d better go and pick some silverbeet if you and Georgy haven’t had greens for a week.”

    “I’ll take the scurvy.”

    “No, you won’t, Adam, it softens the gums and makes the teeth drop out. Go on, off you go.”

    Adam looked at her, laughing, and realized she meant it. “Dad won’t eat it,” he warned weakly.

    “Of course he will, I’ll tell him it’s spinach.”

    “Well, for God’s sake don’t drench it in melted butter,” he said, opening the back door. “Won’t I need a knife or something to cut it with?”

    “Wimp!” his mother retorted witheringly.

    Adam went out to wrench silverbeet plants apart with his bare hands.

    “Scrambled eggs and fish and chips,” said Melinda weakly to herself. “No wonder he’s refusing butter!” She sloshed some brandy in the pan.

    When Adam came in with an armful of silverbeet she said: “What in God’s name do you eat at home, Adam?”

    “Um… Grilled fish, quite often. I’m quite good at grilling fish. And lots of salads,” he said in a very meek voice.

    Melinda gave him a hard look and he said: “I know at least two places in London that don’t sell wilted lettuces. Although one of them doesn’t sell anything that Jack and May Swadling would recognize as lettuce at all. However, it compensates for this by selling endives belges and curly endive and fresh fennel and cos lettuce.”

    ‘I see. And how does Georgy feel on the subject of endives belges, etcetera?”

    He flushed. “I haven’t asked her. Aren’t you being a bit previous, Ma?”

    “Am I?” retorted Melinda.

    There was a short silence.

    “Don’t push,” he said in a hard voice.

    “I’m not pushing. But if you don’t fully intend dragging her back to your cave and feeding her on rabbit food and grilled fish, Adam, don’t you think it might be kinder to break it off now?”

    “My feelings don’t enter into it at all, I presume?”

    “No. You’re ten years older than she is and about forty years more experienced.”

    “Keep out of this, Melinda.”

    Melinda glared at him.

    “I mean it,” he said. “Georgy’s an adult; whatever happens between us—or doesn’t happen—is entirely our affair.”

    “I was only—”

    “Trying to make a lame duck out of her. Well, she isn’t. Far from it,”

    “You’re as bad as your father!” said Melinda heatedly.

    “That’s a compliment,” he noted. “I meant what I said, Ma: keep the nose out.”

    Melinda glared at him. “It doesn’t alter the fact that—that as far as experience goes, she’s virtually a child, Adam!”

    Adam looked down his nose at her—looking remarkably like his father. “Not any more, she isn’t, I do assure you.” He opened the kitchen door and went out.

    “OOH!” said Melinda furiously. She washed the silverbeet vigorously, chopped it up finely and unnecessarily, it would shrink to nothing anyway, and added some salt and far more pepper than was necessary. Which would shortly lead to Christopher’s enquiring tenderly if she’d also spoken roughly to her little boy and beaten him when he sneezed. To which Adam would reply, before his purpling mother could get a word out: “Yes. But I ignored her. More spinach, Dad?”

    “Get this down you,” said Jill kindly.

    Joel took the gin and tonic in a trembling, palsied hand.

    Jill had also invited Jean-Paul Lavallière from her department to dinner this evening, firstly because she rather liked him and secondly because she knew he was currently unattached and thought Joel might rather like him, but now she wondered if it was a mistake: Joel was obviously about to burst into the latest chapter in the Adam-and-Georgy saga and Jean-Paul wasn’t much of a gossip, really. She gave him a gin and tonic and recommended. “I wouldn’t listen to this, if I was you.”

    Jean-Paul’s subject was the 19th-century novel. Jill who stopped round about Les Liaisons dangereuses, had more than once pointed out that somebody had to do it. He smiled at her and said: “And to think I could have stayed at home with that new book on Zola.”

    “Not that one by that idiot that read Lacan in early childhood and never got over it?” she asked in horror.

    “No, no,” he replied soothingly.

    “Phew!” said Jill in relief, sagging onto her sofa with her own gin and tonic.

    Jean-Paul laughed and Joel said plaintively: “Darlings, if this is going to get all inter-lek-tu-al, one shall have to leave.”

    Jill said immediately to her colleague: “How can he sustain the position that nothing exists before language when he’s dealing with Zola on genetics? A primitive view of genetics, true, but—”

    “By ignoring the whole question, how else?” he replied blankly.

    Jill choked into her gin and tonic.

    “To the indoctrinated mind, nothing iss relevant except vhat it wishes to be relevant, haff you still not learned this?” asked Gretchen, coming in with an apron on looking rather flushed.

    “Yes, but Gretchen, the thing’s called Avant—” She glanced at Joel. “Um, Before the Gene: Questions of Being in the Rougon-Macquart Series. Well, more or less.”

    “Just when we had thought Zola was firmly out of the mainstream,” agreed Jean-Paul sadly.

    “He is: that thing isn’t about Zola, it’s about the author’s crush on Lacan et al. Hang on, didn’t he have a fight with that mob, though?”

    “Yes. Polly tells me that Jean-Jacques Casassus, he tells her that after the fight the author tries to stop publication but it’s too late, the book has… is being printed. I forget the English expression Polly used,” he finished apologetically.

    “She would haff said ‘been put to bed’,” spotted Gretchen.

    “She would, indeed,” agreed Jill. “Isn’t that only newspapers, though?” she added over Joel’s spluttering fit.

    “I don’t know, happily, it’s not my language,” said Gretchen. “I haff not come in here to talk about Lacan or his disciples, or the schisms in the Lacan school vhich by the by iss very old hat, the English haff now heard off him.”—Jean-Paul choked.—“I haff come in for a drink,” she pointed out.

    “Let me!” said Joel eagerly, bounding up. “I’ve seldom heard such a beautiful but casual put-down, all done in yer merest aside!” he told her happily.

    “If that’s aimed at me, forget it, I haven’t been near the shores of Blighty in years, and Manchester University Press refused to touch my last book,” said Jill, unmoved.

    “Manchester? But one cannot get published there unless one is a buddy-buddy of that terrible man, Wolfe!” gasped Jean-Paul.

    “Polly must have told you that,” noted Jill.

    “Bien sûr; and also that you have had the most terrible row with him!” he gasped.

    “True. I thought his influence was waning. I mean, he must be all of five hundred by now.”

    “There iss alvays Cambridge,” said Gretchen.

    “She won’t believe me when I tell her that they won’t publish alumnae who only got a Second there,” said Jill sadly.

   Jean-Paul’s eyes were twinkling. “We are talking about the book you publish with Les presses universitaires, no?”

    “Well, yes. Only subsequently, though: after I’d translated it and Polly had edited it and had a bit of a word with Casassus—” She stopped, her colleague was laughing like a drain.

    “Next it vill vin the Prix Femina,” said Gretchen calmly. “Ta, Joel, that hits the shpot.”

    Joel gulped. “Oh, good, darling. Um—win the what?”

    “Ignore that,” recommended Jill.

    “No, I want to know!” he whined.

    Jill sighed. “It won’t win anything, it’s not trendy, it’s just another of your academic pot-boilers.”

    Gretchen rolled her eyes wildly. “It iss just ten years of your life, ja!”

    “Not ten,” she said mildly.

    “What’s it about?” asked Joel keenly.

    “It’s about feminist perspectives of Les Liaisons dangereuses,” said Jill heavily.

    “Not that thing they made that pretty film out of?” gasped Joel. “Darling, that’s trendy!”

    “Not really. Not up there with your Mozarts. Though that was doubtless its maker’s intention. –I didn’t go, before you ask, I can’t stand seeing my favourite books slaughtered on celluloid.”

    “It vass American,” noted Gretchen detachedly.

    “Well, quite!” she said, shuddering.

    “I found it extremely boring, issn’t that odd? Because I don’t find the book boring at all,” noted Gretchen.

    “Not actually, no,” agreed Jill faintly.

    “Darling, it was full of beautiful people! How could you find it boring?” squeaked Joel in horror. “Lovely Glenn Close!”

    “Ja, she iss American, I think,” said Gretchen.

    “Who?” said Jill.

    Joel closed his eyes-for a moment. “The Big Chill. Our generation, darlings!”‘

    “Eh?” said Jill.

    “Ignore her, Joel, they both saw that with Polly and me. Polly has seen it before but she comes with us because her husband ruins it for her the first time by falling asleep in the middle of it,” explained Jean-Paul with a grin.

    “Ja, and then Jill buys the CD, for a vhile ve near nothing in this house except rubbish about grapevines, I tell her if I hear one more grapevine I break it over her head,” said Gretchen grimly.

    —By this time Joel and Jean-Paul were laughing like drains.

    “Doesn’t mean to say I know who this Whatsername is, though,” Jill pointed out. “I think that CD’s still around somewhere, I could—”

    “NO!” they all screamed.

    “Play some Mozart instead, in certain circles he’s still trendy, I believe,” said Jean-Paul, twinkling all over his thin face.

    Jill got up, groaning. “Yes, and in certain others he’s been replaced by The Phantom of the Opera,” she agreed.

    “No, Lezz Mizz,” corrected Joel.

    “Do not you trendies refer to this phenomenon as ‘Lay Mizz’, Joel?” asked Jean-Paul with terrific interest.

    Joel spluttered and his last mouthful of his second gin and tonic went up his nose. Then he said with a pout: “If people are going to get at me all night, I won’t tell :you about Adam and Georgy!

    “I’m going,” said Gretchen, hurriedly betaking herself, her drink and her apron to the kitchen.

    “This is your friend?” asked Jean-Paul courteously, sitting down again and smiling at him.

    “Not that sort of friend, dear!” said Joel crossly.

    “Un copain, il veut dire: il ne’st pas son ami,” translated Jill in a bored voice.

    “Yes. I didn’t mean to imply that Adam was your boyfriend, Joel,” he said courteously.

    Joel looked at him limply.

    “These expressions are very difficult in English: it’s such a euphemistic language,” he said sadly.

    “I might agree with that, dear, if I understood it,” replied Joel on an acid note.

    By now his audience was wondering if he would have rather liked it if Adam had been his boyfriend after all, and Jill was hoping hers didn’t show on her face as much as Jean-Paul’s did on his.

    “So tell me about Adam and this Georgy... Not Georgy Harris?” gasped Jean-Paul.

    Jill groaned deeply. “The same.”

    “But she is such— I don’t mean to imply she is not attractive, of course she’s very pretty, but—but so naïve!”

    Jill groaned deeply.

    “Well, I’m very glad for her,” he decided. “I hope this Adam initiates her kindly.”

    Jill groaned deeply.

    “But are you not pleased for her?” said Jean-Paul cautiously.

    “French!” she said in despair.

    “Ab-so-lu-ter-ly,” agreed Joel sourly.

    “There’s something wrong with this Adam, then?” asked Jean-Paul in bewilderment.

    “Not as such,” Jill conceded grimly.

    Joel sighed heavily. “The French,” he said gloomily to his cousin, “do not take the same attitude to These Things as we.”

    “I can’t see it as a tragedy if Georgy Harris finds an attractive lover for the summer holidays, no,” agreed Jean-Paul placidly, draining his glass. “Your English drinks are so much stronger than sirop,” he said to Jill, poker-face.

    “Don’t change the subject,” she said grimly. “I’m trying to explain that poor Georgy’s the type that’ll take this thing seriously!”

    “I see. Well, possibly she will learn from it that not everybody has the British attitude to These Things.”

    “That was a dig at One,” noted Joel sourly.

    Then there was a short silence, during which Jean-Paul looked quizzically from one to the other of them. “Well, is it a tragedy, Joel?” he said at last.

    “More or less, dear: yes. The tears won’t just be on her side: after he’s dumped her he’ll spend the next six months agonizing over whether he should have. Not to mention agonizing because he wasn’t good enough for her in the first place.”

    “Eh?” said Jill, startled.

    “Oh, yes, darling: we’ve had that one before, I do assure you! Not ah-pray Livia, I must admit. Ah-pray other ladies.”

    “What is this ah-pray?” murmured Jean-Paul to his colleague.

    “Dunno. Some sort of household disinfectant, I think.”—Joel choked.—“No, but this Georgy and Adam thing’s a mess, Jean-Paul!”

    “Nonsense. It will do her good.”

    “See? French!” said Jill wildly.

    Jean-Paul got up. “And if it does turn out a mess, perhaps Joel can successfully disinfectant it with his ah-pray. I think I’ll see if Gretchen needs a hand, it seems to me highly unlikely that she can manage coq au vin unaided.” He wandered out to the kitchen, smiling.

    “You went over like a lead balloon,” noted Jill sourly.

    “Darling, is it one’s fault if one fails to live up to the level of sophistication of a sophisticated Frenchman?” he replied wildly. “Besides, it wasn’t me that insisted on talking about Cambridge Presses and Lacongs and stuff, and showing one up! –I thought that was a rude word, by the way?”

    “Wha— NO!” she shouted.

    “Sorry, sorry.”

    After a moment Jill said: “It might turn out okay.”

    “You mean Georgy’s heart won’t be broken because it’s actually tough as old boots and she regularly does half a dozen like Adam before brekkers? Or Adam won’t indulge in pointless self-recrimination for six months because he hasn’t got a guilt thing about that bloody broken marriage at all and we’ve all been imagining things these last six years? Or possibly that Adam will decide to settle down in God’s Own Country and raise chooks and silverbeet while Georgy does her Anglo-Saxon thing? Or that alternatively he’ll drag her off to lee gla-more-ous Overseas where she’ll settle quite happily into a routine of glittering first nights, trendy chop-houses, trips to lee South of La France with darling Derry and the household, and occasional little hops to Hollywood to make shiny gla-more-rous clap-trap only slightly interspersed with long bouts of holding Adam’s hand while he agonizes over whether he’s pros-ti-tu-ting his art for lovely lolly?”

   Jill had been mesmerized by his flow but now she took a breath and shouted: “Drop it, Thring!”

    Jean-Paul had returned unnoticed and was lounging in the doorway, watching- them sardonically. “I fail to see why that’s impossible. Georgy is most attractive, why should he not wish to take her rather than another woman? And she’s young enough to adapt to a different lifestyle. –Gretchen wishes to know, is there any thyme left in the herb garden or did you pull it out in your weeding fit this afternoon?”

    “Tell her to go and look. And then to shove it,” said Jill sourly.

    Jean-Paul grinned, and vanished.

    “Did you have a weeding fit?” asked Joel, momentarily diverted.

    “Yes. Therapy,” she said glumly. “I suppose he couldn’t be right?”

    Joel rubbed his gargoyle’s nose. “On consideration, no. I’ll lay you odds, if you like. Five hundred to one. In sixpences.”

    “Shut up.”

    After a moment Joel said: “I wonder if Livia did go off to the country today with Polly and Jake and that terribly macho friend of his?”

    “Who cares?” said Jill dully.

    “I do. Well, not oh fong-dew, as you say in furrin.”—She gulped slightly, in spite of herself.—“But one must maintain an interest, dear!”

    “Must one? Well, ring Polly and ask her, then,” she said dully.

   Joel’s eyes lit up. “May I?”

    Jill glanced at her watch. “Yes, interrupt the Carrano dinner hour, by all means.”

    “Beast!”

    Jill didn’t react.

    After a while he said: “I would like to know, though.”

    “Well, ring Polly and ASK her!” shouted Jill.

    “All right, I will, since nobody here wants to talk to me,” he said, pouting.

Jill didn’t react so he went out to the passage phone.

    … “She thinks she might have fallen for him,” he reported cautiously.

    “Big deal.”

    Joel scowled. “Well, if she has, what about Maurice?”

    Jill went over to the gin. “I can tell you one thing about old Maurie Black, and that’s that he won’t be losing any sleep over Livia Wentworth!” She poured herself a slug and went back to the sofa.

    “What about me?” he squeaked.

    “Get yer own.”

    Joel did so. He sat down and looked at her cautiously. After some time he ventured: “Well, what about the tray macho Wal person?”

    Jill replied without interest. “Probably up her right now.”

    Pouting, Joel looked at his watch. He supposed she was right, actually.

    But Jill was wrong.

    When Livia slammed the phone down on Adam she felt very annoyed, but also. quite lively and almost revivified. She went to her dressing-table and did things busily to her face. After a while it dawned that the pinkish nose and the pinkish patch on the point of the chin were not the result of the lukewarm shower. Damn! How on earth? With the beastly sunhat on, too!

    She tried layers of foundation, but that didn’t work, the nose and chin shone through. She tried some of that special cover-up, fortunately she had some—not that she needed it more than once in a blue moon, she only got a spot if she was very naughty with chocolate and cream: that trip to Vienna with darling Rudi had been ruin to her complexion, ruin, and Rudi had been very naughty, he just wouldn’t understand that she wasn’t only worried about her waistline with all the calories, it was her complexion, she’d never been able to eat chocolate— And it wasn’t fair, wouldn’t you think that by now— Abruptly Livia stopped thinking about by now. She cast a fleeting mental glance in the direction of time differences, and dismissed that, too: Rudi could stew in his own juice for a while longer. And so what if it did turn out to be three in the morning when she finally rang him, arithmetic had never been her strong point, and he knew that.

   The cover-up might have been all right under a heavy make-up for filming, with a sympathetic cameraman—Livia was under no illusion about them and had always been very, very nice to the ones in her soapie—only it was definitely not all right for a warm Antipodean evening with a man who apparently preferred women without “muck” on their “dials”: an evening of what Livia hoped would be close-ups. She creamed everything off, went into the bathroom and reapplied the wash—Amy had given her this brand, she’d said no animal had suffered during its preparation and Livia would find it very soothing to the skin. Adding after she’d accepted it that she always used it herself. Livia had very nearly not tried it after that: if Amy’s face was a reliable guide then torturing little animals to death was just what was needed in cosmetic preparations. But she’d given it a go, it was quite expensive and it would have been a pity to waste it. She thought she quite liked it, and it wasn’t too astringent for her skin, so she might keep on with it.

    She was just about to sit down at her dressing-table again when there was a tap at the door of the suite.

   Wishing bitterly that this hotel was more civilized—fancy letting just anybody wander up to the rooms!—Livia went over to the door. “Who is it?” she asked cautiously.

    “The man in the moon, who the Christ do you think it is?” said Wal ‘s voice.

    She opened the door, what else could she do? If it had been darling Maurice she might have screamed girlishly and begged him to wait in the bar; and Rudi had beautiful manners, he would have rung from the lobby, but if it had been him she would have done the same thing with the same result.

    Wal looked at the small, ruffled figure with its fancy pink satin dressing-gown and its pink, shiny face in some amusement. “It is more than half an hour,” he pointed out.

    “What? Oh; well, Adam phoned, I was talking to him; and my face is all sunburnt, I can’t do a thing with it!”

    “Let’s have a dekko,” he said.

    “What? Oh—come in, darling, I’m sorry!” gasped Livia, stumbling away from the door, and suddenly realizing she was in her bare feet, how down-market, what on earth would he think? Probably that she’d never been in a civilized hotel with lovely carpet on the bedroom floor in her life, she thought glumly, remembering some of the ghastly theatrical digs she’d been in, in her time. Linoleum. Ugh. And what was that other stuff, even older than... No, it had gone, but it had been freezing underfoot, too.

    Wal came in and put a hand under her chin. Livia quivered all over and didn’t say anything.

    “Yeah, that’ll be the sun reflecting off the river,” he said, releasing her.

    “Oh! So that’s— I couldn’t imagine how— I see, darling,” she ended sheepishly.

    “Better put something on it,” he said, sitting heavily on the sofa-.

    “I’ve tried every—” Livia got a good look at. his clothes. “What are you wearing?” she cried unguardedly.

    Wal looked down at his clean shirt and cotton slacks in a puzzled way. “Uh—clothes?”

    “We can’t go to a restaurant like that’“ she cried.

    “We can’t go to the flaming Royal, true,” he agreed. “The Captain Kidd Room won’t mind, it’s usually full of Yanks in much louder shirts than this.”

    It wasn’t an unpleasant shirt—given that yellow didn’t really suit him. Its pattern of little red suns and white yachts was quite restrained, really. And he had buttoned it. Well, most of it, quite a lot of chest hair showed above the top button and Livia ignored the feeling in her tummy this was producing.

    “Was anyone proposing to go to The Royal?” she said acidly. “I’m quite sure you couldn’t get in there without a booking, darling!”

    Wal was quite sure you could: you offered the maître d’ a note with two zeros on it and you were in like Flynn. “Well, we’re not going there, anyway. Could go to a steakhouse if you don’t fancy the Captain Kidd, though.”

    “What steakhouse?”

    “Uh—well, it’s just the other side of the park; you wouldn’t have heard of it, but it’s the best in town. Actually its steak’s better than anything you’d get at the bloody Royal.”

    “Is it air-conditioned?”

    “Dunno,” he said, scratching his chin. “Might be. Shouldn’t think so. It’s pretty small.”

    “I’ve no intention of going to .a small steakhouse that isn’t even air-conditioned: are you mad?” she said angrily!

    “No. I only suggested it because you didn’t fancy the Captain Kidd. Could get the car and have fish and chips down by the waterfront, if you’d rather,” he offered with a twinkle.

    “Certainly not!”

    “Well, get dressed, they won’t let you in The Captain Kidd in that thing.”

    Livia’s mouth tightened. She marched into the bedroom and slammed the door.

    Wal grinned. He got up and investigated the little bar. Good: whisky. He poured himself one and sat down with it. After a while he got up and, going over to the bedroom-door, said: “Oy.”

    “What?” replied a sulky voice.

    He smiled a bit. “Can I get you a drink?”

    “Oh. Well, .I don’t usually before dinner...” She waited but nothing happened. “Just a small gin, then, thank you, dear. And help yourself, of course.”

    “I have,” he said.

   The hand with which Livia was applying eyeliner shook. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath, removing the wavy line from her eyelid. Breathing heavily, she reapplied it.

    “There’s no need to get all dolled up like a dog’s dinner,” he said, coming in with two drinks—Livia gasped, and dropped her blusher brush—“the Captain Kidd’s as black as the ace of spades.”

    Livia ignored that. “Thank... you!” she trilled as he put her drink on the dressing table.

    Wal watched as she got a belt of it down her. “Too strong?” he murmured.

    “No, just right,” replied Livia absently, picking up her brush.

    He sat down on the overstuffed pale blue satin eiderdown, grinning. It was practically straight gin, he’d barely waved the tonic at it.

    Livia looked at him out of the corner of her eye in the mirror. She was abruptly drowned in a wave of desire and wanted terribly just to pounce on him and make him go to bed right now. But as she was definitely not that sort of woman, thank you, she didn’t, but took a revivifying sip of her drink and finished her make-up. When she looked round he was investigating her wardrobe.

    “Wear something loose,” he said.

    Livia did not choose .her clothes on the principle of “something loose”, she chose them on the principle that they’d better show off cuddly little Livia to her best advantage or they wouldn’t get chosen. Therefore she stared numbly at him for a moment or two.

    “That thing you had on the other day was all right,” he said indifferently.

    “My culotte suit? Darling, that’s day wear!”

    There was a short silence.

    “Anyway, it’s gone to the cleaners,” she said weakly, thinking that at least he’d liked it. Not that he’d given any indication at he time, of course!

    “Well, wear anything, but get a move on, I’m starving,” he said.

    She would be much, much too hot in most of the things she’d brought. Ooh, perhaps that sarong! No, he’d think it was silly... She found it and lifted. it out. “This?” she said.

    “Shoulda come out last year—was it? Well, when Polly had that flaming luau,” he said. “Looks like the sort of thing they were all getting round in at that.”

    Livia slammed it back angrily into the wardrobe. She didn’t know what a loo-whatever-it-was was, and she had no intention of asking Wallace Briggs!

    “It’ll do,” he said.

    “It will not!”

    Wal got it out again. “Wear it,” he said in a bored voice.

    She had a lovely pair of very high-heeled sandals… Suddenly Livia felt she didn’t want to wear her very high-heeled sandals, she didn’t even want to look grown-up and sophisticated, she just wanted to cry on his chest and—

    “What in God’s name’s the matter?” he said.

    “Nothing. You’re so hard,” she said faintly.

    “I wouldn’t say that. Not at my age: not before me tea an’ all,” he drawled.

    “You— GET OUT OF MY BEDROOM!” screamed Livia.

    Wal looked at the bright pink cheeks that were showing through the make-up, and laughed. “All right. But put that on, it’ll do. And you won’t need a hat, the Captain Kidd Room’s not sunny.”

    He went out and Livia shouted bitterly: “Very FUNNY!”

    She put the sarong on. Many persons from places around or just below the equator would not have recognised it as a sarong, as it was not a flat square of material, but on the contrary an elaborately darted, folded, interlined, and where necessary just slightly stiffened dress. True, it did only have one shoulder strap, which was knotted in an apparently careless way on the shoulder. It was, in fact, the sort of sarong that Dorothy Lamour would have recognized.

    Livia was a lot smaller than Dorothy Lamour, and an unprejudiced eye might have said that Livia in her bare feet and her moulded sarong that came to just above the knee on the shoulder-strap side and to mid-calf on the other side looked rather silly, so possibly it was fortunate that Wal Briggs was on the other side of the door at this moment. The sarong was very pretty, although it was only cotton: it had a pattern of bright pink flowers and green leaves on a softer pink ground that was printed all over with a ferny pattern in gold. The gold glistened in the light as Livia turned slowly in front of the long mirror and she was quite glad she’d chosen it, after all.

    She brushed her hair out in the natural look and added a bit of gel, to make it look even more natural, and put a pink silk flower that went with the sarong behind one ear. Then she removed it. Then she put it back. Then she added a pair of simple gold hoops to her ears. That looked better. She tried the very high-heeled deep pink sandals but they looked all wrong. So she wore a lower pair in a green that went quite well with the sarong, thinking silently he’d never know she’d bought them to go with that very casual pirate-pants outfit with the big cape that was leisure wear—well, almost beach wear, really.

    Then as a final touch she put on the wristband that went with the sarong. It was green with a big pink flower on it. She picked up the little purse made of the sarong’s material, transferred her necessaries to it, and went out.

    “That took long enough: were you sewing yourself into it?” he said, looking up from one of her magazines.

    “No, don’t be silly, dear.”

    He didn’t say anything else and Livia thought better of asking him in an artless voice if he thought she looked nice.

    “Come on,” he said. “Got your key?”

    Livia had, she wasn’t entirely helpless. With many other men she might have pretended not to remember whether she had it or not, and searched in her little bag in a helpless, fluffy way—but to Wallace Briggs she said only: “Of course.”

    “Come on, then, Dorothy Lamour,” he said with a grin.

    They went out into-the corridor and Livia said with vigour, not pausing to choose her words or think that the remark might age her: “Well, if I’m Dorothy Lamour, Wallace, don’t flatter yourself you’re Bing Crosby! You’re Bob Hope to the life in that awful shirt!”

    “It’s a perfectly ordinary shirt,” replied Wal, trying not to laugh.

    “I’m sure Bob Hope would have thought so, too, dear,” said Livia, sweetly acid.

    Abruptly Wal broke down and had a helpless fit of laughter all over the hotel’s horrible terracotta corridor.

    “You’re not half bad when you let yourself go, Dotty,” he said, putting a casual arm round her shoulders. “Come on, food ho.”

    “I am hungry,” she admitted as they got into the lift. There were two American couples in it in very conservative day-wear (though very clean and well pressed with it) and Livia gave them a pitying glance and tossed her head a little.

    “Must be what’s making you so bitchy,” Wal agreed without rancour.

    Livia forgot all about impressing the Americans and gave him a furious glare.

    “You’ll feel better with some tea in your tum,” he said mildly.

    Livia didn’t reply.

    … “Better?” he said with a grin. Having’ spurned the Captain Kidd’s pizzas, Livia had discovered they also did steak with baked potato and weakly conceded she could just fancy that.

    “Yes,” she admitted with a sigh. “I was terribly hungry, it must have been all that fresh air!”

    “Want some pud?”

    “No, I’d better not,” she said sadly.

    “Probably just as well, their puds are pretty bad. Round about the McDonald’s level, from what I remember. Shall we have coffee, then? What about Irish coffee, they give you a good belt in it.”

    “I don’t think I’d better... Too much cream, after that lovely sour cream with the potato,” she said sadly.

    “They lay it on for the Yanks. I remember when they first introduced it, no-one here had heard of it. Well, Jake might have,” he conceded with a grin.

    “I see, dear. Does he travel abroad very often?”

    “Yeah. A fair bit. Not so much the States, though—though they’ve got friends in San Francisco and New York. No, more to Canada, the Group’s got property and timber interests there, and to Japan a fair bit, And off and on to South America—that doesn’t down too well with Polly, she doesn’t approve of most of the régimes over there.”—“No,” said Livia faintly.—“And he’s been doing a bit of business in Europe lately—though the London office handles most of that.”

    “I see.”

    “They were in some development project in Thailand a bit back, but Jake got out of that pretty quick.” Livia looked doubtful and he made a face. “Too much instability in the region. He won’t touch Southeast Asia. Got interests in Indonesia and Malaysia, though.”

    Livia had thought it was all Southeast Asia. “I see, dear,” she said faint]y.

    “And one of the companies has done a fair bit of construction work in the Middle East, but he pulled out of there not long after the Iran-Iraq war.”

    “Too much instability in the region?” she murmured.

    Wal laughed. “Yeah! This latest kerfuffle proves he was bloody well right, eh?”

    “Oh, absolutely, darling! We came across America, you know: I wouldn’t have dreamed of going anywhere near the Middle East.”

    “Too right.”

    Livia gave a little sigh. “Everything seems so safe, here.”

    “Probably what the bloody Kuwaitis were thinking up until a few months back,” he said sourly. “Uh—no,” as she gave a him a startled, doubtful look: “it is pretty isolated. But nowhere’s safe in the nuclear age, is it?”

    “Not really, no.”

    “Oy,” he said, touching her hand: “if we all go up in a cloud of nuclear dust we all go, eh? No use worrying about it.”

    “No; life must go on,” said Livia with a sigh.

    “Tired?” he asked, looking round for the waiter.

    “Yes, I am, I suppose, darling,” she admitted. “It was a very long trip... I did go straight to bed to sleep off the jet-lag when we arrived, but…”

    “Too much rushing around since.” He caught the waiter’s eye and waved vigorously. Livia pinkened, she knew that wasn’t nice.

    “If they don’t come,” said Wal on a dry note as the man retreated, having taken their orders tor coffee and liqueurs, “the next step is to bellow ‘Oy, whaddabout some service round here?’”

    “Wha— Oh, the waiter! I just bet you would, too!” she said vigorously.

     He laughed. “Too right! Well, Jake does, why shouldn’t I?”

    Livia swallowed.

    “Not that he needs to, most places,” he said dryly.

    “No.” After a moment. she added: “He must lead a very busy life.”

    “Bags of energy,” said Wal with a yawn. “Always has had.”

     “Ye-es… Does Polly go with him on his trips abroad?”

    “Overseas,” he corrected with a grin. “She sometimes goes, if it’s a week or so. It’s easier now she’s not teaching.”

    “Yes. The children must be left with their nanny quite a lot, then?

    “Yeah. Well, they’ve got a nanny and a Jap kid helping her, now. And sometimes Polly’s mum comes up and stays with them, if Jake and Polly are going to be away a week or more.”

    “Yes, I see.”

    “Don’t you approve?” he said with a twinkle.

    “Of course, don’t be silly, darling!” she gasped.

    “A bit of variety doesn’t do the kids any harm. And they’ll be with her for a fair bit, yet, ya know. Jake might not.”

    Livia replied with difficulty: “No. I see.”

    “He’s as fit as a flea, of course, but he’s over twenty years older than her—well, same age as me,” he said, making a face. “Fifty-six, if ya wanna know.”

    “I see.”

    “Took some doing, to make up his mind to get hitched, six years back,” he said, with another grimace.

    “But she’s so lovely,” said Livia faintly.

    Wal shrugged. “Lovely and bright and damn difficult with it—thought we agreed on that?”—Livia nodded.—“Yeah, well, Jake’s not dumb, he always realized it wouldn’t be all beer and skittles, being married to her. And he wanted to have kids, but let’s face it, when the boys are ten he’ll be sixty-one. He’ll be lucky to live to see their twenty-first.”

    “Yes,” she said faintly. “I think I see, darling,” she added. “It’s a big commitment, isn’t it?”

    “Yeah. –Good: coffee,” he said as the man came up with their coffee and liqueurs. “This’ll be awful, their coffee always is,” he warned.

    Livia sighed. “I must remember not to bring Adam here, then.” She wished she hadn’t said it the moment it was out of her mouth: it was never a good idea to mention one man to another; but fortunately Wallace only said mildly: “He into the real coffee bit?”

    “Yes,” she said, pulling a little face.

    “So are Jake and Polly; at first I thought she only did it because he did—ya know?”—Livia  nodded fervently: she knew all about that sort of thing.—“Only she doesn’t, she got into real coffee in France when she was a student. Once I got to know her better I realized she doesn’t do a damn thing because he does.”

    After a moment Livia said: “Surely, darling—! I mean… Well, one doesn’t see the—the other sides of people’s lives,” she fumbled. “I mean, in their private lives I’m sure she must—must make some compromises.”

    He shrugged his heavy shoulders.

    Livia stared into her coffee.

    “You ever been married?” he said abruptly.

    “No.”

    “I have. Three times. All disasters.”

    “I know. I mean, Polly mentioned it was three!” she gasped, very pink.

    “Yeah. S’pose I should have stuck with the first one. Only she was a nagger, ya know? Reckoned I ought to join the mainstream: you know: take silk, set me sights on becoming a judge before I was forty-five: that sorta thing.” He sighed.

    “And you didn’t want that?” she ventured.

    “No. I’ve always been the bad boy on the legal scene here. A nice, clean downtown firm full of Q.C.’s wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole. My motto’s defend anyone for anything.” He shrugged. “So I’ve got a reputation for—well, being in with the crims, that sorta garbage.”

    Livia looked at him dubiously and reflected that he was tough enough, he probably handled his criminal clients extremely capably. “Would you defend someone for—well, for murder—if you knew he’d done it?”

    He shrugged. “Why not? The system says he’s entitled to a fair trial.”

    Livia looked at him in horror.

    Wal shrugged again. “I didn’t make the system. If it was down to me, I’d string the buggers up without a second thought.”

    “Wallace!” she gasped.

    Wal sipped his coffee. “Nice ladies like you have got no idea. Half these buggers don’t give a f— don’t give a damn about what they do or who they do it to. If they can top someone and get away with it, they’re laughing. See? Don’t ask me whether it’s their bloody broken homes or the rotten social inequalities of our system or the fact that they’re Black or sky-blue-pink or something, while you and me aren’t—all I see is the results. And believe you me, their lives aren’t worth preserving.”

    There was a short silence. “But you do?”

    “I defend ’em, yeah. So what? It’s a living.”

    They drank coffee in silence.

    Finally Wal admitted: “Not all my cases are like that—not all dyed-in-the-wool crims, especially not these days. Tend to get the bigger scale stuff: the drug bosses, that sort of thing. But as well I get the ones that your nice downtown law firms won’t look at because they’ve been splashed all over the papers: doctors from Pakuranga that go potty and top their bitches of wives with a shotgun, poor little shits of accountants from Birkdale that’ve done in their wives because they can’t stand the Alzheimer’s— Yes,” he said, as Livia looked at him in horror: “I’ve had a few of those; and the odd political scandal that’s turned nasty and that the whole bloody legal apparatus is shit-scared of touching because it might rub off.”

    “Have you?” she said faintly.

    “Political ones?” He shrugged. “Only a couple. Well, the country’s not that big. And before you ask, no, I didn’t get them off in a blaze of glory: when I say the whole bloody legal apparatus I mean it: right up to the flaming judges.” He sniffed. “Further. Took one case to the bloody Privy Council, once—your one, in Pongo, thass right,” he confirmed to her puzzled face—“and of course they only upheld the original verdict. I did warn the poor bugger that’d happen, but—” He shrugged. “He reckoned there was a principle at stake.”

    “Well... Well, he was right, then,” she said.

    “Insofar as there was a principle at stake: true. Only the principle lost out, like what I’d said it would, so I was right, too, eh? Anyway, the publicity didn’t do me any harm.” He shrugged

    “Wallace!” she gasped.

    “Don’t kid yourself, the law’s a business, just like any other one. And if you can’t break into the old-boy network, you’ve got to use any method you can.”

    “I didn’t think it’d be like that in New Zealand,” said Livia dazedly.

    “Maybe it isn’t, if you’re content to sit on your arse doing conveyancing in the wilds of Papatoetoe,” he said drily.

    “Darling, all these Maori names,’ Livia replied faintly.

    “Eh? Oh! Sorry! Has this all sounded like Greek to you? Well, Greek and Maori,” he said with a grin.

    “No! It’s been fascinating, darling!” she gasped.

    “Fascinating but Greek,” he agreed with a little smile. He sipped his Drambuie and watched her over the rim.

    “No, I— Well, I was in that series about real trials, I was a key witness... That was quite a while ago,” she said weakly. “They were re-enactments. In three parts, so you could guess who done it before the third part.”

    “Cripes, I know the things ya mean! They were on the year I had hepatitis. I was off sick for ages, used to watch them in the afternoons—too bloody weak to do anything else. That was a fair bit back,” he said with a grin.

    “Yes. And I do remember the—prosecuting attorney—I know you don’t call them that!” she added on a gasp. “I mean, well, the prosecutor: he was a Q.C.”

    “Yeah. Not a D.A.,” said Wal weakly.

    “No,” she said in a small voice.

    “If you’re a Q.C.—that’s what they call taking silk,” he said, “then you’re a Queen’s Counsel and you can represent the Crown—see?”

    “Ye-es... Oh! I see! Of course!” She shot him a doubtful look.

    “Their gowns are supposed to be silk, it’s some bloody medieval Brit tradition or something,” he said drily.

    “It gives you a funny feeling—all that tradition,” she said slowly.

    “It gives me a funny feeling that they oughta junk the whole bloody system, yeah,” Wal replied grimly.

    Livia looked at him doubtfully and he pulled an awful face and said: “Well, what human institution doesn’t have its faults, eh? Come on, drink up.”

    “Yes,” said Livia, obediently sipping her Cointreau. “I’m sorry poor little me is so dumb, dear,” she added in a voice that came out a lot drearier than she’d meant it to.

    Wal gave her quite a kindly look. “You’re not dumb, in fact I’d say you’re pretty sharp. Not your fault if you’re haven’t done a doctorate like ruddy Polly Carrano, is it?”

    “No. –Has she?”

    “Uh—more or less. Think it was a French doctorate, actually. Same difference.”

    “Yes,” said Livia glumly.

    Wal finished his Drambuie and sat back. “Left school at fifteen, didja?”

    “I— Yes,” said Livia in a small voice. “Mummy wanted me to stay on, but we couldn’t really afford it. I didn’t go straight on the stage, Mummy would never have heard of it, of course.”

    “What did you do?”

    “I was an office junior... I suppose you’d call it a clerk. It was a big firm, they made nuts and bolts and things like that. I did lots of filing and—and we had to stamp the invoices and put the copies in another place, and… I suppose all offices are like that, really.”

    “Pointless paper-shuffling, too right. First firm I clerked with, my most important job was making the tea. We had two lots of tea—not that it was a big place, really: it wasn’t, the big places wouldn’t have taken me on, I hadn’t been to the right school and I didn’t have the right surname—not from one of the local legal families,” he explained with a twinkle—“and what’s more they knew damn well I was moonlighting at night as chucker-out in a sleazy nightclub up— Well, where there were two sleazy nightclubs and as many Chinese restaurants back in those days; it’s more like the local Sunset Strip now: seven sleazy nightclubs, twenty-seven massage parlours and five Chinese restaurants,” he explained.

    Livia gasped, choked, and laughed helplessly.

    “Anyway, this tea-making—I’ve gotta get this off me chest, ya know,” he explained, grinning. Livia nodded, eyes sparkling, and he said: “Well, first ya hadda make a great big pot, that was for all us oiks, ya see, from me and the typists up to the junior partners. It was just ordinary tea and from what I’d learnt off old Sister Anne that’s what I thought tea was—geddit?”

    “Ye-es...”

    “First ya hadda pour the junior partners’ teas: there was four of them, I’ve since realized that none of ’em ever had a snowflake’s of getting any further, poor buggers, it was one of those family firms: Blunder, Blunder, Bullshit and Blunder.”

    Livia gave an agonized squeak and covered her mouth with her hand.

    Grinning broadly, Wal continued: “Well, the junior partners all had real cups, see? English china, with roses on ’em, I’ll remember that bloody pattern till the day I die. Then next ya hadda pour the senior clerk’s and the head typist’s teas. He had his in a big enamel mug—this was years before everyone had coffee mugs, even at the Convent we had cups, and I always thought that only rough people like wharfies and road-workers had mugs.” Livia looked at him doubtfully; he winked and said: “This was before me own stint as a wharfie, of course. Um—longshoreman? Docker?”

    “Oh, good Heavens,” said Livia faintly.

    “Not what your mummy would have approved of, eh?” he said, winking. “No, well, where was I? Oh, yeah: bloody Miss Hopwood’s tea. She had hers in a special cup, it was pale blue with a gold rim. When you’d poured all those you had to take ’em to ’em. The partners all had a biscuit out of the partners’ tin and by cripes ya got it in the neck if you slopped tea in the saucer over the biscuit. Miss H. didn’t eat those biscuits, she brought her own that she kept locked in her second desk-drawer. And the senior clerk always had two gingernuts, he kept them locked in his bottom drawer. I used to lie awake at nights scheming up ways to get into those drawers—not because I was starving, but to spite the bastards,” he said, twinkling. Livia giggled, and nodded. “Then after you’d taken round the tea-tray the pot’d be stewed enough for the rest of us, see, so the clerks and the junior typists got ours. I dunno how much you know about the English set-up,” he added with a grin, “but in our law offices all the clerks except the senior one are usually law students, so we were the lowest of the low. Well below the typists, and in fact they despised us utterly. Had their own circle of friends, barely spoke to us, let alone treated us as boyfriend material. Well, all the rest of them got their teas, then: the typists used to have theirs in their office and us law clerks had ours in the little back room where they kept most of the lawbooks and grudgingly allotted us two desks between five of us—yeah, real Dickensian, that’s right—only I was lowest in the pecking order, so I didn’t get my tea yet, I had to make the senior partners’ teas first. And this is the bit that was the real shock to my system, see: the senior partners—there were only three on deck and the oldest one of them often didn’t come in, he was pretty well past it—well, they had special tea without milk!”

    Livia bit her lip.

    “Sister Anne refused to believe this when I told her—I was only seventeen, and she’d boarded me out with a nice Catholic family, so I still saw a fair bit of them all at the Convent.” He gave her a cautious glance and admitted: “Well, I would’ve anyway, I suppose. Anyhow, she said I needed my mouth washed out with soap for telling lies when I told her the senior partners had their tea without milk and that it smelled of tar!”

    “Did you ever taste it?”

    “Yeah: once, when half the office was out—the oldest partner hadn’t come in, and the other two and the senior clerk were all in court on a big case—me and Jack Kelly, he was me partner in crime there, we made ourselves a pot of the stuff. Gawd, it was vile!”

    They laughed.

    “Looking back, I suppose it musta been Lapsang Souchong,” he said. “I never thought to ask, because I never knew teas had names, and nobody ever thought to tell me it was China tea.”

    “Wallace, it’s rather sad,” she murmured sympathetically.

    “Bloody pathetic, ya mean! Anyway, this tea got made in a special little brown pot, not in the huge aluminium thing we had ours out of. Then you had to put it on a tray with a tray-cloth that Miss Hopwood brought in special every morning, washed and ironed—it wasn’t always the same cloth, it gradually dawned—with a blue willow-pattern plate of partners’ biscuits. They were allowed to have more than one each, ya see. Then you poured the tea and took it round at once. If you let it sit you got it in the neck. The tray ended up in the second-oldest partner’s room—he was the joker that really ran the place—well, him and the senior clerk, of course—and whether he took another cup out of the pot or whether he watered his blasted cactuses with it, I never did discover, but by the time the pot got back to me there was never a drop left in it.”

    “He could have poured it all away for spite,” said Livia thoughtfully.

    “I wouldn’t have put that past him, either!” he said with feeling.

    “Yes, it would’ve kept you in your place... It sounds dreadful, Wallace!”

    “I suppose it wasn’t, really. Pretty average for an office back in those days. These modern kids...” He sighed. “One of my clerks has just instituted real coffee with those plunger affairs—ya know?”—Livia nodded.—“I’ve got three boys and a girl clerking for me at the moment, and the girl’s by far the brightest, might take her into the firm if that’s what she wants, later... They come from pretty average homes, I try to take kids that need a bit of a chance—so long as they’ve got the ability, of course—but they’ve got no idea! Turn up at the office in jeans, half the time; and one of the boys drives a scarlet T-Bird he’s done up himself and every morning it’s a race between him and John, that’s my senior clerk, to see who can get the parking spot behind the fire hydrant where the Council’s forgotten to put in a meter; and the other day the whole bunch of ‘em were figuring out whether they could scrape up the cash to get themselves over to Melbourne to see the blasted Phantom of the Opera on a special-offer group booking! Strewth!” He saw that Livia was looking at him dubiously and said with a smile: “I don’t begrudge ’em, far from it. But when I think of what I knew—well, what I’d been exposed to, I suppose—at their age, and then look at them, throwing around names like Reeboks and Calvin Klein and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Earl Grey without thinking twice about it!”

    “Yes,” she said softly.

    “And it’s first names all round; if I asked ‘em to call me ‘Mister’ they’d think I was cracked. Oh, well, it’s nicer, I suppose. Only I do draw the line at bloody Liz cooking soup from scratch in the office kitchen!” ‘

    “Liz?” she said faintly.

    “Yeah, she’s me girl clerk. Last winter she decided we should all be eating roughage and protein or some such crap for lunch, so she used to bring in these beans—well, she had cooked the beans at home, I’ll give ya that—she used to bring in them and these bloody onions, and fry up the onions and cook up a big pot of soup until the whole place stunk like— Stop laughing, it wasn’t funny, me clients thought I was going gaga!”

    “Did you stop her, Wal?” she asked with a giggle.

    “Uh—well, no.”—Livia gave a crow of laughter.—“I finally asked her to cook the onions at home, the place was beginning to stink like a hamburger joint. Only I thought myself that a couple of the boys looked as if they could do with a bit of solid nosh, not to say roughage, so—” He stopped, Livia was laughing her head off.

    “Big softie!” she gasped at last, blotting her eyes carefully.

    “Well, I like bright kids,” he said with a smile. “God knows my own are pretty dumb.”

    Livia hesitated. “They’re not in the firm, then?”

    “Hell, no, none of ’em went in for law. Bruno, he’s the eldest, he insisted on going in for kindergarten teaching. It’s the worst paid job in the country,” he added as she looked puzzled. “And before you ask, there might be two other blokes doing it besides him, but if there are I’ve never met ’em. And quite a few places aren’t too keen on employing a bloke to work with really little kids—I told ’im that, too, but he wouldn’t listen—so he’s ended up working in the grottiest joints there are, for peanuts. Did two years with some damned play group that could only afford to give him his keep, he had to sleep on the premises.”

    “He sounds rather sweet,” she murmured limply.

    “Sweet’s his middle name,” agreed his father grimly. “Then Stewart, he’s the middle one, he’s in cost-accounting, not to say property investments, not to say anything else that’ll bring in a ruddy great capital gain that he won’t be taxed for, no flies on Stewart. His middle name’s ‘Mean’, before you ask. He’s married, but everything he gives her is to reinforce the image. Won’t buy her fancy nighties because no-one sees ’em.”

    “I don’t believe you!” she gasped.

    “It’s true. He would do, mind you, if she used the washing-line, but they’ve got a drier.”

    After a moment Livia said in a numbed voice: “Have they got any children?”

    “Yeah. It suited his tax position at the time,” he said sourly.

    Livia swallowed. Then she said in a small voice: “You could give her pretty nighties, Wallace.”

    “I do. Every birthday and Christmas. The little shit still hasn’t got the point. Or if he has he’s refusing to take the hint.”

    She swallowed again.

    “Actually it’s a toss-up which of ‘em is meaner, Stewart or George,” he said thoughtfully. “George—he’s the youngest boy—he’s a stockbroker. He thought it out very carefully and decided that was the profession that would give him the most opportunity to meet the right people. Provided he joined the right golf club, which he immediately did. But stockbroking is only a stop-gap until he judges he’s the right age to put himself up for a safe National seat. That’s like your Tories, Ma Thatcher’s lot, geddit? He isn’t married yet because he hasn’t found the girl with the right political connections, yet. But he’s been a Young Nat since he was sixteen, he was the youngest Young Nat in the whole flaming country.”

    “What’s a—”

    “Um—sort of budding Tories organization. Don’t they have ‘em in England?”

    “I don’t know, dear, I really don’t know anything about politics... Um—I think there’s a Monday Club, or something?”

    Wal smiled a bit. “Not like that. More like junior Rotary, only they admit to their political aims.”

    “I see.”

    “Dead losses, all of ’em,” he said sourly.

    “Don’t say that, dear... I suppose a boy has to have a career,” she said weakly. “You can’t blame them for—for wanting to succeed... And the oldest one does sound very sweet.”

    Wal sniffed. “Wanna go to one of the lounge bars? Be more comfortable than this.”

    “What? Oh—yes, darling, that would be nice.”

    When they’d found two large armchairs in one of the big upstairs bars—Livia was disappointed that there hadn’t been a sofa free, but she was unable to tell whether he was or not—she said: “What about the girls, Wallace? I think you said they’re grown up, now?”

    “Two of them are, they’re flatting. Two are still at home with their mother—Suzanne. Well, three are Suzanne’s, the oldest one’s Gwenda’s. They’re all dumb, all they think about’s clothes, boys and make-up, not necessarily in that order.” He sighed. “Well, little Panda, she’s the youngest, maybe she’s not dumb, but if her mother has her way she’ll be as silly as the rest of ’em by the time she’s eighteen.”

    “Panda? How old is she now, Wallace?”

    He sighed again. “Sixteen. Going on seventeen. I try to see a bit of her: she’s the only one that seems to give a stuff about her old dad.”

    Livia’s eyes unexpectedly filled. She swallowed hard and glared at the bar’s pale green carpet.

    “Her name’s really Pandora, but she called herself Panda when she was little,” he added in a sheepish voice.

    “Have you got a photo of her, darling?”

    “Uh—yeah. You don’t really wanna see it, do ya?”

    “Yes, I’d like to,” said Livia firmly.

    Looking sheepish, Wal got his wallet out. “Here,” he said, extracting a small, dog-eared colour photo from it. The sort that you took in booths, well, that some people did.

    Livia looked at it and smiled. It had certainly been taken in a booth: Wal and his daughter had crammed into it together and were both grinning madly with their heads together. She was a round-faced girl and, if the photo could be relied upon, very tanned. Her brown hair was very short, one of those boyish styles like so many of the children wore these days, and at least on that day she hadn’t bothered to wear any make-up.

    “She looks very sweet. Very natural,” she said.

    “She’s all right. Doesn’t get on too good with her mother and her sister. Well, Suzanne and Caitlin can’t talk about anything except shoes and clothes and makeup—oh, and film stars,” he said with a grin.

    “Oh,” she said uncertainly. “Caitlin’s a very pretty name, dear—unusual.”

    Wal grimaced. “Don’t blame me, their mother chose all their names, her oldest one’s Kamala, and there’s nothing Indian about her. She’s twenty-two, now: I suppose if you work it out Suzanne must have been into the Indian thing at the time, she always was one for following the trends relentlessly. Think she only divorced me because half her friends were into divorce that year.”

    “Well, it’s a pretty name,” said Livia gamely. “And she’s flatting, that right?”

    “Yes, her and Annalinda are flatting together, with a couple of other girls,” he said glumly. “And before you ask, the Annalinda is after some blasted American female that her mother was at school with—there was a bunch of ’em, Gwenda and this Annalinda dame—her family eventually went back to the States—and Pat Somebody-or-other, and uh—Phyllis Something, she’s Phyllis Harding now. A real crow. Her and Gwenda still have these regular get-togethers and as far as I can see when they’re not talking about their faces or their figures they’re doing a sort of one-upmanship thing with their kids. Well, Gwenda can’t with Bruno, of course, but she plays Stewart and George for all she’s worth, and Phyllis can’t with her son, he’s taken up orcharding somewhere up north, but she plays her daughter for all she’s worth, she married some tit in the wedding of the year about seven or eight years back.”

    “Oh, dear,” said Livia sympathetically.

    Wal made a face. “Suzanne’s just as bad, mind you. Only with her set it’s gossip and ladies’ tennis, whereas Gwenda and her lot are more into gossip and ladies’ bridge.”

    “I see.” Livia looked limply at the cheerful face of Panda Briggs. The daughter of... yes, Suzanne. She certainly didn’t look the sort of girl who would be interested in that sort of thing. “What sort of thing does she like, dear? Panda, I mean.”

    Wallace sighed and held out his hand for the photo. “Ya mean besides hamburgers and fish and chips? Well, pizzas, of course. –No,” he said with a grin: “she plays chess and backgammon—don’t look at me, I can’t play chess to save me life, and I’m not shit-hot at backgammon, either—and she’s got a computer—she’s into programming;”—Livia had expected him to say “computer games”, she looked at him dazedly—“and—um, well, she likes sailing, we get out on the boat whenever we can, but her mother won’t let me give her a sailing dinghy of her own; and apart from that she reads computer mags.”

    Livia felt rather depressed. There was no hope that she herself would be able to get on well with this Panda.

    “Polly reckons she was just the same at her age,” he said on a glum note. “Only it was horses instead of sailing with her, of course, living on a farm. I dunno if that’s a hopeful sign or not,” he added with a grin.

     “A— Oh!” Livia went very pink. “Hopeful, surely, darling? Polly’s lovely. And she’s got those lovely children, and—well!”

    “Yeah. And she— Well, never mind. Nobody’s perfect. Only I hope Panda doesn’t turn out as—as bloody complicated as her.”

    “Complicated?”

    “Yeah—well, you know. Like I said earlier.”

    “Yes.” Suddenly the drive to the stables and looking at the horses and the picnic lunch and the paddling all seemed like a million light years away and Livia just looked him numbly.

    “What’s up?”

    “Nothing, darling, of course not! Just—just a goose walking over my grave, or something!” she said with an uneasy laugh.

    Wal made a face. “I’ve been talking too much. Boring you solid.”

    “No—it was interesting!” she gasped. “I loved hearing about your work, earlier, and about when you were a law clerk, and—and about your children. Truly!”

    “Yeah. Well, I s’pose it was slightly less boring than sitting here talking about existential philosophy,” he said with a grin.

    “Heavens, yes, darling!” tinkled Livia. It sank in. “Good gracious, does she?” she croaked.

    “Who, Polly? Half the time, yeah—well, her and those mates of hers from the varsity, yeah. Not that she believes in any of that worth a damn, either...” His crumpled, ugly face fell into gloomy lines and he stared at the carpet.”

   After a moment Livia managed to say: “I’m afraid I just like talking about ordinary things, dear.”

    “Me, too,” said Wal on a sigh.

    There was a short pause.

    “I wouldn’t mind going to bed,” he said.

    Livia went very red and swallowed a gasp.

    “Only I think,” he said, looking up with a grimace: “that I feel too bloody clapped out, at this precise moment.”

    “It was that long drive and—and all those sticky kiddies!” said Livia desperately.

    “Yeah. Oh, well, I’ve got a long day tomorrow, big court case coming up,” he said, passing a hand over his face. “I’ll see you to your room, if ya like.”

    “What? Oh, thank you, darling!” she gasped, scrambling up, horribly flustered.

    At her door she handed Wallace the key. He unlocked the door and opened it without comment. He followed her inside silently.

    “Well—” she said, looking up at him with a desperate smile.

    Suddenly Wal grabbed her and pulled her against him. Livia could feel he could, no matter what he’d said about feeling clapped out, and immediately got terribly excited herself.

    He didn’t kiss her, just held her very tight.

    After some time of this Livia said in a strangled voice: “Couldn’t we?”

    “No, I’d make a flaming tit of myself,” he replied harshly.

   Swallowing, she said: “Darling, I do understand. Sometimes a man can’t—well, can’t control it.”

    “And sometimes he makes a flaming tit of himself, yeah.”

    “I won’t think any the worse of you, Wallace,” said Livia in a trembling voice.

    “Yes, you will, you won’t be able to help yourself, you’re that sort of woman. And Christ knows the last thing I feel like tonight is competing in some sort of sexual marathon against bloody Maurice Black.”

    “It wouldn’t be like that!” she gasped.

    “Bullshit, you know it would and I know it would.” He released her and stepped back. “I’ve got to get up at crack of dawn tomorrow, anyway. I’ll see you at this flaming garden party of Polly’s, I suppose.”

    “What? Oh—yes,” said Livia faintly.

    “It was a good day,” he said, turning for the door.

    “Yes! It was lovely! Thank you, darling!” gasped Livia, all flustered.

    Wal paused with his hand on the doorknob, not looking at her. “Look, I know you’ve got a tight schedule—and I’m really gonna be tied up for the next few weeks if this case goes the way we think it will.”

    “Yes,” said Livia faintly.

    “Only—I could manage a day next weekend, if— Well, do ya reckon you could keep Saturday free for me?”

     Livia’s heart hammered wildly. She didn’t think for an instant of pretending she might be busy—or even of wondering if it was all genuine on his part. “Yes, I could manage Saturday,” she said huskily.

    “Good. Well, I’ll ring you.”

    “Lovely, darling,” said Livia faintly.

    “Righto, see ya,” he said and walked out.

    Livia looked numbly at the closed door of the suite.

    It was some time before she realized he really had gone and he wasn’t going to think of an excuse to come rushing back. She could still feel—or at least she felt she could still feel—the warmth and hardness of his prick against her belly and not merely her mind but her whole body refused to believe that he really had gone for the night, he wasn’t going to—

    Finally she gave a great sob, rushed into the bedroom, and cried her eyes out, face down on the overstuffed pale blue satin eiderdown.

    Wal Briggs drove home slowly and carefully to his rather awful trendy flat in a rather awful newish apartment block just on the other side of the city with a splendid view of the harbour and the downtown area. He was aware that he’d had too much to drink to be driving, and also that if he hadn’t had so much to drink there might have been a chance of his performing creditably in bed, even though he was bloody tired and would have to get up at five in the morning to go through that brief. He was also aware that with many women he wouldn’t have given a damn whether he performed well or not, he’d just have got it in there and gone bang, and he couldn’t quite figure out why it mattered with Livia Wentworth.

    On the other hand—or possibly not on the other hand, thought Wal sardonically—he most certainly wasn’t about to indulge in a sexual competition with Maurice Bloody Black. Or any other bloke, actually, and he hoped that after a while it would dawn on Livia that maybe he hadn’t meant only tonight and she’d take the hint without having to have it spelled out to her.

    He was still very aroused, and he sighed and moved uneasily, and decided he’d jerk off in the shower, it would help him to sleep... He’d see her at the garden party: that was something, even though she’d undoubtedly have a fleet of hangers-on in tow. And if she did keep Saturday free, that would indicate that— Well, it was obvious she wanted it, that didn’t need indicating. But it would indicate that at least she’d bothered to make an effort, which in its turn would indicate...? Very little except that she wanted it to a considerable degree, thought Wal sourly.

    He was not unaware that Livia at this moment might be crying her eyes out on the satin eiderdown. But he didn’t much care—indeed, he thought it might do her good. Though if he hadn’t felt so bloody tired—what with the drive and with not having slept much last night—and if he hadn’t had at least two too many Drambuies… Oh, well. She’d get over it.