Welcome To Semi-Paradise

3

Welcome To Semi-Paradise

    “What a gla-more-ous tropical experience that was,” sighed Joel, with the accent on the “more.”

    “Shut up,” replied Adam, trying not to laugh.

    “How long does it take to this—uh—place in New Zealand?” asked Joel, peering out of the window of the Air New Zealand jet at the flat blue plate of the Pacific thirty-odd thousand feet below.

    “No idea,” grunted Adam, opening his book.

    “Thought you’d been out there before?”

    “Came the other way,” grunted Adam.

    “Oh, bother!” he said in a high-pitched squeak.

    Adam sighed. “Find something to do, for God’s sake. I do know it’s a fairly long leg,”—Joel peered at one of his in a startled way; Adam managed to ignore this, but only just—“so drink yourself into a stupor, or something.”

    Joel sighed. “That gets tedious, after a while. Besides, can they do those wonderful tropical alcoholic fruit-salads our generous hosts favoured us with in Hon-o-lu-lu?”

    “Doubt it. Still, they could probably manage you a puce umbrella on a stick.”

    Joel made a horrible face at him. Adam returned to his book. After a while Joel sighed, and said: “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather sit by the window?”

    “Quite.”

    “There’s nothing to see,” he sighed.

    “There wasn’t anything to see between Los Angeles and Honolulu, either. Or across the Atlantic, come to that. Or across America.”

    “Please!” hissed Joel. “‘Across The States’! People will think you’re un-trendy, or don’t know where it’s At, or something! Pray consider the image, darling!”

    Adam sighed.

    Joel’s lips twitched, but he lapsed into silence.

    Adam read his book. Joel stared glumly in front of him. The hostess wobbled up and down the aisle a couple of times to the two gentlemen nearer the front of the Business Class area—oddly enough, there weren’t many passengers in the Business Class area of the plane whose destination was the Auckland International Airport. There’d have been even fewer if Adam hadn’t insisted on paying the extra for Joel to accompany him.

    After life had gone on at this exciting pace for quite some time, Joel said: “Perhaps I will have a drink.”

    Adam grunted.

    “Want one, dear boy?”

    “No.” He looked up from his book. “Well, just a mineral water.”

    “Such abstinence!” sighed Joel. “Wouldn’t you even care to try a teensy, weensy sip of ice-cold pineapple juice mixed with rum, a dash of maraschino and topped off with a layer of—”

    “No.”

    “—coconut cream?” finished Joel with relish.

     Adam gulped.

    “Never been offered such poisonous plonk in all me puff,” Joel summed up.

    “No. Well, they are American.”

    Joel just shuddered, and rang for the air hostess.

    When she came she smiled blindly at him, then looked at Adam and went very pink, so whatever else she was, she wasn’t immune. Plastic, but not immune: an interesting concept.

    “Can you do me a whisky and water without ice?” he asked, leaning across Adam.

    “Uh—yes, sir.”

    “Fine. One of those, then, and a mineral water for my young friend. –No ice.”

    She reeled off a list of mineral waters, looking hopefully at Adam.

    “Perrier. Thanks,” he said.

    “Adam, it’ll be one of the batch with bugs in it, we’re practically in the Anty-podes,” sighed Joel.

    “Oh. Um—have you got any Évian?”

    “Yes, sir; but the Perrier’s—”

    “Make it an Évian, then,” said Adam. “Thanks.”

    When they got the drinks they turned out to be bare, or, um, raw, or whatever you called it when you were presented with two bottles and an empty glass instead of a glass filled with whisky and water, so if it hadn’t been for the leg-room question they might just as well have saved Adam’s money and travelled Tourist. Joel’s bottle of water was icy-cold and he had a fair idea they’d chilled the whisky, too. Oh, well.

    “That was most extremely mean, Adam!” he said with a giggle.

    “Eh?”

    “You never even smiled at the poor plastic tart!”

    “Oh.” Adam sighed. “Sometimes my face aches with smiling.”

    “Lucky you,” retorted Joel simply.

    Adam returned to his book. Joel drank his whisky and water very slowly, trying to make it last.

    “Should have brought something to read,” said Adam at last into his book.

    Joel sighed. “I’m not very literate. –What is that thing you’ve buried yourself in?”

    Adam held it up. A battered old Complete Works of the Bard.

    Joel’s jaw dropped. “Getting up in the part?” he squeaked.

    “No, that’s what I was doing in Honolulu when I had all those headaches and had to stay in my room.”—Joel was unable to repress a gulp.—“No, just reading.”

    He rested the book on his tray and Joel peered at the page and gasped: “Timon? Why, dear boy?”

    “Suits the mood,” said Adam drily.

    “No-one’s ever going to cast you in it, you’re too pretty,” he warned.

    “Shut up.”

    “For God’s sake! Couldn’t you read a cheerful one? Like—uh—” He faltered.

    “You are illiterate, aren’t you?” noted: Adam with interest.

    “I’m trying to think of one besides the bloody Dream that’s cheerful!”

     Adam smothered a laugh

    “What about—um—The Winter’s Tale?” said Joel weakly at last.

    “‘Exit, pursued by a bear,’” replied Adam thoughtfully.

    “That’s apocryphal!”

    “No, it isn’t: hang on, I’ll show you.” He showed him.

    “Strewth,” he muttered. “Half a mo’… Christ!” he gasped.

    “Yes, very cheerful, really,” agreed Adam acidly: “an elderly gent being torn limb from limb by a bear.”

    Joel took it off him and read it over carefully. “You don’t actually see it,” he said sadly.

    “No, even in Shakespeare’s time there were probably laws against that,” replied Adam acidly.

    “Well, maybe that’s not cheerful—but this Clown looks like quite a good part!”

    Adam sighed.

    “But the rest of it’s cheerful: remember that film with—uh—was it Harvey? With all the straw. Made in the Sixties, I think.”

    Adam shut his eyes for a split second.

    “I thought it was very cheerful,” said Joel.

    “Darling, it’s bitter as bile,” said Adam heavily: “it’s about a man being torn apart by unfounded jealousy—sex-u-al jeal-ous-y.”

    “Eh?”

    “He destroys everything around him—everything he loves—for nothing: did you sit through it with beans in your ears?”

    Joel shrugged. “Must have. There was a lovely part in the second half, though: an antic, he—”

    “Autolycus: yes, you’d make a lovely Autolycus, Joel, I’ll bear you in mind when they cast me as Leontes,” sighed Adam.

    Joel looked at him dubiously.

    “I don’t know which I’d rather play, Leontes or Timon,” sighed Adam. “And shut up, I want to get on with it.”

    Joel lapsed into a sulk. He had some cards in his pocket, but he knew Adam loathed card games, so that was out. Watch the in-flight movie? Ugh. What was it, anyway? He rang for the hostess. She came, and told him.

    “Ewoks?” he said faintly, shutting his eyes for a split second.

    “Ut’s rilly sweet, sir!” she said brightly.

    Joel waved her away.

    “Do they all have accents like that?” he said to Adam.

    “Eh? Oh: yes. Nasal. High-pitched. Horrible. Well, it’s supposed to be a classless society, but some of them are worse than others.”

     “How would you rate her?”

    “One out of ten.”

    “What? –No! The voice!”

    “Average,” said Adam, sounding very bored,

    “Oh.” Joel pouted and relapsed into silence again.

    After approximately an aeon, one of the gentlemen from further up the plane, now in his shirt-sleeves, with his tie loosened, wandered down to them and said: “Gidday. Anyone for a hand of poker?” With the accent, but in a very attractive bass that made it sound almost bearable.

    Joel looked at him warily. Those trou’ were heavy silk, unless he was a Dutchman, that belt was gen-yew-wine lizard, unless he was a Dutchman, those were Gucci loafers, unless he was a ditto, and that hunk of gentlemanly jewellery on the strong, hairy brown wrist—he was very brown, maybe he had native blood—was a Rolex, Joel had seen ads for them in posh magazines in his dentist’s waiting-room.

    “Not at the sort of stakes you play for, I’m only here on charity,” he said frankly.

    “Could play for matchsticks?” said the gent hopefully.

    “Um...”

    “Go on!” said Adam irritably into his book.

    “Don’t I know you?” said the gent in a puzzled voice, staring at him.

    “No,” said Adam, glancing at him indifferently.

    “Yeah: hang on. If I said ‘Funny hat’ and ‘Cheering on ya troops?’” said the gent cautiously.

    Joel choked.

    “Oh. That,” said Adam.

    “My wife reckoned you were good,” said the gent in glum tones.

    At that Adam looked up at him, smiled, and said: “Dragged you to it, did she?”

    “Too right!” said the gent fervently. “She likes all this intellectual muck, ya see.”

    At this Joel went into a paroxysm, gasping: “One—of—your—greatest—fans!”

    “Sorry,” said the gent unrepentantly, grinning. “’Ve I put me foot in it?”

    “No! Salutary!” gasped Joel.

    “Don’t go in much for all this intellectual stuff, meself, prefer a show with plenty of leg. And tit,” he added by the way. “Here!” he said, bending down conspiratorially. “D’jew ever see that Lay Mizz thing?”

    “Yes!” gasped Joel. Adam shook his head, smiling.

    “Wasn’ it Goddawful?” said the gent, with a kind of awe.

    “Your wife dragged you to that, too, did she?” asked Adam.

    “Nope. She wouldn’t go: pretended she had the grass staggers, or some such. No, some friends of ours in New York took me. Well, they told me it was a musical!” he said aggrievedly.

    Here Adam broke down and laughed like a drain.

    “Whaddabout it?” said the gent, grinning.

    “Yes, why not?” agreed Adam.—Joel gulped.—“So long as it’s only for matchsticks.”

    “Yeah, sure. And watch out for my mate, Inoue, there: he’s a tiger: the original poker face,” he warned them.

    “Yes,” they said weakly, getting up.

    “YEAH: they’re COMING!” he suddenly bellowed at the dark head further along the plane. A bland Japanese poker face turned and smiled slightly at him.

    “Jake Carrano,” he added, suddenly sticking out his hand.

    “Adam McIntyre. I’ve heard of you, too,” admitted Adam, shaking it.

    “Aw, yeah?” he said warily.

    “According to my father, you own half the Hibiscus Coast.”

    “’Bout that, yeah,” he replied, unmoved.

    “You won’t have heard of me, though!” squeaked Joel proudly. “Joel Thring,” he said, holding out a hand gingerly.

    “Gidday,” replied the gent, shaking it for an agonizing second. “Come on, then.” He led them away.

    During the next five hours or so they learned quite a lot about Jake Carrano. Including the facts that he was a mean hand at poker but not nearly as mean as his Japanese mate; that Inoue Takagaki, a man of about his own age—mid-fifties, maybe? (it was hard to tell: the Japanese had an ageless face and Jake Carrano  was certainly remarkably fit-looking, though the thick, short, dark curls were liberally sprinkled with silver)—anyway, that Inoue was his representative in Tokyo (he was dressed in silk, too, noted Joel, though of rather more conservative cut than his boss’s and in a very dark navy, not silver-grey); that Jake Carrano lived somewhere not far from Adam’s parents and had twin boys of five and a daughter of three (second—third?—time round? wondered Joel and Adam); and that his wife’s young cousins were in the thing that Adam and Joel were going to be in. “Flaming thing”, actually.

    “Oh,” said Adam cautiously, eyeing him over his cup of tea.

    “What’s the tea like?” returned Jake.

    “Foul.”

    “Thought so. Pol—thass the wife—she reckons I oughta bring me own tea-bags; only ya feel a tit, don’tcha?”

    “No,” said the Japanese. He opened his briefcase, produced a tiny whisk and a small Tupperware container, opened the latter, tipped some pale green powder into the cup of hot water he’d asked for, and whisked it briskly.

    “Got guts, these Japs,” sighed Jake.

    Inoue winked briefly.

    “Yeah, well—the twins—not mine, I mean: me wife’s bloody cousins, she’s got thousands of ’em and half of ’em are twins— Where was I? Uh—yeah: they’re in this thing. Ginny’s a speaking fairy and Vicki’s a leggy fairy.”

    “Leggy?” said Joel faintly.

    “Yeah. Stands in the front row of the chorus and shows off ’er legs.”

    Joel and Adam choked. Adam then rallied sufficiently to say: “Which part does the other one play?”

    “Um—well, I don’t think it’s got a name,” he said dubiously.—Joel swallowed; Adam bit his lip.—“She only has to say ‘Shove off, everybody, everything’s hunky-dory’,” he explained.

    There was a short silence.

    “‘Hence away; now all is well. One aloof stand sentinel,’” said Adam at last in a faint voice.

    “That’d be it!” he agreed cheerfully.

    There was another short silence.

    “Doesn’t she have to sing?” asked Adam weakly.

    “Nope.—Thass what me wife reckoned, too.—Nope, they’ve got some kid doing that bit. Boy soprano.”

    “Christ,” muttered Joel.

    “And another little kid we know—he’d be about twelve or thirteen—he’s in it, oo. Got nothing to say, though. They’re just gonna dress him up in a fancy costume. Turban or something. Pol reckons he’s gonna look like something out of The Pearl Fishers, and it’s—uh— What was that she said?” he said to Inoue.

    “Anachronistic,” he replied calmly.

    “Aw, yeah. –That,” he said to them.

    After a certain period Joel said faintly: “A turban?”

    And Adam said faintly: “The Pearl Fishers?”

    “Yeah—I like it, do you?”—Adam nodded dumbly.—“Pol reckons it’s too pretty-pretty, she likes Wagner better. But I like it,” he said definitely.

    “Yes,” they muttered.

    At this Inoue rather obviously took pity on them and said: “The little boy’s name is Ranjit Singh.”

    “Oh, good God!” said Adam, passing a hand across his face.

    “Yeah. Didn’ I say?” said Jake in a puzzled voice.

    “No,” groaned Adam and Joel.

    “Oh. Well, I can’t see meself what an Indian kid’s got to do with Shakespeare, but Pol reckons that bit of it’s authentic.”

    “Authentic. Yes, indeed,” muttered Joel. “As in the lynchpin of the entire plot.”

    “That right?” he said without interest. “Anybody fancy another hand? Or Inoue’s got this real good Jap game he could teach ya.”

    They plumped for the Jap game. It would do to while away the few thousand remaining miles across the empty Pacific.

    “Quite salutary, all round,” sighed Joel, as they returned to their seats to buckle themselves in for the descent.

    “Yes,” agreed Adam. “You thought you could play poker, heretofore, didn’t you?” Joel had surrendered the window seat to him. He peered out of the window. “Looks pretty murky out there. Mother says it’ll be foully humid—did I warn you?”

    “Yes. Five thousand times,” sighed Joel.

    “I mean it, Joel. That shirt’ll have to go, for a start.”

    Joel looked down at it indignantly. It was his gen-yew-wine American Hawaiian shirt. Polyester. With big bright pink, bright yellow and bright blue hibiscus blooms. Admittedly on a white ground, but there wasn’t much of the ground visible.

    “It’s me best!”

    “It’ll be sticking to you closer than a brother in five seconds flat in January in New Zealand.”

    Pouting, Joel said: “I said we should have stayed longer in Hawaii!”

    “February’s worse,” said Adam briefly.

    Joel swallowed.

    “I rather liked him, didn’t you?” said Adam.

    “What? Oh, Jake? Yes, all right, I suppose. Tray macho.”

    “Mm. Extremely intelligent, under that manner, though. –If he’s the man I think he must be, Dad says he’s enormously wealthy.”

    “Adam, dear: one could tell that by the clothes. Not to mention the gold accessories,” sighed Joel.

    “No, I mean it. Billionaire class. Could buy and sell those idiots we stayed with in Honolulu.”—Joel swallowed.—“And before you ask, also those idiot neighbours of theirs.”

    Joel smiled. The female neighbour had made it very plain she thought Adam was “just dorr-ling!” Never mind getting up in the part, a next-door neighbour like her would have been more than enough to make any sane man lurk in his room for the duration of the vacation. After a moment he said: “I suppose the wife’s a gold-plated gold-digger.”

    Adam smiled.

    “What? Well, go on!”

    “I think she must be the woman Uncle Maurie told me about. No, no: not one of his!” he assured him. “No: in the intervals of being Lady Carrano—he’s a ‘Sir’, by the way, you get those in New Zealand for being fabulously wealthy—um—well, in the intervals of that, she teaches linguistics at the university.”

    “Pull the other one, Adam,” sighed Joel.

    “No, it’s true. Uncle Maurie described her as ‘a juicy morsel’.”

    Joel looked at him wildly.

    “He also said she was chucking herself away on a macho moron and wasting her excellent brains producing brats when she ought to be getting on with her research.”

    Joel gulped.

    “Uncle Maurie’s the sort of man that would see no contradiction in the two comments,” he explained.

    “I see,” whispered Joel.

    “Anyway, I liked him,” finished Adam.

    “Yes,” whispered Joel.

    “Oh, no!” he said.

    Adam’s lips were very tight. His nostrils had flared. He got his sunglasses out of the top pocket of his cotton shirt and put them on. Then he said: “I told Clem to tell that moron Jacky no publicity.”

    Joel had time to mutter: “Five’ll get you ten it wasn’t him, it was bloody Livia up to her tricks,” before the reporters were upon them.

    Adam had developed a technique of stonewalling. Perhaps it didn’t make him all that popular with the media, and Jacky—as he didn’t fail frequently to tell him—frequently despaired of him. Now Adam stonewalled the New Zealand Press persons for about fifteen minutes. He provided two pieces of information: one, that all the interviews were already arranged, and two, that he had no idea at all when Livia Wentworth was arriving. Nevertheless it took the fifteen minutes before the reporters  gave up (Joel perceived that they weren’t very tenacious: well, it was only a little country); and the photographers had all seemed to get pics, so presumably they would all run their pics and be happy. Then they all raced off in pursuit of “Sir Jake”. He had an even better technique: “NOPE! NO COMMENT! NOPE!” That got rid of them in about fifteen seconds after the obligatory flash-popping.

    “Lee taxi?” suggested Joel.

    “I suppose so. –Thank God I told the parents not to meet us,” he muttered.

    “Mm. –Doesn’t look as if he’s being met, either,” he said, as Jake and Inoue looked around them in a baffled sort of way.

    “No. –Oh, hang on: here we are. That must be the wife.”

    “Strewth,” said Joel simply, as a tall, curvaceous brown-haired woman in pink shorts and a frilly pale yellow blouse raced up to Sir Jake and, casting herself on his bosom, burst abruptly into loud tears.

    “Yes. –Hang on, Joel,” he said as Joel headed for the exit: “I think there’s something wrong.”

    Joel—as he would later tell his wide circle of acquaintance at length—could have been knocked down with a feather, as Adam—Adam!—then went over to this Jake chappie and said to him—timidly, timidly, we give you that, darlings—but nevertheless said: “Anything wrong?”

    He also went very red as he said it, but he did remove the trendy sunglasses. Cor! Likewise, Phew!

    “She’s seen an accident,” said Jake briefly over the sobbing form plastered to his burly chest. “Come on, sweetheart, buck up!”

    “Blood—all—over!” she gasped.

    “Yeah: but at least you weren’t in it, darling,” he said, patting her frilly blouse.

    “No—but—babies!” she sobbed.

    “What?” he said, going a funny colour.

    She sniffled loudly and, looking up at him, said: “I had the children in the car, and the policeman made us stop for ages on the other side of the road—and they saw it all, Jake!”

    “Bugger,” he muttered. “Uh—where are they, sweetheart?”

    “Godda hanky?” she replied thickly.

    He gave her his handkerchief and she blew her nose. “I took them in to the Building,” she said, “and we got Jim to drive us the rest of the way, because me and Akiko were all ups—”

    “Yeah, okay,” he said, patting her pink-shorted bum: “At least ya had that much sense. Well, where are they? Didja leave ’em in town?”

    “No—they’re just coming. They’re all right,” she said, turning round and looking for them, “only— Well, it was dreadful, Jake. Blood everywhere.”

    “Yeah. They’ll get over it, love: things like that don’t make much of an impression on young kids: nothing to relate it to in their wee noddles, ya see.”

    “No,” agreed Adam hoarsely.

    “Uh—yeah,” he said with a jump. “Uh—we seem to be okay; thanks anyway, Adam.”

    “Only we’ll have to go past it again, there was someone trapped in one of the cars and the man said it was going to take hours!” gasped his wife, looking as if she was about to cry again.

    Joel eyed her cautiously. Very, very pretty, in spite of the swollen eyelids—greenish-grey eyes, most unusual. Light tan, lovely figger, oval face—sort of a sweet expression. Very little make-up—very natural look, and as, La Livia to the contrary, Adam didn’t admire the over-lipsticked, hair-sprayed, American footballer-shouldered thing, he got a sort of sinking feeling in his tummy and decided that whatever happened, there was no way Clem was going to be able to blame him for it! No way! So he tugged at Adam’s arm and murmured: “Come on.”

    “No—hang on,” ordered Jake Carrano suddenly. “Listen, Pol: we’ll take the copter back. Avoid the road altogether, eh?”

    “Yes, but— Is it here?” she replied in a bewildered way.

    He shrugged. “If it isn’t, it soon will be.” –Must be how billionaires did it, registered Joel. Ve-ry nice.

    “Oh. Good idea,” she said, sagging against him.

    “Yeah. Listen, Adam: if you two aren’t being met, can we give you a lift? You are going up to your mum and dad’s, eh?”

    “Uh—yes. Kowhai Bay,” replied Adam in a stunned voice. “Will there be room?”

    “Bags of room!” he replied breezily. “Jim’ll take the waggon back for us with the luggage. And the kids can sit on our knees. Yeah: bags of room.”

   Adam was beginning awkwardly: “Well—it’s very kind of you, Jake—” when he exclaimed: “Here they come! They look all right,” he registered.

    “Do they?” His wife peered anxiously.

    Two little boys, shepherded by a burly, brown, smiling man in what might have passed for a chauffeur’s uniform if you were very broadminded about it and didn’t object to short-sleeved, open-necked white shirts and navy shorts with sandals—Joel gulped—were approaching, accompanied by a dainty Japanese girl carrying a little red-headed kiddy. Joel didn’t much care for kids and he watched uneasily. However, the Carrano kids didn’t appear at first encounter to be horribly spoilt brats, they just ran up eagerly to their father and clambered on him and hugged him and so on, and then the littlest one, with the red hair, said to Jake’s pal: “Konichiwa, Inoue-san,” and Joel just about fell over.

    Inoue replied in kind and picked it up. It must be the daughter, thought Joel dubiously, though its hair was as short as the boys’ and like them it was wearing tiny denim shorts and a tee-shirt. Not a femmy-nine pink tee-shirt, a purplish one with a washed-out something on it. They all had on their feet what Joel decided after some puzzling must be some sort of native Antipodean adaptation: rubber flip-flops, were those considered appropriate wear for billionaires’ kids at International Airports, then?

    “Well, come on: we’ll go to the lounge or something,” said Jake finally, “and I’ll give Chris a ring.”

    “I’ll do it, Jake,” said the brown man.

    “Righto. Tell him to move it, don’t want to hang round here all day.”

    “Okay.” He wandered off not very fast. Well, it was hot. In fact it was stinking hot, hadn’t they heard of air conditioning in this neck of the Anty-podes? Joel attempted to move uneasily in his polyester shirt but he couldn’t, Adam had been quite correct and the bloody thing was clinging to him.

    “Jake, you haven’t introduced us!” said his wife, now hanging on his arm, with a contralto gurgle. She had the accent but, registered Joel with some gloom, hers wasn’t too bad and the contralto counted for a lot. He’d told bloody Clem at the outset, he’d said he disclaimed all responsibility: if Clem didn’t trust Adam out of his sight then he could bloody well come out and do his own chaperoning. …Oh, dear.

    “Eh? Oh! Sorry.” Jake performed introductions.

    “Mac said you’d be here soon,” Polly Carrano said to Adam as she shook his hand.

    “Oh—did he?”

    “Mm. I popped in to see how rehearsals were going the other day.”

    “How was it?” asked Adam in a voice of doom.

    “Pretty much like you might expect,” she replied with a naughty twinkle.

    “God,” he said deeply.

    “I don’t think any of the lovers can act,” she added thoughtfully.

    “Of course not!” agreed Joel acidly.

    She smiled and held out her hand. “It’s lovely to meet you, Joel: I thought you were wonderful as Mosca.”

    Joel went very red and shook her hand fervently. “That thing?” he said with a would-be airy laugh. “Did that manage to get out here?”

    “Yes, we do get some English TV shows,” she replied composedly.

    “Well—thanks, Polly,” he said lamely.

    “I’m looking forward to your Puck.”

    “I’ll do me best,” he said, making a face.

    “The Bottom’s good,” she offered.

    “That’ll make him and Joel, then,” noted Adam.

    “And Vicki’s legs!” put in Jake with a chuckle.

    “Of course!” Adam agreed, laughing. “Not to mention the other one’s two lines!”

    “Nope: she’s Goddawful. Can’t act for toffee. Stiff as a stick—eh, Pol?”

    “Who, Ginny?”—He nodded.—“Yes, I’m afraid she is,” she said to Adam. “Never mind: her hair looks lovely!”

    “I’m so glad,” he said politely.

    Laughing, she returned: “That’s why Mac picked her and Vicki. Half the university wanted to be in it, I gather—goodness knows why, this was before he thought of asking you to be in it—so he picked the prettiest ones. And the most grotesque ones, of course.”

    “So as I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb,” noted Joel mournfully.

    Giggling, Polly replied: “No, at that stage he had a very thin girl lined up for Puck. Sort of Ariel-like, I think.”

    “Christ,” muttered Adam. Joel just stood there with his jaw sagging.

    “Come on, darling, let’s go and find an air-conditioned bar or something, poor Joel and Adam look as if they’re about to collapse in this humidity,” the wonderful woman then said to her husband.

    “Thank you, Polly, I’m your slave forever,” whispered Joel.

    Smiling, she returned: “The humidity level’s very high here in January and February.”—Joel avoided Adam’s eye.—“It’s not really very hot, it’s only about twenty-four today, but it is very humid.”

    “Yeah: it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” said Jake with a laugh.—Joel eyed him in a jaundiced fashion. He seemed immune to it. Totally immune. So maybe he had—Maori blood, would it be? He was certainly brown-skinned.—“Come on, then: Koru Club?” he said. “Better than that bloody Vip lounge, anyway.”

    “Righto,” she agreed.

    They all went off to the Koru Club, which was merely an air-conditioned bar, and Joel didn’t even think of asking for alcohol, he just said faintly: “A long cold mineral water with lots of ice, please,” when Jake asked him what he fancied.

    Adam, Polly and Inoue had the same. The Japanese girl who'd come with the kids—she must be their nanny or something, but she also seemed to be some sort of relation of Inoue’s—had something called an “L&P”, which she had difficulty in pronouncing. Jake and the little boys had orange juice. The little girl screamed for a beer but got put down loudly by her father, so she had orange juice, too. The glass was too big for her tiny fists and she and her mother had a loud argument over who was going to hold it. Finally Adam resolved it by saying with his nicest smile: “Would you let me hold it, Katie Maureen?” –Such was her name.

    She couldn’t have been immune, in spite of only being three, because she let him. Sitting on his knee, what was more. And what was even more, Joel knew what he’d paid for those cream silk slacks, he’d been with him, not a million miles from the Burlington Arcade, when he’d got them—claiming at that time to have no semi-tropical gear, which must have been a lie, because what about that time he’d been photographed all over Ther Bee-ah-mas in endlessly trendy gear? Unless he’d thrown it all away because it was two years old. Joel had only been looking. Well, he might have bought a silk handkerchief, if greatly encouraged. Since nobody had encouraged him—or even noticed he was with Adam, really—he hadn’t bothered.

    “God, it’s beautiful!” he said in awe, with his nose pressed to the window of the Carrano Group’s helicopter. –You knew it was, for one thing it had “CG” in green and gold plastered all over its white exterior and for another thing little Davey Carrano, who was the twin with the dark curls like his father’s, had informed him: “It’s the Group’s copter. We can go in it, though. I’ve been in it loads of times.”

    Polly, who was beside Joel, peered over his shoulder at the view of curved green coastline, sparkling silver sand, frill of white lace surf, and incredible turquoise sea shading to azure, and said: “Yes, it is pretty, isn’t it? I like the turquoise bits; I never realized that the sea looked like that, until I’d been in the helicopter.”

    “Me, too, neither!” agreed Joel fervently. “Look, Adam: isn’t it beautiful?”

    Adam had been in a helicopter before—in New York, from the top of the Pan Am building to the airport. But that had been much more like a bus—though the cityscape at night had certainly been breathtakingly beautiful. The Carrano Group’s helicopter, though it did seat six, wasn’t in the least like a bus and he was rather wishing he hadn’t accepted the lift.

    “Yes,” he said in a strangled voice.

    Polly at this turned round and said: “Are you all right, Adam?”

    “Yes—I’m fine. Just a bit of vertigo to start with, that’s all.”

    “Sure? Because Chris could always land—”

    “No, really.” He looked out his window, sighed, and said: “It is beautiful. Very tropical.”

    “Mm—tropical paradise: look at those beaches!” said Joel.

    “It’s the North Shore. They are nice beaches, only they’re getting to the stage of wall-to-wall transistors in summer, now,” said Polly sadly.

    “Yeah; ’s why we live up the Hibiscus Coast, see?” said Jake, looking back with a grin from his position beside the pilot. With Davey on his knee. The other twin, Johnny, a tow-head with a little oval face that was rather like his mother’s but more nervy-looking, had unexpectedly claimed Adam’s knee. The macho little girl had claimed Inoue’s. The Japanese nanny had opted to go in the car—though Sir Jake had breezily offered her his knee.

    “Puriri Beach?” his wife rejoined in a hollow voice.

    “Yeah—well, our bit’s okay. Tropical paradise, like you said!” he said to Joel with a laugh. “Well—semi-tropical, doesn’t get that hot,” he amended.

    “Semi-paradise,” corrected his wife on a sour note. “I hope your mother’s warned you,” she said to Adam.

    “More or less,” he murmured with a little smile.

    “What about?” croaked Joel.

    “Everything,” said Polly simply.

    Joel gulped. Nobody elaborated and he didn’t dare to ask. He went on looking out the window. Once or twice Polly pointed out landmarks.

    Eventually Adam said in a hoarse whisper: “This one’s gone to sleep!”

    They looked back and smiled.

    Polly murmured: “He’s a nervy little boy: of course he’s been very excited all morning with his father coming home; and they just started school in November, that really took it out of him—and then there was the A,C,C,I—”

    “Yeah: we get it,” rumbled his father. “He’ll be right: we’ll put him down for a nap when we get home. –Just as well bloody Nanny’s pushed off home for the hols, eh?” he said to his wife.

    Biting her lip, she murmured: “Ssh. Pas devant les you-know-whats.”

    “Pas devant les enfants!” said little Davey brightly. Adam and Joel gasped.

    “Yeah, all right, Mister Big-Mouth: shuddup,” said his father, hugging him.

    “Pas devant les enfants!” croaked little Katie Maureen. –Joel had thought at first that she must have a cold, but she didn’t: it was an incredibly deep voice for a female child.

    “Ssh!” said Inoue with a laugh, hugging her.

    “Parrot,” said her mother simply. “Nanny’s wonderful, I’d have gone mad without her. Well, we’ve had three under five in the house for the last three years,” she explained.—Joel shuddered; Adam just smiled: was the humidity draining his brain fluids, or what?—“Only she is a bit—well, trying. She likes a fixed routine,” she explained. “And it’s a bit difficult, when Jake goes on so many business trips, and the kids like to meet him—you know.”

    “Mm,” agreed Adam, glancing cautiously at the little figure in his lap.

    “It’s okay: he’s dead to the world,” she murmured.

    “Yes,” he agreed softly.

    Suddenly Joel saw to his horror that the azure eyes had filled with tears: he looked away hurriedly, but not before he saw that Adam was smiling at Lady Carrano in spite of the tears.

    “He’s lovely, Polly,” he murmured.

    “Sleeping cherub!” she said with a tiny choke of laughter. “Yes, of course he is; they all are—only they’re terrors, too. They require huge amounts of energy.”

    “More than we’ve got,” agreed their father simply. “It’s why we got Nanny. And Akiko—she’s sort of helping out.”

    “Yes. She was with me when I looked in on the rehearsal the other day, and Mac asked if her she’d like to be in it. She nearly died, poor girl!” choked Polly.

    “It would have made it more exoteek,” noted Joel.

    “Mm. Well, he’s already got a couple of Chinese girls, he’s putting them in cheongsams, poor lambs.”

    Joel winced.

    “Any Maoris?” asked Jake with interest.

    “Well, Bottom, of course,” she replied calmly.

    Joel had to swallow, but managed to croak: “It’s going to be a sort of semi-tropical Antipodean Dream, then.”

    “It’s gonna be a sort of something, all right, Joel,” Polly agreed, twinkling at him.

    “Ow, me reputation, Iago!” he squeaked.

    “Ssh!” hissed Adam.

    Joel glanced back at him uncertainly. The little boy on Adam’s knee whimpered and stirred, and buried his head deeper into Adam’s pale blue, sea-island cotton, immensely expensive shirt. Adam looked down at the little sun-bleached fawn head. A tiny, tender smile hovered on his long and somewhat cynical mouth.

    Joel felt shaken to the core of his being. To—the—core. He stared out of the window at semi-tropical semi-paradise, and said nothing at all.

    Some time later he reported dazedly: “It’s all garden suburbs!”

    “I did try to tell you,” murmured Adam.

    “Yes, but— Is it all like this, Melinda?” he asked.

    “Pretty much. Well, there’d be a few big blocks of flats—Housing Corporation; you know, state subsidized—in the inner city area that haven’t got gardens, but—mm. I suppose it is. There are poorer areas, of course.”

    “But still with gardens,” said Joel.

    “Gardens with rusting skeletons of broken-down Holdens in ’em,” said Christopher Black.

    “Yes, isn’t it odd?” his wife agreed. “Remember when we were first married, dear? Neither of us had a bean, but we filled the garden of that place we rented with silverbeet and cabbages and more or less lived off them for a couple of years.”

    “And my parsnips!” objected Christopher.

    “Help, yes. Wasn’t it awful? –We had to eat them, they went mad,” Melinda explained. “Parsnip soup, parsnip purée, boiled parsnip, roast parsnip—God!” She shuddered.

    “Mm. We were respectable middle-class pinko lefties,” murmured Christopher. “Imbued with the Protestant work ethic—couldn’t possibly let a good garden go to waste.”

    “Yes, I suppose so. I just think it’s odd, growing rusty Holdens instead of food for your kids,” said Melinda with a sigh.

    “Always wondered why you’ve never served parsnip, Little Ma,” drawled Adam from his position sprawled on his spine in a big chair.

    His mother merely gave him a sharp look and said: “You look all-in, dear: why don’t you pop off and have a nap?”

    “Yes, I might,” he agreed, getting up, yawning.

    “You, too, Joel: don’t stand on ceremony: we know what jet-lag’s like,” urged Melinda.

    Joel made a face. “I won’t be able to sleep yet, thanks, Melinda: I took a damned travel-sickness pill in Honolulu and they always make me edgy as Hell for at least twelve hours.”

    “Well, come on out in the garden, then.”

    They strolled outside. Melinda took him right down the back of the garden. It was exceedingly pretty: there was a well-regimented vegetable patch behind a neat screening of trellis, but apart from that it featured lots of trees, some of them large and old, but some quite new and slender, interspersed with many flowering shrubs—chief among them yer gen-yew-wine hibiscus—and backed onto a little patch of native greenery which Melinda assured him with a laugh was called “bush”. This growth more or less screened the house below them and the street it was on from their view.

    “Clem said I could ask you anything,” she said abruptly.

    Joel flushed a little but replied: “Yes, you can. I’ve known Adam for years—haven’t seen all that much of him since he’s got so world-famous an’ all, but— Yes,” he said gently. “Ask me anything, Melinda.”

    Melinda swallowed. “He is all right, isn’t he?”

    “Mm—yes. I’d say so. No signs of that depression, again. Well, he was compos mentis enough to escape to his room and learn his lines when those ghastly Americans kidnapped us in Hawaii—some might say it was the line of least resistance, but there was a time when Adam would’ve just sat out limply on the patio letting himself be talked at, wasn’t there?” he said, twinkling at her.

    “Absolutely!” agreed Melinda fervently.

    Joel smiled a little. “Mm.”

    “No—no woman?” said Melinda in a shaking voice. “I mean, seriously?”

    He made a face. “The dire Claudia seems to have put him off for life. Well, her plus the dreaded Livia. That’s very much over, by the way. –Have I said the wrong thing?” he gasped.

    “No,” said Melinda, blowing her nose. “It’s stupid—I keep hoping he’ll meet some nice, simple girl—you know!”

    Joel ran his hand over his thin (today auburnish) hair and said helplessly: “Nice simple girls don’t tend to—uh—impinge on the rarefied circles in which Adam’s been moving lately.”

    “No,” she agreed glumly, putting her hanky away.

    “Um—there is something—well, I don’t know if you’d call it a ray of light at the end of the tunnel or—or the brain fluids draining away, or what!” said Joel with a mad laugh. “Not being of that persuasion meself, yer see.”—Melinda goggled at him.—“Well—uh—those Carrano people who—who kidnapped us in their helicopter…” He hesitated.

    Melinda gasped: “You don’t mean Lady Carrano?”

    “No. She’s a lovely creature, but I don’t really think he has fallen for her. Not in the least. If anything, he seemed more struck by him!” said Joel with an uncertain laugh.

    Swallowing, Adam’s mother said: “Not another strong personality he’s going to let swallow him up?”

    “No, I don’t think Sir Jake’d be in the least bit interested in swallowing up intellectual-type actors!” He told Melinda about Sir Jake’s remarks on the subject of the funny hat, etcetera.

    “Well, what, then?” she said in confusion.

    Joel said awkwardly: “It was the kids—I’ve never seen him so struck. One of the little boys went to sleep on his knee and— Well, he was all of a doo-dah!”

    “Oh,” she said thoughtfully.

    “Um—do males go broody?” he said dubiously.

    “Oh, very much so! Good Heavens, yes: my brother Brae was crazy to have children! And absolutely potty over the babies when they did arrive!”

    “Strewth,” he said weakly.

    “Well, that is a good sign!” decided Melinda, patting his arm. “Thank you so much for letting me interrogate you, Joel!” she added with a gurgle.

    Joel reflected that she was a little like Polly, Lady Carrano—though she would never have been so pretty—and that perhaps that was why Adam had neither run a mile at the sight of Lady C. (a more than possible reaction from Adam) or come on to her right under her husband’s nose (Joel had seen him do that more than once or twice, too), but merely seemed comfortable and at home with her. Well, he bloody well hoped it was that. Sir J. didn’t strike him as the type that would put up with anything at all, either under his nose, or behind his back. Not—at—all.

    “I wish I knew some other people with kids,” said Melinda, frowning. “We’re the wrong generation, of course—so is most of Kowhai Bay, it’s too expensive for couples with young families. Um... There’s that dear little Elspeth girl, she always stops for a chat if I bump into her down at the beach or at the shops: she’d be about fourteen, now, but she’s got a baby brother—half-brother, really,” she explained, smiling at him.

    “I see,” he said foggily.

    “I think we might ask the Carranos to lunch, then they can bring the children!” she decided.

    “Um—yes; I’m sure Adam would like that,” he croaked.

    “Good.”

    Joel thought of advising her to look hard for a few nice, simple girls in this semi-tropical semi-paradise while they were out here, but didn’t bother, he had an uneasy feeling she already had that well in hand. Help—mothers!

    “I’m beginning to understand,” he said numbly, about thirty minutes later. Discovering that he really was wide awake and edgy, Melinda had driven him down to the Arcade in Puriri township. It was a not unpleasant little suburban shopping mall, directly opposite the beautiful golden beach that ran the length of the little town. And somewhat unfortunately separated therefrom by the main north highway.

    “Yes,” said Melinda simply.

    “Did you say this stationer’s is the only bookshop?” he said in a hollow voice.

    “Yes. –I wouldn’t buy that thing, Joel, it’s rubbish.”

    Joel looked dubiously at the local glossy in his hand. It had a terrifically semi-tropical picture on its cover, of a sort of skewed white pillared building against a blazing blue sky (much bluer than the actual sky, though that was very blue up here, unlike the muck that had shrouded the environs of the International Airport). “I thought it might give me an idea about—uh—local customs,” he said numbly.

    “Well, in that case, it’s your money. Only for Heaven’s sake don’t let Christopher get hold of it, he’ll be unable to stop himself reading it, of course, and then he’ll go into one of his diatribes. And I know nice Dr Smith says his blood pressure’s all right, but we really don’t want him working himself up at his age,” said Melinda in a remarkably placid voice.

    “Um—no. Adam’ll read anything put in front of him, too, I’ve noticed that: must be where he gets it from,” he said, looking helplessly at the copy of Metro and wondering if he shouldn’t buy it, after all.

    “Oh, definitely!”

    “Um—you have warned him about the bookshops, have you?” said Joel uneasily. “I mean— Well, browsing in old books is practically his only hobby.”

    “That and going for long walks looking at horrible old Victorian monstrosities that anyone in their right minds— Yes, well,” said Melinda with a sigh. “Yes, I have warned him, Joel.”

    “What about the city?”

    “I’ve warned him about that, too,” she said simply.

    Joel gulped.

    “Christopher has found one second-hand bookshop in town where he very occasionally buys something. But it’s very expensive. He says it’s a purely colonial phenomenon: it wouldn’t be bad if what it held was the detritus of Empire, but actually it only appears to be the detritus of the Sixties.”

    “Ouch. Adam won’t like that,” he predicted.

    “No. Well, there’s the Emporium here, Christopher’s found a couple of those murder things he reads in that,” said Melinda dubiously. “It’s just along the waterfront. But according to him, it mostly has endlessly recycled copies of The Far Pavilions and that Collins woman’s stuff.”

    “Er... Public library?”

    “There is one up here,” Melinda acknowledged. “And the staff there are very nice. Quite knowledgeable, and very helpful; but—well, they have to cater for their clientele, I suppose.”

    Since on the short walk to the Arcade from the carpark they had passed approximately five hundred male OAPs in neatly pressed shorts and long socks with sneakers, plus approximately a thousand female OAPs in well-sprayed curls and floral frocks, Joel could only nod wordlessly in response to this.

    “The Deli’s quite nice,” said Melinda on a dubious note. “Depending on what you’re used to, I suppose.”

    “Adam’s used to buying a nicely ripened Camembert or a fresh goat’s cheese whenever the fancy takes him,” noted Joel drily. “Not to mention the odd sliver of—uh—ham stuff. Foreign ham stuff.”

    “Mm. Well, they do their best. And there is a nice greengrocer: three times the price of the supermarkets, but at least they don’t knock the fruit about!”

    “Californian grapes?” murmured Joel on a choke of laughter.

    “Sometimes. Enormously expensive. The Australian ones are really much tastier.”

    “I think he’s going to starve to death!” gurgled Joel.

    “No. But he’s not going to be content with meat and three veg, that I do know. He was out here in winter last time—our winter, I mean; did he mention it?”

    Joel’s hazel eyes sparkled maliciously. He began to tick off points on his fingers. “Draughts, sheepy lamb, native sweet potatoes—er—draughts, sheepy lamb—er—draughts, roast pumpkin but I’ve decided that was apocryphal—”

    “He ate like a pig and slept twelve hours a night!” said Adam’s mother indignantly.

    “Had to. Digesting all that sheepy lamb!”

    “It was only the one roast that was a bit— Well, it was hogget, but the butcher said it was a lovely tender leg. Oh, well. He’s spoilt, that’s his trouble!”

    “Sorry, Melinda,” he said, twinkling at her. “‘Ma’s tarragon chicken’ was mentioned with great approval, I assure you.”

    “Oh, good! Well, I can do that any time, chicken’s always available. Our tarragon died, but I managed to freeze quite a bit, it’ll be all right in the sauce. –Shall we go to The Deli?”

    They went. Joel saw exactly what she meant, they did try. After that they went for a wander along the main street. On its far side a stretch of greensward and some large Norfolk pines bordered the azure sea, with ghosts of islands off in the haze to the far left—north, Melinda said. Joel began to feel rather disoriented: he’d sort of had an instinctive feeling it was south. As no-one ever thought to point out to him that in the southern hemisphere the sun moved in the northern part of the sky, this slight disorientation was to remain with him for the remainder of his sojourn in the Antipodes.

    On the near side of the main street, on which they were walking, was— Well, the shopping centre was bad enough. The Arcade, quite a large complex, was reasonably unobtrusive: brick, with a few dinky white edgings here and there. Some of the older buildings were Thirties kitsch, but crude hands had defaced these, naturally, with Seventies and Eighties foul shiny shop-fronts. But as they got further along—south, it must be…

    “What is this: Motel Plaza? God, that one’s got garden gnomes!” he gasped.

    “Wenderholm: I believe it’s very expensive. Yes, aren’t they dreadful?”

    “One marvels at the bloody-mindedness of the human spirit,” murmured Joel. “I mean—this!”—he waved at the pale apricot stucco monstrosity that was Wenderholm—“and then this!” He waved at the view of the sea.

    “Mm. I think it’s just lack of taste, really. –There’s a caravan camp on the seaward side just along there a bit.”

    “Right! That’s it, we’re going back!” decided Joel.

    “Christopher says it’s got something to do with the fact that New Zealand was almost entirely settled by the pioneering working-class in search of bourgeois detached paradise,” she murmured.

    Joel shuddered. “I’d say he’s got something, there.”

    “Mm: quite possibly a bee in his bonnet, he loves erecting fancy theories. At first he’s only half-serious about them and then they become—um—shibboleths,” she said sadly.

    Joel giggled. “Or sacred cows?”

    “Absolutely. By the way, whatever you do, don’t mention rugby to him.”

    “Very well,” he said foggily.

    “It’s the favourite game, here... I don’t want to go into it.”

    “No, please don’t. Er—Adam tells me you took him to a play that winter he was out here?”

    Melinda shut her eyes briefly.

    “I see.”

    “He would go. I kept trying to warn him.”

    “It was a professional company?” he said cautiously.

    “There’s only one. –Yes, of course it was. Don’t look at me like that, Joel!” she said with that gurgle of hers. “Christopher and I were born here, we knew what it was like! We came out here for the weather—it’s so much milder than England, I’ve had no trouble with my hip—and because it is our home, and— Well, he’s got his books and his writing—he still does a lot of quiet smoking and thinking, you know; and he’s taken up gardening again, which is a relief, he wasn’t getting any fresh air at all in Cambridge; and I’ve got my music.”

    “Mm.”

    “Anyway, Adam can have a good rest, he doesn’t look as if he needs to go rushing round to shops and shows, that cold of his must have really pulled him down. If he wants something to read he can re-read his father’s books. And laze in the garden, and go for lots of swims, it’ll do him good. The beach is very near; I don’t know if you’ve worked out the geography yet?”

    “No. Well, Jake very kindly got his pilot to fly us over it.” He twinkled at her.

    “He sounds quite a character.”

    “He is. Adam was struck by his intelligence, but I can’t say—” He shrugged.

    “Mm. Christopher knows a man called John Mackay who knows the Carranos very well—I think he’s some sort of relation, but I haven’t worked out quite what. He’s a retired professor of history—Edinburgh—and that’s what he says.”

    “The macho thing must be some kind of screen, then,” he said with a shrug.

    “Partly, yes. And quite possibly he just is a very macho man. Some men are, aren’t they?” she said calmly.

    Joel twinkled at her. “Not so much in the thee-ay-ter, Melinda!”

    “No. –Look, this is the Emporium.”

    Joel looked. Scraggy raffia thingywhatsits, scraggy cane objets, hideous dinky brass objets, even worser hunks of ersatz china—ye gods. What was much worse, they were all obviously new. Piles of plastic breakables—ye gods, again. Little plastic windmills on sticks, wooden parrot heads on sticks, flimsy Japanese umbrellas, fluorescent orange balloons on sticks, puce balloons incredibly stamped with the legend “Mrry Xmas”—must be Korean or something—silver balloons— Hang on.

    “What are they?”

    “Those modern balloons, the children these days seem to like them. I think they’re made of plastic.”

    “Yes, but those silver ones have got a sort of… extra protrusion,” said Joel numbly.

    “Mm. I suppose they are odd. All the stuff in the Emporium is odd. I think it’s all seconds—you know, factory runs that went wrong.”

    “Yes,” he said weakly, not realising that this was his first brush with the dreaded silver bladders that were to feature in—not to say plague—the show. “Please take me away from here, Melinda,” he whispered.

    Giggling, Melinda led him off. “Cappuccino?” she suggested brightly.

    “Not on your Nellie!” Joel replied fervently.

    She giggled again. “How right you are!”

    “Mister ‘I grind my own’ isn’t going to be too thrilled, take it for all in all,” he noted.

    “Oh, Adam’s a coffee snob, always has been. Well, he’ll just have to buy the beans and grind his own, that’s all. –It’s all right, The Deli does have them!”

    Joel sagged.

    “Hang on: we’ll just go to the greengrocer’s.”

    In the greengrocer’s she bought a nice ripe paw-paw—it was called that here, but she explained kindly he might have heard it called papaya. At immense expense, though after a startled moment Joel realised it wasn’t, exactly, he’d been thinking in sterling. He refrained from telling her they’d had a surfeit of the bloody things in Honolulu. He had a feeling it might be the most unkindest cut of all.

    “He’s nice, isn’t he?” said Melinda when Joel, having drunk immense amounts of ice-cold lager, had begun to yawn uncontrollably, admitted the travel-sickness drug was wearing off at last, and staggered thankfully off to bed. “I couldn’t really remember him from the last time we saw him.”

    “Mm... Was that before or after Adam went potty?”

    “Don’t say that! Um... before, definitely, Claudia was with him, don’t you remember? She was terrifically nice to Joel, so of course it was obvious she hated him.”

    “Mm. Hated anybody Adam liked, far’s I could see,” grunted Christopher.

    “Yes.” Melinda sighed. “I don’t know... How do people get to be that horrid? –No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to hear one of your sacred cows.”

    “Moo!” said Christopher in a startled way. “I thought they were shibboleths?”

    “No: Joel suggested sacred cows, and I’ve decided he’s right: I can just see them: those pale grey ones they have in India, with garlands round their necks.”

    Christopher groaned.

    “No, not ugh: moo!” she said brightly.

    “Mm. Well, are your maternal fears set at rest, then?” he asked drily.

    Melinda went rather pink. “Don’t be silly! I never really— Anyway, it’s obvious that he’s just very fond of Adam.”

    “Mm.” Christopher picked up his pipe. “Can’t imagine why.”

    “Christopher!” she gasped.

    “Well, why? Never exactly gives of himself to these friends and supporters, does he?”

    “Christopher Black! What a foul thing to say! I’m sure he’d give his right arm for Clem!”

    “Maybe. But Clem doesn’t need his right arm, does he? Might need an ear to tell his own troubles to, though, now and then. And has Adam told us a thing about Joel’s tastes? Except that he thinks he isn’t a vegetarian, and that was only because you asked him!”

    “Ye-es... Well—what could he have told us?” she said defensively.

    “A million and one things! That’s he’s hooked on Scrabble: there’s an avid Scrabble Club in Puriri, you know—no, actually there are two, the Puriri West one’s a breakaway cl—”

    “That’s apocryphal!”

    “Nonsense, darling: no-one could make up anything that daft—it’s Puriri all over. Um—let’s see: that he’s keen on sailing—could have jacked up someone to take him out on a boat; or that he hates sailing: then we’d have known not to jack up someone to take him out on a boat;”—he eyed her sardonically—“that he likes very blond young men—could have invited that boy from the Chez Basil—”

    “Stop it!”

    “No, well, he could have told us any one of a million small things, and he hasn’t.”

    “Well—um—well, theatre people live very much in a small, closed world, dear. Quite likely Joel hasn’t many outside interests.”

    Christopher made a rude noise.

    “Well, look at Adam!” said Melinda with some vigour.

    “He does at least like browsing in second-hand booksh— Hang on: I bet Joel’s asked you if— See!” he cried, as she went very pink. “He has, hasn’t he?”

    “Pooh, that doesn’t prove anything,” she said on a sulky note.

     Christopher sniffed. He sucked hard on his pipe, got it going, picked up the paper, and retired into it.

    After some time Melinda said weakly: “People do just seem to like Adam, dear.”

    Christopher sniffed again.

    Melinda sighed a little. “Well, shall we have our dinner? What do you think?”

    He looked up with a smile. “Tea’, dear: we are in the Anty-podes, you know!”

    Melinda gave a choke of laughter. “Poor Joel! He was so overcome when he realized he’d said that!”

    He looked at her with affection. “Until he realized you were laughing your socks off: yeah.”

    “Mm. –Well, shall we?”

    “Oh, Lord, yes: they’ll probably sleep for twelve hours or so.”

    “Righto.” Melinda got up. “You can set the table.”

    “Mm,” he said into his paper.

    “I think Adam’s all right, don’t you?”

    “Mm,” he said into his paper.

    Melinda went over to the  door. “Christopher—”

    “Mm? What?” he said, looking up vaguely.

    “What on earth are they going to do in the evenings? The TV’s all repeats of dreadful Australian serials in summer.”

    “Uh—well, same as we do, I suppose. Read a book. Or maybe Joel does like Scrabble,” he said with a twinkle.

    “Not Scrabble: Adam’s so dreadful at it.”

    “C,A,T—yeah,” he agreed drily.

    “Well, it’ll have to be books or music. And the beach is lovely in the evenings.”

    “Mm,” Christopher said into his paper.

    Melinda had almost said: “And maybe we could ask Georgy and her mother over.” She thought better of it. Of saying it, not of the thought. She went out, looking thoughtful.

    Christopher put down his paper and sighed heavily. This wasn’t because he wasn’t pleased to see his son—he was; nor because he didn’t like Joel—he did; nor because he didn’t think that Adam was looking okay—he did; but rather more because after forty years of marriage he could read Melinda like a book.