Crisis Management

11

Crisis Management

    “That hat’s no good,” said Tim in a strangled voice, going very red. “Here.” He handed the startled Bettany a large, plain straw sunhat that had seen better days.

    “Thank you, darling!” she gasped,

    Growling: “That’s okay,” he retreated precipitately.

    Bettany just sat there limply in the strawberry patch, not even taking off her lacy dark pink raffia hat and replacing it with the practical one. She’d done it wrong again! He was a lovely man, she didn’t mean to scare him off… A tear stole down her cheek. Sniffing, she brushed it away with the back of one grubby, strawberry-stained hand, determinedly replaced her pretty hat with the practical old thing, and got on with it. Alex wanted enough strawberries to fill two dozen of those plastic pots he’d got off that funny old man, Vern Something, from the town… Jake had put a fridge in the shed for the produce and had the electricity connected to it. It was an extravagance, of course, but then, he had so much it was nothing to him—but very thoughtful of him to have done it! He was a lovely man, too, and so was Wal, even though he wasn’t good-looking like Jake… So was darling Pete, of course, in fact he was one of the loveliest men she’d ever met, and dear Jan was so lucky!

    More tears crept down the brown cheeks that were now, thanks to her efforts amongst the strawberries, tomatoes and beans, rather burnt on top of the tan, but Bettany went on valiantly picking strawberries. If only she could find a job! The new ecolodge was hiring, but she hadn’t even had any response to her letter. If only she could see the man, she was sure she could— Even though Shannon said he was awful and a dweeb: she was very young, and… Well, at least she could give it her best shot! But he had a notice up on the door now: “No interviews without appointment. All enquiries to tradesmen’s entrance”—and really, it was hard to say which of those statements was more off-putting!

    Tim went glumly back to the early bean bed that he was clearing. He couldn’t stand the woman, but she was doing her best to give them a hand. If only she wouldn’t gush and—and give you that hungry look all the time! Ugh! He leaned on his fork and thought wistful thoughts of pretty Polly Carrano and how kind she was, and her lovely smile, and her sense of humour…

    Max put the receiver down with a hand that shook a little and went back into the sitting-room. “That was Uncle Hugh,” he said tightly to the family. “Seems to have woken up to the fact that he’s got a brother who’s gone missing, at last.”

    “What did he say, dear?” asked Moyra faintly.

    “He’s going out there. The High Commissioner will give him a bed. No, well, he was at school with his older brother, or something—he’s only just woken up to that, as well!”

    “That’s good, darling, but was there any news?”

    Max’s lips tightened. “The whole of that coastal area has been devastated. No news of Dad as such. I— Uncle Hugh suggested I might join him.”

    “Then you’d better,” said Ran firmly. “It’s better than sitting here worrying. And you might be able to do something to actually help, even if it’s only holding things for the real nurses.”

    “Um, yes,” he said lamely.

    “Shall I come, too?”

    Max’s hands trembled slightly. He shoved them into his pockets and said: “No, don’t, sweetheart. I—I couldn’t bear it if you caught something.”

    “They are purifying the water, it was on the news the other day, but I won’t come if it’d make it worse for you.”

    “I—I think it would, Ran.”

    “Of course it would, darlings,” said Moyra firmly. “It’s not as if either of you had a medical qualification, after all.”

    “No,” said Ran on a wan note. “Shona Green’s gone. They called for volunteers at her hospital. Um, sorry, Aunty Moyra: she was in my class at school. She’s a nurse, she’s been working up in Auckland at one of the big hospitals.”

    “Of course, dear! But those are the skills they need! And life must go on, you know. That lovely Jim Thompson will need you, Ran!”

    “Yes,” agreed Max, running his hand through his curls. “I don’t know what the Hell’s happening over at Fern Gully, Ran: that idiot Simon Basildon-Pugh that Hospitality hired in spite of all Jim’s advice seems to have alienated the chaps who are supposed to be finishing the grounds.”

    “I’ll check up on it straight away,” said Ran grimly.

    No-one objected that she was nominally still on holiday; in fact Felicity even volunteered to come over with her, because she’d heard a rumour that the silly man had taken down Mum’s lovely wall hangings.

    “What?” said Max sharply. “He can’t do that, they’re part of the concept, Sir Maurice’ll throw ten thousand fits!”

    “Exactly,” said Felicity soothingly. “Don’t worry, Max, we’ll sort it out. You’d better contact a reputable travel agent and find out what shots you need for Sri Lanka.”

    “Yes. I’ll check the Internet, too,” said Murray in tones of unalloyed relief.

    Dan was as relieved as anybody that they all had something to do and that Ran hadn’t kicked up at Max not wanting to take her with him to Sri Lanka. But he noted at this point: “It can wait until tomorrow. It is bedtime here, whatever it might be where Max’s uncle is. Oh—that reminds me: I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while, Max, but it kept slipping my mind. There’s no need to suffer with that huge, stinking, hairy hearthrug on the end of your bunk: biff him out here. If the floor’s not good enough for him he can sleep on the sofa, since Shannon isn’t with us.”

    “Dad, he’ll come out and get in the tent with me!” wailed Sean.

    Rover’s dog-door was a cause of considerable ill-feeling in the Jackson household: Sean had appointed himself to put it in and given the size of the brute it was nothing but a bloody draught-attractor, and half the time he just stood there and whined until someone opened the door for him anyway! Therefore Dan replied with sour satisfaction: “Serves ya right for putting that bloody dog-door in, in the first place!”

    “Dan, I don’t mind him!” said Max with a laugh.

    “See?” said Sean quickly.

    “Look, lame-brain, they can biff him out and shut the sitting-room door on him,” said Dan heavily.

    “What if he chews up the furniture?” asked Katy mildly.

    Dan got up. “Okay, I give up. Max can suffer. It’ll give him a taste of how stinking hot and humid Ceylon’s gonna be, that’s for sure! I’m going to bed. Good-night.” He went out.

    “Sri Lanka,” Sean corrected lamely into the sudden silence that had fallen in the Jacksons’ sitting-room.

    Murray got up. “Yes. We’re all a bit on edge, wishing there was something practical we could do. Come on, Felicity. Good-night, everybody.”

    Felicity followed him, bidding everybody a sweet good-night and into the bargain kissing her mother’s and aunt’s cheeks.

    Into the further silence that had fallen in the Jacksons’ sitting-room, Sean noted: “It was the tsunami, I think. Don’t think she even cares he’s Jewish, any more.”

    “That’ll do, Sean, dear,” said Moyra very firmly. “Not that anybody disagrees with you, but some things don’t need saying, do they? Why don’t you go over to the permaculture place tomorrow, dear: I’m sure that that poor man who slaves in the gardens needs a hand, and Alex doesn’t seem to be of much use, does he? –Come along, Katy, dear: beddy-byes!”

    They went out, leaving Ran, Max and a sheepish-looking Sean.

    “Um, Max, I’ve got quite a bit in my bank account: I could afford to come with you,” he offered after a moment.

    Max went very red. “You mustn’t dream of it, Sean! And certainly not of spending your own money. Um, the thing is, none of us has the skills to be useful, so, though I would like your company, I think it might be better not.”

    “Yeah,” he said, making a face. “Okay. Well, I s’pose I can give old Tim a hand over at the permaculture nuts’ place. But what the Hell’s Alex doing, if he’s not getting stuck in?”

    “Selling Moyra tomatoes, apparently,” said Ran drily. “You know that shed they’ve got out the front? Sitting in it selling tomatoes and stuff.”

    “The older kids could do that!”

    “Yeah. Why don’tcha get over there and tell him that, Sean?”

    “I bloody well will!”

    “Good on ya,” replied Ran mildly. “Wanna drink of water, Max? That thing ya mum made for tea was bloody salty.”

    “Yes, wasn’t it?” he said with a rueful grin. “Never mind, she tried.”

    “Yeah,” said Ran comfortably, following him out to the kitchen.

    Sean sat there scowling for some time. He bloody well would tell ruddy Alex where he got off!

    “It’s not flaming well FUNNY!” he shouted.

    “I thought it was, rather,”  murmured Alex.

    “NO! It’s a bloody crisis, Alex: why the Hell aren’t you out there pulling your weight? Tim’s used to having two hefty blokes helping him, plus whatever that useless Terry did!”

    “Uh—yes, but it is summer, there’s not much to do, really, is there? I mean, everything’s fruiting.”

    “You’re an idiot! It’s dry as Hell round here in summer: everything has to be watered, every day, and the veges need to be mulched or the soil dries out, and the second crops have to go in as well as the winter crops he’ll be starting—and that involves digging and manuring to Hell and gone! And the leaves and stalks and stuff don’t magically lift themselves up onto the compost heap!”

    “Compost mountain range,” corrected Alex with an attempt at a smile.

    “This isn’t a joke, Alex,” replied Sean evilly.

    Alex had thought, during his stay in Sean’s tent, that the young man quite liked him. He’d certainly laughed at his jokes. “Okay, it isn’t a joke, and I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Well, um, who’s going to look after this lot? There’s quite a lot of money involved.”

    “Jonathan can be in charge: he’s old enough to do a responsible job.”

    The lanky, bulgy-eyed Jonathan had been standing at Sean’s elbow all the while, saying nothing. –And a greater contrast between two male creatures, reflected Alex limply, could hardly be imagined! Sean was blond, like his sisters, with the same matte tan that Shannon had and the same very thick, straight hair. He wasn’t very tall, about five-ten, but very stocky: the sort of figure that probably, noted Alex drily, had made him a prime candidate for rugby fullback at school. Jonathan was almost the same height but half Sean’s girth, and though he was very tanned, looked all skin and bone, as if he didn’t get enough to eat. The bulgy, pale blue eyes and the small, receding chin were horribly like his mother’s. True, it was an awkward age, but Alex wouldn’t voluntarily have put him in charge of a kids’ lemonade stall. It was hard to believe the two were the same species.

    There was no doubt that Sean’s choice of phrase had been deliberate: Jonathan was now a glowing tomato shade. “Yeah, I’ll do it,” he said huskily.

    “And Jay can help,” said Sean firmly. “But he’s in charge, mind, Jay.” The point probably didn’t need reinforcing: the renamed Jay was a skinny, meek little creature who barely reached her brother’s shoulder, and didn’t look as if she could say boo to a goose. She had, alas, the same bulgy pale eyes and receding chin, but instead of the boy’s sun-bleached pale fawn her hair was dark. Just as lank, though. Whether her current outfit, one of those provided by Bettany or Polly, actually improved her appearance was a moot point. The jeans were very dark and very flared and hung limply on her bony legs and hips. There were two tops, the under one a sort of singlet, very short, showing the waist but mercifully, in Alex’s opinion, not the tummy-button. Probably Bettany’s choice: it was a cheerful pink. Over it was a sort of droopy thing in a see-through fabric heavily patterned with brownish leopard spots. Her feet were not in the relatively sensible sneakers that Polly had bought, but Bettany’s choice: transparent pink plastic sandals made even more horrid by the glitter mixed into the plastic. All three girls had a pair, which they had all worn continuously since the woman had provided them. Nokomis’s were too big for her but that wasn’t stopping her.

    “There’s packing, too,” said Sean grimly as they set off for the hinterland leaving the two children behind the stall.

    “What?”

    “Packing for their big orders from the organic retailers! Or did you imagine it all jumped into the boxes by itself?”

    “No. I hadn’t thought,” said Alex lamely.

    “Hadn’t cared, more like!” retorted Sean fiercely.

    “All right, Sean, what have you been doing this past week or so?”

    “Finishing my ruddy thesis, helping Pete McLeod out with the boat trips and the walking tours, and trying to stop my sister’s fiancé rushing off to bloody Sri Lanka!” he snarled.

    Alex swallowed. “Oh,” he said lamely.

    “And doing half the gardening for Dad, the silly coot’s planted up too much, he got pissed off when Pete told him what was what about the potatoes, and— Forget it.”

    After a moment Alex asked weakly: “And have you finished your thesis?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Well, that’s good,”

    “It is if my flaming supervisor’ll ever get off his arse and email me his comments, yeah.”

    “ I suppose he’s in the bosom of his family for Christmas like the rest of them.”

    “He told me to get it to him before New Year’s if I wanted him to read it because he’s taking the family to Fiji for the second half of January.”

    “I see. So when’s your viva?”

    “If he reads it and it’s okay, he's setting it up for May.”

    “May!”

    Sean shrugged. “External examiners. Cast your mind back.”

    “Uh—mm. I transferred to Oxford, finished there.”

    “Right. Why’d ya come back?” asked Sean, shoving a tangle of overhanging greenery back and, to Alex’s surprise, letting him past before he let it swing heavily back into place again.

    “I loved Oxford’s architecture, was bored with the work and loathed every Pom I met over there, that enough for ya?”

    “What about the weather?” he said stolidly.

    “I loathed that, too.”

    “Yeah, so did Ran. So didja pack in the botany because you were bored with the work?”

    Alex hesitated. Then he said: “For a couple of years the teaching was a new challenge. But the mediocrity of the students and the level at which I was required to teach combined with the boredom with the work, and that was it. –But don’t let my rotten example influence you,” he added politely.

    Sean scowled. Then he admitted: “All right, you’re bloody sharp; Dad told me— Never mind. But I am sick of it. Though I guess everyone feels by the time they finish their thesis that they never want to see it again, eh?”

    “Not everyone, but a lot, I think. By the time you’ve had a break, come through the viva and actually got the degree you’re usually fighting fit and immersed in job-hunting, as far as I can see.”

    “Were you?”

    Alex sighed. “No, I was back at my alma mater teaching morons the difference between a stamen and a pistil, Sean.”

    “Right. Like what Rick does, eh?”

    “Yes. He actually enjoys it,” he said heavily.

    “Yeah.” Sean forged on, scowling.

    Alex didn’t pursue the subject. He just stumbled in his wake, wondering if he knew where he was going.

    “Bloody Hell!” he said as they emerged from the edge of the jungle to a—well, jungle clearing.

    “Yeah. They don’t believe in planting up huge fields with just one species: that encourages the pests, see?”

    “Nevertheless they’ve managed to fit in a few zucchini plants,” he said limply.

    “Yeah. There’s a big demand for those all summer, but they’re a lot of work: need harvesting at least every other day. They do pretty well with the sweetcorn, too, but there’s more competition in that market.”

    “Right. And the red peppers?”

    “That started off as just companion planting but they’ve got an organic retailer that takes most of them, now. It’s very sheltered, here, see, that’s why they’re doing so well. –Hey, TIM!” he bellowed, waving.

    Tim turned, waved, and made his way over to them.

    “You picking?” asked Sean.

    “Yeah.” He squinted at the sky. “Shouldn’t be, really, it’s getting a bit warm, but I gotta finish this patch.”

    “Right. Alex can give you a hand. Where’s Jake?”

    “Him and Polly are picking the celery. He reckons you can get a machine to wrap them. It kind of seals the plastic automatically.”

    “Sounds worth investigating. You wouldn’t have to muck around with those bits of green tape, eh? So where do ya need me?”

    “Dave Churton rang to say he can take six cartons of peppers if we can supply them. Can ya do those?”

    “Right; is it just this patch?”

    “These are furthest forward but there’s a few ripe in the next one. The cartons are on the trailer,” said Tim.

    Alex could now see that at the far side of the extensive clearing there was a track, an actual track, through the jungle, with a mini-tractor with a large trailer attached standing there large as life and twice as natural. Jesus! Why couldn’t they have come that way instead of through the bloody jungle? Not that it hadn’t been extremely interesting: it wasn’t, of course, a tangle of natives, but a mixture of those, fruit and nut trees, and fruiting vines of various sorts: chokos, cucumbers and gourds.

    “That way’s longer,” said Tim out of the blue, as Sean went off towards the tractor.

    Alex jumped. “I see,” he said feebly. “Okay, show me what size zucchinis to pick, Tim. –Have you got a market for the flowers, as well?”

    Tim replied literally: “Yes. There’s two retailers in Auckland that take those: Dave Churton—he’s got three shops, he’s got one up the Hibiscus Coast now, as well as the ones in Remuera and Newmarket—and Andy Chong. His dad was wild when he came to us, but the Chinese market gardeners weren’t doing the stuff his customers wanted and his dad had let him take over, so he’s doing it his way.”

    It was the longest speech Alex had ever heard Tim make—even when he was talking about music. “Yes,” he said limply. “I get it. Good for Andy Chong. How do you get them up there, Tim?”

    “Air freight. It’s worth it for the best produce. Terry’s got an agreement with Dave Reilly, he runs CAF—Central Air Freight. It’s just him and a mate and the mechanic, really.”

    “Uh-huh. A relation of old Vern’s, would he be?”

    “Yes, one of his sons. He said to me that Terry was a bit of stinker but he wasn’t gonna turn good custom away. See, they can often bring a few tourists back down, but it makes it worth their while if they’ve taken up a load of freight. They take Dave Churton’s skinny eggplants, too. He likes the white ones and the very pale purple ones, but actually they taste the same as the dark ones. Greg Reilly, he’s Dave’s brother, he takes most of our stuff up to Auckland in his truck. It took ages before he got the point that it all needs to be packed carefully, you can’t just bung it in.”

    Alex winced slightly, nodding. If you were out on the roads round Auckland in the early mornings you often saw the local form of vegetable transport, heading for the big central markets, or later, the greengrocers taking the stuff back to their shops: open trucks piled with silverbeet and cabbages already starting to wilt, was the style.

    Tim bent easily and nipped a zucchini off with his knife. “Like this, see? Make sure there’s a bit of stalk on them. We usually put them straight into the cartons, but if they’re dirty they have to be washed: put them in a wire basket.”

    “Here,” said Sean, coming back with an armful of containers. “You’d better show him how to set them out, Tim.”

    “Yes. Over here.” He led the way to the shallow carton he was filling. It wasn’t sitting on bare dirt, or even on the heavy mulch which covered most of the spaces between the plants, it was sitting on a piece of plastic. Its inside was lined with greaseproof paper. It was almost full: two layers of beautiful zucchini packed rather as one might a set of bottles, top-and-tailed. Alex looked at it limply. It looked exactly like the produce Granny used to favour in the nice greengrocer’s shop, unquote.

    “The customers want them like that,” said Tim.

    “Yeah.” The side of the box bore a green logo consisting of the letters “TOP” sitting on the silhouette of, at a guess, a globe artichoke. He closed the lid gently. The logo again, “Taupo Organic Produce” and the web address. It was clear enough but didn’t look professionally printed, more… stencilled? “Dare I ask if you stencil these boxes yourselves, Tim?”

    “Yes. Printing’s too expensive. The kids and the women do them in the evening,”

    By the light of their one tallow candle, no doubt. Alex was all for self-sufficiency, but God! He let Tim give him detailed instructions which he didn’t need, reflecting that he was doubtless used to instructing the dim sort of groupies of both sexes who’d hung round Terry, and, assuring him he had a knife, got on with it. It wasn’t precisely fast work, but if you knelt as Tim was doing, it did at least spare the back. Well, it spared him the humiliation of having to admit he’d put his back out at the age of twenty-nine and had to bloody well avoid any heavy lifting and too much bending, didn’t it? The accident with the back had been a factor in his giving his academic career away, but he hadn’t thought it’d cut much ice with Sean Jackson, so he’d refrained from mentioning it. No, well, if he hadn’t got out of it, what would he be doing right now instead of choosing equal-sized organic zucchini and placing them carefully in biodegradable, recyclable cartons for the silver-rinsed ladies of Remmers and Newmarket with their pearls and Volvos? Well, you paid your money and took your choice! Sunbathing with one’s up-market peers in Rarotonga like the H.O.D. and his frightful wife, or earnestly supervising moronic Botany Club members, like Rick! Alex looked up at a clear blue sky and round at the sunny clearing crammed with the organic descendants of the basic foodstuffs of the Central American Indians, and grinned.

    Round about lunchtime Sean found Shannon out the back, bringing in some washing.

    “Gee, are those dry already?” He didn’t wait for her to snarl the obvious reply, he began helping her.

    “Ta,” said Shannon after a moment.

    “That’s okay. I’ve got bloody Alex helping Tim. About time he did some real work round here.”

    “Yeah. Good on ya. Who’s looking after the stall? I haven’t heard the bell.”

    “Jonathan and Jay. I think he’ll stick at it, I’ve told him it’s his responsibility. I dunno if they can make change, but too bad.”

    “Um, yeah. Um, Sean, Alex has changed all the prices,” said Shannon uneasily.

    “What to?” he demanded angrily, reddening.

    “Twice what they were before.”

    Sean gave a startled yelp of laughter. “Good on ’im!”

    “Mm. He isn’t all bad. Only, will Jonathan notice?”

    “Uh—I’d say he’s been so much under his bloody father’s thumb that he won’t dare to object to anything a grown-up does or says, Shannon.”

    Shannon swallowed hard. “Yes, you’re right. It makes you realise how lucky we are to have Dad, eh?”

    Sean had always thought so. He looked down at her tolerantly. “Yeah, Dad’s okay.”

    “And Mum. I mean, she may not be a conventional suburban mum, but who wants that? Imagine having Ma Roberts for a mum!”

    Sean obligingly shuddered.

    “Sabrina’s hopeless. I mean, at the moment she’s not normal, but any mad idea he came out with, she was up for, and her only idea of telling the kids off is to bleat ‘Your father won’t like that!’”

    Sean gave a genuine shudder, this time, and admitted: “That probably works, actually.”

    “Well, yeah, but heck! And she didn’t even insist they hadda have some decent clothes! I don’t mean anything fancy, but ordinary shorts and tees, Sean!”

    “I know. Can’t imagine Mum putting up with anything approaching that.”

    “No. ’Member those birthday cakes she used to make for us? In shapes,” she prompted.

    “Oh, yeah! She used to make mine like Thomas the Tank Engine!” he said with a laugh.

    “Yes. She did a Big Bird for me one year: ’member that? He was so magnificent it was a crime to eat him! And then she got that idea of piñatas…” said Shannon with a deep sigh.

    “Yeah, they were good. Doesn’t Sabrina do anything like that?”

    “No. Well, he never gave her any money, so she couldn’t even buy icing sugar, and he said that cake was a waste of their resources!” reported Shannon angrily.

    “So, um, didn’t they have birthdays at all?”

    “Sabrina and the other mums used to make them homemade cards with the food dye they use for stencilling their boxes and do some sort of thing with a candle and a wreath round it. I think they got the idea from a library book: ancient Nordic or something. Nothing special to eat, though. And they only got a present if Tim had managed to whittle something for them.”

    “Shit.”

    “Yeah. –No, they leave the pegs out,” she said as he lifted the sacking peg-bag off the line.

    “Oh—right. Funny pegs, eh?”

    “Terry made Tim whittle them,” said Shannon heavily.

    “Fuck me. –Here, I’ll take that.” He took the basket of washing off her. “Who wove the basket?” he asked snidely.

    His sister replied literally: “It was a trade for a sack of potatoes and some organic strawberry jam. Mum’s friend, Lesley Winters.”

    Mrs Winters was extremely up-market: her husband was a bank manager. “Eh?”

    “Yes. She’s into basketry. That Ali Baba basket Mum’s got in the bathroom’s one of hers.”

    “Uh—yeah, I know. I can’t imagine her even speaking to them! I mean, they’re… grimy,” finished Sean limply.

    “Good word for them,” said Shannon drily. “Evidently the call of organic potatoes and real strawberry jam was too strong. Added to which, that basket’s a bit crooked.”

    “Right,” he said feebly, following her into the kitchen. “I brought in some veges: can ya use them? Those overgrown zucchinis got away from Tim, and the up-market retailers don’t want crooked peppers.”

    “Um, yes, I suppose we can have them for lunch.” Shannon looked at the contents of his wire basket. “Ugh, what’s this?” she asked, picking up a greenish-white ovoid fruit with an expression of distaste on her pretty face.

    “Tim reckons it’s an eggplant that, um, reverted or something. The fancy Auckland retailers only want the long, thin ones.”

    “Of course it’s an eggplant!” said Polly from the doorway with a laugh in her voice. “It’s the original eggplant! Why they got their name!” She took it from Shannon and held it up admiringly. “See?”

    “Ooh, yeah! Like a big egg!” said Sean with a sudden laugh.

    “Yes, the size of a goose egg. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? –Jake and I are just going over to the ecolodge for a shower.” She put the eggplant back in the wire basket, smiling. “You could make a lovely ratatouille with these, Shannon.”

    “Um, I don’t know how,” she admitted, reddening.

    “I’ll do it. It’s easy, you’ll see! We won’t be long!” She vanished.

    “She is a great cook,” said Sean, eyeing his sister uneasily.

    “Eh? Yeah.” Shannon picked up the eggplant again. “She’s right, when ya look at it,” she said in a small voice. “It is beautiful.”

    “Well, yeah, when ya get rid of your preconceived notions like number one, veges didn’t oughta be white and shiny, and number two, eggplants oughta be purple and fat or purple and skinny—yeah!”

    “It’s too nice to cook.”

    “Put it in a bowl so’s we can look at it over lunch,” he said comfortably. “Hey, I was thinking: why don’t we have lunch outside?”

    “Like a picnic?” asked Shannon dubiously.

    “No, like the Italians do—Greeks as well, I think. Take the table outside; it’d be lovely under that verandah thing out the back.”

    “It’s a pergola, you ape.”

    “That or a kiwifruit frame, yeah. Whaddaya reckon?”

    Shannon agreed and, as the table in the big, shabby, rambling old bungalow’s dining-room was only a trestle, they manhandled it outside.

    Sean went to get the chairs and Shannon decided to fill the coffee-pot, since Polly had bought them one and some real coffee to go in it, and make a couple of salads.

    He came up to her side and watched silently for a moment. “I’m thinking of giving science away,” he said abruptly.

    “Some of us told ya that taking up fish genetics just to please Dad was a mad idea,” replied his sister.

    “It wasn’t just— No, all right, I suppose it was mainly that. Only there’s nowhere I can go with it, except work for his lot or another lot like them, or for Fisheries—and they’re not interested in freshwater species anyway.”

    “Nah, the fly-fishing lobby’s too strong,” said Shannon. “But is it because those are the only jobs or because you’re sick of the work itself that you wanna pack it in?”

    “Sick of the work itself,” said Sean with a sigh. “It’s been over eighteen months, now, that I’ve been really bored with it. Well, everyone says that writing your thesis is the worst bit, but I don’t really think it’s just that… ”

    “So what’d you do, instead?”

    “Dunno.”

    “Teach?”

    “Secondary school?” he said in horror. “No way!”

    “You could help coach the football and cricket teams as well; it wouldn’t be a bad life.”

    “Shoving the EnZed required curriculum down the throats of kids that only wanna be out nicking smokes and doing their girlfriends and working on their old cars? No, thanks!”

    “Well, I couldn’t hack it, myself,” she owned. “Um, start a business? That takes capital, though.”

    “Yeah,” he agreed sourly. “Drive a timber truck? There’s not much else round here.”

    “Do ya want to stay down here, then?”

    “Mm. I really hated it in Auckland,” said Sean in a low voice.

    Well, gee, Aunty Moyra had been right all along when she’d said he was a small-town boy! “You could work for Pete and Jan, maybe.”

    “Doing what?”

    “All the stuff Pete does, basically. Well, you’ve done most of it, off and on, over the years, eh? I’m not saying they could afford to pay you much, if anything, but I was thinking: they might wear an agreement where you work for them for peanuts and they leave the place to you, see? Only, depends whether ya wanna end up running a so-called ecolodge for the affluent middle class in your declining years.”

    He swallowed. “I don’t think that’s my bag, any more than it is Pete’s.”

    “You can at least use a computer and a calculator!”

    “Yeah. Not that,” he said wanly. “I don’t think I’m the entrepreneurial type. I mean, look at Greg: he couldn’t wait to buy his own truck; he wouldn’t even go into the air freight thing with Dave, would he?”

    “Eh? Oh, ya mate Greg Reilly! Yeah.”

    “I’d rather just be a fisherman,” he said glumly. “I just like mucking about on the lake.”

    “I know,” replied his little sister simply.

    Sean leaned on the bench and sighed.

    “Look, put it on hold for a bit. Don’t think of what ya might do, think of what ya can do,” said Shannon on a firm note,

    “Whaddareya, John F. Kennedy?”

    “Or a Berlin bun,” said Alex drily from the doorway. The Jackson siblings looked round at him with identical expressions of blank surprise and he said: “Sorry; forget I spoke. I found this giant marrow and Tim told me to bring it up to the house. The word jam was mentioned but possibly the crisis has affected his brain. –All right, I never spoke!” He vanished.

    “Boy, does he get up ya nose or what,” she muttered.

    “Yeah. Does it on purpose,” agreed Sean.

    “Um, didn’t Jan make jam one year when Pete let a marrow get away from him?”

    “Hey, yeah! Ginger jam!” he cried.

    “Ya right, so it was. Nokomis reckons there’s a ginger plant down near where they’ve got all that bloody taro. If it is, it’ll be the only ginger on this property.”

    “Yeah. Never mind, Polly can buy them some—and some sugar!” he said with a grin.

    “Right. Which brings me back to my point,” said Shannon firmly. “What ya can do is help out here. I mean, let’s face it: I wouldn’t put it past Alex to just give up and wander off. And Polly and Jake have been great, but they’ve got their own lives, not to say three kids and a giant multinational corporation to worry about!”

    “I think the Carrano Group pretty much runs on oiled wheels, but yeah. See whatcha mean. They do need someone,” he said, frowning over it.

    “Yep.”

    “Dad’ll go spare. –Well, not that I’m lending a hand; if I stay on.”

    “So?”

    Sean took a deep breath. “Okay, let him, it’s my life, not his! And it’s better than bumming round the place drawing flamin’ plants!”

    “You said it,” agreed Shannon mildly. “Shall I do some potatoes?”

     “I’d vote yes, only will they go with this ratty stuff of Polly’s, though?”

    “Their potatoes are so lovely that they go with anything. With fresh bu— Oh, shit!”

    “What? Christ, haven’t the cows been milked?”

    “Of course they have, Tim’s in charge of them, ya don’t think he’d let a cow suffer, do ya? No, he’ll of set the milk out to separate.” Sean was looking blank so she explained: “You have to skim the cream off and make the butter. Tim’s been doing it but I said I’d take over.”

    “Ya mean they skim it by hand?” he said weakly.

    “Whaddelse? Likewise churn it by hand.”

    “What? From sixteen cows?”

    “Um, no, they don’t turn it all into butter. The butter’s just for them, Sean.”

    “I’ll do it,” he said resignedly. “Anything else ya haven’t managed to fit into these seventy-two-hour days of yours?”

    “It is a bit like that,” she admitted. “Collecting the ducks’ eggs and the eggs that the, um, bloody-minded chooks lay in the undergrowth. Most of them are really good about using their nesting boxes—”

    “That can wait until after lunch,” he said firmly. “I’ll have a word with the kids, too: I’m bloody sure that’s a job Terry would’ve had them doing. Where’s this milk, then?”

    “In the dairy. That big whitewashed shed next to the milking shed.” She swallowed. “You have to be scrupulously clean, though, Sean. I mean, they only got a licence to sell their organic cheese after years of wrangling with the authorities and umpteen inspections.”

    Sean looked at her limply. “Ya don’t mean we’ve gotta make cheese as well?”

    “No, Jake looked at the figures and said they were mad and I might as well not bother. But all the same we don’t want germs in the milk. They sell it as that A2 stuff, ya see.”

    “All right, they’ve got a ruddy hand-driven bottling plant out there!”

    “No, a man collects it in the afternoons: he belongs to a bigger place up near Hamilton that’s specialising in it.”

    “Curiouser and curiouser,” said Sean grimly. “Okay, I’ll be scrupulously clean.”

    “You need to wash your hands really well—there’s a tub—and put a cap over your hair and wear an overall in there. And special gumboots: they’re all by the door.”

    “This’ll be why there’s so much washing every day, will it? Okay, I’m not arguing.” He went out.

    Shannon got on with the salads. Phew! Um… anything else she might’ve forgotten?

    “They’ve done the celery all wrong!” reported a whiny little voice.

    She took a deep breath. Ghillywaine was standing there with a bunch of celery, beautifully clean, enclosed in its “TOP” plastic bag exactly as Tim had shown Polly and Jake and in fact exactly as they’d done the preceding order, several days back.

    “It looks perfectly all right to me, and you take that back right now, Ghillywaine. That’s to be sold, it needs to be kept cool in the big shed, not handled by interfering kids.” –Ghillywaine, she had had more than time enough to discover, was a whiner and a sneak. So far she hadn’t yet told on any adult, only the other kids, but gee, now she’d graduated!

    “They done it all wrong,” she whined.

    “Bullshit. Take it back.”

    “They wrapped it the wrong way,” she said, pouting.

    Shannon grabbed it off her. Okay, they had: the plastic bags, which were rather loose, so as to make it easy to insert the celery—probably not Terry’s idea—had to be folded tightly round the stalks and closed with a piece of green tape, and this bag had been folded the wrong way, so that most of the lettering on it was obscured.

    “It’s a ruddy plastic bag, it doesn’t matter how it’s folded, and take it back immediately,” she said in a steely voice. “And I don’t want to hear any more tales!”

    Pouting, Ghillywaine trailed out with it.

    Shannon sagged against the bench.

    “Darling, quite right!” said a breathless voice.

    She jumped. “Hi, Bettany. You look hot.”

    The hot-looking Bettany came in, beaming at her. “It’s a beautiful day, dear! You were so right not to let that little Ghillywaine get away with tale-telling, Shannon: once they start, they don’t stop! And it’s such a nasty trait: the sort of thing other children don’t like, it’ll make her so unpopular at school.”

    “Yeah,” said Shannon, grinning at her. “Ya don’t think I came on a bit strong, then?”

    “Not at all, darling!” Bettany assured her. “—These tomatoes are for us. Alex sorted out what he calls the bent ones, isn’t he silly? I said to little Jay, she could sell them anyway, they’re all beautiful, but she insisted!”

    “He’s not back on the flaming stall, is he? Sean told Jonathan and Jay to do it.”

    “No, darling, he just popped by on his way to the house with a marrow to make sure they were managing. He’s not as irresponsible as you think!” she chirped.

    “Yeah,” said Shannon weakly. “Well, that’d be hard, I gotta admit. Um, well, Polly’s gonna make a ratty-something, I think it’s a French thing, so these can either go in that or the salad.”

    “Exactly. Darling, do you realise they’ve got an enormous order for organic baby spinach that has to be filled for next Monday?” she said in a lowered voice—unnecessarily, there were only the two of them in the kitchen and Sabrina couldn’t possibly hear from her room.

    “Baby spinach?” said Shannon in a hollow voice.

    Bettany nodded hard. “Terrifically labour-intensive! And it all has to be done in the cool of the morning because it wilts so easily!”

    “Look, this is mad! Jake’s right, they just make rods for their backs!” she said in loud exasperation.

    “I think so, too. But they have promised this order, you see.”

    “Flaming Terry has, ya mean. Okay, we’ll all get up at dawn and pick the muck. Any idea how it’s done?”

    Bettany tried to smile and failed. “Jay said they use scissors.”

    Actually, this might’ve seemed mad, but Sean’s phrase “Curiouser and curiouser” just about summed up Taupo Organic Produce, so Shannon wouldn’t have expected much less. She nodded grimly.

    “Darling, we can’t ask Polly and Jake to do that!” she hissed.

    Shannon gave her a kindly look. “They are only human. But I don’t think they can: it’s this Monday they’ve got to collect their daughter from computer camp.”

    “Oh, good heavens, yes! Shannon, darling, what are we going to do without them?” she said in dismay. “I mean, Jake’s so sensible, and so good at deciding what—what bits of the nonsense, as he calls it, to cut out! But that apart, it’s two extra pairs of hands!”

    “Yeah; not to mention her cooking, eh? Well, Sean’s on deck fulltime, now.”

    “Oh, good!”

    “And he’s making Alex work in the gardens. Um, well, what we can’t manage, we can’t.”

    “Yes, but isn’t it a matter of what darling Jake calls prioritising your tasks?” she ventured.

    “Yeah. Well, he can tell us what looks worth doing, eh? Cash-nexus-wise,” said Shannon grimly, “not environmental- or organic-wise.”

    Bettany nodded fervently. “One does so agree, Shannon, darling!”

    Shannon looked at her flamboyant, sun-flushed, untidy person with considerable liking. “Yeah. You can have a shower, if you like, Bettany: Polly and Jake have nipped over to Jan and Pete’s for theirs.”

    “Oh, wonderful!” she beamed, hurrying out.

    Yeah. The hot water was a real problem. Wouldn’t you think permaculture would go with solar power? But perhaps they hadn’t been able to bear the huge installation costs. It was electric, one of those stupid hot-water cisterns that let you have one shower and half a normal family’s washing-up and then ran cold for the next four hours. There was hot water in the dairy, but that was its own little system, unconnected with the main house. No wonder the permaculture nuts always looked grimy!

    “We don’t drink much beer, Pete,” said Tim faintly, looking at the two enormous slabs Pete had brought over, unasked.

    “Emergency rations,” replied Pete, unmoved. “I’ll shove some of these in the fridge, but you can pass the rest round.” He went out to the kitchen.

    Tim looked limply at a dozen beer cans and at the personalities seated round the big wobbly trestle-table in the dining-room. The ladies wouldn’t want—

    “I’ll have one, ta, Tim!” said Polly cheerfully.

    Limply Tim handed Lady Carrano a can of DB Lager.

    “Shannon’ll have a shandy,” said Sean. “She thinks beer’s too sour. Pass us that lemonade, wouldja, Jan?”

    Jan passed the lemonade, noting: “You don’t have to drink beer, Bettany: would you like a shandy, too?”

    Gratefully Bettany allowed Sean to make her a shandy, admitting: “Beer is rather sour, isn’t it? But I love a shandy!”

    Jan helped herself to a beer. “Well, go on!” she said to Jake as he was just sitting there.

    “Yeah. Where’d these glasses come from?” he asked, staring at the filled one Alex was now holding out to him but not taking it.

    Jan gave him a glare. “That apology for a sideboard: you saw me—”

    “Originally, ya clot! –No, you have it, Alex.” He took a clean glass and looked at it closely.

    Jan sighed. “They were probably Sabrina’s mum’s: a lot of the household stuff’s what she inherited from her.”

    “Uh-huh. Right.” He flicked the glass with his fingernail and it let out a loud musical “Ding-ng!” and everybody jumped. “Czechoslovakian crystal. Pre-War. Shouldn’t ruddy well be using ’em,” he said calmly, filling it.

    Pete came back from the kitchen looking dry. “Have a peanut butter glass with a blue drawing of a kowhai on it instead,” he suggested drily, holding one up.

    “They’re ruddy collectible these days, too,” replied the billionaire, unmoved.

    Jan took a deep breath.

    “Yeah,” said Jake quickly. “Siddown, shuddup, and get one down ya, Pete. This here meeting will now come to order. –Sit down, Alex!”

    Alex retreated from the battered sideboard and sat down, grinning. “There’s a whole set of sherry glasses in there, too, with a lovely decanter,” he reported.

    “Good, I’ll look at them later,” replied Jake calmly “We’ll have the news first. Go on, Bettany.”

    “Well, yes, Jake, darling, I suppose we’d better get it over with,” she agreed, looking anxious. “It isn’t all bad, darlings: Wal’s son is all right, and so is his younger boy: he grabbed him when the wave came, you see.” She swallowed. “But the older boy and Janine, Stewart’s second wife, were swept out to sea, there’s no hope they’ll be alive.”

    Jan blew her nose. “Oh, dear. Well, it could be worse.”

    “Yes,” agreed Polly. “They’re coming home. A lot of people are staying, I think, hoping against hope or waiting for the bodies to be identified, but Stewart saw Janine go under, so— He rang Wal, didn’t he, Bettany?’

    “Mm. He thinks it’ll be better for the boy to come home and be with his own mother. He sounds very sensible.”

    “Ye-es,” agreed Polly slowly. “He and George, Wal’s youngest boy, have always been the sensible ones.”

    “Don’t start your psychoanalysis bit, Madam Freud, ta!” said her husband crossly.

    “No, all right. But Stewart’s pretty repressed, Jake.”

    “Repressed or not, he’ll be better off at home. If they do find the bodies, bloody Foreign Affairs can get them home: earn their enormous salaries, for once,” he said, scowling.

    “He loathes everything to do with the diplomatic corps, and of course the trade ones can’t pull their fingers out and don’t know what real business sense is,” Polly explained.

    “Shut up, Polly,” said Pete mildly. “Just drink your beer, eh?”

    To the surprise of some Polly replied meekly: “Sorry,” and just drank her beer.

    “Right, that’s one lot,” said Jake heavily. “Go on, Sean.”

    Sean glanced uneasily at Shannon but she was just looking at him expectantly. “Um, yeah. They’ve found Max’s dad’s body and the girlfriend’s, and far’s we can make out, most of the girlfriend’s family: they were all together, sorting shells in the one big hut.”

    “House?” ventured Shannon in a small voice.

    “They might call it that over there, but it sounded like a hut to me,” said Sean firmly. “Anyway, if that was all, Max’d just be arranging for the funerals and coming home—well, the Throgmortons want his dad’s body to be sent home to England; dunno why, because he loathed the dump—however. But like I say, that isn’t all. There was one survivor.” He swallowed. “Little boy. He’d be about seven. Spoke quite good English and they thought that was funny and showed him a pic of Max’s dad and he reckoned he was his dad.” He swallowed again.

    “Oh, good gracious!” cried Bettany.

    “Um, yeah,” said Sean lamely. “I suppose a DNA test’ll prove it. But the thing is, General Throgmorton, that’s Max’s Uncle Hugh, he’s sort of, um, kicking up over it.”

    They looked at him doubtfully. Eventually Polly offered: “Because of the brown, Sean?”

    “Eh? Oh! I getcha! No, um, actually ya would think that, eh? Well, we all did and so did Moyra. Um no, quite the opposite, actually. He’s got no sons, so he wants to adopt him.”

    There was a dazed silence. Then Jan said faintly: “But how old is he, Sean? I mean, if he’s a retired general—”

    “Dunno exactly. But he’s got grown-up daughters, and he isn’t doing a job, he’s definitely retired. Well, Ran said he was as old as the hills and about as flexible, but I dunno that ya can take her word for gospel. But Moyra reckons he must be sixty.”

    “That’s too old to adopt a little boy of seven!” croaked Jan.

    “Yeah. Well, I was fifty-one when our boys were born, but yeah,” agreed Jake. “And he’s the type that won’t’ve hardly set eyes on his girls when they were little: see, he’ll’ve been too busy rushing round shooting at the IRA in Ireland, where the Brits had no right to be in the first place, and at the Argentineans in the Falklands, where the Br—”

    “Yeah. Shut up, Jake,” said Pete mildly.

    To the surprise of some, Jake shut up.

    “Max wants to take him, of course,” Sean went on a trifle limply. “And Ran’s really keen. Well, and Moyra’s super-keen, but her vote doesn’t count.”

    “No. We’re not sure who would be the next of kin,” said Shannon shakily.

    Nobody else was, either. They looked at one another uncertainly. Jan began to point out that in any case the boy was a foreign national and the implications of adopting one, DNA or not, would be— But stopped, as that had obviously occurred to everybody else and they didn’t want to hear it.

    Finally Jake said heavily: “That it, then, Sean?”

    “Yeah. Dunno when Max’ll be coming home. He’s scared to leave his bloody uncle in case he grabs the kid behind his back—pays off the authorities or something.”

    Everybody nodded glumly and Bettany added on a tearful note: “But it’s so silly! Why can’t General Throgmorton come out here? It’s so lovely, and everybody’s so friendly and—and easy-going, and they could all be together and he could see the little boy every day!”

    They looked at her limply, especially those who’d copped an earful of the easy-going locals’ opinion of Bettany down the dairy or the service station.

    Sean cleared his throat. “Um, well, he doesn’t sound the type, Bettany.”

    “No; he’s the sort that thinks nothing’s real outside England,” said Shannon. “Don’t look at me like that, Sean: Max told me himself he was one of them until he came out here and experienced it for himself!”

    The other New Zealanders looked fearfully at Bettany but she cried: “Darlings, that’s exactly it! So many of the people at home are so dyed-in-the wool and stuffy! Especially, dare I say it, the upper classes!” She gave a stifled giggle.

    “Yeah. Well, old Hugh Throgmorton’s upper-class, all right: I answered the phone once when he rang and I could barely understand a word ’e said,” admitted Sean. “Well, maybe Max’ll persuade him to, um, well, at least come out here and see what it’s like, eh?”

    Nobody contradicted him, fortunately, and Pete said quickly: “Okay, is that it for the tsunami side? You heard anything more, Tim?”

    “Um, sort of. Jake gave the phone to Shannon, not to me,” he said wanly.

    Jake cleared his throat. “I rang all the contacts I could find—Helluva pity bloody Terry took ’is laptop with him, eh?—anyway, I contacted all the ones I could, and gave them the number of that phone I put Shannon in charge of. –She’s on deck in the house all the time, Tim: more central than you,” he said kindly.

    “But Jake—” began Jan.

    “It’s all right, Jan: I’m not related to any of them,” said Shannon sturdily.

    “And we are all here, Jan, broken reeds though some of us are,” put in Alex smoothly.

    Jan gave him a glare.

    “Anyway,” said Shannon, “a lady from Foreign Affairs did ring this arvo. She said they might of found Kamala and her sister and did we know of anything else that could identify them? So I said in case those rings in their navels weren’t enough, the only other things were what we’d already told them: that silver crucifix with a globe on top of it that Kamala had round her neck ’cos she couldn’t see it was some art school student’s idea of a sick joke—work it out,” she advised them sourly, “and that crystal pendant that Tim reckons she’d given her sister to wear for the karma or something.”

    “That’s what she said,” put in Tim faintly.

    “Yeah. So the lady said there was no trace of those but they were wearing navel rings. So I said that the only other thing that could identify them was DNA and we could send them samples of Kamala’s kids’ and she said that that’d have to be properly arranged and she’d let us know if it came to that, and rung off.”

    “Darling, you should have told us!” gasped Bettany.

    “I told Tim. It wasn’t definite enough to tell the kids, so we decided to shut up about it until they’d gone to bed.”

    Both Bettany and Alex were now looking decidedly cheesed off. Pete swallowed a sigh and said: “Very sensible, love. Go on, then, Jake—if this is a council of war? Or we could just finish the beer.”

    “Let’s all have another round, anyway.”

    They did that, and Jan passed some cheese straws: a wee bit overcooked but still edible.

    “Yeah,” said Jake, setting down his glass with a sigh. “Let’s see. We’ve gotta collect Katie Maureen on Monday, and I think I’d better stay up in town. But Polly and the kids’ll come back down—the boys are due back this weekend. They can put in some hard yacker in the vege patches or wherever ya need them, okay, Tim? They’re seventeen and reasonably hefty.”

    “Davey is: he’s a fullback for the school rugby team,” said Polly, smiling at Tim. “He’s got Jake’s physique. Johnny’s skinnier, he’s more like Dad and my brothers, but very wiry.”

    “Um, yes. Good,” he said in a muddled voice. “Um, maybe they can help dig over the patches for the new winter crops, only I thought Alex could do that.”

    Alex took a deep breath. “Tim, I can’t.”

    “Why not?” demanded Shannon grimly, going bright red.

    “Because I’ve got a bad back,” he said tiredly. “I put it out several years ago—I was only twenty-nine, for those requiring chapter and verse. Don’t say that was too young for it to happen: it happened. I can’t dig, or bend, much, and I can’t lift anything heavy. I’m sorry, Tim, but kneeling in the fields picking your lovely zucchini is my level, I’m afraid.”

    “Could you help with the milking?” asked Sean thoughtfully.

    “Uh—yes, I suppose so. Provided I was taught and that the cows liked me.”

    “They do have to like you,” said Tim. “It makes the milking go quicker.”

    “So would getting a dog. I’ve spoken to Bob Parker and he’s bringing his young dog over to see how ya like him. He’s been training him up with his old Sal: she’s a good old bitch, but a young dog still needs to be told what to do,” said Pete on a firm note.

    “Um—yes. Thanks,” replied Tim dazedly.

    “Sounds good,” said Jake firmly. “A milking-machine’d make it go even quicker, mind.”

    Sean’s jaw dropped. “Eh? Ya don’t mean ya milk them by hand? Look, this is ludicrous! Shit, the local cow cockeys have had milking machines for fifty years!”

    “Longer,” said Jake drily. “Change that shed to yer standard herring-bone formation, you’d fit the sixteen of them in nicely, Tim, and the milking’d be done in no time. The cows’d be happy enough: play some music to them.”

    “Some friends of ours live next-door to a dairy farmer, and his cows like Chopin,” said Polly kindly. “Though contrariwise, Shostakovich doesn’t seem to curdle the milk!”

    “Yeah,” Jake agreed, patting her knee. “Introducing irrelevancies again, sweetheart. I’ll look into it.”

    “That’s great, Jake,” said Jan firmly, as Tim was just stuttering, “but your boys’ll have to be back at school at the beginning of February, won’t they?”

    “Mm, and they have to have new uniforms,” said Polly with a sigh. “We’d better do that before we come down. It’s not that they’ve grown—though they have, especially Johnny, he’s been growing like a weed—but they’re changing schools for their last year because he reckons that Puriri High wasn’t teaching Johnny anything and he’d laze through the year and not get Schol. And we didn’t want to split them up, so Davey’s going, too.”

    “That bloody Grammar forcing-house?” asked Alex, raising his eyebrows at her.

    “What else?” replied Polly heavily. “Various fancy alternatives were mooted, but his old cobbers rallied round and pulled strings, so it’s Grammar. They’ll make the little sods work like stink,” she finished with relish.

    “Right,” he agreed drily. “It’s not just Schol., it’s top the Schol. list, Polly.”

    “Yes. Well, Davey’ll never get Schol., but Johnny’s really bright. –Sorry to introduce irrelevancies again.”

    Before Jake could retort Jan said quickly: “They’re not irrelevancies at all: the point is, you two have got responsibilities of your own.”

    “Yeah,” said Tim hoarsely. “And—and we can’t keep taking stuff from you, Jake. Um, for one thing we don’t know what’ll happen with the property.”

    “Mm. Well, my lawyer’s talking to Terry’s lawyer,” said the billionaire on a dry note. “But in the meantime you need to be able to carry on, fill your orders and so forth, eh? And plan for the rest of the year. You drawn up that schedule like I suggested?”

    “Yes,” said Tim meekly, producing a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. “I left the cheese off.”

    “I should bloody well hope so!” he agreed, taking it from him. “What’s all this crap about preparing animals and produce for a show?”

    “Like the Easter Show, Jake!” said Polly on an eager note.

    “Yes, that’s right,” Tim agreed. “It’s up in Hamilton. Sort of an agricultural show. Terry was very keen on it: it’d be good advertising to have a stand there, you see. And we can show the cows.”

    Jake groped at his chest. “Uh—bugger. Haven’t got me jacket,” he muttered.

    “Reaching for the gold-topped Parker: it’s his version of the blue pencil: all the execs at the Group have learned to fear it,” Polly explained. “Give him a ballpoint, someone.”

    “Have the stump of a 6B pencil instead,” said Alex drily, handing him one.

    “Ta.” Jake crossed out firmly. “No shows, geddit? Dissipating your energies. Ya need to focus, at this point. What’s all this shit about kale?”

    “It grows well here because of the frosty winters.”

    “Tim, what market is there for bloody kale in bloody EnZed? Organic or not?”

    “I dunno. Terry said we’d try it.”

    “No kale.” Jake crossed out. “No fucking Jerusalem artichokes, most people have never heard of them and of those that have, most of them loathe them.”

    Polly gave an indignant gasp. “This is the man that ordered potage de topinambours last time we were in Paris and told them it was a culinary poem!”

    “Escoffier’s recipe,” he said, winking at Jan. “It’s in that vege recipe book she gave ya. –If the Tour d’Argent was down the road I’d say go for it, Tim, only it isn’t, so don’t bother. Never mind if Terry’s mate with the shop in Remmers wants them. Tell him it isn’t cost-effective—I guarantee he’ll understand ya. And no organic lettuce: didn’t what I said about the hydroponics boys having the market sewn up sink in?” He crossed out busily.

    “People buy lettuce from the stall, though,” said Tim limply. “Don’t they, Alex?”

    “A few, yes, but in my observation it’s one lettuce customer to twenty tomato customers.”

    “Not twenty,” he objected, frowning.

    “Yes,” replied Alex flatly. “I’ve got the figures, Jake—they only go up to the point at which Sean dragged me off the stall,” he added, eying Sean drily, “but I’d say they’re a representative sample.” He passed Jake a crumpled piece of paper.

    “Good.” He scanned it rapidly. “Right. Lettuce is out, goddit?” he said to Tim.

    “Okay. That’ll mean some empty patches, Jake,” he replied meekly.

    Jake snapped his fingers. “Gimme the plans!”

    “He’s gone into his terror-of-the-boardroom thing, Tim, and I can only apologise for him,” said Polly sweetly.

    Grinning feebly, Tim got up, went to the battered old sideboard, and produced more crumpled sheets of paper.

    “You need to colour-code these: match ’em to your schedule,” noted the entrepreneur. “Okay—lettuce,” he spotted. “Shit: lettuce, lettuce—look, flaming Terry was mad! How many hours did ya spend last year strawing them up so’s they wouldn’t be filthy and might have a faint hope of competing with the hydroponic ones, dare I ask? –Don’t bother,” he said to Tim’s red face. “Man-hours don’t count, eh? –And woman-hours don’t count even more, we know,” he said to his spouse. “Well, man-hours do count, because that’s what this joint runs on, geddit? And even you need sleep, Tim.”

    “He’s got a very loud alarm,” put in Bettany.

    Poor Tim was now about  the shade of his splendid tomatoes. “Sorry! Did it wake you up?”

    “It probably wakes them up down in Turangi,” noted Alex. “Don’t worry, Tim: we all just turn over and doze off again. But I’d say if a bloke like you can’t wake up without an alarm, that shows you’re doing too much.”

    “Sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, darlings!” explained Bettany.

    “Yeah. Didja manage to record what hours you spend doing what?” Jake asked him.

    “Um, not really. I mean, it’s not, um, cut and dried. I mean, if I’m mulching the zucchini patch and the red peppers need it, too, I do them, so, um… Sorry, Jake.”

    “I’ll send a bloke down,” he decided.

    “With a stop-watch in his little zoot-suited hand, perchance?” asked Polly evilly.

    “Yeah. And shut up: who was it worked until five in the morning on that article ya wrote for your poncy French mate’s journal and fell asleep at the fucking computer on the morning you were supposed to take your daughter shopping for a birthday present for ’er best friend?”

    “The preponderance of the second person in your utterance has probably given your audience a clue, Jake, so I won’t bother to answer that,” she replied sweetly. “But I will just say that the practice of holding a stop-watch on a worker normally has the effect of making him work faster, resulting in a complete falsification of your results. That or he works to rule, but Tim’s not that sort.”

    “Look, shut up! I’m doing it! Or have you got a better suggestion for getting some real figures out of the dump? –No,” he concluded with satisfaction.

    “There is the point that he’ll be an extra mouth to feed, or aren’t you counting woman-hours?”

    “Of course I am, ya ruddy nana! He can stay at a motel and eat in Taupo. Or cough up to eat at the ecolodge, if you can fit him in, Jan.”

    “It’ll all go on the expense account, Jan, and his Sir Jacobness will duly claim it as a tax deduction,” Polly assured her.

    “Right. Well, it does seem to be the only way of, um, working out how cost-effective the place is, Tim,” said Jan on an apologetic note.

    “That’s okay. Um, well, should I teach Alex how to milk the cows, Jake?”

    The others looked at him limply, even though they had realised that he’d long since run out of anything approaching enterprise, but Jake merely replied: “Try it. If he hasn’t got it by the time you’d normally have finished milking, give it away.”

    “Okay.”

    Jake opened a folder that he’d brought. He tapped something in its closely typed sheets with his pencil stump, frowning. After a moment Pete ventured: “Something up?”

    “The figures for the potatoes. They’ve done well out of them, but the figures for the amount of ground they had planted up in potatoes last year don’t seem to match Tim’s plan.”

    “No, ’cos they rotate their crops, Jake!” cried Shannon.

    “That’s right,” agreed Sean.

    “Eh?”

    Pete coughed. “Yeah. Don’t think you’ve quite latched onto it, Jake: that’s what permaculture is, ya see. It uses natural methods to keep the pests down, and not planting the same things in the same place every year is one of them.”

    “Integral to it,” said Alex on a weak note.

    “But— Jesus! Is there a system to it?” he asked, rumpling his silver curls wildly.

    “That is the system, ole matey. Have another drink,” said Pete kindly.

    “N—Well, yeah, I will, ta. –I don’t mean that: I mean can ya plan ahead—say, five years—so you know what you can expect each patch to yield? Like, can ya say if this one’s in potatoes this year, next year ya plant—well, not fucking cabbages, because ninety percent of the population hates cabbage—but, well, something. Sweetcorn or something.”

    “I think there is a definite rotation scheme, isn’t there, Tim?” said Polly kindly.

    “Yes, though we are bringing new patches on all the time. Um, Terry had it in the computer, but there isn’t a print-out.”

    Jake pounced. “So he has got a farm management program!”

    “Um, no. It’s a garden design program, actually. It works really well. It doesn’t seem to mind how big your garden is.”

    “Uh—it won’t do your predictions, surely?” he groped, as Pete handed him a fresh can.

    “No, it’s just for the layout.”

    “Jesus.” Jake drank beer dazedly.

    “Just write down your basic system of crop rotation for him, eh, Tim?” suggested Pete, handing him a beer.

    “It’s not unique to permaculture. Um, yeah, okay. Um, the cows are economic, because they produce manure,” he added uneasily.

    Jake drew a deep breath. The point had been made—several times, actually. “Yeah, everyone’s got that, Tim, no-one’s gonna try and make you get rid of the cows—or the ducks and chooks. That reminds me: saw one of those ruddy garden programmes a bit back, there were these types that had a lovely vege garden with a chook run that they shifted every year.”

    “But their poultry are free-range, Jake,” said Shannon uneasily.

    “All that means is they peck around in the open air, not that they’re allowed to wander all over the garden ruining your nice organic celery!” he retorted pointedly.

    “He’s exaggerating. It was only a few leaves,” explained Polly, “and I think it was only that one chook, that had developed a mania. –They can be very obsessive.”

    “Right, and if ten thousand of ya would shut up for a minute,” said Jake loudly, “what I’m proposing is that you corral them every day on the bit of garden ya want manured, with a wire fence. With a good heavy base so’s they can’t get under it, goddit?”

    “Um, they’ll fly over it, Jake,” said Shannon uncomfortably.

    “Then clip their fucking wings like the rest of the country!” he shouted.

    “Sorry,” said Polly once the echoes had died away. “He can’t bear inefficiency.”

    “Right,” he agreed. “And before someone tells me it’s more man-hours, balance that against the time it takes to find the eggs the ruddy creatures have hidden in the bushes, not to mention the number of eggs that go to waste!”

    “That’s a very valid point, Jake, but it is mainly kiddy-hours!” said Bettany brightly.

    The billionaire eyed her brightly-garbed person with considerable approval. “Yeah, but there’s better things they could do, see? The eggs need to be washed and sorted, and since they haven’t got a mechanised system, that could do with a bit more child labour. Incidentally, I’ll get the Group’s legal team to check out just what the laws on child labour are, ’cos ya don’t want the government coming down on ya like a ton of bricks on top of everything else. And helping to stencil the ruddy cartons is all very well, but not if it keeps them up till all hours and they don’t get their homework done. –And that reminds me: that Ghillywaine looks to me as if she’s got worms. Get her to the doc, pronto,” he ordered them.

    “I’ll do it, Shannon, dear,” said Bettany quickly. “Livia was saying just the other day that they probably all need a check-up, and she’s found a lovely man in the town!”

    “Good. He can come and look at Sabrina, too; I dare say those pills of Sylvia Whatserface’s aren’t doing her any harm, but on principle ya shouldn’t take someone else’s medication. Right: let’s see.” Briskly Jake summarised the points that, according to him, had been decided on so far. Doubtful expressions appeared on several faces but no-one dared to argue with him.

     … “That dump next-door’s gonna be cost-effective or perish in the attempt,” concluded Jan, collapsing into bed at an advanced hour that night.

    “Eh? Aw—yeah,” agreed Pete, yawning. “Well, it might all go pear-shaped, if Tim’s not allowed to plant millions of lettuces and cabbages, but if anyone can make flaming permaculture cost-effective it’ll be Jake, that’s for sure.”

    Jan gave a cracking yawn. “Yep.”

    “Didn’t know you could get garden-design computer programs,” he noted, getting into bed and switching the bedside light out. “Might be worth looking at, eh?”

    Jan quailed. “This place has done okay so far with pencil and paper, Pete.”

    “Eh? Rats! Twenny-first century now! And ya taught me to use the diary whatsit on your computer, eh?”

    He could look up the week’s schedule, yes. That was as far as it went, though. A computer-obsessed Pete? No, please, no! The permaculture gods were punishing them for wishing Jake Carrano on Taupo Organic Produce!

Next chapter:

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