Job Applications

7

Job Applications

    Jan Harper looked at Shannon uneasily. Never mind the pretty blonde looks, “Determined” always had been the kid’s middle name. Presumably this wasn’t just a holiday job she was looking for? They could certainly use an extra hand themselves over December and January, only unfortunately they couldn’t manage to pay her.

    “Um, well, they are hiring over at Fern Gully, yeah. S’posed to open in February. They’ve decided they can’t manage it for the Christmas trade, even though Max stood over them with— Ya don’t wanna know. Um, well, like I say, they are hiring but, um, it’s not like our place, you know, Shannon. Their parent company does everything on, um, professional lines.” She swallowed.

    “Round here?” replied Shannon with feeling.

    Given that they were standing as of this minute in Pete’s bloody shed, there was some excuse for the sceptical tone. More than some, actually. It was a while since Jan had poked her nose into the shed: in fact last time she’d looked it had been full of those bloody tomato seedlings that had been his last obsession but three—or was it four? And Jesus, the bugger had started collecting sacks again! She’d thought, in her blindness, that that was all over after he’d let Katy take the lot.

    “He’s started collecting potato sacks again!”

    “Eh? Aw. Yeah. Never mind, Mum’ll prolly be able to use them,” returned Shannon with a sort of tolerant indifference.

    Jan swallowed a sigh. True, Shannon wasn’t yet twenty-one. Also true, she was the youngest of the Jackson kids, and suffered to an extreme degree two syndromes that she, Jan Harper, had noticed were common in youngest kids: a refusal to recognise any values than those of the peer group and—possibly contrariwise, but then, that was human nature for you—a determination to grow up faster than lightning. Jan had never reported these observations to anyone: she was more than old enough to realise that most people wouldn’t be interested or would think she was doing it in a spirit of criticism. And her helpmeet would either claim it was self-evident and he’d known it all along or refuse to listen, depending on whether he’d gone into one of his macho, Good Keen Man moods at the time.

    “Eh?” she said, jumping. “Sorry, dear! Um, well, yeah, Katy can certainly have the bloody sacks, if she’s still into that sacking thing. Is she?”

    “Dunno,” replied Shannon predictably.

    No, quite. There was some excuse for the kid: she’d been away at university all year, but— Oh, well.

    “Um, like I say, they’re hiring, but I think they’re looking for people who’ve done, um, courses.” She swallowed. “Hospitality courses, they call them.”

    Shannon snorted. “They’ll be lucky!”

    “Yeah. Um, didn’t Dan say you’d finished your degree, Shannon?” she croaked.

    Shannon favoured her with a hard stare from the greenish eyes that were unlike any of the Jacksons’ eyes—so much so that Sean, little toad that he was, had tried to persuade the poor kid she was a changeling when she was about five. Fortunately even at that age Shannon had had more common sense than to believe a word of it. Though you could have too much common sense, couldn’t you? That and the blonde hair made two traits she shared with her sister Felicity.

    “So?” she said, sticking out her chin.

    So should she be doing something with it? Jan looked somewhat limply at the blonde, green-eyed, determined changeling before her and said: “Well, they’ve appointed a manager, I suppose he’s there: you could get on over and see, dear. Um, but I think the road’s pretty frightful still, the Council hasn’t done anything to it and we’ve had a lot of rain lately. Um,”—bravely making up her mind to bite on the bullet—“and if there’s no joy there, we can always use a hand in summer, you know.”

    “Thanks, Jan, but I’m not looking for a holiday job,” replied Shannon in a dismissive tone, disappearing.

    Jan staggered back indoors and sagged against her kitchen bench. What exactly was the kid looking for? And did her father know what she was up to? And if he didn’t could she, Jan Harper, please be very far away when he found out? Because easy-going though he was, she had a fair idea that Dan Jackson didn’t want any of his kids working in a glorified motel. Not as a flaming career, for God’s sake! …Fern Gully Ecolodge was awfully glorified. What was Shannon gonna make of it? Er—well, nothing, probably, her generation didn’t even blink at that sort of rubbish, did they? Had something to do with having lived with those tartified abortions on the other side of the lake all her life…

    After quite some time Jan came to and realized she was supposed to be making pastry. She opened the fridge. Oh, bugger, they were low on butter! Not only the unsalted stuff for the pastry, but butter in general. She’d had a feeling there was something she’d forgotten to put on the last shopping list, but as the list-making had coincided with a dispute over whether Pete would, could or should disappear into the bush in the middle of their busy season with a couple of old mates after pig—why was it the brutes were always “pig”, singular, when the macho idiots imagined they were gonna shoot one?—uh, as it had coincided with that, any rational woman would forgive her for leaving a few odd items off it. Well, she had three options—given that her usual helper, Janet Barber, was off sick with a bad cold today. One, drive into town and buy some. Two, nip next-door to the permaculture nuts and buy some organic cream and churn it herself. Three, skim this morning’s goats’ milk and churn that.

    On due consideration Jan put the flour away and got some frozen filo pastry out of the freezer. Bugger the recipe, not to say what was on the menu, they could have filo pastry and like it! Besides, they all thought it was up-market, didn’t they? Er—it would need to be brushed with butter, yes… Okay, instead of butter on their potatoes they could have marg like the rest of the country, and lump it! …Pete’s sacred new potatoes out of the garden, ulp! Yeah, well, sod him, and his ruddy pig-hunting! Jan got on with it, scowling.

    Shannon headed her little second-hand Mazda down the road, frowning. Why did everybody always treat her like a kid? Ruddy Jan must’ve called her “dear” fifteen times in the course of the conversation! She wasn’t a kid, she was an adult, and she was fed up with doing everything they expected her to do! She’d told Dad a bloody B.A. was flaming useless, but he’d said everybody needed a decent education and as she’d sat Bursary and got it she might as well go to university, and some garbage about helping her to grow up and broaden her mind. It hadn’t broadened her mind: the lecturers were a lot of up-themselves nongs, and half of them came to class completely unprepared, it was a total waste of time. But she didn’t like science and anyway, Sean was already doing that: it was his thing, she wasn’t gonna copy him, and if he wanted to suck up to Dad to that extent, let him.

    The only course she’d actually enjoyed had been Art History, that Ran had claimed was bullshit and she could learn more by reading a couple of decent books. The language classes had been hopeless: the French lecturers all favoured the rich kids that had been to Noumea to improve their French, and there was never enough language lab time scheduled to let you catch up, and she’d tried that Alliance française club shit and it was total shit, they all talked to their own mates, very fast, and ignored you. And Japanese had been pretty much a wash-out: the First-Years only got one real Japanese lady, and her English was so bad you couldn’t understand her classes, and the rest of them were New Zealanders that all favoured the rich kids that had signed on to go on their guided tours of Japan during the long holidays. Like, that was their private little scam, see? Ignore your classes all year what you were paid to teach—that or spend them blahing on about your bloody trips—and then charge megabucks plus and get your fares and accommodation all paid, to take these tourist groups to Japan! Nice work if you could get it—exactly.

    So she’d dropped it in her second year and taken Archaeology instead but gee, ya know what? All of them were only interested in the tours they took to Greece and Egypt in the holidays! Except for one bloke that specialised in Maori stuff, he was a total nerd—not a Maori himself, very pale and rather spotty—and spent all his holidays and weekends out digging up fossilised kumaras with his Anthropology mates. Those of the Anthro’ mates that he wasn’t having a feud with ’cos the modern idea was you didn’t dig up the sacred sites of other races. Or their fossilised kumaras.

    So she’d ended up majoring in English Literature, which was completely useless. Because when she’d tried to switch to something practical like Accountancy they’d said she’d have to start with 101, and that’d mean she’d never finish her degree for ages, because you had to do a third year of at least one subject, like a major. And her maths results from school weren’t good enough for Economics, they didn’t think, but she was right: the regulations allowed her to take it and they weren’t saying she couldn’t, but she might find it a struggle. Anyway one of her flatmates was doing it and it was total bullshit and nearly all the lecturers, they were ladies that had majored in it and couldn’t get a job in the shiny downtown offices where the Ec majors they’d married were employed, geddit? Yeah.

    She had thought seriously about doing that tech institute project management course that Dennis from the flat was doing, only then ruddy Ran had claimed that as her thing. Okay, fine, if that was what she wanted, good on her, but she wasn’t gonna copy her!

    Shannon drove on, frowning…

    Cripes! When last seen, Fern Gully Ecolodge—that was, Bob and Gayle Meldrum’s bach—had been a small, one-storeyed, unpainted grey wooden structure. Possibly in the dim, distant past someone had once flung a bucket of creosote at it—like that. It had featured a creaking flight of wooden steps and a small, saggy front verandah. Built on by Bob when him and Gayle had imagined they were gonna turn the dump into an ecolodge like Pete and Jan’s. Not apparently having realised that starting up that sort of thing took a couple of years, min’, of really hard yacker and complete dedication.

    After a bit of numbed staring she realized the original structure was still there, if you looked for it. But, uh, jacked up? It was now sitting, verandah and all, on about a metre of nice old recycled bricks. The weatherboards were still greyish but the verandah posts and railings—new railings, Bob hadn’t had any—and the shutters that had been added to the windows were all in a lovely warm, terracotta-ish natural-wood shade that Shannon knew perfectly well wood didn’t attain on its own. “Oiled,” she decided under her breath. The building had spread both up and sideways: extended symmetrically to about three times its original width, then stepped back maybe two metres, with wings added at each side. To her right, the wing was obviously intended for guests: there were more shutters and more verandahs, while over to her left the same basic style was retained, but there were no verandahs and fewer windows and a small sign indicated: “Tradesmen’s Entrance.” Shannon swallowed: she’d have taken a bet that was the only one of them in the whole of Taupo; did these YDI types know what country they were in? Couldn’t they of put, well, “Deliveries,” if they hadda put anything?

    Max’s design had gone up as well as out: the central portion of the house, that was, the old bach plus its main extensions, now had an upper storey. Gabled; you couldn’t see much of the roof from this angle but Shannon knew that they’d had to scour the country for recycled tiles, the old bach had only had rusty corrugated iron. And colour-steel in a nice, unobtrusive shade like what Pete had used wouldn’t of been eco-friendly enough to get the place a four-green-leaf rating. She looked up at the upper storey with a very wry expression on her pretty, tanned face.

    The same colours and materials had been used, with the wide, oiled wooden bargeboards echoing the style of the verandah. That looked good, but if you asked her he’d gone overboard with the glass. The windows of the upper storey were narrow French ones, opening onto their own small balconies, with oiled railings in the same style as the verandah. But at each end of the central block the French windows and their balconies were replaced by green glass panels, floor to ceiling. Presumably not opening. Not smooth sheet glass, but kind of mottled and… globby.

    She edged to her right. Not to her surprise, the side wing featured another panel of this green glass, where it met the main part of the house. This wing’s verandah was semi-shaded by a couple of scraggy trees which looked like natives, all right, but her bet would have been they’d been dug up from another part of the property and replanted here, because they actually overhung the verandah. And that decorative thing in a very nice flecked oatmeal pot on the verandah, a bit like Jan’s big pot, so perhaps it had been made by the same potter, was a cabbage tree, were they mad? When the things were in flower, they stunk like billyo: worse than privet!

    Rolling her eyes a bit, Shannon went back to the front path. It was recycled brick, really nice to look at, but a death-trap in winter, why hadn’t Ran wised Max up about that? The huge terracotta pots to either side of the new front steps were impressive—coiled work, you didn’t often see it in terracotta—but the New Zealand flax inside them wasn’t all that, if you'd grown up surrounded by it. And that bronzy one was a hybrid, the garden centres were full of the stuff. Likewise the redder, stripy ones, like that one in the smaller pot on the verandah.

    She couldn’t remember what the front door had originally been like but she was positive it had been replaced. This one looked like one of those heavy kauri doors you got in old villas, the sort with a large round doorknob in the middle of it, that usually didn’t work. This kauri door had been stripped and polyurethaned or her name wasn’t Shannon Jackson. She eyed it drily: Ran and Max had gone on and on about eco-friendly materials, but if polyurethane was eco-friendly she was a Dutchman. It did have a knob but gee, it wasn’t a big old iron one like usual, it was a glossy green glass one! To either side of the front door the window frames, if stripped and oiled, were possibly original but what was inside them certainly wasn’t. More green glass: not the green of wine bottles, but a much brighter, lighter shade. Again, sort of… mottled-looking? “Fake bottle-glass,” said Shannon to herself. It must make the place pretty gloomy inside, surely?

    Above the green glass knob there was a highly polished brass knocker, possibly an antique one, but as she knew they cost the earth, her bet would’ve been a fake one, very likely recycled: they’d been popular in the Seventies and a lot of Mum’s arty friends that had had them back then had since got rid. There didn’t seem to be a proper doorbell, so she knocked.

    She had time to decide there was no-one here and to knock again and to decide there was definitely no-one here, before the door opened.

    Shit a brick! What was it? Tall, thin, weedy, pale and dressed in pale khaki safari gear, straight from the ironing-board! It opened its mouth and said on an annoyed note: “Yays? Can Ay help yoow?” –Pom, deduced Shannon unerringly, not consciously classifying it as a less up-market Pom than Max or Moyra that was trying to be fancy, but nonetheless recognising the phenomenon.

    “Hullo, my name’s Shannon Jackson. I heard you were looking for a housekeeper for the ecolodge,” she said firmly.

    “The advertisements haven’t gone out yet,” he replied, frowning.

    “I know, but as a matter of fact my sister’s fiancé is the senior architect on the project—Max Throgmorton,” said Shannon, smiling nicely.

    “Oh. Well, uh, you’d better come in, Ms—uh—Jackson, was it? Come in,” he said, still frowning. And not asking her whether she wanted to be called “Ms” before he did it. Personally Shannon didn’t give a rat’s what they called her—though as it was mainly Leses or divorced moos of Mum’s generation that insisted on “Ms”, and as there was nothing wrong with being a single, independent woman, she usually used “Miss”—but she thoroughly despised those that didn’t ask. She followed him in with a mental shrug.

    Cripes! Max must of taken the whole of the back out of the original bach! Like, usually there was just one fair-sized room with a lean-to kitchen out the back plus a bathroom if you were lucky, but the front door had opened onto a wide expanse of polished kauri floorboards—recycled, of course, recognized Shannon, also recognizing that he’d pinched this idea from Pete and Jan’s place. Beyond the empty spaces of what was presumably gonna be the main lounge, miles bigger than the original main room of the bach, were expanses of plate glass, interspersed with metre-wide floor-to-ceiling panels of more of the mottled green glass. She wouldn’t have minded knowing whether it was cast all of a piece or made of blocks, like, glass tiles, but didn’t ask, this dweeb probably wouldn’t know and it would have struck an unfortunate note, she didn’t want to make him feel like a drongo from the off. You weren’t simply faced with a wall of glass, because Max had made the back part of the ecolodge all sort of stepped. Like, over to the right the floor was raised a couple of steps—that looked like a recycled railway sleeper—and that bit stuck out more, maybe that was where they’d have the dining tables, and beyond it you could see the side wing, kind of stepped again. The middle bit of the lounge was slightly recessed, and to the left it was recessed a bit more, and then a higher bit stuck out again, kind of almost a wing only not quite. That bit had a little piece of verandah, matching the one at the front, with steps going down onto the patio.

    Onto what might be a patio if those wankers ever pulled their fingers out—right. Shannon looked drily at the view of, in the foreground, a mixture of mud and half-laid patio with a feebleized pair of blokes standing over a concrete mixer not observedly working—Max, Ran and Jim had been bloody silly to push off back to the Auckland office before every last detail of the grounds was finished—and, in the middle ground, a long, sloping expanse of more mud. Beyond that was a spectacular view of Lake Taupo which certainly hadn’t featured when Bob and Gayle Meldrum had had the place. YDI must of bulldozed a good fifty metres of native bush—shit. She didn’t express any of her thoughts: she didn’t want to give the Pom the wrong impression.

    “As I say, the advertisements haven’t gone out yet, Ms—ah—Jackson,” he said.

    Okay, he was pretending not to have got her name on purpose to show how superior he was. Feebleized nerd.

    “I thought you might care to look at my résumé anyway,” she said nicely, holding it out to him.

    “Very well. –I’m afraid there’s nowhere to sit, as yet,” he said on an acid note. He directed a glare at the wankers outside, that neither of them noticed, and then looked reluctantly at her résumé. “Er—yes. You’ve no experience, really, have you?” he concluded sourly.

    Shannon had worked in any kind of hotel, motel, restaurant or café you cared to name while she was doing her degree. “I’ve had a very wide experience of the hospitality industry,” she replied firmly.

    “As casual staff—yes.”

    “Largely, yes,” replied Shannon calmly. “But as you can see from that I did manage The Hibiscus Tree in Auckland for six weeks while the manager was sick.”

    “According to this it was only a café,” he returned irritably.

    “Yes, but quite a large one: it did three-course sit-down lunches. I had six staff under me, and I had sole responsibility for managing the budget, including all the purchasing,”

    “I see.” He looked at the photocopy of the reference from the owner of The Hibiscus Tree, frowning.

    “I have worked at the local ecolodge, Taupo Shores Ecolodge, too: there’s a reference there from the manager, Jan Harper. She’ll be in if you like to phone her.”

    He turned back to the description of her experience there. “Waitressing, kitchen-hand, laundry-maid?” he said, raising his eyebrows nastily.

    By this time Shannon was feeling very strongly that this dweeb was the last boss on earth she’d ever want to work for, but there were several points to consider. If she could get a toe in it would be very good experience, and, realistically, how long was the dweeb gonna last? What Dad called EnZed laissez-faire would get to him before he’d been out here a month or—she glanced at the wankers on the patio—two more days, most likely. And if he went on wearing those bloody safari shirts he’d never fit in. Probably no-one would be actively rude—well, with the possible exception of Pete McLeod—but there’d be a fair amount of non-cooperation and deliberate not understanding. Not to mention, probably even harder to take, depending on your temperament, the kindly explaining of how things are done out here. She looked at the sour lines running from the dweeb’s long, thin Pommy nose to his down-turned, narrow Pommy mouth. Yeah, right, he was the type to accept that sort of thing gratefully. Not.

    “It was an opportunity for some all-round experience and it gave me a very good overview of how an ecolodge functions,” she said smoothly. “I believe in learning the job from the ground up.”

    “You’ve done that, all right,” he said, without the flicker of a smile.

    “I’d welcome the opportunity to explain what I think I could do for you,” said Shannon nicely.

    “Look, as I say, we’re not officially hiring. And I’m afraid you haven’t got the managerial experience or the accredited hospitality qualifications that we look for in a housekeeper in an establishment of this sort.”

    Right. There’d be plenty of them rushing to work in the back of beyond in a country with New Zealand’s population—not. Well, yeah, if they were very lucky they might get one that fancied a subsidized stay in one of the popular tourist areas, but that’d last as long as the nice weather did and then she’d be off like the wind. In fact, the best they could hope for would be an Aussie wanting a bit of overseas experience before she escaped back to tropical Queensland and the giant tourist hotels there that paid proper wages and didn’t expect their housekeepers to do anything actually hands-on.

    “I see. I am familiar with local conditions, of course,” said Shannon easily. “I will submit my résumé officially when your advertisement comes out. And may I know your name?”

    The thin mouth tightened nastily for an instant, so maybe she shouldn’t of asked, but heck, if ya don’t ask how are ya gonna know? “Basildon-Pugh. Simon Basildon-Pugh.”

    How much? What with that and the safari shirts, the bloke didn’t have a chance! Not to mention the attitude! Hospitality what?

    “Welcome to Taupo, Mr Basildon-Pugh,” replied Shannon very nicely. “May I ask, is this your first visit to New Zealand?”

    “What? Yes!” he said impatiently.

    “I see. And is Mrs Basildon-Pugh with you?” –’Cos if she was, maybe he was keeping the plum job for her.

    “No. I’m not married,” he said unpleasantly.

    Right, well, that was another thing that was gonna go down real well locally: ’cos if you were his age, like, fortyish, everyone expected you’d have a partner and a family. Maybe it was different in some circles in the cities, though it certainly wasn’t in the parts of Auckland infested by such as Aunty Rosalie and Granny, but in the country towns like Taupo— YDI musta been outa their skulls ever to have appointed the dweeb!

    “Well, that’s a pity. I hope you won’t find it too lonely. Though of course you’ll be very busy once you open.” She hesitated, then didn’t say if he needed help or company he could phone them at home or give Pete and Jan a bell. He didn’t look like the type that’d ever admit he needed help of any kind. “Thanks for seeing me, Mr Basildon-Pugh. I’ll be in touch.”

    He let her get halfway to the front door before he said: “Just a minute.”

    Shannon turned without haste. “Yes?”

    He was frowning but he said: “Have you had any reception experience?”

    Yes, like what her résumé said! Politely Shannon returned: “Quite a bit. I’ve done reception at the Southern Stars Motel: that’s ten units, it’s one of Taupo’s nicer motels; and at Holiday Heaven Motel, that’s got six units, all family-size, and of course I’ve had more direct ecolodge experience assisting with reception at Taupo Shores Ecolodge.”

    “Assisting?”

    Blast! She shouldn’t have said that! “Filling in for them in the summer season: the owners usually do it themselves but they need extra hands at the busy time of year.”

    “Hm. You’ve got switchboard experience, then?”

    Eh? No, see, when the phone had rung for someone in one of the units or rooms she’d just sent a carrier pigeon, with a note tied to its ankle. “Yes, I’ve worked with a PABX and a Commander system,” she said smoothly.

    “Commander?” he echoed, frowning.

    Fuck me, thought Shannon limply. Where you been living all your life, mate? She did her best to explain without sounding as if she was talking down to the drip. He didn’t look as if he believed her at the end of it but as there was nothing else she could add, she stopped.

    “Yes. Well, you may care to apply for the position of receptionist. –There will, of course, be a full interview,” he added in an evil tone.

    Ye-eah… Oh, cripes! Like, you didn’t just walk in on a bloke that was observedly doing nothing and ask about a job, ’cos see, this was Planet Corporate Bullshit! What ya did, ya submitted your résumé in response to the ad, with a covering letter three times as long as the actual résumé, responding to all the fatuous, unnecessary and irrelevant points the job criteria had included, and then ya rolled up to the interview at the appointed time, not early or they’d conclude you were desperate, but of course not late, that’d damn you from the start, even if the bus had broken down and it wasn’t your fault, and then you were interviewed by a panel of sixteen of the corporate dweebs safely immured behind their shiny conference table!

    “Of course. I may do that, then, provided that the terms and conditions are suitable. My family does live locally, so I have the advantage of knowing the area and being used to its relative isolation,” said Shannon in a very nice voice. “Thanks once again for seeing me without notice, Mr Basildon-Pugh. I’ll look forward to our next meeting.” Not.

    She held out her hand, thus forcing the dweeb to shake, because she’d had it up to here with him. Aw, gee, he had one of those crushing handshakes that screamed “insecure”. Fancy that.

    Shannon retreated to the car in good order.

    Since she was here she wouldn’t have minded going down to the lakeshore, but there was no access for miles unless you went through the ecolodge’s property. YDI had not only bought the Meldrums’ dump, they’d bought the properties next-door as well: the one on the right as you looked at it from the road had once been a dairy farm, so it was pretty extensive. Not that it was anything but scrub, but the idea was they’d turn it into a wilderness area. Possibly they ben aiming at a grant from the Government, only that hadn’t happened. Jim Thompson had advertised for volunteers to help get rid of the weeds and replant it with natives but gee, all he’d got in reply to his ad was zilch. So he had to offer the local kids cash money, but that hadn’t worked, either, ’cos none of them knew a weed from a manuka seedling, in fact most of them thought manukas were weeds, which in their mums’ and dads’ hideously mown and manicured, English-style gardens they were, actually. Jim had rightly concluded the answer was a lemon, and was gonna ring Hill Whatsisface all the way over in Pongo and have a moan to him, only Ran had had an inspiration and got onto the Botany Club from varsity.

    So as a result the minute exams finished fifteen hairy Bot students came down all eager with their tents, their combie van, their campfires, their pot and beer and their piles of rubbish that Pete McLeod in person came over and told them to collect up and/or bury right now or he’d see them chucked off the property. Next day a sheepish-looking Bot lecturer turned up at Taupo Shores and apologized, so hah, hah, hah. Since then they had actually done more or less what they were supposed to.

    But as abandoned dairy farms were fairly large you couldn’t see any difference except where a professional firm, not the students, had felled a stand of macrocarpas that Shannon had sort of thought were natives, ’cos you saw them everywhere. But Dad reckoned they weren’t, they were from Monterey in California. After the felling, according to Dad and Pete, both of whom had enjoyed telling her, so Shannon hadn’t bothered to point out it was self-evident, it had become apparent why the farmer had planted them, way back when. Windbreak: right. However, the Bot lecturer had got all keen and volunteered to do research on what natives would make the best replacement windbreaks, so Jim hadn’t turned him down. What an idiot! He could of charged YDI megabucks for the job!

    Shannon directed a glance of dislike at the stretch of scrub which held the Bot students—one of them, complete with his hairy legs and grimy toes in his rubber jandals and his horrible, hairy beard had tried to pick her up down the service station only yesterday—and turned the car’s nose for home.

    She was so hacked off with dweeby Simon Basildon-Pugh and his corporate bullshit that she almost drove straight past the car that was half in the ditch down near where the back road to the ecolodge joined the slightly better surface of Lesley Road.

    Shit! She braked and reversed carefully.

    Jesus, there was someone in it, she hadn’t imagined— Shannon leapt out and rushed over to it.

    “HEY! Are you all right? HEY!”

    The bloke slumped in the driver’s seat didn’t move. She couldn’t see any blood, but he must have knocked himself— She tried the door nearest her, which was the passenger door, he must have sort of swerved or skidded or tried to control his skid because the ditch would’ve been on his left if he’d been heading towards the ecolodge— Gee, not locked.

    “HEY!” she shouted, bending down. Jesus, was he dead? She had done a couple of First Aid courses—well, so-called, one had been at Guides that Dad thought she oughta join because they built character (funny joke) but it was useless, but the St John’s course was a bit more— She put her fingers on his neck. Um… Phew! He did have a pulse. He must just be knocked cold.

    Only how could he have knocked himself out, he had his seat-belt on! Shannon pulled experimentally at it.

    “You flaming nong,” she muttered. It was an old car, probably as old as that heap of Ran’s but much nicer, an old Jag, maybe? The seatbelt was about as old as the car and loose as buggery.

    She’d better not try to move him—not that she could have, anyway, he was only normal size, not a huge great fat man or like that, but he’d be too heavy for her. She went over to her car, grabbed her mobile, and rang the ambulance. Ten minutes. Right, that’d be thirty, min’, she knew where the ambulance station was, and as well as that it was about a hundred to one that when they got onto Lesley Road they’d take the wrong turnoff, because in spite of Jim Thompson, no AA sign with “Fern Gully Ecolodge 7 K” on it had as yet appeared at the corner of what their maps might tell them was Motutaiko Road but no sign sure as Hell did. Added to which it was nowhere near Motutaiko Island, though from one point where the land rose slightly you had once been able to catch a glimpse of it before that patch of bush grew up and obscured it—so what was the betting they’d go haring off in the wrong direction entirely?

    She was gonna go back over to the bloke and then thought better of it: there’d be another accident if she left her car there, and so she drove it neatly over to the verge and parked it. Keeping well clear of the ditch, which possibly he hadn’t even seen, to give him his due, it was full of tall grass, so unless you knew there’d be a ditch— Only surely everybody would. Even if he was what those over the age of sixty and unaware that the rest of the world had moved into the 21st century, e.g. Pete McLeod, went on calling a townee regardless…

    She better not just sit here! She got out and, first making sure it seemed stable and unlikely to collapse towards her, stood by the opened door of the crashed car.

    Shit, it was just as well she’d moved her car, ’cos here came a 4WD! From the direction of the ecolodge, ugh, heck, was it the dweeb? She had been gonna flag it down, only on second thoughts—

    It was stopping anyway. Phew! Not the dweeb, but— Cripes. Shannon goggled as this dead ringer for Hugh Grant got out of the dirty 4WD. Well, younger, more like him in that dumb thing about the weddings where he was too feeble to actually make his move on Andie MacDow—

    “Had an accident?” he called in the usual EnZed accent.

    What did it look like? “Yeah. Not me, him. I’ve rung the ambulance. He’s not dead, just unconscious,” said Shannon flatly.

    “Good,” he said, smiling at her. “But maybe I’d better check.”

    “Are you a doctor?”

    “Uh—no. Not a medical doctor, no.”

    “Then have ya done a really good First Aid course? Like St John’s Advanced?”

    “Um, no. I was a Scout, though,” he said with a feeble smile.

    “Right, then ya can leave him alone. I’ve checked him and he’s got a pulse.”

    “Can I look?” he said in a feeble voice. “I think I might know him.”

    Fuck. “Yeah, go on, look,” replied Shannon weakly. “Only don’t try to move him, will ya?” she said as came over and bent down to the car.

    “No. –Bugger, it is him. Alex! ALEX!” he shouted.

    “Out cold,” said Shannon.

    “Yeah,” he agreed, straightening. “That seatbelt he had fitted doesn’t seem to have done him much good, does it?”

    “No. It’s loose as buggery: it’s one of those old ones with no give in them that don’t automatically tighten if ya jerk forward.”

    “Second-hand,” he said with a sigh, shoving back the Hugh Grant-type hair. Actually it was a lighter brown than Hugh Grant’s, which mind you Shannon reckoned he must dye, ’cos she’d heard on a quiz show he was born in 1960, which if ya worked it out meant he was actually six years older than Kiefer Sutherland, ’cos he was born in 1966, she’d heard it on a quiz show, never mind he played these old men with grown-up daughters as old as her.

    “Are you all right?” he said sharply.

    “Yes!”

    Rick Weaver looked anxiously at the pretty blonde girl with the lovely honey tan and the unusual greenish eyes. She looked fairly shell-shocked to him. “Yeah. Um, well, when did you ring the ambulance?”

    Shannon looked at her watch. It felt like ages ago but it had been only ten minutes. “Ten mins back. They reckoned they’d be here by now, only they won’t, see, it takes longer from the ambulance station even if ya do drive like a bat out of Hell, which given these back roads, they won’t be able to unless they wanna end up in the ditch as well. That’ll be them,” she noted as her phone rang. It was. They were ringing to reassure her the ambulance was on its way; well, good, that was nice of them, only it didn’t help if the ning-nongs had taken the wrong road, did it? They reckoned the driver knew that road. He’d know it if he was a fisherman or a fish poacher or a builder’s labourer that had worked on the ecolodge and not otherwise. Unless he was one of the locals that drove down here on Sundays to perve at the place, which according to Dad half the population had.

    “Well?” he said.

    “Eh? Aw. It was them, just to let me know it’s coming and it’ll be another ten min. That means twenny. Hey, if I was you I’d move that four-wheel-drive, there’s a Pommy dweeb up the ecolodge that might drive into you.”

    “And a couple of dozen varsity students that’ll definitely drive into me,” he agreed with a grin. Shannon wouldn’t of sworn to it because she hadn’t looked that closely at Hugh Grant’s, like, being dazzled by the rest of it, but she’d of said this bloke’s teeth were better. Not the top ones maybe, but the bottom ones were straighter, she was almost sure.

    When he came back from moving it she said: “I’m Shannon Jackson. My parents live down here. You with the Botany lot, then?”

    “Yes, Rick Weaver,” he said grinning. “I’m in charge of them, for my sins.”

    “You’d be the lecturer that apologized to Pete McLeod for the ruddy mess they were making, then.”

    He went rather red, good. Shannon Jackson ten, ultra-good-looking varsity lecturers zilch.

    “Yes, that’s right. I let them come down by themselves—half of them are post-grads, they are supposed to be marginally competent and responsible— However. Had to finish my bloody exam marking, you see.”

    “Right, I suppose it’s your busiest time of year, really, isn’t it? Just when all the students,” said Shannon, consciously refraining from saying “all of us,” after all she’d finished her degree, she wasn’t a student any more, “can relax.”

    “Yes. Hellish, because there’s always terrific pressure to get the marks out before the bloody H.O.D. takes off for three months in Rarotonga on the excuse he’s studying genetic links between their native vegetation and the stuff the Maori may or may not have brought with them.”

    “Nice work if you can get it.”

    “Exactly! Anyway, I raced down here as soon I could, but not in time to stop those idiots making a Helluva mess.”

    “Right. So how long will it take them to get rid of the weeds and plant up those manuka seedlings and stuff?”

    Rick’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, there’s scope there for years and years of Christmas holidays, yet! Especially since the guy that gave us the seedlings doesn’t seem to have realized that half of them are hybrids.”

    “Right, that’ll persuade the Government to give them a grant for the development of a genuine wilderness area—not,” agreed Shannon.

    “Yes! Shit, is that what they’re hoping for?” he said with a laugh.

    Jesus, hadn’t he even asked? “Yeah; didn’t you find out what they were up to before ya rushed down here with your Botany Club?”

    He blinked. “Um, I checked what they wanted to do with the property, of course.”

    Right. Okay, he looked like Hugh Grant—in fact better: he had a decent tan, that pinky-white Pommy skin of Hugh Grant’s was real dweeby when ya thought about it—but heck, he was about as much of a wimp as the actual Hugh Grant most probably was in person. Well, would anyone with any common have gone out and tried to pick up a prostitute off the streets of LA? Who’d the nong think he was gonna meet, Julia Roberts? Though, yeah, it was really great publicity—if ya wanted the whole world to think ya must be a nong.

    Shannon looked tolerantly at the very handsome man with the tan and the Hugh Grant facial structure and said: “Yeah. Sure. They mention the words ‘Banrock Station’ to you?”

    “Uh—no.”

    “Like, my sister’s fiancé, he’s the chief architect on the ecolodge project—Chief Architect, YDI South Pacific, is his position—and besides, my sister, she’s doing assistant project manager for them, so the family’s heard all about it. Banrock Station’s in Aussie—”

    “I get it, a sheep station!”

    If he’d let a person speak, he’d find out, wouldn’t he? “No! It’s a winery, see? They wanted a gimmick, so they’ve turned a big area of their property into a wilderness area, with boardwalks and all. The Auckland YDI types went over there a bit back and sussed it out.”

    “Oh,” he said feebly. “I get it. Um, boardwalks?”

    “Like, they’ve got wetlands, see? The Aussie climate’s dry enough for boardwalks, but they’d need a lot more upkeep here. But Jim Thompson, he’s YDI South Pacific’s Regional Manager, he’s looking into it, ’cos he reckons they looked really, really good. Did they mention they wanna put a pond in?”

    “Not to me, no.”

    “Well, they do. Boardwalks round the pond area and probably crushed pumice paths round the rest of it. Well, there’s enough pumice around here. Not that it comes ready crushed in your genuine ethnic wilderness,” ended Shannon with a shrug.

    After a moment—he could see that she was quite young, and besides, she was very pretty, he didn’t really want to get on her bad side—Rick Weaver replied: “That’s a bit off, isn’t it?”

    “Manukas are ethnic enough, aren’t they?” she replied flatly.

    Rick tried to smile. Maybe they were, but you just did not say that sort of thing!

    She’d turned away to check on Alex so with a feeling of considerable relief he came and looked, too. No change.

    “He seems to be breathing normally,” he ventured.

    “Yes,” she agreed with a sigh, straightening. “We’ll just have to wait until the wankers get here.”

    It dawned on Dr Weaver, with a surge of relief, that she was so cross and aggressive because she was worried about Alex!

    “They can’t be long now,” he said reassuringly. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him. Unless you’ve got a blanket or something we could put over him?”

    “Um, yeah, there’s a rug in the boot.”

    It might not help but it couldn’t hurt, and at least they’d feel they were doing something. He went over to the Mazda with her. Crikey. It was the most organised car boot he’d ever seen. Well, he was used to packing the car efficiently for trips, but— Crikey. There didn’t even seem to be any dust! What did she do, vacuum it every weekend? The rug was clean and neatly folded, there was a first-aid box and a toolbox, and several large bottles of water. Numbly he let her get the rug out and bustle over to Alex’s car with it.

    “Uh—yeah. Try not to disturb him!” he gasped, coming to with a start and hurrying in her wake.

    What was she gonna do, haul him up and dance the highland fling with him? Why did blokes always talk in clichés? Grimly Shannon tucked the rug lightly over him.

    “So he’s a mate of yours?” she said, for something to say.

    “Yes, known him for years. He’s a good bloke, Alex, but…” The wide greenish eyes looked up at him expectantly and Rick swallowed. He didn’t want to bad-mouth good old Alex, and he certainly didn’t want to give Shannon Jackson the idea that he was the sort of bloke that put other blokes down to girls, but—

    “Um, don’t get me wrong, as I say we’ve been mates for years, but he’s a bit of a no-hoper, really.”

    The failure to put decent seatbelts in his old car, let alone the condition the car was in—looked as if it hadn’t been washed for months and the inside was full of crap—had pretty much told Shannon this anyway. She nodded.

    “Um, yeah. He's a very clever guy: he was a Rhodes Scholar, way back when, and everybody thought he was gonna make something of himself. Went to Oxford—you know.”

    “Yeah, I know what a Rhodes Scholar is, ta.”

    He swallowed. “Yes, of course. Sorry. He did his degree in botany, came home and got a job at varsity—Auckland, that’s where we met. He was one of the junior lecturers when I went through.”

    “Right. What was his sport?”

    Okay, she did know about Rhodes Scholars. “Rowing. Played rugby at school: he was a forward, excelled at that, too, but switched to rowing in his last year and got really keen on it: single sculls and coxless fours. He won some race at Oxford and they wanted him for the Olympics, but he told them where to put it, with a pithy addendum about the prostitution of modern competitive sport.”

    “Good on him!” replied Shannon fiercely.

    Rick tried to smile. “Well, maybe, but how many people get offered an opportunity like that in their lifetimes? Anyway, by the time he came home he’d given it up: said he was getting too old for it. Though those who knew him rather well claimed that he’d just lost interest, and as it turned out I wouldn’t say they were wrong. The year I started my Ph.D. he chucked his job in and took off with a sketch pad and a camera.”

    After a moment Shannon said: “Where to?”

    “You may well ask! Well, down here, initially; he didn’t totally lose touch with everyone and for a while he stayed in motels. His photographs were really wonderful and we all thought he might manage to sell them—well, not that much of a market, but fancy calendars are popular, aren’t they? And there was always the possibility of a book: one of his friends had worked on a coffee-table book and had good contacts at the publisher’s. But it came to nothing. He went down to Queenstown and took more photos of mountains and plains and the flora down there, and at one stage sent some copies of a whole lot of botanical drawings to the Department. They were excellent of their kind, but all those plants have been recorded long since, there was nothing, um, relevant, if you see what I mean. Then he disappeared, and we didn’t hear anything for nearly a year, but his family finally got a postcard from Australia. The postmark was Woomera,” he added on a grim note, “but none of us could decide whether that was just one of his jokes. After that there was complete silence for two years. Then the book of photos came out.” He sighed. “It was really wonderful—there’s a much bigger market for such things over there, of course, and views of the Outback are always popular. So we all thought that Alex had thrown himself into a different profession and there was method in his madness after all. How wrong we were. He did come home, rescued the Jag—it is a Jag, don’t let that bonnet fool you, the little jaguar’s been nicked long since—loaded up with fresh sketch pads and pencils, and took off again. None of us thought it was significant that he left some of his most expensive camera equipment behind.”

    “And?” prompted Shannon, as he’d ground to a halt and was just staring dully in front of him.

    “Mm? Oh—that was it, Shannon. He disappears into the bush for weeks, sometimes months on end, emerges with detailed botanical studies of plants that have been documented years since, takes on a few odd jobs to earn a bit of cash, and disappears again. He’s got no permanent address; uses his parents’ place as a postal address, but they hardly ever see him. Well, his father tore a strip off after the Australian venture, so it’s not surprising he avoids them, I suppose.”

    Shannon thought it over, frowning. “Is he gonna do a book of sketches?”

    “Not as far as anyone can ascertain—no,” said Rick Weaver on an acid note.

   “Shit. Um, how old is he, Rick?”

    Rick sighed. “Going on thirty-five. He’s six years older than me. I’ve long since got over the notion that he was going to be a rôle model—not to say supervise my Ph.D. thesis,” he added wryly.

    “I get it. You must’ve felt let down,” said Shannon on a cautious note.

    “Mm, I sure did,” agreed Rick wryly. “Anyway, that’s Alex. God knows what motivates him.”

    “I suppose he is doing his own thing,” she said dubiously. “Um, did he have a wife or a girlfriend?”

    “A fiancée. Back in his Rhodes Scholar days he had loads of girlfriends, they all thought he was a coming man: good catch, y’know?—Yeah,” he said, as she wrinkled her little straight nose and nodded. “Upper-class English tarts, was how he referred to them. At least he wasn’t taken in by all that bullshit, I suppose that’s a plus.”

    “Sounds as if he was more put off by it.”

    “Uh—yeah!” said Rick with a startled laugh. “I guess he was. Well, maybe that was part of it,” he said slowly. “Saw too much of the type that was out for what she could get, and all the types of both sexes—any sexes, looking back on his descriptions of Oxford—that sucked up to him because of his abilities and looks. Well, you might not be able to see it: he’s skinny as a rake these days and the five-day growth doesn’t seem to make him look like a tennis star, does it?”

    “No, or a trendy American street kid,” agreed Shannon drily.

    “Right!” he agreed, grinning, very relieved to know she wasn’t the sort of dumb dolly that fancied that look. “But anyway, he was pretty good-looking in his younger days. And loads of charisma—y’know? The type that can inspire others with his own enthusiasm. Looking back, I think that was what the Rhodes Scholarship interview panel took as leadership abilities,” he said with a little sigh. “When he started his lecturing job he got engaged. She was a lawyer, been to a good school, going places in her profession, had the child-care situation all worked out, selected the site in Pakuranga for their first house— That type, dunno if you’re familiar with it, and if you aren’t you’re lucky!”

    “Um, yeah, my oldest sister’s engaged to a bloke who’s a lawyer, and his first wife dumped him for a bloke that wanted to live in Pakuranga,” said Shannon, swallowing hard. “Mind you, I wouldn’t have said Carter’s Bay’s much better.”

    “Carter’s Bay? But it’s great!” said the botanist in surprise. “Still largely undeveloped round there, wonderful swampland— Hang on. Whereabouts in Carter’s Bay?”

    “That modern white block on the waterfront,” she admitted.

    “Jesus!”

    “Yeah. Um, he said to me that he likes the view of unspoiled rundown sheds and empty shops down below them, and unspoiled mud and mangroves over the other side of the bay,” admitted Shannon, swallowing again in spite of herself.

    Rick Weaver laughed.

    “Yeah,” she said, grinning at him. “See, Felicity thinks he’s let her have her own way over the flat. And to a large extent he has, to be fair. But there’s a bit more to him than meets the eye! –Sorry: go on about Alex.”

    “Mm? Oh; I was only going to say that he walked out on the suitable fiancée as well as all the rest. She’d planned a huge white wedding, of course, but that wasn’t to be for another six months, so you can’t say he left her standing at the altar. Though she certainly behaved as if he did.”

    “Right,” she said slowly. “Was that what he was running away from, do ya think, Rick? Like, conformity to the domestic norms? Well, the upper end of them, but they’re worse, aren’t they?”

    “To a certain extent, yes, and possibly not from her specifically. I think the imminence of the wedding and the plans the poor girl had made—normal plans, you have to admit—made him feel trapped.”

    “Yes,” said Shannon, nodding. “Um, has he ever been checked out? Like medically?” she said as Rick just looked blank. “I suppose I mean psychologically.”

    “Alex? I don’t think so. Um, it has been suggested he’s schizophrenic, but that was mainly his Dad in a Helluva temper with him.”

    “Ye-ah… It doesn’t sound like full-blown schizophrenia at all. When he’s functioning it sounds as if he functions extra-well—magnificently, really. I’d say he sounds more bipolar, Rick.” He was looking blank again so she prompted helpfully: “You know, like Winston Churchill: he was a bit that way. I saw a documentary about it—well, actually I was home for the holidays and Dad made me watch it, he said it might broaden my horizons a bit: it’s his theme-song,” she explained. “But it was interesting, as a matter of fact. A lot of high achievers are slightly bipolar—I think there is a technical term for it but I’ve forgotten it. Roosevelt was another—FDR. When they’re up they’re very up and achieve tremendously but they can be very down, typically spend years in the doldrums.”

    “Um, isn’t that to confuse the ups and downs of a political career with their emotional state, though? Not mention FDR’s medical state, poor bugger.”

    “Good point, but the documentary actually was quite balanced about it. The political and medical downs would bring on the depression, of course, like with anyone, but if you’re slightly bipolar you get really, really down. And I got the impression,” she said shrewdly, “that there’s not necessarily anything you can put your finger on that provokes the next upswing.”

    “I see. In Alex’s case, given that his life was proceeding along a perfectly normal course, I wouldn’t have said there was anything in particular to provoke the downswings, either.”

    “No,” she agreed. “He sounds more bipolar than Churchill or Roosevelt.”

    Rick gnawed on his lip. “Is there anything that can be done?”

    Shannon shrugged. “Drugs. I got the impression they don’t always work and when they do they reduce the person to a sort of dull average.”

    “Jesus! I honestly think Alex’d rather die!”

    To his surprise—she’d struck him as eminently sane, not to say on the hard-headed side—she replied calmly: “Yeah. Me and Dad agreed on that one, you betcha.”

    Rick hesitated. His reaction had been shocked out of him and had been quite honest as far as it went: he was sure that’d be Alex’s preference. But for himself… “Um, there is the point that not everyone’s as footloose and fancy free as he is. It must be very difficult for a bipolar person’s family.”

    “Eh?” said Shannon as a siren was heard in the distance at last. “That’s them! Thank God, flaming load of wankers! Think we better honk our horns?”

    “It wouldn’t do any harm,” agreed Rick on a weak note.

    “Right!” She hurried over to the Mazda.

    Rick went over to the four-wheel-drive with a frown on his face. He wasn’t too sure that he’d left her with the right impression, there…

    The ladies were having afternoon tea. That was, Katy had come over to Taupo Shores Ecolodge round about afternoon teatime and collapsed onto one of the forest-green, linen-look plain sofas in the big kauri-floored lounge with the fireplace wall of recycled brick and the end wall of glass with its view of the lake. So once she’d taken the three middle-aged couples and two middle-aged ladies that had rolled up for it theirs, Jan sat down with a sigh next to her.

    “You’re busy today,” noted Katy.

    “Mm. Um—what? Well, fairly, yeah. The rooms are all taken, but the younger ones have gone off down the Rimu Trail on Pete’s 16 K so-called bush walk. He’s gone with them, as they seemed to think a guide was in order.” Jan poured the tea before it could get stewed.

    “I thought it was self-guided?”

    “Ostensibly, yeah. These ones are all Yanks of the sort that think when it says in teeny-weeny print on the bottom of a brochure a guide is available on request it means it. Luckily for them he was on deck and hadn’t hived off into the bush to sulk because I’d said he’d go after pig, singular, over my dead body,” said Jan grimly.

    “Oh, heck. Is he still wild about that, Jan?”

    “I don’t think so, but I can tell you I still am!”

    “Yeah, um, maybe this was the only time his friends could get away,” she said uneasily.

    Jan snorted. “Rats! Those so-called mates are all retired long since, Katy! And these days half of them are so decrepit it’d be a risk letting them go near the bush at all, let alone off into the hinterland after wild pig!”

    “Mm. Are there still any?”

    “I rather think there are, deep in the Kaimanawas, which is where the idiots proposed heading for,” returned Jan grimly.

    “Help!”

    “That was what they’d have needed, all right. Shit, Polly Carrano was saying last time they were down at her oldest brother’s farm he wouldn’t go out with Jake! And he told him to his face that if he was too old for it, so was he!”

    “Did Jake want to go this time, Jan?”

    “They all wanted to go, Katy,” she said heavily. “Livia Briggs had to throw a hysterical fit to stop bloody Wal.”

    “Jan, I think it’s just that—that they know they’re getting on and they—they resent it,” said Katy in a trembling voice.

    Jan sighed. “Yeah. And in Pete’s case he’s fed up with the day-to-day shit of managing this place. Well, for God’s sake! Guided ten-mile walks down a track a flaming two-year-old could find its way along unaided?”

    “Mm. Could you—could you afford to have someone else do it, Jan?”

    Jan looked round the warm, welcoming room with its chatting afternoon-tea-ers, its miraculous kauri ceiling—the two American dames with the unlikely coloured hairdoes were observedly admiring it as of this minute—and sighed. “Not really. Looks prosperous, doesn’t it? If it was like this all year round we’d be sitting pretty, but it’s three months, tops—a bit more, maybe, with the retirees that aren’t dependent on the official holidays. Only they’re like trained seals or something: they nearly always do book for the Christmas holidays or the long weekends!”

    “Yes. Those sort of people,” said Katy, eying Mr and Mrs Sexton from Wellington in, respectively, their nice grey slacks and conservative fawn thin-knit jumper, and nice floral frock and conservative lilac thin-knit cardy, “are like trained seals.”

    Jan followed her gaze. “The woman’s my age. Can’t she remember looking in horror at what their mothers—God, and grandmothers, come to think of it—used to get round in and vowing never to be like that if she lived to be a hundred?”

    Katy smiled: Jan herself was in fawn slacks in a heavy cotton weave, a thin-knit grey vee-necked jumper that was actually a man’s jumper and thus half the price of the women’s ones, with a white tee-shirt, a man’s one that was a fifth of the price of the women’s ones, under that. “I don’t think it’s that they can’t remember it, Jan, I think it’s more that they never thought it!”

    “No? Marilyn Brooks from next-door to us when I was growing up was here over Labour weekend. I can remember her clear as day looking at Ma Brooks in her droopy floral blouse with the bow at the neck over the inevitable straight but not tight skirt and swearing she was never gonna end up like her!” Her eyes twinkled a little. “We were both in hand-bleached jeans—the expression ‘stone-washed’ hadn’t yet come in—and those skin-tight tops with the row of tiny buttons like old-fashioned long-johns—for preference in a faded maroon. Marilyn had her hair down to her waist, dyed pitch-black with a Red Indian beaded headband round it, and I had mine not quite as long and hennaed to buggery. Needless to state her mum’s hair was just tastefully bouffant and backcombed enough, and tinted a discreet fawn.”

    “And so what was she wearing over Labour weekend?” asked Katy, now frankly grinning.

    Jan replied grimly: “The hair was in a layered cut, just tastefully bouffant and backcombed enough, and tinted a discreet fawn, and the blouse, I kid you not, was floral Viyella with a fucking droopy bow on it. She had given in to the extent of wearing slacks, while Ma Brooks wouldn’t have been seen dead in pants: these were polyester and a light turquoise that toned with the blouse.”

    “I see! –I’ve noticed that middle-aged ladies do wear those layered cuts,” she agreed.

    “Don’t they, just,” said Jan with a deep sigh.

    “Never mind, you’re not a performing seal, Jan,” she said kindly.

    “No, but sometimes I feel perilously close to it,” she muttered, looking round the room and acknowledging the smiles and coy waves of Mrs Sexton in her aforesaid, Mrs Perryman in its clone, only with a pale blue cardy, and Mrs Sieff in pink, complete with the pearls and the big glittering brooch on the shoulder, exactly what her, Jan’s, gran used to wear to afternoon tea, except that Gran’s pearls had been very yellow and the brooch had been glass, whereas Mrs Sieff’s would be the real McCoy, judging by the silver Beamer that she and her spouse had rolled up in. The two unlikely-haired American widows, also smiling and waving coyly, were in the transatlantic version: nice pastel tracksuits of shiny, space-age material over extremely expensive cashmere pastel jumpers. With, between them, one huge amethyst and diamond brooch, one multi-stranded necklace of tiny but real turquoise beads (Mrs Silverstone: she was a more adventurous dresser than Mrs Doole) and four very nice pearl earrings.

    “Oh, God, that reminds me,” she gulped. “I think a couple of them might be Jewish. I was gonna do a pork roast tonight.”

    “That sounds yummy!” Katy encouraged her, smiling.

    “Yeah, but… The Sieffs have gotta be Jewish, I’d say. Help. I’d better ask them.”

    “Just ask them if they eat pork,” suggested Katy, smiling.

    Jan looked at her limply. “Of course! God, my mind’s going. Eat that blueberry muffin: I don’t care if I never see another blueberry or another muffin as long as I live.” She got up and headed off towards Mr and Mrs Sieff.

    Obediently Katy ate the muffin. Yum! Jan was some time so she poured herself another cup, and ate one of the delicious-looking cream horns. Ooh, yum!

    “That one’s yours,” she said as her hostess returned.

    “Ta. I might as well eat it, because if I don’t, Pete will,” she admitted. “Mrs Silverstone can’t be Jewish because she adores a traditional pork roast and I heard a lot about the late Harry and his powerboat business. The Sieffs aren’t Orthodox and I heard a lot about the grandchildren but I did finally work out that they don’t eat pork and that she’s watching George’s weight, so I mustn’t dream of doing lamb chops specially for them.”

    “Will you?”

    Jan scratched her chin. “There are some chops, or rather the remains of a side, that the Good Keen Man claimed he could saw into chops at need. I thought I might bung it in the oven at the same time as the pork, save on power.”

    “That’s a good idea!” agreed Katy encouragingly.

    “Provided he gets back in time to dismember it, mm. The telly chefs might be serving that sort of roast these days tarted up with little white hats on the bones, but what they don’t tell you is it’s really, really hard to carve, and I’m hopeless at it.”

    “Pete won’t want to miss one of your roast dinners, Jan!” said Katy with a laugh.

    “I hope you’re right; one of those bloody Yanks that went with him mentioned the dread word ‘campfire’ and the bugger perked up like nobody’s business.”

    “But if it isn’t planned they won’t have anything to eat.”

    No. Unless Pete poached something or shot something, either of which he was more than capable of. Or, if near the permaculture nuts’ place, just plain nicked and killed something. She was bloody sure he and Wal Briggs and that dim bloke from the town that hung round with them had liberated a Muscovy duck from the poor permaculture nuts one overcast long weekend when a large party of vegetarians had booked in. Well, it sure as Hell wouldn’t’ve been any of the vegetarians, would it?

    “Let’s hope not,” she agreed. “Have a slice of fruit-cake, Katy, don’t leave it for Pete.”

    Guiltily Katy ate the fruit-cake, ooh, yum! Real whole cherries!

    Jan finished her own piece of cake and sighed. “That’s better. So what’s the news of Shannon’s invalid?”

    “I think you know as much as I do. Dan and me finally worked out he’s not the one that looks like Hugh Grant.”

    “No, that one seems to be the working botanist. Relatively sane in spite of the botany and the looks, we gathered.”

    “Yes; the invalid’s the mad one. Um, some disease like polar bears?” she said vaguely.

    Jan gulped, well though she knew her. “Yeah. They call it bipolar disorder, Katy: something to do with the two sides of the brain not meshing, I think.”

    “Mm. Just because he opted out of the rat-race he has to be mad.”

    Well, yeah, that thought had had also occurred to Jan and Pete. Though while all A might be B, and all B might be C, all A did not necessarily have to be C, did it?

    “Anyway, he’s sitting up and taking notice—did she tell you that? –Yeah. The hospital’s just keeping him in until the concussion’s worn off,” said Katy comfortably.

    That or until they sent him up to Auckland for a cat-scan, possibly, but Jan didn’t say it—sufficient unto the day. Added to which, Katy wouldn’t want to hear it, would she?

    “Uh-huh. Have you popped in to see him?”

    “Of course,” said Katy placidly. “We took him a few flowers out of the garden. Um, the ruddy banana passionfruit’s flowering like billyo, so Dan picked a whole lot of that,” she added guiltily. “I’m afraid there might not be as many fruit as usual this year, Jan.”

    Jan smiled. “Don’t worry! If it’s anything like our monster that’ll encourage it! Did he like the effect?”

    “Yes, actually he did,” beamed Katy, “and he did a sketch for us on the spot! He can certainly draw! If you’d like some sketches of native plants for the ecolodge he’d be happy to do you some.”

    As opposed to faked-up antique watercolours cut out of Polly’s posh mags and varnished by hand by P. McLeod, this would be, would it? Jan eyed her artistic friend in some amusement but said only: “That’d be nice, provided he doesn’t charge too much.”

    “I think the problem’ll be to make him charge anything.”

    “Right! And what’s he look like, Katy?”

    “Quite skinny. Very tanned: of course he’s out in all weathers. I think he’s only about thirty-five, but he looks older. Quite a thin face: dark hair, his friend Rick said he used to wear it long but he’s had it cut very short. Actually he looks a bit like Pete only younger.”

    Jan took a deep breath. Right. Never mind the putative bipolar disorder—and as far as she’d been able to ascertain that had only been the clinical diagnosis of Miss S. Jackson, aged almost twenty-one—but a Pete that was already obsessional at thirty-fourish? Jesus! How the Hell could she tell Katy tactfully to keep Shannon well clear? She looked cautiously at her wide, blonde face.

    “I liked him,” said Katy mildly.

    Jan swallowed.

    “Mind you, I don’t think he’s as practical as Pete. I mean, not the sort that can set his hand to any sort of job round the place.”

    Oh, right, that made it better! Jan tried to smile. “Um, Katy, which of them did Shannon seem keener on, do you think?”

    “I was gonna ask you that,” admitted Katy, looking at her hopefully.

    “Well, I haven’t met Alex. Rick seems a nice enough fellow. He seems to have his head screwed on, got a really good job that he’s serious about. Um, and very good-looking, of course,” she ended limply.

    “Yes. Dan really likes him. Um, well, Shannon does seem to be going out with him. She was raving on about his looks, but I wouldn’t say she was all that keen, really. Well, I suppose keen in a sexual sense,” said Katy, sounding vaguer than ever.

    Wasn’t sex precisely what usually drove kids of that age to get mixed up with blokes that were drastically wrong for them? “But?” croaked Jan.

    “Um, she said his values were conventional and boring.”

    “Oh, shit!” said Jan in pure dismay.

    “I think they are, pretty much,” said Katy cautiously. “He seems to have a nice flat—he was telling us about it when he came over for tea the other day. And the four-wheel-drive looks grubby, but that’s because it’s actually being used as an off-road vehicle, not tooled round town to the supermarkets. Dan said it’s an expensive model and looks in good nick. And his parents sound pretty conventional—very well off, I think: he went to Auckland Grammar because it was the nearest secondary school.”

    Jan raised her eyebrows. “Grammar Zone, huh?”

    “Mm. He was telling us about his sister’s wedding; it sounded very nice. They had the photos in the Domain and the reception at a proper reception place with a great big tent.”

    “Well, people do go mad over weddings, of course, but that sounds as if they’re pretty well off, yeah.”

    “Mm,” she agreed, nodding.

    “Um, I’d have said that Shannon was the sort to approve of people with conventional values, Katy.”

    “Conventional and boring. She’s never liked to be bored. She’s not as intellectual as Sean and Ran, and of course Dan thinks she doesn’t read enough, but she is very sharp. She gets impatient with people that can’t think like she does,”

    “Ye-es… You mean as fast as she does?”

    “That, too. She, um, she sees through things, Jan,” said Shannon’s mother on an uncertain note. “Um, through crap, I suppose I mean.”

    Well, yeah, Shannon Jackson had always struck Jan as a pretty disillusioned little tyke, but then, wasn’t the crap mostly what her parents’ generation subscribed to, and the seeing through it bit just the peer-group phase?

    “She likes Murray, but she was absolutely scathing about that flat him and Felicity are living in,” Katy reminded her.

    “Mm. Isn’t it just a phase, though, Katy?”

    “I dunno. She’s always been like that. Anyway, she said that Alex was a no-hoper but at least he wasn’t brainwashed into conformity for conformity’s sake and the pointless acquisition of consumables like the rest of the population. Dan was really wild: he shouted at her that that was what life was for ordinary people, and what the fuck did she want if not that? And she said she didn’t know, but, um, she thought that you and Pete were an example of how people didn’t have to be like that.”

    Oh, glory! “Katy, it took Pete fifty years and me forty to get to the point where we even—even recognised that the other person was someone we could see something in!”

    “I know. Pete always had really glamorous ladies before, didn’t he? Not just the ones he married, I mean.”

    Exactly. Right. “Um, look, possibly she just feels instinctively that though Rick is a very, very attractive fellow he isn’t right for her and she’s just—just reacting to it. Over-reacting, I suppose. It doesn’t mean that this Alex type will ever be right for her.”

    “No, that was what I thought.”

    Jan swallowed. “Don’t you think you’d better tell her that, then?”

    “I dunno that she’s that keen on him, Jan. I mean, she has been taking him flowers and books and stuff, but…”

    “Speak to her anyway. Nip it in the bud,” said Jan grimly. “Shannon’s a determined little go-getter: you know that, Katy. A feckless bloke that just wants to bum round sketching would be totally wrong for her. Added to which it sounds as if he might drop the sketching at any moment, too! Very likely just at the point when she’d jacked up a market for him!”

    “Yes. Dan said that, but anyway I’d thought of it for myself,” said Katy glumly.

    “Right. –Oh! Did he say that to Shannon?”

    “Yeah. She said he didn’t really know her. So they had a shouting match. Only hers wore off and she just shrugged and said it wasn’t worth fighting over and he was perfectly entitled to his opinion and she saw where he was coming from, and went out. Dan was really upset.”

    God! Any dad would be! “Mm. Um, where is she this arvo?” asked Jan nervously.

    “Over at the new ecolodge again. She took the runabout. She said she wanted to see the rest of the place without risking running into the dweeb.”

    “Mm? Oh, that Pommy type! I saw him at the service station telling poor old Ken Roberts that his car didn’t require lubrication, my good man. –A lube job,” she said to her blank face.

    “I never even knew it meant that!” she gasped.

    “No; it took me a while, I must admit,” said Jan drily. “Well, she’ll see the new jetty and the one eco-cabin that Max has got up so far, bottles and all. It is a very pretty setting, but I have to admit Pete’s taken a few mates over there for a good laugh.”

    “Yes: Max admits himself it’s silly, but evidently the London YDI lot were thrilled.”

    Jan just nodded and let her tell her about Max’s bottle cabin, since it had now penetrated that she hadn’t come over to share the agony over Shannon, she’d come to get away from it.

    Shannon had brought her digital camera with her. It was getting late but the sun was striking the bottle cabin very effectively, so she took several snaps. It was silly, all right, but silly in a nice sort of way. He’d used kind of blocks of the bottles, green and brown, with a few small blocks of blue ones, and there was plenty of recycled brick as well. All the windows had huge shutters in the same oiled wood as the main ecolodge building’s, maybe the idea was you could have the windows open and just close the shutters on a very hot day… After a bit she wandered up onto the verandah, sat down and hugged her knees and gazed at the view. The little cabin had the best view in the whole property: down the lake with the glimmering white mountain peaks at the end of it. Lovely… Shannon just sat there for ages, forgetting to take any snaps, while the soft flecks of colour on the lake dwindled from silver to silver touched with gold, then just a hint of pink fading out to grey…

    She came to with a start, slapping at her bare ankle as the dusk and the mozzies bit together.

    “Right, shutters’ll keep them out, not, does he realise that?” she muttered, heading back to the dinghy.

    … Rick looked at the photos and gave a loud snigger. “Yeah, me and a couple of the boys took a run over that way. Ludicrous, eh?”

    “It’s a laugh, all right,” said Shannon temperately. “Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with a laugh.”

    “Yeah, but the types that like fancy ecolodges’ll take it seriously! Hey, BILL!” he bellowed. “Come and take a dekko at this, it’s the ruddy bottle cabin I was telling you about!”

    Shannon said nothing as half a dozen hairy Bot students—both sexes, the females were as disgusting as the males—ran up and collapsed in rude sniggers.

    Alex Burton looked at the pictures. He smiled. “Conspicuous consumption of the silliest kind! Or is it conspicuous re-consumption?”

    “Um, yeah. ’Tis mainly recycled,” said Shannon, clearing her throat. “Silly, eh? Though it’s a bit of a laugh, I suppose.”

    “We all need a laugh from time to time, don’t we? I’d say that this is well on the glorious side of those silly and unnecessary trifles that make one realise that life can be worth living!” said Alex, laughing. “Hullo, what on earth’s up?” he said as she blew her nose hard.

    “Nothing. That’s what I felt, too,” said Shannon, smiling at him. “See, Max tried to explain that to me and I thought he was—was just being affected, and I made the mistake of saying so to Ran and she was awfully wild with me. Only I hadn’t seen it, then. I mean, ya get out there, and there’s a real beautiful view, right down the lake to the mountains, and—and yeah. It’s deliriously silly, eh?”

    “Absolutely! As soon as I’m on my feet again I must go and see it in all its folly! –Literally a folly,” he murmured.

    “Exactly. Just like the English landscape gardeners!” said Shannon with huge satisfaction.

Next chapter:

https://theecolodgesbythelake-anovel.blogspot.com/2021/12/merry-eco-christmas.html