Overseas

6

Overseas

    “Changed your mind, then, Throgmorton?” said YDI’s Hill Tarlington as they sat down, Max manoeuvring the crutches with some awkwardness.

    Max’s eyes twinkled. “Not as such, no! But I’ve talked it over with the senior partners, and they’ve agreed that if you want this concept it’s yours, for a minimum fee and acknowledgement of the firm’s contribution. We’ll do the full design for you if you like—not at a minimum fee!” he added with a grin.

    “Uh—good show. I’ll check with Sir Maurice but I think, if he likes it, he probably will want your firm to go ahead. We’ve had no luck with our other possibles. Well, there’s a chap out in New Zealand who would take it on, but he’s fully booked for the next year and we don’t want to drag our heels any longer. –May I?”

    “Of course.” Max handed over the portfolio of sketches, poker-face. He wasn’t at all sure the chap would like what he saw.

    There was a short silence and then he said on a weak note: “Bottles? Is this a joke?”

    “Not really,” said Max smoothly. “There’s a huge bottle dump not very far from the site: satisfies your recycling criteria. The alternative was tyres,” he added blandly.

    “Uh-huh.” He looked at the notes about materials on one of the drawings. “Where’s all this recycled wood going to come from?”

    “I think Jim Thompson’s probably emailed you about that. He’s provisionally reserved a large amount of kauri—that’s their lovely native hardwood—”

    “I know it,” he admitted. “It is recycled, I trust?”

    “Yes; I don’t think they’re allowed to cut the trees down these days.”

    “Mm. Well, these look good; I’ll submit them to the bosses. And thanks, Throgmorton.”

    Smiling, Max got up and asked him if he’d like to come for a drink. He seemed like a decent chap, there’d be no harm in getting to know him a little better, and it was certainly that time of day, in fact the bar would be full of happy-hourers and—he refrained from glancing at his watch—very possibly Ran would be waiting outside it, having lost her nerve about fighting her way in amongst the suits. It wasn’t the crowds as such, apparently, but the suits. Especially the female ones.

    To his relief she wasn’t waiting outside it. The London weather was mild in his terms, but she found it chilly. They’d found a table and sat down with their drinks when she came in.

    “Hi,” she said, grinning.

    “There you are, darling!” cried Max in relief.

    “Yeah, I found it,” she agreed. “Hullo,” she said to Hill.

    In spite of the fact that she was dressed in shabby jeans and a limp blue tee-shirt under the leather jacket Tarlington didn’t seem unimpressed. Quite the contrary: he’d struck Max as a bit down, actually, but he perked up amazingly. Well, so much the better. Jimmy Whittaker had waxed extremely enthusiastic, though not failing to hide his astonishment, but of course in his case the boobs were definitely a factor. Very possibly Tarlington was also a tit-man: the grin his mug now wore would certainly seem to indicate as much. It was also pretty clear to Max Throgmorton that the fellow was not unused to the company of the female sex—and one or two remarks of Jan Harper’s in re the male half’s inability to see what was going on under the nose now began to make more sense, as did the rather muddled impression that when the fellow had visited Taupo Shores Ecolodge she hadn’t positively disliked him.

    “He’s nice, isn’t he?” said the innocent Ran happily when the fellow pushed off.

    “Yes; I rather like him,” replied Max calmly.

    “He doesn’t seem to be taken in by those nits that him and Jim have to work with!” she said with a chuckle.

    “Er—no. Quite. Darling, are you sure this cadetship at YDI is what you want?”

    “Yeah, ’course!” Ran told him a lot at top speed about the class she’d just come from. YDI had not only agreed to her working for a couple of weeks in Jim’s office in Auckland before they left for England, but taken her on as a cadet with the proviso that she’d get her project management diploma during the current academic year and then work for them for five years. Max wasn’t too sure he liked the sound of the five years thing—what if they wanted to send her off to the ends of the earth while he was working in Britain?—but if need be he could always pay the indemnity and get her out of the thing. He hadn’t expressed this last to Ran: she was far too independent to agree to it and besides, their relationship wasn’t yet at that stage. Though it was bloody well going to be, and grinning idiots like Jimmy Whittaker and Hill Tarlington could look but not touch!

    He’d looked into YDI when they put the suggestion to Ran and they seemed solid enough, though it was rather an odd set-up: the firm was in two divisions, Development and Hospitality, the former managing their own building or conversion projects, the latter managing the completed hotels. Well, it did mean they could have exactly what they wanted, yes. The Japan-based parent company, the Gano Group, was about as solid as the Bank of England, with fingers in a huge number of very profitable pies world-wide. And as Hill had told him, they pretty much let YDI do their own thing.

    “It sounds as if you might be working with Hill,” he said cautiously.

    “Not for ages yet, and when they do let me go out on the sites it’ll only be holding stuff and looking respectful while the project managers do their thing!” she replied cheerfully.

    Max was somewhat relieved to hear the plural. “So he isn’t their only project manager?”

    “No, there’s three senior ones, I think,” replied Ran with cheerful indifference.

    Right. Good.

    “Do you think they’ll pay you a decent sum for your concept?” she asked hopefully.

    Max bit his lip. “Darling, you haven’t quite got it. It will be a decent sum if they want it, but it won’t be me they pay, it’ll be the firm.”

    “But you did all the work in your holidays and during your sick leave, that doesn’t seem fair!” she cried.

    Max had begun to feel that it didn’t seem fair, either. “That’s the sort of employment contract one has, these days. Take it or leave it, sort of thing.”

    Ran frowned over it. “So will they pay you a percentage?”

    “No, it doesn’t work like that, I’m on a salary.”

    “What about all those hours of overtime you do?”

    He shrugged. “Goes with the territory. If one’s done well and the firm’s had a successful year—well, a spectacularly successful year—there may be a Christmas bonus, but that’s entirely at the discretion of the bosses.”

    “It sounds like America!” said Ran in dismay.

    “Mm. The corporate life, eh? –Thought about dinner? Fancy Italian?”

    “Yes, but nothing too expensive,” said Ran severely.

    She meant it: last time he’d tried to take her somewhere really nice without having the nous to make it a special celebration for something-or-other she’d refused to set foot in the place.

    “No, I promise not to be extravagant,” he said, looking meek.

    “You better believe it!” replied Ran cheerfully, getting up. “Come on, then.”

    Max came on, grinning.

    Jan and Pete hadn’t seen Katy or Dan for a bit, so Jan went over there, ostensibly to drop off a pie that was surplus to requirements, a couple who had been expected last night having cancelled at the last minute.

    “Ta, Jan,” said Katy limply. The pastry looked not only homemade, but homemade with real butter, and it had curly decorations of leaves and a little bird! “It looks beautiful. I’m sure it could have gone in the freezer, though, if you can’t use it tonight.”

    “It could go in your tums, too!” said Jan with a laugh. “No, our current lot are all vegetarians and they don’t defrost too well, the pastry tends to go soggy in the process. God knows what they put in those microwave ones.”

    “Starch, probably,” said Katy, pouring the hot water on the teabags.

    “Good guess. Is this orange pekoe?”

    “Um, dunno, it’s something Max bought us before he left. Twining’s,” said Katy vaguely. “I think he said it was from Ceylon.”

    Right, it was Twining’s orange pekoe. “That reminds me,” said Jan, hoping she was sounding extremely casual: “how are they getting on?”

    There was a nasty little pause and Jan’s tummy had time to drop into her boots. Then Katy said: “Okay, I think. Well, Ran says she’s very happy and Max is always a box of birds when we speak to him. Only…”

    “Mm?”

    “Um, she is ringing up rather often just to ask how Rover’s getting on.”

    As far as Jan was aware the brute was his usual greedy, lazy self, only exerting himself when some fool had left the meat out on the kitchen bench, kind of thing. “Is he all right?”

    “Yes, he’s in rude health. I took him for his check-up only last week. The vet reckons he could only have been about two when Ran found him.”

    “Uh—in that case shouldn’t he be exercised more?” said Jan feebly.

    “Well, yeah, but once you’ve dragged him off the bunk—and that’s a labour of Hercules in itself—who’s gonna drag him along the verge until he actually deigns to move his legs for himself? Last time Dan tried he let him drag him all the way to the Youngs’. He gave up, coming home, and carried the sod.”

    Jan bit her lip. “Mm. Well, he’s probably missing Ran, but Pete’s claim is he needs discipline, Katy.”

    “Maybe Pete’d like to come over and give him some, then, ’cos he won’t take any notice of me or Dan, and it’s all very well to say watch those stupid things on TV, but they always start with the thing out in the back garden looking frisky!”

    Jan didn’t ask which particular stupid things on TV she meant, because she was right: they did all start like that. And “frisky” wasn’t a word that could ever have been applied to Rover, even back when Ran had first adopted him.

    “Mm. I might stir Pete into action, if you like. He always used to have a dog. Or he did up until the first wife made him get rid—that was the one that had the crocheted toilet-roll holders; dunno what crime the poor dog committed, exactly: just generally being breathing and hairy, I think—make that breathing, hairy and male,” amended Jan drily, “and then after her until the second one made him get rid because it was chasing the goats. I think the main reason that he didn’t get rid of the goats instead, apart from the fact that he was still in his besotted phase, was that they needed the milk to drink. That was the red-headed American Flower-Power type.”

    Katy nodded. “Dan remembers her.”

    Half of Taupo remembered her: it was hard to forget something that told the local shopkeepers what she thought of their lousy service and inadequate goods in a loud American accent while standing there in her dirty toes and Roman sandals, draped in Indian muslin that looked as if it hadn’t been washed for two months, with the greasy red curls tangled in the dangling Indian silver earrings, what time she waved a joint casually in the hand laden with Indian silver and Red Indian mixed silver and turquoise.

    Jan sighed. “Yeah. Oh, well, we’ve all made mistakes in our time… Not you and Dan, though!” she recognized with a sudden laugh. “Sorry. I still get mad when I think of how the American bitch walked off with all that expensive stereo gear she made him cough up for, poor old Pete. Not to mention the three jobs he had to slave over to make ends meet while she was waltzing off for those long weekends in Wellington with the Lesbian lover!”

    “Yes,” said Katy sympathetically. “Never mind, Jan, he’s got you, now. Do you think he would like to come and walk Rover?”

    “It’ll do him good! Take his mind off the Taupo Shores Tallulah!” said Jan with a grin.

    “I thought he’d finished that?” said Katy, looking at her in horror.

    “No, he’s still finding bits that need more little curlicues painted on them or tiny polished brass handrails added to them. In other words it’s become an obsession and I’d be really grateful if giving Rover some exercise could be the obsession that replaces it, Katy!”

    “Well, yeah. We’d be grateful, too,” said Katy limply.

    “Good. I’ll get right onto it! It’s turning into a bloody floating tart’s bedroom: he asked me to sew flaming cushions—not seat cushions, as such, that’d be almost reasonable—but extra little cushions for the thing the other day,” she revealed.

    “Heck, in that case we’d better give you Rover!” said Katy with a horrified laugh.

    “I’d offer, but I don’t think Ran’d wear it!”

    “No,” agreed Katy on a wan note.

    Jan swallowed. “Did you mean she’s ringing up to ask how the bugger is more than she used to do when she was up in Auckland, Katy?”

    “Loads more,” said Katy wanly.

    Oh, Hell. After a minute Jan managed to say feebly: “I suppose it is getting pretty cold over there, you can understand it if the climate doesn’t particularly appeal—and she’s missing a summer.”

    “Mm.”

    “Um, how’s her study going?”

    “Good. She seems to be really into it. I dunno how that Sir Maurice did it but he got her into the course that started in September. Well, paid the huge fees, I suppose that helped.”

    Jan blinked. “You mean Jim’s firm is paying the fees? I thought Max was gonna cough up?”

    “Um, yes. I mean, he was going to, but the firm’s taken her on as a cadet and they’re paying. She has to work for them as well, of course.”

    “What about paying them back, Katy?”

    “I don’t think so,” replied Katy in a sort of vague surprise.

    “Um, not necessarily in money, but don’t they usually make them sign up to work for them for a specified period, in these arrangements?”

    “I’m not sure… Ran wants to work for them anyway,” she said, looking vaguely puzzled.

    Mm. Well, not concentrating on what she didn’t want to hear always had been Katy’s coping mechanism. Lucky her. Jan didn’t enquire further, she could always get the real gen out of Dan, if she needed to. She thanked her for the tea, praising it quite genuinely, and agreeing fervently when Katy said she might buy it in future instead of their usual tea, fended off further thanks for the pie, and escaped with only a short period of looking blankly at what she’d done to those sacks of Pete’s and pretending she believed it was art.

    … “Well, it was, I suppose!” she said to Pete with a laugh.

    “Bound to be, if you thought it looked like a collection of bits of bleached sack. Oy, did she use actual bleach?”

    “No, left them out on the line for ages and ages.”

    “That’s good, ’cos I don’t think Sir Poncy Max’s poncy ecolodge is gonna allow anything in that’s used environmentally destructive chemicals.”

    “Don’t call him that,” said Jan without conviction.

    Pete sniffed faintly, but desisted.

    “Um, you don’t mind walking Rover, do you?” said Jan uneasily.

    “Eh? ’Course not! Lead me to it!” he replied, rubbing his hands. “Been telling Ran for years all the brute needs is a bit of obedience training and being taught he’s not top dog.”

    “Hah, hah,” said Jan feebly.

    Pete smiled a bit. “Townee. –Oy, what are ya snivelling for?” he asked in alarm.

    Jan blew her nose. “Nothing. Glad we’re us, I think.”

    “As opposed to who? Dan and Katy? I know she’s not there half the time—or pretending not to be, same diff; but it doesn’t worry him, ya know. And not all dames’d find him that easy to take, ya know.”

    “Not them, you clot. No, I was thinking of Ran and Max specifically, I suppose, but young couples in general.”

    “Uh—don’t know what they’re letting themselves in for?” he groped.

    Jan eyed the mere man tolerantly. “No, you great hairy clot. Don’t know how lucky they are and that what they’ve got is worth hanging onto.”

    “Oh! That all?” said Pete with a laugh. He ceased working on what he’d been working on at the kitchen table, came over to her, and put his arms round her. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have me twenties and thirties back for quids.”

    No, nor the period when he’d been mixed up with the American cow, reflected Jan, gratefully resting her chin on his wiry shoulder and letting herself be hugged…

    She blinked, as her eyes came back into focus. “What is that on the kitchen table?”

    “Eh? Aw.” Pete released her. “I’ve got it on a bit of newsp—”

    “Get it OUT of the kitchen!” shouted Jan. “Flaming bloody Norah! This isn’t just our own dump, Pete, it’s the bloody ecolodge’s kitchen! Are you MAD?”

    Looking defiant, Pete gathered the dismembered bits of the Taupo Shores Tallulah’s innards up tenderly. “It’s not dirty—”

    “OUT!”

    Scowling, he went over to the door. “Look, I gotta do it somewhere, and the shed’s full of—”

    “Tomato seedlings that were your LAST obsession! You’re the living end, Pete!”

    Scowling, Pete shambled out.

    After a moment Jan rushed over to the door. “HEY! You can bloody go and walk Rover NOW!”

    “All right,” he muttered. “If you say so.”

    “PETE!”

    “YES! All RIGHT!” he shouted. He ambled away, muttering: “Strewth, a bloke can’t call ’is soul ’is own round here.”

    Jan shut the door and tottered back inside. “What was that?” she said faintly. “The macho male’s way of communicating he’s had it up to the eyeballs with his own poncy ecolodge? Shit. Well, fair enough, he is sixty-seven, and everyone deserves a bit of peaceful retirement, free of trendy backpackers in their trendy suede safari boots. Um… shit. He’d never wear selling the dump, but if we don’t, what’ll we live on? Put a manager in? What’d that leave us to live on? …Shit,” she concluded sourly.

    Even though she’d known it was just like the ones in the mags that Felicity admired, Max’s modern flat had been an awful shock to Ran’s system. Well, it was lovely to look at—yes. Very tasteful. But with its plain, pale, varnished floors, stark white squared-off sofas, and low white cabinets against the white walls, it was so… null. No, cold and null, to be strictly accurate. He’d said it had a view of the river—and actually Aunty Moyra had said it was the view of the river that had sent the price up astronomically—so Ran had thought that’d be pretty, but it wasn’t! It was interesting, yes, but it wasn’t pretty, it was all sort of industrial and the water looked dirty—in fact undoubtedly it was dirty, in the middle of London—and there were no trees in sight at all. She’d thought it might be like the Waikato, with the weeping willows that technically were pretty much noxious weeds out in New Zealand but nevertheless very pretty. Or like Christchurch, where the Avon was extravagantly pretty; but it wasn’t. Max seemed very proud of his view, so she didn’t like to criticize it.

    On the whole, though, the view was just a minor contributing factor in the flat’s coldness. It was the place itself. The layout was very plain but heck, most flats were, and other people managed to make them warm and—and welcoming! Well, not her and Belinda and Dave and Susan, back in Auckland: in fact when Max had seen their flat he’d laughed and said: “I see! Your old student flat, darling!” Well, yeah, it was, and none of them had been earning enough to do anything to it—not that there was much that their mean landlord would have let them do in any case—but if it was scungy, it was also cosy. Even Felicity’s last flat, white concrete block throughout, had been warmer-looking than Max’s. She’d put a lot of thought into choosing furniture and rugs and curtains that would be elegant but warming, in fact. After a week of living in Max’s awful chilling flat, Ran regretted deeply ever having laughed at Felicity’s earnestness over her interior décor. She was so right: your surroundings did matter!

    You might have thought that even though a person liked plain white sitting-room furniture and a funny-looking white lamp that had cost The Earth—he’d shown Ran the mag he’d seen it in—he wouldn’t necessarily want a terrifically plain bedroom as well, but Max’s bedroom was fully as awful as his sitting-room. Instead of white it was a very pale oatmeal: he had explained that the transition between the two rooms was easy and comfortable, not too much of a shock to the senses, but to Ran’s mind it was like walking from the freezer into the fridge: a few degrees up but not enough to warm the average human being. The pale, polished floorboards were continued but on top of them he had a plain oatmeal wool rug. Not with a fuzzy pile like a carpet: a woven rug. Yes, done by hand by a craftsperson, darling, he’d said, smiling. In that case why the Hell had the craftsperson chosen all pale oatmeal wool? Not even natural wool: it had a slight fleck in it but Ran, who was used to the natural wools favoured by the New Zealand weavers, could see at a glance that this was scoured and professionally dyed wool. So why chuck away megabucks on it? You got exactly the same effect with a nice piece of New Zealand Feltex Berber body-carpet like what Jan and Pete had in the ecolodge’s bedrooms. She didn’t, however, say so to Max, who was very proud of his rug. The curtains were the same shade of oatmeal: not wool, but heavy cotton. He liked the weave. Well, yes, they were lovely curtains, and they had the merit of hiding the pale oatmeal narrow Venetians, but why couldn’t he have gone for a contrast?

    Max’s huge king-size divan bed was covered during the day by a tailored pale oatmeal wool thing, not textured at all but very, very plain, the exact same shade as the carpet. At night he took it off, because it was very heavy (so why have it?—right) and had a big caramel duvet that exactly matched his caramel sheets and pillowcases. True, these were several shades darker than the flaming walls, curtains and carpet—small consolation. The low cabinets, some of which, after you’d wandered round in confusion wondering where his drawers were, opened to reveal drawers, were in lovely pale wood that, gee, toned with the oatmeal. Willow? Zat so? The wardrobes were built in and so discreet that Ran hadn’t realized at first there were any.

    When they first came into the room he laughed and said: “Oh, God! Sorry, Ran, darling, this was one of Primmy’s efforts!” and bodily removed the large, modern-looking blue glass vase that was standing on one of the low cabinets. Okay, the vase might not have been what you saw in the posh mags, and it might, as he later said, have been mass-produced, but at least it had given some colour to the room!

    By this time Ran hadn’t been expecting anything of the ensuite, so at least she was neither surprised nor disappointed when it turned out to be all white with a grey granite vanity top. The kitchen matched it, no surprises there. His kitchen appliances were all those huge grey industrial steel ones but gee, the shock if they hadn’t been would’ve shortened Ran’s life by a minimum of ten years. It was just as well he didn’t have a cat or a dog—or even a budgie or a goldfish—’cos any animal would have died of frostbite in the place. Never mind the bloody central heating.

    Ran didn’t criticize anything: he was proud of it, and even she, ignorant Colonial yob though she was, could see that it was all in the most exquisite taste. And must have cost a bomb—yeah.

    “I thought,” she said limply, when they finally got around to doing some cooking—which rather naturally wasn’t until they’d been there for a while—“that you might have some of that lovely bright red enamel cookware. Um, I forget what it’s called, I think it’s French. Or is it Danish? Um, Felicity likes it. You can get it in a sort of deep blue, too, she chose that.”

    Max’s pots and pans were all black. Matte black. He gave her that special kindly smile that she’d now realized was his way of not putting down ignorant Colonials and other yobs and explained what it was. Well, he was right: it was great to cook with, not that he was much of a cook. Singed steak on his special little grill—okay, Max, griddle—or grilled fish in his special fish griddle—okay, Max, pan—or baked fish in his long fish casserole in the oven. Fish kettle? Ran felt so limp at this one that she wasn’t even up to saying “Geddouda here.”

    After six months of it, and having endured the rigours of the English winter, Ran was coming to the miserable conclusion that maybe, though she loved him, she wasn’t gonna be able to hack Max’s way of life after all. It wasn’t the weather: she had got used to having to wrap up in very heavy clothes for outdoors but with lighter things under them than you’d have worn in winter back home, because everybody had central heating or very efficient heaters.

   —Almost everybody: he’d taken her up to his Uncle David’s big house in the country, Wenderholme, for Christmas, and though the rooms they lived in were reasonably warm, most of the house was freezing. And his Aunt Penny’s house, which was kind of in the grounds, only not close to the big house, a lovely two-storeyed old house that back home you’d have said was a really decent-sized house but that Penny said was comfortable but a bit cramped, wasn’t warm at all, it didn’t have central heating, only fireplaces, and she and her friend Janet who helped run their kennels mostly lived in the big kitchen. Which was really lovely, loads of mats over the tiled floor, and a big modern stove as well as an antique one that they burned wood in, and saggy old comfortable armchairs and a sofa as well as the big varnished dining table. Max loved it, too, so why couldn’t he see that that sort of thing’d be much, much nicer to live with than his flat?

    Most of the dogs of course lived in the kennels—beautiful red setters—but Penny and Janet had three dogs who were proper pets: Pongo, who was a splodgy black and white, longish-haired, short-legged dog that Penny reckoned was half spaniel, but his mother had been got at by a mongrel, Lance, who was an elegant greyhound that had never won any races and that Janet had rescued when his owners were going to have him put down, and Lulu, a fat, wheezing bulldog, just about the ugliest thing Ran had ever seen and totally ferocious-looking but actually sweet as pie.

    “I do miss Rover,” she said to Max after meeting Pongo, Lance and Lulu.

    “Mm, of course, darling,” he said, giving her a hug, “but the quarantine regulations are frightful, you wouldn’t want him to be in prison for all that long time, would you?”

    “No,” agreed Ran sadly. “He’d pine.”

    “Mm. We’ll see him when we go for visits, sweetheart.”

    Yeah. Only when was that gonna be? Moyra was really keen for them all to go out this summer—the English summer, that was—but Max thought he might have to work. He’d also had to work over most of Christmas. Ran had known intellectually that people didn’t have their long holidays at Christmas on this side of the world but it had been an awful shock to her system when he’d gone straight back to London the day after Boxing Day.

    During the English winter Ran, who normally never had colds, came down with three colds and two bouts of flu, which she insisted weren’t nearly bad enough to need the doctor—Max was the sort of person who did tend to call the doctor, Ran had discovered, whereas in her family you mostly checked the person’s temperature, decided that it was only the flu, provided plenty of basins for the up-chucking, and let them get over it naturally.

    Then she came down with a third bout of flu in spring, just when Max had declared the weather was so much nicer and she’d be all right now, and could start to enjoy herself again. She was so feverish that he panicked and called the doctor without even consulting her.

    “I hardly ever get the flu, usually,” she said weakly as the doctor, a very smooth-looking character in a spiffy suit who had apparently been to the same school as Max (yikes), took her temperature and reported that it was only the flu.

    “It must be a different strain,” said Max worriedly.

    “Mm. Did you say this is the third bout? Hm,” he said. “Been doing too much, have you, Ran?”

    “She got up miles too soon after the other two bouts, and she’s been working terribly hard,” said Max. “And insists on carting home loads of shopping and cooking us lovely meals—though I have said it’s so easy to eat out, she doesn’t need to bother after a long day studying.”

    “It’s one of those diploma courses,” said Ran feebly. “It’s a bit pressurized, but it’s good that you can do it within one academic year. See, I can get the tube to really near the good supermarket he showed me, and then catch the bus the rest of the way home, it’s no trouble at all, really.”

    “Yes, but darling, last Tuesday you didn’t catch the bus!" said Max loudly.

    “Tuesday’s the day I have classes until six,” Ran explained. “I wanted some fresh air and exercise, so I walked home from the shops.”

    “Yes, and it came on to pour and you got soaked!” he said crossly.

    “I thought it was just getting dark,” Ran explained to the doctor. “I am used to a rainy climate.”

    “Mm. It sounds to me as if you’ve been overdoing it.”

    “I’ve been trying to tell her that, George!” agreed Max.

    “I haven’t, I’ve been leading a normal life,” said Ran weakly: she was beginning to feel she was gonna up-chuck again: her head was awfully hot; only maybe it wasn’t just the flu, maybe it was the stress of being incarcerated in bed and examined and criticized by two up-market Pommy males in spiffy suits. –Max was also in a suit, as she’d told him, once he’d confessed what he’d done, that she didn’t need looking after and if he insisted on having the doc, okay, but he could go into work straight after.

    “It’s all a big change for you, though, Ran, darling.”

    “Exactly,” agreed George. “Try doing less, Ran; God knows this bugger can afford a few restaurant meals. –I’ll give you a prescription,” he said to Max—not to her, please note—and blah, blah, old-boy blah…

    Ran fell out of bed and belted for the bathroom where she threw up convulsively into his pristine modern white loo of a design she’d never seen before. Kind of, um, more streamlined than ordinary ones.

    Max then decided that Moyra had to come and look after her while he was at work. Ran wouldn’t have said that Aunty Moyra was the sort to enjoy sitting by a person’s bed of sickness, and there was certainly nothing she could do—there was nothing anybody could do when it was the flu, you just had to get over it. However, he was adamant and she was too weak to go on arguing with him.

    So Moyra came and after some initial fussing and insisting she had to drink a great big glass of Lucozade, which Ran was privately convinced she was gonna throw up within the next twenty minutes, but downed to please her, retired to the sitting-room and the TV. Fortunately she knew which of those featureless pale cabinets it was hidden in, because Ran was now so feverish she couldn’t for the life of her remember.

    “I don’t see why you have to force your poor mum to sit out there listening to me up-chucking,” she said when he came home from work that evening. “There’s nothing she can do.”

    Moyra had tactfully left them alone for at least two minutes. Now she shot in. “Don’t take any notice of her, Max! I love being here! And you cannot possibly be left home alone, Ran, darling: you’re very sick! What if you got worse?”

    In that case she’d probably throw up on the oatmeal rug and he’d get rid of it, so good! Ran didn’t say so, largely because she wasn’t feeling up to conversation at all.

    Max made sure she was comfortable and pulled his mother into the other room, frowning. “How is she really?” he said in a lowered voice, having closed the door.

    Moyra made a face. “She has been very feverish, darling. Very bad around four—I thought you might come home early,” she noted by the by.

    It was now nearly eight. Max frowned. “Couldn’t get away: John had set up a meeting. They want to tender for a new industrial complex— Never mind that. How is she?”

    “It is only the flu, darling. Well, as I say, very hot around fourish and she was sick again and then she had a sleep and felt much, much better. Um… there is something, Max. She was muttering when she was very hot.”

    Max stared at her in horror. “Why didn’t you ring George?”

    “No, because then she was sick again, and felt a lot better! And her forehead was much cooler and you can see for yourself she’s feeling a lot better now! No, it was the muttering, darling,” said Moyra uncomfortably. “Well, of course when one’s feverish one does come out with a lot of rubbish—goodness, I remember when your father had that dose of—”

    “For God’s sake, Moyra, must you drag up the horrors of the Dark Ages? What about Ran?”

    “Ssh!” Moyra glanced over her shoulder uneasily but the door remained closed. “It was about the flat.”

    “What?” he said blankly.

    “Um, horrible oatmeal rugs and curtains, and—and cold, Max, darling,” said his mother limply. “And then she shouted something about grey all the time—I think that must have meant London—and then she sat up and said, quite lucidly, I thought at first, only then I realized it was part of it: ‘Penny and Janet have got their dogs, so why can’t I have Rover?’ Um, only then she said: ‘He isn’t oatmeal, he’s all wrong and I’m all wrong and it’s horrible and you can’t have oatmeal dogs!’ So I realized it was the fever, still,” she ended miserably.

    “Shit!” said Max with suppressed violence.

    Moyra shot another look over her shoulder. “Ssh! Well, as I say, one comes out with all sorts when one’s temperature’s very high, but, um, I did think it was indicative, Max. I don’t think she’s very happy here.”

    For a moment Max was attacked by the mad suspicion that Moyra was making all this up as part of a potty campaign to get him to settle in New Zealand near the cousins and build her a holiday mansion on the lakeshore. Then he looked at her worried face and bit his lip. “Mm. Well, the weather’s been fairly awful by her standards.”

    “Yes; she did say to me the other day—before she came down with it, I mean, the day we went to Harrods—that the winter seemed to be going on awfully long and were the English winters always this long?”

    “It’s spring,” said Max feebly.

    “Not to her, I don’t think, darling.”

    “I—well, she did remark on how cold it was, but— It was stupid to assume she’d be used to cold winters. I suppose I was unconsciously thinking of conditions on the slopes. It was much milder in the town,” said Max lamely.

    “Yes.”

    He gnawed on his lip. “She’ll adjust, though, surely?”

    “I don’t know, dear. There was quite a bit about the grey. Has she ever told you that what she loves about Auckland is the blue?” said Moyra, swallowing.

    Max of course had only seen the city in winter. “No. Blue what?”

    “Um, well, she just said blue, but I think she meant the sky and the sea, darling. Well, of course the day I arrived it was so humid I didn’t really notice anything, but then going home Katy came up with me because she wanted to see a friend who does lovely weaving and we visited another friend of theirs who runs a gallery and it was glorious, darling! We crossed right over the harbour, the most wonderful views, and the friend’s flat was in a Fifties block that’s been modernised: only four storeys but she’s on the top floor, with the most wonderful view straight out over the sea! Er, well, Katy said the big island in the distance was a volcano but it’s dead,” she added on an uncertain note. “But it was all lovely, darling! So tropical! As nice as Jamaica!”

    Max blinked. “If you say so.” He eyed her somewhat drily. “Bougainvillaea-swathed walls, perchance?” –These had featured largely in Moyra’s past encomiums of Jamaica.

    “You think that’s a joke, Max, but there were. The flats’ gardens have been completely redone and there was a wonderful deep purple one on the front wall!”

    “Oh. So it is warm enough for it to grow,” he said lamely.

    “Obviously!” replied his mother in vindicated tones.

    “Mm.”

    Moyra took a deep breath. “Max, darling, I know you think I’m am interfering old has-been, and of course Ran’s only had a bare seven months here, as yet—but if you seriously want to keep her, don’t you think you’d better think really hard about—about your priorities, darling?”

    “To keep her!” said Max in startled and indignant tones.

    “Yes,” replied Moyra firmly.

    “I— Moyra, you do realize that coming on top of your campaign to get me to design potty ecolodges for YDI this approach smacks as distinctly suspect?”

    “Don’t change the subject, Max,” replied Moyra with superb dignity.

    Max sighed and ran his hand through his curls. “Do you want me to end up as potty as Daddy?”

    “Of course not,” she replied without any signs of excitement or even interest.

    Okay, she didn’t. Tommy Throgmorton was as of this moment beachcombing in Sri Lanka. Literally: he and the current dusky maiden ran a shell shop for the tourists where they sold the shells he picked up on the beach. It was a living, of sorts, but what they in fact lived off was the fairly generous allowance Uncle David made him. Considerably more generous than what Grandfather, whose avowed aim had been to bring him to his senses, had allowed him. In his time Max’s father, who was a very charming chap indeed, had tried leading and composing for a pop group—he was quite musical and had considerable charisma but absolutely no application, so after a few gigs at friends’ parties this endeavour had gone nowhere—the law, the City, helping out at The Wenderholme Stud, professional jump racing—he was a very good rider but the lack of application meant he hadn’t usually been able to make the weight—helping his sister Penny with the dogs—a complete disaster, as anyone who knew their two temperaments could have predicted—bumming round the world in quest of ashrams and enlightenment, and just bumming round the world. The Sri Lankan girl must be at least the fifteenth dusky maiden he’d claimed to have settled down with but by this time the family had long since lost all interest, let alone the desire to keep track.

    Max walked over to the windows, and stared out irritably at the view of city lights reflected in the river.

    “She thinks it’s ugly,” said Moyra on a detached note.

    “Rubbish,” he replied grimly.

    Moyra said nothing.

    “I’ll get the dog over,” he said, without turning round.

    “Setting aside the fact that it might not come through the horrid quarantine—remember that awful time Penny and Janet—”

    “Yes! The brute is not an over-bred, highly strung, pedigree nervous wreck!”

    “No, but he’s not a young dog, darling: it would be big shock to his system. But as I say, setting that aside, it would only be a band-aid solution.”

    “What?” he said impatiently.

    “A plaster,” said his mother tranquilly.

    “I know what—” Max broke off, scowling. “Rubbish.”

    “Think about it, Max,” advised Moyra, drifting out to the kitchen.

    Max stood at the window, scowling out at the view of the river at night.

    He thought it over, off and on, for some weeks. Then he made an appointment with Hill Tarlington from YDI—recognizing somewhat sourly that his decision to do so was influenced by the firm’s having decided to tender for the industrial complex he’d mentioned to Moyra. It was in, ye gods, Dubai. The place itself seemed to be quite peaceful but in his opinion going anywhere in the Middle East at this point in Earth history was crackers. Added to which, wanting to work in a place that hot was crackers. All very well for John and Alexander to say it was a great opportunity for the firm: it wouldn’t be either of them who’d be the mug appointed to get out on the site in his hard hat to check on the work and solve problems, would it? No matter whose name was ostensibly attached to the designs. And, just incidentally, he was beginning to feel he’d had enough of this last: true, they’d let him take the credit for his own work on his last two projects, but before that there had been the factory in Scotland and the quite large shopping centre in Belgium that, even though he’d done all the design work apart from some very tentative concept sketches for the latter, had somehow ended up with the senior partners’ names attached and his nowhere. He hadn’t minded so much when he was only starting out—everybody had to go through it, after all—but now that he was beginning to be known in his profession, it was just not on.

    “My immediate boss, John Banks, did mention that negotiations over your design for the ecolodge seemed to have stalled a bit,” said Tarlington nicely.

    Max sipped his whisky. “Mm. Er—this isn’t really a factor in my thinking, Tarlington, but Alexander Wyatt isn’t keen: the firm’s got a lot of other stuff on hand and he’s very involved in tendering for a new project in the Middle East.”

    Hill Tarlington preserved his countenance but silently recognized that that certainly helped to explain why Foxe Wyatt’s quote for completing the design for the ecolodge had been so excessive as to cause Sir Maurice Bishop to hurl it bodily across his office, shouting: “BALLS!” And why they had also quoted a figure for which they would let YDI purchase the initial concept outright. Not quite so outrageous: that had only got a grim: “Balderdash.”

    “I see,” he said neutrally. “Of course I can’t negotiate on the firm’s behalf, but I had the impression that they’re coming round to the idea of buying the concept. Once Maurice realizes how it stacks up against the cost of having someone on our own payroll do a design from scratch I think he’ll be willing to offer a figure that your people may be prepared to accept.”

    Max looked dry, but nodded. Alexander had called Maurice Bishop a penny-pinching old woman but had accepted with a shrug John Foxe’s point that if they wanted the thing off their hands they’d better be prepared to negotiate.

    “Glad to hear it. It’ll be winter out there again before long, you won’t be able to do much on the site once the rain sets in.”

    “I have pointed that out,” said Hill drily. “Well, what can I do for you?”

    Max rubbed his chin slowly. “Confidentially, I have been thinking about my options. I hadn’t planned for it at this stage, but— Well, for one thing, I don’t want to work in the Middle East, if the new tender comes through. And I’m rather fed up with working for a large firm that tends to take the credit for a lot of my work.” He eyed Hill thoughtfully.

    “Uh-huh. I’m not guaranteeing YDI wouldn’t do the same. Our own architectural staff mostly do conversions, apart from the ones who handle our chain of motels. –Different trading name,” he explained.

    “Yes: MM Motels, isn’t it?”

    “Yeah: originally, back before YDI bought them out. they were the Merry Motoring places.”

    “Good God: Nanny took me for a summer holiday at one of those the year my parents were busting up,” said Max limply. “On the outskirts of Grange-over-Sands. Terrific treat!”

    Tarlington grinned at him. “It’s still there: The Grange MM, now.”

    “Pale yellow with orange doors?” said Max on an eager note.

    “No, ’fraid not, the MM chain features nautical white and navy with extraneous lifebuoys everywhere!”

    Max’s eyes twinkled. “What a pity: that colour scheme is one of my earliest memories!”

    “Seared into the soul: mm,” agreed Hill on a dry note. “Can I ask what your thoughts are, at this stage?”

    “We-ell… The thought of swapping one big firm for another doesn’t appeal all that much, really. Though I admit I have changed my mind about the type of work that YDI would require: working on that ecolodge was terrific fun! Actually I’ve been itching to go ahead with it, daft though it is! I have always enjoyed my work, but I’ve never actually had fun with it before.”

    “Uh-huh. Not thinking of going into private practice?”

    “I have thought about it… The initial set-up costs are exorbitant. I’d have to sell the flat—not that it’d be much loss,” he said with a sudden frown. “And then, in the line of work I’m known for, the clients tend to look for an established firm with the size of staff to handle large projects… Er, well, I was wondering… At some point someone mentioned that the post with your lot might possibly entail being based in Auckland with your South Pacific office.”

    “I can’t say definitely what the thinking is, but it is an idea that’s been mooted, yes. And at the moment the original design work does seem to be in that area.”

    “Mm. May I ask what the situation is with the Australian ecolodges?”

    Hill made a face. “I suppose I can tell you this: it’s certainly not a secret, in fact it’s been splashed all over one of their mags. The chap who designed Big Rock Bay Ecolodge for us has received terrific publicity on the strength of it and accepted commissions from other clients that’ll keep him busy from now until Kingdom Come. Er—all for the same type of tropical design—well, there are evidently a fair few people with money who fancy exotic hideaways in the more tropical parts of Australia which they may use for a much as two months out of a year,” he said with a slight shrug. “Maurice is extremely annoyed, as you can imagine, though one or two people have pointed out that if he was so pleased with the chap he should have offered him a few more commissions. But one consideration was that we’re not thinking of the same type of thing for the places in the other states, and his speciality is the more tropical sort of look, using the through-drafts for natural ventilation, that sort of thing.”

    “I see. So in effect the position of architect in charge of your South Seas operations is vacant.”

    “Uh—you could put it like that, possibly, but I have to admit that Maurice and John haven’t, Throgmorton.”

    “Mm: too mean to pay the salary: I have encountered that syndrome before,” said Max on a grim note. “Uh—look. I’d be interested in a five-year appointment with YDI in that position. Possibly one could stress the point,” he said, eyeing him sardonically, “that your projects may actually get off the ground within a reasonable time-frame, with someone permanently in charge of the design side.”

    “I see. No more than five years?”

    “Not for the initial contract, no,” replied Max smoothly. “And based in Auckland with Jim Thompson.”

    “Right.” He hesitated. “Er—look, are you sure this is what you want? I’ll certainly speak to Maurice, but—uh—well, everyone’s been very kind to me in both New Zealand and Australia, and of course they are both English-speaking countries, but… I liked Auckland, it’s a pretty city in a beautiful setting, but one or two of the people I spoke to admitted quite freely that’s there’s nothing approaching cultural facilities there. Er, don’t know what your tastes might be, but one woman—admittedly they’re damned well off—said that they get over to Sydney when they want opera.”

    “I am very fond of opera, but my plan would be to time my hols to coincide with Glyndebourne,” said Max with a twinkle in his eye. “No, well, Ran’s told me exactly what cultural facilities Auckland offers, and I think I’m prepared for the culture shock!”

    “Very well, then; I’ll speak to Maurice. I don’t say he may not blow his top, but I think you’re in with a chance. You’d better write to him, Max. Put the points you’ve made to me, especially about increased efficiency in getting the projects off the ground.”

    “Exactly!” he said with a laugh. “Thanks, Hill.”

   Ran came into the big canteen at YDI’s head office looking very shy. It wasn’t that the people she had to work with hadn’t been nice to her, but in the first place the staff in general weren’t used to female project management staff and didn’t know quite how to react to her, and in the second place most of the women were terrifically smartly dressed: either secretaries or executive types. The younger men were even more smartly dressed and even more executive types. Even the ones who, she had now realized, weren’t actually execs at all. The older men were simply terrifying. This set-up was no different than that at her place of work in Auckland, where, or so it had seemed to Ran, everyone had a well-defined rôle in the social structure of the organization except odd female researchers. So it wasn’t that she  wasn’t used to it, but that didn’t make it any easier choosing where to sit at lunchtime.

    It was supposed to be a very egalitarian canteen—Ran had done a lot of background reading and she knew it was patterned on a model from Japanese management theory—but as anybody but a management theoretician would immediately have worked out, all that happened was that people sat in little cliquey clumps, with their own sort. Though it did mean that you could see your boss only taking fifteen minutes maximum for his tea break and eating the same sort of lunch as everybody else. Not that the real high-ups did eat their lunch in here very often, but at least the firm wasn’t chucking money away on an executive dining-room!

    Sometimes when she had a day in at YDI she arranged to meet Max for lunch but just lately he was buried in work and eating sandwiches at his desk. She joined the queue behind two terrifically smartly-suited ladies from Human Resources that she’d met when she had to fill in all the forms. Luckily it didn’t matter that she couldn’t remember their names, because they were chatting and didn’t look at her. After a while a young man in a terrifically smart grey suit came and joined the queue behind her. Ran was just wondering if she should say hullo, even though she didn’t know him—it seemed the human thing to do but on the other hand when she’d tried that once before the young man in question had got too encouraged and asked her to happy hour with him—but luckily another young man with even spikier hair came and joined him and they started talking about cars. She would’ve been happy to join in if it had been about cars’ insides but it wasn’t: expensive models. Ran had seen quite a few Porsches in London but she sincerely doubted that either of these young men could afford one.

    You might think that a canteen of a firm in the hospitality industry would offer something a bit special, but actually it didn’t. Today the hot choices were fried fish, macaroni cheese, and something called toad in the hole that looked as nasty as it sounded. Ran was hungry: she chose the macaroni cheese, it was usually not bad, and a side salad. The salads were quite nice, possibly because the older execs often had them. As usual, the nice lady at the counter gave her a little bread roll without being asked.

    Then she looked round desperately for a place to sit. Often she chose an empty table rather than barge in on a group that she didn’t know and that wouldn’t want her, but today there didn’t seem to be any. However, over there one of the smaller tables only had one girl sitting at it and she looked quite ordinary, so Ran went thankfully over there and said: “Hullo. Is it okay if I join you?”

    To which the quite ordinary-looking girl, who was just wearing ordinary jeans, not low-slung, and a plain white tee-shirt under a tweed jacket, with her brown hair in a big fat plait, replied: “Yes, of course.”

    So, even though she had the toad in the hole, Ran sat down with her.

    After a bit the girl said: “Is the macaroni cheese nice?”

    “Yes, not bad. They make it out of those ready-mix packets, but it tastes all right.”

    “I thought it looked like the packet stuff,” she agreed. “Have you ever tried the toad in the hole?”

    “No. Actually I’d never heard of it before today!” said Ran with her friendly grin.

    At this the girl looked very relieved, asked her whether she was a New Zealander, revealed happily that she herself was an Australian—which Ran had already realized—and explained that toad in the hole was an English thing and she was having it because she wanted to see what it was like. And yes, it was as nasty as it looked!

    … “She sounds like a lovely girl, Ran,” said Max to the encomium that evening, wondering uneasily if it was because she was a fellow Antipodean that Ran had liked her so much, and if it was just another indication that she was homesick.

    “Yes; she’s not like the rest of them at all!” said Ran enthusiastically.

    “Er—no?” he replied weakly.

    “No! Like, she said she has got a couple of smart suits, her flatmate made her get them, actually I think she chose them for her, only she keeps them for best, and she’s only in for some orientation this week, and guess what she had on?”

    Max eyed her thoughtfully. Tired jeans, a black singlet and a black leather jacket five sizes too big for her would have been his bet. Not that on Ran’s sturdy figure, they didn’t look good. Bloody good, in fact.

    Ecstatically Ran told him what her new-found friend had been wearing.

    “I see,” he said weakly. “Well, good, she sounds like your type of person.”

    “Yeah. Even most of the people on my courses are real button-down—y’know?” she said glumly.

    With an effort that hurt Max refrained from putting a hand to his own collar-points. “Mm. Well, most of them would be in jobs, I think, sweetheart: doing the course as a post-graduate qualification.”

    “Not all: some of them are only job-hunting, but they tend to wear the smartest gear, actually. Personally if I’d bought a real spiffy suit for my job interviews I wouldn’t waste it on my classes. What if someone spilt something on it or ya fell over? Like yesterday some idiot had spilt a can of Coke in the corridor and never bothered to clean it up.”

    “You’ve got a point!” he said, grinning. “Well, why not invite this new friend to our little dinner, darling?”

    “Yeah, great! She might not still be here, she doesn’t live in London, but I’ll ask her!” decided Ran, beaming.

    Max sagged. At least it seemed to have been the right thing to say. Making a mental note to warn Jimmy not on any account to come straight from work in his business suit, he said: “Actually, I thought the dinner could be a sort of celebration.”

    “What of? I thought your birthday wasn’t till September?”

    “Mm. Not that. Sit down, Ran: I’ll explain.”

    “Can’t you explain in the kitchen? Those nice potatoes you bought still need to be washed, ya know. And they won’t cook themselves.”

    “This is more important than the dinner.”

    Looking mildly surprised, Ran sat down again.

    Max handed her a glass of red wine.

    “I thought this was yours?” she said uneasily.

    Max poured one for himself. “No, this is mine. Isn’t that okay? I thought you preferred red?”

    “Not on the sofa,” replied Ran, as still as a statue.

    “What? Oh! Er, that’s another thing we need to talk about. Put it like this, Ran: I don’t care if you spill it.”

    “Rats, Max, ya spent ages brushing the seat after that new girlfriend of Pig Bon-Dutton’s sat on that potato chip.”

    “Potato crisp,” he corrected mildly. “That was before I’d thought about my priorities.”

    “Oh,” said Ran, looking puzzled.

    “Um—well, you know I did that ecolodge design for YDI, of course.”

    “Have they coughed up the money for that at last?”

    “Y— Er, not that, but they have, yes. Bought it outright. Bloody John Foxe actually said in my hearing that they were glad to get rid of it.”

    “Oh,” said Ran, looking at him doubtfully.

    “Mm. Um, well, I had great fun doing the initial drawings and I’ve been itching to finish it, actually, but, uh— Damn. I’m not putting this the right way round. Um, well, I’d like the opportunity to finish it but I’m not heartbroken that the firm’s sold it outright to YDI, okay?”

    “Um, yeah,” she said dubiously.

    “However, I am very pissed off with the firm.”

    “Right, not letting you have your name on your own stuff. But they did for the last two big projects, didn’t they?”

    “Yes, but they've been backsliding. None of the concept drawings I’ve done for the Dubai tender have been put forward as mine. Granted it is a tender for the firm, but they should be acknowledging me as the senior architect on the project. I spoke to Foxe about it, but he did his cheerily dismissive thing, and bloody Alexander Wyatt told me kindly that when and if the tender came through would be the time to discuss it. Possibly overlooking the fact that that was precisely what he said about the Scottish project,” he added grimly.

    “Ooh, help!” gulped Ran.

    “Mm. I—uh—I had a talk with Hill Tarlington from YDI a few weeks back and, well, what with the fun of the ecolodge design and the challenge of breaking into a really new field, I told him that I was prepared to seriously consider a position with them. But that I’d prefer to be based in Auckland for the next five years, not London,” said Max on a firm note.

    Ran’s jaw sagged. “But you said the whole idea of ecolodges was potty,” she croaked.

    “Did I? Well, I’m sure I did!” he said with a laugh. “And of course it is! But does work have to be deadly serious? I’ve never had such fun in my life!”

    “Um, yes, but Max, once the newness wears off, won’t you be bored?”

    “Not within five years, I don’t think, darling. I have thought about it seriously, and each new ecolodge for YDI will pose quite a different set of problems—different challenges, you see.”

    “Ye-es… Different in specifics, Max, but not in kind,” said Ran cautiously.

    To her surprise this went over well: he beamed at her and said: “That’s a good point. Dan’s right: you’ve got a bloody good mind.” He tasted his wine. “Mm! Drink up, darling.” He drank some more and said: “You see, architecture is very largely specifics. My feeling is that five years is enough to give me some solid experience and to get my name known in a very different field—I must admit I’m thinking of the glossies where my designs will have a chance of appearing next to the articles on the tropical hideaways and allow me to break into the up-market end of the holiday home market, like that Queensland chap! And the job includes quite an amount of travel, so I’ll have an opportunity to get to know both Australia and New Zealand really well. I’ve talked them into offering me the position of Chief Architect, YDI South Pacific, with a very decent salary,” he said, grinning at her, “and that’ll sit very well with your position as assistant project manager on Jim’s projects, won’t it?”

    “Um, yeah,” croaked Ran, goggling at him. “Um, Mr Banks said I could work with Hill in England if I preferred it, though.”

    “Uh-huh. And would you prefer it?”

    “Um, well, I haven’t seen much of him because he’s been out on the sites, but he is very nice. That Jody, he’s a twerp, and really up-himself. Charles is okay, but he’s already got an assistant. Um, well, no, I’d rather work for Jim,” concluded Ran in a weak voice.

    “And go home?”

    “Mm,” she admitted, biting her lip. “It is very interesting here, Max, and it’s great being able to go to concerts and plays and the art galleries, but I—I don’t really like it. It—it seems grey and cold all the time.”

    Max finished his wine, set his glass on the coffee-table and put his arm round her. “It has been cold—it is cold. And London is a grey city. I like it, but I can understand why you don’t.”

    “Yes, but Muh-Max,” said Ran through trembling lips, “what if we get back to New Zealand and you’re the one that’s unhappy?”

    “I don’t think I will be, but if I am I’ll tell you, okay? And my contract will only be for five years.”

    “Have—have you signed it?’ she croaked.

    “Not yet, not without your approval,” he said simply.

    Ran gulped.

    “There are two of us involved, at least I thought so?”

    “Mm,” she managed.

    “So what do you say?”

    “Well, um, if it’s only for five years…”

    “Initially.”

    “Yes, but you could go home after that.”

    “Or start up on my own!” he said with a laugh. “Hill mentioned some English chap who’s doing very well—as a matter of fact I think he might have designed one of those huge holiday places at the far side of the lake!’

    “Um, yes. It’s a limited market though, Max.”

    “Not so much in Australia, I think. Added to which I rather think we could live very comfortably indeed on two commissions a year,” he noted drily.

    “Two?”

    Raising his eyebrows slightly, Max mentioned what the fees for an up-market holiday house like those ones on the expensive side of Lake Taupo would be.

    Ran’s jaw sagged.

    “See?” he said merrily, hugging her against his side. “Two could live very nicely on that! Even three or four!”

    Ran gulped.

    “That is, if you have crossed the world with the intention of marrying me if I don’t turn out to be too horrible,” said Max on a sly note.

    “Don’t be silly,” replied Ran feebly.

    “Well?” he said with a grin. “What about it?”

    She looked at him dubiously. “That’s not a proposal, is it?”

    “Er—yes. Oh, Lor’, do you want the whole bit? I can go down on my knees if you li—”

    “No! Don’t be a flaming nit!”

    “Is that a yes?” replied Max meekly.

    Ran’s cheeks were very, very red. “Um, yes,” she said in a tiny gruff voice.

    “Hurrah!” said Max with a laugh, kissing her very, very hard.

    “Look out!” gasped Ran as she was pushed back against the back of the pristine white wool sofa, the wine glass in her hand shook, and— “Shit!” she gasped in horror as the wine flew out and into the corner of the sofa. She squirmed away from his embrace and stared numbly at the mess.

    Max shrugged. “Too bloody bad. Forget it, Ran, I know you hate the damned things.”

    “It’s gone right into the crack!” cried Ran in anguish. “Whadd’ll we do?”

    “I said, forget—”

    “I’ll get a cloth!” she gasped, scrambling up and making a rush for the kitchen.

    Max looked at the mess his beautiful sofa had become and shrugged again.

    Ran rushed back with the sponge from the kitchen bench and a tea-towel.

    “Help, it’s sunk right in!” she gasped when application of both these aids had resulted in nothing very much.

    “Yes. To Hell with it.”

    “But we’ve got people coming to tea this week!” she cried in anguish.

    “Er—” Max looked weakly at the mess. “I’m afraid they’ll have to lump it. It’ll give Violet a chance to tell me that white furniture’s a bloody great mistake, yet again.”

    “Hang on!” she cried, rushing out madly in the direction of the bedroom.

    Max could just have sat there waiting but on reflection he got up and poured himself another glass of red.

    Ran rushed in with the crocheted afghan that had accompanied her all the way to Britain and that she’d never yet dared put on anything in his tasteful flat. “Here!” she gasped.

    Max watched unemotionally as the mess the corner of his sofa had become was enveloped in granny squares. Very traditional: black background, supporting every colour of the rainbow. Ooh, the corners had rainbow tassels on them: that was an unusual touch!

    “Where did that come from?” he asked unemotionally.

    “Aunty Rosalie! Dad’s sister!” gasped Ran. “She thought the bed might not have enough blankets!”

    Uh-huh. Something like that would have been his guess, though he had met the aunt in question, who lived in Auckland, only very briefly.

    “That looks better!” decided Ran in relief.

    It might not have been the thing, after the lady of one’s choice has just accepted one’s proposal of marriage, to break down in spluttering hysterics, but alas, at this point Max Throgmorton did so.

    “Nong,” said the lady of his choice, grinning at him. “Relatively better.”

    “Relatively better!” agreed Max ecstatically. “I’ll say!”

Next chapter:

https://theecolodgesbythelake-anovel.blogspot.com/2021/12/job-applications.html