Design Considerations

4

Design Considerations

    Max roused groggily to the view of a very ordinary-looking chap in a fawnish padded anorak, unzipped over a heavy brown knit jumper which allowed a neat checked shirt to show at the collar, standing in the bedroom doorway watching him.

    “Hullo,” he said cautiously.

    “Hullo,” the chap replied cautiously. “Didn’t mean to disturb you. How are you feeling?”

    “Uh—much better, thanks,” he said dazedly. Who in Hell was he? Some relation on Dan’s side? Couldn’t be their boy, he was too old—mid-thirties, possibly.

    “Ran said it’d be okay if I had a word with you,” said the chap awkwardly.

    “Er—of course. Ran?” replied Max cautiously. He was under the impression she’d gone back to Auckland.

    “Taking a bit of leave. Think she’s fed up with that job of hers. Thing is, though, if ya fritter it away during the year it doesn’t leave ya with much at Christmas, does it?”

    Max was rather flushed, though that could have been the warmth of the room, with a large electric heater going. “You mean she’s here?”

    “Yeah. In the kitchen. Katy’s had an inspiration for some sort of hangings made out of old sacks, wants to concentrate on them. Old sacks and natural dyes, think it is.”

    “Yes, she was telling me about the dyes, the other day,” said Max limply.

    “Fancy a cuppa?”

    “Er—yes; thank you.”

    Nodding, the chap vanished. Max sagged against his pillows. Was he supposed to know who he was? Had he in fact met him when he was on the painkillers? Or—uh—not someone he’d met up the mountain? They had spoken to a fair few people, but…

    “Here ya go!” announced the chap, bearing in the famous wooden tray, the one with inlay and all, made by Sean when he was in the Fourth Form. It had handles as well as a little raised edging all round it and take it for all in all was a miracle of the Fourth-Form woodworker’s art.

    “Thanks,” he said weakly as he set it on the bedside cabinet. “I ought to get up, really.”

    “The weather’s pretty mournful: nothing to get up for,” replied the chap cheerfully, drawing up an elaborately buttoned, upholstered lady’s chair. Very pale blue satin that sort of shimmered: it was a merciful dispensation of Providence, really, that he’d chosen to sit on it rather than the small, white cane chair with the frilled toile de Jouy seat cushion that was currently occupied by a fat white teddy and a flaxen-haired doll, both in pristine condition. He handed Max a mug and passed a plate of scones. “These are good, Ran made them,” he said kindly.

    Max took one but said on a desperate note: “Look, I’m sorry, but should I know you?”

    “Um, sorry. Didn’t I say?” he said, going very red. “Jim Thompson. I’m with YDI South Pacific. –Ran said it’d be okay if I had a word with you,” he reiterated.

    Uh-huh. Just who had been phoning whom? “Of course, Jim,” said Max nicely.

    Instead of having a word with him, Jim buried his nose in his mug of tea. It was, Max noted by the by, one of the delightful handmade pottery mugs of which the house featured not a few, in assorted styles and shapes. This one was straight-sided, with the matte ochre of the inside, handle and rim shading unevenly about halfway down the outside into a soft mauve. The colours suggested nothing so much as a desert at twilight, and though Max hadn’t seen those precise shades in the local desert, nevertheless that was what he thought of every time he saw one of the mugs from the set. They were particularly effective in that where the colours met there was a suggestion of a very slightly rougher grey. Dan and Katy also owned a lot of pleasant brown pottery mugs, variously rough-glazed, shiny-glazed or matte-glazed, but the one he himself had been favoured with wasn’t one of them but a sturdy plain white china thing with a leering orange cartoon cat on it. He sipped from it slowly, eyeing him warily.

    Finally Jim looked up and said: “Don’t take this the wrong way, will you, but I know you’re an architect, and the thing is, we’re desperate to find someone that can combine a decent design with, um, an environmental approach, and, um, well, not recycled wastes exactly, but a bit like what you did with those industrial complexes on the outskirts of Bonn and Birmingham.”

    Mm. “Do you work with a chap called Tarlington, by any chance, Jim?”

    “Hill Tarlington. Not with, exactly, he’s based in England. He is managing the projects.”

    Right. That was one. “You didn’t meet my mother back at Christmas, did you?”

    “Um, no,” said Jim blankly.

    “No,” he said limply. “One mercy. So did Tarlington suggest you talk to me, Jim?”

    “No, Pete and Jan over at Taupo Shores Ecolodge said you were here. See, our CEO’s doing his nut because none of the firm’s jokers can come up with a decent idea and they asked some others to submit designs and they were all horrible. Well, he thought they were, I never saw them. They’ve hired an Aussie to do the ecolodge in Queensland but he doesn’t know anything about our local materials and it’s different over there, you can have natural ventilation: he’s using the through-draughts. Sir Maurice reckons he’s the only architect in the country that understands about keeping the Aussie sun out. But that’s not what we need, though mind you a west-facing room’ll get stinking hot here in summer.”

    There was a short silence. Then Max said neutrally: “Don’t YDI generally convert existing places? Country mansions, that sort of thing?”

    “Yes. Think that’s why Sir Maurice thought the Meldrums’ bach’d be a starting-point,” he said glumly. “Only Hill took one look at it and just about had a fit. Well, ya could build on, but it’s basically only one room. But they want the site, ya see. It’s got great water access.”

    “Uh-huh. And the luxurious holiday homes that Moyra—sorry, that’s my mother—that she reported the district’s full of didn’t suggest any approaches to you or Tarlington?”

    “He didn’t like any of them. And they’re not environmentally-friendly. Um, you know: acres of plate glass and then ya have to rig up awnings or outside blinds or those sail things, and that’s not enough in full summer, either, so these rich types have all got air-con. And they mostly don’t come down the rest of the year but they’ve got central heating anyway.”

    “Uh-huh.” Max ate his piece of scone, eyeing him drily. “Pass me the plate of scones, would you?”

    “Oh—sorry.” Jim passed him the plate and Max set it on his lap.

    “Um, Ran said not to put anything on your legs,” he excused himself.

    “Mm? No, it’s only the shin that’s busted, Jim.”

    “Oh, right. Compound fracture, is it?”

    “Mm.”

    Jim took a scone. When he’d eaten it he said: “Like the jelly?”

    “Yes, it’s wonderful, Jim! What on earth is it?”

    “Well, it’s hard to believe, but it’s guava. Ruddy things grow like weeds. Caitlin’s gran’s got a whole hedge of them.”

    “Is the weather warm enough for them? I thought they were a tropical fruit.”

    “No,” he said blankly. “Oh! Yeah, I know the ones you mean! Only ever seen them in tins, think they’re South African. Nah, they won’t grow here. These ones are mountain guavas or something, from South America. Dark red. Well, I did look them up, once, because there was a photo in some ruddy gardening mag that didn’t look like Caitlin’s gran’s ones, according to her. There’s two sorts and they’re not related, or that’s the story. They’re only about this big,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger about a half-inch apart. “They taste revolting raw, so most people don’t grow them, these days. But they do make great jelly, eh?”

    “Absolutely! You could certainly serve it at your ecolodge!” said Max with a laugh.

    Jim rubbed his chin. “Ye-ah… Well, the stuff the Head Office types got off the Internet said the food had to be locally grown, not actually native, so I think that’d be all right.”

    “Who made it?” said Max, smiling at him. “Katy?”

    “Nope: Ran, last year. They’ve got a huge clump of the things out the back. Well, might of started off as a hedge, like Caitlin’s gran’s. See, this place used to belong to Dan’s mum and dad: it’s only the older gardens where you’d find guavas, these days.” He shuddered. “Not to mention feijoas! Dad ripped ours out when I was about seven; I can see ’im clear as I see you now,” he said, grinning at him. “Got hot as Hell, dug a ruddy great hole: reckoned the things had roots to Spain! But he got them out in the end. Then he had a long shower and a beer. After that he told Mum not to bother about tea, and took us all out for pizza to celebrate!”

    “I see,” said Max weakly. “Er—though I’ve never heard of feijoas, Jim.”

    “Haven’t you really? They grow like weeds here, too. I always thought they must be some English thing the early settlers brought with them and kind of fell back on when they couldn’t get anything else to grow.” He endeavoured to describe them. The information that the shrub looked a bit like a small pohutukawa and it had the same sort of red flowers made no sense to Max. And the fruit sounded like a green tropical guava.

    “They’re revolting,” said a voice from the doorway.

    Max jumped. “Hullo, Ran,” he said feebly.

    “Hi. Don’t let him talk you into trying feijoas: they’re revolting. I read in some bloody English book that they taste like pineapple, wouldja believe?”

    “Eh?” croaked Jim.

    “Yeah. Written by a Pom that had never eaten a ripe pineapple or a flaming feijoa. They taste sicky. I mean really sicky,” said Ran.

    “Yep,” agreed Jim. “I wasn’t trying to talk him into trying them, I was trying to put him off them.”

    “Forever!” said Max with a laugh.

    “Good,” she conceded.

    “Couldn’t you make jam or jelly from them, though, Ran?” he said, smiling at her.

    Ran shuddered. “No.”

    “In that case we’ll have to be content with this marvellous guava jelly of yours!”

    “Yeah, it’s great,” contributed Jim, beaming at her.

    “Ta,” said Ran gruffly, going very pink. “Didja ask him?”

    “Well, sort of.”

    “He broached his subject, let’s say,” murmured Max.

    “I did warn you, Jim,” she noted detachedly.

    “Yeah, but heck! Solar heating’s a breeze. –I mean, I dunno whether you could get it to do much in Europe, but lots of people have solar panels here, these days! And you know about waste recycling, Max! Um, hang on.” He felt in his pocket and produced a neatly folded sheet of paper. “See, to get top rating, that’s five stars—”

    “Leaves,” corrected Ran. Her eyes met Max’s. He grinned at her. She went very pink and smiled back.

    “Well, yeah,” agreed Jim, not noticing this by-play: “leaves, but it’s their version of five stars. See, Sir Maurice reckons we’d be okay with four, ’cos the best ones they listed only had four anyway! To get five your ecolodge has gotta do ‘everything in their ability to creatively reduce and reuse their waste.’ It doesn’t specifically mention sewage or toilets at all, it’s only grey water that it mentions: see, ‘waste’ is defined as organic or inorganic matter, and recyclable matter, and grey water. We checked the definition of grey water and it’s only waste water from domestic sinks and baths, see? Um, what else? You have to compost organic matter, and recycle what they call ‘recyclable matter’, they don’t define that, and conscious—hang on—have to be ‘consciously limiting usage of all other matter’: we figured out that meant non-recyclable stuff. You can use disposable stuff, we worked out they meant stuff that has to be disposed of, but only when you have to. ’Cos it says ‘not using disposable items whenever possible.’ And you have to reuse your waste in creative ways to cut back on what you throw away.”

    “Right: that’d be like old Mrs Poulson down Edward Street,” noted Ran drily.

    Jim eyed her warily. “What does she do?”

    “Crochets floor mats out of old plastic bags. That’s creative, if ya like.”

    “Wouldn’t they be kind of crunchy to walk on?” he said feebly.

    “Yeah, though they flatten out after a bit. She makes hats out of them, too.”

    Max had been keeping out of this discussion but at this point he croaked: “Hats?”

    “Yes. Sunhats. The brims are a bit floppy, but they’re not very wide.”

    “Who does she sell them to?” croaked Jim.

    “No-one. She doesn’t make them to sell, she makes them because she can’t bear to see plastic bags going to waste. She wears them herself, and Mum’s got one she wears in the garden. Hang on.” She disappeared. The two men looked at each other limply. “Here,” said Ran, reappearing. She held it out. Yes, that was a hat crocheted from old plastic bags, all right. “See,” she explained: “your fancy ecolodge could supply free recycled sunhats and carpet all its floors with—”

    “Look, shut up!” cried Jim. “It’s hideous!”

    “Plastic bags are,” agreed Ran mildly. “Nevertheless it’s a very environmental use of them.”

    “Creative recycling into hideous hats and mats that can only be thrown away when you’ve finished with them because they’re not biodegradable: mm,” agreed Max. “But it does satisfy the definition of ‘reuse’, doesn’t it?”

    “All right, be like that,” said Jim sourly.

    Max smiled at him and held out his hand for the paper. “May I? Mm… Well, certainly a challenge. Er—did you notice how very carefully worded this is?”

    “I didn’t, but Hill did,” he admitted. “Like not mentioning toilets.”

    “Mm.”

    “Mind you, anything with those bloody composting toilets seems to get four st— leaves.”

    “The iron’s entered into his soul since he met some of them in Australia,” explained Ran.

    Max looked expectantly at Jim but he advised: “Don’t ask,” shuddering and closing his eyes, so he didn’t.

    “Mm…” he murmured again, rereading the sheet of paper, which appeared to contain a slice off the Internet verbatim, and then some definitions which they’d looked up elsewhere.

    “There’s a bit on food, too,” added Jim.

    “Guava jelly?” asked Max with smile.

    To his entertainment Jim replied: “Hang on,” and fished in his pocket again. “Yeah: locally grown slash raised—see, that implies you can include meat—and ya have to offer vegetarian or vegan options. And it’s gotta be only organic if ya want the five st—leaves, only there were four-star places that were mainly organic but not completely.”

    “You couldn’t be, here,” said Ran detachedly. “Not unless you didn’t use sugar at all. –We import it,” she explained placidly. “There’s no way it could be organic.”

    “Er—you don’t grow beet sugar?” asked Max.

    “No. I’d never even heard of that until a couple of years back,” replied Ran cheerfully.

    “Nah,” agreed Jim. “See, we saw the cane fields in Queensland and Hill, he said they were immeasurably prettier than the awful sugar beet fields ya get in Europe. Hang on, Ran: you could use honey instead. What about those organic nutters next-door to Pete and Jan: have they got bees?”

    “No. They tried them, and their garden certainly flowers enough, but they swarmed and flew away. It happened twice—with different sets of bees—and they gave up. Pete reckons the bees didn’t like them enough to stay.”

    “Right,” said Jim placidly. “Well, we could think about organic honey from other sources, but like I say, Sir Maurice is only going for four stars.”

    “Mm…” murmured Max. “Bathroom porcelain was mentioned at one point, I think, Ran?”

    She went very pink and nodded hard.

    “Yes. We-ell… The more you look at how very carefully this is worded, the more yon conclude it’s the rankest piece of hypocrisy!” he said with a laugh.

    “Hill said that, too, at one point; only then he had a think about it and he decided that these eco-nutters are completely genuine, only that’s what twenty-first century eco-nuttiness is: total hypocrisy without realizing they’re doing it,” said Jim with perfect seriousness.

    Max thought it over. “‘Everything in their ability to creatively reduce and reuse their waste’: yes,” he said thoughtfully. “There are some things that aren’t within one’s ability. And the bathroom porcelain would undoubtedly fall into the category of this ‘all other matter’ that one is ‘consciously limiting usage of’!”

    “Yep, that’d be it,” agreed Jim comfortably.

    Ran’s brow furrowed. “What? Give that here!” She took the paper off Max, pulled up the cane chair, put the teddy and the doll on the end of Max’s bed, and sat down.

    “He’s right, isn’t he?” said Jim after some time.

    “Well, yeah, but your mate is right in saying it’s twenty-first-century hypocrisy at its worst, too!” replied Ran forcefully.

    “He didn’t exactly put it like that. Well, I s’pose it is, yeah; only some recycling and composting and stuff’s better than none, surely?”

    “Mm. Organic…” She frowned over it. “Look, what about meat scraps? If you put them in the compost you’d be overrun with rats.”

    Jim consulted his paper. “‘They never throw away leftover food and use it by either incorporating it into another meal, sharing it with neighbors,’—Hah! Yank spelling!” he spotted—“‘or feeding it to the animals.’ If you were being strictly legal about it, meat scraps aren’t the same as leftover food. Like, you can have meat scraps from preparing the meal or afterwards, like the bones and bits of fat.”

    “Exactly. Very carefully worded,” agreed Max drily. “May I, Ran?” He took the original sheet back from her. “Uh-huh,” he said. “The five-leaf ecolodge ‘is doing everything in their ability to creatively reduce and reuse their waste. They are composting organic matter…’ and etcetera. It doesn’t say they are composting all organic matter.”

    “Cripes,” said Ran weakly.

    “Yeah,” agreed Jim. “Well, Sir Maurice’s legal team will have been over it with a fine-tooth comb, but Hill spotted most of it anyway. And he reckons we could give stuff to the permaculture nutters next to Pete and Jan’s for their animals and that’d either count as giving it to the neighbours or feeding it to the animals and we wouldn’t have to have our own animals.”

    “That’s a pity, ’cos Pete and Jan could supply you with a flock of goats!” said Ran with a sudden gurgle.

    “Yeah, she reckons they breed like goats,” he allowed, grinning. “Only the big problem is the materials to build the place out of. Well, there are places that specialise in recycled timber and so on, we wouldn’t have to forage like Pete did, but ya don’t want it to look like a daggy shack. Or put it like this, Sir Maurice doesn’t. Um, Hill was thinking of maybe radiata pine logs, only then he sent me an email to say Sir Maurice had been really blistering on the subject of Canadian log cabins, so I suppose that’s out. But he had a snap of a really nice place he saw in Auckland that was partly logs…” He looked at them sadly.

    “That recycled kauri of Pete’s is gorgeous,” admitted Ran. “Did you notice it, Max? In the big guest lounge.”

    “The ceiling,” clarified Jim. “Well, the floor as well, and that big beam he’s used for the mantelpiece, but the ceiling’s the best thing.”

    “Yes, it was glorious,” said Max on a weak note. “That’s all recycled timber?”

    “Yes: kauri,” replied Ran.

    “He won’t know it, Ran; Hill had never heard of it. –Agathis australis,” explained Jim kindly.

    It was at about this point in time that Max Throgmorton began to get a glimmer of a notion (a) that Jim Thompson wasn’t as artless as he came over, (b) that YDI in general and Sir Maurice Bishop in particular hadn’t fallen out of their tree in hiring him, and (c) that he must have discovered at some point in the past that his low-key approach worked.

    “Mm. Well,” he said drily, “I’ve nothing else to do, so if you let me have the documentation, Jim, I’ve nothing against thinking about it for you, but I should point out that I have a contract with my present employers that specifies I don’t do any moonlighting. So it won’t go past the suggestion level.”

    “Gee, really?” he cried, his pleasant round face lighting up. “Gee, thanks, Max, that’d be great! I’ll give you all the stuff on the local materials, shall I?”

    “Car tyres,” said Ran drily. “Old fridges and the giant boxes the new ones came in.”

    “Shut up! Not the tip!”

    “It probably is the tip up your way, but round here it tends to be the back yard or the verge or down the end of the nearest dirt road,” said Ran drily. “Though there is an actual tyre depot. It’s full of tyres, too.”

    “In Queensland—” Jim broke off, looking sheepish. “Sorry. It’s on the lines of your Mrs Whatsername that recycles plastic bags.” They were looking at him expectantly. “Um, well, swans made of tyres are very popular in some circles,” he revealed. “It’s the curve, see: just right for the necks. Um, garden ornaments, Max. Hill laughed himself sick, but even he didn’t have the hide to suggest it to Sir Maurice.”

    “I’ve seen them here, as well,” said Ran detachedly. “Painted white—or pink, in some cases. But aren’t Australian swans black?”

    “Right. WA, they come from—that’s Western Australia, Max, all the Aussies say WA. Um, no, these tyre ones were all white,” he said feebly.

    It was only at this point that Max Throgmorton gave way entirely and broke down in spluttering hysterics. Though he did manage to notice through them that bloody Jim Thompson was smirking.

    “Personally,” said Jan on a very dry note, “I’d have said the man must have spotted the bugger when he offered to email him all the gen.”

    “Max belongs to the socio-economic bracket that accepts the laptop attached to the arm that’s not wielding the mobile phone as the norm,” replied Ran. “But I think he spotted him long since, actually. He’s bored, that’s all, and it’s something to occupy his mind. Well, it’s a good sign: means he’s convalescent, doesn’t it?” she said cheerfully. “He got up for tea last night, too. He still can’t manage the bloody crutches properly, though. Actually I think he’s terrified of falling over and hurting himself again, and who can blame him?”

    “Not me,” agreed Jan. “Can’t the ruddy hospital give him some help?”

    “The physiotherapist seems to think that he should be able to manage them by now. He doesn’t like her: he says she’s got a closed mind.”

    In Jan’s day the girls that went in for physio were the sort that did have closed minds, so she replied: “Well, yeah!”

    “Um, would Pete let me borrow the launch, do ya reckon?”

    “I dunno that he will, the macho idiot. I admit that there’s no difference, logically, between you being stuck out there with a squall blowing up and the ruddy motor conked out and him being ditto, but he’s like that. He’ll take you anywhere you fancy, though: like a shot.”

    “There is a difference, because I’ve got a mobile phone that works,” replied Ran drily.

    “Pete doesn’t belong to the socio-economic bracket that accepts them as a norm. It won’t wash, I’m afraid, Ran.” She chopped the stalks off a bunch of silverbeet. “Where do you want to go?”

    “Over to the other side. Max wants to see those poncy holiday homes with his own eyes—like in 3D, rather than those blurred shots of Jim’s. Who the Hell took them?”

    “Vern Reilly with his Brownie, as far as I know,” replied Jan smoothly.

    “They look like it,” agreed Ran.

    “Mm. Well, I’m very much afraid that Pete’ll never wear you captaining the Taupo Shores Tallulah all the way over, especially not in winter, Ran.”

    “Was that a joke?” replied Ran suspiciously.

    “No. –Oh! The name! No, most unfortunately that wasn’t a joke either, that’s his latest. He’s definitely doing her up—in fact you’d better catch him before he hauls her into dry dock—and he’s christened her that and he’s gonna fix up a striped awning with a scalloped edge on the poor old tub.” Carefully she removed the last vestiges of green from the stalks.

    “Why?” asked Ran feebly.

    Jan sliced the stalks up and dumped them in the steamer. “Well, possibly inspired by your Aunty Moyra’s enthusiasm over the trip on the thing last summer, but as to exactly why, I don’t think there is any rhyme or reason. Blokes are like that. If you live another forty years or so without ending in clink for strangling one of the buggers, you might just be able to accept it.”

    “Not all of them, surely?”

    “Let’s see… They invented model trains, stamp collecting, fly fishing, and golf. Yep!”

    Ran had to swallow. “See whatcha mean. Well, I’ll ask him. –Is Primmy around?”

    “Why?” replied Jan cautiously.

    “Max was thinking she must be bored and she might like to come on the launch, too.”

    “Oh—right,” said Jan uneasily. “She’s gone on a tour.”

    “What, walking round the scrub in ever-decreas—”

    “Not a bush walk, no. A tour. With Vern,” said Jan, trying to smile. “Several of them really liked the Antiques and Boutiques tour, so he said he’d run them up to Hamilton and Ngaruawahia to look at the ones there.”

    Ran’s jaw sagged. “Are there any?”

    “Dunno,” said Jan weakly. “Vern reckons there are. And he had Mrs with him, with her best blue purse and matching stomping shoes, so presumably there must be.”

    “I see. I wouldn’t have put Primmy down as the type that was interested in fake New Zealand antiques or arty-crafty junk.”

    Jan began washing carrots. “Apparently she is. Well, she bought stuff. Not stuff I’d give houseroom, but nevertheless. –Go on, go and grab Pete before he hauls ’er into dry-dock.”

    “Right!” Ran hurried out.

    Jan stopped preparing veges for lunch and tottered over to a chair. “Jesus!” she said with feeling. “The strain of not breathing a word about blasted Primmy’s Canadian hunk—! And to think I thought it’d only entail doing the accounts, cooking some nice food, doing unending piles of laundry, and nagging Pete into clearing the gutters and sweeping the chimney in the intervals of persuading good old super-conscientious Michelle Callaghan that the bogs she cleaned yesterday and that haven’t been used because the rooms are empty, don’t need doing again. Boy, the ecolodge business’d be easy if the guests weren’t people!”

    “Some people think that one’s pretty,” offered Pete in a completely neutral voice.

    The giant holiday home had acres of plate glass, about seven different levels—quite unnecessarily, as it was set on a gentle slope—and a couple of trees protruding from different parts of its anatomy. Oh, and acres of blue slate, both on the roof and on the ground.

    Ran looked at it dubiously. “Wouldn’t those paths be death-traps at this time of year?”

    Pete sniffed slightly. “Yep. Mind you, slate doesn’t grow as much moss as brick.”

    “I like the general concept—the levels, and allowing the trees to remain,” offered Max.

    Pete made a rude noise.

    “Actually I think this is one of the places that brought the trees in specially,” admitted Ran.

    “’Course it is! That’s a flaming nikau! It hadda be trucked in, and don’t ask from where! And that other thing’s half the size it was, artistically twisted or not, ’cos they couldn’t fit that wing in without lopping a bit off it. And just in case you were looking at that punga, it set them back about five thousand bucks from a flaming nursery, no kidding, and that spot’s too dry for it in summer: they have to keep the sprinklers on it all night and half the day!”

    “Um, the big tree fern, Max,” said Ran, swallowing.

    Max had been looking at it with great admiration; it was a stunningly beautiful thing. “Oh. But they are all native plants?” he said feebly.

    “Them three are, yeah,” allowed Pete. “If you were wondering about the bits between the glass, they’re mostly steel, with a bit of concrete block that we think the builders might’ve thrown in without the owners’ say-so. Mainly the bits of the foundation what you can’t see because they’re pretending to be bits of hillside. Haven’t been inside it since it was finished but I’d say the inside walls—what there are of them—are mainly glass, too. So as ya get a really good view of yer guests getting undressed across yer slimy slate patio—geddit? Wanna see the next one? It’s got even more native plants.”

    “Lead on, Macduff,” replied Max, grinning.

    Pete headed the launch for the next giant holiday mansion. It was round a sort of—not a point, no. Round a bunch of trees and shrubs that stuck out just enough to shield the houses from one another. Max gaped. Grey, rough timbers… The first impression was of a series of shacks, frankly.

    “I quite like it,” said Ran. “Dad reckons it’s made out of packing cases.”

    “Ruddy expensive packing cases. Be a few railway sleepers in there, too,” noted Pete.

    This house had opted to go up where the other, pace its different levels, had opted to go sideways. Though they probably had as many levels. The section was about as sloping as its hidden neighbour’s. Therefore the back part—or possibly the front, if you approached it from the road, though like all the exhibits they’d seen so far it had an impressive lake frontage—had been built on stilts. In order to give it the height, yes. And the view of the lake that it would have had in any case if they’d simply used a bit more of the section and gone sideways. The house looked like a series of roughly piled up—well, packing cases came close. Or shacks. Square, box-like rooms, stepped one above the other. The main part of the structure was to their left. From the lower, or shore level, a flight of rough wooden steps led up the side of the building to the next box, set further back on the right, its floor starting about halfway up the bottom level’s side wall. It was evidently a two-storey box, but the higher storey didn’t look as if an adult could stand upright in it. It had a couple of portholes, one of which gave onto a balcony at floor level. Possibly merely decorative? The steps continued up against the left-hand wall past the next level, which formed a second storey, stepped further back. It had a very large porthole facing over the lake, in fact its front face was nearly all porthole. Then above that was the larger wing set on stilts at the back—or front. It ran along behind both left and right sides, not stinting on the extraneous half-storeys and rough wooden balconies.

    “You can’t see it from here but there’s a kind of covered walkway that joins that bit,” said Pete, pointing to the right-hand bit, “to the block at the back. They started off with it all open, like them ruddy steps, only in our climate it was disastrous. Made the mistake of coming down one really wet Christmas and after that the roof went up over the walkway, pronto. They did have some idea of making a tree-tops walking track round the section—still in yer rough-hewn four-be-twos, of course—only they canned that. Could’ve had something to do with one of their guests having a nasty fall on them steps and busting his arm, I s’pose,” he noted, sucking his teeth and looking airy.

    “Hah, hah,” said Ran before Max could manage to dredge up a reply. “Um, that funny little top storey is for the children, Max. They’re supposed to crawl through that porthole onto their balcony.”

    “I see!”

    “Right,” agreed Pete, “and the martyr that cleans their rat-hole was supposed to crawl through the other porthole round the back that used to be the only door into the ruddy place and then go up this kind of plastic tube with a ladder inside it and through the hole in the bedroom floor, only funnily enough Mrs wouldn’t have a bar of it and they couldn’t find a martyr that was willing to do it on a regular basis, not even for cash money. Well, had a Dutch girl one year, didn’t they, Ran? Out here on a tramping trip, wanted to earn a bit of extra dough. Only Mrs caught her and Mr on them futons they floored that bit with,” he said, pointing to the portholed left-hand bit, “so that bright idea was down the toilet and the marriage just about was, too, until he coughed up a trip to Brunei. So before they came down again Jerry Dutton and his merry men hadda come over pronto and put in a proper door and a staircase. Well, hadda be a spiral one, that room’s pretty small, but it’s got a proper handrail. It’s one of them lacy iron ones, Jerry ripped it out of a place he was renovating that year, swears at everything else in the place, but if ya must hire a builder at short notice and tell ’im ya want a result day before yesterday, ya gotta take what ya can get, eh? After that Sue Pritchard and Kristel Pohaka agreed as a great favour to take them on for only a smallish fortune as part of their huge Lake District Cleaning Services empire. –They do a lot of it themselves but they’re set up as a proper company and they employ about five other moos and they got the whole of this side of the lake well and truly sewn up!” he elaborated with relish.

    “I see. And the other?”

    “Eh?”

    Max hadn’t meant to stop Pete in his flow but he wasn’t displeased to see that he had. “Your side of the lake, Pete.”

    “He doesn’t understand, Pete,” said Ran quickly. “There are people that help out at the motels, of course, Max, but people don’t usually have cleaning ladies, here. It’s not like Britain.”

    “Er—I see. Will domestic staff be a problem for Jim’s ecolodge, then?”

    “Depends how much they’re willing to pay,” said Pete on a dry note. “Well, I hate to say it, but this is probably the best of them, environment-wise. Actual wood, and they’ve left as much of the vegetation as poss’. There is one small point which if I’ve grasped this five-leaves crap of Jim’s correctly maybe oughta be mentioned.” He removed his navy and grey knitted hat and, scratching his head, said to Ran: “Don’tcha reckon?”

    “Don’t be mean!” she retorted with energy. “Whatever it is, just tell him!”

    “Centrally heated throughout? Air conditioned as well as the portholes?” ventured Max.

    “N—Well, not air conditioned, no. But them portholes are all double-glazed, matey: they made the big mistake of coming down for Easter one year it fell in April. It can be glorious during the day at that time of year—though mind you it can pour as well—but it’s usually starting to get pretty nippy at night. It took them a whole year to get the double-glazing done: no-one round here was capable of it, so they hadda get an Auckland firm, and of course they were completely booked up. But they managed it in the end. Too late for the next Easter but even if you are filthy rich it appears ya can’t have everything.”

    “Pete! Just put him out of his misery!” said Ran sharply.

    “Eh? Oh—sorry, Max. It’s cedar,” said Pete on a glum note.

    Max looked at him blankly.

    “All this natural-look, weathered wood it’s built of. Ce-dar,” said Pete clearly.

    “Oh!” gulped Ran, clapping a hand over her mouth.

    “Yes. It weathers beautifully,” said Max limply. “Or is the climate wrong for it here?”

    Pete was seen to swallow. “It’s Canadian. Imported. S’pose ya might be able to get hold of a bit from a recycling place, but not enough to build anything sizeable.”

    “Oops,” he said on a dry note.

    “Yeah. Well, ya can see why Jim’s Sir Maurice has been doing his nut. If it looks good it’s not local and won’t satisfy your five-leaves crap and if it’s local it’s flaming radiata pine or concrete block and hideous. And it’d be impossible to actually design anything that was all recycled, because if you go to a recycling yard, even a big one, ya gotta take what ya can get and ya can never be sure of finding what ya need. Unless ya go Ian Haskell’s way.”

    “Don’t be silly,” said Ran, swallowing.

    “See, in this country beer only came in these brown quart bottles for most of my lifetime and all of my dad’s,” said the elderly Pete to Max, his thin, tanned face expressionless.

    “Er—yes?”

    “Which meant there were a fair number of beer bottles knocking about. ’Specially out the backblocks—this rural paradise, to you—where it was the only hobby. See, this was before they brought in television and cans and started importing Foster’s—”

    “PETE!” shouted Ran.

    “I’m getting there. Lotta blokes usedta make their own—homebrew, ya know?—only they always used brown quart bottles too, ’cos that was what there was. So about ten years back Ian came down here and bought a place just far enough out not to be on the sewerage and decided he was gonna go for your completely recycled and build it all himself. Him and the girlfriend, with a bit of help from his brother, the idea was. Surprisingly enough it didn’t bust him and the girlfriend up within the first year, either. Though that was mainly spent drawing up plans and digging foundation trenches and discovering that it’s quite hard to make adobe bricks in a climate that gets as much rains as ours. Or that rammed earth crap. See, his trouble was he’d been watching too much TV and getting books from the library. You might think that adobe’s confined to the American Southwest and that these days, when ya don’t have to make yer own bricks slaving in the sun for hours on end while your girlfriend runs out of the tin garage from Mitre 10 at ten-minute intervals to tell ya that hose ya fixed onto the tap at the roadside for washing-up water has come adrift again—”

    “Will ya just CAN it, Pete?” shouted Ran.

    “No, no; let him tell it!” said Max with a laugh.

    “Ta. But it isn’t, see: there’s environmental nutters that do it in Australia as well. So some of the books were Aussie ones, geddit? One of the driest places on Earth, Central Australia is,” he noted thoughtfully.

    “Mm,” agreed Max, his shoulders shaking. “Go on, put me out of my misery!”

    “Oh, he managed it,” said Pete. “Foundations where he’d said they were gonna be. Not as high as what some of us had thought they might be, but nevertheless. So the next step was—”

    “The framing?”

    “That’d be the logical assumption, yeah. But one of the books explained that a bottle house doesn’t need a frame. –Held up by the weight of the bottles alone,” said Pete thoughtfully.

    “Hah, hah!” said Ran crossly.

    “They’d already started collecting up bottles, see. Well, nothing much else to do in winter after you’ve covered the adobe foundations in a big blue plastic tarp and got the industrial blow-heater going under it, meanwhile your girlfriend’s shivering in the tin garage from Mitre 10 screaming why didn’t you get a heater for this dump as well while you were at it.”

    “That’s apocryphal from beginning to end,” said Ran grimly.

    Pete winked at Max. “Not entirely, it’s not. Anyway, they’d spent untold hours scouring the countryside for bottles. And once all the little kids of the neighbourhood had heard the glad tidings they usedta bring ’im loads of them in their bike baskets. Ten cents for fifty,” he said, looking bland.

    Max hadn’t properly grasped New Zealand money but he did get that ten cents wasn’t much. “Er—like 10 P, would that be?”

    “Less, if 10 P’s ten percent of your pound,” said Ran. “About 3 or 4 P, I think.”

    “That may not seem like much—well, it isn’t much,” conceded Pete, “but see, a house the size he was envisaging ’ud need something like a hundred and fifty thousand bottles. Work it out.”

    “I don’t know your brown beer bottles, but going by the size of a case of wine, it’d be about a dozen per square foot,” said Max, grinning at him. “That’s a fair number of bottles, yes. May I ask what was going to hold them together?”

    “The only thing that could possibly look good, or even halfway good, would be molten glass or possibly silicone,” said Ran drily. “Both of which were ruled out by economics, since common sense didn’t come into it.”

    “It is a cheap way of building a house,” noted Pete, grinning. “No, well, concrete, of course.”

    Max winced, but nodded. “The necks pointing inwards, I presume?”

    “Yeah, ’cos otherwise you get a very tuneful house!” choked Pete, suddenly collapsing in awful sniggers.

    “My God, did he make that mistake?”

    “Not exactly. All the pictures he’d seen showed the houses with the bottoms of the bottles outwards, so he started off his wall that way. Got a really good lot done the first day—his brother was down that weekend—retired to bed in the tin garage in a really good mood, woke up in the middle of the night with the girlfriend having screaming hysterics—something about taniwhas. Uh—kind of Maori demons, not that she was, but we’ve all heard of them. The wind had got up in the night.”

    Max collapsed in awful sniggers.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Ran, grinning reluctantly. “The thing was, even when she realised what the noise was and the taniwhas were only a nightmare, it didn’t solve the problem.”

    “No. The whole of New Zealand can be very windy and there was no shelter on their section. The noise went on almost every night: they couldn’t get a wink of sleep. Of course the two blokes tried putting up the side walls fast as possible but that only changed the notes, apparently. So they hadda cover the entire structure with their big blue plastic tarp every night plus and weigh it down with heavy objects so as the wind couldn’t blow it off or get in under it. Which was okay when the walls were only a foot high all round, but started to get a bit of a problem once they got a bit higher. Eventually the poor girl couldn’t take it and since he refused point-blank to take a motel room, she pushed off home to Auckland. Sitting on her lonesome every weekend in a scungy flat which was all they could afford ’cos they’d put their money into the section palled pretty quick, so she dumped him.” Pete sniffed slightly. “Well, if ya’ve met that sort of fanatic you’ll know that at that point they either lose interest, probably take up something else, or else get even more fanatical, let the beard grow, and retire from all human society.”

    “Which?” croaked Max.

    Pete scratched his head and replaced the navy and grey knitted cap. “Bit of both, really.”—Max looked dubiously at Ran but she just nodded.—“Flung himself into the bottle house for about the next two years, got quite lot of it done, though it got a lot slower once he hadda run up and down ladders for the bottles. Then a mate of his took him on a ballooning convention and that was all she wrote. Last heard of the pair of them were ballooning in the Andes.”

    “What?” he said limply.

    “Yeah. The mate was quite organized, in his way. Got sponsorship and all that. Organized but mad,” said Pete heavily.

    Max nodded groggily. “And the house?”

    “It’s still there: funnily enough no-one wants to buy a good-sized section with half a bottle house on it. We could take a dekko at it, if you’d like to.”

    “I would, actually, if it’s not too much bother.”

    “No bother at all. Might give ya some ideas, eh? Beer bottles are still pretty much local ingredients, though these days the bottle dumps have got a fair few green or white wine bottles in there as well. And somewhere around I’ve got the contact details of a dame that recycles glass. Melts it down and makes paperweights and things out of it.”

    “That could be interesting,” he said slowly.

    “Thoughtcha might think so,” replied Pete simply.

    The launch headed out from the shore.

    “Are we gonna skip the next one, Pete?” asked Ran.

    “Uh—well, think they’re home. –Retired couple. He was a barrister, made a fortune defending the big-time crims up in the Big Smoke, Max,” Pete explained. “Known him for years, he’s an old mate of Jake’s, he’s okay. They don’t spend all their time here, got a flat in Auckland as well.”

    “I wouldn’t want to intrude, of course,” said Max nicely.

    Pete was seen to swallow. “Uh—no, ’tisn’t that. See, his wife— Uh, what’d she be, third?” he said vaguely to Ran.

    “Um, no, wasn’t Leila the third one? I think Livia must be the fourth, Pete.”

    “Okay, fourth,” said Pete amiably. “See, she’s an English TV actress. Well, retired long since, but ya might remember that thing she was in—when would it be, Ran? Lessee, she met Wal Briggs a few years after Polly and Jake got married; uh—1991? Something like that. Think that series of hers musta come out round about ’89-’90.”

    “I certainly remember ’89-’90, but I don’t know that Ran would!” said Max with a laugh.

    “I’d’ve only been about ten,” she agreed.

    “Right: too young to stay up watching dumb English TV series with blondes on yachts in floaty blue negligées and rouged nipples,” returned Pete instantly.

    Max gulped. “Good God. I do remember that thing. Uh—sort of Britain’s answer to Dynasty or some such? The life of luxury amidst the overstuffed Eighties furniture and the giant yachts? I was doing my architectural qualifications and none of us in the flat actually admitted to being addicted to the bloody thing but somehow we all used to end up watching it! Livia—uh… Livia Wentworth!” he cried, snapping his fingers.

    “Right, that’s her. Whole of Taupo was glued to it—well, whole of the country, I think.”

    “Good grief! Livia Wentworth! Er—how old would she be now?”

    Pete looked dry. “Admits to fifty-five. Well, I think she’s a good bit younger than Wal but my guess’d be sixty-odd. Well-preserved, mind you. I’d’ve said they had nothing in common—and in fact Jake just about blew his top when he realized Wal had taken up with her—but actually they seem to get on really well. He’s bright as Hell, of course, but she was never famous for her brains. Not the domestic type, either—can’t boil an egg. –Not that she’s entirely dumb,” he added thoughtfully. “Quite on the ball. Well—who knows what makes couples stick together, eh? But maybe it was like me and Jan; old enough to know what we wanted.”

    “But she’s all right, Pete!” urged Ran.

    “Yeah. Not her, lovey. They got a dame staying with them. English, too.” Pete shuddered. “One of Livia’s old mates from her acting days. None of us knows how she managed to get herself out here but the object of the exercise seems to be to sponge off Wal and Livia, ’cos that’s what she’s been doing for the past six weeks.” The two young people were looking at him blankly. Pete sighed. “She’s a gusher.”

    “I’d’ve said Livia was, too,” said Ran dubiously.

    “And Moyra’s certainly a gusher!” admitted Max with a laugh.

    “All right, just don’t say you haven’t been warned.” He headed the launch for the next cove.

    “This is the Briggses’—Wal and Livia’s,” he said, pulling into the jetty outside the right-hand house. “That dark brick and glass thing behind them trees,” he said, waving his hand to the left, “it belongs to a judge that threw a wobbly when ’e realized who ’e was next to—Wal’s never been what ya might call quids-in with the flaming legal Establishment—only by then it was too late, he’d chucked a fortune away on the ruddy dump! Anyway, don’t blame Wal for this: one of the ex-wives and her architect did it.”

    “Self-evident!” said Max with a laugh. The ex and the architect had gone for the Spanish look. Well, sort of. Californian Spanish. Low, rounded arches everywhere, shutters, as Pete was pointing out, to Kingdom Come, and curved orange roof-tiles till the cows came home. The turrets were an interesting touch. The garden sort of matched the style of the house. Lots of vines and statues and urns, but also a lot of what Max now recognised as native New Zealand “flax”: Phormium tenax, as Pete was now pointing out.

    “Shut up, Pete,” said Ran at this point. “He can see all that for himself, he’s not blind.”

    “No. But ’e can’t see what colour it used to be, eh?”

    “Actually, I thought it was pretty,” said Ran with a sigh.

    “You were about two! No, well, it was built back before she was born, Max, and originally it was your genuine Spanish Mission look: white with just the orange tiles, didn’t look too bad if ya concede that any structure at all’s gonna swear at the EnZed landscape. Then just when we were getting used to that, it got done out in variegated shades of grunge and dull purple. That was really Goddawful, but it was what the trendies were into at the time, or so they tell me. There was a threat to replace the orange tiles with blue slate, being as how that was what the trendies were into at the time, but it never happened. Well, either the divorce intervened or she lost interest.”

    “Or Wal put his foot down?” suggested Max, looking at the vast expanses of the Briggs roof.

    “Nah, he always let them do what they liked—think that was part of the trouble. After that the next one had it painted pale pink and all the shutters bright blue.”

    “That’s what I remember,” agreed Ran.

    “Yeah, it was pretty, but slightly unexpected. Anyway, not long after he took up with Livia terracotta render was all the go with the trendies—well, it was out here, and according to the experts, over in Oz as well; dunno if it ever hit Britain. The Florentine look, so-called. You shoulda heard Jake on the subject: unprintable! So Livia had it terracotta rendered.” Pete cleared his throat. “Come out a bit darker than what she’d thought it was gonna, and there were floods of tears, but Wal thought it might weather, so they left it for a bit. All what weathered was the trim—buggered if I can remember what colour it was—but by then turquoise was really in so they had the trim redone in that, and that really weathered. So there were more floods of tears and he gave in and let her have the lot re-done.” He looked bland.

    “Came out paler than what she’d thought it was going to?” suggested Max delicately.

    Alas, Ran at this collapsed in awful sniggers, clapping her hand over her mouth and nodding madly.

    “Yep,” allowed Pete. “More like—what was it, that Polly said? Oh, yeah: an apricot sherbet. It was pretty, actually, but see, it wasn’t what Livia had envisaged. So ’e took ’er off to Tahiti to get over it—New Caledonia’s miles nearer, of course, and miles cheaper, as these things go, or so they tell me, but Wal’s got pots. So she decided to put up with it for a bit. But last year she got hold of this decorator type that had been to Mexico.”

    “Uh-huh.” Behind its large, gently sloping lawn the house’s long lake frontage consisted largely of a heavy arched verandah as to the lower storey and a couple of matching balconies, one at either side of the centre turret, as to the upper. At the far right-hand corner an extraneous second turret featured. The possible monotony of this design was relieved by an extraneous one-storey wing to the left, protruding down towards the lake and featuring a flat roof which at the moment held some white iron-lace patio furniture and a large specimen of Phormium tenax in a bright mosaic pot. The small, curved wrought-iron balconies at the windows of the turrets were possibly a mistake, if one was being captious. Though almost undoubtedly Spanish in inspiration—yes. Through the arches of the main wing many long windows adorned with sets of shutters could be glimpsed. The protruding wing at the left, one room wide and perhaps three deep, featured shutters at either side of sets of French doors with their own little orange-tiled canopies. Also possibly Spanish in inspiration but from a rather different tradition.

    The house in its current metamorphosis was largely white. Not plain white. It featured brightly coloured decorations on the lower parts of the broad verandah columns. Stepped; possibly vaguely Mayan in inspiration? Very glossy: Max’s bet was ceramic tiles. They would reach to about mid-thigh on an average human being. A corresponding stepped pattern featured on the top balconies below the orange roof tiles. Sort of a coloured stalactite and stalagmite effect—yes. The left-hand wing had been favoured with a simpler approach: a solid block of these tiles to about knee-height along the wall, composed of elaborate edgings in several colours, not neglecting a Greek key pattern, and a middle section of bright blue adorned with a free-form and quite realistic portrayal of green cactuses with red, pink and yellow flowers.

    “See those pictures of cactuses?” said Pete.

    “Mm.”

    “The decorator type commissioned them specially in Mexico. Hand-painted on a blue background with the individual bits of yer cactuses, see?”

    “Vividly,” he murmured, squinting. “Is that the original terracotta on the wall behind the lower verandah?”

    “Nope, darker, hadda be redone. They’ve gone back to bright blue for most of the shutters, like you can see, but Livia never knew it in those days, it’s just a coincidence.”

    “Mm-hm.”

    “And yer eyes aren’t deceiving you: upstairs they’ve got the walls behind those arches bright pink as to the left and bright orange as to the right.”

    “Plus and the bright yellow central turret with its bright pink iron balconies and the bright pink end one with its bright turquoise balconies: yes,” he sighed.

    “Very Mexican, it all is. See, all them giant terracotta pots, they’re genuine Mexican.”

    “Right, and that’s a genuine New Zealand tree fern in that one, is it?”

    “Yep. Wal’s already told her it’s gonna die: they hate being in pots and that spot’ll be in full sun, but dames like Livia can’t be told. –Look out, here they come,” he added, sotto voce.

    So they did! Two overdressed dames were wiggling towards them with cries of joy. In Max’s opinion there wasn’t much to choose between them, but he very quickly got the point: Livia’s friend seemed to have taken a fancy to Pete. She was all over him. Gusher and then some.

    Naturally they had to come inside for some morning tea—coy smiles from Livia; Max sincerely doubted that Ran, who called it that as a matter of course, had got the point that she was conscientiously using the local vernacular, but he was pretty sure that Pete had and was deliberately ignoring the fact. After a terrific amount of fuss over getting “poor Max” and his crutches out of the boat and up the terracotta-tiled path, they finally made it. Golly. She’d gone all Mexico inside, too!

    The sitting-room was in essence a plain, large, square room, adorned with three sets of French doors opening onto the verandah. They had entered the house through another set of French doors giving onto a passage, Livia airily explaining that of course this was technically the back of the house, darlings. The sitting-room was off this passage to the right. At its far end another doorway gave access to the dining-room. There was nothing unusual about this arrangement but the carved double doors featuring in both doorways certainly gave one pause. The more so as Livia informed them airily they were from the Philippines but darling Ray had said they were very Iberian Peninsula in inspiration, and didn’t clash. The wide, dark floorboards throughout were teak but they mustn’t blame her, they dated back (to what, tactfully unspecified), and poor darling Wal had paid so much for them that it would be too cruel to tell him they were a trifle anachronistic, wouldn’t it? Be that as it might, Livia had made up for it by smothering them with Spanish rugs. Curlicued and Jacquarded within an inch of their lives, to a rug. Largely in shades of ochre with black, or red with black, but in the sitting-room one scarcely noticed them, because of the walls. The back wall, facing the French doors, was a huge, flat expanse of bright pink, only slightly relieved by a giant wooden crucifix and a bright naïve landscape in a wide frame glittering with pieces of mirror. At the far end of the room the side wall was bright orange. The one giving onto the verandah, mercifully with all the French doors in it, was a cheery emerald. And the fourth was a matte china blue which had nothing at all in common with the bright, almost royal blue of the exterior shutters, so it was just as well the only ones visible from here were those on the single-storeyed wing. The furniture was a mixture of giant buttoned leather things and giant wooden-armed, padded-seated… um, possibly Spanish-Colonial things? The multiplicity of cushions scattered here, there, and everywhere mostly picked up the curlicued and Jacquarded style of the floor rugs, though not necessarily their colours. Spiky aloe plants in terracotta or mosaic pots, twisted iron or brass candlesticks, clay statuettes and pre-Columbian bric-a-brac jostled for position on every available surface and much of the floor space. The room might just have looked good with very plain furnishings but Livia’s gave it the kiss of death.

    Livia was a small woman—the phrase “pocket Venus” had been much bandied about at the time her series had been a roaring success. The curves were slightly more pronounced than Max remembered them from the telly and there was a definite tummy, but Pete wasn’t wrong in saying she was well-preserved. She had rushed out to them huddled in a fluffy fake-fur jacket in a particularly offensive long, matted mixture of grey, white and pale blue, but this was now discarded to reveal the essential Livia. As the house was very warm, a fair amount of the essential Livia was able to be on display.

    The jeans were the sort of thing Max was accustomed to see Primmy getting around in: dark, very tight as to the hips and bottom, very wide as to the lower part of the leg, and with extraneous pieces of embroidery. Livia’s embroidery was pink and mauve with a bit of yellow. The jeans were low-slung, though not as wincingly so as some, and belted with a wide, studded metal thing which featured a flashing buckle. After some covert staring it dawned that the thing had bits of mirror set in the metal, not brilliants, and therefore was almost undoubtedly of the same provenance as the picture frame on the wall behind her. The tummy was protected from the draught that low-slung jeans typically produce, even in a centrally heated house, by some sort of fine knit in pale terracotta. From a distance it could have looked like bare skin, yes, except that Livia’s was a very pale English skin. Over this knit was another: very tight, extremely low-cut and long-sleeved, in a cross-over style. Pale pink and delicately studded with tiny metal things. In the vee at the bosom there showed a glimpse of the terracotta thing, and then a glimpse of a bright turquoise lacy bra. Bulging out of these glimpses was a considerable amount of pale Livia.

    The neck was not permitted to give the age away: it was veiled with a multicoloured bead choker, putatively Amerindian in style, below which depended another necklace composed of multiple strands of small, square pieces of mirror. Matching multiple strands of mirror dangled from the ears. The hair was about as fluffy as it had been in the series. Pale yellow, but some artistic silver streaks were allowed to appear. The style was extremely casual and girlish, incorporating a giant pink plastic clip and a casually inserted tortoiseshell Spanish comb and Max would have taken his dying oath it had taken her hours of effort before her mirror. Not to say a bucket of mousse. She was artfully made up but not flashily so, so the overall effect was not quite tarty. In fact, if your temperament and prejudices allowed you to stand mutton dressed as lamb, you could have said it was quite a brave effort. Gallant, even. –The rings on her left hand, incidentally, were not Mexican junk or anything like it, and Max found himself wondering why on earth the chap let her get away with the junk.

    Beside her friend Bettany, however, Livia paled into insignificance. –It was “Bettany”, not “Bethany” or “Betony,” as she informed them with a breathless laugh, girlishly pushing back the tangle of black curls with a great jangling of the metal bangles at her wrist. Max would have put her down as well under Livia’s age but over forty. Certainly old enough to find the stringy, elderly Pete fanciable, as the incessant batting of the huge, mascara-ed lashes indicated. She was taller than Livia: medium height, or she would have been without the enormous, bright apricot, wedge-heeled sandals. Possibly as a counterbalance to Livia’s widely flared jeans she had chosen very, very tight stretch pants. Mercifully black.

    She also had several layers on top and they were also skin-tight and as she was, though not technically fat, even bulgier than Livia, the effect was quite impressive. The outer layer was black stretch lace, the long sleeves pushed up to the elbows. It came to just above the waist, revealing a bright apple-green singlet thing which came to about two inches below the waist. Under that again was a screamingly bright, striped long-sleeved garment in more apple-green, scarlet and bright turquoise. The stripes ran horizontally and one could only thank a merciful Creator that the thing was semi-veiled by the other garments. Surprisingly, none of them was actually a cross-over style, but they all had very low scoop necks. The scarlet lacy bra was of course glimpsed. Unlike Livia’s, the bulges were very tanned: perhaps Bettany had foisted herself on friends who lived somewhere very warm on a previous trip? Or possibly it was out of a bottle.

    Her jewellery was largely silver metal of the cheap Indian variety, but a brass silhouette of an elephant with beads dangling from it also appeared at the neck. Quite large. Er—possibly the friends lived in India? If one could get past the incessant clattering from the metal bangles it dawned that there were also huge stretches of coloured plastic bangles, the cheap Indian sort, on each arm. Every colour under the sun but definitely some apple-green and some turquoise, so undoubtedly the whole effect was meant. Even to the loosely rioting black curls in which the dangling silver Indian earrings kept catching. The lipstick was scarlet and intensely shiny and of the sort which gives rise to the suspicion that the wearer has had something disgusting inserted in the lips. And the only thing preventing Max from concluding that she had was the suspicion that she wasn’t that well off. Livia’s tat looked as if, though one apologised to the shop for the suggestion, it could have been bought at Harrods. Bettany’s looked as if it came from a flea market.

    “Of course,” she said over the Earl Grey and macaroons, batting the lashes frightfully, “little me doesn’t know beans about architecture, darlings, but I did have a part in a lovely series which was set in a nature reserve!”

    “She was the other woman, but it was canned after one season, wasn’t it, darling?” said Livia with apparently genuine sympathy.

    Bettany made a face. “Yes, too mean! I mean, it was a terrible mistake to cast darling Andy as the reclusive botanist, because it screamed out for the Hugh Grant type, and he just isn’t! I mean, bone structure isn’t everything, is it?”

    “I wouldn’t cast Hugh Grant as a reclusive anything,” said Ran, apparently quite genuine.

    “Naughty!” screeched Bettany with a horrible long trill of laughter. “Isn’t she sharp?” she said proudly to the company. “Of course one wouldn’t, Ran, darling, except that all the women were supposed to run mad over him, you see, and no woman could over poor Andy, pretty though he is!”

    “Oh, I see: you mean he’s gay?” said Ran.

    “That’s it precisely, darling! And acting is all very well, but one has to have S.A. or the thing just does not work, does it?”

    “No, you’re right,” she agreed.

    “Absolutely! So of course it bombed. But Paul Mitchell was directing, you see, and he takes his work so earnestly, and he made us read up all this stuff about the real nature reserve—of course our bits were just filmed in the studio with faked-up grass huts: too disappointing, darlings, and one did say there would have been wider audience appeal if at least the main parts had been taken on location, but naturally little me was not listened to! But the real huts—where one can stay, you know, it did sound as if one could have a marvellous holiday there—the real ones have terrific rules and regulations and they’re terribly strict, darlings, and it’s all genuinely environmental, so I know all about the conservation issues, and how one has to preserve the natural environment and only use beautiful biodegradable, natural soaps! –Darling, marvellous for the complexion: oatmeal and all sorts!” she said to Livia. “And of course all the solar energy and special toilets and water purification, and one is absolutely forbidden to cut down a native tree!” She beamed around the room.

    Max found Ran was looking at him nervously. “That’s perfectly correct, Bettany,” he said nicely. “Those are precisely the issues with which one must deal in designing an ecolodge, and believe you me, it ain’t easy!”

    He was rewarded for this tremendous piece of self-restraint by the tremulous, relieved smile which broke over Ran’s speaking countenance. Not to say the ditto that appeared on Livia’s well cared-for one and the thrilled smile the hugely gratified Bettany awarded him—though funnily enough he wasn’t interested in the last two.

    When at long last they were allowed to make their escape—the embarrassed Ran laden with a package of Livia’s very own moisturizer and special shampoo and conditioner, the harsh winter weather was dynamite on one’s skin and hair—Pete said thoughtfully, having gunned the engine and got well away in a shower of spray: “Good on ya, Max. The gusher’s like a bloody parrot, eh?”

    “Which one, Pete?” replied Max with a laugh.

    “Well, Livia’s pretty bad, but not quite in that class. The Bettany woman. Don’t think she understands a single word of that stuff she was spouting about the nature reserve.”

    “No,” he agreed, twinkling at him. “She’s the type that latches onto the fact that the group she’s with is interested in a particular subject and learns the correct phrases to trot out.”

    “I think it’s sad!” said Ran with feeling.

    “So do I,” he agreed. “Bit sad all round, really, isn’t she?”

    “Mm. I don’t think it’s dawned on her,” said Ran with something like awe in her voice, “that she doesn’t need to suck up to Livia like she does, ’cos Livia’s the sort of person that’d be kind to her anyway!”

    “That’s right, lovey,” agreed Pete, beaming at her.

    After a moment it dawned on Max that the fatuous smile now adorning Pete’s thin, sardonic face was mirrored on his own. “Exactly,” he said feebly.

    “Doesn’t mean she isn’t a bloody unbearable gusher with it, mind you,” noted Pete fairly.

    “No!” agreed Ran, laughing. “I nearly died when she called you a lovely man to your face!”

    “Right. Well, some of the Yank dames we’ve had at the ecolodge were pretty bad, too, but— Yeah. Bloody embarrassing. And look, do us a big favour and don’t encourage her in this nutty idea that she’s gonna find a job locally. Like I tried to tell her, we don’t need a barmaid. Well, haven’t got a bar, for a start. And with six rooms, there’s no call for a permanent waitress, either.”

    “But if Jim’s ecolodge gets going they may need staff.”

    “Did you ever see anything less environmental than the way she was got up? –No. So don’t encourage her.”

    “But she has had experience working as a barmaid, Pete!”

    “Mm. Rather more than she’s had working as an actress, I’d say,” put in Max drily.

    “Yeah. Nevertheless,” said Pete heavily, “she hasn’t got the tone what this ruddy Sir Maurice of Jim’s’ll be looking for.”

    “Oh. No,” said Ran sadly. “I’d forgotten about him. He sounds really horrible. Blow.”

    Max leaned an arm on the side of the launch and looked dreamily over the pewter lake. “Could clean her up? Probably Livia’d enjoy being involved in the project, too. Do something drastic about the hair—perhaps tied back neatly with an environmental strip of cream suede? Neat fawn slacks—not tight—neat Roman sandals or desert boots according to the season, nice safari shirt with perhaps just one Amerindian artefact dangling at the neck?”

    “Nice safari shirt with them pleated pockets over the tits: right,” agreed Pete with relish.

    “Shut up,” said Ran unsteadily.

    “I made the suggestion in all innocence!” protested Max.

    “You might have started off that way, yeah,” she retorted drily.

    “See, once a bloke’s got the picture in ’is mind of pleated safari shirt pockets over the t—”

    “Shut UP, Pete!”

    Pete and Max exchanged grins, but did shut up.

    After quite some time of frowning at the water Ran said in a completely unconvinced voice: “It might work.”

    Alas, both Pete and Max promptly collapsed in agonised splutters.

    There were only two couples in besides Ran and Max for lunch at Taupo Shores Ecolodge: a middle-aged Mr and Mrs Grant from Auckland who didn’t ski or tramp, so it was a bit of a mystery why they’d chosen this time of year for a holiday in these parts, and an American couple in their mid-thirties, Bob Sorenson and Jennifer Duffy Sorenson, who were walkers. Yesterday they’d exhausted themselves doing Pete’s 16 K Rimu Trail, possibly getting themselves lost during it, as it had taken them most of the day after they’d insisted they’d be fine alone with Pete’s map, so this morning they’d just done the 5 K Rewarewa Trail on the property. Mr and Mrs Grant meanwhile “just going for a wander” down the same trail in, respectively, their grey flannel slacks and neat fawn parka, and grey jersey-knit slacks and neat blue parka, and ending up meeting the Sorensons in their elaborate waterproof hiking gear at the end of it, but however.

    As usual when there weren’t very many guests in Jan and Pete put everyone round the big table, and joined them. Jan usually served a soup on a chilly winter’s day; today’s was a thick bean creation which the Sorensons, who were vegetarians, ate with dazed looks on their faces, Jennifer then asking what sort of beans were in it and not appearing cheered when Jan said pinto beans. And what else, Jan, if she might ask? –But she always fried her onions first, too, and her soup never turned out like this! The second course was also vegetarian. Neither couple had encountered silverbeet stalks done in a creamy white sauce before and nor had Ran, but Jennifer Duffy Sorenson thought she’d seen something like it on Julia Child and that was real cuisine, wasn’t it, and was thrilled to have Max confirm that he’d had the dish at a nice restaurant in France. Jan merely said placidly she was glad they liked it and a friend who’d been to France had given her the recipe; she’d always just given the stalks to the goats, before. The carrots and leeks stewed in olive oil with a little thyme were also much admired and Diane Grant admitted with a sigh that she’d never been able to cook leeks without making them all wet and squeaky. There was a choice of baked local sweet potatoes or baked ordinary potatoes with this course but as there were enough for everyone to have one of each, everyone did, Bob Sorenson declaring the sweet potato the best he’d ever had, and admitting that they’d thought, as Americans, they knew sweet potato, and Norm Grant conceding the secret must be to grow your own, he’d always liked kumaras but the supermarket ones never tasted this good.

    “So they’re a native vegetable? Remind Jim to put them on his menu!” said Max to Jan, grinning. “Where is he this morning?”

    “Caitlin dragged him off on the trip to Hamilton with Vern,” she admitted. “She’s looking for an antique bedhead.”

    “Ouch! Poor Jim!” said Max with a laugh.

    “Help, will they be able to fit it in the car, if she does find one?” asked Ran.

    “They’ve got a station-waggon,” explained Pete. “Put the back seats down. Well, probably manage it unless it’s the size of that carved wooden Mexican thing of Livia’s.”

    “Is the upstairs Mexican as well, Pete?” asked Max with foreboding.

    “Too right! So’s the kitchen: terracotta tiles till Christmas!”

    “Yes,” said Jan feebly. “I’m afraid the bedroom looks sort of like a church, there’s so much carved stuff, sort of—sort of looming; and she’s got another huge crucifix in there, and a sort of—of shrine, with a statuette of the Virgin Mary.”

    “Are they Catholic, Jan?” asked Jennifer with interest.

    “No,” said Jan, swallowing.

    “Well, I guess a person can have a devotion to the Virgin Mary even if they aren’t Catholic: why not?” said Bob comfortably.

    By now everyone had gathered who was the stronger personality in that marriage so they looked somewhat fearfully at Jennifer but, possibly soothed by the food, she just smiled, nodded and agreed with him. And the company proceeded happily to the superb apple pie and real cream, or yoghurt if preferred.

    After Jan had firmly refused all offers to help with the dishes and packed them off in the 4x4 in the direction of the bottle house, Max admitted feelingly: “If ever I had a sneaking ambition to be the host of an ecolodge, it died the death today!”

    “But there was nothing wrong with them, Max,” said Ran in surprise. “I mean, they’ve had some shockers, haven’t you, Pete?”

    “Yep. This lot are really tame, Max.”

    “That’s my point! Polite exchanges of inane nothings over Jan’s wonderful food? Even the Sorensons: never mind the vegetarian, walking-tours shit, they’re so completely middle-class and—and null!”

    “That’s right. You’ve seized the essence of the ecolodge client, there, Max,” Pete replied placidly.

    “Jesus!”

    “Did you think some of them might have a few original ideas, Max?” asked Ran with a smile.

    “Yes! Well, didn’t you?”

    “No, but I’ve known the ecolodge all my life,” she said placidly.

    “Thing is,” explained Pete kindly, “the ones with the original ideas—well, the more original ones, don’t think there are all that many really original ones floating around, are there? The ones with them, they’re more liable to be out doing stuff for themselves, like building yer odd bottle house or even setting up an ecolodge in deepest Belize complete with its regional cuisine done on yer genuine Mayan wood stove, and yer fresh-baked banana bread and Guatemalan coffee, which, forgive my geographical exactitude, here, comes from a different country ent—”

    “Knock it off, Pete,” groaned Ran.

    “That’s all right!” said Max with laugh. “The iron’s entered into your soul over that Belize ecolodge, hasn’t it, Pete?”

    “Something like that,” he admitted, grinning. “What was I on about? Aw, yeah. The ones with the original ideas tend to be out and doing for themselves, they don’t want hot and cold running electric blankets and nicely laid-out fake trails served up to them on a plate, geddit?’

    “Almost; could you explain it a bit more, Pete?” replied Max plaintively.

    “Shuddup, ya bugger!” he choked.

    Max sat back, smiling, and they drove on in a state of perfect amity…

    “That’s it,” explained Pete superfluously.

    “Yes.” It was approximately a third of the outer shell of a bottle house, all right. No roof. Max wound his window down a little experimentally.

    “Taniwhas!” explained Ran with a gurgle.

    “They’re wailing demonically, all right!” he agreed.

    “Wanna get out? –No-one’ll blame ya if ya don’t,” noted Pete.

    “I would like to look it at more closely, if it’s not too much bother.”

    “No sweat. Don’t open your door, I’ll take ’er closer.” They bumped over the rough grass of Mr Haskell’s deserted section. About as rough as the dirt track leading to it, actually. Pete then got out and helped Max out, advising him to hop with one crutch, the ground was too rough for him to manage with two. Max duly hopped with one crutch.

    “Concrete,” explained Pete superfluously, as he peered at it.

    “Mm.”

    “It’s so depressing because it’s grey, I think,” offered Ran. “The effect with the bottles could be quite nice, if it wasn’t for all the grey.”

    “Mm… Yes, you’re right, Ran. Why in God’s name didn’t he tint it?”

    “No artistic flair?” suggested Pete. To Max’s amusement, Ran didn’t jump on him for this one, but nodded seriously.

    Max looked at the bottle house for a while, slowly beginning to smile. “A Mexican bottle house’d be fun,” he murmured.

    “Jesus!” replied Pete. “Don’t you start!”

     “No, but it would… Coloured adobe—well, tinted concrete—between the bottles? Sections of different coloured bottles?”

    “Brown, green and white,” noted Pete.

    “Exactly! And if one scoured the bottle dumps, the odd blue one, too? Er—there’s a brand of mineral water back home that comes in blue bottles; do you—?”

    “Nope. Plastic. And I defy anyone to do anything environmental with them!”

    Max made a face. “Mm.”

    “Um, I think I might have seen a blue glass bottle at a trendy café in Auckland Felicity once dragged me to,” offered Ran.

    Pete sniffed. “That’d be right. Well, scour the Auckland bottle dumps, eh?”

    “Uh-huh...” agreed Max, looking dreamily at Mr Haskell’s masterpiece.

    “Well?” said Jan on the wanderer’s return.

    “Took them home, made sure Ran was gonna get a hot cuppa down them, checked on Katy to make sure she’d eaten something in that bloody shed—she had: piece of cheese, the crust of the loaf and a Granny Smith and called it lunch—and tried not to look at what she’s doing with them sacks.”

    “Never mind, she’s happy; she hasn’t had an inspiration for quite a while. What about the bottle house?”

    Pete sat down heavily at the kitchen table. “Went over a treat, as a matter of fact.”

    Jan just nodded.

    He rubbed his nose. “Didn’t have to suggest tinting the concrete, thought of it for ’imself.”

    “See, you’re not the only with a bit of nous!”

    “Artistic flair, we decided it was,” said Pete, smirking.

    Jan returned unemotionally: “Artistic flair yourself into chopping and peeling this ruddy pumpkin for me, wouldja? The bloody thing’s like iron.”

    “Could take it out the back, clobber it with the axe?”

    “Incidentally taking your foot off as the axe rebounds off it. Get on with it.”

    Pete sighed, and attacked the pumpkin. After a moment he got up and really attacked the pumpkin. “Fuck!” he gasped.

    “See? I told you we should have planted butternuts!”

    “Not—keepers! Don’t like—the frosts!” he gasped. “Look, this is hopeless, Jan,” he said, stopping and mopping his forehead. “The axe’d be sensible. Uh—lessee. Yeah: edge ’er in here, by the stalk end, then whack the bloody pumpkin on the chopping block, eh?”

    “Ending up with dirty pumpkin that’s been all over the back yard, just as one of the guests pops round the corner of the house. Yeah, do that, Pete, the health inspectors’ll only shut us down for a million y—”

    “I’ll bring the axe in here,” he said, exiting rapidly.

    “Wash it,” said Jan grimly as came back in with it.

    “Look, the pumpkin grew in the groun—All right!” He washed the axe head. Then he scientifically inserted the corner of the blade, carefully knocking the pumpkin securely onto it. Then he raised the axe complete with pumpkin and whacked it down on the sturdy old table. Two pieces of pumpkin shot to either side of the kitchen and the axe head sank into the wood of the table top. As anyone but a cretin might have expected, as his partner in life did not fail to point out.

    “Never mind, makes it much more authentic. Quite ye old-ee, really,” he said, peering at the scar. “Whadda they call that junk Vern shows them? Distressed?”

    “Just get the bits and chop it up. And you still have to peel it,” she reminded him nastily.

    Pete had given up on the kitchen knives and was sawing the peel off the pieces of pumpkin with the bread saw, when she said: “So is Max gonna do some drawings?”

    “I think so, love, yeah.”

    “Good. And how did Ran seem?”

    “I’m no expert,” he warned. “Uh—quite protective, really. Mind you, did a bit of protecting of Livia and the Bettany female from him as well. Though actually he behaved himself—well, he saw she was worried.”

    “Good; so he does care what she thinks of him!”

    Pete sighed. “Ever heard of the expression ‘visiting fireman’?”

    “Shut up!”

    He shrugged, but shut up.

Next chapter:

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