Recycling

5

Recycling

    Jan shoved the hair off her forehead, and sighed. “Primmy’s pushed off with Hanley Johansson. Permanently, I mean, Ran. He’s headed home to Canada by way of northern Australia and an island off the coast of Africa that’s so exclusive we’d never heard of it.”

    “Oh,” said Ran numbly.

    “Siddown,” said Jan with a sigh, plugging the jug in.

    Numbly Ran sank onto an old kitchen chair.

    “To my knowledge she hasn’t left a message for Max,” said Jan heavily. “Unless she emailed him.”

    “She can’t of, he thinks she’s still here.”

    “Mm. Well, I’d say Moyra’ll be pleased,” she noted drily.

    “Um, yes. Last time she rang up she said she was an empty-headed clothes horse with an eye for the main chance and the one thing that could be said of her was that she didn’t bully him like that Angela did,” admitted Ran.

    “Right. Uh—said to you or him?”

    “Me. She said it was pointless trying to tell a male anything, it just had to dawn of its own accord.”

    Jan grinned in spite of herself. “I’d say she’s not far wrong, there!” She handed Ran a mug of instant coffee and sat down with her own. “I’ll tell him, if you like,” she offered mildly.

    Ran went very red. “No, I’d better do it. He is a relation, after all.”

    “Just as you like. What’s he doing this morning?”

    “Jim Thompson came over and they were gonna meet up with Vern Reilly and go for a look at some recycling yard.”

    “Recycling so-called, if it’s that dump Vern’s nephew Ben runs. It started off as a timber yard but the big boys put the owner out of business yonks back, so Miser Ron, Vern’s brother, bought it up for a song and put a gate up and started charging the locals to dump stuff there—instead of driving up on a quiet night and dumping it there anyway like they’d been doing for the last half dozen years,” she clarified. “It’s out off the Rotorua road—down Elizabeth Crescent and round the bend.”

    “Oh, yeah, I know! It’s always been padlocked whenever I’ve seen it,” said Ran, looking dubious.

    “Yeah, that’s the point. You can’t just drive in, you have to stop and honk your horn. Or get out and press the button on that speaker thing Ben’s put on the gate if you’re not a local,” she conceded with a wink.

    “Goddit.”

    “Mm. Well, if you go over there you’ll be breaking it to the whole of the male peer group, not just Max,” warned Jan.

    “Yeah, but if I do it at home I’ll be breaking it to Felicity and the new boyfriend as well, they’ve suddenly landed themselves on us for the weekend.”

    “Uh—another new boyfriend?” said Jan cautiously. Felicity’s males came and went like the stuff she put on her back, in fact if you thought about it, faster: she’d had that heavy coat for two years, now.

    “Yeah. Well, new as a boyfriend, she’s known him for years, he’s another lawyer.”

    “Not another ghastly button-down-collared yuppie like that awful Kyle?”

    “Gary,” corrected Ran placidly. “The one she chucked the job in over.”

    How she managed it in these days of constant unemployment and downsizing Jan had no idea, but Felicity was always changing her jobs, too. “Uh—oh, yeah,” she said hazily.

    “This one’s name’s Murray. He works for the same firm as Gary.”—Jan was goggling at her.—“Well, don’t look at me,” advised Ran drily. “He’s much higher up than rat-fink Gary was, and a quiet sort of person. Quite nice-looking but definitely not handsome.”—Jan was goggling at her.—“He’s divorced, his wife found something more with-it that wanted to give her a huge house in Pakuranga with a three-car garage. –One miserable-looking little girl that Murray only gets to see on weekends.”

    Jan swallowed hard. “Ran—” she said faintly. “Cripes, there’s so many of ’em that I dunno what to say first! Uh, well, possibly not in order of priority, if he doesn’t want to give the female in his life a huge house in Pakuranga with a three-car garage, why’s Felicity taken up with him?”

    “I said, he’s much higher up in the firm than Gary was. He’s a junior partner.”

    “That does not negate my point!” said Jan with some feeling.

    “Nah, you’re behind the times. Huge dark brick horrors in Pakuranga with three-car garages are out, poncy flats way up Carter’s Bay with a view over the bay and out to the Gulf are in. It’s a place that that mate of Pete’s, Jake Whatsisname, built. Huge white block: Felicity claims it’s Mediterranean style.”

    “That hideous great white lump that Carrano Development’s defaced nice old Carter’s Bay waterfront with? Polly Carrano calls it Casa Meretricious!” she gulped.

    Placidly Ran replied: “That’s it. Casa Meridionale. It’s a condo: he actually owns the flat, he’s not a renter.”

    “He wouldn’t be,” said Jan faintly. “A—a quiet sort? Is she serious, then, Ran?”

    Ran looked thoughtful. “Serious in her terms, yes. I think she’s decided he’s what she wants.”

    “God, poor bugger!” said Jan with feeling. “Uh—sorry, Ran,” she added feebly. “She is your sister, after all.”

    “That’s okay. It might work out quite well, actually, so long as she doesn’t have to push him. But he’s already doing well in his profession, so she might not have to. When she finds something she really wants, she does stick to it, you know. Like Prince Valiant.”

    Jan smiled weakly. “Mm.” The misnamed Prince Valiant was Felicity’s horse. She’d begged for it in her early teens, and Dan and Katy had given in on condition she looked after the creature herself. Not only had Felicity got up at crack of dawn every morning throughout her schooldays to groom and feed the nag, when she went off to Auckland to the up-market secretarial course she’d chosen she took it with her, paying for the haulage out of what she’d saved over the years from her baby-sitting and holiday jobs—parsimony was admittedly the girl’s middle name, but still, that was bloody good going—and grazed it in someone’s field, paying for its hay and stuff herself and apparently riding it every weekend. When it got really past it she found someone who specialized in looking after old horses—come to think of it, that was somewhere near Carter’s Bay—and she was now paying them for its board and lodging. And still popping up to see it every other weekend.

    “How old is it now, Ran?” she asked weakly.

    “Prince Valiant? Ten years younger than her, so he must be seventeen.”

    “Right,” said Jan weakly. “Well, yes, she’s stuck by i—him, all right.” She looked at her weakly.

    “Prince Murray,” said Ran thoughtfully.

    “Shut up,” she croaked.

    Their eyes met. Suddenly they both broke down in shrieks of laughter.

    “That did me good!” admitted Jan, mopping her eyes. “Uh—hang on: did they come down last night?” Ran nodded and she croaked: “Where are they sleeping?”

    “She’s in Shannon’s bunk and he’s in Sean’s rat-hole,” replied Ran cheerfully.

    Words failed Jan.

    “The bunk is more comfortable than the fold-out sofa,” Ran reminded her calmly.

    Well, yes! Last Christmas, when they’d had to put Moyra in her room, Felicity had booted Shannon out of the bunk and left her to the mercies of the sofa-bed. Fortunately Shannon was young enough to sleep like a log on anything. But letting Katy put an up-market lawyer boyfriend in the rat-hole? The bed was reasonably comfortable, if narrow, but the room itself…

    “The rat-hole? An up-market lawyer type from Auckland?” she croaked.

    “Murray said that it reminded him of holidays with his grandpa in Paeroa,” replied Ran kindly.

    Jan hadn’t been over that way in years—in fact last time she’d been up there the little town had still had the huge sign in the shape of a bottle of Lemon and Paeroa outside it, welcoming you. Faded as buggery, true, but still there. These days they made the stuff commercially, relentlessly calling it L&P, and it tasted like commercial lemonade, in other words fizzy, over-sugared muck. “Uh—that would’ve been downmarket, all right,” she croaked.

    “Yeah. He seems like quite a decent bloke, really. Dad said he’s too good for her,” reported Ran cheerfully.

    That was the thought that sprang to mind, yeah. Only— Well, heck! Poor bloke!

    “He likes Rover,” reported Ran on a pleased note.

    Definitely too good for her. “Uh—good,” said Jan with an effort. “Well, you could get on over to the recycling yard, Ran, only as I say, the male peer group’ll be in full session.”

    “I’ll winkle him out of it,” replied Ran. “Ta for the coffee. See ya!”

    Taking all things into consideration, Jan tottered over to the bench and made herself another mug.

    Elizabeth Crescent was exactly as Ran remembered it: muddy ruts leading pointlessly from Point A to nowhere. A few scattered houses at the beginning of it. Um… Oh, yeah, you turned off just after the crescent hived off to nowhere and then really got lost and then, just as you were starting to panic, here it was. The dump to end all dumps: in other words, a male paradise, and as it was Saturday morning there were a fair few of them in their beat-up Holdens, dirty 4WDs the wife hadn’t got round to forcing them to wash yet this weekend, and aging station-waggons. Gee, and two actual utes, maybe Vern’s nephew had some good junk as opposed to stuff that no-one in their senses’d give house-room and that’d end up adorning the back of the section until the wives made them get rid of it and Vern’s nephew duly refused to pay them anything for it and charged them for the privilege of dumping it.

    She joined the queue. After a few moments a daggy male figure in beat-up jeans and the usual grungy parka got out of a ute and came over to her.

    “I thought it was you,” he greeted her.

    “Ya would do, I’ve had this heap since I was old enough to drive,” replied Ran.

    “Legally, ya mean—yeah. Whose was it, again?”

    “Uncle Joe’s—Dad’s uncle.”

    “Aw—right. Ya do realize this isn’t a queue, do ya?”

    Ran goggled at him Used as she was to the male peer group, this statement was untranslatable! “What is it, then?”

    “Jack Roberts stuck in the mud, the sucker that came after him stuck in the mud behind him, the sucker that came after him stuck—”

    “All right, I get it!”

    “No, ya don’t, Ran. And two cars behind him, a bloke that’s actually broken down, so the car in between can’t—”

    “Is there a ditch?” replied Ran, peering at the knee-high grass at either side of the ruts.

    There always was, so her old school friend replied calmly: “Yeah.”

    “Right. So if it isn’t a queue, why are you queuing behind them, Barry?”

    “I’m waiting for Ben to open his ruddy gate. Some of them are actually parked,” he added helpfully.

    “Eh? Oh, ya mean the owners have gone in? Why didn’t they drive in?”

    “There’s an even bigger mud puddle about ten metres in, think Ben might’ve warned them off.”

    “I see.” Not asking if anyone had pressed the button on the flaming speaker, because he wouldn’t admit it if they hadn’t, Ran said: “How’s Alison?”

    “Very pregnant,” replied Barry sourly.

    “Yeah, well, that takes two.”

    “Look, we agreed two kids were enough!” he said heatedly.

    He thought they had, more like. “Get it in writing plus and stand over the doc as he does her tubes, would be my advice, Barry, only what would I know?” replied Ran placidly. “’Scuse me.” She honked her horn loudly.

    “That’ll bring ’im running,” noted Barry sardonically.

    “Yeah.” Ran got out.

    “It’s brass monkeys,” he warned.

    “Yeah.” She walked past him, past the row of vehicles, parked or stuck, and pressed really hard on the button on the speaker.

    “Someone’s already done that,” said Barry’s voice lugubriously from somewhere up above her left shoulder.

    “Yeah, right. –YEAH, we want the flaming gate opened!” she shouted into the apparatus.

    “Was he there?” said Barry in mild surprise.

    “Him or Santa Claus, Barry.”

    Giving her a resentful look, the representative of the male peer group returned to his vehicle.

    Vern Reilly’s nephew greeted Ran and the view of the press of vehicles behind her with a surprised: “Hullo. Why didn’t someone ring before?”

    “Gee, Ben, could it be because they’re a load of male wankers?” replied Ran evilly—Barry wasn’t wrong, it was brass monkeys, all right.

    “Something like that,” he agreed equably, opening the gate. “I wouldn’t drive in, the driveway’s blocked by a huge mud puddle,” he warned.

    “Yeah. That must really encourage custom. Would a load of gravel break the bank?”

    “According to Dad, yeah,” Ben replied sourly. “He reckons they can carry it as far as their cars.”

    “Well, if they can lift it without a block and tackle, I suppose that’s fair enough. Is your Uncle Vern still here?”

    “Yeah. Him and that Pommy cousin of yours are looking at our kauri.”

    “Kauri what?”

    “Timber!” replied Ben on an annoyed note.

    And the rest. Warped, curling bits of barely-fit-for-firewood, more like. Ran didn’t say it, she just said: “Then couldja point me in the right direction?”

    “I’ll show ya,” Ben decided. “This can stay open, Dad won’t be round this morning,” he decided.

    “It’s your funeral,” replied Ran comfortably, following in his wake as he skirted the immense mud puddle in the yard’s apology for a driveway.

    “Um, they were here,” said Ben lamely as they rounded a giant pile of junk and a tumbledown shed to a view of more giant piles of junk, the nearer one composed of long pieces of warped, curling bits of barely-fit-for-firewood propped against something else.

    “Max is an up-market English architect: I don’t think these bits of firewood would appeal. Have you got anything under shelter?”

    “Timber’s supposed to weather!” replied Ben on an annoyed note.

    “Uh-huh. In the real timber yards they don’t lean it on something else and leave it for five thousand years, though, do they?”

    “Shut up, Ran, ya not funny,” said Ben morosely. “Was that Barry Kitchen’s ute back there?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Did he say what he was looking for?”

    “No.”

    “Uh—blow. I’ve got a nice pastel bathroom suite. He said they were thinking of doing up their bathroom. ”

    “With a third kid on the way I’d strongly doubt they can afford to,” said Ran, not unkindly. “Did he tell you that before or after she got preggy again?”

    “Uh—dunno. He must be looking for something, though!”

    That or escaping from Alison and the preggy to the male peer group—one or the other. Ran didn’t point this out. “Yeah. Well, my bet’d be some nice timber to make another changing table out of after he ripped the last one apart to help build a playhouse for Brad and Courteney.”

    “Did he?”

    “Yeah. It’s a really nice playhouse.”

    Ben had brightened. “I’ve got some nice old tables in the shed!”

    Possibly Alison Kitchen would accept a repainted old table as a changing table for the new sprog instead of a made-from-scratch to exact specifications proper changing table, but Ran sincerely doubted it. “Mm. Well, you could try him with them, Ben.”

    “Yeah, I will. I think they might be in here: come on.” He led the way to a large tumbledown shed, something the size of an aircraft hanger. “Hey, Uncle VERN!” he shouted, sticking his head through its doorless doorway. –That’d be to let the planes taxi in and out, noted Ran, by the by.

    “Down here!” came a hoot in reply.

    “They’re down there. I better catch Barry,” said Ben, withdrawing his head.

    “Righto—ta,” agreed Ran, going in. “Cripes, real kauri?” she croaked, tottering up to them.

    “Yeah. Dunno why he’s stuck it in here—just as well, though, eh?” replied Vern.

    “What was it?” asked Ran, sniffing cautiously. There was a really funny pong.

    “Best part of an old woolshed, ’ud be my bet,” replied Ben’s uncle. “That’s sheep shit you can smell. Well—mixed with lanoline,” he conceded, running his hand over a highly polished, if untrimmed, piece of timber.

    “It’s been cleaned,” said Jim Thompson on a defensive note.

    “Ya mean the visible sheep shit’s been washed off it—right,” conceded Ran, grinning at him. “Your lot had better jack up some really reliable types to do the actual work if you’re thinking of using this stuff for your up-market tourists. What’s the word?” she added, looking at the piles and piles and piles of timber. “Um… triage,” she said thoughtfully.

    Gratifyingly, Max collapsed in sniggers.

    “We’ll just have to get a reliable foreman,” said Jim firmly.

    “Stop—it!” gasped Max. “No such animal,” he explained, wiping his eyes.

    “No, and what if he hasn’t got any sense of smell?” added Ran thoughtfully.

    Max gave a yelp and collapsed again, this time joined, to Ran’s surprise, by the elderly Vern Reilly.

    “Actually, I was serious,” she admitted, grinning at them.

    “You were not!” retorted Jim crossly.

    “Well, eighty percent, Jim,” she said kindly.

    Max blew his nose. “Possibly select the bits personally before buying?”

    “No!” said Jim crossly. “Didn’t you hear him say it’d be miles cheaper as a job lot?”

    “Added to which,” noted Vern thoughtfully, “even if ya do select them, who’s gonna supervise who loads them onto the truck for ya?”

    “He’s got a point,” admitted Ran. “The thing is,” she said kindly, looking at Jim’s face, “recycling is terrifically hands-on, Jim. Commercial builders just aren’t geared up to do it.”

    Jim looked sulky. “All right, if you know so much about it, why don’t you volunteer to be our on-site supervisor?”

    “Actually, I wouldn’t mind. I’m fed up with doing an office job,” replied Ran calmly.

    Max looked at her doubtfully. “Would you really like it?”

    “Yes.”

    “You’d have to know a fair bit about materials, Ran, love,” said old Vern.

    “Does working as a builder’s labourer every holidays between fourteen and twenty-one count?” replied Ran calmly.

    “Uh—yeah, Pete mentioned ya done that,” admitted Jim. “Some local guy, was it?”

    “Two. Jerry Dutton to start with, I learned a lot from him, and then Micky Young when he wanted to branch out on his own.”

    “Not some relation of the dreaded Ma and Pa Young, Ran?” ventured Max.

    “Yeah, their oldest son. He’s okay, he’s not like them.”

    “I don’t think he’d need to be! Anybody who could possibly contemplate sending that face of Rover’s to the pound—!”

    The elderly Vern scratched his chin. “Dunno about the face so much, Max, but ya can’t say the rest of him’s that appealing.”

    Max’s eyes twinkled but he replied seriously: “Of course he is, the great soft thing that he is. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

    “No, that’s right!” agreed Ran happily. “Well?”

    Max was just standing there smiling at her, so Vern prompted: “Knowing about the materials, Max.”

    “Oh!” he said, jumping. “I’d say that goes a long way towards qualifying you, Ran.”

    “Pretty much, yeah,” agreed Jim. “It’d be my neck if I took you on and you got it wrong, though, Ran.”

    “I wouldn’t get it wrong if the spessies were written down, Jim,” said Ran seriously.

    “Right. ‘No planks that stink of sheep shit,’” agreed Vern, poker-face.

    “Or possibly ‘No planks that stink of sheep shit for interiors,’ Vern,” said Max. “Well… supervisory sort of position, with hands-on experience… Um, bit of project management knowledge, Jim?”

    “I think Sir Maurice would probably hold out for that, yeah. Like, you’d be a lot lower in the pecking order than Hill Tarlington, of course,” he said to Ran, “but you would have to know about time-lines and that sort of stuff.”

    “I see. There’s a tech institute course I could do, one of Shannon’s flat-mates is doing it. Or maybe do night classes.”

    “You might be better off doing it by correspondence,” said Jim slowly. “It’s not as isolated as it was: these days lots of them have workshops and things that you do over the Internet, eh? Um, what I was thinking, Sir Maurice might want you do an English course, Ran, not one of ours. Shall I ask Hill what he thinks?”

    Ran’s eyes shone. “Yes, do; I’d really, really like that, Jim!”

    “Okey-doke. And tell ya what, if they want someone with more experience to supervise this project on-site, you could always be his assistant!”

    Ran nodded eagerly.

    “But—uh—well, YDI is building here and in Australia, of course, but, uh, their main business is in the northern hemisphere, Ran,” said Max on a weak note.

    “There are planes,” she replied cheerfully.

    “Y—” Why he had imagined that she wouldn’t want to leave home Max had no idea. But the notion was certainly firmly fixed in his head. Possibly because her home and family were so bloody appealing, especially as compared to his own? “Well, yes, if you don’t mind being a bit of a globe-trotter.”

    “Lead me to it!” said Ran with a laugh.

    “Good,” said Jim briskly. “That’s settled. Now, you better see what we’re planning, eh?”

    “Goodoh,” Ran agreed equably. “What were you thinking of, Max?”

    “Follow Pete’s example and extend the existing building, given that, despite appearances, the house is solid kauri. Add a couple of wings of varying storeys to take advantage of the lake view—drawing some inspiration from that packing-case house on the other side of the lake, but using as much kauri as possible. Add several chalets based on the bottle house idea. Use a great deal of recycled glass throughout, combining privacy with as much natural light as possible. All recycled bathroom fittings,” he said, twinkling at her, “perhaps giving each suite a theme—Sixties, Seventies, and so forth, if we can’t find anything older; pot-bellied stoves if we can decide on a renewable fuel, plus solar heating.”

    “Mm. You can get loads of firewood round here because of the forestry—I mean, they’re doing it anyway, it’s not as if the trees are being cut down on purpose, and they do replant.”

    “Yes. Head Office’s legal staff are checking that out, but we think it’s a goer,” put in Jim. “Here’s his sketch.” He unfolded a large sheet of paper.

    Ran goggled at it. “Wow!”

    “Er—not gone overboard with the bottles and the bottle glass?” said Max.

    “No, it’s fabulous!” Ran smiled at him. “No wonder you asked Mum if she had a big sketch pad you could use.”

    “Er—yes. Oh! Did you expect me to do it on my laptop, Ran?”

    “Mm.”

    “Not the concept drawings,” said Jim smugly. “I really like these heavy glass panels for the windows: see, he’s done one in close-up. We’ve been in touch with a lady that does a lot of work with recycled glass and even though ours’d be semi-industrial, she’s really keen to be in on it.”

    “Cash money,” elaborated Vern with a wink. “Lot prettier than those industrial glass tiles that couple from Wellington made Jerry Dutton use in that bloody awful cantilevered place, eh?”

    “Miles prettier! Mind you, that was a good contract for Jerry,” replied Ran seriously.

    Vern winked at Max. “Right. Well, tell us what ya reckon they can do with this junk of Ben’s, love.”

    Obligingly Ran told them. And also what she thought the over-optimistic Max and Jim wouldn’t be able to do. The elderly Vern Reilly, on whom it had already dawned that they were being over-optimistic, had to conceal a few grins: she was spot-on.

    “See, if you want Ben to keep all this for you, you would have to pay him. People come from all over the country looking for kauri, you see,” she explained seriously. “There are one or two firms that specialise in selling recycled kauri, but it costs and arm and a leg. Um, I know the yard doesn’t look busy, Max, but it’s winter, people don’t really get going with their building projects until the weather’s a bit warmer.”

    “Right,” agreed Vern. “And even now, ya still get a reasonable number of the really keen ones that’ve got it all planned out: source your raw materials in winter, spend the fine weather building, see?”

    “Yes. And, um, any sort of nice old furniture’s like hen’s teeth,” she said on an apologetic note to Max. “The stuff your tourists go for in the boutiques and junk shops is really horrible, isn’t it, Vern? But it goes for incredible prices.”

    “Right: really basic stuff with horrible flaking paint; they call it distressed and in pristine condition, if ya can believe it, and it goes for hundreds. And the real antique stuff, well, ya won’t get anything like a chest of drawers for less than five or six thousand, and even then you’d be bloody lucky if it had its original handles.”

    “Um, that is New Zealand dollars,” said Ran awkwardly, looking at Max’s face, “but it’d still be about two thousand pounds, I suppose, Max. And at that it’s only what you’d call Victorian.”

    “But— Hell. Well—uh—Plan B?” he said to Jim.

    “Even that Plan B stuff’s going for an arm and a leg, like Vern says,” he replied glumly.

    “Unless ya want recycled scratched brown woodgrain-pattern Formica,” noted Vern, eyeing a prime example of it. “Those legs’d be pine—usually with knots in places ya don’t want ’em,” he noted. “And you can’t get Fifties Formica-topped tables with those nice metal legs for love or money these days, they’ve all gone to the trendy junk shops in Auckland. Real collectible, they are, these days, ’specially with the matching chairs.”

    “Er… commission your own furniture. Jim? Out of recycled materials?” ventured Max.

    “That might work,” conceded Vern.

    “There are furniture designers in Auckland that’d be happy to do you a load of one-offs,” allowed Ran. “But the thing is, they’d make you pay through the nose for them in the first instance and in the second instance, from the look of the stuff in the fancy mags it’d all be horrendously uncomfortable. –Never heard of ergonomics,” she explained kindly. “They’re not artisans or craftsmen, they’ve only been to art school.”

    “Stalemate again, then, Jim,” said Max lightly.

    “Look, why is that every idea we come up with’s a total no-no?” he said angrily.

    “Um, sorry, Jim,” said Ran lamely.

    “No! Heck, it’s not your fault, Ran!”

    “Think it’s the twenny-first century’s,” put in Vern laconically. “Still plenty of old kitchen chairs and stuff in here, though. Not a complete set in sight, I’ll give ya that,” he admitted.

    Jim looked dubiously at a flaking dark cream and very dirty plain wooden one, and its neighbour, a flaking lighter cream and very fake captain’s chair style, with a split black vinyl padded seat. “Mix and match them? I suppose you could get some sort of effect if you painted them all to match.”

    “Paint isn’t eco-friendly, Jim,” warned Max, his mouth twitching.

    “No—funny, that, eh?” agreed Jim on a sardonic note. “I did start looking up what they make paint of as versus what they make polyurethane varnishes of, but it got so bad I hadda stop. Well, strip them?”

    “I’d certainly strip that!” he agreed, looking at a hideous turquoise object. No, not quite turquoise, the greener side of turquoise: really vile. Though fortunately a great deal of it had flaked off.

    “That paint job’ll date back to when they put the new school up,” decided Vern, giving it the once-over. “—Tui Street Primary,” he said to Ran.

    New? It was old when she went there! She goggled at him.

    Vern’s shrewd little eyes twinkled, but he refrained from smiling. “Mid-Fifties. No, hold on, when was the Coronation? Earlyish Fifties, then. Built for the baby-boomers. Painted it this lurid sort of bluish-green. That’ll be a tin that fell off the back of a truck: there were a fair few of them. Whole house down Edgware Road got done out in it.”

    “Edgware Road?” queried Max faintly.

    “Yeah; why?”

    “Oh—nothing,” he said faintly. “In that case it should be either fairly easy to strip that chair, Vern, or almost impossible.”

    “What I thought,” agreed Vern placidly.

    “So do you agree in principle, Max?” said Jim on an eager note. “Mix and match?”

    Max rubbed his chin slowly. “Your interior design staff would have the say-so, I think, Jim, but my recommendation would be maybe, so long as the result doesn’t look like a mish-mash. And, er, possibly rubbing eco-friendly beeswax or some such into them after they’ve been stripped might seem the solution to satisfying that website’s criteria, but one has to think of the upkeep: that sort of finish has to be maintained regularly.”

    “Right: there’s loads of people round these parts that’d be really keen to have a job rubbing beeswax into recycled junk furniture—not,” contributed Ran.

    “Bugger,” muttered Jim, scowling. “The thing is, those other places don’t admit what they’ve used!” he said in exasperation.

    “Mm.” Max was now looking at a collection of doors leaning against the nearest wall. Badly seasoned and insufficiently cared-for pine would be his bet, for the most part. The panels of dark yellow glass that several of ’em featured were highly desirable adjuncts—not, as Ran would say. However there were one or two… Strangely, mostly minus their handles.

    “Old door handles are like hen’s teeth, a bloke in one of the junk shops in Hamilton was telling me that gays from Auckland drive down in their Porsches and grab them all,” explained Vern helpfully.

    “Mm-hm…” Max scraped at the surface of one experimentally with his thumbnail. Its heavy white paint flaked off, the pink undercoat under that coming off with it, and there was revealed—

    “Solid kauri. Some of these doors are really old,” said Jim. “Would they be the right style, though?”

    “Mm? For the buildings? No, not thinking of that, Jim. This timber would make a beautiful table.”

    There was a dubious silence and then Ran said: “Mum knows a lady that’s got an old door as a coffee table. Um, she lives in Auckland, in a really trendy done-up building with a view of the sea and her place is all open-plan with great big plain sofas and hand-woven rugs and stuff. I mean, you’d really need the space; she’s thrown everything into one, there isn’t even a spare bedroom any more.”

    “Not an entire door as a table, Ran, though that sounds like rather fun,” said Max, smiling at her, “but reuse the timber. Then you’d end up with a mixture of recycled, stripped stuff and made-to-order pieces from recycled timber: the natural, wood-grain look would be the factor that tied them together.”

    “Um, yeah, if you can get the right person to make them, that sounds lovely.”

    “I’ll work on it,” said Jim with determination. “There must be one bloke in the country that loves working with wood, uses good old solid techniques and has some grasp of basic ergonomics! –And if that there’s a disbelieving silence, it can stop now!” he ordered them with a grin.

    “Okay, we’ve stopped!” replied Ran cheerfully. “How soon do ya reckon you might get some decisions out of Head Office, Jim?”

    “I’ll contact them straight away… Depends what sort of mood Sir Maurice is in, really,” he admitted. “I’ll need to suss out the furniture makers pronto, too, he’ll want facts and figures. –Blow, Melanie’s hopeless at Internet searching: I did tell them a secretary with good research skills would be the go but they wouldn’t wear the extra expense at that stage. Um, Ran, you’ve done a lot of research, haven’t you? Whaddaya say to this idea: come aboard straight away, take over the research side of stuff for me, and the initial contacts with the possible suppliers and so forth, and that gives you a toe-in, see? Meantime, you do your correspondence course, and then when the project’s ready to break ground we put you in on the on-site side. Well, Hill reckons it doesn’t do to get too specialised in project management: it limits you, see? And if you only do the on-site stuff there might not be anything for you to do when we’re not building.”

    “Really?” she gasped. “That sounds great, Jim!”

    Max bit his lip. “What about the globe-trotting?”

    “There’ll be a fair bit of that: Sir Maurice still wants a site in New South Wales, not necessarily the one we looked at; and if we don’t do that sewage-ponding crap Tazzie might still be go, there is a big tourist industry there, loads of up-market little restaurants, and in the summer they can do the trip up the Franklin; and if the Queensland place does good we’ll probably put up another one: somewhere really remote, further north. Well, it’s stinking humid all year round up there, but that seems to be what the punters want!” he said cheerfully. “And he’s interested in the Cook Islands: that’d be an all-year-round job, it’d be worth buying or leasing a whole island and flying them in with a little amphibian! Hill did stop over there on his way home, looked at a couple of possible sites, but one of them’s owned by one of those enormous Islander families that can’t agree on anything. –Polynesian land ownership, see?” he said to Max. “Individuals don’t own anything; the Maoris had a similar system. The other site was too near the existing tourist traps, Sir Maurice hated it. But anyway, the Cooks are still on the agenda. She’ll get loads of travel.”

    “Yes, I— Not necessarily the South Pacific, Jim,” said Max limply.

    “Hill reckons he’s gonna make the ole bas—pardon my French, make him send all staff with supervisory responsibilities on the firm’s standard orientation course in England.”

    “‘That sounds good!” said Ran, grinning.

    Something like that—mm. Max tried to smile. Somehow a picture of her based in a nice little flat in London, conveniently near his flat, had got into his head…

    “What, Ran?” he said, jumping. “Er—yes, I think we’ve finished: I’d love a ride back with you.”

    Ran had forgotten to be nervous about breaking the news of Primmy’s defection, what with the interest of the recycling yard and the excitement of the prospect of a job with Jim. But now it all came over her in a rush. She said nothing as they picked their way past the mud and ruts to the car.

    “Talking of recycled!” said Max merrily, buckling his seatbelt. “I love it, Ran! A genuine old Humber!”

    “Yeah; I’ve put a lot of work into it,” said Ran mechanically. She pulled out carefully, in view of the cretin parked too close behind her, and, since there was no room to turn, backed carefully up the road until they were past the row of vehicles. “Hang on,” she said, as they reached the last one. “Open your window, wouldja?”

    “Er—certainly.” Max wound his window down.

    “HEY!” yelled Ran, leaning over him. “THIS ISN’T A QUEUE!”

    The man in the car wound his window down. “Eh?” he cried.

    “This isn’t a queue!” cried Ran. “Half of them are bogged down and the rest are parked! You can’t drive in, there’s a huge mud puddle just inside the gate!”

    “Righto—ta!” he cried.

    Ran backed up further. “You can put that window up again,” she noted, as he was just sitting there.

    Max jumped. “Oh—yes.”

    Ran had accomplished the turn and was halfway back to Elizabeth Crescent before she got up the nerve to say: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

    “Mm?” he replied with a smile.

    As it usually did when he said “Mm?” like that Ran’s tummy had done that swoopy thing. She didn’t look at him but kept her eyes firmly on the road. “’Tisn’t particularly good news. It’s about Primmy.”

    “What’s she done now?” said Max in a bored voice.

    Ran frowned. “Pushed off with a bloke. That Hanley Johansson.”

    “Oh, yes?” said Max in a bored tone. “Where to, this time?”

    Oh, help, he hadn’t understood! This was even harder than she’d thought it was gonna be! “Um, no, you don’t get it, Max,” she said, swallowing hard. “She—she’s gone for good. To Canada.” He didn’t say anything so she added awkwardly, feeling herself go very red: “I’m awfully sorry.”

    “Oh, good God!” said Max. “Darling Ran, have you been torturing yourself over having to tell me? Thank you so much, but— Good Lord, don’t bawl!”

    “Sorry!” gasped Ran as the tears trickled down her cheeks, what a total nong! She pulled into the side of the road and groped for a hanky, not looking at him.

    “Have mine,” said Max with a smile in his voice, pushing his handkerchief into her hand. “And for Heaven’s sake don’t bawl over Primmy!”

    Ran blew her nose hard, not looking at him. “I thought it might be the last straw,” she said in a tiny voice. “On top of your broken leg.”

    “No! Darling Ran, you’re letting that soft heart of yours run away with you!” said Max, putting his hand on her knee. “It’s the best news I’ve had for ages! I’ve been racking my brains for a way to dump the silly little cow nicely for ages! Well,” he said with a grimace, as Ran looked at him in astonishment over the handkerchief, “she hadn’t committed, at least in her terms, any dumpable offence.”

    Ran blew her nose one last time. “No,” she said limply. “I see.”

    “Mummy was right all along, see?” said Max with a laugh.

    “Hah, hah. Well, she didn’t predict Primmy was gonna do that—but she certainly didn’t strike any of us as right for you,” admitted Ran.

    “No. Er, well, more or less threw herself at me,” said Max, making a face, “and, given that I was fed up with the frightful Angela— Did Moyra—? Right,” he said wryly, as Ran, going very red, nodded hard. “Well, given that, I, er, gave in. Well, she is very pretty, but I must admit I hadn’t realised until closer acquaintance just how very dumb she is or how bloody irritating it could be!”

    “I see. Um, actually Dad said she’d be driving him mad in your shoes and he’d give you credit for not losing your temper drastically with her, only perhaps you were still—” Ran broke off abruptly.

    “I was past the perhaps stuff, Ran,” said Max meekly.

    “Mm,” muttered Ran, wishing she could stop blushing: what a nong, he must think she was the world’s greatest idiot! Why the Hell couldn’t she be adult and sophisticated about it and just—just chat lightly? As, bugger it, he obviously expected!

    “Er—I suppose I don’t tend to lose my temper, much. Mummy claims I’m too accepting—and Angela claimed something much, much worse!” he admitted, swallowing a laugh.

    “Oh,” said Ran, swallowing. What did he expect her to say? Help! “I—I wouldn’t say that was a bad thing,” she offered valiantly. “Bad-tempered men are awful.”

    Max looked into those big amber eyes and said on a would-be light note: “Glad you think so. Primmy’s no loss; and it leaves me footloose and fancy-free, doesn’t it?”

    “Yes,” she said, blushing again and looking away from him.

    Max put his hand on her knee. “Darling Ran, once this bloody leg’s letting me do anything at all, couldn’t we—er, well, do something?” She was still very red and not looking at him: damn, that hadn’t struck the right note at all! “I think you must have noticed I’m keen,” he said in a low voice.

    Ran gulped. “Um, well, not really,”

    “It isn’t a hose-pipe in my pocket, you know,” he said conversationally.

    “Um, no! Um, well, I mean, that duh-doesn’t necessarily mean anything!” she gasped.

    “Possibly not, but ’tis sort of a prerequisite,” returned Max meekly.

    “That isn’t funny,” said Ran feebly.

    He looked at her uncertainly. “Um, too soon after the thing with Primmy? I promise you it meant nothing to me, Ran. We had less than nothing in common.”

    “I don’t think we have, either,” said Ran in stifled voice.

    “Of course we have! Both love art and classical music, interested in books, furniture, and even architecture!”

    Ran licked her lips nervously. “You don’t understand. Those things are all real to you, and I’ve only seen most of them in books—or on TV, I suppose, only we don’t get many interesting documentaries out here. Not about art or architecture,” she ended lamely.

    Max was rather at a loss. “Yes, but—but that’s still tastes in common, Ran!”

    “We’re from different worlds and—and I don’t want a—a long-distance relationship, I don’t think I’d be any good at it and—and I think it’d be awful,” said Ran with tears in her voice. “And don’t dare to say you’d only be at the other end of the phone! Or those ruddy emails.”

    Max bit his lip. “Look, if I say those odd phone calls and emails were the highlights of the past year to me, there’s no reason you should believe me, but—but they were,” he ended lamely.

    “Me, too,” said Ran honestly.

    Max was very flushed. “There, you see?” He attempted to put his arm round her shoulders but she pushed him away. “Ran, for God’s sake give it a chance! Look, you’ll be working for YDI and as Jim pointed out, there’ll be an opportunity to come over to Britain, it won’t be entirely a long-distance relationship.”

    “No, it’d be horrible!” cried Ran loudly.

    It didn’t sound too enticing, no. “Uh—look, we hardly know each other as yet, isn’t it a bit soon for you to decide it’d be horrible?”

    “I don’t see how we can get to know each other with you in London and me out here.”

    “Come to London, too,” said Max lightly. “Do a short stint with Jim, and then complete your project management studies over there.”

    “I can’t afford it,” replied Ran honestly.

    “I can, though. In fact, stay in the flat with me, and that’ll give us a real chance to get to know each other and for you to find out if all the other bits are horrible, too.”

    Ran’s heart was beating very fast. “Um, that’s mad,” she said wanly.

    “No, it isn’t,” replied Max on a grim note. “A bit precipitate, I grant you, but that seems to be the hand we’ve been dealt, doesn’t it?”

    “Mm.”

    He looked at her uncertainly. “Could I kiss you, or shall I just sit here and burst into tears?”

    Ran blinked. “You wouldn’t do that!”

    “No? I feel perilously close to it!”

    This was completely mad, because they were from two different worlds, whatever he might claim, and she couldn’t see herself in that poncy flat of his in London, it sounded dire, the sort of thing Felicity admired in the mags, and never mind what he’d said about wanting to dump Primmy, he was probably on the rebound, no-one could actually want their girlfriend to walk on out them, and—and in any case she could never be the sort of sophisticated lady he was used to and what she really ought do was tell him firmly it’d never work out. Ran looked up at him. The widely-set brown eyes did have tears in them: oh, help! And that entrancing lower lip, that was just very slightly bowed, though that sounded sickening, and that had that sort of shadow under it, that you couldn’t possibly describe, looked distinctly wobbly. And she was probably only so keen on him because he was so good-looking, and—and taller than she’d imagined him! And it was completely mad.

    “You’re mad, but go on, then,” she said.

    Max blinked; then it dawned that that was actual consent, so he kissed her. He had of course kissed a good many ladies in his time but it wasn’t every time, by any means, that great showers of golden rain went off all round him as he did so. For one kiss, in a funny old car in the middle of nowhere, miles out past the back of beyond? He made it two kisses, just to be sure.

    “Your heart’s thumping like billyo,” said Ran inanely into his chest as he then held her very, very tightly.

    “Mm? Is it? Good,” said Max shakily. “I— It is too soon, Ran, but I think I love you.”

    “Me, too,” said Ran in a tiny voice into his chest.

Next chapter:

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