8
“It’s Only Love...”
Ward’s flat was not unlike the thing that Hugo Kent had put Kitten in. Except that it didn’t feature a lot of pale pink and mirrors. It was on the top floor of a not-very-high-rise block, though, and it did have a magnificent view of the harbour. At this hour, not much of the harbour was visible. Ward went across to the picture windows and drew the long curtains. They were a pale fawn velvet. The carpet was an oatmeal shade. The lounge suite was pale fawn leather in the sort of soft-looking, rather pudgy style which Ingrid had always disliked intensely. The leather had a matte finish which could be quite pretty but which in this setting faded almost into nothingness. Especially as the walls were a pale oatmeal.
“Siddown, if you can stand it,” said Ward with a sigh.
Ingrid bit her lip a little and sat down on the sofa.
“I started off with great ideas about the bachelor pad, but— Well, ran out of steam or something,” he said with a face. “Never seem to have the time to go shopping. Finally I got fed up with perching on the kitchen stools and went into Fine Brothers and bought that.” He looked at the suite with dislike. “Tracy—that’s my daughter—she calls it the epitome of yuck. I’m inclined to think she’s not far wrong.”
“It’s all a bit much of a muchness,” said Ingrid kindly.
“Or just a bit much, yeah. Oh, well. I’m usually too busy to even look at it. –Coffee, tea? Alcohol?”
“Just coffee, thanks.”
“Right. Won’t be a sec.” He went through to the kitchen to put the jug on. As the bloody place was open-plan—a mistake, what guests he did have could see the clutter in the kitchen—he then said: “Only instant.”
“That’s okay!” said Ingrid cheerfully.
Ward had one of those jugs that boiled the water in no time. Nevertheless, as he stood there staring at it he felt it was taking forever. “Milk?” he called.
“No, just black, please!”
He opened the fridge. “Just as well,” he muttered, shutting it again. He sugared his own liberally and just stopped himself in time from sugaring hers. “You take sugar?”
“No, thanks.”
Leaving the spoon in his mug to remind himself which one it was, he returned to the horrible lounge-room. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Ingrid smiled up at him.
Ward sat down heavily beside her. “Put your hot mug on the table: with luck it’ll crack the bloody thing.”
“It’s not that bad,” she said limply, wondering where on earth he’d found it.
“It’s bloody.” The glass of the coffee table was a smoky brown. Its rounded wooden legs, the size of small tree trunks, were stained a very dark brown.
“Perhaps you ought to get a decorator in,” she said kindly.
He shuddered. “I’d as soon let Tracy loose on t!”
“How old is she?” asked Ingrid, smiling.
“Nineteen. Well, nineteen going on forty-eight. Thinks she knows it all. Y’know?”
“Mm.”
There was a short pause. “Ingrid, how old are you?” asked Ward grimly.
“Twenty-two going on twenty-three,” replied Ingrid calmly.
“Uh—yeah!” he said with a weak laugh.
There was another pause.
“I have been married,” said Ingrid calmly.
Ward goggled at her. “Eh?”
“Yes. It didn’t work out.”
“So—uh—you’re divorced?”
“Yes.”
“He must have been barmy to let you go!” said Ward forcefully.
Ingrid hesitated. “We didn’t get on too well. Well, we had nothing in common. He was only interested in cars and footy and going to the pub with his thick mates.”
“With you to come home to? He was barmy, all right!”
“Thanks,” she said, going rather red. “It was my fault, really, I shouldn’t have done it. Well, he was keen to, but— I thought I saw potential in him,” she said, frowning, “that wasn’t there after all.”
“Mm. Good-looking, was he? Young?”
“Yes. Well, that’s probably what coloured my judgement,” she said tranquilly.
Ward’s jaw sagged, even though he’d been thinking as much himself. “Yeah,” he croaked. “Right.”
“He’s better off without me,” said Ingrid firmly.
Ward gulped a bit, and drank ghastly instant coffee that would undoubtedly keep him awake for hours.
“Did you say you’d been to Kendall Burgoyne’s place?” asked Ingrid politely.
“Eh? Aw! Yeah, that’s right: he’s got this scheme—” Ward told her all about it.
Ingrid listened obediently, nodding. Sloane had picked up a pretty accurate version, so nothing he said was news. Though his passing references to Kendall and Joyce Burgoyne made her smile. And his pithy and unflattering opinion of old Mr Fine made her raise her eyebrows a little. Even though it was clear Ward greatly admired the old man’s commercial acumen.
“’Nother coffee?” he said with a sigh.
“No, thanks. I suppose I’d better go.”
Suddenly Ward put his hand heavily on her grey-uniformed thigh. “Don’t,” he said huskily.
Ingrid swallowed. “It was really good over at Lallapinda, Ward.”
“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?” he said eagerly.
“But I—I’ve had one bad experience,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t know that I’m ready for any—any sort of relationship, really, however casual.”
Ward bit his lip. He picked up her hand gently. After a moment he held the palm to his lips.
The desire which Ingrid wasn’t kidding herself she didn’t feel for him but which she’d been keeping firmly in check abruptly threatened to swamp her. She actually felt her nipples stiffen: and they usually didn’t do that unless they were specifically stimulated. All the time he was speaking she’d been aware of the bulge in his trousers: that hadn’t had an exactly calming effect.
“I dunno what I can say,” he said huskily into her palm. “I know I’m too bloody old for you. And—and—well, no-one can tell in advance how anything’ll turn out. But I promise I won’t do anything to hurt you, Ingrid.” He squeezed her hand hard: Ingrid didn’t say that he was hurting her, actually.
After a moment he said painfully: “Look, I’ve gotta be honest with you. It’s not as if— I mean, I am free, ya know. I’ve had a few affaires since I busted up with Nina, I’m not a flamin’ monk, but there’s no-one in particular.”
“No,” said Ingrid, swallowing. “I see.”
Ward licked his lips. “I don’t—I don’t feel particularly casual about you, Ingrid. I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. I wanted like Hell to ring you from WA, but I—well, to tell you the truth I thought it wasn’t fair on you: I thought I’d give you time to—to see how you felt about—about getting mixed up with an old feller like me.”
“You’re not old,” she said faintly.
“I’m fit enough, but I’m fifty-six,” he said bleakly.
Ingrid would have put him down as around fifty. She bit her lip. “I see. You don’t look it,” she said faintly.
“I am,” said Ward, his nostrils flaring. “It makes a difference. I haven’t got much time left.”
“You—you said yourself you’re very fit,” she faltered.
“Yeah. But ya never know. So when I say I don’t feel particularly casual, I suppose I—I’m giving you due warning. If you just want some sort of—of fling, I dunno that I’m up for it.” She looked at him doubtfully and Ward clarified grimly: “I dunno that I could take it when you ditched me for something young and pretty.”
“I’ve tried young and pretty, and it’s very boring. Not just mentally: physically as well.”
“Oh,” he said, rather taken aback.
There was a short pause.
“So he was no good in bed?”
“Hopeless,” said Ingrid, wrinkling her straight nose. “Rough.”
“Mm. I can promise you that ninety-nine percent—well, maybe ninety-eight percent of the time,” said Ward with a little smile, raising her hand to his mouth again: “I won’t be that.”
“I know,” Ingrid agreed, smiling.
Ward felt vaguely that he ought to say a lot more: issue a dire warning that he might drop dead in her bed from a heart attack—though according to the doc his heart was as strong as a bull’s—or at the least point out that he probably only had a few good years left in him; but somehow he found himself croaking: “What do you say, then? Can you hack it?”
Ingrid’s heart beat very fast. She looked into his eyes and said steadily: “I’m not sure exactly what you mean. You must know that I do want you physically.”
“Yes,” he said, the colour flooding up his heavy neck. “I mean come and share the bloody flat. See how you like it. See if you can stand me.”
Ingrid swallowed loudly.
“I can’t make myself younger for you, Ingrid!” said Ward desperately. “If I had a spare ten years to fart around in I’d say try it on for size, see each other once a week. But I haven’t. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. We’d better make the best of what we’ve got.”
Ingrid licked her lips. “You don’t know me,” she said in a low voice.
“No,” he said, beginning to tremble. “Come and live here for a bit and we’ll get to know each other, is what I’m saying.”
She looked away from him, licking her lips again.
“I’m not offering to set you up in a wee nest like flaming Hugo Kent, if that’s what you’re thinking!” he said loudly.
She looked round with a startled laugh. “No! Of course not! –He actually calls it that,” she noted in awe.
“I know,” said Ward Reardon on a grim note. “So whaddaya reckon? See if we can hack it like two adults? Regardless of the bloody age difference, or the odd divorce or two? –My track record’s not that hot, ya know: you’re not the only one that’s made a bloody cock-up of a relationship.”
“No, that’s true.” She licked her lips again.
“Ingrid,” said Ward hoarsely: “if you do that once more I’ll be right into you on the bloody sofa!”
“What?” said Ingrid in amazement.
Shaking, Ward said: “Stick that little pink tongue out like that and wind it round your lips like you—uh— You know what I flamin’ mean!” he ended loudly, now a sort of deep violet shade.
Ingrid smiled slowly. “Oh. That.”
“Yeah, that,” he grunted. “Come on, ya must have some bloody idea if you want to or not!”
“I—I want to...” She looked up at him pleadingly.
“Come here, then,” said Ward thickly, pulling her into his arms and covering her mouth with his.
Ingrid shut her eyes, kissed him back frantically and strained against him. When he paused for breath, panting, she said in a high voice: “I thought you’d forgotten all about me!”
“Eh?”
“I knew Hugo Kent was back, and—and when you didn’t ring me or contact me or anything—” she said shakily.
Ward kissed her again, panting hard, and showed her dress up. “Idiot,” he said thickly in her ear. “I’ve been stiff as bejasus for a ruddy month, wanting you like Hell!”
“Mm,” said Ingrid, biting her lip hard and throwing her head back.
“God,” muttered Ward, his ears turning red as he wrenched at her panties. “Lemme, Ingrid.”
“Yes,” said Ingrid, very faintly.
Ward abandoned his efforts suddenly. “Put your legs up on the sofa, lemme—”
Ingrid swung her legs up. He pushed the dress up to her waist, hauled the panties off and fell on her, shoving his face up there. Ingrid gave a high-pitched wail and grabbed his shoulders.
“Yeah,” said Ward, kneeling up, his face contorted, wrenching his zip down. He got himself out. “Look, Ingrid, for Chrissakes, is it safe?”
“Who have you done it with without a condom?”
“JESUS!” he shouted. “No-one except my flamin’ ex, and that was so many years back I can bloody well barely remember it! Now, is it SAFE?”
“I—I think so,” she said in a shaking voice.
“Bugger,” said Ward, biting his lip. He fell on top of her, buried his face in her shoulder and said: “Sorry. I’m damned sorry, sweetheart, I just—wuh-want it so much.”
“You don’t know how many people I might have done it with without a condom,” said Ingrid faintly.
After a moment he said: “No. How many have ya?”
“No-one,” she said, swallowing.
Ward raised himself on one elbow and peered at her. “What about your ex?”
“No. I wouldn’t let him.”
He was conscious of the thought, No wonder they split up: poor bastard. “Uh—right. You want me to use one?”
“No,” said Ingrid, her lips trembling. “I just want you to—to be in me.”
Very probably there was no gent in the entire world that could have resisted that one. Not if he was normal, that was. Ward was more or less conscious of this thought as, turning a deep violet shade once again, he covered her mouth with his and plunged into her.
Ingrid shrieked and dug her fingernails into his back and came like the clappers on him; and Ward went off like a bloody volcano, yelling his head off.
By the time he was capable of formulating conscious thought again, which wasn’t for some time, it dawned that she’d wanted it, all right, even if it might have been a bit “rough”. Crikey Dick, had she wanted it! He raised himself on an elbow, rolled into the back of the sofa, and pulled her gently against him. “So you liked the raw bit of meat in there, didja?” he said in her ear.
“Mm,” said Ingrid dazedly.
“That’s a start,” said Ward on a smug note.
“Mm.”
After quite some time he said, idly pushing the grey dress up and stroking the satin flatness of her belly: “A bit later on, I might let you try that trick with your little pink tongue on the old bit of meat: how’dja fancy that?”
There was no reply, and he saw she was fast asleep.
Smiling, he edged himself off the sofa, picked her up and carried her carefully through into the bedroom. He peeled the duna back, put her in the bed and got in beside her. He was just about capable of formulating the thought: Not bad for an old ’un, before he went out like a light.
As usual, Hugo had got into Kitten’s pink, soft, and muzzily smiling form about two minutes after she’d woken up. When he came through from the shower in his dressing-gown, the bed was empty. He wandered out to the kitchen. “What’s this? Ugh: fruit in the morning? Unnatural!”
“It’s good for you,” said Kitten firmly, operating on the pink grapefruit.
Hugo laughed tolerantly. “Very well, darling, if you insist.”
“You can have a croissant afterwards.”
“Mm.” He sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the morning paper. “God,” he said in a hollow voice.
“You always say that!” said Kitten with a giggle.
“Do I?” said Hugo, smiling. “I suppose I do. Well, it always is!”
“Yes,” said the clipper serenely. “I know.” She set a bowl of prepared grapefruit in front of him and came to sit opposite him. Hugo ate his breakfast without talking, glancing through the news and the financial pages.
Kitten didn’t attempt to distract him: she didn’t require breakfast-table conversation to reassure herself that she existed as a human being in his eyes. She ate grapefruit and wholemeal toast silently, watching him with simple enjoyment of his maleness.
She came and perched on the bed and watched him while he dressed.
“You’ll make me self-conscious!” he said with a laugh.
“You’ve got nothing to be self-conscious about. You’ve got one of the best figures I’ve ever seen,” she said seriously.
Hugo was a little startled. “Er—for my age?” he murmured delicately.
“No. Of anyone. It’s a matter of balance and proportions,” said Kitten, narrowing her eyes.
“Er—I see. Well, I don’t think I can take the credit for that.”
“No. But at least you haven’t let yourself go. Some of those men at that do last night—!” She wrinkled up her exquisite little face.
“Darling, all this flattery!” said Hugo, laughing. “Can it be good for my character?”
“It isn’t flattery: it’s the truth.”
“Even worse.” He was ready: he went over to the door.
Kitten pattered after him. “What would you fancy for dinner, Hugo?”
“Oh—anything, darling; I don’t mind.”
He always said that, but she knew he was both terribly particular and very careful about what he ate. After last night’s chocolate cake he wouldn’t want anything with cream or heavy fat in it. “Fish? Would you fancy trout?”
“Mm, lovely. Just grilled, I think, sweetheart.”
“Okay. And I’ll do a nice salad.”
“Wonderful.” Hugo pulled her against him. “Mmm,” he said into her neck.
“I wish you didn’t have to go off to stupid business,” said Kitten wistfully, pressing herself against it.
“Mm.” He kissed her gently and then more urgently.
“Don’t, Hugo!” she squeaked, pulling away from him. “You’ll get me all excited!”
Hugo laughed. He pulled her towards him again. “I could do a little something nice for you,” he murmured.
Kitten held up her face. Hugo kissed her wetly. “Shall I?”
“Mm!” she said, nodding hard.
He knelt, and slid his hands up her thighs. Kitten shuddered. “Mmm-mm,” said Hugo, pushing his face against the silky softness of her inner thighs.
Kitten made a mewing noise. Immediately Hugo shoved his tongue right up her.
“OH!” she cried, gripping his shoulders fiercely.
He made a muffled noise of encouragement and worked his tongue in her energetically. When he paused for breath he found he was shaking. “Hell,” he said into the bush. “Shouldn’t have started— Got myself all excited-like.”
“Mm,” she sighed. “Ni-ice.”
“Darling,” said Hugo in a muffled voice, fumbling at his zip. He probed with the tip of his tongue: she squealed and jerked.
Very red in the face, shaking all over in his neat light-weight silk business suit, Hugo Kent scrambled to his feet and pulled her against his erection. “I’ve got to—” he said in a shaking voice. “Quick, darling!” He pushed her against the passage wall, and, panting, guided himself into her. “God!” he gasped, throwing his head back.
“Hu-go-o,” moaned Kitten.
“I love you,” said Hugo through his teeth. “Do me, Kitten.”
Kitten’s face was very flushed. She jerked up and down on him.
“I’m nearly—” said Hugo very faintly, grimacing horribly. She pulled him into her, not speaking. Shuddering and shaking, he gasped: “Kitten— No! God! JESUS!” he yelled, wrenching it out of her and exploding shatteringly against the satin mound of her belly.
When he’d stopped yelling and gasping, Kitten said cautiously: “All right?”
“Mm.” Hugo opened his eyes, grimacing. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No. That’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, little Kitten: have a come on my tongue: all right, sweetheart?”
Kitten nodded mutely.
He got down there again. Immediately she moved fiercely, grabbing his shoulders, moaning. “Do—it!” she panted. Hugo obliged. “I love—you—Hugo!” she gasped. After a few more moments’ treatment she let out a shriek to raise the dead, and clenched and pulsed furiously for him.
It was a beautiful day, and Martin Jarrod had decided he’d take a taxi and collect Hugo. He’d got about three feet from the door of the flat when he’d heard him yelling. After that, regrettably, he’d been rooted to the spot. Now he reddened, and hurried away. Shit. Likewise, Hell. Well, damn the bloody little bitch! Martin was sourly aware he was as hard and hot as Hell for her. He frequently was in her presence, but not to this bloody degree. Unlike Hugo, though, he didn’t have any immediate source of relief. He was also, very bitterly, aware that in spite of his status as a respectable married man, if the hot little bitch had so much as glanced his way at the damned Lallapinda dance he’d have been up there like a ferret. Of course she hadn’t: what had he got? Less than half the looks and personality of Hugo Kent, and not a hundredth of his personal fortune.
Martin was now bitterly convinced that the conniving little bitch had known all along who Hugo Kent was and was out to take him for whatever she could get. “I love you, Hugo”? Jesus Christ Almighty! Why couldn’t the fool see through her?
“That’s the Sydney Harbour Bridge!” said Jay with a smothered giggle.
Graeme chuckled. “Not really?”
It was a large bridge, spanning the harbour: unmistakable, even if you’d never heard of this particular Australian icon. “Yes!” she squeaked, giggling madly.
Graeme sniggered.
“And this,” said Jay solemnly, waving at the large white structure directly behind them: “is the Sydney Opera House.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
More giggles.
They took the guided tour round the inside of this particular Australian icon. During the course of it Graeme was a trifle startled to find she knew nothing—nothing whatsoever—of opera, or, indeed, classical music in general. She’d heard of The Three Tenors, she said brightly. Graeme winced. She had lived in Sydney all her life, apart from the short-lived marriage in Hong Kong, and had never before been inside the Opera House. Well, there were people in London who’d never been inside Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s, no doubt.
After that it was definitely time for lunch. Graeme would have taken a taxi but Jay led him confidently to the correct bus stop. They hopped on a bus. The trip wasn’t very long: they hopped off. Jay led him down a maze of little streets. Everything around them was Chinese. Not the Coca-Cola signs, of course, but almost everything else, and nearly all the faces, apart from some obvious tourists with cameras slung round their necks and uncertain expressions on their faces. Probably wondering if they’d ever find their way back to the main drag, thought Graeme with some sympathy.
“This is it,” she said, beaming at him.
“Mm.” It was clearly a restaurant. Not that he could read the sign. He remembered almost no Chinese characters, though he had, without ever having been formally taught as far as he could remember, been able to recognize some when he was a boy. He did vaguely associate one of the symbols with food but the rest of the neon sign could have been Greek.
“Come on!” She tugged him inside.
The food was wonderful. Not a shred of chopped cabbage in sight. Bok choy, certainly, but no European cabbage. After walking around Sydney all morning Graeme was very hungry, and even though he was terribly excited at being in Jay’s company, did the meal full justice. She ate hungrily, too: good, he couldn’t stand skinny women who were picky eaters. Not that Jay was fat, of course!
He was happily unaware that in the back regions Mrs Ho had said crossly to Mr Ho: “Isn’t that little Wong Jie out there? Who is that creepy-looking man she’s got hold of?”
Mr Ho reported morosely that he didn’t know: he thought he was a Pom.
“He’s wearing a wedding ring!” she hissed.
Mr Ho stuck his head cautiously through the bead curtain and had another look. So he was. He looked at Mrs Ho morosely.
Scowling, Mrs Ho shook a cleaver at him.
“It’s none of my business! What am I supposed to do, ring up Grandfather Wong and get him round here on the double to stop her?”
Apparently he was, if he had the backbone of a jellyfish: yes.
Jimmy Ho ventured timidly: “I suppose she is an adult, Mum,” but had the cleaver shaken at him for his pains. And if he wanted to go back to uni this year, GET ON WITH CHOPPING THOSE VEGGIES! Morosely Jimmy got on with chopping veggies. It was murder, being the youngest of a large family every last member of which had done exactly as Mum had told them all their lives up to the precise moment of leaving the nest to get married and, let’s face it, all of whom were still doing exactly as Mum told them. Apart from Pete’s one misguided venture into a takeaway chicken and chips outlet: a disaster, as his mother had predicted. Nothing had ever done any good on that site, and why? Because there was a gigantic McDonald’s three blocks up the road in one direction and a gigantic Pizza Hut four blocks down the road in the other direction, and two blocks back from that, a well-established clump of small businesses including a fish and chips shop which also sold chicken: and these days everyone had cars, Pete!
Sheryl Chao, née Ho, was of the opinion, having peered through the bead curtain, that the man wasn’t creepy-looking at all, but was ordered to GET ON WITH THOSE DUCKS! Even though she was a married woman with three kids of her own, Sheryl got on with the ducks.
Jay was aware of most of this going on in the background, and what she wasn’t aware of she could guess: but too bad, she wasn’t dependent on Grandfather for anything and he had nothing to say in her life any more. And besides, when he heard who Graeme was... Over the jasmine tea she smiled at him a lot and listened quietly as he told her about his boring suburban life at home and how his wife never took a blind bit of notice of anything he said to do with the kids or the house and had chosen the kids’ nursery school and then a private day-school for them without consulting him and had had a large goldfish pond put in the front garden without consulting him—then having to have it expensively fitted with a custom-made wire mesh cover so as the kids wouldn’t drown themselves... Etcetera. It was as boring to listen to as it must have been to actually live it. ...Should she tell Grandfather, or not? If she didn’t, he’d never get invited to partake of one of Grandmother’s meals, not if Grandfather ever found out he was married... She’d think about it. Having Grandfather knowing, and on her side, would be good. But having Grandfather knowing and disapproving could be fatal. Would he? Well, he was keen on the sanctity of the marriage bond and all that garbage, until your husband’s father went broke, of course... She couldn’t decide. She’d think about it.
Jay and Graeme left the restaurant arm-in-arm, smiling at each other. Jay hadn’t pointed out that Mr Ho had charged them five times what he’d have charged his local customers: she figured Graeme could afford it and if he was too silly to ask for a detailed bill in English, that was his own look-out. They wandered slowly up towards the bus stop.
In the restaurant, Mr Ho was very slowly, pretending he didn’t speak much English, explaining to a group of hungry-looking, red-faced, hot American tourists what was on the menu. Pete Ho, who had returned to the parental fold after the chicken and chips disaster, was morosely serving some local Chinese businessmen with cold Foster’s lagers all round. He wouldn’t have minded a Foster’s himself, it was a bloody hot day, but Dad’d do his nut if the customers smelled alcohol on your breath. Pete reckoned Dad’d do better with air-con instead of the stupid ceiling fans but of course nobody listened to him. Heck, everybody had air-con these days! The only result of that one had been that he was told to speak Chinese, was he ashamed of his cultural heritage?
Out the back, Mrs Ho, cleaver in hand, had nipped outside for a fag and a breath of fresh, if warm, air. Sheryl deserted the ducks and hurried over to the phone.
Jimmy began unwisely: “Mum’s told you not to—”
“I’m not putting a bet on!” she snapped. She pressed buttons hurriedly. Jimmy listened, looking suspicious. “Hullo, is that you, May?”
Jimmy’s jaw sagged. “Is that May Wong you’re ringing?” he hissed.
“Ssh! And she’s May Lee, now!” she hissed.
Muttering under his breath, Jimmy retired into his veggies.
One eye on the back door, Sheryl gasped out in a horrified tone that Jay had just been in the restaurant with a Pom, and a married man! Once she’d sorted out that this was one physical body, Jay’s older sister asked suspiciously how Sheryl knew he was married. The wedding ring was duly reported. May noted that that seemed to back up the story, but what did Sheryl expect her to do about it? Sheryl’s thought processes hadn’t got that far, but after a minute she said weakly: “Well, speak to her, May.”
Jay’s sister merely snorted. Over at the bench, Jimmy also snorted into the veggies.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!” snapped Sheryl. She might have said something more but at that moment the back door handle turned so she hurriedly hung up.
Mrs Ho came back in, looking suspicious. “What’s going on? Has she been putting a bet on behind my back?”
“No. Gossiping with a dumb friend,” said Jimmy. Well, there had to be some solidarity, even if Sheryl was as mad as a snake.
“Get on with it,” said their mother disagreeably.
They got on with it.
Inevitably Graeme and Jay wound up back at his hotel. Graeme didn’t even pretend they were there for coffee: the moment he’d closed the door of the room he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for hours!” he said with a shaken laugh.
“Me, too,” said Jay, smiling up at him serenely.
“Jay, you’re so—so—” said Graeme shakily. He kissed her again.
Jay cooperated eagerly: he was quite attractive and she hadn’t had it for ages. She let him squeeze her breast and slip his hand inside the bosom of her dress: then she let him slide a hand up her skirt. At the same time she let herself rub him, just a little. Graeme got expectably terribly encouraged by this and in no time his dick was out of his pants—it was quite a nice one, Jay noted detachedly—and he was panting into her ear, in the intervals of nibbling at it: “Can we? Please?”
Jay wasn’t averse to having Graeme Pointer beg for it. So she made a pretence at hesitating. Graeme immediately became terrifically—terrifically—humble and pleading. Even to tears in his eyes. He was shaking, too. Whether this was a factor in her decision to let him Jay couldn’t have said. She felt extremely powerful and in control; and that was definitely a factor. So was the fact that, in spite of the tear-filled eyes and the pleading, his erection was very visibly not one whit diminished. Jay rather liked European ones. They weren’t as dark as Chinese ones. Graeme’s was a nice fat, pale one: pale pink. Circumcised: good, she preferred that, it was definitely more hygienic and safer for the woman. She let him get to the point of actually falling to his knees and pressing his face against her belly, mumbling tearfully: “Please—darling little Jay! Please—!”
Then she said breathlessly: “All right, but you have to use a condom: promise?”
“Yes, of course!” gasped Graeme. “Of course!”
Jay stepped away from him, smiling. She moved slowly over to the bed. “Okay, then.” She smiled into his eyes and slowly drew the cotton dress up over her head. When she had it off, Graeme was still just kneeling there. His mouth was now open. Jay smiled into his eyes again. She’d put on her best undies today. They went well with the dress, which was a splashy red and black stylized floral print. The bra and panties were bright scarlet, mainly lace. The panties were very cut away, in fact little more than a couple of wisps of lace attached to a strip of cotton-lined satin. The bra, which Jay didn’t need to wear, she was a good shape and nice and firm, was unlined lace. She knew that her nipples were visible through it. She removed it very slowly, smiling at him.
Graeme scrambled up and tore his shirt off, panting, his eyes glued to her.
Jay stretched languorously, still smiling. The breasts rose cheekily.
“God!” he gasped, wrenching his trousers off. “You’re fantastic!”
The smile became distinctly naughty: she wriggled a bit, hands behind her back so that the breasts stood out cheekily. Graeme stumbled out of his shoes, still goggling at her.
Jay gave a tiny laugh, and slowly caressed herself. She rolled her head back for an instant, closing her eyes, sighing as she palpated her breasts, and rotated her hips gently. Graeme’s eyes stood out on stalks and he gasped for breath.
Very slowly, eyes locked to his, Jay removed the scarlet panties.
She had a bikini line but the hair had been very carefully shaped into a neat triangle. Graeme did not consciously compare it with his little May’s, all those years ago, but he was conscious of a feeling of relief that it was more than just a straight strip: he hated that.
Jay threw the scarlet panties at him, giggling.
“Darling!” he gasped, stumbling out of his underpants. He rushed over to her and pulled her against him fiercely, kissing her madly.
Jay hadn’t expected a miraculous simultaneous orgasm or anything on that level, which was just as well. He was too eager to last: as soon as he had the condom on he got into her, pumped furiously for an instant, and came. Which was pretty much what she’d expected.
She hadn’t expected that he would then attend to her with such—eagerness, really. Not that she hadn’t wanted him to, but... He seemed to be actually glad when she had a come! Tim had never much cared, and the various young men with whom she’d had briefer relationships had never cared at all. In fact it had usually been her fault entirely if she hadn’t managed to come after ten seconds of furious pumping on their part.
“All right, darling Jay?” he said tenderly.
“Yes! Thanks!” panted Jay.
Graeme smiled, and stroked her breasts gently. “These are so nice... It’ll be better next time. I might even manage to go quite slowly for you,” he murmured.
“Mm,” said Jay.
He raised himself on an elbow and looked down at her anxiously. “It is all right, isn’t it? We can go on seeing each other?”
“Mm,” said Jay.
“What is this: a council of war?” said Sloane limply, coming into her own lounge-room rather late on a Friday after a hectic day at RightSmart to find the girls assembled.
“Yes,” said Kitten on a grim note.
Sloane looked warily at Nikki.
“We’re gonna get that Jerry the Jerk!” said Kitten viciously. “I’ve told her the lot.”
Nikki nodded, looking fearfully up at Sloane.
Sloane sat down with a groan. “All right, then, what’s done is done. But for God’s sake get me a drink, someone. Gin and ginger, it might ginger me up.”
Melodie bounced up and got her a gin with a token amount of ginger and lots of ice.
“Thanks,” she sighed.
“We’ll have tea in a bit, I’ve made something nice,” said Kitten comfortingly.
Sloane closed her eyes. “Don’t tell me he’s dumped you already?”
“No!” she said scornfully.
Cautiously Sloane opened one eye. “Well, what on earth are you doing here on Friday night when you ought to be painting the town red with him, or dayning at an exclusive restaurant, or whipping him up a dainty little meal in the nest?”
“He’s got a business dinner, ya clown.”
“Oh,” she said limply.
“And we gotta get a few things straight,” said Kitten grimly.
Sloane eyed her warily over the gin and ginger. “Go on.”
Kitten took a deep breath. “We’re not in this thing to fall in love, some of us might have lost sight of that in our excitement.” She looked hard at Ingrid.
Ingrid went very red. “I’m not in love with him!” she snapped.
“You are living in his flat,” said Melodie dubiously.
“Isn’t that what we wanted?” she cried.
“Yeah,” said Kitten grimly. “Only you told me yourself that he was the best lover you’d ever had.”
“Ooh, is he?” gasped Melodie.
“Shut up!” snapped her twin. “So what if he is?” she said grimly to Kitten.
“Possibly nothing, but there was a goopy look on your face when you said it. Just watch it. If you go all soppy you’ll let him get too comfortable with this live-in arrangement.”
There was a short silence.
“Don’t you want him to?” ventured Nikki.
Kitten withered her with a look. “No! We want him to propose, you nana!”
Ingrid was now very pale. “I think he will,” she said in a low voice. “And he’s a decent type, so just lay off, Kitten.”
“He’s a decent type that helped take Lallapinda off Grandfather!” she cried loudly.
The others were goggling at Ingrid. Finally Melodie said limply: “You are in love with him, Ingrid.”
“I’m not,” she said grimly.
“Ingrid,” urged Kitten: “think ten years down the track. Or twenty: better.”
Ingrid looked at her sulkily. “What of it? He’s very fit for his age: his doctor says his heart’s as strong as—”
“No!” shouted Kitten. “Look, that proves it!” she said exasperatedly to the girls.
“Shut up, it does not,” said Ingrid crossly. “All right, I’m thinking ten or twenty years ahead: so?”
“So do you want your son to be on the way to a directorship in the firm, or not?”
Ingrid swallowed. After a moment she managed to say: “He’s already got a son.”
“Neil Reardon’s an idiot!” protested Melodie in amazement.
“You should know,” agreed her twin sourly.
Melodie began heatedly: “Just because I never did stupid science at school like you—”
“STOP IT!” shouted Kitten.
“Yes: knock it off, Melodie,” agreed Sloane. “Had you thought of that, Ingrid?”
“N— Well, I— But he’s got a son: he may not want to start a second family at his time of life,” she muttered.
“Ingrid, it’s up to you to make him,” said Kitten grimly.
Ingrid chewed on her lip. Finally she said sulkily: “What if I don’t want to have ruddy kids?”
“That isn’t the point,” said Kitten tightly. “It’s gotta be our kids that take over the whole of KRP, or there isn’t any point to it. Alimony’s one thing. But we want it all in our family!”
There was a rather horrid silence.
“Did we say that in the beginning?” quavered Melodie.
“I’m saying it now,” said Kitten through her little pearly teeth.
“You might not of, Melodie, but we did,” put in Jay faintly.
“That idiot Graeme Pointer’s only got girls and his wife keeps trying to make him have a vasectomy. She must be dumb as they come,” noted Kitten pleasedly. “Doesn’t she understand that girls don’t count when it comes to corporate dynasties like Crap?”
“They certainly don’t when it comes to Pointer’s,” agreed Sloane, rather feebly. “Michael Pointer had four sisters, and Graeme’s got one, and none of them even seem to have been given an education, let alone encouraged to come into the firm.”
“Yeah. –I told her: Hugo told me!” said Kitten impatiently to Jay’s puzzled face. “Hugo’s only got one brother, and Roderick Kent’s not interested in the firm—or in work, far’s I can make out—but he’s got lots of girl cousins and none of them have gone into Crap, either. It’s boys that count.”
“I may never produce any!” said Ingrid with spirit.
“I’d say you’d have a better chance of it than that cow he used to be married to,” returned Kitten calmly.
“Yes: isn’t she about fifty?” agreed Melodie.
Ingrid frowned. She clenched and unclenched her hands. “Yes. But what if I don’t happen to want to be a sort of—of prize heifer?”
“Don’t be an idiot: it’s biology,” said Kitten briefly.
“Well, yes: she’s right, there: he can’t have them, Ingrid,” agreed Sloane.
“Yeah, and twenty years down the track he’ll be DEAD, and what makes you suppose the Kents and the Pointers’ll let MY SON in?” shouted Ingrid, suddenly turning scarlet. She bounced up and rushed out to the bathroom.
After a certain period of silence had elapsed, Nikki ventured cautiously: “If you ask me, she does want to have his kids, that’s why she’s so upset.”
Sloane sighed. “Mm. It looks like it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jay. She licked her lips nervously and glanced sideways at Kitten. “My sister May went just like that after she’d met Ken Lee. Dumb, really, because she knew he was only going out with her because our grandparents all wanted him to. Then she had three kids in three years.’
There was another silence.
“They are all right, though, aren’t they?” ventured Sloane.
“They’re still together. They’re either not talking or shouting their heads off at each other,” replied Jay, shrugging.
“Ugh,” said Melodie. “I don’t think Ingrid and Ward Reardon’ll go that way, though. I mean, she does seem really keen... What I mean is,” she gulped, as they all glared: “the risk isn’t that she won’t want to have his kids, but that she’ll go all soppy and not even try to make him marry her, like Kitten said!”
“Yeah,” agreed Kitten flatly.
There was another silence.
“It doesn’t sound very like Ingrid,” murmured Sloane.
“Well, you saw her!“ said Melodie strongly.
“Mm,” she admitted, biting her lip.
“Hormones. They take over and make women go all soppy,” said Kitten grimly. “Talking of soppy, you can tell us all about it,” she added sourly to Jay.
“All I said was, he could be very sweet!” she cried.
“‘Sweet and tender’ was the exact phrase used, if I remember rightly,” replied Kitten grimly, nostrils flaring.
“Um—well, he is. You could say,” she said, with a pout worthy of Kitten herself: “that he’s a soppy Pom, if you prefer!”
“We’d much prefer to,” admitted Sloane, as Kitten’s cheeks took on an alarmingly purple tinge. “Is he, though?”
“Yeah. Well, I haven’t got much to compare him with, I suppose... Your dad’s all right.”
“Uh—yeah. Uh—in what way, Jay?” said Sloane limply.
“We-ell... I dunno, I suppose I mean he’s not a yob.”
“Tim was a yob, all right,” said Melodie to the sub-text.
“Yes. I think I’ve only had experience of Aussie men that were yobs, before,” Jay explained earnestly.
“And Chinese men,” ventured Nikki.
“They were all yobs, too,” she said briefly.
Kitten rubbed her nose. “Do ya mean he’s gentle in bed, Jay?”
“Yes,” she muttered. “And he’s—um—very polite.”
“In bed?” croaked Nikki.
“N— Well, yes, I suppose he is. What I mean is, he always makes sure that—you know.”
“No. What?” demanded Kitten baldly.
“That I enjoy it, too,” said Jay faintly.
“Do ya mean he gives you an orgasm?” demanded Kitten.
“Mm.”
“So he flaming well should!” she cried.
“Yeah. They don’t always.”
“Yobs don’t,” agreed Sloane drily.
“Jerry the Jerk never bothered much,” admitted Nikki sourly. “Half the time he said it was my fault: I was too—”
“Too slow!” chorused the Manning girls.
“Tell us about it,” added Kitten. “The theme-song of the yob. Well, you wanna get past the yob stage, Jay,” she said kindly. “That’s where older men are quite good. They’re more insecure with younger women, so they need to feel you enjoy it as much as them. Added to which, if you don’t enjoy it, what reason have ya got to stick with them?”
“Y— Um—yes,” she faltered.
“Is it only their age, then?” asked Nikki.
“No,” said Kitten definitely. “It’s largely the educational level, too.”
“Oh,” said Nikki blankly.
“Yobs that only stayed at school till they were eighteen because they had to and didn’t learn anything then or later remain yobs all their lives. The ones that get a bit of education and start to realise that women’s issues actually exist—I’m not saying realise that women are people—they start to get a bit of an inkling that we’re not just a hunk of warm meat for them to shove it into,” explained Kitten briskly.
“Kitten, honestly,” murmured Sloane.
“Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong!” she said with a laugh.
“Really?” said Nikki.
“Mm,” affirmed Sloane drily.
“All I ever meet’s yobs,” she said with a sigh.
“Nikki, if you’d of let Peter Hannaway from the Sixteenth do it when he wanted to, you might of learnt something,” said Kitten heavily.
“He’s over fifty!” she cried.
“I rest my case,” said Kitten smugly.
“Um—that’ll do, I think,” said Sloane, looking at Nikki’s distressed face.
“Sloane, he always wears silk shirts and proper cufflinks and he uses a really lovely aftershave, I think it’s Saint Laurent Pour Homme!” said Kitten, leaning forward in her earnestness.
Nikki’s lower lip quivered. “He’s fat.”
“—ish,” corrected Kitten.
“Yeah. He’s the one we met in the lift that time, isn’t he?” said Melodie.
Nikki nodded sulkily.
“He isn’t that fat. Very smooth. He had on a lovely tie: tasteful. Lovely grey hair: very shiny, and quite thick.”
“Leave her alone,” sighed Sloane. “We were attacking Jay, I think, before we got side-tracked.
“—You oughta,” said Melodie in a low voice to Nikki.
Nikki scowled.
“I would,” said Melodie in a low voice.
“Ssh!” said Sloane crossly. “Well, come on, then, Jay: we’d better know the worst. Have you fallen for Pommy Graeme? Or is it hormones? Or both?”
A dark flush had risen up Jay’s slender neck. “No!” she said sharply.
“Oh, God,” groaned Kitten, collapsing in her armchair.
“I quite like him, and he’s good in bed, but he’s soppy as anything!” she cried loudly. “He’s—he’s—a namby-pamby little-boy type, if ya wanna know!”
“Crikey, Jay, don’t you know anything?” groaned Kitten. “That’s how she gets ya!”
“Who?” she said in bewilderment.
“Mother Nature,” replied Kitten grimly.
After a minute Jay said sulkily: “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ya do,” she returned drily, “but I’ll spell it out. All Nature’s interested in is the perpetuation of the species. Didn’t you see that Charles Darwin programme?”
“Um, ye-ah... It never said anything about that.”
“Be fair, Kitten, it didn’t,” agreed Sloane.
“What else was it about, you load of dumb-dumbs?” she shouted. “Sure it didn’t say it right out: it was made by the usual male Establishment mob: they don’t want women to wake up to reality!”
Ingrid had come back in unnoticed, her hair combed out neatly and a fresh coat of lipstick applied. “She’s right, actually,” she said wryly. “All that Mother Nature’s interested in is the perpetuation of the species; and as part of the master plan,” she said, looking at Jay sardonically, “she makes the female of the human species go all soft and goopy over the little-boy male of the species. And do whatever the male wants her to, whenever he wants her to. If she falls preggy as a result of it, it’s one up to Mother Nature. And if she breaks her heart, believe you me, Mother Nature doesn’t give a shit.”
Jay’s charmingly curved lips (much admired by Graeme Pointer, especially in his soppier moods) trembled. “That’s really horrid.”
“Yeah, isn’t it?” agreed Ingrid in a hard voice. She sat down and took out one of her cigarillos.
“In-GRID!” shouted Sloane.
“All right: open the bloody window or something,” said Ingrid irritably.
Scowling, Sloane turned the ceiling fan on and opened all the windows. “If you can see that so clearly in her case,” she noted sourly: “why can’t you see it in yours?”
Ingrid blew out a cloud of smoke. “I can,” she said briefly.
They goggled at her.
“Knowing it’s happening to you doesn’t help you to do anything about it,” she said heavily. “One of these days that’ll dawn: even on her,” she noted, looking hard at Kitten.
Sloane gave a hard laugh. “I sincerely doubt it!”
Ingrid blew out more smoke. “Anyway, don’t go soft on a married Pom with an established life on the other side of the world, if you can help it,” she said to Jay.
“I’m not! That’s what I keep trying to say!” she cried. “He’s a drip, and I don’t even like him, really!”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
They looked at her uncertainly. After a moment Melodie said: “Well, what about you, then, Ingrid?”
“Yeah,” agreed Kitten, scowling.
Ingrid looked thoughtfully at the tip of her cigarillo. “I will try to get him to marry me. And I’m thinking about having a kid.” She replaced the cigarillo and drew on it while they all stared at her. She expelled smoke and removed the cigarillo again. “But I’m not kidding myself: if he just wants us to live together, I’ll do it.” She got up. “I dunno if I’d define it as love, or Mother Nature, or just plain hormones,” she said drily to Kitten: “but I do know that I like him better than any other man I know. He’s picking me up, he’ll be here in a few minutes. I’ll wait downstairs.”
She went out while they were still staring numbly.
After a few moments Melodie rushed to the window. “There she is,” she reported, as her twin’s crisp white summer dress with its tiny red dots appeared on the pavement below their undistinguished little block of flats. “I suppose we should of known, she never wears red,” she said glumly.
“That frock suits her,” replied Nikki uncertainly.
Melodie sighed. “Not that.”
“You’re right, Melodie: it’s got ‘sweet little woman’ written all over it,” agreed Kitten sourly.
“Um—well, it has, yeah!” she said with a startled laugh. “I didn’t mean that, though, I only meant she’d changed her style... Y’know?”
“Yes,” agreed Sloane. “However you put it, it amounts to the same thing.”
“Mm.” Melodie continued to watch from the window. “This’ll be it,” she reported glumly. “Dark blue. Flat. Funny-looking thing, isn’t it?”
“Not considering what it’s worth, no. It’s a classic car, don’t you know anything?” retorted Kitten expectably.
“No,” said Melodie mildly. “There they go.” She came slowly back and sat down. “I wouldn’t mind being her, even if he is old.”
“Have Peter Hannaway,” offered Nikki sourly.
Melodie smiled wanly. “I wouldn’t mind, I’m fed up.”
“One of them’s got engaged to someone else,” spotted Sloane heavily. “Which one is it? Lysle?”
“No. I’m just fed up with them all. They’re all dumb and boring,” said Melodie simply.
“Crikey, can we videotape that?” croaked her oldest sister.
Kitten said loudly: “I’ve been telling you for years: none of them have got any vision past the quarter-acre block, the barbie on the patio, one and a half cars—you get the half—one point seven kids, superannuation and—”
“Kitten—” warned Sloane.
Kitten drew her finger across her throat with a horribly juicy noise. “When you’ve paid for the fancy funeral that’ll satisfy the Joneses next-door and sold the house that his insurance paid off because it’s too big for you on your own, you’ll have just enough left to move into a lovely retirement village with all the other—”
“KIT-TEN!” shouted Sloane.
“—wrinklies,” finished Kitten inexorably.
“Shut up!” cried Melodie crossly. “What about love and—and children?”
“Look at May and Ken,” said Jay glumly before Kitten could formulate a suitably withering retort.
“Yeah,” she agreed pleasedly.
“Not everybody ends up like them!” cried Melodie, very red.
“Statistically speaking, most of us do,” said Sloane firmly. “But I suppose Mother Nature programs us for eternal optimism, or some such thing.”
“You’re as bad as she is!” cried Melodie.
“No-one’s as bad as she is, but I don’t think I’m entirely blind or stupid. If I can get a few of the things I want out of life before I move into the retirement village, it’ll do me.”
Silence fell. Kitten looked unconcerned and Melodie and Jay avoided everybody’s eyes.
Finally Jay ventured, looking sideways at Melodie: “Roderick Kent’s not taken yet.”
“Chance ’ud be a fine thing,” she replied glumly.
“Well, what about Neil Reardon?” said Nikki eagerly.
“Ye-ah.... I suppose I could give him a bell... He’s as boring as the rest of them!” she burst out, pouting.
“He’s richer, though. He’d leave you with a mansion overlooking the harbour and his insurance on top of it,” said Kitten cheerfully.
“Ye-ah...”
“Melodie, if you want it, you have to put some energy into getting it!” she urged, leaning forward.
“I dunno that I do want it. Anyway, if Ingrid’s son’s gonna cut him out, what’s the point?”
“Um—yeah,” said Kitten weakly. “Um, but he’ll be another whole generation, Neil’s got more than twenty years’ start on him!”
“Ye-ah...” She made a face. “He’s such a drip. I’d have to spend most of my life pushing him.”
“That sounds familiar,” noted Sloane grimly.
“Yeah. Mum’s like that,” contributed Nikki mournfully.
The Manning sisters nodded feelingly,
“Most women end up pushing a bloke that’s got next to no assets and no vision beyond the quarter-acre block,” admitted Sloane. “In one way you’d be no better off, but in another way you would. Well, put it this way, if you’re gonna end up pushing some drip, why not Neil Reardon?”
Melodie sighed. “I can’t work up any enthusiasm for it.”
“I see. –Drop it,” she warned, as Kitten opened her mouth. “Never mind, Melodie: we’ll think of something else.”
“Yes,” decided Kitten. “We may need to get you in as a spy in the company. ’Specially if we’re gonna get Jerry the Jerk!” she added, smiling at Nikki.
Nikki nodded. “Yeah. –I wouldn’t mind having a go at Neil Reardon, if Melodie doesn’t want him. I quite fancy him.”
“Are you prepared to work at it, though?” demanded Kitten.
Nikki nodded silently.
“You’ll have to change your image, he never took a blind bit of notice of you at Lallapinda,” the expert declared, eyes narrowed.
“Nikki, are you sure?” said Sloane nervously.
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it. I mean, everyone at the building’s talking about Kitten and Hugo Kent. I mean, not all of them know who she is, that she’s my friend and everythink, but everyone knows she’s just—just ordinary. Well, you know what I mean!” she said with a sudden laugh.
“Yes,” conceded Sloane, smiling. “It might not be easy.”
“I don’t mind. I don’t want to spend the next fifty years pushing some nerd for his own good and end up like Kitten said. Well, it’s not just that,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it, since Jerry dumped me. I started off blaming him, and then I decided it was just my rotten luck. But you’ve got to make your own luck, don’t you?”
The girls nodded seriously.
“Yeah,” said Nikki. “Well, count me in!”
“First off we’ll change your hair and make-up,” decided Kitten briskly. “Lemme think about it. Come on, who wants another drink?”
When she’d dispensed drinks and they were all sipping except Melodie, who had gone out, presumably to the bathroom, she said: “Well, that disposes of Neil Reardon. Any takers for Roderick Kent?”
Melodie came back with one of Kitten’s scrap albums. “Yes. Me,” she said defiantly.
Jay handed her her drink, looking at her anxiously.
“Thanks,” she said, ignoring the anxious bit. She sat down beside Jay on the sofa and opened the album. “See? Dishy, isn’t he? Know who he reminds me of?”
“Corbin Bernsen,” said Kitten instantly.
“Who?” said Jay dazedly.
“He was in L.A. Law.”
“Ages back,” said Sloane heavily to the blank faces. “Don’t ask me if she was old enough to watch the originals or if she’s seen a rerun or what.”
“Really handsome. Rather narrow features. I can’t decide whether he’s Jewish or Scandinavian or a mixture,” said Kitten with narrowed eyes.
“That name’s probably made up,” noted Sloane drily.
Ignoring this, Kitten added: “Roderick Kent does look a bit like him. But Hugo says his hair’s reddish.”
Nikki made a face.
“Not really red, a reddish blond. Well, men are hopeless at describing that sort of thing, aren’t they?” she said comfortably. “But that’s what he meant.”
Melodie pointed at the fuzzy black and white photo of Roderick Kent. “See? I think reddish-blond would look good.”
Jay peered. “Melodie, I don’t like the look of him. He’s got a mean sort of mouth, I think he’d be awfully selfish.”
“He’d be that, all right,” agreed Kitten.
Melodie’s own wide, generous mouth tightened. “Don’t you worry: I can look out for myself.”
“You’ve shown no signs of it for the last twenty-two years,” Sloane objected.
“If I was as dim and soft as you mob think, I’d of let myself get married to one of those thickos like Lysle and Duane and Ken!” she retorted scornfully.
“She’s got a point,” Sloane admitted to Kitten.
“Yeah. –Melodie, you’re gonna have to be hard as nails,” she warned.
“Let yourself be guided by her!” advised Jay with a loud giggle.
“Shut up,” said Kitten mildly. “You’re gonna have to stop yourself going all soft the minute he mentions bed,” she warned her little sister.
Melodie shrugged. “I only went all soft with those types because it never mattered.”
They goggled at her. For a moment she’d sounded awfully like Ingrid. The old Ingrid.
“I think she’s serious,” decided Kitten.
“Yes,” confirmed Melodie in a hard voice.
“Right,” replied Kitten. “Don’t you try and do anything about it, Mel: I’ll work out a proper strategy. I’ll get as much background info out of Hugo as I can. I think we might have to pretend you’re someone else, they’d get suspicious if two of us went after the two Kents, especially with Ingrid mixed up with Ward Reardon.
Melodie nodded, looking grimly determined.
“In the meantime, stay out of Hugo’s and Ward’s way. And Neil’s, come to think of it.”
“You could change her hairdo, too,” suggested Nikki.
“Yeah. –Turn your head,” she ordered.
Obediently Melodie displayed her profile.
“Does she remind you of Helena Bonham-Carter?” Kitten demanded of Sloane.
“Who?”
“Sloane! Honestly! She’s an English actress! She was really big in the Nineties, she was the Yardley Girl!”
“I dunno that she looks like Melodie, though, Kitten,” objected Nikki.
Kitten sighed. She got up. “Wait here.”
“She’s gone to get her ‘Looks’ album,” Nikki explained to Jay.
Kitten came back with another scrap-album. Jay could see that its cover was labelled: “Looks, 1993-1994.” Help. Nearly ten years ago? How far back did she go?
“I haven’t got any Oriental types in this one, that’s why I’ve never shown it to you,” explained Kitten, sitting down on Jay’s other side. “Um... Here we are.” She put it on Jay’s lap. Jay and Melodie both looked at it dubiously. Kitten grabbed the book back and got up, scowling. She marched over to show it to Sloane. Nikki came to peer over Sloane’s shoulder.
“Let me see your profile, Melodie,” ordered Sloane.
Melodie turned her head obediently.
“Ooh, yes,” said Sloane slowly. “She could be that type.”
“She’d have to lose a couple of stone,” said Kitten detachedly.
“You’re right,” agreed Nikki in awe. “Melodie, you could be really elegant and—and— I dunno the word,” she admitted with a sigh.
Kitten turned over. “Here’s two more. I forget what that one’s from: it was a thing she was in on TV.”
Melodie came to peer over their shoulders. “I don’t think I could be like that.”
“Your face is rounder, but once you’ve lost weight it’ll look more elegant. –I think you mean ladylike,” Kitten said to Nikki.
“Ye-es... Somethink like that.” She looked admiringly at Miss Bonham-Carter. “She’s got an air, hasn’t she?”
Jay gave in and came to look, too. “It’s a bit hard to envision. But you could be right, Kitten.”
“How do we know that Roderick Kent fancies that type?” asked Sloane drily. “And isn’t that look really out, these days? Aren’t the girls still going for the Jennifer Aniston thing?”
“We don’t know for sure he’d fancy it, and it may not be In, but does she wanna look like all the bimbos? The thing is, it’s terrifically up-market, isn’t it?” said Kitten.
“Yeah. Well, it’s different from Melodie as we know her, I’ll give ya that,” granted Sloane.
They eyed Melodie in silence for a moment or two. Melodie at the moment was clad in an abbreviated top, rather like the one of Ingrid’s that Sloane had worn on the memorable night of the Burgoynes’ party, but shorter and tighter and a very bright jade green. The slight bulge above the tight belt, and the little rounded tummy in the faded, short-short denim shorts reinforced Kitten’s point that she’d need to lose a couple of stone. Not to mention the half-moons of rounded buttocks, back view. The rolled-down green socks and the Reeboks gave pause for thought. Possibly Miss Bonham-Carter was a Reeboks type in her private life but if so, the photos most certainly didn’t indicate it. Elegant, romantic, up-market: all of those, yeah. Also slim and delicate.
“Stand over there,” ordered Sloane, pointing. “And suck your tummy in.”
Melodie went to stand over by the window. “I know I’ve put on weight,” she said, scowling. “It was Christmas.”
“It wasn’t Christmas at Mum’s, that’s for sure!” returned Sloane energetically.
“No, but you know what she means,” said Nikki peaceably. “Everybody invited her to their work parties: well, all the places where she’d temped, and most of the blokes she knows asked her to theirs, and we had her at our lunch.” She caught sight of Kitten’s face. “There were hundreds of people there, Ward Reardon wouldn’t of noticed her.”
“No, well, never mind how she put it on, she’s put it on,” said Sloane. “—I grant you you can probably take it off, Melodie, but can you keep it off?”
“I can if there’s a definite goal, yeah,” replied Melodie defiantly.
Sloane shrugged. “If you say so. –I’d give it a go, yeah, Kitten. The Whatsername look: yeah. But you might bear in mind we’re as far as ever from meeting Roderick the Playboy.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Hugo Kent introduces his playboy brother to all his mistresses, does he?” she said drily.
“No. Well, I dunno, because he’s never had any before me.” She looked smug.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Sloane, rolling her eyes slightly.
“Nothing. He’s got high moral standards.”
“He used to have, you mean,” she noted sardonically. “So? How does Melodie meet Roderick?”
“All in good time. It’ll take a while to get that weight off her, and do something about the hair. –You can let it grow. We want it to look romantic,” she decided.
Jay was looking through the album, regardless of its advanced age. “She’s pretty,” she offered, holding it out to Kitten.
“She’s a foot taller than Melodie, you idiot!”
“Wasn’t there some thing on TV,” said Sloane, beginning to lose control of her mouth, “about some woman who went to California and got pieces put in her legs? No, on second thoughts it was pieces sawn out of them.”
“A documentary?” asked Nikki.
“Something on Sixty Minutes?” asked Jay,
“Um, wasn’t that that dumb thing with Roseanne in it?” said Kitten.
“No—oh, yeah, that was the American version!” said Sloane, now frankly laughing. “No, this was English. It was ages ago, come to think of it, you lot would’ve been far too young, I think I was only about ten: I remember Dad saying it wasn’t suitable for kids but Mum said if I was old enough to understand it I was old enough to watch it. Anyway, the lady in that was very elegant. Um, I can’t remember if she was the lady who had the bits sawn out of her legs, actually… Anyway, very elegant. She was in that awful lawyer series with that fat old joker that Dad bought the video of: you know, Kitten. Um, I think he said he was an Aussie.”
“Oh!” said Kitten. “That! Ancient. Dad reckons the plots are good but I reckon they’re feeble. Yeah, the lady in that’s elegant, all right. She’s the only good thing in it.”
“That English lawyer thing of Dad’s? I definitely couldn’t be her!” gasped Melodie.
“You’re right, there,” agreed Kitten. “You can look like Helena Bonham-Carter, though.”
“Righto,” she agreed meekly, not objecting that she didn't want to look like someone from the Nineties.
Kitten had airily decided Sloane could drive her back to the nest, once the delicious dinner she’d made them had been consumed and the concept “duck, not Peking,” had been explained to a helplessly giggling Jay.
Sloane had only had one glass of the Shiraz Kitten had brought with her: it was rather heavy. She agreed mildly, though with a wary look in her eye.
“What do you really think about Jay and Pommy Graeme?” asked Kitten after some kilometres had passed under their wheels in silence.
“I think if he could see her giggling her head off watching those thighs in their dinky little shorts on the footy on TV, he might revise his ideas about her somewhat!” retorted Sloane strongly.
Kitten grinned. “Yeah. Well, up his. But do you think she has fallen for him?”
Sloane made a face. “On the whole, I’d say yes. But you know her better than the rest of us do. What do you think?”
Kitten also made a face. “Definitely. But will she let it turn her soft?”
“I thought your theory was they always did?”
“Not all. One woman in a million manages to keep her head while she’s gone all soft about one of them.”
“We are agreed that one woman isn’t Ingrid, are we?”
Kitten gave a terrific snort. “Her!”
“Yeah. Um... How hard is Jay, under all that Asian pretty-little-girl shit, Kitten?” she asked cautiously.
“That’s cultural: she can’t help it.”
“I know that! –Well?”
Kitten’s eyes were narrowed. “I’m thinking about it. ...I’d say she’s pretty hard, Sloane. l dunno if I ever mentioned it, but after he came crawling back and she told him to get stuffed, that Tim kept on ringing her up and crying down the phone at her.”
“And?” said Sloane cautiously.
“Well, she was... adamant.”
“Adamant; eh?” said Sloane weakly.
“Mm.”
“I’d call that pretty hard,” Sloane admitted, “but look at Ingrid!”
“Yeah.”
This time there was quite a long silence.
“Look,” said Kitten cautiously, “I wouldn’t say this to any of the others, because if they did know what I was talking about, they’d pretend they didn’t.”
“Mm?”
“The majority of women do go pretty soft when they fall for a bloke. But at the same time, underneath it, they don’t really let themselves get suckered. They’re programmed to go for security and a roof over their heads, for them and their kids: the quarter acre and the lot. They instinctively play it the way that’ll get them all that.”
“Mm... I see. You mean, whether the guy wants it or not?”
“In lots of cases, yeah.”
“Do you think that’s why so many modern marriages bust up?“ asked Sloane dubiously.
Kitten shrugged. “Nope. I’d say most marriages that bust up, bust up because the couple involved are a pair of idiots that in the first place are too lazy to work at commitment and probably too brainless to realise they need to, and in the second place have never been brought up with any ethical standards like their grandparents were.”
“Ouch,” said Sloane faintly.
“You asked.”
“Mm.”
“There’s also the point that women achieve the goals they’re biologically programmed for by the time they’re in their forties. But Nature can squeeze another generation out of most men. They’re not programmed for nineteen-fifties morality, let alone monogamy.”
“Yeah. Don’t go on,” she said in a hollow voice.
Kitten smiled a little, but was obligingly silent.
After some time Sloane said: “I won’t say that I disagree with you. But doesn’t what you’ve just said about women invalidate what you said before tea about going soft?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “There’s a type of woman that inevitably self-destructs by going all soft over the wrong type of man. The type that for one reason or another can’t or won’t settle down on the quarter-acre block with her.”
“Kitten,” said Sloane feebly: “do you mean you and me and the twins?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” she said detachedly.
“What? Well, why?” cried Sloane aggrievedly.
“I dunno, Sloane, I’m not God. –He’s a man, by the way.”
“You mean He’s a male chauvinist pig; I’ve worked that one out for myself, thanks,” she said grimly.
“Mm. –We’re gonna have to keep Melodie up to the mark,” she warned.
“By you, we’re gonna have to keep them all up to the mark!”
“Yes.”
Sloane groaned. “I can just see Neil Reardon looking twice at Nikki if you—um—”
“Clean her up a bit,” said Kitten tranquilly.
Wincing, Sloane admitted: “Yeah. But looking twice is about a million miles from marriage. And if Jerry the Jerk didn’t think she was executive-wife material, what in God’s name makes you imagine Neil Reardon will?”
Kitten shrugged. “Neil Reardon’s a side issue, anyway. I think there’s a good chance that Ward will marry Ingrid, ya know. She can be pretty up-market when she tries: I think he’s really impressed by her. And he’s free: there’s nothing to stop him.”
“Yes. So do you advise her to get pregnant immediately, or not?” she asked acidly.
Kitten replied seriously: “Not just yet. But I think it might be a good move, if he doesn’t propose. You know: floods of tears, ‘What’ll we do, Ward?’, all that.”
“This sounds as if someone might have envisaged the scenario already,” she noted grimly. “In another context. –Well?”
Kitten replied tranquilly: “At the moment I think Hugo would gently and firmly decide I’d have to have an abortion. He’s used to taking charge in crises and making decisions. And he doesn’t see me as potential wife material, yet. I’m thinking about producing a son that he doesn’t know about. Well, ideally a son; a daughter would do.”
“That he what?” croaked her older sister.
Kitten merely continued tranquilly: “Say he pushes off back to Pongo and I don’t tell him I’m pregnant... Then I’d have to prove it was his. –I think he might go all soppy once he actually laid eyes on it, you see.”
“Or deny paternity entirely: one or the other, yeah.”
“Yes,” agreed Kitten mildly. “The DNA test’d prove it, though.”
Sloane sighed. “Kitten, kids aren’t pawns. If you have one, you’ll be stuck with it for the next eighteen years. It’ll be your responsibility.”
“Mm.”
“And don’t expect Mum to be supportive!”
“I’m not that dumb,” replied Kitten calmly.
Sloane sighed again, but drove on without saying anything more.
Outside the nest she drew in to the curb—there was virtually no-one parked in the street, the area was too up-market for anyone not to have a garage—two-car, usually—and sighed again.
“The worst-case scenario,” said Kitten instantly to the sigh: “is that Jay’s hopelessly in love with Pommy Graeme, he gets her up the spout and waltzes back to the wife and she never sees him again, and that Ingrid’s hopelessly in love with Ward—not that we don’t know that already—and he decides it was all a mistake and ditches her.”
“Get out,” she groaned.
“I haven’t finished yet. And that Hugo waltzes off to England and forgets all about me,”—Sloane goggled at her—“and that Kendall Burgoyne chickens out of the whole bit. –He has got ‘chicken’ written all over him, ya know.”
“Mm. But he’s pretty fed up with Joyce, from what he was saying the other day,” she said cautiously.
“Yes. Just mind you let him get good and desperate before ya go to bed with him.”
“Mm.”
“And remember what I told you: then you decide you don’t want to go on with a pointless relationsh—”
“YES!” she shouted. “Get out of the CAR!”
Kitten replied thoughtfully: “I don’t think the worst-case scenario is likely. But so far I have to admit ole Ward’s our best bet.”
Sloane’s mouth opened slightly. After a moment she managed to say, jerking her head at the up-market block of flats before which they were parked: “What about him?”
Kitten shook her head. “I said, he doesn’t see me as wife material. He keeps telling me it’s been the most precious time of his life.”
“But— Oh...” said Sloane slowly.
“Yes. He’s already thinking of it as a sweet memory,” said Kitten detachedly.
“Help. How are you coping with that, Kitten?”
“Not by arguing with him, that’s for sure. I’m laying contingency plans,” she explained, opening her door. “See ya!”
She was off before Sloane could issue any more dire warnings about not producing a kid in the belief it would be merely a pawn in her little game.
Sloane drove home carefully: the traffic was always thick on a Friday night. Contingency plans? The mere phrase gave you a hollow feeling in your tummy!
There was also a slight hollow feeling because she had a lunch date with Kendall on the Monday, and she was pretty sure he was working up to saying something definite. It wasn’t that she was in love with him, but— Well, he wasn’t unattractive, and it was bloody nice to have someone wanting you, for a change! Instead of having to make all the running yourself.
... Contingency plans? Help.
Next chapter:
https://thelallapindarevenge.blogspot.com/2022/11/aussie-and-other-wimps.html
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