14
Out Of The Realms Of Fantasy
So far the news from Kitten had been extremely sparse, though Melodie had written very fully, if not, on analysis, very illuminatingly. Then Dick did get a letter.
Dear Dad, wrote Kitten on Paul Warden’s heavy cream, engraved writing paper,
I thought you might like some news. We’ve arrived safely in England. Paul Warden and his second wife, Mary, are making us very welcome at Crowsnest. It’s a charming house: William IV. Something along the lines of Elizabeth Bay House, but not as pretty. It’s great to see Brucey and Maddalena again. Brucey’s so tall I wouldn’t have recognised him. You can almost believe he’s Christina’s big brother, now, but he’s still got those round cheeks. Maddalena’s fiancé is here: Peter Evans. She was at school with his sister, and Paul Warden trains his father’s horses. He’s Harry Evans. He’s head of the HEI Group: it started off with HE Refrigerated Storage and the original Shop-Rite grocery chain, but of course they’ve diversified a lot, since. He’s an Austrian Jew by extraction: his dad came over to England before the War as a refugee. Not bad going, in two generations. Peter’s a wet Pommy wimp, but that’s what you get for marrying a wet, inbred, pedigreed Pommy female like Lady Juliet Evans. They’re here, too. She sighs a lot and keeps asking if we’ve heard of the So-and-So’s. Yuck.
Paul Warden is a rather limited man who’s only interested in his horses. Quite good-looking, so maybe that’s why Aunty Ingrid married him. Mary Warden is even more limited. We can’t figure out what on earth she does all day. She can’t even cook. She’s got a Hungarian cook, believe it or not. Actually she’s married to a man from the village, so her name is Mrs Simmons. She’s almost exactly the same age as Mary Warden but she makes her call her madam. They haven’t got any children of their own and if you ask me it’s a moot point whether Paul Warden’s forgotten how or Madam forbade him from the word Go to do anything half so distasteful.
It’s freezing, with snow in the air, but the house is warm. We haven’t done any riding, according to P.W. the ground’s too hard. There are lots of foals, of course. Very sweet. We’re all well. Must dash, Brucey’s giving us lunch at some local dump he swears can cook trout.
Your loving,
Kitten.
P.S. Madam Warden’s totally dippy on Rose Anne, so maybe she just skipped the maternal hormones and went straight on to the granny ones. –K.
It was not entirely surprising that after reading this missive Dick went round to Sloane’s breathing fire and brimstone. “Read that!” he ordered.
“Don’t blame me,” replied Sloane mildly. She read it. “Her all over,” she noted.
“She’s barely said a word about her own infant, and that was only in a bloody P.S.!” he choked.
“She did say they’re all well, Dad.”
“Has she written to you?”
She had, but Sloane had no intention of showing him that. “Melodie has. Here you are.”
Dick seized it gratefully.
Dear Sloane,
Here we are at Crowsnest in England! It’s fab, you ought to see it! Kitten reckons it’s William the 4th, whatever that means. It reminds me of that lovely place we went to see once with Dad, I think it was in Elizabeth Bay, anyway after that we had lunch at that really ace little place that served the snitzles with the kind of pale pink sauce and the fried green butterflies, I forget what herb they were. Kitten says basil, but you needn’t take her word for it, she reckons that sauce was yucky.
It’s absolutely freezing, but they’ve got central heating, thank goodness. You ought to see my room. Me and Nikki are sharing but Mrs Warden said we could have a bedroom each if we’d rather. They’ve got 15 bedrooms! This one has got twin beds but they’re both queen size. Four posters, with a blue and pink floral pattern and guess what! The walls are done out in the same pattern with matching wallpaper. The curtains are plain dark blue. Only the ties are strips of the floral. Really tasteful.
They haven’t got body carpet at all, and we thought that was a bit odd, because they can obviously afford it, but Kitten reckons it’s the look, so I suppose she’s right as usual. The floors are polished wood and they’ve either got squares of carpet, like with the wood showing round the edges, you know? Or rugs. Our room’s got rugs, they’re very pretty, they really tone. Persian pattern, but not overdone. The bedroom furniture is really nice, don’t believe Kitten if she tries to tell you it’s Reproduction. Our room’s got built-in robes, which I must say is convenient, but lots of the other rooms haven’t. I’d have them in all the rooms, if it was my place. There’s two dressing tables, isn’t that extravagant? I asked Mrs Warden where they got it all but she doesn’t know. She said that most of it came to them from his grandfather. Ida and Timothy Warden, that’s his brother and his wife, they’re the ones that send Aunty Ingrid a Christmas cake every year, they got half of the antiques.
They’ve got a cook, Mrs Warden doesn’t do any of the cooking or the housekeeping, talk about high society. Nice work if you can get it. She was complaining because she couldn’t get any servants to live in, so I told her about RightSmart and how hard it is to find the right sort of people that will take live-in jobs and won’t exploit their employers, and she was very interested. She said she envies you and she wishes she’d had the opportunity to do something like that when she was a girl. She’s only about Mum’s age, for Heaven’s sake! England must have been like the Dark Ages in her day, that’s all I can say. I’m glad I’m an Australian and I didn’t have to go to a stuck-up Pommy girls’ school and grow up to do nothing.
Maddalena says she absolutely hated that school they sent her to and couldn’t wait to leave. So I said but would she have met Peter, that’s her fiancé, if she hadn’t been to the school and met his sister? But she said she would, because Mr Warden trains his father’s horses. Maddalena’s grown up really pretty. She’s got light brown hair, a bit lighter than mine, but the same sort of curls. A really smart cut. Brucey’s just the same as ever, only very tall. Me and Nikki were afraid he might be falling for Kitten, but on thinking it over we don’t think he is. He thinks she’s funny. Do you remember how he was always laughing when he was little? He hasn’t changed. He liked his school, but Maddalena says all the other boys reckoned it was putrid, but that’s Brucey. He likes everything. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He went to uni but he didn’t pass anything. Mr W’s ropeable about it, which is funny but then I suppose he’s not really an English gentleman if he works at training horses for a living, is he? He reckons the breeding side of it’s only a hobby but Mrs Warden let it out that it’s a very expensive hobby. I said to Brucey, Why don’t you go into the business? And he just laughed and said he supposed he will, in the end.
I thought he’d wear those very smart English clothes like in that mini-series with all the sailing that you said was garbage, only he doesn’t, just jeans and windcheaters and quite ordinary jumpers. Mr Warden usually wears riding breeches, they look ace, but I can see you’d have to have good legs to get away with them. Brucey’s got one jumper in a really nice Aran knit pattern and I thought Maddalena or his mother or his Aunty Ida might have knitted it for him but none of them can knit. Anyway it’s got holes in the elbows so Nikki said she’d knit him a new one and she’s going to ask her Mum to send her that really easy pattern that’s only fake Aran not real cables. I said to Kitten as she seemed really keen on him why didn’t she offer? But according to her, knitting is lower class, and that’s why Mrs W and the Aunty and Maddalena don’t do it! Honestly! There may be one howling snob around here but it isn’t one of the Wardens, I can tell you!
“Flaming bloody Norah,” noted Dick Manning at this point.
“Mm? Oh, is that the bit about Mrs West’s bloody knitting pattern? Skip that, Dad: that’s just Melodie.”
“No, but look, she’s as bad as Kitten! –In her own way,” he said firmly as Sloane opened her mouth.
“Yes, well, she’s written screeds,” she said neutrally.
“Yeah, but none of it’s to the point, Sloane!”
Sloane eyed him drily. “What is the point, Dad?”
Dick spluttered.
“If you read on about three pages, there’s stacks about Rose Anne,” she offered calmly.
Dick glared, but skimmed rapidly through the next three pages, and then read with great concentration.
“Well?” said Sloane drily.
“Yeah, well, she seems to be okay, doesn’t she? Eating her nosh and so forth. At least the English baby-foods seem to be just the same as ours. Not that her ruddy mother would have bothered to mention that, of course. Just as well Mrs Warden’s taken to her, eh?” He sighed. “To read this, you’d think it was Melodie that was her mum, not ruddy Kitten! But if she’s that keen on her, why doesn’t she have some of her own?”
“Maybe she thinks that finding a husband first might be the way to go, Dad.”
Dick grinned feebly. “Yeah. Well, good on ’er. –Here, who on earth’s this R.K. she keeps going on about?”
“What?” said Sloane feebly.
“This bloke they seem to be expecting. Judging from this, he must be royalty at the very least. Or possibly a very minor pop star,” he said snidely.
“Oh—him. Um, I’m not sure, Dad,” lied Sloane valiantly. “Some posh Pom that owns some of the horses that Mr Warden trains.”
“Yeah.” Dick scratched his chin slowly. “He sounds all right,” he admitted.
“What, Paul Warden? Well, yes, I’d say so. It doesn’t seem to have dawned on Melodie that his grandfather left him a mouldering dump that might have been full of antiques but was crippled by death duties before the War and then just about finished off after it when the slaves all decided they didn’t want to work for the gentry for peanuts any more,” said Sloane drily. “Paul Warden built the business up from scratch.”
“Mm. Um, what did the father do, do ya remember, Sloane?”
“Yes, don’t you? Aunty Ingrid went on about it for ages one night. Oh—no, I think you’d taken that skinny bloke out to show him what a real Aussie pub was like. He was in the Army. An officer, of course. You know, Dad: as a career. Aunty Ingrid reckoned he was only interested in killing things and didn’t care if was enemy soldiers, or foxes, or birds. Um, pheasants, I suppose.”
“Must be: like the foul-tasting muck Melodie was blahing on about, that she thought was some Hungarian muck the cook had dreamed up, only it turned out to be pheasant in a ruddy wine sauce. Kitten lapped it up to the manner born, apparently.” Dick cleared his throat hard. “So to speak.”
They eyed each other cautiously.
“It does sound awfully like it, doesn’t it?” she ventured.
Dick went into a choking it, nodding frantically. “Yeah!” he gasped. “Down to the Austrian grocer!”
“Mr De Vere—mm. But he was Czech, I think.”
“Yeah.” Dick blew his nose. “You been recording the repeats?” he said eagerly.
“Well, most of them.”
“Come on, put it on, love: might as well get the dinkum oil, since neither of those two cretins is capable of telling it like it is!”
Resignedly Sloane produced her copies of To The Manor Born and put one in the machine.
“I bet it is just like it,” concluded Dick, after the obligatory nose-blowing and eye-mopping.
“Yes. Let’s just hope Mary Warden’s nothing like Audrey.”
“She doesn’t sound like it. Sounds more like what that droopy Margery might have turned out like if some misguided type had married her.”
“Mm. Well, after Aunty Ingrid, it’d be—” Sloane broke off.
“Restful!” choked Dick. “It would that! –No, well,” he admitted, mopping his eyes again, “they seem to be treating the girls really kindly, that’s a plus.”
“Yes. I suppose it was a bit of a cheek, dropping in on them like that,” said Sloane on an uneasy note.
Dick of course had grown up as a country boy. “Eh? Rats, love! Paul Warden’s your cousins’ dad, after all!”
“Mm,” said Sloane, smiling uneasily.
“Ace car,” noted Nikki, leaning her elbows on a windowsill in the room that Maddalena claimed had once been a “day nursery.” Whatever that was: right. These days it was Maddalena’s study, but since she’d finished uni some time since, she didn’t do any studying in it, it was more like a little sitting-room. Nikki wouldn’t have half minded having one just like it. “It’s not a Porsche, is it?”
“No,” said Maddalena without much interest. “I don’t know what it is, Nikki. I think it must be Roddy Kent,” she said as the door of the low, rakish-looking thing below them on the gravel sweep opened and a man got out. Sheepskin-lined car coat, tweed cap and all: shit. So far nothing at Crowsnest except perhaps the lovely furnishings and the accents had been at all like that English mini-series with the sailing, especially not the clothes, male or female; but this man’s clothes were. Nikki gulped as a lady got out of the car. “Who’s that?” she said faintly.
“No idea, Nikki. Well, Roddy Kent always has some unfortunate bird in tow!” admitted Maddalena with her nice smile. “But it always seems to be a different one, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes. Unfortunate?” croaked Nikki.
“Well, yes. Oh, I think he’s quite decent to them, while it lasts,” she said to their guest’s horrified face, “but it never does last for long, you see.”
Nikki nodded numbly. They had gathered that much. And although they knew he was the type that always did have a girlfriend, somehow they hadn’t expected him to turn up at Crowsnest with one. Well, her and Melodie hadn’t; Kitten, knowing her, had probably expected anything at all. But that didn’t mean that Melodie would be capable of making him dump the girl. In fact, as long as she’d known her, Nikki had never seen Melodie muscle in on any other girl’s territory. Help!
Melodie was enjoying the stay at Crowsnest, although she found it hard to adjust to staying in a place where the hostess never had anything for you to help with. Well, one day Mrs Warden had had some branches she was arranging in tall vases, and Melodie had helped her with those, even though privately of the opinion that bare branches looked real weird, y’know? Wouldn’t you think she could’ve got some nice proteas, at least, from the local florist? But most of the time Mrs Warden didn’t seem to have anything that needed doing. Melodie liked Maddalena but she could see clearly enough that they had very little in common. Especially since Maddalena wasn’t really interested in clothes. So she was mostly spending her time reading a lot of magazines—some that Kitten had brought with her, and some that belonged to Mrs Warden—and going out to the stables to look at the foals. They were really adorable! Sometimes Nikki came with her, but she’d admitted that she was a bit scared of horses: they were big, and they made huffing noises. Melodie had tried to point out how gentle the mares looked: you only had to look them in the eye to see how gentle they were—but Nikki wasn’t volunteering to get close enough to look a mare in the eye. Though agreeing that the foals were sweet.
Melodie of course did not go unnoticed in the Crowsnest stables and by now had become fast friends with Stan Freeman, the head groom and right-hand-man to Paul Warden, Bob Bundy, Stan’s assistant, who was a bit slow but had a wonderful touch with the mares, and assorted “lads” of both sexes. She had also discovered a thin, bespectacled, serious, pale person in the office, by name Ella Parsons, and had made friends with her, too. Ella answered the phones and made appointments but she was much, much more than a receptionist: she did all the bookkeeping and proudly showed the awed Melodie “the system” on the computer. And revealed that she was a qualified accountant. Melodie of course would probably have made friends with anything at all that adorned Paul Warden’s office, but as in addition to being pale and serious Ella had a bad limp, Melodie felt very sorry for her. And very soon had all the details of Miss Parsons’s home life, mum and dad, married sisters and brothers, and nephews and nieces out of her. She was, of course, perfectly genuine in her interest and even remembered the names of the nephews and nieces.
“Fraternising,” Kitten had said on a grim note in the privacy of the bedroom Melodie shared with Nikki, “with the help.”
Turning very red, her sister replied grimly: “Drop dead, Kitten.”
“Look, I like Ella, too! She’s done really well for herself, and anyone that takes up accountancy has certainly spotted the system for what it is: she’ll never be out of a job, even if she’s surrounded by corporate crashes and small businesses going bankrupt! But that isn’t the point: these types like R.K. will say—”
Melodie shouted that didn’t care what they said and if R.K. was like that, she didn’t want him! So Kitten gave up on that one, for the nonce. Though remarking sourly to Nikki later: “He will be like that, you know.”
“Mm. Maybe Melodie could, um, change him? Um, help him to be a nicer person?” she squeaked.
Kitten had sighed, but refrained with a great effort from telling her to take her head out of her Barbara Cartlands and come into the real world.
For the visit to Crowsnest, Kitten had got Melodie into what she declared was the right sort of gear. Melodie hadn’t protested that the gear was much, much smarter than anything Maddalena or Mrs Warden had been observed wearing; the reflections in her mirror told her that she looked ace. And much more up-market than usual. The slimmer figure helped, of course. Some days she was permitted to wear jeans, but only the correct designer brands, of course. With the correct accessories. Today, however, it was a jump-suit, to which Kitten persisted in referring as “une combinaison,” in a soft greyish-brown tweed. The waist was slightly elasticised at the back, under a smart little half-belt, and the front fastened with a neat zipper. Undone almost to the waist, so that the moss-green high-necked jumper showed. Kitten had originally tried a black jumper, as evidently that had featured in the French Vogue from which she’d got the idea, but it hadn’t done much for Melodie’s complexion. The soft green brought out the green in her hazel eyes. Kitten had refrained from giving her face a cheekboned look, so it was strictly natural. In other words, about five layers of applications, tissuings off, and reapplications. The big hazel eyes were emphasised by a soft brown eye-shadow and lots of mascara. The outfit was completed by shiny black boots. Kitten had found the hairdresser in Copenhagen, so the hair, now just below her shoulders, looked superb. You would have sworn all those streaks were perfectly natural. And it was now terrifically easy to do. Which didn’t mean that Kitten didn’t pay it due attention every day, too.
Melodie was in the stables communing with her favourite mare, a placid brown creature who, or so at least she had been informed by Janet Pithey, one of the lads, had won enormous amounts for her owner before being put to stud, and who of course had a racing name. The racing name was daft and didn’t suit her, so Melodie had been pleased to learn that her stable name was Spotty, because as a foal she’d had a noticeably spotted belly, and if you looked hard, you could still see some of the spots. Melodie had duly looked. Sure enough, the nice brown Spotty was a bit paler underneath, and definitely speckled! Spotty was the pride of the stables: she had been mated with various excellent stallions and one of her offspring had just won some race of which Melodie had never heard, and it was—according to Janet, Stan, and Ella—a feather in Mr Warden’s cap to have retained her in the stables. The owner apparently trusted Mr Warden. Melodie had nodded seriously: she had not, being Melodie, given the matter a second’s thought: but she instinctively knew that she, too, would have trusted Paul Warden with anything.
“Hullo, Spotty!” said a warm male voice just as Melodie was stroking her silken nose and sighing, and wondering it if might soon be time for lunch. “Nice, isn’t she?” he said to Melodie, smiling.
“She’s lovely: my favourite, actually,” said Melodie in rather a lowered voice to the pleasant-looking stranger with the crinkly eyes.
The crinkly eyes twinkled: the mares and foals would not have been disturbed by their conversing at a normal volume—as, indeed, he himself had been doing; presumably the lowered voice was so as not to hurt the feelings of the other mares? “Mm,” he said, offering Spotty a sandwich of grated carrot and peanut butter.
“How did you know?” gasped Melodie as the mare gulped it down greedily. “That’s her absolute favourite treat!”
“Yes. She was at the races one day, and pinched a sandwich from the lad who was supposed to be keeping an eye on her—have they told you that story?” he said with a smile.
Melodie nodded hard. “Mm. She won, didn’t she? That was her first big win. So they tried her on the sandwich combo again. But it didn’t make her actually win any more, it was just a coincidence!” she said with a giggle. “But by then it was too late, she’d got really addicted. It was Janet’s sandwich: her mum’s into vegetarianism. Sometimes she puts nasturtium leaves with the peanut butter. But I think they might be a bit hot for Spotty.”
“Yes,” he said, grinning. “Don’t know that I’d fancy them myself, either!”
Melodie nodded, smiling. “Are you here to see Mr Warden?” she asked politely.
“Not really; I was passing, and thought I’d drop in to see dear old Spotty and the new foal.” He fondled her nose, smiling.
“Janet’s calling him Bert,” reported Melodie dubiously.
“I don’t like that much,” he said immediately. “He doesn’t look like a Bert to me.”
“No.” Melodie looked at the leggy, light brown foal, and sighed deeply. “If he was mine, I’d call him Fawn. Though I s’pose that sounds silly.”
“No, it sounds delightful!” he said with a little laugh. “They are fawn-like at that age, aren’t they?”
“Yes—well, I’ve only seen a real fawn at the zoo, and on David Attenborough, of course,” replied Melodie seriously, “but he is, yeah. And he is sort of fawn, ya see?”
“Exactly. Well, let’s call him Fawn!” he smiled.
“Ye-es, only— Well Janet might agree, she’s okay, but the owner’ll want to call him something blimmin’ silly,” she said with a sigh. “Won’t he, Fawn?” she cooed. “Yes, you! It does suit you, darling little Fawn!”
“Er—why should the owner call him something silly?” he asked on a cautious note.
“They always do,” replied Melodie simply.
He cleared his throat. “Well, racing names, you know. Often take account of the bloodline—that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, I know, only it’s a pity it comes out silly, like poor Spotty’s name. Anyway, we always call you Spotty, don’t we?” she said happily. The mare made a huffing noise and Melodie turned her head and beamed up at the stranger. “There! She knows she’s Spotty, see?”
“Of course,” he murmured, stroking her nose gently. “Well, I don’t think Fawn will be renamed.”
“Ya wanna bet?”
His lips twitched but he said on a cautious note: “Paul Warden’s mentioned the owner, has he?”
“Nope—well, dunno, really. He might of, but there’s loads of them, I can't remember which one he is. Or it might be a lady, some of them are, but I think it’s a man. Yeah, I think Janet said ‘he’. So it can’t be one of those syndicate thingos, either. Mr Warden wouldn’t say anything bad about him, mind you, he isn’t like that. Actually if he didn’t like him I don’t think he’d want to keep Spotty in his stables.”
“Er—retaining her is doing Warden a lot of good,” he murmured.
“He isn’t that sort!” replied Melodie in patent amaze. “Don’t you know him at all?”
At this he grinned, the eyes crinkling up very much, and said: “Well, yes, but I was wondering how well you know him. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I was—er—leading you on.”
Melodie of course was by no means an intellectual girl, but she wasn’t slow, either, so she replied smartly: “To put my foot in my mouth, ya mean?”
“Mm, something like that. Sorry. I am Spotty’s owner, actually. Michael Stuart.”
Melodie was already rather flushed but at this she went even pinker, and Michael Stuart was conscious of a not unfamiliar sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Then she gasped: “Heck, I’m sorry, Mr Stuart! I didn’t mean to be rude about you! I didn’t think you’d call her Spotty, ya see!”
The sinking feeling vanished like dew in the morning and Michael Stuart grinned again and said: “I’ve always called her Spotty. She was given the daft racing name before I bought her. And not ‘Mr Stuart’, please.”
“Help, you’re not one of the those English lords or something, are you?” said Melodie in transparent dismay.
“No,” he replied firmly, omitting all reference to the next Queen’s Birthday Honours List. “Call me Michael.”
“Aw, good-oh! Good to meet you, Michael!” said Melodie in relief, sticking out a small, warm hand. “I’m Melodie Manning.”
Eyes crinkling very much, Michael Stuart—who owned a string of racehorses and had let Spotty remain with Paul Warden because he was, as his ex-wife had pointed out, as soft as butter about the bloody horses, which was completely potty and illogical, considering he was as hard as nails about his bloody business and mean as sin when it came to his own wife’s merely wanting a nice holiday in Réunion or a new suite for the drawing-room—took the little hand in his big one and squeezed it gently. Not displeased to find the enchantingly straightforward Melodie went even pinker and laughed breathlessly as he shook it—and not this time fearing for a moment that she’d heard of the Stuart Group, knew all about the international trucking business and the hugely successful venture into cargo planes, and knew bloody well who Michael Stuart was.
Dear Sloane,
We can write Melodie off as far as the Lallapinda revenge is concerned, she’s fallen for bloody Michael Stuart. I know you won’t have heard of him, but I bet Kendall B. will have, he’s into international trucking and air freight as well: making millions out of it. A miles better bet than passenger airlines, so don’t quote flaming Virgin Airlines at me. Not as creepy-looking as him, actually, so I suppose it proves that all Pommy entrepreneurs don’t have to be. You could say she’s doing bloody well for herself, he’s nearly twice her age and completely mad about her, bad as Ward over Ingrid, but being Melodie she didn’t have a clue who he is, she just fell for him because he’s as keen on bloody Spotty and its foal as she is! He’s been and let her name it Fawn, that’ll look good in the international racing news in four years’ time, not!
He turned up here in a Lamborghini with a bird in it—actually when he drove up we thought it might be Roderick Kent—but anyway the bird turned out to be his sister, so that’s okay, as far as it goes. Not that Melodie recognised the car, her and Nikki both just said it was a flat thing. Trust them. But we can give up any hope of Melodie grabbing R.K., she can’t see past Michael. I suppose Dad’ll be wild, but he isn’t as old as Ward, he’s about forty, and he does seem like a decent joker. And ten to one if we had got her hooked up with R.K. she’d’ve gone soft and told him the lot, so it’s probably just as well. And it doesn’t really matter, since R.K.’s not in KRP.
I did think of Nikki for him instead but she never fancied him from the photos and she’s too down-market for him even with the new hairdo, he’d never take her seriously, so I’ve decided not to dissipate my energies and just concentrate on the core project. Actually Brucey seems to like her, funnily enough. Well, I must admit he’s as brainless as she is, and of course very good-natured and not up-himself: the sort that takes people as they find them. He said to me she’s a really nice, natural girl and he wouldn’t mind living in Australia, so that’s quite promising, don’t you think? She likes him, too, she’s got Mrs West to send her that fake Aran knitting pattern and she’s started knitting him a jumper. I said to her, Don’t you realise that in your mum’s day that was a definite social signal, tantamount to putting your brand on a bloke? But she just told me I was talking through the little hole in the back of my neck again. Never mind knowing nothing of the social conventions of the society you grew up in, how anyone can be that dense about their own motives beats me, but however.
Nikki and me are headed for London in a few days’ time but Melodie’s decided to spend some time with Michael. They’re popping over to Copenhagen to see Aunty Ingrid and then she’s gonna stay with him for a bit. I said to her will this be at the villa in Spain but Thicko just giggled and said don’t be silly, he lives in England. So I didn’t say he’s got a mega-flat in London plus and, according to Country Life, a country house in Sussex as well as the villa, it’ll either dawn or not, and if he decides to dump her it’ll probably be better if she doesn’t realise what she’s lost.
I think we’ll look for a flat. We’ll stay with Jay just at first but we need to leave the field free for Pommy Graeme. Evidently he’s round there at least three evenings a week, don’t ask me what the bitch of a wife imagines he’s doing, and quite often manages a Saturday or Sunday arvo, the woman must either be blind and stupid or else she doesn’t care. He’s keener than ever but so far there’s been no sign of him working up the guts to ditch the wife, in fact it sounds as if he’s getting too comfortable with it—started taking the set-up for granted, you know? He needs to be shaken out of his comfort zone. So how’s this: I video them together and send it to the wife. It’ll be easy, Graeme meets Jay for lunch every other day, he doesn’t seem to care about being seen in public with her, not to mention not caring about being seen kissing her goodbye, so that’s a lot of pretty decent evidence by itself, not to mention the times he spends the night, so I’ll put the day and time on. And if that all doesn’t convince the bloody wife to divorce him, I’ll bug the bedroom. I won’t tell Jay, if it does come to that: ten to one she wouldn’t let me, it sounds as if she’s gone really soppy over him: last time I rung her she was on about babies. So I said, she’s only here on a working holiday, what happens if her visa runs out and she’s pregnant, and she actually said she’d never get rid of it even if he doesn’t want to marry her! Fatal. So I’ll get moving the minute we get to London.
Well, that’s about it for now. Maddalena took some Polaroids of Rose Anne so I’m enclosing a couple. You can give one to Mum and Dad, if you like, maybe it’ll reassure Dad that I’m not starving his grandkid.
Love,
Kitten.
Sloane didn’t volunteer to pass this epistle on but this didn’t stop Dick from blowing his top about Melodie.
“Who the HELL is this Michael Stuart creep?” he shouted.
Sloane winced. “Don’t shout.”
“Don’t tell me they haven’t told you the lot, Sloane! Who IS HE?” he bellowed.
“Um, all I know is what they’ve let on. Um, well, a rich Pom, Dad,” she said glumly.
“How OLD is he?” he bellowed.
Sloane swallowed. “I think Kitten said he’s, um, about forty.”
Dick breathed heavily.
“Um, Dad, it might not last, you know what Melodie—”
“I’ve just had an email from your bloody Aunt Ingrid! Since when was Melodie into taking them home to meet the rellies?” he shouted.
Oh, cripes. “Um, I think the thing was, he had business in Europe and Melodie wanted to see Aunty Ingrid and Christina again...”
“Bullshit, Sloane!” he shouted.
Sloane licked her lips. “It does sound as if it might be serious, but it’s too soon to say, really. Um, she’s knitting him a jumper, apparently.”
Dick groped his way to a chair and sat down heavily. “What?’
“Um, yeah. Mrs West sent Nikki the pattern because she wanted to knit one for Brucey, and, um, Michael admired it, and Melodie said she’d knit him one.”
“Knitting him a— Bloody Ingrid reckons the man owns a giant courier company!”
“Ingrid— Oh, Aunty Ingrid? Um, I think Kitten said international transport and, um, cargo planes,” said Sloane faintly.
“Cargo pl— Fucking Hell, do you mean he’s S-Speed-Tran International?”
“I dunno, Dad.”
Dick got up. “Where’s your laptop?’
“Um, in the bedroom, but I have hadn’t had any emails from them—”
“Not that load of computer illiterates! Gonna look up S-Speed-Tran on the Internet,” he said grimly.
“I haven’t got a modem connection,” said Sloane feebly as he headed for the bedroom.
“Rats, gave you the cord myself!” he said crossly.
“Yes, um, I mean the phone’s plugged in, Dad.”
“Then I’ll unplug it. Didn’t you get a double plug for it; like I told you?”
“No. I went to Dick Smith’s and there was a very young pointy-headed nerd serving, at least, he was standing at the counter ignoring me, you couldn’t call it serving, and when he finally condescended to notice me he pretended he didn’t understand what I was saying.”
“Shouldn’t of gone to Dick Smith’s, they only speak Geek-Speak,” he grunted, coming downstairs with the laptop in its case. “I’ll get you one.” He investigated the case, found the cord, plugged it into the laptop, unplugged the phone and plugged the modem in.
“Well, where else can you buy a double plug thingo for a laptop?” said Sloane weakly as he sat down.
“Not surprised he didn’t understand you, if that’s what you called it, pointy-headed or not,” he grunted, tapping. “Any hardware store. Mitre 10. Bunning’s. Woolie’s, probably. –What the Hell?”
Sighing, Sloane came to look over his shoulder. “All Australian... I see, they own All-Aussie Transport.”
Dick tapped again. “What the fuck settings have you got on this thing?”
“None, Dad. I mean, I haven’t touched it. Actually I don’t know it had settings. And don’t change anything, I’m used to it!” she added quickly.
Sniffing, Dick said: “It’s your funeral. ...Here we go. Pommy web address. Usual cretinous home page designed by pointy-headed nerds, the Brits got them as well,” he noted by the by. “Any facts here, as opposed to corporate spin?”
“Um, Kitten always reckoned Who’s Who was good. They’ve got it at the State Library,” said Sloane feebly.
Dick sniffed. “Hang on... Ah! Bit of a biog. ...Thirty-nine,” he concluded grimly.
“That’s not so bad, Dad.”
“I’d agree with you if she was twenty-nine! All right, next question: is he married?”
“No, definitely divorced,” she said quickly.
Dick was following up a link. “Yeah, well, better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick... What?”
Sloane peered. She swallowed. “Kitten did mention he's got a villa in Spain: I think that must be it.”
Dick breathed heavily.
“Um, it sort of sounds as if Melodie hasn’t realised how rich he is,” she offered in a small voice.
“Uh—oh. Well, no, that sort of thing never did count with her, bless her. Unlike some,” he noted sourly. “Even your ruddy Aunt Ingrid noticed that Kitten’s eye’s firmly on the main chance, whether or not in the intervals of picking up fat married Yank millionaires.”
“Yank— Oh, the man on the plane,” said Sloane feebly. “That was nothing, Dad.”
“It can’t have been nothing if Ingrid noticed it! Where’s Kitten’s last letter?” he demanded grimly.
“Um, it’s full of rubbish, Dad.”
“Ya don’t say! Get it,” he ordered grimly.
“No, you don’t wanna read it, Dad—“
“I WANNA READ IT!” he bellowed. “Get the bloody thing, Sloane!”
“No, it’s full of—of bullshit—” Suddenly Sloane burst into snorting sobs.
“Oh, shit,” muttered Dick, getting up. “Come on, lovey, not that bad,” he said, putting an arm round her shoulders and guiding her to the sofa.
She sobbed for some time. There were words in amongst it, but they didn’t make much sense, though “Wish I’d never started it” did give one pause for thought, rather. Finally Dick gave her a grimy hanky and said: “I’m gonna read the bloody letter whether or not ya tell me where it is, so ya might as well tell me. Or alternatively I could turn out all your drawers.”
“No,” said Sloane, sniffing hard. “I mean, don’t do that. It’s on the bedside table. But it’s stupid, it’ll only make you cross.”
“So what’s new?” said Kitten’s father very, very mildly, going to get it.
He read it through three times, the first admittedly breathing fire and brimstone, the second more carefully, and the third very slowly and carefully indeed. Then he said: “The Lallapinda revenge, eh? Your mother and me thought the silly little twit had got over that, years back.”
Sloane blew her nose drearily. “No, I mean, it was my fault. I suggested it.”
“You might’ve thought you did,” replied Kitten’s father drily.
“I did, it’s all my fault. It was when we were down the beach, last—no, Christmas before last, of course. Over in SA. Just before the dance at Lallapinda. I suppose we’d had too much beer, it was that awful strong SA stuff that Kym and Andy like. Um, we were talking about Jerry the Jerk leaving poor Nikki—you know, Dad, when KRP decided to send him off to London and he decided she wasn’t the sort of trophy wife a rising exec like him deserves, the useless little worm. Um, and I said something like getting back at him’d be good—well, we were thinking of shopping him to his London boss or something, because that résumé that got him the job in the first place was all fake—and then I said we oughta do more than that: get back at the bloody Kents and Reardons and Pointers, all the KRP mob, for sending Grandfather broke and forcing him to sell Lallapinda. Um, actually I think Kitten did call it ‘the Lallapinda revenge,’ at that point, now I come to think about it,” she admitted.
“I just bet she did, the silly little tart! So getting herself up the duff by flaming Hugo Kent—your mother and I can both count, ya know,” he added drily as Sloane was seen to jump sharply—“was part of the bloody stupid strategy, was it?”
“Um, I dunno if it was to start with, but as soon as she found out she was pregnant she worked it in,” said Sloane miserably.
Dick took a very deep breath. Then he said with terrible restraint: “I presume it never occurred to any of you that the bloke might have a right to know he had a kid on the way?”
Sloane blew her nose again. “Kitten was sure he’d tell her to get rid of it, he was in a top-executive, tidying-everything-away mode when he left.”
“Sloane,” said Dick heavily, “that doesn’t answer my question. Just think about it.”
After a few blank moments Sloane went very red and said in a strangled voice: “Men’s rights, do you mean?”
“Yes,” he said grimly. “It’s a mere biological accident that it’s the woman that carries the baby. It’s as much the man’s.”
“Yeah? Funny how over the last hundred millennia or so that hasn’t seem to occur to any of them.”
“It does to the DECENT ones!” he shouted.
“Mm. Sorry, Dad,” said Sloane in a tiny squashed voice.
Sighing, Dick put his arm round her again. “Sorry, love: not your fault if Kitten’s a stupid little bint with an eye on the main chance.”
“Dad,” said Sloane in a trembling voice, “I think she really is in love with Hugo Kent, in—in her way.”
“Her way that includes having it off with assorted Pete Dawkinses and chance-met Yanks and pilots, presumably?”
“Mm. That’s just sex. I think she feels more for Hugo.”
“Without at the same time according him the same basic human rights she accords herself,” said Dick flatly.
Sloane bit her lip. “Mm.”
“So what is— No, hang on. Let’s get one or two inessentials out of the way first, shall we?” He consulted the letter. “Here: ‘we can give up any hope of Melodie grabbing R.K.’: that’d be the above-mentioned Roderick Kent, would it?”
“Mm. Hugo’s younger brother, he’s a playboy, he’s not involved with KRP,” she said dully.
“I did get that, yeah. Has Melodie ever met him—or have any of you, come to that?”
“No.”
Dick swallowed suddenly. “Right. Well, sounds as if this Michael Stuart type’s a better bet than him, anyway.”
“Mm.”
“Second point: what the Hell is all this about Jay? That’s the Chinese kid, right?”
“Mm. Um, it was a coincidence, Dad. Her Grandfather Wong was ruined by Michael Pointer back when the family lived in Hong Kong and so Kitten thought she’d want to be in on the Lallapinda revenge, too, and then, um, well, she met Graeme Pointer, um, quite accidentally, and he fell for her like a ton of bricks. Um, he’s Michael’s only son, you see.”
“Right, but who is Michael Pointer?” he groped.
“He’s the P in KRP—Kent, Reardon, Pointer,” said Sloane weakly. “The original Aussie firm took over Pointer’s Bank, you see? Michael Pointer was heading up Pointer’s in Hong Kong when they did the dirty on Grandfather Wong.”
“Uh-huh. And whose idea was it for Jay to set up a love-nest with his son?”
Sloane winced. “Kitten’s. But Jay was keen: she was ropeable when she realised he was gonna go back to the wife in England as if nothing had happened!”
“Uh—right,” he said groggily. “Something did happen out here, then?”
“Yes, they were all out here together. I suppose Graeme was at the Lallapinda dance with his father and Hugo and Ward, but none of us noticed him; but then they came back to Sydney.”
“Ye-es...” Dick was now looking rather sick. “I better warn you now, Sloane: I might be about to be really, really angry with the lot of you—you not least, you are the eldest. Was Ingrid in on this charming plot?’
“Um, about Jay and Pommy Graeme? She does know, but she’s not interested—”
“NO!” he shouted. “Did the cunning little bitch deliberately entrap poor bloody Ward into marriage because he’s a Reardon?”
“No, definitely not, Dad! She’s genuinely in love with him, can’t you tell?” she gasped.
“I thought I could,” said Dick grimly.
“Um, well, she is. She went totally soppy over him the minute she met him. Kitten was wild with her, actually. I mean, at that stage we didn’t think he’d want to marry her, because of the age gap, and Kitten reckoned it was Nature ensuring the—the continuation of the race, and Ingrid was just giving in to her hormones, or—or something mad,” she ended miserably. “But Ingrid didn’t do it deliberately, honest!”
“I suppose I believe you,” he said limply.
A tear ran down Sloane’s cheek. “She really is in love with him. She’s really happy.”
A dim light was now beginning to dawn. “Uh-huh.” He put his arm round her again. “Presumably Kitten hasn’t let on what she imagines she’s gonna do in London—thin or not,” he noted by the by—“to force Hugo Kent into marrying her and recognising his bastard kid?”
“No,” she admitted, gnawing on her lip. “Don’t call Rose Anne that, Dad!”
“I might not, if her bloody mother had ever given the bloke a chance, instead of assuming the worst,” he said bitterly.
“Dad, he’s a—a big businessman, don’t you think his first reaction would have been to tidy it all away? I mean, his wife’s a lady, her father’s an earl or something, I should think the people he knows ’ud think he’d lost it if he decided to divorce her and marry an Aussie girl that’s half his age just because she’d fallen pregnant.”
Dick swallowed a sigh and refrained with some difficulty from telling her that, popular speech to the contrary, no-one “fell” pregnant: it took two. “Mm, you may be right. Well, I can see that the thought would occur, yeah. Let’s forget about her and her mad plots, nothing we can do about it from this side of the world, anyway. Well—stand by to pick up the pieces when the silly little thing eventually realises the bloke’s out of her reach. Now, what was all the bawling about?”
Sloane gulped. “Nothing,” she said in a stifled voice.
“I get the ‘all your fault’ bit, and if you still imagine it is, lemme tell you now, Kitten’s had the daft notion of getting back Lallapinda in that blonde noddle of hers for at least the last ten years. –Ask your mother if you don’t believe me,” he added simply. “But as far as I can see it’s not going too badly—well, no actual disasters. So what was the ‘wishing you’d never started it’ stuff in aid of?’
“Nothing!” she gulped.
Dick’s mouth firmed. “Burgoyne, perchance? If we’re talking about stupid Lallapinda revenges, here, it was his dad that talked Dad into that mad mining scheme, but he didn’t need much persuasion, always had a bee in his bonnet about finding a fortune on the property, only needed some bloke to come along with an equal bee to get all encouraged and do something about it. –Well, it took two to stand up to Mum,” he admitted drily.
“I—I didn’t realise he was keen all along,” said Sloane faintly.
“Well, he was. And if he hadn’t got rid of Lallapinda, I would’ve: the place wasn’t viable by that time anyway, and there was no way I was gonna be stuck out in the wilds of SA in a job I loathed when there was something else I could do and was a damn sight better at!”
Sloane’s eyes were full of tears. “Mm.”
“So what about Kendall Burgoyne?”
Not to his surprise, she burst into tears all over again. This time there was quite a lot of “I didn’t mean to”, and “Not really in love with him”, and “Just wanted something for myself” in there, as well as quite a bit of “It was stupid and mean.”
Finally he said heavily: “It was stupid and mean, all right, Sloane, if you didn’t give the snap of your fingers for the bloke; but a married man who makes a dead set at a much younger woman is bloody asking to be taken for a ride, and you can’t say he was entirely blameless.”
“No,” she said, sniffing juicily. “He was very keen.”
“Uh-huh. And now?”
She blew her nose on the soaking hanky. “He’s found out about Hardy.”
Dick had expected her to say something about Cal Wainwright. He swallowed. “Who?” he croaked.
“No-one, I mean, it’s just silly! It’s not serious, but he’s so nice and—and he’s intelligent and—and cultured, Dad, but really manly with it!”
Dick gulped slightly but managed to say: “Sounds all right.”
“Yes, but I’m not in love with him. He’s so good-looking that when he wanted to, I just... And he does look awfully like Martin Sacks,” she said earnestly. “In the first series!”
“Some joker on the TV? Sloane, love, ya can’t just— No, well, I suppose if I put myself in your shoes, and I was unattached at your age and some gorgeous bird that looked like something off the TV was offering—yeah, well, don’t blame yourself.”
“No, but now he wants me to meet his parents!” she wailed, bursting into fresh sobs.
Oops. Dick grimaced. Poor bugger. “Better tell him you’re not serious soonest, then.”
“Yes. Only that’ll leave me with Kendall and if I have to tell him I’ve given Hardy up he’ll get all encouraged again and—and I don’t want him!” she cried.
“Tell him you’ve had enough,” said Dick calmly. “He can’t kick up, can he? Married man: what’s he gonna say?’
“Yes, but you don’t understand, Dad! That was the plan! To—to draw him in and then break off with him and make him really miserable so as he’d want to marry me and decide to divorce Joyce and—and then kick him in the teeth!” More tears.
Oh, boy. Dick scratched his jaw and just let her bawl for a bit.
“If you don’t want either of them, you’ve got to get rid of them,” he said firmly. “Never mind you led Burgoyne on: he’s got free will, hasn’t he? Nothing was making him, after all.”
“No, that’s true,” she agreed soggily.
“And this Hardy joker—younger, is ’e? –Yeah. Well, nothing to blame yourself over, he wasn’t hanging back, was he?”
“No. Um, he did make the first move. And the second, really, he found out my address and—and just came round.”
“There you are, then. Lots of people make mistakes at your age. Much better to make a clean break once you’ve realised he’s not the one, rather than let it drag on.”
“Yes.” Sloane blew her nose once more. “Only that’ll leave me with no-one again,” she said drearily.
“Better than being in the shit, love.” Dick got up. “I’ll make some coffee. Aw—where are those new Polaroids of Rose Anne, by the way?”
“On the mantelpiece: I’ve put them in frames, I thought you could choose the one you like best,” said Sloane, smiling shakily.
“Good!” he said cheerfully, going out to the kitchen.
Sloane got up slowly and fetched the framed snaps. Rose Anne was looking completely adorable in a pink fluffy hood, with one tiny curl peeping onto her forehead.
“Now what are you bawling for?” said Dick in horror, coming back in with the coffee mugs to find her sitting on the sofa with the pictures in her lap, tears slipping down her cheeks.
“Nothing,” she said, summoning up a smile. “I just wish she was mine, that’s all.”
Phew! That was pretty much a step in the right direction! Dick didn’t say so, and he didn’t point out that that young Hardy type could presumably, cultured or not, give her a couple of those. Nor did he mention Cal Wainwright, though he’d certainly been intending to. He just sat down beside her and joined her in admiring the pics of his granddaughter.
“What are you doing?” cried Karen that evening to the thumpings, scrapings and scufflings that were going on in the roof.
Dick’s head appeared in the hatch. “Here!” he gasped. “Knew it was up here somewhere! Hold the flaming ladder, wouldja, I might live to see me next grandkid born!”
Obligingly Karen held the ladder while he came down. “What is that?” she croaked as he blew dust off it.
“Sloane’s old album, that she made when she was about sixteen—’member?” he beamed.
“It’s grandkids: they soften the brain,” she muttered.
“Something like that, yeah!” He propelled her into the lounge-room and forced her onto the couch. “Now!” he said, sitting down beside her. “Not that, not that—heck, that’s Ron the Scone’s brother Merv, what in Hell’s he doing in that cowboy get-up?”
“It must’ve been the stupid Oklahoma thing they did at school: there was a big row because the girls all wanted some stupid Lloyd Webber thing and the boys wanted some sort of hard rock thing but the teacher chose Oklahoma. Kitten was in it, sitting in a swing, with acres of frilly petticoats, courtesy of Mum’s sewing machine,” she reminded him heavily.
“Aw, yeah. None of them could sing: that’s right.”
“Not in tune, no,” agreed Karen drily.
Dick turned over, grinning. “Shit, this musta been the year the twins’ bloody dance class put on that nauseating Snugglepot and Cuddlepie thing, this is Melodie as a gumnut and Ingrid as a bottlebrush! I won’t ask why she’s seen fit to stick a circle of bluebells round them, though.”
“No, don’t,” agreed their mother drily. “And before you ask, that’s little Damian West as a waratah inside that heart—she must’ve got it off a Valentine card, I suppose.”
Dick collapsed in agonising splutters, gasping: “Oughta send a copy of it to ’is ruddy football team!”
“Mm,” she agreed, smiling. “Funny how the cutest kids can grow into galumphing great clods, isn’t it?”
“It sure is!” Dick turned over. Pages and pages of collages from women’s magazines and greeting cards, plus a definite piece of his mother-in-law’s wallpaper from her spare room—pink roses. “Ah: here we go: bridal!”
Karen looked limply at a page of white fluff. “Christ, I’d forgotten she went through that phase.”
“Sickening while it lasted!” agreed Dick happily, turning over. “Cripes!”
Karen peered. She swallowed. “That’s little Damian’s head again, on that pageboy.”
Dick broke down in horrible splutters.
“Dick, I admit the soft impeachment, but why, at this point in time?” she said weakly.
“Just wait!” Grinning, he turned over. Yet more bridal collages...
Karen gasped.
“Ah-hah!” cried Dick in triumph. “You’d forgotten this was in here, eh?”
“I bet she has, too,” she croaked.
Dick smirked. It was a sizeable scrapbook and this was a full-page effort. A bride and groom cut from a mag, and surrounded by extra white folderol, roses and cakes and what-not, cut out from other sources, but the significance of the picture lay in the two faces pasted onto it. The bride was Sloane herself: it was one of the trials for a studio portrait her Grandmother Andersen had had done for her sixteenth birthday. The extra wreath of white roses stuck on the head didn’t help, but that was scarcely the point. The groom’s face was a pic which Dick dimly remembered seeing in the vaingloriously named Nearby Bay & District Gazette. Fuzzy black and white but extremely recognisable. Cal Wainwright.
After an appreciable pause his wife warned: “Dick, don’t you dare to read anything into this. She was sixteen, for God’s sake!”
“Uh-huh. Real keen, though, if ya cast your mind back. Lasted a while, too.”
“She was a kid, you nit!”
“She’s not particularly grown up, now. But she’s getting there,” he said with a little smile.
Next chapter:
https://thelallapindarevenge.blogspot.com/2022/11/push-and-pull.html
No comments:
Post a Comment