Asphodel House

17

Asphodel House

    “That’s it,” said Pete on a wry note. “Asphodel House.”

    My jaw sagged. “But—”

    “Yeah,” he agreed. “What’s more, one species is an invasive weed in SA. It’s a known pest in pastures: the farmers loathe it. The house dates back to the last years of the 19th century: think the Victorians fancied it was a romantic name. Well, Tennyson?” he suggested, cocking an eyebrow at me. “‘Others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.’ –Dunno what poem it’s from,” he admitted, grinning. “Great-Aunty Ruby had a volume of Tennyson: I was very keen on The Revenge when I was a kid. Only noticed the lines about the flowers because the name was the same as the old house’s. I had no idea that to the Greeks the Asphodel Fields were a realm of the Underworld, and I don’t think the old lady did, either!”

    “No, I see,” I said faintly.

    “It is a pretty name,” ventured Cassie uncertainly.

    “Yes, very,” Pete agreed. “Some species are used, or were used, as garden flowers: mainly Asphodelus albus, I think: white flowers, though lots of them seem to be white or whitish. Last time I looked there were still plenty growing here and there in the old garden. They don’t seem to mind the SA heat. Well: native to the Mediterranean, and Greece can be bloody hot.”

    Asphodel House was situated to the southeast of the city centre, in what according to Pete had once been a “very plutey area” and was still observedly affluent, though most of the houses looked considerably younger. Their gardens were, however, well established, and as the short road backed onto a hill slope covered by a grove of wild olive trees, more or less the foothills of the Adelaide Hills proper, it was very quiet. Some of the big old trees in the suburb were Australian gums, but some most definitely weren’t, and the two big ones framing Asphodel House’s shallow front garden were English oaks.

    The house itself was charming: I could see why Pete would have liked to own it. Two-storeyed, wooden, with a wide verandah framed by wooden lace. The current owners had probably been responsible for its colour scheme: blue-grey, a fairly deep shade, picked out in white. It seemed, from the number of high-pitched gables and chimneys we could see from the road, to stretch a fair way back. Two lowish turrets with pointed witches’ hats of roofs definitely added to its charm. Gavin immediately decided that if he lived here his room would be in one of them.

    We went through the tall white-barred wrought-iron gates which stood hospitably open, the grace of their simple lines being only slightly marred by a large sign which read “Asphodel House. CAFÉ and GARDENS. Guided Tours” and the opening hours. “10 am to 4.30 pm Friday to Monday, Dec-Mar”, and only “10.30-4.00 pm Weekends, Public Hols” for the rest of the year. Did people require sustenance later and finish eating earlier for eight months of the year in Adelaide, South Australia, then?

    At the head of the short, neatly stone-flagged path flanked by thick beds of English lavender the shiny black front door was closed, but this was probably only to keep the air-conditioned cool air in, as it bore a notice: ENTER. We obeyed and were immediately confronted with a view of a charming white panelled hall and, in the foreground, a forbidding glassed-in reception box which took up a good deal of the small lobby. Unfriendly red ropes were slung across the width of both the main hall and a narrower passage leading off it to the right.

    “They’re not gonna let us get away without coughing up the dough,” noted Perry.

    “No,” we agreed, looking somewhat dazedly at the notice on the reception box.

    “Twenty-five dollars per adult to view the house?” gasped Cassie in horror.

    Junie was goggling at the next bit. “There’s a twenty-dollar cover charge for the café!”

    “Eh?” croaked Perry.

    “Yep,” Pete agreed. “Kids aren’t allowed on the tour of the house, by the way. And there aren’t any kids’ prices in the café.”

    “‘Garden Viewing. $20.00. All children must be accompanied by an adult. No Dogs Allowed’,” read Cassie limply.

    “Just as well we didn’t bring them,” said Perry drily.

    “Alex,” said Cassie in a low voice, “I’m sorry; I had no idea. We don’t have to stay.”

    Briskly I replied: “Of course we do. It’ll be an excellent opportunity to suss out the prices the type of customer who comes here expects to pay as a matter of course.”

    “Yeah; they’d be the sort that can afford the odd dozen or so at the cellar door,” said Perry with relish.

    “Perry, not at these prices, dear,” Junie protested weakly.

    “On me, Junie,” I said quickly. “No, I insist. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I hadn’t intended paying.”

    “Well,” said Perry, scratching his chin, “concepts such as free will apart, thanks very much, mate. Given that I’ve just worked out what the café and garden for three will come to, never mind the flaming tour.”

    Junie was very pink, but thanked me gratefully, and so did Cassie, even pinker, presumably on the score of its having been her idea. Pete preserved his cool but I hadn’t expected him not to. Gavin, meanwhile, was slowly examining the notice.

    “What’s a cover charge?”

    Certain people gulped.

    “Go on, Alex, mate,” Perry prompted: “you’re the sophisticate that haunts places like the Savoy Hotel and the Ritz and, um, them places.”

    “You started good,” I noted, shoulders shaking slightly. “It’s—uh—an amount some eating places make you pay if you sit down at one of their tables, even if you don’t eat or drink anything.”

    “Heck! That’s not fair!”

    “No, it isn’t,” I agreed.

    “I wouldn’t have thought it was even legal!” put in Junie crossly.

    Gavin’s eyes narrowed horribly. “Hey, whaddif ya went in, see, and just had a drink of water?”

    “Then they’d make you pay for the water—which wouldn’t be cheap at a place like this, even if it was only tap,” said Pete heavily, “plus the cover charge on top of that. At this sort of dump,”—he eyed the white walls disparagingly—“you’d be looking at thirty bucks, total. Minimum.”

    “Yeah. My bet’d be fifteen for a glass of water,” drawled Perry.

    “Righto, thirty-five,” he agreed.

    Gavin was looking horrified. “It’s the sort of place, Gavin,” I said, putting a hand lightly on his skinny shoulder, “that people who are Friends, capital F, of the Art Gallery would come to regularly.”

    “Ugh! Ya don’t think he’ll be here, do ya?”

    “I sincerely hope not. Well, here goes nothing.” I went over to the grim-looking woman in the reception box and was duly told that children were not allowed on the tour and must be supervised in the garden at all times. And yes, pay for all tickets now. I ascertained who wanted which of the choices, reminded Gavin that no, he couldn’t come on the tour of the house, and paid for all tickets. Paying the so-called “cover charge” got you a ticket to the café, fancy that.

    “What say we all go through to the café,” Perry suggested, “and then when we’ve had afternoon tea maybe those who want to can do the tour of the house and the rest of us’ll go into the garden. Meet up out there, eh?”

    We agreed to this and went through to the café, which entailed going down the passage to the right and being stopped at its further end by a stern-faced young man who took our tickets. Was this, I wondered, so as we couldn’t eat, do a tour and then nip back for a second meal without paying the cover charge? Undoubtedly, yes.

    We were shown to a table in a very pretty room, all tables furnished with charming pastel linen and decorated with little vases of flowers, and sat down to a lovely view of the beautiful English-style back garden. And proceeded to goggle at the menu.

    True, I have had worse—and even more expensive—chefs’ gourmet titbits than those offered by Asphodel House. Not often, and not at restaurants to which I ever returned. This was bad, though. The menu wasn’t headed “menu”, it was headed “Asphodel Amuse-Bouches.” Oh, God.

    It was Junie who plucked up courage and asked, though in a very weak voice: “What is an amuse-bouche, when it’s at home?”

    Perry gave me a dry look. “You can field that one, mate.”

    “Er… Well, they’re tiny nibbles, really. Literally ‘amuse-mouth”, though ‘taste titillaters’ would be a better translation, really. Not long since it became terrifically trendy for famous chefs to serve them up without charge to their customers in order to demonstrate their skill and ingenuity with unusual ingredients and combinations. Sometimes before the orders were placed, in which case the idea was that they might suggest the dearest dishes on the menu, sometimes to occupy the time while the customers waited for a course. This was in the most expensive restaurants on earth, mind you, so they could afford to give them away.”

    Perry took another look at the menu and muttered: “I can believe that.”

    “Er—yes. Well, since then the idea has taken off, but they’ve more or less become just another course that you pay for. Er—no different from what we used to call canapés, really,” I ended limply.

    “You mean like hors d’oeuvres?” Junie fumbled.

    “Mm.”

    “They’ll be smaller, though,” Pete warned.

    “Will they, Alex?” asked Cassie.

    “I should think so, yes.”

    They all looked limply at the menu again.

    It was in three sections—more or less. “Our Morning Glories”, “Our Afternoon Delights” and, technically a subsection of the latter, “Our Sweets to the Sweet”. The morning glories were prosaically “Available until 11.30.” Presumably if you came in after that and before noon you starved for half an hour, because the afternoon delights were available “From 12 noon.”

    “There isn’t an actual lunch menu,” said Cassie in a puzzled voice.

    Nor there was. The menu advised: “Your choice of afternoon delights and any of our wines and spring waters for a delicious light luncheon with taste appeal.” If you’d rolled up for afternoon tea, as we had, you could: “Select savoury or sweet treats with a choice of gourmet teas or specially sourced organic coffee for your afternoon refreshment.” It wasn’t clear why the teas were plural and the coffee wasn’t. The menu then detailed the glories, delights and sweets on offer. Well, more or less, there were more than a few chef’s choices in there. What detail there was, however, was fairly mind-boggling.

    “Well,” I said, after some blank staring, “I definitely don’t know what finger limes and Davidson’s plums are.”

    “What’s, um, truffle?” asked Gavin.

    “Don’t order that!” said Cassie in alarm. “It’ll be horrendously expensive!”

    “I was only asking.”

    “Go on, Alex,” said Pete meanly.

    “It’s a sort of fungus, related to mushrooms, really, which grows, er, under the ground, Gavin,” I said weakly. “Usually black. The European ones are—er—traditionally sniffed out by trained dogs or, er, truffle pigs.”

    The unfortunate boy merely stared at me.

    “It’s true!” said Cassie quickly. “Um, they’re growing them in Australia now, I saw it on TV. Um, down in Tazzie, I think.”

    “So do they use dogs?”

    “I can’t remember,” she said weakly. “Maybe they do. Um, the things look revolting, sort of like lumps of dirt, and they’re supposed to have a very strong smell.”

    “Ugh! So, um, what’s nori?”

    “Seaweed,” several adult voices replied heavily.

    “Ya don’t eat seaweed!” he scoffed.

    “Um, yes, it’s a Japanese thing,” Cassie explained. “They collect it up and dry it. It’s a special sort. They kind of press it into, um, thin sheets; then when you want to use them I think you have to soften them in water. Anyway, they’re trendy. Very dark green.”

    “Ugh, yuck!”

    Several faces looked as if they agreed with him.

    In the end I stuck my neck out and ordered the “Bush Tucker Special Platter, choice of 2 of our Bush Tucker Delights, plus the Chef’s Australian Choice of the Day.” And a spring water: I had a feeling I might need it.

    Cassie had been persuaded to order at least three items—the prices had horrified her so much that she’d tried to stick to one. She chose what was a pretty standard petit four from the sweets list, described as “Dark chocolate ganache on soft chocolate sponge, topped with a fresh cherry direct from our Adelaide Hills supplier”—this last probably not a lie, as we’d seen several roadside stalls advertising fresh cherries over the past weeks. Her second choice was a chef’s choice of the day which the waiter informed us was “salmon caviar with cream cheese mousse à la concombre.” A slice of cucumber barely more than an inch in diameter, topped by a small blob of white stuff and three salmon eggs. Decorated with a very small reddish leaf.

    Gavin peered. “What’s that on top of it?”

    “I think it’s a baby beetroot leaf,” she replied limply.

    “Raw?”

    “Mm.”

    Her third choice had advertised itself as “Finest beef fillet sets sail with a dash of chilli tomato relish.” What it was setting sail in was more cucumber, vaguely boat-shaped and about an inch and half long. The beef was sliced so thinly that it could have been from any part of the animal. The relish must have been at least half a teaspoonful.

    Not counting her glass of spring water or her cover charge her afternoon tea had cost fifty dollars, the salmon roe offering being twenty and the others fifteen each.

    Everyone else’s were similar, naturally.

    “How do they dare?” said Junie in awe.

    Good question.

    However, all around us afternoon tea-ers in expensive leisure gear, silk predominating, were gobbling up the delights and sweets, what time the gourmet teas and the organic coffee rapidly vanished down the gullets. The females of the two couples at the table closest to us had actually ordered the “white tea”, over the price of which I drew a veil.

    My Australian bush tucker was very odd. Very odd. I looked blankly at the nearest offering. Er, more salmon roe, gone wrong? The same size, but pale green. Okay, Pete, finger limes: a fruit, each one about as long as a good-sized finger, but fatter, and containing these small globules, some varieties green, others kind of pinkish. Juice vesicles, oh, really? Thanks so much for that. Mine were perched on a minute block of what purported to be crocodile tail but could have been any white meat, it was so small it hardly tasted of anything, especially when combined with the sour lime. The block was set on a smear of something pale which was probably more of the cream cheese mousse, ensuring it didn’t fall off a tiny square of rye toast.

    The Davidson’s plums featured as a reddish sauce or possibly relish in a rolled sliver of wafer-thin kangaroo meat. What taste the meat had was no different from beef, but it was completely overpowered by— Gasp! You’re right, Perry, sour as Hell!

    The “Chef’s Australian Bush Tucker Choice of the Day” looked extremely strange. A Chinese spoon holding some small green offerings in a dark sauce. Pete peered. He collapsed in sniggers.

    “All right, what is it?” I said grimly.

    Perry had been helping Tanya to eat the cherry off her petit four, which had apparently been fixed on with superglue. “Spit the stone out, pet,” he said, cupping his hand under her chin. “Good girl!” He peered. Then he collapsed in sniggers.

    “What it is? What’s the joke?” cried Gavin aggrievedly.

    “Pig—face!” gasped Perry helplessly.

    “It can’t be!” Junie protested. She peered. She gulped. “Ooh, help.”

    Pete blew his nose shakily “Yep: pig face. –Karkalla to youse, mate,” he added chummily.

    “Thanks. What the Hell is it?”

    “A succulent. Grows wild by the sea. Sometimes called beach bananas.”

    Cassie gasped. “You don’t mean that thing with pink flowers? But it’s a weed!”

    “Got it in fourteen,” he returned sardonically. “Boy, this lot are really up with the play: thought it was only the trendies in Sydney that were serving that.”

    Defiantly I picked up the spoon and tipped its sparse contents into my mouth.

    “Well?” said Perry, as I chewed and swallowed.

    “Er… Soy sauce and definitely ginger… Greenish?” I offered.

    He and Pete immediately went into further sniggering fits. Junie bit her lip and Cassie clapped her hand over her mouth.

    “You shoulda had the chocolate thingo with a cherry: it was good,” said Gavin.

    “Yes,” Cassie admitted.

    “Mm, it was,” Junie agreed.

    Yes, well. The sweets consisted mainly of chocolate in various forms on very small pieces of cake, dark or pale, whilst cucumber and the inevitable bits of toast—rye—were strong themes on the savoury side. Though the odd bit of pale green honeydew melon turned up on both sides: Junie’s “Chef’s Vegetarian Special Amuse-Bouche of the Day” consisted of about a sixth of a little bocconcini cheese (didn’t that name itself mean small mouthful?) and a smear of what the waiter claimed was “tahini-pomegranate molasses dressing”, sitting in a tiny melon cup. About an inch in diameter, yes.

    One of Perry’s choices on toast (a very small wedge) was probably the prettiest: “aubergine caviar” scattered with tiny specks of green, tentatively identified by Junie as “those baby sprouts that they cut with scissors”, plus one small blue flower. Pete was able to identify that: borage. Edible, tasted of cucumber. Perry didn’t look as if he believed him but he tried it. “Yes, cucumber,” he conceded feebly.

    If you added up what our table had consumed in bulk, so to speak, the toast component, predominant though it was, came to about one slice, the protein, including Junie’s cheese, considerably less than half a cup, the honeydew melon something under four cubic inches (all shapes being hollowed out) and the cucumber, though it seemed horribly ubiquitous, about the same. Plus just under six cubic inches of chocolate sponge cake, six fresh cherries, four strawberry halves—that did make two whole ones, yes—and a strip about four inches by one by a quarter-inch thick of what was probably madeira cake. Afternoon tea for five adults and two children. Jesus.

    Junie and Perry having volunteered to keep an eye on the kids in the garden, they gave up their garden tickets to the waiter and were ushered out through the café’s French doors, what time Cassie, Pete and I headed back to the front hall for the tour of the house. It wasn’t exactly guided: our tickets having been repossessed, we were directed “down the passage”, where if we liked we could join up with the group that had gone through to the conservatory at the back.

    We duly ventured down the hallway. On the right a door stood open to reveal a roped-off small drawing-room drenched in William Morris.

    “See?” said Pete neutrally.

    “Uh-huh,” I acknowledged.

    “It’s completely overdone,” said Cassie faintly.

    “Yep,” he agreed. “More money than taste. –Don’t start to count the number of different patterns in there, pet,” he advised. “That way madness lies.”

    I, too, had been silently counting. I had reached fifteen, and I hadn’t even got as far as the scatter cushions on the various sofas, settles et al. I stopped, shuddering.

    To the left another open door gave a view of a roped-off breakfast room.

    “That,” I said faintly, “could be a really pretty little room.”

    “Surely people wouldn’t have eaten their breakfast off a tapestry tablecloth?” croaked Cassie, staring.

    “No,” Pete agreed. “The Victorians did like to smother any table that was momentarily bare in a frightful heavy cover, but my bet’d be that was put there because, having taken over the main drawing-room for the café, they couldn’t find anywhere else to dump it.”

    We nodded dazedly. After a moment she ventured: “So—so is that thingo over the window original, or would it have been added, too?”

    We stared.

    “A baldaquin?” I croaked.

    “It’s horribly like one,” Pete agreed. “Well, it’s not nearly deep enough to shelter a dais or a throne, but it’s sprouting from the wall, all right.”

    “You couldn’t call it a pelmet,” I allowed.

    “Not at that size!” he agreed.

    We stared. It was a tall window, giving onto a side garden. The thing—on second thoughts make that Thing, capital T—hung down over the top third of it, narrowing to a shallow point. It wasn’t draped, but a flat piece of, er, some sort of canvas? Mounted on a shallow, er, box? Painted. In a vegetable style, “that would certainly not suit me”. Greenery-yellery.

    “It’s not a blind,” stated Cassie.

    “No: fixed,” Pete agreed. “Think it must be original, it sort of tones with the chair covers, doesn't it? –I dunno what you’re thinking of, Alex,” he added, “but Patience comes vividly to mind as far as I’m concerned.”

    “Absolutely. Bunthorne to a T,” I croaked.

    Cassie was looking puzzled. “How do you mean, patience? The card game?”

    “Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride,” we chorused. We looked at each other, and laughed.

    “Gilbert and Sullivan: it’s a comic opera,” Pete explained. “W.S. Gilbert having a go at the Aesthetic Movement, Cassie.”

    “I see,” she smiled. “I haven’t heard of that one. Dad likes them. He’s got recordings of The Mikado and, um, The Gondoliers, that’s right, and The Pirates of Penzance—he hates the modern version, though—and another one about boats.”

    “H.M.S. Pinafore,” Pete identified, grinning. “Yep. They’re the great ones. Patience has really fallen out of vogue—largely because its main character, Bunthorne, is seen as a take-off of Oscar Wilde, I think. Out of favour early on because of the scandal, and nowadays, of course, it isn’t p.c. to make fun of gays.”

    “Oh,” she said blankly.

    Smiling a little, he explained. He would, I thought idly, have made an excellent teacher: he hit just the right note: not too detailed, but enough to be understood, placing the subject in its context, and managing not to sound patronising at all. Yes, Pete Goodwin was definitely a good guy.

    “Earth to Alex!”

    I jumped. “What, Pete?”

    “Do we want to venture further?”

    “We’ve paid for it,” said Cassie grimly. “We might as well get our money’s worth out of them.”

    “Yeah, well, let’s help to wear out their flaming carpet,” Pete agreed.

    “It is horrible,” she said detachedly, “only in a different way from the rooms.”

    How true. The hallways were covered in a very dark grey closely-woven substance, doubtless chosen to be hard-wearing. As well as to deaden the noise of the house’s hardwood floors, visible in the small spaces between the William Morris carpets in the rooms we’d seen. I’d already encountered such hardwood floors, unadorned, in various Australian restaurants in older buildings: not only did one get the constant clattering of heels and scraping of chairs, they created a horrible echo effect, over which the assembled Aussies did not hesitate to bellow. Asphodel House’s café, however, had gone in for a muted grey-blue vinyl floorcovering which was not unattractive, and which must, as Perry had discerned, have been laid on “a hefty underlay”, as it was, in comparison to its fellows, remarkably quiet.

    We pursued our way down the hall, discovering to the left an unspeakable dining-room smothered in dark crimsons, dark greens, and dark blues with the heaviest of dark oak putatively Arts and Crafts furniture imaginable, and finally, a crosswise passage. To the left was a firmly locked white-painted door, “NO ENTRY”, and to the right no verbal message but a forbidding white-painted steel grille, taller than I was, with faceted arrow-like spikes on its uprights—possibly a section of fencing?—locking us off from the rest of this passage, which must lead to the kitchen regions.

    “What it is,” said Pete thoughtfully, “they would’ve had scads of middle-aged ladies in silk blouses asking coyly if they could have “just a peek” at the old kitchen, and going in without waiting for an answer. Ya can’t blame them for locking it off.”

    Agreeing with mean sniggers that you couldn’t, we went through the double French doors facing us. Their glass panels were covered with dark green Holland blinds but as they were slightly ajar we could see that we were, indeed, faced with a smallish conservatory.

    After a few moments Pete noted: “This wasn’t open when I came here. I’d say nothing in here dates back to the house’s heyday.”

    “No,” I agreed. The plants all looked as if they’d been trucked in yesterday. There were no flowerbeds of any sort, just rows and rows of potted palms and, er—what were those broad-leaved things? I asked.

    “Monsteras,” said Cassie. “Actually they’ll grow outside, in SA.”

    Pete nodded. “Monstera deliciosa. Possibly known to you as fruit-salad plant.”

    “Er… no. I have seen them in the Caribbean and, I think, Kew,” I offered.

    “Ya mean Kew what this lot doesn’t bring to mind?” he replied drily.

    Well, quite!

    “I thought it’d be like in that lovely David Attenborough programme,” said Cassie sadly. “They had wonderful palm trees that reached the ceiling—it was very tall—and those climbing things.”

    “Vines?” suggested Pete.

    “Yes, but these were special ones, I think, Pete.”

    “Lianas?” he offered, raising his eyebrows.

    “South American, aren’t they? Very likely,” I agreed quickly. “Yes, well, I confess I expected something straight out of Douanier Rousseau.”

    “Ooh, yes! Christina’s got a book about him!” beamed Cassie. “His pictures are just gorgeous! There’s one with a tiger, isn’t there?”

    Pete beamed at her fatuously and agreed there was. I found I was also beaming at her fatuously.

    “In its heyday this place wasn’t quite that, but close,” Pete then admitted. “Aunty Ruby’s album had some great old photographs…” He looked around glumly. “Dunno what happened to all those beautiful old china pots of my grandmother’s. Huge: big enough to hold well-grown palms.” He gave the closest pot a baleful look. It wasn’t small, true. Also true, it was dark green plastic.

    “Um, shall we go upstairs?” Cassie suggested.

    “Yeah,” Pete agreed. “When I came not all of the bedrooms were on display but maybe I better warn you, it doesn’t get much better. Well, one room’s got the pomegranate wallpaper, I’ve always liked that pattern, but—well, you’ll see.”

    We did see. It could have been a delightful room, without all the different patterns on enormous bed curtains, window curtains, chaise longue, easy chair and dressing-table stool, and the four different and quite distinct floor rugs.

    The next room featured a definite baldaquin over the bed, and Morris’s greenery-yellery honeysuckle pattern wallpaper. Plus a GIANT tapestry hanging that almost covered one wall.

    “Golly,” said Pete, his eyes on stalks. “I could almost swear that wasn’t there before. Uh… after Dante Gabriel Rossetti?” he croaked.

    “Very likely,” I agreed, averting my eyes from it. “Well, whatever the next bedroom’s like it can hardly get worse.”

    Silly me. A jumble of crimsons, orange, dark navy and browns, plus an actual Rossetti painting…

    “Is it an original, Pete?” I asked faintly.

    “I’m not looking,” he warned.

    Cassie collapsed in giggles immediately.

    I turned my head. Er—quite. Pete had his eyes closed and his face screwed up in exquisite pain.

    “Just let’s go,” I sighed, “before fleets of middle-aged ladies in silk blouses descend upon us and start cooing how lovely it all is.”

    So we escaped to the garden and the blessed sanity of Perry, Junie, dear little Tanya, and Master Forrest. The last-named considered the big oaks, siblings of those in the front garden, “pretty cool”. And pointed out to us that “the meanies” had walled off the back garden so as you couldn’t get through from the front: see?

    So they had! A ten-foot white-stuccoed wall, with a nine-foot-six padlocked gate in it: white-painted vertical steel bars, a clone of the one blocking the kitchen passage,

    “It’s to stop you getting away with not paying twenty bucks to see the garden,” said Cassie faintly.

    That did it, and all five of us adults collapsed in streaming hysteria.

    We loved the old garden. It was truly beautiful, though to my unaccustomed eye the appearance of the odd Australian native plant seemed incongruous in what was basically a standard English garden style, perhaps based on a stiffer Victorian layout but allowed to grow, flourish and droop over its little paths and lawns here and there. Tanya was enchanted by the stretch of crazy paving leading down to a tiny lilypond with a little statue of a frog on a lily pad at its centre, and Gavin was very taken with the big old tree which had a pretty white swing attached—roped off, however. Looking up into its broad branches he wondered excitedly if it’d be the right sort of tree for a tree house! We all agreed that it definitely would.

    Amazingly there were no “Keep off the grass” notices, so after a good wander round we sat down in the deep shade of one of the biggest trees—a deodar, perhaps planted by some nostalgic retiree in memory of his days in the service of the British Raj—and stared peacefully out at the vista of greenery against a very blue sky, a sloping lawn, and, off to the right, a patch of longer grass in which grew a plethora of, yes, white asphodels in bloom.

    “It’s idyllic,” sighed Junie.

    We murmured agreement.

    “Er, may I ask what those plants with the, er, bobble-like little green or dark red flowers are?” I ventured after a period of just lazily looking out across the garden. “Over there, mixed in with the lavender border along the path,” I explained. “Would they be natives?”

    Four Australians were seen to swallow hard, and Cassie said in a small voice: “Do you really not know?”

    “He’s taking the Mick,” decided Perry. “Ignore him, pet.”

    “I’m not!” I cried, very injured.

    “Um, well, there aren’t any at Trethewin, I don’t think,” ventured Junie.

    “Ralph suggested some for one of the herbaceous borders, only then he went into a fit of the giggles, so his mother told Dad she’d sack him if he dreamed of planting any,” Cassie revealed.

    “What plants?” asked Gavin.

    “Over there,” she sighed. “Look, see the lavender?” He was blank. “Those greeny-grey plants all along that little path, with the pale mauve flowers.”

    He looked. “Purple, you mean. They’re yucky. So don’tcha have them in England, Alex?”

    “Of course they do, Gavin,” said Junie firmly. “That’s English lavender.”

    I sighed. “This had almost turned into a perfect afternoon. Very well, my apologies for opening my mouth, and please, nobody enlighten me, I’ll just sit here trying to regain my tranquil, ignorant peace of mind.”

    “Sorry, mate!” choked Perry, going into a paroxysm.

    “Don’t laugh,” said Junie uneasily. “They’re kangaroo paws, Alex. Sorry.”

    Suddenly Tanya piped: “Kangaroo paws! They’re like little furry paws!”

    “Are they, darling?” I smiled. “They’re pretty, aren’t they?”

    “Yes. Some are red, and some are green. Not like real kangaroos,” she explained carefully.

    “Huh! Whaddabout red kangaroos?” cried Gavin scornfully.

    “Gavin,” said his aunt dangerously: “that’s enough.”

    “I only—”

    ‘That’ll do! She’s only six! You could barely recognise a gum tree at that age! And as for not knowing what lavender is! There’s masses of it at Trethewin.”

    “But there are red kangaroos! I mean, that’s their name!”

    “Yes,” said Pete levelly. “That is their name. But I rather think you know as well as I do, mate, that they’re not really what you could call red, at all. Just brownish.”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “Then why did you say it?”

    Silence.

    “To annoy,” sighed Cassie.

    “Uh—possibly more psychologically complex than that,” Pete murmured, getting up. “There’s a big herb garden here somewhere, Cassie: I thought it might be a good idea to take a note of some of the stuff they’ve managed to grow for your dad: give him a few ideas about what’ll grow in our climate—maybe some more stuff for Trethewin, eh?”

    “That’s a great idea, Pete!” she beamed, getting up.

    “What do you reckon, Gavin?” he added casually. “Fancy taking a look at it? Save your gramps coughing up twenny bucks for the privilege.”

    “Righto,” he conceded, scrambling up. “I reckon it should be free,” he decided, frowning, as they walked off. “Like the Botanic Gardens. They’re cool. Have you been there, Pete? We went, eh, Cassie? They got a huge like, lilypond, it’s got lotuses, Gramps reckons they got millions of them up in the Territory.”

    “Yep, that’s right,” Pete agreed. “Millions of crocs, too, so the Aboriginal women that wade in to pick the lotuses—you can eat the stalks and the seeds, ya see—well, they gotta watch it.”

    “Heck! Salties?”

    Pete apparently understood this arcane reference: he replied mildly: “Nope, lotuses don’t grow in salt water. But there’s no such thing as a good croc, is there?”

    “Nah!” the boy agreed sturdily.

    Perry looked after them, smiling. “Pete’s pretty good value, isn’t ’e?”

    “Yes, he certainly is,” I agreed.

    “We like him very much,” Junie put in.

    “Hard to believe he’s been an arty type all his life,” Perry admitted.

    “Well—not entirely,” I explained. “I gather he did a fairly brief stint for one of the big state galleries after his degree, mainly conservation work, but in the first place there wasn’t much to it, no-one out here was putting much money into that sort of thing back then, and in the second place there was a fair amount of professional jealousy because he’d done so well helping the police with the Andrews scandal.”

    Perry made a face. “Oops.”

    “Mm. So he—er—‘went Outback’, was his phrase. I hope it’s all right to use it.”

    “Yes, of course,” said Junie quickly. “Everyone says it, Alex. No-one will think it’s odd.”

    “Unless they’ve never heard a Pom use it before,” drawled Perry.

    “Just ignore him, Alex,” she advised mildly.

    I laughed. “Thanks, I will! –Anyway, I gather Pete spent about three years working on a big cattle ranch somewhere well inland.”

    “Cattle station, you mean, Alex,” said Junie comfortably.

    “Oh—yes, of course.”

    “So did he go back to working in art conservation after that?” asked Perry.

    “Not directly. He’d saved enough to go to England and do the sort of course he was interested in, which focussed a lot more on the forensic stuff, so he did that. Working in pubs and garages to eke out his money, I gathered. He said he’d always been more interested in horses than cars but the cattle station was so isolated that they had to do everything for themselves, and he learnt a lot about car engines, tractor engines and you-name-it engines!” I finished with a laugh.

    Perry nodded thoughtfully. “Right. Bit of an all-rounder, then.”

    “Yes. He reads a lot, too. Pretty much the Renaissance man of the second Elizabethan era.”

    “Second— Yeah, I getcha,” he conceded. “Well, he’s obviously at a loose end, fed up with early retirement: why don’t you offer him a job, mate?”

    “Perry, darl’, it’s none of our business,” said Junie on an anxious note.

    I smiled reassuringly at her. “Nonsense, Junie: you’re friends. Well, I’d like to, Perry, but as what?”

    He gave me one of his poker-faced looks. “Depends.”

    “On what, for Heaven’s sake?” cried Junie.

    “On whether he’s looking for someone to oversee the winery, ’cos frankly, I’d be putting me hand up for that, and I know a bloody sight more about wines and running a business than Pete does.”

    Junie was now very flushed, looking at me in some dismay. “Sorry, Alex!” she gasped. “He’s been making noises about it, but I didn’t think he’d come out with it just like that!”

    “I’m glad he did, Junie. –If you’re serious, Perry, the job’s yours,” I said. “I wasn't thinking of Pete in that rôle, but I have been hoping you’d be interested.”

    “Good-oh. Subject to the usual thirty-page document of contract and providing the money’s right, of course.”

    Junie bit her lip and looked at me anxiously, so I merely said mildly: “Yes. And providing that you do want to move back to South Australia, Junie.”

    “Well, yes!” she gasped. “I mean, we’ve been talking about it for ages, only the shop’s been doing so well and it’d be much harder to break into the market down here, they’d close ranks: SA’s like that!”

    I wasn’t terribly surprised to hear it. “You certainly wouldn’t have that problem. Have you thought about where you’d like to live? If you fancy staying up at Trethewin I’d be happy to build a place for you.”

    “We do love it,” she said, going very pink. “But it is pretty isolated, of course…”

    “Well, there’s Miranda and Ben, and Mike, down at the winery. Though I suppose you’d have to think about Tanya’s schooling.”

    “No problem, she can go to Gavin’s school!” said Perry breezily.

    Junie looked worried. “Yes, but what about high school, Perry? Cassie was a weekly boarder, but it’s no use thinking Mum’d take her during the week, because she wouldn’t, even if that stupid retirement village’d let you!”

    “We can sort that out when we come to it,” he said firmly. “We’ll have to discuss it fully, of course, Alex, but just how do you envisage the rôle?”

    “CEO, really, Perry, rather than hands-on. Ben’s on top of the day-to-day stuff but he can’t prioritise and he’s hopeless at any sort of forward planning, and if anything even worse at marketing.”

    “Yeah, I got that impression. Righto, I can handle that for you. And what about the cellar door?”

    Good question. “What do you think?

    “Well, points like costings, viability, and seeing it as part of the entire enterprise, not as a cosy little sideline to chuck pocket money at every so often, I’d say.”

    “Yes,” I agreed in relief. “My thoughts exactly.”

    “But, um, well, what about you, Alex?” ventured Junie. “Um, well, like I say it’s pretty isolated and, um, I mean, we do love it, but… Well, are you gonna stay on in the house?”

    Perry winced. “Sorry, mate. One of us was under the impression we weren’t gonna bring that subject up.”

    “That’s quite all right. I’m not sure, Junie. I can’t say I feel terribly keen about going back to cold old England and the company… There’s no challenge in it, everything runs on oiled wheels and it’s just a question, really, of maintaining the status quo. There’s little point in trying to compete with the big boys like Branson, we’d go broke very quickly, the market’s saturated. But ABC Freight does have its own market niches: not many airlines are keen on horse transport, for instance: there’s a lot of time wasted while the interiors are reset with stalls, and sawdust put down, and so forth, and then at the other end a lot more time wasted in cleaning out and dismantling everything. Er—the stalls are prefabricated, built to come apart. The agents usually provide the men for the actual labour, there’s very little extra labour cost to us, but it’s the time involved, you see. Means the planes are out of commission for a while; it’s not just flying to point B, refuelling and returning. And we also maintain a fleet of small planes for little jobs like running businessmen up and down the country for any of a number of reasons: sometimes just for a golf game or the races, sometimes for business meetings. The big boys aren’t interested in that end of the trade, but on the other hand one needs a certain amount of infrastructure and of course some capital investment to offer such a service, and one-man operators find it very hard to recover costs.”

    Perry nodded interestedly. “Sounds as if it’d be a great sort of business to start up, but like you say, no challenge once you’ve got it running.”

    “Exactly. My grandfather did all the challenging stuff. Of course minor problems crop up every so often, as with any business, but nothing that can’t be handled by any competent manager, and we’ve got several of those.”

    Junie added seriously: “And you wouldn’t be involved in transporting the horses yourself, of course.”

    “No,” I said with a wry smile. “Never even see them. Or get to fly one of the small planes, come to that.”

    “Can you fly?” asked Perry.

    “Yes,” I admitted with a sigh. “But what with fitting it in, my parents and sister worrying if I do, and my board likewise…”

    “Yeah. Well, you could have an airstrip at Trethewin, mate: bags of room. Probably have to get sixteen licences in triplicate, but at least you can afford to get your lawyer onto that.”

    “Uh—yes, I suppose I could.”

    “Lots and lots of farmers have their own planes,” said Junie.

    “Really?”

    Perry smiled a little. “Yes, of course. If you live eight hundred K beyond the black stump and your station is measured in square miles, not hectares, air transport makes sense. They use copters a lot for round-ups on the big stations, too.”

    “Good Heavens.”

    “You haven’t really grasped the size of the country, have you, mate? Tell you what: we oughta take you up to Uluru, pronto. Take the campervan, the drive’d give you a good idea of distances out here. Go next week, whaddaya reckon?”

    “Perry, Tanya’ll have to be back at school soon,” said Junie uneasily.

    “Yeah, that’s why I say go next week.”

    “We-ell… It’ll be awfully hot.” He looked puzzled and she added: “For Alex, I mean.”

    “Aw! Uh… well, we got A-C, and with plenty of water and a hat he’ll be right. And it’s desert country: it does cool down at night.”

    “Ye-es… But camping grounds, Perry?”

    “He’s not a fragile flower, pet.”

    Tanya had dozed off, hugging a rather grubby white teddy bear with a tartan bow round its neck. Now she came to and said groggily: “Pretty flowers.”

    “Yep,” Perry agreed, picking her up and cuddling her. “Lots of pretty flowers, but they belong to the house, don’t they? We’re not allowed to pick them.”

    “Not allowed to pick them,” she agreed. “Can we look at Froggie?”

    “Eh? Aw—in the pond! Yeah, ’course we can, pet, he’s great, eh? –Hey, wonder if they bought him locally or if ’e was a fixture?” he wondered. “How’d you fancy a lilypond with a frog in it up at Trethewin, Alex?”

    “Make as many ponds as you like,” I replied.

    “I’ll hold you to that,” he threatened with a grin. He got up, still holding Tanya. “Pete for stables manager?” he drawled, walking off without a backwards glance.

    I heard Junie swallow. “Sorry; he’s like that,” she sighed.

    “I realise that, Junie!” I replied with a laugh.

    She gave me a relieved smile. “Well, in that case, what do you think of the idea? Provided you do want to, um, re-start the stables, of course.”

    “I’m very tempted,” I admitted. “Both by the idea of re-establishing the stables and of having Pete as manager.”

    She nodded. “Mm. You could do the financial management, of course, but you’d need someone like him on the ground.”

    “Oh, absolutely. So… training, do you think, or just livery stables and buy and sell the odd hack or eventer?”

    “Training’d be much more engrossing,” said Junie seriously.

    She was right, of course, but did Pete have the necessary expertise? Before I could voice my doubts she was pointing out that I could help with that, with my experience in eventing and riding out with the English racehorses in the mornings! Who on earth had told her that titbit? I just looked at her limply. She nodded brightly.

    “Er—yes,” I agreed.

    “It’d be fun!” she urged, smiling.

    “Yes, it would.” Only two flies in the ointment, really—if one discounted the reactions of my family and the board. Firstly, would Cassie want to share my life if I did settle down at Trethewin and should I ask her to; and secondly, just how much of a pest not to say a danger might bloody Andrews prove if I stayed in the country? At the time of the fire I would have said there was a good chance he’d done his dash, but after the bomb…

    “What?” asked Junie anxiously.

    “Er… Wondering how the Hell to get rid of Andrews as a possible threat, actually, Junie,” I admitted.

    “Yes,” she said seriously. “That is a point. Well, tell you what: say we do all go up to Uluru: that’d give us all a little breather; then I can go back to Brizzie with Tanya and see about selling the house, and Perry and Fifi can stay on with you until you’ve sorted out horrible Andrews once and for all. I think we’ll keep the business, young Kevin seems to be managing fine, and Perry will still oversee the wine orders, if that’s okay with you.”

    I nodded dazedly: they really had been talking it over, then. “Yes, fine. But—uh—there’s no timeline on the bloody Andrews thing, Junie.”

    “I know. I think you’ll be much safer if Perry does stay on, and he can start his new job, of course. But we can’t let the horrible man totally rule our lives. You need to be vigilant, but we’ll carry on with our plans regardless, shall we?”

    I looked at her pretty round face with its pink flush on top of the light tan, and the big dark eyes, and smiled. Perry wasn’t the only one in that marriage with courage, brains and determination—not to say organising ability!

    “Yes,” I said. “It’s a bargain. Uluru, then carry on regardless. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

    That, alas, was an example of the plans of mice and men.

    We had just joined Perry and Tanya at the lilypond and were admiring Froggie when the others returned. Pete was looking grim and Cassie and Gavin were clearly very shaken, though the little boy was also in a state of high excitement.

    “Hey, Alex! Guess what? I seen Tony! He’s here!”

    “What?”

    Cassie nodded hard, biting her lip. “Yes. I—I didn’t actually see him but I—I thought I heard his voice.”

    “Where?” I demanded tightly.

    “Hold your horses, mate, he’s all right for the time being,” said Pete. “Way down the bottom of the garden showing a crowd of middle-aged moos over the so-called wilderness area. Pommy accent you could cut with a knife plus coming over like a stock gay, that sound about right?”

    “N—er, well, he was using an English accent when I first knew him but he’s certainly not gay.”

    “He was pretending, Alex,” said Cassie shakily. “Calling himself Anthony, like with a soft ‘th’ sound, at least that’s what the ladies were calling him.”

    “An-thony?” I echoed in distaste.

    “Yeah; nauseating,” Pete confirmed. “We were behind a good thick clump of bushes, no chance he coulda caught sight of us, but she was sure it was his voice. So I gave Gavin a leg-up into the nearest tree—the foliage was good and thick, don’t worry—and he had a careful look at him.”

    “It really was him, Alex! In a fancy shirt. Those ladies, they were giggling, they sounded real silly, he was putting on a silly voice.”

    “That’s it,” Pete approved.

    “Well done, Gavin,” I said dazedly. “Bold as brass?” I said incredulously to Cassie.

    “Yes. We could hear quite well from where we were. He was deliberately encouraging the ladies to go all silly. What—what are we gonna do, Alex?” she quavered.

    “Ring Wilson.” I said firmly. I had, thank God, brought my mobile phone with the number in it.

    “Where?” the policeman asked dazedly.

    “Asphodel House,” I repeated. Quickly Pete prompted me with the name of the street and the suburb.

    “Right. I’ll be there meself. Twenny min’. Don’t go near him.” He rang off.

    “He’ll be here in twenty minutes,” I reported lamely.

    “Quarter of an hour late, then,” Pete drawled.

    Well, exactly!

    “Okay, which of you does he know by sight?” he asked.

    He’d seen all of us except Pete himself, Junie and Tanya. Pete thought that in that case Perry had better take his family plus Cassie and Gavin back to the cars.

    “No,” said Junie firmly. “Not Perry. You may need him, Pete, you don’t know what the horrible creature’s like. –Come on, Tanya, darling, Daddy’s got something to do, so we’ll go and wait in the car, and you and Bear can tell me a story about the pretty garden and the frog pond, okay? Cassie and Gavin’ll come with us; I expect they’d like to hear the story, too!”

    “I don’t—”

    “Gavin, don’t be a fool, the bloody man carries a knife,” I said heavily. “Do you want to be his hostage?”

    “No,” said Cassie quickly, grabbing his hand. “We don’t. Come on, Gavin.”

    They went, but we could hear him protesting: “But I’ll miss everythink!”

    “Let’s hope there won’t bloody be anything to miss,” said Perry grimly. “Okay, he doesn’t know you, Pete, so what say you tack yourself onto the group and don’t let the bugger out of your sight for an instant. We’ll have to lurk in the bushes, Alex.”

    “Ye-es… I don’t suppose it’d be any use warning the proprietors there’s a dangerous criminal on the premises and getting them to lock the place down?”

    “They’d think you were mad,” he replied briefly. “Leave that to the cops.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Pete. “Come on, for God’s sake!”

    We hurried off in the direction of the “wilderness area” at the rear of the garden. The other two looked remarkably calm, if grim. Personally I was all of a flutter, pulses racing, slight nausea, sweating, knees showing a tendency to shake. The first person to make any move against the bastard was going to fall victim to a knife slash, I was damn sure.

    We followed a path for a while and then Pete headed off it into a clump of bushes. We made our way through them until he motioned us to a stop behind some heavier foliage, and pointed, mouthing: “Through there.”

    Perry nodded. “I’ll take a decko,” he whispered, and edged his way silently forward. The leaves didn’t even rustle, and barely moved.

    “Bushman skills,” said Pete in my ear. I nodded numbly.

    There was really no need for us to be careful about noise, because there was a continuous babble from beyond the bushes: a female chorus of appreciation punctuated by very silly giggles, the occasional high-pitched exclamation of “An-thony! You are naughty!” rising over it. In amongst all this palaver a man’s voice, pitched higher than I’d heard it before but definitely his, was fluting such phrases as: “Quayte a unique specimen, so unusual to see it in South Australia,” and: “They say the seed was imported from England, very naughty, but then, they didn’t know about the risk of contaminating your pristine environment, poor dears, did they?” Or: “Pretty, of course, but darlings, it spreads like wildfire! Once in, never to be rooted out, if one may use the expression!” –Silly titter, with descant of female trills of titillated appreciation, ugh!

    Silently Perry resurfaced, pulling a sickened face. “Yep,” he murmured. “You wanna get over there, Pete?”

    Nodding, Pete headed back to the path.

    That left the dauntless Perry and my quailing self.

    He felt under his loose Hawaiian shirt, earlier eyed askance by the young gent guarding the door of the café. “Here,” he said, handing me a pistol. The Walther PPK/E .32 that I unfortunately hadn’t had handy when we cornered Andrews in Byron.

    “That’s yours!” I hissed.

    He merely gave me a look, and felt under the shirt again—the opposite side. His Walther TPH .22. Okay, two-gun Hawkes.

    “Are you wearing a double holster?” I hissed incredulously.

    Silently he lifted the shirt. Yes—well, two holsters, one on each hip. I swallowed.

    “No clear shot,” he said in my ear. “Surrounded by dames.”

    I nodded numbly.

    “Go back,” he whispered, pointing, “and monitor that path. I’ll check the far side.” With that he disappeared in the undergrowth.

    Limply I made my way back to, um, well, near the path, but still in the bushes. Lurking. I felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in my throat and took a deep breath. And readied the pistol. Though if the bloody man was surrounded by giggling silk-clad ladies there was little hope of getting a shot at him.

    I waited for what seemed like an eternity. Then Perry resurfaced, shaking his head. “No way out. High walls on both sides.”

    “What about at the back?” I quavered.

    “Ten-foot barbed wire, presumably to keep trespassers out. I’d like to see ’im try,” he admitted.

    “So is this the only path?”

    “Yep.”

    Oh, God.

    We waited…

Next chapter:

https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/06/catching-andrews-again.html