South Australia, With A Little Touch Of Paradise

21

South Australia, With A Little Touch Of Paradise

    Jim Hawkes scratched his chin. “Yeah. Well, I got Liam on the job with his earring in, and he chatted up the two gays that run the dump.”

    I nodded: “the dump” was Asphodel House.

    “Their names are Arlo and Rogan, though I wouldn’t take a bet either of them are on their birth certificates. Arlo Harris and Rogan Wingate. Late thirties to early forties, come on like mid-twenties.”

    “Right.”

    “They don’t cook, they just manage, unquote, and Rogan is the restaurant’s maître d’ as well. The head chef is an unappreciated genius,”—he looked horribly dry—“with flair, y’know?”

    “Is ‘y’know’ still In, then?” I said weakly.

    He shrugged. “It is with them, apparently. Anyway, Liam met this genius and he didn’t think he was gay, though he was giving a good imitation of it, so we put in Keir Macdonald—don’t think you’ve met him yet, he’s been on another job, slightly undercover.” He winked. “He’s a bit older than the rest, in ’is late forties, ex-Army sergeant that was looking for a job with a bit of interest to it; tough as old boots, and looks it. He did a bit of obbo, followed this guy to the pub he drinks in after work, and got chatting over a beer. Turns out Liam was right, he isn’t gay, he just puts it on in order to earn a crust. He’d be in his late thirties, happily married, nice wife who works part-time doing office work for a local car yard, two kids, Bryony and Terry, aged ten and eight, and a thumping great mortgage. To keep the job he shaves his head, wears three earrings in one ear and a pansy floral silk scarf on said head instead of a chef’s hat, and rocks up to work with just a touch of turquoise eyeshadow and a smidgen of lippie. Evidently the wife thinks it’s a riot. In a former life, which the gays don’t know about, he was a reasonably successful pro wrestler until he dislocated his shoulder, after which he slung hash at a variety of takeaway joints until he was spotted by a mate of the gays who was about to open a series of ‘pop-up’ restaurants—know them?”

    “Mm. Didn’t realise they’d hit the Antipodes.”

    “Apparently. Evidently this bloke was impressed by his hamburgers. That or fancied a bit of rough trade. Anyway, Jack Barnard, or Jackie to the gay fraternity, cooked so divinely that the two mates grabbed him for Asphodel House, given that a ‘dreadful person’, unquote, had just let them down terribly. End of story.”

    “Oh?”

    Jim sniffed. “Yeah, well. The gays were rather coy, but Jack Barnard come out with the lot—busting to talk to a straight bloke, Keir thought. The gays have got an interest in the business, but Andrews Senior also put dough into it. He owns a third share, Jack thinks. The gays live in: got a nice suite upstairs, its own ensuite, little sitting-room and all.”

    “Come on, Jim, drop the other shoe!”

    He grinned. “Harry Andrews, that they know as Hal Heys—gone back to it, yeah,” he said as I blinked, “took over what had been the garage, tucked away at the back. There used to be a drive going up to it over to the left of the house, but at some stage, when there was a lot of development in the area, a big strip of land was sold off—the garden frontage would once’ve been quite a bit wider. Actually it might of started off as the stable, come to think of it.”

    “Yes, that’s quite likely,” I agreed. “So was he using it as his studio?”

    “Yeah. Painting stuff downstairs, big bed-sit in the loft.”

    “And?”

    “Well, the cops didn’t seem interested once they’d got the bloke clapped up, so the stuff hadn’t been touched, and Keir and Liam were able to have a quiet recce. The house is alarmed but the studio isn’t. Probably because that woulda cost cash dough.”

    “Quite. Well?”

    Jim looked smug. “Three finished horsey works signed Munnings—yep, that does it, eh?” he said with a grin to my expression. “Bang to rights! Um, and several of ladies in old-fashioned white dresses, and a thing on the easel with the paint still wet that Liam swears he’s seen in the Art Gallery only he can’t remember where exactly or who it was by.”

    “Could he describe it?”

    “Yeah.” Jim consulted his notes and read out: “‘A beach with a scrawny old Norfolk pine and a kind of tent thingo with rolled-up sides and a lamppost, and you could just see the sea. There was an old pram at the front and I think some people at the back.’ –Technical,” he added blandly.

    “I’ll get onto Pete Goodwin.”

    “I would, yeah.”

    After a moment I croaked: “Actually signed Munnings?”

    “Eh? Aw, the horsey things! Yeah, too right! Like I said, bang to rights!”

    “Did they take photos?” I asked tensely.

    “Well, yeah, rather carefully, in case the gays might’ve noticed flashes of light in the dead of night. Only we can’t use them in evidence, Alex: B & E.”

    “Oh—no. Damn.”

    His eyes began to twinkle. “What we could do, see, is claim that that you’ve just remembered you took a peek through the windows and just happened to notice these paintings.”

    “Er—yes. One, are they visible from the windows, and two, would Andrews have been crazy enough to leave his blinds up or curtains undrawn?”

    “One, they are now, and two, no, he wasn’t, but Keir isn’t thick.”

    I gulped. “Great. But I don’t think it would convince Wilson if I rang him after all this time having just remembered a more than slightly crucial point. Um, well, one of your people happened to glance through the windows during a tour of the garden?”

    “That’d work, provided one of them goes on a tour of the garden.”

    I thought of Asphodel House’s usual clientèle and Jim’s personnel, and had to swallow. “Er…”

    “Audrey,” he decided. “She’s about the right age group. We’ll get her gussied up, and Clarysse and Lorrae can help her with the lippie and stuff. Will it still be open during the week?”

    “Until the end of the month, yes.”

    “Good-oh.”

    “It had better be as soon as possible, Jim,” I said uneasily.

    “Yep.” He picked up the phone. “Get Audrey and Clarysse in here, wouldja, Lorrae, love? And a couple of coffees wouldn’t come amiss, if you’ve got the time.” I heard a cheerful “Righto, Jim!” and he hung up, smiling at me. “They can nip over to DJ’s, buy her some clobber and the right sort of make-up and she can go this arvo, oke?”

    “Yes: wonderful,” I said dazedly.

    Five minutes later the stolid Mrs Audrey Peterson smiled calmly at us and agreed that of course she could do it, Jim, no worries. But she’d need some cash, wasn’t it awfully expensive?

    “Horribly,” I agreed, getting my wallet out. “Don’t expect anything like an afternoon tea, Mrs Peterson, but you’ll be less obvious if you do order something. The sweet things aren’t bad. Small but edible.”

    She tried to object that the amount I handed over was far too much but I was deaf. And anything left over could go on happy hour drinks for them, okay? She and Clarysse gave in, very pleased, and departed on their shopping expedition.

    “Liam reported,” Jim said over the coffees, “that Brodie Andrews stayed with his dad for quite a while—the gays were all lit up over it. Said he made a lovely guide.”

    “Ugh. Yes, he was putting on quite a performance in the garden with his group of adoring older ladies.”

    “Jesus,” he muttered, wincing. “Well, Liam didn’t let on that he’s an even bigger crook than his bloody father, but the big-mouth cops didn’t have no such reservations, so they were kind of what ya could call all agog. But absolutely no hard intel in amongst it. No notion where or if he might have a bolt-hole. True, ’e charmed them with ’is traveller’s tales, apparently, but we already know he was up in Byron and over in Melbourne, don’t we? Not to say sunny Spain.”

    “You mean he— I see.”

    “Yeah,” Jim agreed sympathetically. “Don’t think no ladies figured largely in any of these tales, mindjew, but yeah. Cheek of the Devil, eh?”

    “Mm.”

    “Sorry, Alex,” he said glumly.

    “Hell, not your fault, Jim! He’s been covering his bloody tracks for God knows how long: it’s probably become automatic.”

    “Yeah.” He looked at his watch and discovered it was still far too early for lunch. And wouldn’t I have had to get up at crack of dawn to get down here as the office opened?

    “Not really. Usually get up early and go for a ride, anyway.”

    “Right. All going well up there, is it?”

    “Yes, very well, thanks. –Oh! Sorry, Jim, I forgot!” I hauled out the invitation. “You and as many of the staff as can make it are invited to the huge wing-ding next week to celebrate the vintage. Not that Mike thinks the wines will be spectacularly good, but the word is not bad, especially the Cab Sav, and they didn’t get any mildew, unlike some of the other areas.”

    “Uh—good-oh,” he said on a dubious note. “Look, is it a good idea, though? Hordes of guests turning up?”

    “I know,” I admitted with a sigh, “but they look forward to it all year, Jim. Well, Perry and Ken plus the extra four chaps with their dogs that Perry’s rounded up will all be on duty.”

    “Ye-ah… I hope them dogs have got good ears, mate.”

    “Very. And noses. And they can all run like the wind. They’re all ex-Army, like Fifi.”

    He brightened. “So they’d go for the bugger?”

    “Yes.”

    “Great. Let’s just hope he hasn’t managed to get a gun.”

    Well, yes, I’d been hoping that, too. “Mm.”

    “Did ’e do that gentlemanly shooting stuff when ’e was in England?”

    “Killing defenceless native fowl? He came out after pheasants a couple of times, and once when we got out after the rooks that were plaguing a local farmer, but he never managed to hit anything.”

    Jim rubbed his chin. “Ri-ight. Well, either he’s a rotten shot or it was camouflage.”

    “Yeah,” I acknowledged wryly.

    He thought it over, looking very sour. “Look, the staff had better skip it for this year, Alex. Sorry and all that. Nice thought, but I don’t wanna expose them unnecessarily. Or Paula.”

    “I understand, Jim. That’s quite all right.”

    “I’ll come meself, though,” he said grimly. “The more eyes that can spot the bastard, the better.”

    “But—”

    “I’m coming, don’t argue.” He rubbed his arm, and grimaced. “I owe him one.”

    He then asked me what the thing about the desk had been in aid of, so I explained, adding that I hadn’t yet had time to examine it. Jim didn’t think a secret drawer was very likely but agreed there’d be no harm in having a good hard look for it. Though he couldn’t imagine anything incriminating that Andrews could possibly have squirreled away in it. They had found out who had made it but as it had been an elderly craftsman who’d since died, that was that.

    Then, as Pete, Cassie and I had a lunch appointment with an architect whose firm had put in a proposal for rebuilding the stables, I went off to that, assuring Jim that I’d tell Pete about the painting Liam had spotted and get him to ring back about it, and Jim assuring me in return that he’d contact me as soon as Audrey got back from her afternoon tea and tour.

    “Has he got a nerve or has got a nerve,” croaked Pete as I passed on the description of the beach painting. “That’s an early Jeffrey Smart! Um, well, Modernist; you could call him realist until you looked closely. Doesn’t often do beaches, but he often has a stretch of almost bare ground, so the sandy foreground in that one’s fairly typical. He’s known more for his urbanscapes, full of allusions, understated social comment—sort of things you don’t take at face value. Rather formalised, the word “precisionist” also being bandied about: likes rectangles and squares, and definitely uprights and horizontals. Well composed, got a good eye for the balance of a canvas. Funny thing is, his subjects are very Australian, but he pushed off to Italy in the Sixties, lived there ever since—he’d be well into his eighties now. –Well, I’m only going by the ones I’ve seen here!” he added with a grin.

    “Hm. He won’t be rushing back to say ‘Hey, that’s not mine!’ then,” I noted drily. “Possibly Andrews thought he’d do a series of variations on his known paintings, the same idea as his Munnings efforts.”

    “Yeah. The sooner this dame has her afternoon tea and reports, the better.”

    “Quite. I’ll contact Wilson straight away. And I think,” I added thoughtfully, “that I’ll ring Cray in Melbourne, too. Drop a hint that perhaps a call from another state might ginger Wilson up.”

    “Can’t hurt,” he agreed, grinning.

    Cassie smiled weakly. “That’s very sneaky, Alex. –I hope that poor lady has a decent lunch; did you warn her about their awful afternoon teas?”

    “Absolutely. Recommended the sweet things—small but edible.”

    “Good!” she beamed.

    And with that I took her arm and we went off to lunch “under the vines.” I never did find out if that was the place’s name, but it was certainly situated down a small side street with a pavement sheltered by a long arbour of flourishing green grapevines.

    “What a wonderful idea!” Cassie approved, smiling up into a cool, leafy green tunnel. “Why on earth don’t they do this with more little streets?”

    Why, indeed? Adelaide’s long streets which crossed the big main arteries in its famous grid pattern were connected by a multiplicity of these little side streets or alleys, all, with the exception of this one, baking hot. March, several locals had by now informed me, was usually “pretty hot”. It’d be cooler by the end of the month. Oh, really?

    “Down here,” Pete discerned, leading the way, and we descended to the basement restaurant and the lunch meeting arranged with the architect.

    … Yes, well. Modified rapture on all counts.

    “What do you think?” I asked as the very keen youngish fellow left us “to talk it over.”

    “I think that this Chardonnay could have been a lot drier,” said Pete, finishing the dregs of his.

    “Yes. Not that.”

    He and Cassie both looked dubious. Certainly the firm had designed other stable blocks, but not, as Pete pointed out, for any well-known trainers, only for private owners.

    “I don’t think he’s grasped the scope of a training stables at all,” Pete decided.

    “No,” Cassie agreed. “And when I asked where would the stable lads sleep he just looked blank, didn’t he?”

    Pete nodded. “Yeah, and then said that they hadn’t envisaged a dormitory block but of course could include one if so desired.” He looked dry.

    “Mm. With, presumably, an extra charge,” I noted, “that I’d assumed was included in their estimate.”

    “Yeah.”

    We looked at one another without enthusiasm.

    “It sounded very fancy, too,” Cassie offered.

    “Yep,” Pete agreed.

    “Verdict, Pete?” I asked.

    “It’s up to me, is it? Thumbs down, in that case.”

    “Yes,” Cassie agreed in relief.

    I nodded. “Okay. We’ll keep looking.”

    “I could ring round a few places, see who did theirs,” Pete offered.

    “Good idea,” I agreed.

    “Meanwhile…” He looked at his watch. “Wanna wander along to the Art Gallery, suss out the Jeffrey Smart? –If it’s still on display. It’s a few years since they acquired it, might’ve vanished into storage, they come and go.”

    “I’m afraid a spirit of no-enthusiasm has come over me, Pete,” I admitted.

    “Me too,” said Cassie. “I was going to go to the supermarket, actually.”

    “In me suit?” he said in horror.

    She collapsed in delighted giggles immediately.

    So we all went happily in our posh business-lunch gear to the Woolie’s supermarket, which was nearest, but not bad, though they (as Stella had long since informed me) were putting lots of things in little plastic packets these days because of the hundreds of Asian students at the nearby unis who liked them like that.

    Where of course I discovered all sorts of unnecessary goodies, particularly in the fruit and veg section, in nice neat little plastic packets.

    Cassie’s reactions could have been summed up as: “Gavin won’t eat that,” and Pete’s as: “Those won’t be ripe, ya know, mate.”

    Defiantly I selected a small plastic packet of wonderful spiky pinkish-purplish dragon fruit, a small packet of lychees, a hand of smallish organic bananas intriguingly tipped with bright red, and a handful, loose, of snake beans! Fascinating: they were about fifteen inches long!

    We’d just finished loading the cars for the trip back to Trethewin when Jim rang.

    Audrey Peterson had been to Asphodel House, eaten the nibbles and drunk a cup of tea at “a terrible price”—and was there such a thing as white tea or had it been some sort of rort?—and done the tour of the garden. Not guided, no, and yes, you could see the paintings through the studio windows. Okay, medal for Audrey!

    “Bingo,” I concluded. I rang Wilson. Adding the unnecessary titbit that Andrews Senior’s prints would be all over the studio, at which Pete went into an insufficiently muffled sniggering fit.

    Then I rang Cray.

    “Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay!” Pete concluded as I rang off.

    Cassie went off in a gale of ecstatic giggles, gasping: “Yes! Sucks to him!”

    “I’ll ring Peter Sale,” I decided. I rang. He was very pleased to hear from me and extremely pleased to hear that Andrews Senior would be convicted for art forgery as well as for threatening with a deadly weapon and harbouring a known fugitive, the best that Wilson had been able to come up with. And he’d let poor Merv Walton know, too. –An interior decorator? Yes, they’d been very pleased with their fellow, he could recommend him, and would I like to speak to Lalla about him? I duly spoke to Lalla, and received her encomium of Alan Travitsky of Travitsky Interiors in Sydney.

    Ringing off with appropriate thanks, I reported, with the addendum that Lalla had said that this Travitsky fellow was “a furniture restorer and interior designer” who specialised in restoring and redecorating older homes “in a style appropriate to their era.”

    After a minute Pete croaked: “Let’s hope not. I mean, that bloody monstrosity of a desk that you want to get rid of is appropriate to Trethewin’s era, not to say the ruddy La-Z-Boys you reckon the old joker had filled the place with.”

    Cassie might have been heard to gulp, at this point.

    “We’ll go for something that will harmonise with my delightful Edna Lambert,” I said firmly, “and if this chap can’t manage that we’ll think again.”

    “Good. Um, it’ll cost a packet to get ’im over from Sydney, ya know,” he warned.

    “I’ve got a packet, Pete,” I replied mildly.

    “Yes,” said Cassie firmly. “He has, Pete.”

    I smiled a little. It had taken her aback, but we’d got over it.

    She and Gavin had met me at Adelaide airport. She was looking very shy, though also very pink, so I simply set down my one suitcase and my bag of duty-frees, and held out my arms, and she ran into them and burst into tears on my shoulder. Very much okay, then!

    Gavin of course was bewildered. “What’s the matter? He got here all right, the plane didn’t crash or nothink, why are ya bawling?”

    “Ladies do,” I said over her shoulder, grinning. “How are you, Gavin?”

    He brightened and, accepting this polite query as the purely conventional substitute for “Good morning” that it was in Australia, replied: “Gidday, Alex! Hey, they got all the grapes in now, an’ Mike, he’s says the wine’s good-oh, an’ they’re gonna have the big party next week! An’ Figgy, he’s great, we didn’t bring him, he’s on guard at home, an’ Junie, she’s sold their house an’ they’ve come back an’ Tanya’s gonna start at my school an’ I gotta be in charge of her, an’ she’s gotta listen to me, see! An’ Perry, he said Fifi, she needs to be on guard at Trethewin, only Figgy, he’s coming to school with me, and he explained to the head teacher!”

    I gulped. The mind boggled.

    Cassie raised her head, sniffing horribly. “Just idd case.”

    “Mm.—That’s excellent, Gavin,” I said, not asking why, then, Perry hadn’t insisted he start the term back at the beginning of February with Figgy in attendance.—“Have my handkerchief, darling.”

    “Thaggs,” she said soggily. She blew and sniffed. “Why do you always have a clean hanky in your pocket?”

    “Early training. Ingrained. They had handkerchief inspection at school for years.”

    “Very funny, Alex.”

    “Er—no, it’s true,” I replied weakly.

    “That’s barmy! I’m glad I don’t go there!” cried Gavin, not unexpectedly.

    The school probably was, too, I reflected, grinning. “Yes, it was damn’ stupid, when you think about it. –I gather you might be pleased to see me?” I added slily to Cassie.

    “Hah, hah,” she said weakly, going pinker than ever.

    “Mm. So how about a kiss?” I didn’t wait for an answer but suited the action to the word. Very thoroughly.

    “Ugh, yuck!” cried Gavin in revulsion, retreating several paces.

    “Just wait,” I said, finally surfacing, but still holding her tight. “Your turn’ll come.”

    He gave me a disgusted look.

    “They can never believe it at that age,” said Cassie with a smile. “Funny, really, when they’ve been standing on their heads and pulling hair and so forth ever since pre-school to impress little girls!”

    “Ugh! I have not!”

    Her eyes twinkled but she didn’t contradict him. “It’s unconscious, I suppose,” she said to me.

    “Mm, exactly. Well, much as I’d like to stand here kissing you I suppose we’d better head for the car,” I said, releasing her and hefting the suitcase again.

    Helpfully Gavin seized the bag of duty-frees, which, this being Adelaide, SA, hadn’t been nicked the minute I set it down in the echoing purlieus of what called itself an international airport. It actually had very few direct flights out of the country; Fred, in fact, had related in some detail the saga of one, Josh Bentham, to prove it.

    Josh was a mate from the RSL (their equivalent of the British Legion, sort of, though it sounded more like a gambling club, with serried ranks of “pokies” and enormous meals of “snitzles” or steak). Josh and his wife, Rae, possibly short for something, had a daughter who had married a Kiwi, so they’d decided to go over there to see the grandkids. They had been earnestly advised by several well-wishers to avoid the horrors of changing planes at Auckland airport: it was better to fly direct to Wellington, if that was where you needed to go. Likewise it was best not to hop up to Sydney and take one of the more frequent flights from there, because of the horrors of the giant Sydney airport (referred to, confusingly to an outsider, as “Kingsford Smith”. True, we have “Heathrow.” Nevertheless). So they duly “rocked up” at Adelaide airport at six in the morning for the flight that left at 8.06 a.m., having, of course, had to get up around four in order to be sure of— Quite. They joined the right queue for international travellers and checked their baggage through on a direct flight to Wellington, NZ, which was their destination, along with a gaggle of other grey-faced, yawning travellers, and duly boarded the plane. Which decanted them at Melbourne airport (referred to, confusingly to an outsider, as “Tullamarine”). They were in the domestic terminal, “absolutely miles” from the international flight to Auckland. They got hopelessly lost amongst the shiny boutiques advertising “muck that ordinary people can’t afford, like them fancy Pommy raincoats”, sideways look at me—Burberrys, one presumed?—and only just managed to make their actual overseas flight. Well, you might say it was convenient, they were headed in the right direction, east. Look at the map, Fred had advised me sourly. I did. Melbourne is certainly east of Adelaide. It is, however, a long way further south. A long way. That—apparently—was Qantas for ya. Did what they liked. They had a monopoly, ya see: forced all the little firms out of the interstate market by undercutting their prices, and even Virgin hadn’t managed to make much headway against them! He was right, I discovered. Qantas management were completely ruthless and a law unto themselves. Thank God Grandfather hadn’t gone into passenger carriage.

    In the car Gavin investigated the bag of duty-frees. “Aw, heck! Haven’tcha brought anything decent, like chocolates?”

    “I don’t think the duty-free shop at Heathrow was offering duty-free chocs, Gavin.”

    “What has he brought?” asked Cassie with a smile in her voice.

    After a moment he admitted grudgingly: “Bottles.”

    “Bottles what of?”

    Silence.

    “What of, Gavin?”

    “Wine, I s’pose,” he allowed grudgingly. “Why? We don’t need wine at Trethewin! We got millions of bottles!”

    “Well,” I admitted, “one isn’t wine, it’s brandy. It’ll say ‘Cognac’ on the bottle, Gavin.”

    “Um… sort of.”

    “Yes. It’s a French word. The other’s Champagne. Genuine French. Um, it starts with C, H, because that’s how they pronounce it in France,” I added weakly.

    “Sh— That’s mad!”

    “No; different languages spell and pronounce words differently from English.”

    “Yes. Cabernet Sauvignon is a French name, too,” said Cassie.

    “I thought it was an Aussie name.”

    “You can explain that one, Alex, I’m driving!” she said with a laugh.

    “Thanks. Er, you see, Gavin, it’s the name of the grapes.”

    “I know that!”

    “Yes; sorry. The grapes came originally from France and, uh, over there that’s what they call them.”

    “Aw.”

    At this point I shut my eyes, praying that he wouldn’t ask what about “Shiraz”, because at this stage, after the Hell of changing planes at Kingsford Smith—Fred’s mate’s informants had been oh, so right about that one—I wasn’t up for it.

    Somebody up there loved me that day, because he then said merely: “It’s got a great big cork, with like somethink… Is this wire?”

    “DON’T UNDO THAT!” we shouted simultaneously. We glanced at each other and laughed weakly.

    “Champagne is a very fizzy wine and unless it’s well chilled if you take the wire off the cork may shoot out very fast and put someone’s eye out, Gavin,” she said firmly.

    “Our wines don’t do that.”

    Many complex answers might have been returned to this one, but she just said mildly: “No, they’re not fizzy.”

    “Aw. Like, does the wine shoot out? Like if ya shake up a Coke bottle—”

    “Yes. Then you lose most of the wine like you lose most of the Coke.”

    Silence from the back seat, so he must have discovered that last for himself. I shook silently.

    The Adelaide traffic was thick hereabouts, and Cassie, concentrating on her driving, suggested: “Why don’t you have a nap, Alex? It’s gonna take ages to get home, at this rate.”

    “I thought we were gonna go to Wendy’s!” wailed Gavin.

    “You thought wrong,” his aunt replied calmly.

    “Aw, heck!”

    I gave in at this point and admitted: “There’s a present for you in my suitcase.”

    “Mighdy!”

    Something like that. I could only hope I’d gauged his tastes correctly. I’d consulted young Ben and got the peer-group view, so I’d done my best. Oh, well, fingers crossed.

    “‘Thank you’ might be nicer than ‘mighty’, Gavin,” murmured Cassie.

    “I haven’t had it yet,” he replied logically.

    I laughed suddenly. “No! Very logical! How’s your maths, these days?”

    “Um, all right,” he replied cautiously.

    “Do they grade them?” I asked Cassie.

    “Not really. I mean, they mark them but they don’t get grades: the head teacher thinks it only encourages unhealthy competition and makes the ones who aren’t doing so well feel inferior and then they try even less. He got eight out of ten for his last lot of maths homework.”

    Okay, he wasn’t going to be the 21st century’s greatest mathematician, then. What else would an innate ability to think logically suit? Um…

    I must have dozed off thinking about it, because next thing I knew we were home.

    Supreme tact was being exercised at Trethewin that evening: the Hawkes family retired early to their campervan and Pete decided to “unroll me swag”, in other words sleep out, while the good weather lasted. Ken, of course, would be out on patrol with Fang and so would the four other guys Perry had rounded up. The five of them did it in shifts, four on, one off. They didn’t sleep in the house: they had their own campervan. Ken (and Fang) slept in the back of his ute. The back regions of Trethewin had now begun to resemble a camping ground: Corey Mincey also had a campervan, which he and two of his helpers shared; the other two were married men who lived over in Mt Barker, a hill settlement near Adelaide which was, I gathered, larger and a lot less refeened than Stirling. The journey to Trethewin via the awful country roads still took them the best part of two hours, but they seemed to take it for granted.

    Gavin was in bed and fast asleep by eight forty-five. That left us chickens.

    I grinned at Cassie over a glass of Cognac. “We’ll have to do it, you know: they’ve made such tactful efforts.”

    “Don’t!” she gasped, turning puce.

    “Don’t?” I replied incredulously.

    “Um, that’s not what I meant! I just meant it—it’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

    “Have a sip of brandy, that’ll chase it away.”

    “I don’t think I need any more, Alex.”

    I drained mine. “Okay, then, come on. Your room or mine?”

    Deliciously pink, she tottered to her feet. “Um, mine, ’cos if Gavin wakes up and I’m not there he might panic.”

    “Yes, of course, darling. That reminds me,” I said as we went over to the door, “why has Perry suddenly decided he’d better have Figgy at school? Don’t tell me Andrews tried something on there!”

    “No, it’d be too public, he’s too sneaky for that. No, after you went he started having awful nightmares about knuh-knives and baddies, so Perry thought—”

    “Of course,” I said, putting an arm round her tightly and turning the light off with the other hand. “Good for Perry.”

    “Yes. It seems to have worked. We had to explain it to the head teacher and his class teacher but that was okay, they’re both nice, sensible people. And they had a lovely ‘show and tell’, with Perry and Fifi as well. He told them all about how good the Army dog training is and how safe they are with kids and what good guard dogs they make when they retire!” she beamed.

    “Good.”

    In her bedroom I kissed her slowly and she trembled slightly. So I told her to pop into bed, and shed my clothes. She undressed shyly, turned away from me, and slid under the covers. Smiling, I considerately turned the main light off, leaving just a small shaded bedside lamp, and got in beside her. And took it from there.

    She was shy at first but not unwilling and then deliciously co-operative and then— Well, Paradise could not be better! We both ended up panting, satisfied, and smiling.

    It was still comparatively early, so once I’d more or less recovered—though silently reflecting that I would never in fact recover: Cassie was now the centre of my being and always would be—I fetched us drinks. She only wanted spring water, bless her. We sat up and sipped companionably.

    Then I told her just what my bloody private fortune consisted of.

    There was quite a lot of dismayed gulping.

    “I’m still me,” I said anxiously.

    “Mm. ’Course.” She sniffled a bit.

    Oh, Lor’. “I can’t help it. Bloody Grandfather left me the lot and Dad won’t—”

    “You said. It’s okay, I’m just… processing it, I suppose.”

    “Mm.” I put an arm round her and leaned my head on hers, sighing. “I don’t enjoy a flamboyant lifestyle, I think you know that. We’ll just live quietly in the hills with the horses, okay? Neil’s already taking over in London, the board’s come to heel. I’m still the major shareholder, of course, so I’ll be involved to the extent of voting on any major decisions, but that’s it. I’m transferring my bank accounts to Australia and I plan to tie up as much as possible in trusts for various persons.” I kissed the top of her head. “It’ll all come to you and Gavin eventually, darling, plus any kids of our own, but since there’s no inheritance tax here you won’t have to worry about that.”

    “You’ve thought of that already?” she said dazedly.

    “Er—one has to. I—er—I suppose I’ve been taught since childhood that responsibility goes with wealth.”

    “You were lucky,” she said soberly. “Lots of rich kids are totally spoiled and their lives are ruined.”

    “I know. Well, we’ll avoid that trap,” I said tightly.

    “Mm. –I’m glad you didn’t go mad and spend a fortune on Gavin, Alex.”

    “I wanted to,” I said on a rueful note. “But I have had years of being ordered by Sarah not to spoil her two. And I quite see it wouldn’t be sensible.”

    “He loves it,” she said with a smile in her voice.

    “Yes, thank goodness! Ben’s choice, really. He had one at that age.”

    Gavin’s present was a radio-controlled toy racing car. It purported to be a Ferrari but since it was modelled on the modernistic things of today it could have been anything. True, there were bits of red visible. It hadn’t been exactly cheap but at the same shop a chap had been buying a complete set of track, cars and controller for his eight-year-old kid, the sort that needed an immense table on which to be set out, so by comparison…

    Cassie sipped her water slowly. Eventually she said: “I hope you didn’t spend too much on the perfume, though.”

    “You do like it, don’t you?” I asked anxiously.

    She was wearing it: she smelled incredibly good. Warm Cassie mixed with warm Arpège: mmm-mm!

    “Yes, it’s lovely!”

    “Oh, good. Actually, it was a real bargain: duty-free, you see! You and me one, Customs and Excise nil!” I said proudly.

    At that, thank God, she collapsed in giggles.

    “All us millionaires are Scrooges under the skin, you know.”

    “Stop it!” she gasped.

    I stopped, smiling. Phew! I really had felt it had been touch and go, there, for a moment.

    Back at Trethewin after our expedition to town it was discovered that Junie had left a note to the effect that she was taking the kids out to get ice creams after school. Pete helped us to unload the huge piles of groceries—the boots and back seats of both cars being laden—and then decided, grinning: “I’ll leave you two lovebirds to get on with it, since it’s only your second full day back, Alex. –Shove that beer in the fridge, mate, it won’t chill itself,” he added, exiting.

    Cassie and I looked limply at each other.

    After a moment she said: “We should’ve gone to the wholesalers, really.”

    “Er—what?”

    “For the beer. I mean, this won’t go far.”

    I gaped from her to the enormous “slab” of cans. “Eh?”

    “The four men with the dogs, plus you, Perry, Pete and Ken? And it’s a hot day. Though I dare say Junie and I can sip a ladylike glass of white wine, if we must.”

    “Is there any white wine?” I replied feebly.

    “No. It was a joke.”

    I looked limply at the slab. “It won’t even fit in the fridge.”

    “No. You’ll have to cut the plastic with a knife.”

    Sighing, I attacked the plastic. The resultant freed cans took up a good deal of space in the fridge. On the other hand… Dubiously I did the arithmetic. Er—bother! In fact, pooh! I blew a non-existent fly off my nose.

    “Where—I know this is a silly question—where are these wholesalers?” I sighed.

    “The nearest would be Mt Barker.”

    God. I tottered over to the table and sank down on one of the as yet un-re-cushioned chairs. (Stella hadn’t been able to get the smell of smoke out of the cushions and she, Mum and Sarah hadn’t been able to agree on a fabric. Small mercies. My poor darling Cassie hadn’t been asked for her opinion.)

    “Er… Supposing I let one of Corey’s boys loose with a credit ca—”

    “No, it’s too much responsibility, it wouldn’t be fair on them, Alex. Or cash. You think nothing of handing out handfuls of hundreds, but they have to sweat for it.”

    “You’re right, my dearest,” I sighed. “It looks as though that’s it for tomorrow, then. I was planning to stroll out with Pete to check out sites for such inessentials as the new stables, the lads’ accommodation block, a house for Perry’s family, and a possible landing strip for the Cessna. –I suppose you wouldn’t fancy coming over to England to collect it?”

    “Alex, you are not gonna fly a little plane all the way to Australia! Don’t be silly!”

    Damn. Okay, I stopped being silly. “No, very well.”

    She picked up my tropical fruits and deposited them in the fridge.

    “Darling, is that necessary?”

    “What?” she said blankly.

    “Er—fruit in the fridge.”

    Okay, they always put fruit in the fridge. Likewise the lettuce but not the tomatoes, Stella had forbidden that. She managed to fit in the steak for tonight’s stir-fry and a huge amount of sausages, but given that it already contained such necessities as milk, cheese, marg, and opened pots of marmalade, honey, jam, chutney and Vegemite (ant precautions), that was it.

    “There’s an awful lot of meat and chicken left over, darling,” I noted feebly.

    “Yes; it’s going in the freezer.”

    That was good. Provided that she remembered to take it out again well in advance of when it might be needed. I refrained from making the point. So the meat and chicken went into the freezer along with the ice cream and the chiller bags from the house’s collection of “eskies” (foam hampers) in which all the perishables had had to be packed—repacked—in the parking building for the journey up to Trethewin. Yes, it was possible to order one’s groceries online in Adelaide and no, no-one would deliver this far out.

    The solution, I reflected idly, wondering how long Aussie beer took to chill, given that it had travelled up in the boot in thirty-six-degree heat, would be, once bloody Andrews had been caught and imprisoned, to take on good old Ken as a permanent, er, courier or some such. Write out a list and get him to drive into town every week and fetch the stuff. Given that he manifestly needed a job but had no experience with horses and wasn’t much of a gardener. A couple of the dog boys, however, had already expressed great interest in the garden and had already had long chats with old Fred, so that looked hopeful…

    “Mm? Sorry, what was that, darling?”

    “I said, would you like a cup of tea?”

    “In this heat, woman? Are you mad?”

    “But the air-con’s on!”

    “I am not going near tea, thank you, unless it comes at four degrees, maximum, with lemon.”

    “They’re not in season.”

    “There you go, then.”

    “I forgot to put juice on the shopping list,” she confessed, “and Gavin drank the last of it this morning.”

    “Impasse,” I replied coldly.

    “Well, in that case I’ll just have a glass of water,” she decided.

    “Cassie, have tea if you want to, for God’s sake!”

    “No: I just thought it might be the right Pommy thing,” she said calmly.

    “I see.”

    “You’re trying not to laugh: I know that poker face!” she said gleefully.

    I gave in and did laugh.

    “Actually we forgot to get more spring water, too,” she realised. “I mean I did remember, but that was when you were getting carried away by all that packaged tropical fruit, and it went straight out of my head again.”

    “We need to compile a definitive list and put it in the computer.” As her jaw had dropped and she was goggling at me I added: “Unless you want to be reduced to patronising bloody Matthews in the village?”

    “No. Have you got a computer?”

    “I brought my laptop, yes. Well, I didn’t need to bring many clothes, did I, in this weather? There was plenty of room in my case.”

    “But presumably not for a printer!” she retorted smartly.

    “No. In that case handwritten shopping list and we put a printer on it. Then every week we print out the definitive list and cross off the stuff we don’t need.”

    She sat down looking weak, ignoring the packets of pasta, Weetbix (yes: the Aussie name for it), biscuits, and various UFOs still piled on the table. “Are you always so horribly organised?”

    “Er… split personality. Very organised work-wise and office-wise, hopeless impulse shopper who has to be reined in, as I think you and Pete might have realised today.”

    She looked limply at the hand of organic bananas which I’d placed tenderly in a floral fruit bowl. “Yeah. You’re that, all right. Those things won’t taste any different from ordinary bananas, you know.”

    “Surely—”

    “Ya wanna bet?”

    … She was right, of course. At dinnertime it was discovered that my wonderful spiky pinkish-purplish dragon fruit had crispish white insides filled with minute black seeds and tasting of nothing very much, being mildly refreshing but essentially null, that the lychees were not particularly ripe and therefore very hard to peel, that the snake beans, perforce chopped for the stir-fry, tasted just like ordinary green beans, and that those small organic bananas tasted exactly like the standard Queensland Cavendish ones and into the bargain their intriguing red tips were merely food wax.

    As this last was revealed my beloved Cassie collapsed in helpless giggles.

    “And I thought I was getting a supportive partner!” I cried.

    “Shut—up—Alex!” she gasped.

    Grinning, I shut up.

Next chapter:

https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/06/when-all-is-safely-gathered-in.html