Happy Birthday

22

Happy Birthday

    It wasn’t until the fourth of February that the bottom really dropped out of everything—or, in Steve’s phrase, the shit really hit the fan. Kyla’s birthday fell on the 15th, which was a Friday. Given the distances that many of the guests would have to cover, they’d planned the party itself for the Saturday, and the guests had booked in at the motel or the pub from the night of the 14th, and would stay on for the Sunday and in some cases most of the next week, too. Both Kyla and Trisha had spent the first days of February largely in looking anxiously at the sky, crouching over the transistor radio to get the weather forecast, checking the weather forecast on Harriet’s computer, ringing Isabelle to check whether she’d heard that the roads were letting people get through to the supermarket yet—no, they weren’t, being the inevitable answer—and peeking anxiously into the freezer, in spite of being told innumerable times by Steve that doing that would NOT help the stuff to freeze and WOULD use up more electricity, and WILL YA STOP LIFTING THE LID OF THE RUDDY FREEZER! Like that.

    They’d had breakfast—all of them, including Rosa and Mike, of course—and the macho men, or at least Steve and Mike, supplemented by Josh and Jimbo, had adjourned to the verandah, never mind it was, funnily enough, still raining, while in the kitchen Rosa was imparting the secret recipe for the Caulfield family trifle to the ladies and Crispin—he’d been trapped with the phrase: “You’ll like this, Crispin, it’s a genuine Australian recipe!” Trisha, in the intervals of nodding and smiling, was casting wistful glances at the freezer, what time Kyla was silently counting on her fingers, when the phone rang.

    Scott Bell. “The flamin’ electricity’s out, mate. Is yours?”

    Oh, God. “Just hold on a moment, Scott.” Crispin unplugged the electric jug and plugged in the fancy electric mixer which had been unearthed by one of Harriet’s helpful grey nomads from the back of a cupboard, where, to Trisha’s fury, it had apparently been lurking, its existence denied by “that pest of a Ben”. Harriet’s mild remark that she didn’t really need it but it was useful for fluffy jelly hadn’t gone down too well. Normally it made one Helluva noise: there’d be no mistaking— Not a sausage. Oh, God!

    “Ours is out too, Scott,” he croaked.

    “Thought so. Be the whole of the Bay area.”

    By this time the females were watching him with bulging eyes and horrified expressions. Not surprisingly, it was Rosa who spoke first. “Is it the power, Crispin?”

    He nodded groggily. “Yes. –Sorry, Scott, what? Uh—a generator? Oh, I see! Well that’s good, you’ll be able to run your freezer— Oh. Yes, I suppose it would eat fuel,” he agreed feebly, never having given such a matter a passing thought in his entire life. “Both freezers stocked? Oh, yes, of course: for the party,” he said guiltily. His and Harriet’s joint feeble efforts had been completely incapable of stopping the matrons of the entire area—and beyond: there were some people called Wong who lived rather further afield who’d had to be invited because Kyla had been to (etcetera)—they had been completely incapable of stopping any and all of them from contributing. Of course Harriet wouldn’t have it catered! They had never heard of such a thing! Since Trisha had apparently never heard of such a thing, either, that had been that. Oh, and nor had Aunty Mary. So there you were. Well, there poor Isabelle and Scott certainly were, stuck with two huge freezers, one with their own emergency stock in it and the other with party food, plus, presumably, their kitchen refrigerator, all to be run off this generator. Not to mention with a little girl to take into consideration.

    “Scott, what will you do for milk?” he gulped.

    “Eh?”

    “For your little girl,” croaked Crispin.

    “Aw! Well, she’s not so little these days, ya know, doesn’t need the ruddy formula no more—that was a right do, while it lasted, I can tell ya! Yeah—no, she’ll be okay, we got plenny of long-life stuff. Well, it’s revolting, but if ya mix some Milo into it ya can more or less choke it down. I did try her on it—Isabelle reckoned I was mad, of course, but she let me—and she seemed to like it. Well, added a bit of sugar, between you and me, mate!” he ended with a smile in his voice.

    “I see. Well, that’s a relief. Um—these generators: are they, er, readily available?”

    “Yeah, sure!” replied Scott, sounding amazed. “Oh—s’pose you’ve never struck ’em before, eh? Yeah—no, well, see, the best place to go—” Yes, well. Maryborough was a fair way south of them, and the latest word was that about fifty businesses and three times as many houses there were flooded.

    Ending with the cheery assurance that last time they’d been flooded this bad the power had only been out for about five days—no, well, that flamin’ tornado just before your rellies got here, that was a one-off, mate, and the blokes had had the power back in no time, eh? He wouldn’t worry about that!—Scott rang off.

    Crispin swallowed. He, Harriet and Josh had made a pact that they would not mention that tornado to her relatives—ever. It hadn’t struck them, or Big Rock Bay, but it had been not far away and the winds had been terrible—if short-lived. The Drinkwaters would have been travelling at the time and mercifully they seemed to have missed that little snippet of news. Well, you had to know their obscure little district really well to realise just how close the bloody thing had struck. Freak weather conditions related to Cyclone Oswald—oh, really? How consoling.

    He tottered back to the table and sat down heavily. “Scott thinks the power may be out for about five days,” he said flatly.

    “What?” gasped Trisha. She counted frantically on her fingers.

    Kyla was looking from her to Crispin in dismay.

    “Um, that’ll still be, um, hang on, today’s the fourth—I think,” said Harriet. “Um, well, the fifteenth’s still ten full days off, anyway.”

    “Harrie, stuff won’t keep in the freezer for five days!” gasped Trisha.

    “No: forty-eight hours maximum, dear, so long as you don’t open it at all,” put in Rosa helpfully.

    “It’ll be ruined! What’ll we do, Mum?” cried Kyla.

    “The—the cake’ll be fine, dear, Aunty Mary’s bringing it…” Trisha’s voice faded out and she looked limply at Crispin.

    He took a deep breath. “We’ll give it the forty-eight hours. Then if Scott’s right and the power still isn’t back on we’ll have to let everyone know that the party’s cancelled. I’m sorry, Kyla, my dear, but there’s nothing else we can do,” he ended firmly.

    Poor Kyla nodded numbly. A tear ran down her cheek but she wiped it away and said valiantly: “Yeah. ’S’aw right, it’s an emergency.” She sniffed hard and added: “And—and did Scott say that little Lily Rose is okay, Crispin?”

    “Yes,” he replied, smiling at her. “Don’t worry. They’ve got plenty of long-life milk, and he’s tried her on it mixed with Milo and a little bit of sugar, and she likes it.”

    “It’s revolting,” said Harriet faintly.

    “Yes, that’s why he added the Milo and the sugar,” replied Crispin calmly. He had, of course, not the faintest idea what long-life milk was.

    “That doesn’t sound too bad!” said Rosa bracingly. “So her name’s Lily Rose? After the film star, would that be? How old is she, Kyla, dear?”

    Blessings on Rosa! Kyla perked up tremendously and told her in great detail all about little Lily Rose and the real Lily Rose—both Crispin and Harriet blinked but Trisha either took it in her stride or was still too numb to react—who was Isabelle’s best friend Dot’s cousin and of course the film had been made at Big Rock Bay!

    Crispin got up quietly, went through to the sitting-room, retrieved a bottle of Cognac and some glasses and went back. As the saga ended he handed a drink firmly to Trisha.

    “But—”

    “Drink it, Trisha, my dear. You’ve had a shock.” He distributed drinks to the others, warning Kyla: “Brandy. Strong but good. Just sip it slowly,” and, knocking back his own—a grievous insult to Ben Rivers’s excellent Cognac—took a deep breath and went out to the verandah.

    “Holy Hell,” said Steve numbly.

    “Quite,” Crispin agreed drily.

    “You got a generator?” asked Mike keenly.

    “No,” replied Crispin evilly. “Bloody Ben Rivers apparently didn’t consider that a necessity of life up here.”

    “He wouldn’t,” admitted his nephew bitterly. “Ya know what ’e done when they had a tornado up this way?”

    Crispin gulped. “No, what?” he croaked.

    “Went down that bloody cellar of his with a couple of ’is Abo mates and drunk ’imself silly! –Wouldn’t of known a thing about it, only good ole George, he let on, see? They hadda haul the silly bugger out bodily when it was over.”

    “I see,” he said faintly.

    Steve eyed him drily. “I’m not asking about that one that struck just up the coast just before we got here, mate, if you don’t wanna let on.”

    Weakly Crispin returned: “Oh, so you did realise… No, well, it missed us, thank God, but the winds were frightful. Hughie rang when it was all over to say they could see the bloody thing from his place—until Joel dragged him into the storm cellar!” he added with a little laugh.

    “So he has got one?”

    “Well, yes, but when Joel first got here it was under six feet of rusting débris, one gathers.”

    “Par for the course. Ya better give ’em a bell. But I’m pretty sure they got a generator. So, what’s first on the agenda?”

    “I’m damned if I know, Steve! What do you think?”

    He scratched his head. “Ring round all them little bimbo mates Kyla invited and tell ’em not to come?”

    “Er… I’ve promised her we’ll give it forty-eight hours. Just in case the power comes back on and the stuff in the freezer’s okay.”

    Steve eyed him drily. “There’s an expression for that.”

    “Sheer cowardice?” suggested Josh with a smile in his voice.

    “Absolutely!” Crispin agreed fervently.

    Both Steve and Mike gave startled laughs.

    “No, well, cock-eyed optimism, I think, Dad,” Josh admitted.

    “That’s it,” Steve agreed.

    Crispin sighed. “Quite. What the Hell does one do with a giant freezerful of dead food, Steve?”

    “Bury it, mate. –Jimbo’ll give you a hand. Loosen up all them stiff muscles from the last lot of shovelling,” he noted snidely.

    “They are not!” cried Jimbo indignantly.

    “Mine are,” Mike admitted wryly, rubbing his right arm.

    “I bet, mate,” Steve acknowledged. “Well, ya done good. At least if we get more flooding your campervan’ll be oke up on the higher ground.”

    “Yeah.”

    Silence fell.

    Finally Jimbo ventured: “S’pose we could eat some of the stuff.”

    “Cooked on what?” returned Steve swiftly. “There’s two bloody great turkeys in that flamin’ freezer!”

    “Shit,” the crestfallen lad uttered.

    “Yeah.”

    More silence.

    This time it was Josh who broke it—the young, Crispin recognised silently, had a Helluva lot more stamina than their elders. “There’s the barbecue. Um, well, if someone held an umbrella over it…”

    “That’d work,” said the elderly Mike kindly. “Um, have ya got plenty of barbecue fuel?”

    “Dry barbecue fuel, I think is what you mean, mate,” retorted Steve swiftly. “Well, I brung some, only I couldn’t fit much in. See, Ben used to hive off into the bush and cut down our irreplaceable native environment if ’e wanted fuel. Piled it up behind the shed. Had a tarp over it at one stage, properly pegged down, only that was yonks back. –Tell ya what, mate,” he said to Crispin: “you were bloody lucky the tornado didn’t hit, there’d of been ruddy logs rocketing off all over the show. –It’s that big wet pile beside that big wet pile of gravel what you found, Jimbo.”

    Jimbo glared at him. “I’d of brung some inside, only it was too wet by then, Dad!”

    “Keep ya hair on, I meant nothink by it. Well, nothing to do with you. But if flamin’ Ben was here I’d flatten the bugger, I can tell ya!”

    “Um, yeah,” said Jimbo uneasily, “but at least he had the gravel, Dad!”

    “Never got round to filling in that bloody puddle with it, though, did ’e?” Steve retorted swiftly. “Oh, well… There was only him, ya see, for years, Mike,” he explained. “Used to roughing it.”

    “I getcha,” replied Mike mildly. “Well, I’ve got a fair bit of barbecue fuel in the campervan, and a spare gas bottle for our barbie, you’re welcome—” He broke off, as Steve was shaking his head.

    ‘It’s not that sort of barbie, Mike,” Jimbo explained seriously.

    “Nope,” Steve agreed. “It’s a solid brick structure, Mike, mate, in which one puts yer actual fuel and lights it with yer actual match—well, and some kindling and a bit of paper. You can burn anything in it, this is true.”

    The elderly Mike smiled. “Be the only one left in the whole of Oz!”

    Steve broke down and grinned. “You’re telling me, mate! Well, just as well, eh? But don’t no-one dare to say there was method in ’is madness,” he warned, “’cos the ruddy man didn’t know what method meant!” He heaved himself up. “Come on, might as well look at it. –It’ll be full of water, of course,” he noted by the way.

    And with that the macho men trailed off in the rain to inspect Ben’s primitive barbie. It was full of water, all right. But after the brilliant Jimbo had seized a stick and vigorously dug into what appeared to be an accidental little hole at the bottom of it, the water ran out and they realised—or some of them did—that there had been some method in Ben Rivers’s madness. The more so as Jimbo panted: “See, ya scrape the ashes out through here, Uncle Ben reckoned it’s the same principle as an old-fashioned fireplace!”

    Something like that. Well, at least the thing didn’t need irreplaceable fossil fuel that they were running drastically short of. Which reminded him— Crispin shot off like a rocket.

    “No!” he gasped in the kitchen, snatching a kettle of water off Ben’s camping-gas burner and turning the thing firmly OFF.

    Very red-faced, poor Rosa protested: “But I was just gonna make a nice cup of tea, Crispin!”

    “No!” he gasped. He panted. “Terribly sorry, Rosa, but we’re really short of camping-gas; we’ll need to conserve it for cooking. –The local service station ran out just before the main road between it and the pub flooded,” he explained.

    “Oh, dear! Then of course we mustn’t use it up. Well, we’ve got some… Um, we were going to get a refill when we got to the Bay,” she admitted.

    Quite.

    Time wore on. Crispin rang Hughie. Yes, their generator was going good, mate. How was Foster? “You losin’ it, Crispin? How’dja think the bugger is? –Eh? Aw: the tornado! Take more than that to scare him! –The macadamias? Tough as old boots once ya get them established; they are native to Queensland, ya know. Aw, the nuts? No, mate, ya got the wrong end of the stick, the nuts fall March to September, that’s when we harvest! All right, look it up if ya don’t believe me, but that’s what macadamia trees do, drop their nuts, see? You still goin’ ahead with that bloody party?”

    There was no-one else around: Crispin was ringing from the sitting-room and the womenfolk were closeted in the kitchen, he could only hope not using up their precious camping-gas, and the macho men had exited en masse in order to haul some of Ben’s barbecue timber under cover in the vain hope of its drying off before next Christmas. Words to that effect. So he admitted to Hughie that he bloody well hoped not: it depended on whether the electricity was restored within the forty-eight hours.

    “It won’t be,” was the stolid reply. “Took five days for the buggers to fix it last time we got a flood. Ya can’t count the tornado, mate, that was a one-off, and it was only local, see? Brought the line down. But this time it’ll be the ruddy substation, that’s why the whole Bay area’s out.”

    This sounded so terrifying that Crispin didn’t have the bottle to enquire further. He just made sure that Hughie and Joel had plenty to eat and enough bottled water, and assured Hughie that of course they’d like to see him if he felt like coming over, remembering just in time to warn him that they had a pair of grey nomads in residence.

    He was wondering whether he could creep into the kitchen and liberate a beer without being stopped and deciding that the answer was no and eyeing the sideboard where Ben’s marvellous Cognac lurked and trying to work up the nerve—Harriet probably wouldn’t reprove him but she’d look upset, that’d be much worse than being bawled out, and Trisha probably would reprove him!—when the blasted instrument rang.

    It was Michelle Dawson and he didn’t know her—that was Crispin, was it? Yes, she thought she recognised the English accent!—well, of course they’d never met, but her Jessica had told them all about him! (Jessica? But he didn’t know any Jessica! Well, not in Australia. His old school friend Andy Napier had had an aged Great-Aunt Jessica who fed you on the best teas ever: cream horns with real dairy cream, giant buns oozing with butter and strawberry jam, towering sponge cakes guaranteed to smother you in clouds of icing sugar as you bit into a giant slice…) They’d been so sorry to hear about his accident (unquote): wasn’t that terrible? And she did hope he’d got the card! (Had he? Help!) “Er, yes, thank you so much, Michelle,” he fumbled. But what she was ringing about— She was awfully sorry, but she and Michael didn’t think— She meant, with the weather being so frightful and half the roads flooded and, well, Michael said that that terrifying tornado—in Australia? Honestly! You just didn’t know what things were coming to these days, did you? Well, Michael said it must have been very near them—though of course all those Google map thingos were hopeless, you could never see a thing on them— Huge breath. She was terribly sorry, Crispin, but they’d decided it would be wiser for Jessica not to try to get up there for the party, after all.

    Oh, good grief! She must be the mother of one of Kyla’s “little bimbo mates”! Hurriedly he thanked her for letting them know and explained they were pretty sure they’d have to cancel the party, so much of the state was flooded, and it looked as if the power would be off here for the best part of next week.

    Terrific sympathy, etcetera, wishing there was something they could do—well, of course you gave to the flood relief appeals, didn’t you, only there were so many of them you didn’t know which one— Etcetera. But she did finally ring off.

    Crispin looked limply at the phone, reflecting that he’d better make a list and start crossing off names…

    He’d fetched a piece of paper and a pen and had written down: “Party refusals” and “Jessica” when the phone rang again.

    “Um, yeah, hi, um, is that, um, Crispin?” gasped a very young female voice.

    “That’s right,” said Crispin as nicely as he could. “Can I help you?”

    “Um, yeah! I mean— Like, is Kyla there?” she gasped.

    “No, I’m afraid she’s out helping to walk the dog.” –Faced with the choice of joining Jimbo and Brindle for a walk in the rain, or joining the cabal in the kitchen: quite.

    “Aw. Um, can ya tell her Samantha rung? And I’m awfully sorry but I won’t be able to make it for the party after all, and can ya tell her Dad’s put his foot down?”

    “Of course I will, Samantha. Thanks very much for letting us know.”

    “No worries!” she replied fervently, and hung up.

    Taking a deep breath, Crispin wrote “Samantha” underneath “Jessica”. And as an afterthought—how many dozen more of them might there be, after all, before he could get the message to Kyla, “Dad put foot down”.

    He was just about to give in and answer the call of that Cognac when Harriet came in, looking guilty, and very carefully and quietly closed the door after her.

    “Escaped?” he murmured.

    She nodded hard.

    “Bad, was it?’

    She nodded hard.

    “Fancy a Cognac?”

    She nodded hard.

    Raising his eyebrows only slightly, Crispin trod over the sideboard and procured them.

    “A list?” she said, picking it up when she’d taken a gulp.

    “Mm-hm.”

    “‘Dad put foot down’,” she read out. “There’ll be a fair bit of that, I should think.”

    “If the fathers of Sydney have any sense: yes.”

    “It sounds as if Maryborough’s been practically under water: the Mary River flooded, and the flaming Bruce Highway comes right through it. Well, for all I know there’s a blimmin’ bypass, and I still don’t know which of those towns we came through it actually was, but I wouldn’t risk it.”

    “Me, neither,” he said comfortably.

    “So it looks as if we won’t have to have the ruddy party after all?” she ventured, looking at him hopefully.

    Crispin’s shoulders shook slightly. “I thought it was your idea, darling?”

    “It grew,” replied Harriet glumly.

    Alas, the overwrought Crispin at this gave way entirely and laughed till he cried.

    Forty-eight hours had passed. There were now eight “refusals” on Crispin’s list. He got the official guest list out of Trisha—Jesus! This many? And, sitting down on the sofa and firmly crossing off the eight, started to go through them, phone in hand. The rest of Kyla’s own friends first: he had a norful feeling that some of the “little bimbo mates” might just be silly enough to ignore all warnings, official, paternal, and merely familial, and try obstinately to get here. It was rather a pity that they all had their own mobile phones: frankly, he’d have preferred to speak to their mothers—and much, much preferred to speak to their fathers.

    He was mopping his brow at the end of it—there’d only been fifteen in all, so with the eight already gone there were only seven to do, but godfather!—when Harriet came into the sitting-room with a cuppa.

    “I know you don’t think we should waste the gas thingo, only—”

    “No, no; bless you, darling!”

    “It might be a bit strong: Rosa made it,” she said uneasily. “I mean, I was going to, only she took over.”

    “They do,” said Crispin kindly.

    “Yes. In a way it’s interesting, isn’t it? They’ve been playing the rôle of Earth Mother so long that they’re completely at a loss when they can’t do it, so if there’s a—a gap available for it, they go for it!”

    “Spot-on,” replied Crispin, smiling very much. “I say, it is rather orange, isn’t it? Do you think I could possibly have a weeny, weeny drop of—”

    Harriet went over to the sideboard obligingly, though noting detachedly: “You’re turning into an alcoholic.”

    “Er—yes. I feel I need to. It’s that or go mad,” he explained.

    “I thought it might be. –You’d better put it in: I’m heavy-handed with bottles.”

    “I won’t make the obvious remark!” he replied with a laugh, pouring. “Thanks, darling. Sit down and have one?”

    “I’ll sit down,” Harriet conceded. “But I’ve just had a cup of tea: ya don’t think she’d let me get away without one, do ya?”

    “On second thoughts, no.”

    He was halfway through the cuppa when the bloody instrument rang.

    “I can’t,” he said faintly.

    Harriet was looking at it as if it was something really nasty—pongy. “Ugh. Well, all right. Hullo?” she said glumly. “Blast! Press the flamin’ green button!” she adjured herself. “Are you there? Hullo? Oh, hi, Aunty Mary. How are—”

    And that was all she said for the next—well, Crispin’s watch, of course, had stopped. An appreciable period of time.

    At long last she was able to report: “Decided not to come up. Uncle Don reckons the four-wheel-drive’ll do it, easy, but she’s persuaded him not to take the risk.”

    “Good,” replied Crispin brutally, crossing them off his list.

    The phone rang.

    “Jesus!” he shouted.

    “If we don’t answer they’ll panic—”

    “Crispin Narrowmine speaking,” he said very, very coldly into the blasted thing. Having first pressed the sodding green button: yes. How come with genuine old telephones you merely had to pick the thing up and speak—

    Harriet goggled at him in amazement as his face became all smiles and he assured the caller that of course he knew who he/she/it was!

    “Kyla’s lovely Ellen Gilbert,” he reported at the conclusion of the exchange, still all smiles.

    “Oh! Yes, she is lovely, isn’t she? What did she say?”

    “In summary, glad to hear we’re all safe and well, sure we won’t want to be bothered by guests at a time like this—”

    “Alone of Australia!” gasped Harriet.

    “Too right!” he agreed in the vernacular. “And won’t foist herself on us. And to give Kyla her love and tell her not to worry about coming back to work, she’ll expect her when she sees her, and Patches’ Christmas present was much appreciated, and she spread it out over two weeks!”

    “Fancy Feast,” said Harriet automatically. “Oh, dear.” A tear ran down her cheek.

    “Darling, what’s the matter?” he cried.

    “Nothing,” she said with a shaky smile. “Just—well, Ellen being so nice, and remembering to mention something as daft as a cat’s Christmas present, and Kyla thinking of something he’d like and buying it for him…”

    “Mm,” he said, putting an arm round her tightly and leaning his cheek on her head. “Still some decent people in the world, in spite of floods and tornados and cyclones and idiots who can’t give a coherent phone message!”

    Harriet sighed deeply. “Yes. Something like that.”

    “Hughie!” gasped Harriet, later that day, as Steve, Trisha and Crispin, having hauled one of the turkeys out of the freezer, were standing there contemplating it glumly, possibly not in the expectation of Rosa’s expedition to retrieve a cookbook from the campervan which she was almost sure had a recipe for grilling turkey pieces resulting in anything very much. “How did you get here?”

    “Come the back road, of course,” replied Hughie with his usual stolidity, setting a large foam hamper down. “Ya got a turkey, eh? That’ll take a while to thaw. We still got room in our freezer—well, we done a shoulder of lamb in the Weber the other day, Know-It-All reckoned ’e’d seen ’em do it on TV and it wouldn’t take much longer than in the oven.”

    “And?” asked Crispin eagerly.

    “Finally got to eat it at har’ past nine.”

    Crispin and Steve collapsed in sniggers, what time Harriet and Trisha gasped and clapped their hands to their mouths.

    “Yeah,” said Hughie with a certain dry relish. “Anyway, ya want us to take some stuff for ya? We can fit in, um, well,”—he scratched his chin dubiously, eying the turkey. “A turkey and a bit more stuff.”

    “Good, we’ll give ya the bloody thing,” decided Steve unilaterally. “Um, better make it the other one, come to think of it: it’s still frozen solid.”

    Hughie opened the freezer and peered. “Shit.”

    “Puts it well,” Steve agreed. “Well, you wanna grab what you think’ll fit, Hughie?”

    “Righto,” Hughie agreed. “Got some chiller bags in the esky, don’t worry, the stuff’ll be okay,” he assured Trisha, perhaps registering her dubious expression.

    “Thanks, Hughie,” she said limply.

    “You managed to get that ruddy so-called barbie of Ben’s going?” he asked Steve in a friendly way, delving into the freezer.

    Steve awarded him a sour look. “Getting round to it.”

    He sniffed.

    “Be careful, Hughie: it weighs a ton!” gasped Harriet as he heaved the second giant turkey out.

    He eyed her tolerantly. “To you, maybe. –Shit, don’t think it’s gonna fit in the esky,” he discovered. “Too high. Oh, well, chiller bags and wrap a blanket round the lot: it’ll be okay for the drive home.”

    “Will anything else fit in the esky, though?” ventured Trisha.

    “Not much. Never mind, I got another one in the car. Anything in particular ya want me to take?”

    Trisha went over to the freezer. “Um, not really,” she admitted. “Um, well, there’s millions of sausage rolls and party pies. Do you and Joel like them?”

    “Well, yeah, but won’tcha want ’em?”

    “Not really,” she said with a sigh.

    “Aw. Righto, then. They can just go in a bag, he can give them a go in the ruddy Weber. It’ll either work or not.—See, I just wanted a barbie, somethink a decent size, only that’s how they come these days. All the flamin’ bells and whistles. I told ’im, just because they’re there, doesn’t mean ya have to use ’em, but of course ’e never listened.—Um, let’s see… Shit, why’d ya wanna put all this ham in the freezer?”

    “I didn’t think it’d keep in the fridge, in this weather,” Trisha explained somewhat limply.

    “Prolly right, come to think of it. Me old gran, she used to cure ’er own, now they’d keep for months! Dunno what they do to them in the ruddy factories, but I wouldn't call it curing.”

    “No, that’s right,” she agreed. “Well, ham can always come in useful… Take most of it out, Hughie, and you and Joel have as much as you like. We’ll leave the rest out, we can always eat it today and tomorrow, at least.”

    “Righto. Lessee…”

    Trisha watched with a lacklustre eye as he decided unilaterally what else to take and filled his esky, took it out to the 4WD, and returned with a second esky to operate on the turkey with the aid of a duna provided by Harriet with the explanation that she didn’t have any spare blankets but she thought this’d be good insulation and not to worry about getting it back to her, she never used it.

    “Right!” he said, hefting the result. “Youse mob might as well come over for tea. I’ll make sure ’is Lordship gets the roast on good an’ early, this time.”

    “But—we can’t impose, Hughie!” gasped Trisha, turning puce.

    “Rats. Know the back road, Steve?”

    “Uh—I know where it is, yeah, but I don’t think the waggon’ll do it, mate,” he admitted limply.

    “Take Crispin’s four-wheel-drive,” he ordered simply.

    “We won’t all fit in,” said Harriet in a small voice. “There’s Rosa and Mike, too, you know.”

    “Our grey nomads,” Crispin explained, poker-face.

    “Come over and fetch the rest of ya,” he decided. “You can bring some salad, if ya must,” he added to Trisha, going.

    The back door closed after him.

    The company looked at one another numbly.

    Rosa had come back in the middle of it, clutching a cookbook, but hadn’t uttered. Now she said faintly: “Is—is he a neighbour?”

    “And a very good friend,” Crispin replied, pulling himself together. “Damn, we never thanked—” He rushed out.

    Silence fell in Harriet’s kitchen.

    Finally Steve managed to utter: “What did he take?”

    “Who cares, at least it helped empty the ruddy freezer!” replied his sister-in-law with feeling.

    “Uh—ya got a point.”

    “It— Well, there were the party pies and the sausage rolls... Um, besides the turkey it was mainly meat and—and ice cream, I think,” said Trisha weakly.

    Steve cleared his throat.

     “Don’t,” warned Harriet unsteadily.

    Their eyes met, and they both burst out laughing.

    Trisha smiled limply at the bewildered Rosa. “Um, he is like that,” she ventured when the noise had died down.

    Steve let out a howl and Harriet uttered a shriek.

    Trisha bit her lip; her shoulders shook. Suddenly she broke down in giggles.

    Crispin had got back from having his thanks firmly rubbished in time to witness this last. His eyes twinkled. “Classic,” he murmured.

    Kyla, Jimbo and Josh, meanwhile, had taken Brindle—and Mike, since he expressed interest—for a walk up to the mango trees, in spite of the relentless drizzle.

    Kyla’s reaction was: “Aw, heck! I thought we could give Brindle the meat!”

   Jimbo’s was: “But I thought we were gonna do both turkeys on the barbie!”

    Mike’s was a strangled cough and avoidance of his hosts’ eyes.

    And Josh’s was a fit of helpless sniggers, but on the whole who could blame him? Emergencies, Crispin couldn’t but conclude, seemed to induce people to parody themselves. Or—er—perhaps merely to get more so!

    It had stopped raining, though, true, the sky was still a sullen grey. Nevertheless the macho men ventured down to see how the pub had come through.

    “Oh, cripes,” uttered Mike, his jaw sagging.

    “Yeah,” Steve agreed limply.

    “I thought— Didn’t Mr Bell say there was only about a foot of water here?”

    “That was before the creek flooded, mate. Think it’s diverted, and the road is the bloody creek,” Steve admitted.

    It certainly looked like it.

    “That’ll be why Scott said he was digging a big drain,” croaked Crispin.

    “Right. This lot’ll be headed straight for their place,” Steve acknowledged. “That steep drop-off when ya get there’ll be like a ruddy waterfall.”

    They stared glumly at the immense stretches of muddy water.

    “I thought it would have dissipated by now,” Josh admitted after quite some time.

    “’S’been raining non-stop up until this morning, little mate: how the fuck could it of dissipated?” returned Steve crossly.

    “He doesn’t understand, Dad, he’s English,” croaked Jimbo.

    “Somethink like that,” Steve agreed heavily. “Yeah—no, sorry, Josh. Didn’t mean to take it out on you. Was hoping it had dissipated, meself,” he admitted sourly.

    “That’s all right, Steve,” replied Josh weakly. “Um, how on earth does the poor woman in the pub— I mean, she’s completely cut off!”

    “Yeah, well, Scott reckons she’s got a tinnie,” Steve admitted.

    “It’s a little runabout—a small aluminium dinghy, Josh,” said the elderly Mike quickly.

    “She’d need it,” said Crispin faintly.

    “Yes,” his son agreed. “But good Lord, Dad—!”

    “Mm.”

    Something seemed to have penetrated: the two Aussies were exchanging glances, and Steve offered: “She is used to it. They’ve had floods here before. And it’s not yer actual wilderness—there’s the bloke from the servo and his wife, they’ll be checking up on ’er regular, and Isabelle Bell keeps in touch.”

    “Until her mobile phone’s battery gives out,” croaked Josh.

    Steve was observed to swallow. “Uh—there is that.”

    Silence fell. Eventually Jimbo ventured: “Say I wade through it—”

    “And say ya drown yaself and ya mother kills me!” retorted Steve strongly.

    “Um, no, you could tie a rope round me, Dad. At least I could ask Laverne how she’s getting on!”

    “That’d be good. If we had a rope.”

    Silence fell again…

    Mike cleared his throat. “Try yelling?”

    “Uh—” Steve looked at the immense stretches of muddy water. “It’s a bit far. Anyone got a phone on them?” he asked weakly.

    Oddly enough Crispin didn’t own a local phone, he relied on Harriet’s, which of course was sitting in its usual place on the kitchen bench next to the power point. Josh’s battery was dead, so was Steve’s, and Mike didn’t have their phone, Rosa had it. The company looked without hope at Jimbo.

    “Mum took mine off me, she said I was wasting its battery,” he admitted.

    “What were you using it for?” asked Josh with apparently genuine interest. The older gentlemen wouldn’t have dared: they looked at him in some horror.

    “Looking up the flood news on the Internet, it’s a smartphone,” the innocent lad replied.

    “Cost an arm and both legs,” noted Steve. “Don’t look at me!” he adjured them hastily. “His mad grandmother gave it to him. –My mum,” he admitted, as Crispin gave him a startled look. “Not her, ya nit.”

    “No, of course not,” he agreed feebly.

    “The result is, of course, she rings him up every day to ask tenderly how he is, but it serves ’im right for accepting the thing,” Steve finished with relish.

    Jimbo merely eyed him tolerantly and explained: “She rings everybody up. She’s like that. Even if there’s nothing to say.”

    “Especially if there’s nothing to say!” Steve admitted with a sudden laugh. “Yeah. Um, well, ya could nip home and grab some rope, Jimbo—there’s miles of it in the shed—only the thing is, this water’ll be bloody filthy and if you catch something revolting off it it’ll be my neck.”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “It was a good idea in theory,” said Crispin kindly. “But you’d need a scuba suit, really, Jimbo.”

    “Right,” agreed Steve drily. “You got one handy?”

    “Well, no, it’s in England.”

    “That’s another bright idea down the gurgler, then!”

    They stared glumly at the muddy water…

    “Home?” suggested Mike finally.

    “We might as well,” Crispin agreed.

    “Yeah. Ham and stale thawed bread for lunch,” noted Steve. “Cold baked beans from them tins of Ben’s optional.”

    “Um… I did notice a camp oven in the shed,” murmured Mike as they turned to  retrace their steps.

    “Right,” Steve agreed. “And one of those fifty-gallon drums, sealed tight as a duck’s bum, it’s got sacks of flour in it, or so the story goes. You ever made damper, mate?”

    “Well, no.”

    “There ya go,” his fellow Aussie concluded heavily.

    By the time Kyla’s birthday rolled round the power still hadn’t been restored and people’s tempers were fraying. They were still getting bursts of drizzle, but not all day and every day, so that was a bit of an improvement, but the air remained heavy and damp, with no drying in it. As the washing-machine of course wouldn’t work, they couldn’t do much laundry in any case. Grimly the ladies washed underwear and blouses by hand and hung them out anyway. Good old Mike, having investigated the rumour of rope and found there was indeed miles of it, silently went and fetched some and strung up lines in the verandah. None of the ladies pointed out that this effort would make the house look like something from the worst slums of Sydney, they just retrieved the damp garments from the back yard clothes line and hung them up there gratefully. Steve told Mike he deserved a medal and Crispin, more practically, awarded him a belt of Ben’s Cognac. On second thoughts he took him out to the shed, raised the magic trapdoor—Mike’s eyes standing on stalks as he did so—and invited him to choose anything he fancied from the cellar.

    Mike hesitated. “She won’t let me drink it, ya know. Got a bee in her bonnet. One small glass of red a day, max’. And I mean small. Those ponces on the ABC that keep telling you how much an adult male should drink have got her brainwashed and it won’t sink in that they’re talking about before you drive. Well, mostly. There’s this damned skinny woman that’s a diet expert— Sorry, mate,” he ended sheepishly.

    “I think they’re all like that, Mike,” he said kindly.

    “Your Harriet’s not.”

    “No!” Crispin admitted with a startled laugh. “And you won’t have had the chance to see it, but she can knock back the Shiraz with the best of them! –Or do you call it Syrah in your part of the country?” he added nicely.

    “Nah, Shiraz, think it’s endemic to Australia.”

    Crispin nodded, his eyes twinkling. Endemic, eh? Over the last couple of weeks he’d noticed the quiet Mike sitting unobtrusively on the verandah reading some of Ben’s more abstruse tomes. There was obviously a lot more to him than met the eye. “Um, well, secret drinking club, chaps only?” he suggested.

    “Why the Hell not?” replied the elderly gent with a sudden loud laugh. “Well, get a few belts down us, anyway. If the blokes retire in a bunch to the shed, the women’ll just conclude it’s Secret Men’s Business, and sniff a bit. –They always do,” he ended placidly.

    “I’m sure they do! May I ask, is that a phrase fixte out here?” asked Crispin, pretty sure he wouldn’t be misunderstood. “Secret Men’s Business.”

    “You haven’t heard that one before? It’s—” Mike paused. “Well, it purports to be a translation of an Aboriginal concept. There are things in traditional Aboriginal society—ceremonies, mainly, I gather—which only men are allowed to participate in, and correspondingly, Secret Women’s Business, females only. The men’s are mainly to do with beliefs and initiation ceremonies, as far as I know, and I think the women’s rites are often to do with birth—secret disposal of afterbirths and umbilical cords, that sort of thing: it’s not uncommon in primitive societies.” He paused, his shrewd little grey eyes twinkling. “If one is still allowed to say ‘primitive’ in these p.c. days,” he murmured.

    Crispin gave a yelp of laughter. “Almost undoubtedly not! Come on, I’ll show you what’s down here!”

    They ended up getting slightly pissed on a bottle of Nuits Saint Georges but funnily enough none of the ladies noticed, because Laverne had rung up, she was fine, though the pub of course still had no electricity, but guess what! She’d invited them all down there this evening to celebrate Kyla’s birthday!

    … “The Pub With No Beer,” concluded Steve limply, when the gentlemen had received the intel and retreated to the verandah to digest it.

    “You don’t say,” Crispin returned sourly.

    “Uh—no, mate, ya don’t get it! It’s a song: A Pub With No Beer.”

    “‘But there’s nothin’ so lonesome, morbid or drear, Than to stand in the bar, of a pub with no bee-eer…’” intoned Mike mournfully.

    “That’s it,” Steve agreed. “Good ole Slim Dusty.”

    “Um, but beer doesn’t need electricity, does it?” fumbled Jimbo.

    “I was wondering about that,” admitted Josh.

    “Draught beer,” said Steve, though without much hope.

    “Kids all take the facilities of modern life for granted, you know,” murmured Mike.

    “Apparently, yes!” Crispin agreed.

    Poor Josh was now rather flushed. “Drop it, Dad.”

    “Um, when I come past the Red Lion—” Jimbo stopped.

    “Go on,” said Mike kindly.

    “Um, it’s a pub in Sydney, I had to pass it to get the bus when I was visiting Crispin in hospital. Um, well, sometimes I used to see the man rolling these huge great barrels over to, um, like a trapdoor: I s’pose it was the cellar door.”

    “That’d be right,” Steve allowed mildly. “Kegs, Jimbo. They’re what draught beer comes in, all right.”

    “Well, yes,” fumbled Josh, “but surely— I mean, I do know that a pump will work, if primed, with the intake lower than the, um, output, so surely—?”

    Steve and Mike exchanged glances. After a moment the older man said kindly: “It’s like most of modern life, Josh: advances in technology have meant that what was once a very simple idea has become incredibly complicated. Aussies like their draught beer very cold, as I expect you’ve noticed. The system which ensures it’s really cold when it reaches the glass is very complex and relies on an electrically powered pump down cellar to chill glycol, which acts as a coolant, and hence the beer as it travels through the tubes from the kegs up to the bar pumps—or “taps”, as they’re technically called. The glycol travels in tubes next to the beer tubes, all wrapped up”—his clever grey eyes twinkled a little—“within a larger tube. Ever seen a diagram of fibre optic cable? A bit the same idea. The damn system won’t work without electricity.”

    “I geddit,” said Jimbo, what time Josh nodded in agreement. “So it’ll be like the pub with no beer.”

    “Not on tap, no. But Laverne does have it by the bottle,” Steve admitted. “Well, some of it’s foreign muck, ya wouldn’t give it house-room. Nobody round these here parts ’ud go near it, she only gets in it in for them rich greenies from the poncy ecolodge—up behind the motel, Mike. S’pose there might be somethink drinkable left, if that dumb pot-man of hers and the bloke from the servo and Scott Bell haven’t got down on it all by now.”

    “Sounds possible, then!” said Crispin with a laugh.

    “So, the consensus is, the pub might not be a complete write off?” ventured Mike.

    “Yeah,” Steve agreed. “Uh—though we probably should grab some, if there’s any left in the cellar, Crispin.”

    “Er—well, not beer, I’m afraid,” he admitted, avoiding Mike’s eye.

    “Right, well, that’s that, then. Dare say Hughie and Joel might bring a few over, they had plenny in, eh?”

    Everyone conceding that they had, they could look forward to an evening at the pub with a certain confidence.

    … The problem of how to get into the pub, it was discovered, was solved by Laverne’s sending her grinning pot-man out in the tinnie to collect them from the far side of the immense puddle. Very, very fortunately the water hadn’t got quite as high as the verandah floor, so the actual pub wasn’t flooded.

    “Come through!” beamed a very flushed Laverne, as they entered the public bar. They followed her through to the big dining-room…

    “Oh!” gasped Kyla, her hands going to her cheeks. “It’s a party!”

    The dining-room was hung with colourful streamers and balloons, there were storm lanterns here, there and everywhere, there were giant candles here, there and everywhere, and incredibly, there was a huge banquet laid out before them, the long table groaning with food, its centrepiece being a huge double-tiered cake!

    “Of course it is, dear!” beamed Laverne. “You didn’t think Big Rock Bay was gonna forget your twenty-first, did you?”

    “It’s wonderful! But how did you manage it all, Laverne?” gasped Trisha. There was a strong smell of cooked meat and the biggest dishes on the long table were obviously casseroles.

    “Well,” beamed Laverne, “I’ve got the old wood-burning stove, you see, Trisha! There wasn’t that much wood left, but I’ve been saving it up for today!”

    “She done the cake first thing,” croaked the pot-man. “Looks good, eh?” He chuckled pleasedly.

    It most certainly did: the icing was topped with elaborate white rosettes: it was a beautiful cake.

    “Um, so have you got a generator?” asked Steve dazedly.

    “Well, yes, but it’s only got enough power for the freezers and fridges, Steve. I’ve got a camping-gas burner, I’ve just been using that.”

    “Bacon and eggs!” chuckled the pot-man.

    “Yes, it does bacon and eggs quite well,” Laverne agreed kindly. “Though yesterday was the last of the eggs, Tom,” she reminded him. “The rest had to go in the cake.”

    “Aw. Yeah. No more eggs,” he recalled sadly. He brightened. “But we got cake! And pudding!”

    “Yes, there’ll be pudding later,” she agreed. “Come on, now, everyone, sit down: the others’ll be here any minute. You pop out to the verandah, Tom, and keep a look-out for them.”

    “Righto. –Don’t go in the water,” he adjured himself solemnly, departing.

    And with dazed thanks from the guests and beaming disclaimers from Laverne, everyone sat down, Mike and Rosa were introduced, and it was drinks all round, everyone had to have what they fancied—it was a pub, you know! And they were able to have a toast —“Just a preliminary toast!” according to Laverne.

    “Happy twenty-first, Kyla, dear!”

    “Happy twenty-first!” they all echoed, raising their glasses as, not unexpectedly, Kyla burst into tears.

    Laverne had of course invited Isabelle and Scott, plus little Lily Rose, and it wouldn’t have been fair not to ask the remaining campers—there were only four couples, the two young ones who’d had the tents and two remaining sets of grey nomads—and with Hughie and Joel and the couple from the servo as well, it was quite a party! Of course the only people who were anywhere near Kyla’s age were the young couples from the camping-ground, but she didn’t seem to mind—or notice—and a gloriously happy evening was had by all. Laverne had made her famous apricot chicken, and a delicious beef Bourguignonne—explaining happily to Trisha, Rosa, and the other two female grey nomads that she didn’t usually do it for the clients, dears, it wasn’t cost-effective, but this was a special occasion! There was potato salad but she hadn't managed any greens, but possibly only the matrons noticed this lack. Pudding consisted of some magnificent trifles plus a huge selection of ice cream. Take it for all and all, it was, as Hughie summed up blissfully: “Something like a spread.”

    Kyla burst into tears of joy all over again when they had the second, official toast, holding up their glasses over the beautiful cake, but no-one present had expected anything else.

Next chapter:

https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/08/and-all-is-mended.html