Grey Nomads

13

Grey Nomads

    They had a whole day’s grace before the grey nomads arrived, complete with their giant caravan. Well, sort of grace. Given that it contained the horrid incident of Joel turning up with a small table and four old wooden chairs for the kitchen. His Uncle Hughie thought the real table better stay in the other room but this here was going begging, so she could have it for her kitchen. Harriet was almost sure this poker-faced report was (a) verbatim and (b) gently taking the Mick out of not only Hughie but the entire Aussie bloke thing. Not to say out of females that expected Aussie blokes to go on like that! And judging by the look on her face her niece thought so, too.

    “Thank you,” Kyla said grimly as he unloaded them from Hughie’s ancient ute. “We can cope now.”

    “Balls.” Capably Joel hefted the table and strode past her into the house.

    Oh, God. Numbly Harriet picked up a chair and tottered in his wake.

    “A cuppa ’ud hit the spot round about now,” he drawled, when, Kyla having only managed to lug one—they were good, sturdy, solid wooden things—he’d brought the last two chairs in.

    Kyla just glared bitterly so Harriet said on a dry note: “I think you mean ‘Assume our traditional CWA-type woman’s rôle and hop to it,’ don’t you? Fancy a fresh-made scone, as well?”

    “Yes, please,” he replied unemotionally, sitting down at the table.

    Alas, at this point Harriet broke down in helpless splutters.

    “Don’t laugh, Aunty Harrie! He’s doing it on purpose!” cried Kyla furiously. She rushed out.

    Joel grinned. “How old is she?”

    Harriet wiped her eyes. “I’ve forgotten,” she admitted. “Um, well, when we came up before, she was, um, it was just before her eighteenth birthday, because she couldn’t touch the money from Mum’s house until then. She’d finished Year 12, but her birthday’s a bit later... Um, heck, that wasn’t last year, was it, it was the year before! She must be nineteen, now.”

    “Right,” he drawled.

    “How old are you?” asked Harriet on a dry note.

    “Thirty-four.”

    Ooh, heck! It had been pretty clear all along that Kyla had been going to pine hopelessly after him, but— Well, once you hit thirty yourself, fifteen years didn’t seem like such a gap, but in your early twenties even five years between you could seem insuperable.

    “Then it looks as if you’ll just have to put up with the crush on you, Joel,” she said kindly.

    He made a face, and shrugged.

    “Don’t worry, you’re not alone,” said Harriet drily, going over to the sink and refilling the  jug. “She’s also hopelessly in love with all of the farmers bar none—actually I think Trisha said there were six of them, but that’s more than enough, eh?—all of them, on a stupid TV programme.”

    “This’d be The Farmer Wants a Wife, would it?”

    “Yeah, I think that’s its name. I’ve never seen it.”

    “Ya wouldn’t want to. Mum and me sister Elaine keep nagging me to go on it. Partly why I took off for a spell at Uncle Hughie’s,” he noted drily.

    Help, poor guy! “I see,” said Harriet sympathetically.

    “Yeah. Um, and partly because we’ve been a bit worried about the old guy. I don’t suppose he’s said anything to you about his health, has he?”

    “No, he never talks about things like that.”

    Joel sighed. “No. Noticed he puffs a bit?’

    “Mm.”

    “Yeah. It’s emphysema. Not too bad, yet, but the doc’s told him to take it easy. Thing is, yonks back he had a job at a bloody asbestos mine, so there’s a huge risk of lung cancer. He's meant to have regular check-ups but he’s been missing them—he’s supposed to stay with me Aunty Linda down in Brizzie for them, ya see, and he hasn’t been turning up. Well, he can’t stand her, but that’s par for the course, he can’t really take any of his sisters including Mum, except in very short doses.”

    Harriet’s eyes had filled with tears. “I see,” she said in a stifled voice. “He’s never breathed a word, Joel.”

    “Nah, he wouldn't,” said the young man with a sigh. “So I’m gonna stay with him for a bit, make him go to the doc, and take over some of the hard yacker.”

    “Good. How long for?” asked Harriet, sniffing.

    There was a short silence. Then he admitted tightly: “As long as it takes.”

    “I see,” she said shakily. “So—so you won’t be needed on your own farm, Joel?”

    “No, there’s Dad and me brother-in-law.”

    Somehow she’d assumed his mother was a widow. “Oh, good. Um, I’m sorry about Kyla. It’s not gonna improve your stay, is it?”

    “Aw, it’ll be one of those whadda-they-call-ems. Counterirritant,” he drawled, with a wink.

    Harriet gave a startled laugh. “Yes! Um, tea or coffee, Joel?”

    “Well, since you’re making them, CWA woman, coffee, thanks. –Can you make scones?”

    “No.”

    To her considerable relief, Joel at this broke down in helpless sniggers.

    Kyla listened to her subsequent report in grim silence.

    “All right, I’m sorry about Hughie,” she said at the end of it. “But that doesn’t mean that that Joel isn’t an up-himself pig!” She strode over to the timetable. “Grey—what?”

    “Grey nomads,” said Harriet dully. “You know: retired couples that tour the country in gigantic caravans with all mod-cons. More super than they know what to do with.”

    “I know!” She stared at the timetable, narrow-eyed. “What do they want here?”

    “Just a holiday, I suppose. It is nice, and very quiet.”

    “No! Not that! Here. With you. It’s not a camping ground!”

    “Um, I can’t remember what Isabelle said,” she confessed.

    “I’ll ring her!”

    Harriet just sat down at her new kitchen table—wasn’t it lovely to have one in here again!—and waited.

    … “The bludgers want a free camp site, that’s what! Grey nomads? I’ll grey nomad them!” threatened her niece furiously. “Just you wait!”

    Ben’s shed—that Harriet had hardly been into since she inherited it, except occasionally to look for more beer for male visitors—having yielded a treasure-trove of wood, paint, hammers and nails, Kyla got down to it.

    Hughie turned up around mid-morning, looking glum. “Hey, ya do know she’s putting signs up all over the place, do ya?”

    Harriet had been sitting peacefully at the kitchen table, partly just enjoying it, partly reading one of Ben’s recipe books—though without any idea of cooking anything from it, really. “Mm?” she said vaguely.

    “The kid. Puttin’ flamin’ signs up all over the place,” he grunted, going over to the bench.

    “Kyla? She said something about settling the grey nomads’ hash for them, Hughie. Um, caravanners. They’re due today, Isabelle wished them on us. Never mind, it’s keeping her busy.”

    He sniffed, but conceded: “Well, if you aren’t bothered. –Make a cuppa, shall I?”

    Hughie’s idea of tea was something dark orange and so strong a spoon could stand upright in it. Weakly Harriet replied: “Thanks, Hughie.”

    It wasn’t until he’d made it and they were both drinking it—at least, he was blowing on his mug and Harriet was just looking at hers—that she remembered: “Ooh, heck, I forgot to thank you for this lovely table and chairs! Thanks so much, Hughie, they’re just the thing!”

    Looking gratified, he replied: “Rats. Going begging. –That one of Ben’s ole books?”

    “Mm.” Harriet turned it so as he could read the title. English Food.

    “English? Whatcha wanna muck round with that for?”

    “Well, I thought it might have something interesting... I mean, the whole tradition of Australian home cooking is founded on English food, so, um... Well, nearly all of the food I had in England was horrible, but, um, I thought these might be authentic old recipes...” Her voice trailed off.

    “Yeah, authentic horrible ole recipes!” retorted Hughie with satisfaction.

    “Not really...” She opened it at random in the hope of finding a recipe that he’d approve of whilst not actually requiring her to cook it. “Baked Carp with Soft Roe Stuffing”. Er—no. And was carp even English? Um, blah, blah—okay, the woman had had carp from a French river, that didn’t prove it was English, did it? Quickly she turned to the meat section. “Partridge or Woodpigeon with Chestnuts and Garbage?” Oops, no, actually it was “Chestnuts and Cabbage”, but same diff’. Cripes, surely there must be one nice straightforward recipe for meat that Hughie would recognise— Ah! Thankfully she read out: “‘Roast Saddle of Lamb’. There!”

    “Roast lamb’s all right. Does that mean a side, or what?”

    “It doesn’t say,” reported Harriet lamely.

    He sniffed. “Go on, then.”

    “Um, the ingredients are basically just the lamb; it says: ‘1 saddle of lamb, with its kidneys (9-12 lb in weight)’ and—”

    “Be a side, then,” he spotted unerringly.

    “Mm. And a bit of red wine or port, and salt and pepper and flour. And a bit of stock.”

    “Mum just usedta bung it in the oven with a bit of salt on it. Sometimes did rub in a bit of flour, I think,” he offered. “Put the veggies round it. You could do that!” he encouraged her.

    The first paragraph of the instructions had now registered. Harriet blenched. “Um—no.”

    He eyed her drily. “Go on. What’s it say?”

    She gulped, but read out obediently: “‘The butcher will have prepared the saddle by slitting the tail and curving it over, with the two kidneys between the tail pieces and the saddle, the whole thing skewered in place with a couple of—’”

    “Gimme that!” He made a grab.

    Ending weakly “‘...cocktail sticks,’” Harriet surrendered Jane Grigson’s masterpiece.

    Hughie breathed stertorously over it. “Yeah, all right, it does flamin’ say that, ya weren’t kidding,” he conceded. “’E musta been mad,” he muttered, closing the book in a sort of dazed, automatic way.

    Harriet swallowed hard. “I think he maybe just liked reading it; it is very... literate,” she finished in a tiny voice.

    “Somethink like that.” He slurped tea. “Could just do a plain roast,” he suggested. “A leg, if ya like. Or a shoulder’s good. Dad always reckoned the shoulder’s a bugger to carve but the meat’s sweeter.”

    “Really? Uncle Don says that!” she beamed.

    “Shoulder, then,” he decided. He got up and investigated the new freezer. “This won’t do ya much good standin’ here empty: why didn’tcha say? Get into town this arvo,” he decided unilaterally.

    “Um, yes, that’d be great; thanks, Hughie—but what about the grey nomads?” she gasped.

    “Eh? Aw, them. The kid can deal with them.”

    She cringed, but agreed.

    As Kyla had gone into a scornful, managing mood—Harriet was irresistibly reminded of Mum in her heyday but fought it down as best she could—this was no problem. So Harriet and Hughie duly set off for the supermarket and Kyla prepared grimly to receive the grey nomads.

    “See?” said Hughie as, just a bit down the driveway from the house on a flattish bit of dirt with a scattering of gravel amongst the dust a large sign was revealed:

PARKING

1 Caravan ONLY

$25 per night in ADVANCE

Pay at house

    “Mm.”

    “Fenced it off, too,” he noted. “That’ll fall down if the wind gets up. Fix it up proper for you,” he decided.

    “Um, well, thank you, but she seems to have kind of fixed the wire netting to the trees, I think it’ll be okay... I mean, I think it’s only meant to be temporary, to—to kind of indicate to them that—that they have to just stay in that bit.”

    “Rats. Fix it up proper.”

    “Thanks, Hughie,” said Harriet limply, not pointing out that she didn’t actually want a permanent caravan site at the side of her drive.

    At the point where the drive joined the more official bit of road, that was, with a bit more gravel in the dust, another sign was revealed:

Sandy Cove House

NO CAMPING WITHOUT PERMISSION

Trespasers Will be Prosecuted

    Not a bad effort for a kid who’d barely scraped through Year Twelve in the twenty-first century, really. Considering that Kyla’s Year Five teacher had informed the empurpled Steve on a Parents’ Night when Trisha had stayed home with bad menstrual cramps: “Being able to express herself with feeling is much more important than spelling.”

    “Can’t spell,” noted Hughie without animus, as they shot down the road in a cloud of dust.

    “No. Kids these days can’t. Never mind, she’s up for bullying a pair of ruddy grey nomads that I never wanted in the first place!”

    “Right. Good on ’er. We won’t waste the lamb on them, eh?” he concluded happily.

    “This is it,” decided Alice Fletcher firmly as the narrow back road petered out and the sign was revealed. “Go up the drive, Graham.”

    Graham Fletcher peered dubiously. “Um, you sure? Did they say Sandy Cove House? We could be sued for trespassing.”

    “Not if it’s a genuine mistake. But the woman did say Sandy Cove, and have you seen any other properties along here? –No. And we’ve got permission,” she stated firmly.

    “Mm,” he agreed glumly. “—Can’t spell,” he noted.

    “Never mind that, Graham! They’re country people.”

    He peered glumly at the drive. Was it (a) wide enough for the caravan, and (b) too steep?

    “What are you waiting for? Go up the drive!”

    He went up the drive.

    “See?”

    “Mm.”

    “Well, go on! Pull in!”

    “I dunno if I can make the turn,” he muttered uneasily.

    Alice took a deep breath. “I’ll get out.”

    She got out. Whether the subsequent hand signals and the screaming were a help rather than a hindrance was a moot point. But eventually the large caravan was successfully parked without (a) hitting a tree or (b) knocking down the ricketty-looking fence.

    Kyla had gleefully been observing this pantomime from behind the shabby curtains in the front room.—Curtains which, incidentally, she was about to take down and wash, first thing tomorrow morning.—She gave them time to get out and look about them and, judging from the pointing and the hand-waving, discover there were no facilities such as, take your pick, piped electricity with thingos to connect to, water taps, barbies, toilets and shower blocks, or, actually, anything at all down there. Then she strolled down towards them very, very slowly.

    Her garb today had not been assumed specifically to get up the noses of grey nomads, or, indeed, with them in mind at all. If anything, it was intended to wow Joel, should he turn up. More generally, it was the sort of gear that mall-fixated city girls like Kyla considered suitable holiday wear. Nevertheless she wouldn’t have been displeased to know that it got right up their noses. Well, Alice’s, anyway; Graham just registered vaguely that kids these days got round in some weird gear.

    Her aunt had mistakenly assumed that the things on her legs were tights, but no: stretch jeans. From a distance they looked like tights and actually, close up they looked like tights, so— Yeah. Very, very dark navy. Over these not-tights was what Harriet would have called a short sunfrock. It certainly had shoe-string straps and was made of some flimsy, light-weight material. It was a violent shade of acid green or possibly acid yellow. Acid, anyway. The hem was uneven but as Harriet rather thought it was meant to be, she hadn’t said anything. She was almost sure that back when the family had come up here after Ben’s funeral she’d seen Kyla wearing it as a sunfrock, that was, not over stretch jeans or even over lycra shorts, but as a dress; but now it wasn’t summer, so— Well, anyway, underneath it there was a short-sleeved tee-shirt. Doubtless not its technical name, but it was jersey-knit cotton fabric like a tee-shirt, so— Mm. Had this garment been dark navy or black the whole outfit might have— Well, verging on the acceptable or at least the bearable. But no, it was a fruity dark tangerine shade. “Burnt orange,” according to Kyla, and her and Melanie Satterthwaite had found it at a recycling boutique in Melanie’s aunty’s mall.

    So naturally they had been thrilled to discover, when the aunty had “dragged” them to DJ’s, this really great scarf to go with it! The scarf was one of the long, floaty things that had been sort of in for a few years now—well, Harriet had certainly seen them worn by the sort of up-market, snooty lady that shopped, i.e. actually bought stuff, at David Jones, as opposed to just looking, like the most of the populace: typically worn with expensive open thingos that weren’t actual blouses because they didn’t have buttons and did have very uneven hems. These not-blouses were made of floaty fabrics, about the same weight as the scarves, actually, thus necessitating the purchase of something very expensive in the way of a so-called camisole, in silk, to go under them. In short Kyla’s scarf, Harriet in her blindness would have said, was not the sort of scarf and not the sort of colours that girls of her age would have looked twice at. Just showed how wrong you could be, eh? It toned—that was, it certainly had burnt orange in it, yes. Plus a dirty dark green with a hint of emerald to it, another dirty green on the olive side, some very acid yellow, yellower than the sunfrock but in the same general range, and some dirty puce—if it was sort of grimy-looking could it still be puce? Maybe they’d printed it with a kind of airbrushing of black over the puce to achieve the effect? Horrible, anyway. Not in any definable pattern, but it might once have been floral before the twenty-first-century designers had got going on it. Of course Kyla wasn’t wearing it loosely draped round the neck the way the middle-aged ladies did: she’d tied it round her head, bandeau-style, with her shoulder-length light brown hair pinned right up in a couple of plastic clips—untidily, though doubtless meant. On one side the scarf ends floated free, so you really got the effect of the colours. The huge plastic magenta disks dangling from the ears were presumably intended to pick up the puce motif. (From the Vinnies in Grandma’s old mall, would Aunty Harrie believe? –Yes.)

    She did have an actual neck scarf as well. Silly trendy scarves had been in for a while, Harriet had noticed that. They perhaps served to keep the neck warm in winter, but made it horribly hot the rest of the year, and most certainly did not shield the exposed chest that fashion had decreed for some years had to be exposed, whether or not the rest of the world wanted to see your boobs and your underwear. Sometimes, possibly earlier in the trend, they were very long and looped over with the ends poked through at the front. It had taken Harriet months of puzzling to figure out how this effect, observed on TV, had been achieved. She’d finally decided that British scarves—the scarves were mostly on the English shows—must deliberately have been made twice as long as normal ones. She’d seen the look on a few trendy working girls in Sydney, though quite a few schoolgirls observed on the bus had also been wearing it, whether or not the actual scarves were regulation school issue. Kyla’s neck scarf was looped in this fashion, so the idea must still have been In. But it wasn’t a woolly one and it wasn’t another floaty DJ-lady one, either. It was... yarn. Not wool. Not a fabric. Not knitted, not crocheted, not any manufacturing process that Harriet could define. Yarn. Lots and lots of holes, interspersed with rather knobbly lumps, the whole thing completely uneven—even the edges were uneven. It was a cheerful turquoise. So there you were.

    There Alice Fletcher certainly was, goggling at this unlikely vision as it wobbled down the drive towards them. The boots were not Kyla’s good, very high-heeled ones that had cost so much she’d had to lie to Trisha about them: it had dawned that steep drives were un-negotiable, going down, in heels that high. They were what Kyla considered a reasonable height. The platform soles helped, true. They were tan, though probably no-one not of her own sex and generation would have recovered sufficiently from the overall effect to notice this point.

    “Hullo,” said Kyla in a very bored voice as she neared the pair. “Have you got permission to park here? It’s private property.”

    “Yes!” snapped Alice, turning very red.

    “Um, yes. I mean, I think this is the place,” put in Graham unhappily.

    “Of course it is, Graham! –We arranged it through Big Rock Bay Motel,” she said in a steely voice.

    “Aw, yeah? What’s your name, then?” replied Kyla, still sounding bored.

    “Fletcher,” stated Alice grimly.

    “Aw, right. That’ll be twenny-five dollars, then. Cash. In advance,” said Kyla firmly, holding out her hand for it.

    Alice was redder than ever. “We understood that a camping site would be available at no charge.”

    This was, unfortunately for Mrs Fletcher, no more than Kyla had been expecting. “You understood wrong, then. Twenny-five dollars or I ring Sergeant Duggan and then you’ll be up for a whopping great fine.” –She was quite genuine: she had got the police sergeant’s name off Isabelle, who had been only too pleased to impart it, together with a lot of information about Trent and Angie Duggan’s private life. The fact that his police station was a good 80 K away was immaterial.

    “Yes, um, the notice did say—” began Graham.

    “Shut up, Graham! –There are no facilities,” she stated grimly.

    “Nah, the twenny-five dollars is for overnight parking. You can stay until this time tomorrow,” said Kyla, looking at her pink Swatch watch, “and then you gotta pay again or go.”

    “Um, the place down at the Bay charges twenty-five dollars, too, Alice,” muttered Graham into the simmering silence. “I think the woman said that everything else is extra.”

    “Yeah, that’s right. Only we can let you use our barbie for free if you haven’t got one,” said Kyla generously, not bothering to mention that, as it was Ben’s barbie, it was a completely primitive stout, stationary brick affair, requiring no power source but wood and a match, not the huge, gas-fired outdoor stove that was the current Australian conception of a barbecue.

    “What about washing facilities?” snapped Alice.

    “This isn’t a camping site. It’s private property,” replied Kyla with the utmost indifference.

    “You’re obliged to supply water!” she snapped.

    “No, we’re not,” replied Kyla with the utmost indifference.

    “We’ve got plenty of bottled water, darl’.”

    “For washing, you idiot!”

    “The sea’s just down there,” noted Kyla in bored voice.

    Alice took a deep breath.

    “She doesn’t like swimming,” said Graham quickly.

    Ignoring this completely, Kyla returned: “Twenny-five dollars. You gonna pay or do I ring Sergeant Duggan?”

    Alice’s lips tightened. “There must be somewhere else we can park!”

    “There weren’t any cleared bits at the roadside... Um, well, maybe they’d let us use the pub’s carpar—”

    She rounded on him. Fatal other occasions were cited in detail. Drunks throwing up all over the place, drunks in cars driving into them, the subsequent impossibility of getting the necessary panel-beating done in the back of beyond, drunks in cars scraping their sides and ruining their paintwork, drunken raucous voices at dead of night, blah, blah, blah...

    “Yeah, that was awful,” Graham agreed weakly. “This place looks okay, dear; I mean, it’s safe enough. Um, and maybe they could let us have a bucket of water?” He looked plaintively at Kyla.

    Unfortunately for him, Kyla was immune to the helpless male wimp sort that Australian suburbia was full of. “Five dollars,” she said immediately.

    “What?” gasped Alice.

    “Ten if I gotta haul it down for ya.”

    Graham got his wallet out. “I’ll do it. We’ve got a nice bucket—lightweight plastic, but not the cheap sort. –Thirty dollars. Um, and we won’t need the barbecue, thanks, we’ve got a nice little stove. Um, would you know where we can change our gas bottle?”

    Generously Kyla replied: “Well, you could try the servo down Big Rock Bay—that’s the settlement, not the Bay itself, there’s nothink down there except the motel and the camping ground. Only Baz Smothers, he’s the guy that runs it, he might of run out, because there’s been a big demand from the camping ground.”

    “Don’t be ridiculous, Graham, it doesn’t need changing,” stated Alice grimly.

    “Not yet, but better safe than sorry. Um,”—he looked at his watch. “Well, I’ll pop down after lunch, shall I?”

    “And that’s another thing! Are there any facilities in the settlement?” she demanded grimly.

    “Um, like the servo and the pub?” offered Kyla dubiously.

    She was quite genuine, but the unfortunate Mrs Fletcher assumed she was doing it on purpose and turned purple all over again. “No! Somewhere to buy food!”

    “Aw. Um, no. Well, you can get bread and milk at the servo, like normal, y’know?” said the urbanised Kyla. “Only he might of run out. But there’ll be stacks of Coke and like that.”

    “Junk food,” stated Mrs Fletcher dangerously.

    “Yeah, that’s right,” she agreed cheerfully. “Righto, then. One bucket of water, and you’re out of here this time tomorrow or pay again. See ya.”

    Mrs Fletcher glared impotently as she headed back up to the house. –Much faster, going up: the heels were helping.

    “Um, it’d be costing us a lot more down the camping ground, Alice,” said her spouse unwisely. “I mean, they really make you pay through the nose for everything, on top of the twenty-fi—”

    “Shut UP, Graham!” she screamed.

    He watched dully as she made a dash to the caravan, flung its door open, clambered in and slammed the door shut. “What about the bucket?” he said sadly to himself.

    He waited. After a bit the door opened and a plastic bucket came hurtling out. It missed him but as his wife was a rotten shot he wouldn’t have taken his oath it had been meant to. Resignedly he picked it up and trudged off up the drive with it.

    Kyla went straight back inside and rang Hughie’s number. “Hullo, Joel,” she said grimly as Joel’s voice answered. “This is Kyla Drinkwater speaking.”

    “Yeah, I got that. Anything wrong?”

    “No!” she snapped.

    There was a short pause.

    “Uncle Hughie’s gone into town with your aunty, forget why.”

    “To buy some meat for the freezer. Never mind that. Can I borrow Foster?”

    Joel gulped. Foster was his uncle’s old dog. Completely useless around the place, but then, Uncle Hughie wasn’t farming sheep or cattle, so it didn’t matter. Foster wasn’t keen on the womenfolk. Well, actually he wasn’t too keen on anybody, but the minute he smelled scent on a lady he headed for the hills. Which, considering that a dog’s nose was at least a thousand times more sensitive than a human’s, and considering the muck the most of them slathered themselves in, wasn’t too surprising when ya thought about it, was it?

    “Yuh—um, he doesn’t like women,” he found himself bleating.

    “I know that, ya dill!” Kyla paused.

    “Uh—look, Kyla, there is something wrong, isn’t there? Somebody been pestering you? Some character hanging round there? ’Cos I’ll come right on over—”

    “No! –Um, thanks, Joel,” said Kyla lamely. “Um, no, there’s no suspicious characters or anythink,”

    “Uh—if it’s a wild-looking Abo,” said Joel with a smile in his voice, “it’ll only be—”

    “No! I know George and his mates!”

    “Oh, good. So why the Hell do ya want Foster? Uh—lonely? Look, Uncle Hughie’ll be sure to know someone who can let you have a pup—well, a young dog this time of ye—”

    “No! Will ya stop second-guessing me!”

    The phone was obediently silent.

    Kyla swallowed. “Um, sorry. Um, a pup’d be lovely, actually, Joel. It’d be company for Aunty Harrie, too. Um, no, thing is, there’s these awful grey nomads turned up and they want water an’ everythink, and I made them cough up five bucks for a bucketful, see: I thought that’d put them off—” She stopped, as Joel had gone into a choking fit.

    “Good on ya!” he gasped. “So ya want Foster to run them off, eh? He’ll do that for ya, no sweat!”

    “Nah,” said Kyla reluctantly. “Gee, I’d like to see that! See, Isabelle Bell did arrange they could come, but they been real awful about paying up—well, I knew they would be, that’s why I put up the notices—and I made it real clear they gotta pay another twenny-five bucks this time tomorrow or get out; only, thing is, once they’ve got one bucket of water what’s gonna stop them nicking more without paying from the outside tap?” She ran down, panting.

    “Foster, of course!” said Joel with a yelp of laughter. “Yeah, okay, Kyla, good one: I’ll bring the blighter right over. Uh—listen, ya can’t just tie a dog up to the water tank—” He choked slightly but struggled on gamely: “Um, and leave him there. You gotta see he’s got a bowl of water and doesn’t get too hot—well, it’s not hot today, he’ll be oke as far as that’s concerned—but he’ll need a drink.”

    “Don’t worry, I’ll find him a bowl! How deep?” she demanded.

    “Uh—well, not too deep, though he’s got quite a long muzzle.”

    “Ye-es...” she agreed dubiously.

    “Um, well, an old soup bowl, maybe? Deep enough to hold a decent amount of water,”—why were they having this conversation?—“but, uh, not so deep he can’t reach it. And, uh, pretty sturdy, the bugger’s dim enough to knock it over, ya know,” he ended weakly.

    “Pretty sturdy,” echoed Kyla obediently. “I’ll have a real good look! Thanks, Joel!”

    With this she hung up before Joel could say: “Hang on, I gotta find the bugger first.”

    “Shit!” he said to himself with a weak laugh. He went outside and gave a loud whistle.

    Nothing.

    “FOSTER!” He whistled again. “Here, boy! Foster! Here, boy! Good dog!”

    Nothing.

    This went on for some time, until Joel finally gave in, went inside and got a tin of dog food, went outside with it and the tin-opener, whistled, banged the tin-opener loudly against the tin and whistled ag—

    Gee, the bugger was right there!

    It seemed too bloody mean not to feed him now he’d come, and besides, if he disappointed him he might get the idea that you didn’t get food when the tin-opener was banged against— Oh, the Hell with it! He opened the tin. The blighter just about took his arm off before he could spoon the muck out, but Joel was expecting that. Uncle Hughie was more than capable of training a dog: why the Hell hadn’t he made an effort with him?

    He did have a collar on, so, as Joel had prudently come outside with a bit of rope, he managed to rope him before he could take off for the wild blue yonder again. Though, true, his usual style was to lick his chops and then sit up and beg for more. His one trick. God knew where he’d got it from, Uncle Hughie certainly hadn’t taught him, in fact he found it bloody irritating. But he’d belonged to someone else, originally—Joel couldn’t remember who. They must of taught him.

    “Come on: car,” he said on a resigned note.

    “WOOF!”

    Sure enough, the blighter nearly pulled his arm off in his eagerness to get into the car, in the front, if you please, and stick his bloody head out of the window.

    Joel nearly didn’t make it: the first notice was bad enough, but when he copped a gander at the second one, with its “in ADVANCE” it really finished him off. Talk about overkill! He hadda pull in, he was laughing so much he was incapable of driving. Ooh, and that there thing in the lemon fine-knit jumper what he’d have said was highly unsuitable for any camping trip, even with a caravan as swept-up as what that one was, and with a face as sour as a lemon to match, must be the female grey nomad. So where was the male? He peered.

    “Grrr-rrr...rrr...”

    “Yeah, uh, hush, boy,” said Joel without conviction. Even though she was on his right and Foster had his head out the other window he must be able to smell the woman. Not to say, sense her.

    “Grrr-rrr...rrr...”

    “Quiet. –Cripes, that’s the male of the species, all right!” he choked as something smallish, pot-bellied, spindle-legged and greyish all over crept out of the swish caravan and was screamed at.

    “ARF! Arf, arf, arf!”

    “Yeah, that’ll do,” he said weakly, starting up again. “Well, I don’t think there’ll be any problem getting you to chase ’em off the water, eh, boy?”

    Kyla shot out of the front door before he’d even pulled up properly. “You brought him! Thanks, Joel! Hullo, Foster! Good boy!” she cooed.

    “Grrr-rrr...rrr.”

    “Oh, shit,” said Joel lamely.

    “That’s all right, he’ll get used to me,” she said valiantly.

    “Yeah—uh, in the meantime just don’t get too close and don’t for God’s sake try to pat the bugg—um, blighter,” he ended lamely.

    Kyla eyed Foster warily. “No. Um, maybe if I gave him something to eat?”

    “Christ, no! He’d take your hand off, love!” It dawned what he’d just said. “Um, sorry, Kyla. Didn’t mean to say that. You’re not much older than my nieces,” he added feebly. “Um, no, well, if he’s well tied up it’d be safe to throw him a bone, but don’t go right up to him with food. But he won’t need anything else today, Uncle Hughie fed him this morning and then I hadda give him a second lot to get him to come.”

    She nodded hard, the giant purplish disks in the neat little ears swinging wildly. “I geddit. Shall we take him round the back?”

    That “we” was a good one, Joel reflected, accompanying her round the back. And not letting on the flaming pooch was resisting him. Okay, if he fancied being half-strangled by his bloody collar, so be it!

    Funnily enough he didn’t object to being roped to a leg of the water tank’s stand, in fact he just lay down with a heavy sigh.

    “Is he tired?” asked Kyla in concern.

    “No, the blighter’s full—stonkered. He’s only supposed to have one of them tins of dog food a day. –You find a bowl for his water?”

    “Yes, I found several!” he beamed. “Come in the kitchen!”

    He followed her obediently. Er—yes. Several was probably a misnomer. One of them was a heavy-looking pottery thing, bigger than a soup bowl, but about the same depth, that looked spot-on. He picked it up cautiously. Phew! It’d be heavy enough, that was for sure. “Um, you sure this is going begging?”

    “Yes, of course, it was right at the back of a cupboard,” said Kyla blithely.

    Mm. It looked like a hand-thrown piece to him.

    “Ugly ole thing, eh?” she added cheerfully.

    Oh, why not? The hand-thrown pottery bowl with a signature on its bottom that Joel decided he hadn’t seen was duly filled from the tank’s tap—“Grrr-rrr...rrr!”—“Shuddup, ya silly bugger!”—and presented to Foster.

    Slurp, gasp, slurp, gone!

    “Look ou—” Too late: the blighter was shaking his head madly all over them fancy little boots and, uh, what were those things on her legs?

    “Sorry,” said Joel feebly. “Forget to warn you he does that.”

    “That’s okay. I’d better give him some mo—”

    “No!” He made a grab at her, Kyla lost her balance in the absurd boots, and he ended up hugging her to his chest. Shit!

    “Sorry,” said Joel, feeling himself go as red as the kid was—what a nit! Hurriedly he released her.

    “That’s all right!” she gasped, not meeting his eye. “Um, but if I can’t give him his water, whadd’ll we do?”

    “Never thought of that. Uh—I know, I’ll get the hose.” He marched off to the shed. Buggeration, would she go and get all encouraged, now? Well, she wasn’t all bad—not nearly as bad as what he’d thought—and she was certainly genuinely fond of her aunty—but she was only a kid, after all.

    “Brill’!” decided Kyla as he demonstrated how she could turn the hose on and off at the nozzle and fill the bowl from a safe distance.

    “And if Foster gets soaked it’s his own look-out, okay?”

    “Mm. Um, thanks for everything,” she said awkwardly.

    “No worries.”

    There was a short but sufficiently agonised silence.

    “Um, would you like some lunch?” she gasped.

    Maybe he should refuse, but he had a strong feeling he’d better stay and monitor just what did happen if a grey nomad turned up to steal water with Foster on guard. He didn’t make any CWA-woman cracks this time—for one thing he wasn’t too sure she’d get it. “Well, yeah, thanks, if there’s enough?”

    She brightened. “Yes, ’course!

    Righto, then, so be it. But he’d be very, very careful not to give the kid any encouragement whatsoever.

    The lunch was odd enough to dampen anyone’s ardour, supposing he’d been experiencing any. She called it bruschetta but Joel had had that at various poncy cafés in Brizzie and other points south, and it wasn’t much like it. Open sandwiches, true. The bread was that rye stuff that came in long oval loaves, some with caraway seeds, some not. Unfortunately this was with. The supermarket hadn’t had the plain ones, eh? Did that mean she’d had to buy— Oh, never mind. He’d eaten odder. Not much, but—yeah. The toppings consisted chiefly, perhaps not by bulk but definitely by impact, of grated raw beetroot. Guess what! Uncle Ben had had some growing in his garden! She’d thought they were just funny spinach and then she’d pulled one up and realized! The lettuce was the thinnish frilly stuff that came in packets in the supermarket. Reddish edges to it. Didn’t taste of anything—right. Cottage cheese, not ricotta because ricotta was made from full cream— Uh-huh. And Kyla couldn’t imagine what Never-Heard-of-Her on Never-Heard-of-It thought she was doing, encouraging the population to eat all those saturated fats! And in the magazine as well, eh? Joel had been doing some bloody hard yacker round the place all morning, he could really have done with a belt of saturated fats. He tried to smile, and failed. The grated beetroot and its mate the grated carrot were “just ordinary”, because Uncle Ben had only had an old-fashioned grater, which was funny, really, wasn’t it, because he’d been really into cuisine! The tomato was fresh but Kyla was gonna learn up how to do the sun-dried ones, she was sure it wasn’t hard! Those were snow pea sprouts, hadn’t he ever had them before? You could get them in all the supermarkets these days! Hey, had he ever had those, like, baby sprouts? She couldn’t remember what they called them but they were, like, miniature sprouts, you grew them in a little pot and snipped them off with scissors!

    “No,” said Joel weakly. “Look, Kyla, this is very nice”—she beamed, oh dear!—“but, um, I been doing some hard yacker all morning. I mean I could really do with something solid.”

    Her face fell. “Oh. –The cottage cheese is solid,” she offered. “It’s very good for you.”

    “Mm, I know. But, um, well, anything’ll do! Tin of baked beans, or something?”

    “That isn’t funny!”

    He ran his hand through his hair. At this rate, it’d probably all have fallen out before any grey nomads turned up to nick water. “No, um, sorry, it wasn’t a joke. Well, uh, say I was at home, if Dad and me were out working round the place all morning Mum’d probably lay on, um, well, maybe a salad, but something hot as well, in this sort of weather. A quiche or maybe a pie, even. And probably some hot spuds, Dad doesn’t really consider it’s a meal if there aren’t any... spuds,” he ended lamely.

    “All right, I’ve done it all wrong,” she said grimly, getting up. “I’ll see what there is.”

    Joel bit his lip, but as he was starving, didn’t tell her not to.

    After quite a long time investigating cupboards Kyla turned round and said in a small voice: “There isn’t much. Um, there are some tins of baked beans, I think Uncle Ben had them for emergencies.”

    Heroically Joel managed to not to laugh. “Good-oh, they’ll do.”

    She served them up with more of the horrible rye bread, but too bad.

    “You were hungry,” Kyla concluded as he finished the plateful and sighed deeply.

    “Mm? Yeah.”

    “What—what were you doing?”

    “Aw—well, ploughed under two fields of ruddy celery he’d let go to seed, first off. I’m gonna have to think up something to replace it: I had a good look at the accounts the other night and he’s barely been breaking even with it. –Too labour-intensive. Not the growing, but ya have to pay the pickers and packers. See, he could send it all off to Jack Casey—ya won’t of met him, he’s a mate of Uncle Hughie’s that’s into celery in a really big way, he’d be happy to take over the packing. Well, I know in some places you can still buy it unwrapped, but the big supermarket chains, they don’t want it like that, they want it bagged. Jack’s got a contract, see, they’ll take as much as he can supply. But if we do that, we won’t hardly make a profit, because Jack’ll charge like a wounded bull.”

    “I see.”

    “Yeah,” said Joel with a sigh. “After that I just tidied up the yard, really. Well, made a start.”

    “Aunty Harrie was saying he’s got a lot of junk,” she agreed seriously.

    “Too right. Bloody hazard, next thing we know ole Foster’ll be down with snake-bite—heaven for bloody snakes, that’s what the place is. Uh—sorry, didn’t mean to swear.”

    “That’s okay, Dad says bloody when he’s really narked, too,” said Kyla valiantly.

    Joel eyed her shrewdly. “But your mum doesn’t like him to, eh?”

    “Um, no,” she admitted.

    “No. Mum’s the same. Anyway, what with the chunks of rusty iron and the remains of three dead tractors—” He made a face. “I got the worst of it cleared up. There’s a dump—” He broke off, his eyes twinkling. “Well, fairly near in our terms, but I don’t think you’d think so! I’ll take it there.”

    He’d come in the farm ute. “I see,” said Kyla. “So that’s what all that stuff in the ute is?”

    “Yeah. Otherwise known as Foster’s chariot,” he noted wryly. “He will not go in the back! And if you dump him in bodily and tie him up he’ll bark his head off: drive you... barmy,” he ended sheepishly, grinning, as she collapsed in giggles.

    “He’s awful!” she concluded, mopping her eyes.

    Joel grinned. “Pretty awful, yep! Come on, let’s get the dishes done and then we can lie in wait for water-nicking grey nomads, eh?”

    Kyla got up, giggling again. “Yeah! Hey, I bet he barks his head off at them!”

    She wasn’t wrong. Barely had the dishes been put away when there came a fusillade of furious barking.

    They shot outside.

    A very red-faced male grey nomad was just in the act of backing off from Foster, bucket in hand.

    “Gee, Mister, I don’t think our dog wants you to nick our water,” drawled Joel.

    Alas, Kyla collapsed in helpless giggles.

    The grey nomad, guilt written all over him, tried to brazen it out. “I had no intention of it! Are you in charge here?”

    “Nah. Staying with me uncle, he’s a neighbour, he’s not in charge here, neither.”

    Kyla gave a helpless wail.

    “Well, who is?” he spluttered.

    “This young lady here. But you can give me the five bucks, if ya like. You’ll have to have it from the hose, mind: the dog won’t let us near the ta—”

    Kyla gave a shriek, and shot inside.

    “—near the tap,” finished Joel, poker-face.

    The red-faced one duly produced five bucks.

    “Aw, yeah: maybe I oughta warn you. He will bite, if ya get too near,” drawled Joel as he prepared to depart, rather damp, with his bucket.

    “Dangerous dogs! I never heard of such a thing!” he spluttered.

    Joel eyed him sardonically. “This is the country, mate.” He waited pointedly. It sank in, and the nong slung his hook.

    “You were magnificent!” Kyla informed him with shining eyes, as he popped back into the kitchen.

    Joel’s shoulders shook. “Thanks; I think. Well, reckon you and Foster’ll be right, now?”

    “Absolutely!” she beamed. “Thanks so much, Joel!”

    “No worries.” He went out quickly before he could break down and laugh.

    It would not, perhaps, have improved his mood, as he drove off, whistling gently, to know that Kyla immediately sat down with a pile of Ben’s cookery books, determinedly looking for really good recipes for quiches and pies.

    “They’ve gone, thank goodness: they only stayed the one night,” Harriet reported to Trisha next day. “Kyla was really great: she jacked up notices and everything, and then she really put them off!” She plunged into the saga of Kyla, the water-nicking, and Foster.

    “Yeah, she mentioned it when she rang,” said Trisha on a weak note. “Well, I’m glad she’s making herself useful and not being a burden to you, Harrie.”

    “No, she’s been really helpful,” said Harriet, smiling. “She’s even volunteered to cook a proper lunch, today!”

    There was a strange silence from the other end of the phone.

    “What’s up, Trisha?”

    Trisha was heard to take a deep breath. “Look, first she went on for ages about this Joel guy—Hughie’s nephew, is it? –Yeah; and then she asked me what I’d make for lunch if Steve had been doing some hard yacker in the garden all morning!”

    “When’d that be?” choked Harriet, grinning.

    “Hah, hah. He’s not that bad,” said Trisha weakly.

    “Trisha, there’s nothing in your garden since you had that patio affair put in!”

    “There’s still bits that need mowing, and we do clip the bushes. No, well, cleaning the car, or, um, clearing out the garage. Actually he was talking about resurfacing the front lawn, I know it’s not very big but it seems to have got very bumpy. –Never mind that: the point is, she asked!”

    “Are you afraid it’s something to do with the farmer’s wife thing? –I did remind her that even these days the wives are still mostly stuck in the house doing the cooking and cleaning and looking after the kids, that’s right,” Harriet remembered.

    “Did you? Good. So did I. She was going on about learning to ride. No, um, the farmers probably did have somethink to do with it, but it seems to of been directed,” said Trisha, swallowing, “at this Joel guy. What’s he like?” she asked fearfully.

    “I thought I said? Much too old for her: I wouldn’t worry. He’s in his mid-thirties. Well, very good-looking—I told you that, eh?—but he’s shown no interest in her whatsoever, Trisha. He did bring the dog over and help her with him but that’s as far as it’s gone. And I think she made him some— Oh.” Harriet gulped. “Lunch.”

    “That’s it, then,” said Trisha in a hollow voice.

    “It’s a crush,” said Harriet cheerfully. “If he can’t stand it he doesn't have to come over here, does he?”

    “Well, if you think you can bear it...”

    “Yes, of course! And if it results in some nice lunches without raw beetroot, so much the better!”

    “Help, she didn’t serve that up to him, did she? ”

    “Apparently, judging by the evidence! –No,” said Harriet with a giggle, as her sister began to get agitated, “they did the washing up, but there was a half-grated beetroot in the fridge!”

    “You’d think she’d never heard her father doing his nut on the subject in her life,” said Kyla’s mother dazedly.

    “They put things in different boxes in their heads, I noticed that when I was teaching at uni.”

    Trisha winced, and didn’t say “Who, ‘they’?” because she had a feeling the answer might be “Dim bimbos like your daughter.” She admitted somewhat weakly that Kyla certainly appeared to have put the meals she’d had for lunch every Saturday and Sunday of her life in a different box from anything to do with anything, reminded Harriet that in spite of claims to the contrary Kyla couldn’t digest lots of chilli, and to ignore any garbage she came out with about Mexican food—well, the Old El Paso tinned stuff was okay but not those jalapenos in jars—asked if Harriet had email yet and registered the negative answer with some annoyance, and finally conceded that, as there was no way she could text a recipe, she’d email some to Kyla but in case—ten to one—that stupid mobile of hers wasn’t working, she’d post them to Harrie as well. And she could do spaghetti bolognaise, couldn’t she?

    “Not nearly as good as yours, but it’s not too bad,” conceded Harriet with a smile.

    “Good, you can show her that, then. And, um, look, if you can’t stop her inviting the poor man over, at least don’t let her give him that awful cholesterol-lowering cheese!”

    “Eh?”

    Trisha sighed. “She got some to try, Melanie Satterthwaite’s dad’s got high cholesterol and her mother’s put him on it. It goes like melted plastic. Mind you, it doesn’t taste too bad when it’s cooked—but it’s really awful raw!

    Could cheese be technically raw? “Okay,” said Harriet obediently.

    “Good. ’Cos if ever there was anything guaranteed to put a guy off—!”

    There was a short silence.

    “Um, well, I don’t want to, um, kill her chances or somethink before she’s even tried,” Trisha added sheepishly. “But I honestly don’t think she’s got a hope, there!”

    “Me neither,” agreed Kyla’s aunt cheerfully.

    “No, well, she’ll live and learn. –And listen, Harrie, don’t go letting that Isabelle foist more ruddy grey nomads on you! It’s not worth the aggro, and you don’t need the blimmin’ twenty-five dollars!”

    “I’ll try,” agreed Harriet obediently.

    “Yeah, do that,” said Trisha heavily. “Ring us if she’s any bother at all, okay?”

    Harriet agreed happily to this but it was fair to say her sister wasn’t convinced. She hung up, shaking her head. “We’ll have to get up there,” she muttered. “Um, well... Blow, if we spend the money on that he’ll never get his ruddy new car, poor ole Steve! Um, well, next Christmas...” She went and looked hard at the calendar in the kitchen but Christmas remained obstinately months away. “Blow,” she concluded.

    Isabelle knew the Arvidsons quite well—her old friend Dot had known them for ages, they lived near her Aunty Kate in Adelaide—they’d been up here several times, now, and they’d be no bother at all! Well, Scott couldn’t stand him, Keith, but there was nothing wrong with him, honest! Admittedly he wore safari shirts that always looked as if they’d just been ironed, but heck, the woman didn’t have to iron them if she didn’t want to, she wasn’t his slave, was she? And she was quite liberated, really! But the motel was booked out for the whole week, they had a party of retired Lions and their wives—not retired from the Lions, Harriet, don’t be silly! But they were all retirees, they liked coming up here at this time of year because it was quiet. The problem was, the camping ground was booked out, too, because, quite coincidentally, it was the very week that this botany club from Victoria had chosen to come up. Um, not only rainforests, she didn’t think, but something like that! Botany, anyway. Which university, Harriet? Um, she didn’t think they were from a uni—but maybe they were! When did the unis have their exams, again? Earlier than the schools, wasn’t it? But it wouldn’t be this early, would it? So maybe they were!

    Harriet couldn’t see how else a whole party of botanists could manage to get away in late September, unless they’d all carefully scheduled their annual leave on purpose to come up to Big Rock Bay and botanise. Well, possibly keen amateur botanists were mad enough to do that: certainly in her experience all keen clubbers of any sort, the specific interest was immaterial, were totally barmy, fixated, and just plain nuts.

    She waited while Isabelle described the Arvidsons’ campervan in ecstatic terms and then said: “Um, Isabelle, I really don’t want another lot of grey nomads: I mean, the last lot were so awf—”

    Naturally her objections were swept aside. They’d be no bother at all, she’d really like Erin, she was a great help round the place—heck, last time they’d been up here that blimmin’ tree up the back had blown down and she’d given Scott a hand to saw it up and clear it away!

    Harriet blinked. Had she got the names wrong, then? Was it a gay couple, Keith and Aaron? –No, couldn’t be, Isabelle had definitely said “she.”

    “Um, she?” she said cautiously. “Um, Erin is the lady, is she?”

    “Yes, ’course! Um, well, Keith didn’t help and I must admit that did get right up Scott’s nose, but he didn’t want to risk straining his back, you see.”

    “Has he strained it before?”

    “Not actually, I don’t think, but Erin says it runs in his family, his father suffered from it for years.”

    Harriet raised her eyebrows slightly. Oh, yeah? Suffered from wankerism, more like—there was a fair bit of that about in Australian suburbia! No wonder the straightforward, amiable Scott didn’t like Keith Arvidson. –Actually, her bet’d be Steve wouldn’t be able to stand him, either: Scott was very like Steve.

    She was never able afterwards to say how the diversion onto Erin’s helping to chop up the tree and Keith’s prospective bad back led inevitably to her agreeing they could come and park their giant campervan at Sandy Cove for a week, but somehow it did.

    “Honestly, Aunty Harrie!” cried Kyla in disgust.

    “Um, Isabelle says they’ll be no bother, and—and Erin’s a great help around the place,” she offered feebly.

    Kyla pounced. “That means she’ll be in the kitchen all day!”

    Ooh, heck, she was undoubtedly right. “It—it’s done now,” said Harriet in a wavering voice. “And—and it is only for a week.”

    Suddenly Kyla came and put her arm round her. “It’s all right, I’m not cross with you,” she said, scowling terrifically. “Look, how would this be? I’ll tell Isabelle I'm managing all the campsite bookings and the B&B bookings from now on, like, officially, okay?”

    Would Isabelle believe her for a single, solitary instant? Harriet looked at her doubtfully.

    “And then, see, next time she tries it on I’ll refuse for you!” concluded Kyla blithely.

    “Um, yes. That sounds lovely, Kyla. Well, you could try,” she conceded feebly.

    Hughie marched into the kitchen, breathing stertorously. Help, was it his emphysema? Harriet looked at him in alarm.

    “There’s a huge great campervan parked down your drive!”

    She sagged in relief. “Is there? It’ll only be the next lot of grey nomads, Hughie, Isabelle’s completely booked out. She says they’ll be no bother, and they won’t mind paying for—for stuff.”

    “I’ll bring Foster over,” he threatened grimly.

    “No, don’t! I mean, I think we should wait and see what they’re like before we—” Um, help, not drastic measures! “Um, before we take any measures.”

    “Righto, then,” he said grimly. He sat down at the table and crossed his arms, looking militant.

    Harriet swallowed hard. “Hughie,” she faltered, “did you—you didn’t see Kyla down there, did you?”

    “Nope,” he said definitely.

    She sagged. One blessing! Not that Kyla wouldn’t deal with them most capably, but if they were okay, then dealing with them would be the wrong thing, wouldn’t it?

    “I’ll go down and get the dough, if you like,” he offered, still militant.

    “N— Um, thanks, but I suppose I’d better go and introduce myself.”

    “No hurry. Could have a cuppa?”

    It was barely nine o’clock—but then, the odds were that he’d been up since dawn: Joel had let slip that they’d been getting up early, harvesting the last lot of this year’s macadamias and husking them before sending them off to the commercial processors, and preparing the former celery paddocks for, um, something.

    “Righto,” she conceded, going over to the bench. “Tea or coffee?”

    “Might have coffee for a change. Not gonna use ’is coffee-pot, are ya?”

    “No,” Harriet admitted, looking at him doubtfully. “It’s only instant.”

    He brightened. “Good-oh! –That muck ’e used to brew up was like drinking tar,” he confided.

    She smiled a little. “Mm, it was strong.”

    “Strong tar,” Hughie agreed.

    The mugs of instant had disappeared, together with the better part of one of the packets of biscuits they’d bought when they got the meat for the freezer, Hughie having pointed out that she didn’t have any biscuits, when there came a knock at the back door. Harriet jumped.

    “One of them,” he diagnosed, scowling.

    It must be; Joel would call out “Gidday” when he knocked and George would just come in, saying “Gidday” as he did so.

    “Don’t get up, for Pete’s sake! –Come IN!” he shouted.

    The door opened immediately. Harriet’s jaw dropped. Instead of the super-neat suburbanite thin-knit pastel tops and the super-neat polyester slacks of the egregious Mrs Fletcher, not to mention the tinted and hairsprayed, layer-cut curls, this slight, middle-aged woman had straight grey hair in a short, mannish cut and was in workmanlike cotton khaki cargo pants, with a grey hoodie open over a black tee-shirt which sported in white a picture of a mountain and the words “I climbed Kosciusko.” Um, shouldn’t there be a Z in that, these days? Though it was the old spelling, true. The workmanlike kangaroo-pouch slung round her thin middle completed the picture, really.

    “Good morning!” she said brightly. ”Miss Harrison, is it? I’m Erin Arvidson. Lovely to meet you! Thanks so much for letting us camp on your property. I hope we’re not too early; Mrs Bell did say check-in at ten-thirty, but we made very good time coming over from Booyal.”

    “Eh?” croaked Hughie, gaping at her.

    “We’ve been visiting Goodnight Scrub National Park!” she beamed. “We’ve been doing a little tour of the national parks in the greater Fraser Coast area, you see.”

    “It’s nowhere near the coast,” he croaked. “What time didja get up, for Pete’s sake?”

    “Five o’clock,” said Mrs Arvidson briskly. “That gave us plenty of time for a decent breakfast—you need a good foundation to start the day, don’t you?” she added brightly, apparently addressing the question to both of them.

    As she’d paused, it presumably wasn’t rhetorical, so Harriet croaked: “Yes. Um, you’re not too early, Mrs Arvidson, it doesn’t matter what time you get here. Um, I think Isabelle meant that ten-thirty’s check-in time at Big Rock Bay Motel.”

    “Check-out, I thought,” noted Hughie.

    “Is it? Um, yes, I think it is, for the cabins. Anyway, it’s okay, Mrs Arvidson.”

    “Good!” she beamed. “—Erin.”

    “Yes, um, Erin, of course. I’m Harriet. Um, this is Hughie Davis, he’s a neighbour,” she added limply. Erin Arvidson was a small, thin woman, but being in her vicinity was like being in a strong wind. Except that she was the sort of wind that tidied things up, clearly, rather than messing them up.

    “How are you, Hughie?” responded Erin happily, accent on the “are.”

    The correct Australian rejoinder was, of course, “How are you, Erin?” (accent on the “are”), a usage which Harriet had discovered some time since was native to these shores only. Hughie, however, eyed her warily and grunted: “Gidday.”

    Then silence fell, but not for long: Erin Arvidson quickly opened her kangaroo pouch and produced therefrom fifty dollars. “For two nights’ stay, Harriet.”

    Cripes, so they really did use the things for carrying money in! “What?” said Harriet numbly.

    “For two nights’ stay,” repeated Erin.

    “Fifty,” warned Hughie grimly.

    “Um, yes,” Harriet agreed, fumbling with the notes. “That’s right. Thank you, Erin.”

    “Thoughtcha were only gonna stay one night?” rumbled Hughie.

    Ooh, heck! Harriet looked at the woman in dismay.

    “I did stress to Mrs Bell that it’d be two nights minimum, and we’d probably want the whole week: we thought we’d have some R&R before we head home to Adelaide, Keith’s been overdoing it a bit backpacking round the national parks, and earlier on we did a lot of walking in New Zealand. But if it’s inconvenient, Harriet, of course we’ll move on: we wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you: we do understand you’re doing us a favour.”

    “No, it’s okay, Hughie’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Isabelle did say maybe a week,” said Harriet limply: Isabelle had actually said that it was provisionally a week but as the Arvidsons knew the district quite well they probably wouldn’t want that long. “But, um, I dunno that you’ll be comfortable, Erin; we haven’t got any facilities for campers.”

    “You can have some water, only it’s five dollars a bucket,” warned Hughie.

    “No problem, the campervan’s completely fitted out and we make a point of stocking up every time we come to a town.”

    “You’d of found a few of them between here and Booyal,” noted Hughie with huge irony.

    You had to admire her, thought Harriet numbly, as Erin replied calmly to this hit: “We’ve got plenty of tinned and packet stuff, and we thought we’d pop into town tomorrow for some fresh fruit and veggies: we’ll use up the last of ours today. But we would appreciate some water, thank you, Harriet.”

    “From the outside tap,” noted Hughie grimly. “For washing, don’t drink it unless ya boil it first.”

    Rapidly Mrs Arvidson listed the varieties of bottled water they carried, adding to boot a detailed description of Keith’s problems with his stomach and her search for acceptable bottled water. Harriet had assumed that water was water, never mind if the producers claimed it came from fancy springs: she just goggled at her.

    Hughie waited it out stolidly and then noted: “Yeah. Well, you’ll need yer own bucket. And look out, me dog’s tied up to the water tank: he doesn’t like strangers.”

    “Help, you didn’t bring Foster over, did you?” gasped Harriet.

    “Too right.”

    “But Hughie, I’m sure Erin isn’t the sort of person that steals water!” Too late, she realised what she’d said, and clapped her hand over her mouth.

    But Erin was looking sympathetic. “Oh, dear, so you’ve had that sort, have you? We've come across a few, I’m afraid. Outside Rockhampton one time— Well! All I can say is, they deserved to be chased off the property with a gun! Stealing the poor man’s water was the least of it! The whole place was like tinder, and they’d lit a giant barbecue without asking permission, would you believe?”

    “Yeah,” said Hughie sourly. “So did they start a bushfire?”

    “No, but only because he caught them in time. And then he discovered they’d tipped the soapy water from their laundry into his creek! Not to mention the rubbish they left behind. No, well, you meet all sorts on the road, but that really took the cake! He watered his cattle from that creek!”

    “Ugh, so the poor things would’ve been drinking soapy water?” gulped Harriet.

    Hughie sniffed. “Townees. No idea. –He fire at them?”

    Mrs Arvidson was actually seen to hesitate. “I don’t think he fired, no,” she said regretfully. “Well, we had the story from his wife, when we called at the house to ask permission to pull in for the night. We could have carried on to Rockhampton, but Keith’s back was giving him warning signals. She definitely said he took his gun out, though!” she finished happily.

    “I see. And did they let you stay?” asked Harriet in spite of herself.

    “Yes: Beth—that was her name—she was most sympathetic, because as it turned out, her Jim has to be careful with his back, too!”

    “That’s no good, for a working farmer,” noted Hughie seriously.

    “That’s just what I said! It was rather sad, because their son—now, what was his name? Darren, that’s right! Darren wasn’t interested in carrying on with the farm, so it was going to go out of the family.”

    “That right? –I’ve got macadamias, meself,” he suddenly confided. “Me nephew, Joel, he’s come over to give me a bit of hand.”

    “That’s nice,” said Erin, smiling at him. “Macadamias are a good crop to get into, though there is a long establishment time for the trees, of course. The nuts themselves are lovely, and the oil is so healthful. Though I always think it’s a pity the nuts are so pricy, when they’re an Australian native—well, we do have our special nut suppliers in Adelaide, quite a small family business, but they’ve been excellent, we’re very pleased with them, but even they have to charge a certain price, because the wholesale price is so high.”

    Hughie had brightened tremendously. He told her all about productivity, and quantity, and how an oversupply affected prices to the growers adversely, and the overseas prices and— Cripes! Erin apparently knew it all already, she was certainly nodding and agreeing and making knowledgeable remarks as if she did.

    After a bit Harriet staggered up and boiled the jug again. Erin had sat down anyway, so they might as well have some more morning tea!

    Erin came to with a jump when she asked her if she’d like tea or coffee. “Oh, good Heavens, what am I— I’m so sorry, Harriet: invading your kitchen!”

    “No, sit down, Erin,” she said weakly. “We were having morning tea anyway—if you’d like some?”

    With a passing remark to the effect that Keith was having a bit of a lie-down on the backboard, a precautionary measure, you couldn’t be too careful when bad backs ran in the family, Erin happily accepted a mug of instant—just like anyone, Harriet noted dazedly: by now her bet would have been non-caffeinated dandelion substitute from a very special supplier in Adelaide—and continued chatting...

    She was still going when Kyla came in, gaped at the spectacle before her, but said nothing, just meekly got herself a coffee and sat down with them.

    “Heck, do you know her?” she cried loudly as it was revealed—how or why they’d got here from macadamia orchards Harriet couldn’t have said to save her life—that actually, the film star who’d been in the film made at Big Rock Bay was Erin’s “little friend Dot’s” cousin.

    Erin made a modest disclaimer, but it turned out she’d known the famous Lily Rose Rayne for years, actually, because the star’s Aunt Kate was a great friend of theirs, she and Jim were quite near them in Adelaide—did they know Norwood at all? Harriet didn’t reveal she knew precisely where the suburb was, not to say all the connotations of this artless enquiry, and the others looked blank, but Erin wasn’t deterred for an instant. The eastern suburbs, a very nice area. It was so romantic, because— To the disappointment of some, she then launched into the saga, not of the life and times of Lily Rose, but of the great romance between “dear little Dot”—by this time Harriet was mentally envisaging a cross between a dwarf and something two and a half metres tall with shoulders like an all-in wrestler—and the bloke she’d married. He seemed to be both a classical composer and a professional chef but although in Australia most things were possible—depending on your definitions—Harriet took that one with a large grain of salt.

    Oops, no! Just as poor Kyla was desperately saying: “But what about Lily Ruh—” Erin produced a small notebook from the kangaroo pouch and swiftly wrote out the exact address and contact numbers of the charming B&B and restaurant for which Dot’s husband cooked. Not in the Blue Mountains, no, within easy driving distance: out of Sydney, well away from the metropolitan area. And just up the road was the most delightful ecolodge, real home cooking—

    Hang on! Harriet goggled at the piece of paper. In between the garbage of phone numbers and alternative phone numbers and email addresses, there it was. Blue Gums Ecolodge, Potters Road, Potters Inlet, no apostrophes need apply, thanks, we’re Australian.

    The stunned-mullet look on her face must have registered because Kyla grabbed it off her. “Blue Gu— Ooh! You’ve been there, Aunty Harrie!”

    “Yes,” said Harriet feebly. “Once. I still keep in touch with Ann Anderson at the crafts cen—”

    Erin was off and running. All hand-stitched, Keith had been absolutely thrilled to discover it, just the thing when they’d decided to give their bedroom a makeover, of course Dot’s Aunt Kate had recommended them most warmly— Most unusual colours, the quilter was a real artist! And then Keith had discovered, tucked away in a corner of the studio, the most delightful little landscape. Semi-abstract, touches of the primitive, you know? Though to meet him of course you realised he was a very sophisticated man—but Harriet must know him! she beamed.

    Harriet smiled weakly and nodded. “Bernie—yes.” Help, had they bought one of Bernie’s serious paintings, then, as opposed to his pot-boilers of gum trees?

    “Well, what a coincidence!” beamed Erin happily.

    “Not if you think about it,” said Kyla seriously. “Like, anyone what had been to Blue Gums Ecolodge would probably of gone to the crafts centre, too, and met the Andersons.”

    There was a short silence, even Erin seeming incapable of the correct reply to this one.

    “Nah, her knowing them as well, ’cos she lives in Adelaide,” noted Hughie. “Ya haven’t got a macadamia yourself, have you, Erin?”

    “No, we do get the occasional frost, you see. But our avocado’s doing quite well, now. We bought a five-year-old one from the nursery, but it was a good investment, it only took seven years to bear, and now it crops wonderfully!”

    “Right. Hass?” he asked arcanely.

    It wasn’t, but— They plunged into it.

    After a bit Harriet got up and edged outside. Not to her surprise, Kyla followed her.

    “Heck, that lady’s got Hughie on her side!” she hissed.

    Harriet nodded feebly. “Mm.”

    “Would you buy a blimmin’ tree that was gonna take seven years before ya got anythink off it?” was next.

    Harriet shook her head numbly.

    “Me, neither! –Hey, ya do know Hughie’s brung Foster over, do ya?”

    “Mm.”

    Their eyes met.

    “She isn’t gonna get him on her side!” predicted Kyla with glee.

    If any female could, Erin Arvidson was undoubtedly that female, but— “No!” she choked ecstatically, collapsing in hysterics. Promptly Kyla joined her.

    When the shaking had stopped they went over to inspect Foster from a safe distance.

    “Grr-grr...rrr....”

    “Yep! She’ll of met her match there!” concluded Kyla, with an evil chuckle.

    As it turned out Erin had more sense than to go anywhere near Foster, let alone to try to cosy up to him, but Kyla continued gleeful, sniggering in corners from time to time. Well, better than instituting a running feud with the woman!

    By mid-morning next day they still hadn’t laid eyes on the famed Keith but he turned up, coincidentally, just as they were sitting down to morning tea.

    Brought the bucket up—and of course, here was the money—May I call you Harriet?—charming smile. Harriet had been expecting something small, pudgy and sulky, though she couldn’t honestly have said why, but no: Keith Arvidson, who was probably in his late sixties, was very tanned and slim, with grey hair in a rather bristly cut, but still plenty on top. You might have said he was quite an attractive man—apart from the smarminess—except for the very pale, rather bulgy blue eyes, revealed as he politely removed the ultra-trendy khaki sunnies. (Unnecessary, the day was overcast.) Hadn’t quite realised the drive was so steep—of course the campervan had taken the lower section no problem, and something about torque. They were very pleased with it, it had been an excellent investment. Afraid he might have to make a couple of trips with the water, it was silly to take risks when bad backs ran in the family, wasn’t it? –Plaintive look.

    Kyla had been standing in the passage doorway for the latter part of this speech. “Yeah, that’s right,” she said flatly. “Gidday, you’re Keith, are ya? I’m Kyla. Tell ya what, we could lend you a big plastic jug, you could fill that instead. I reckon that four jugfuls ’ud equal a bucket, but we’ll make it five, if ya like.”

    “Kyla—” said her aunt faintly.

    Keith Arvidson, however, wasn’t phased. “That’s very kind, Kyla, but I think five trips might be a bit much. Well, I keep fit”—modestly disclaiming smarmy laugh—“but all the same!” –Plaintive look.

    “Half a bucketful each time, then,” said Kyla flatly. “Whatcha wan’ it for?”

    Harriet gulped, but Keith returned politely: “Erin thought she might do a bit of laundry this morning. We’ve got an excellent portable washing-line, we found it in a camping supplies shop in Ballarat, of all places! Well, it’s nice for families, of course”—patronising look down the nose—“but you must admit, horribly touristified, isn’t it?” Conspiratorial smarmy smile, ugh!

    “Never been there,” said Kyla indifferently.

    “Kyla,” began her aunt, “didn’t the family drive through— Um, no,” she amended quickly, as Kyla gave her an amazed glare.

    “Laundry? Where were ya planning to empty it?” Kyla then demanded.

    Keith plunged into it. Biodegradable washing powders, environmentally friendly this, thats and the others, no environmentally destructive never-heard-of-thems, no harsh other chemical never-heard-of-thems, write-up in Choice magazine—Kyla looked completely blank: Harriet couldn’t tell if it was assumed or not, though either way was good, come to think of it—and etcetera. By the end of it Harriet was completely blinded with science, which no doubt was its intended effect.

    “Yeah,” said Kyla grimly. “So you’re planning to water our trees with it, are ya?”

    He gave them a spiel which incorporated a complete run-down on the whatsits in the disposal and/or storage line that his luxury campervan featured, but they just waited it out. The upshot was, he could assure them that their delightful woodsy environment would not suffer at all. Neither Harriet nor her niece had ever heard a living person use the word “woodsy.” They were momentarily silenced.

    “Oh, and Erin asked me to ask you,” he said with yet another smarmy smile—did he think he was irresistible?—“what those delightful biscuits were that you had for morning tea yesterday: she didn’t recognise them. We thought we’d look for some at the supermarket.”

    “Um, I dunno. That is where I got them,” said Harriet limply. “They were on special.”

    “They’re all gone. We threw the packet out,” added Kyla quickly. “I thought we could have Vegemite sandwiches for morning tea this morning, if ya want some.”

    Harriet would have said this was taking far too great a risk, but it worked. “That’s lovely of you, Kyla, but I mustn’t desert my faithful helpmeet,” he cooed. “Now, that's five dollars for the water, Harriet, and don’t panic when you see me making two trips, it'll only be half a bucket at a time, remember.” –Plaintive smile.

    “Good-oh. And don’t go near the dog,” said Kyla stolidly.

    “Ooh, that reminds me!” gasped Harriet. “What about his breakfast?”

    “Nah, thass okay: I give him some. He just about strangled himself trying to get at me, I hadda throw it at him in the end. –He doesn’t mind eating off the ground,” Kyla assured her.

    “Oh, dear. I think we’d better ask Hughie to take him back.”

    “Ya never know,” replied Kyla darkly, looking hard at Keith.

    He gave a very silly laugh. “I can assure you that Erin and I are not water-stealers! Abyssinia!” With this, and a last, smarmy smile, he disappeared.

    Harriet and Kyla looked at each other limply, but didn’t speak, as there came a fusillade of barks from outside. In response to this demonstration of solidarity on Foster’s part, Kyla managed: “Good ole Foster,” but very weakly. Harriet only managed a faint: “Yeah,” in reply.

    Silence fell. After quite some time Kyla croaked: “Gee, I’d of said Erin was okay.”

    “Mm.”

    “Hey,” she ventured cautiously, “did he make you feel kinda creepy?”

    Harriet nodded hard. “Mm!”

    “Ye-ah. Heck, why’d she marry him?”

    “Dunno. I’d’ve said she had more sense. Oh, well. –You were great, Kyla!”

    Kyla beamed. “Heck, it was nothink! Hey, he took off when I said we were gonna have Vegemite sandwiches, eh? He was after a free morning tea, all right!”

    “That and a sucker to carry his ruddy bucket, yeah!”

    She snorted. “He’ll be lucky!

    After morning tea—more of the delicious biscuits: there were half a dozen packets left, as they were both very well aware—Kyla ventured down to the camping site.

    She returned steaming. “Guess what! Erin’s doing his blimmin’ washing, she’s already put one lot out, it’s all his rotten safari shirts, that awful one he had on wasn’t a one-off, and now she’s doing his undies in a separate load ’cos he doesn’t like them done with the grubby outer things, and he’s lying down on the flamin’ backboard, after carrying two half-buckets of water!”

    “Again?” said Harriet weakly.

    “Eh?”

    “He was lying on it yesterday when she came up for the water.”

    “Blimmin’ heck!”

    It was then revealed that Kyla had said Erin could come and do her ironing up here. It was all right, she had her own iron, a really good one, Mum wanted one like it, Mrs Delafield had one! Actually, the campervan did have an ironing board—citing in detail just how it folded out and what it folded away into—but it was only a miniature one, and Keith had fallen over it once when he was carrying a load of stuff, and bruised his solar plexus horribly— Harriet didn’t ask when the Hell would Keith Arvidson ever having been carrying a load that was too big to see over—even a load of—of balloons or—or fairy floss! Obviously this was verbatim Erin and the kid had drunk it all in. She just nodded kindly and said: “I see. Of course she’s welcome to come up here. It does sound like a lovely campervan.”

    Kyla sighed enviously. “Ye-ah...”

    “Only would it be worth,” said Harriet drily, in spite of herself, “being married to a Keith Arvidson, to own one?”

    Kyla gulped. “Um, no,” she admitted with a sheepish grin. “Nothink would!”

    Over the next few days this was more than proven, as Erin was observed bustling about terrifically busy, cleaning the outside of the campervan, vacuuming the inside of the campervan with the dust-buster—presumably charged at their last camping site?—doing yet more laundry, scouring the pots and pans, they hadn’t had a really good clean for some time, unquote, refitting camping-gas bottles, putting the portable washing-line up and down, setting the portable barbecue up, heaving the sack of barbecue fuel out, heaving the fuel into the barbecue, and so forth. Keith, meanwhile, undertaking such stressful tasks as dusting the dashboard with a feather duster, taking down three safari shirts from the line when it looked like rain—though not putting them out again when it cleared, he left that and the rest of the load of washing that Erin had rescued to her—helpfully bringing her a Scotchbrite when she was doing the pots and pans, correcting her technique with it, watching while she emptied the bucket, reminding her to hang it back on its correct hook, and, once the barbecue fuel was in place, officiously lighting the barbecue in gracious person.

    Erin offered Kyla a lift to the supermarket and she went, since they had no other form of transport, but predictably returned from the trip steaming, with the report that Keith had let Erin heave round a ruddy great twelve-pack of water! And Dad would’ve had ten fits. To which Harriet was very glad to point out that her father was a very decent joker.

    “Yeah, he is, eh? –She does all the cooking as well, ya know. I mean, except when he does a barbie. I mean, he just lights it and cooks it, he doesn’t do all the rest, like what Dad does. And she makes the bed—like, it’s a proper bed, not bunks, but they got a couple of bunks as well—but he reckons he can’t ’cos of his back! Shit, would it kill him to a do a little bit? I mean, he’s retired, for cripes’ sake!”

    Harriet sighed. “Yeah. Well, I won’t say he’s a typical male wanker, Kyla. He’s an extreme example, but it is a very common male type.”

    Kyla looked unconvinced. “He even makes her wash the car! I mean, not just the campervan: when they’re back home in Adelaide she washes the car as well! He doesn’t like taking it to the carwash because of the chemicals they use, they set off his allergies, wouldja believe? But that doesn’t mean he washes it himself!”

    Harriet winced. “Mm. I have to say this, Kyla: she doesn’t have to do any of it. She does have free will.”

    Brilliantly Kyla replied: “I don’t think she has, actually. Shit, to look at her, she looks real liberated, eh? And I mean, she gets out in the bush backpacking, too, an’ everythink... Shit.”

    Quite. Keith Arvidson was the male wanker par excellence, and Erin, alas, was the female groupie par excellence. Whatever the male object of adoration did, she was gonna be in it, too, boots an’ all—literally: she had almost as many pairs of expensive safari boots as he did—but into the bargain she was his little body slave. Hand and foot—yep.

    Harriet did break down and ask them to tea a couple of times during the week—for Erin’s sake, not his. But it wasn’t much of a success, the more so as the first time she had Hughie and Joel over. They were clearly not impressed by Keith’s account of his epic trip backpacking up Mount Kilimanjaro, nor by Erin’s dissertation on the way Keith’s back had started giving him warning signals but he’d carried on up Mount Kilimanjaro... Nor were they impressed by Erin’s admiring account of the way Keith had come to the rescue of an entire backpacking party somewhere deep in the Otcheekinokee Swamp—thereabouts, anyway: alligators came into it somehow—and competently navigated them all out with the aid of his wrist compass, competently lighting barbies as he went, with the aid of the matches he’d sealed in plastic just in case, not to mention the kindling he’d sealed in plastic just in—mm. Nor were they impressed by Keith’s countering this saga with the real story of how he’d guided them all out of the Otcheekinokee Swamp with the aid of his trusty wrist compass... Erin sat through it looking smug, unbelievably.

    On the next occasion Hughie refused point-blank to come, but Joel turned up, with a very dry look on his handsome face. Since Erin was wearing the black “Mount Kosciusko” tee he asked her, the face expressing nothing, whether she knew that that was a spelling mistake. Erin was very pleased he’d noticed. She began to explain— But Keith immediately cut in with the correct explanation. He didn’t actually say she’d got it wrong, that wasn’t his style. Harriet was beginning to feel—quite strongly, really—that an outright contradiction would have been easier to take. The tee-shirt wasn’t quite that vintage, though no-one could be blamed for assuming it was. The souvenir shop, their very first trip... They still had the colour slides: that showed you, didn’t it! Though of course these days it was easy to copy them to digital— Yes, of course you could do that! You just needed the right equipment, and it was quite surprising where you could source it! He told them, but no-one managed to look surprised. No, well, he added, one claim was that it was deliberate—harking back to the old days, you know? Nostalgia. And the tee-shirt design certainly dated back to the Seventies, didn’t it, dear? As a matter of fact he still had his Che Guevara shirt—it was a classic, quite collectable, really, these days! –Coy laugh. What? No, he and Erin had never been into demos, really, Harriet—tolerant smile.

    At the end of the evening, the Arvidsons having retired to their campervan, Joel concluded: “I guess we’re never gonna know exactly how that spelling got onto that tee-shirt.”

    Harriet bit her lip. “No. Never mind: Erin’s put me right on the way to make a proper stir-fry.”

    That did it, and Joel exploded in howls of laughter.

    Kyla grinned weakly. “Yeah, they are both pretty bad, I s’pose. But he’s worse!” she ended aggressively.

    Joel blew his nose loudly. “No argument there,” he said wryly. “Well, you seen it all, now, Harriet. Both ends of the grey nomad spectrum, that’s for sure.” He stowed his handkerchief away. “But be warned, Uncle Hughie seems to of got the grey nomad bug.”

    “Very funny. Not,” retorted Kyla scathingly.

    “No, honest! He was real struck by their campervan—that day he came over and Keith wasn’t in evidence: Erin gave him the royal tour,” he reminded them. “He’s been clearing out his caravan.”

    “Bulldust! He’s got his lizards in there!” cried Kyla angrily.

    “Only the stuffed ones,” replied Joel insouciantly.

    “Stop it,” said Harriet in a stifled voice.

    “Uh—no, that’s the old caravan, Kyla,” he admitted. “The new one—well, newer, it’d be getting on for twenty years old—it was full of junk, but he’s been clearing it out, like I say.”

    “Um, he is about the right age,” Harriet admitted uncertainly: was the whole thing a leg-pull? She wouldn’t have put it past Joel King.

    “Yeah; I think there must be a grey nomad gene that doesn’t kick in until you’re around retirement age,” he said thoughtfully.

    “If this is a joke it isn’t funny,” stated Kyla dangerously.

    “Uh—no. Sorry if you got the wrong impression, Kyla. It’s true, I’m afraid,” he said ruefully. “And you better be warned, Harriet: he’s gonna ask you if you wanna go grey nomadding with him.” With this, he went out.

    Grimly Kyla decided it was all a stupid joke.

    Harriet wasn’t so sure. That last had sounded all too genuine. And as a matter of fact she’d always thought—well, not a gene, no. She’d always thought it was a hormone, though. One of the granny and grandpa hormones that kicked in when you were around sixty. They made even the naturally taciturn loquacious, like old Mr Hatton in Mum’s old street, he’d never volunteered a word to anybody when she and Trisha were growing up, but he was now quite chatty, inflicting a flow of boring garbage on everyone he met, making you stand in line for ages at the chemist’s while he bored on and on, whether to Wayne or Glenda, it didn’t seem to matter which. Mum had been immune to these hormones, of course, but Dad had them: in anyone normal they also made you dote on your grandkids.

    “Wait and see, I suppose,” she said limply.

    They didn’t have long to wait. Hughie turned up at eight-forty next day. “Listen, Harriet, what say you an’ me take off for a bit? Maybe get over to the Red Centre, eh? You’ll like that! Do a bit of grey nomad stuff ourselves! Why not? Nothink to stop us, is there?”

Next chapter:

https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/09/to-red-centre.html