New Horizons

10

New Horizons

    The job with Global Project Management had lasted three months to the day. Harriet hadn’t really believed, because she knew Sally was very pleased with her work, that they’d let her go. She’d come home very tearful.

    “Look,” said Steve heavily, “you finished all them CVs that had piled up, that was really what they took you on for, wasn’t it?”

    “Mm,” she admitted, sniffing.

    “These small firms are like that: work you like stink for as long as the job lasts, then that’s it.”

    “Mm.”

    “RightSmart’ll find you something else!” he said bracingly.

    “It’s nearly summer, they mostly get waiting jobs over summer,” replied Harriet dolefully.

    “You’ve done that!” Trisha encouraged her.

    Harriet blew her nose. “No. Restaurant jobs.”

    Trisha gave Steve a desperate look.

    “Uh—anyone fancy a beer?” he offered on a weak note.

    Nobody did; in fact his wife gave him a good glare on the strength of it.

    Sighing, he got up heavily, went over to the cupboard where he kept the wine, on the score of its being lowest and farthest from the stove, though as nothing seemed to stay in there very long it wasn’t all that drastic if it was never at cellaring temperature, and hauled out a bottle of a decent red. Not the Coonawarra—no. But not bad. Shiraz, Harrie liked that.

    “No arguments,” he said firmly, pouring three generous glasses.

    “Steve, we’re only having Spanish rice for tea,” said Trisha weakly.

    “This’ll brighten it up, then. Go on, get it down yer!”

    Surprisingly, they both got it down them. And brightened noticeably; to the point, even, where Harriet suggested that maybe that tin of strange Japanese oysters would go good in the Spanish rice, it’d eke out the last of those frozen prawns that Trisha had got on special.

    That or poison them, reflected Steve, watching uneasily as Trisha opened the tin. “What are they like?”

    Harriet peered over her sister’s shoulder. “Overcooked oysters,” she decided as Trisha poked one dubiously with a fork.

    “They’ll do!” he decided. “Chuck ’em in!”

    “There won’t be very many each,” noted Trisha, having done so.

    “There’s only two small pieces of prawn each,” Harriet pointed out drily. “Um, I did read a Spanish recipe where they used sliced spicy sausage, like chorizo, as well as the seaf—”

    “No!” chorused the Drinkwaters.

    “All right, no. We’re out of paprika, anyway,” she said peaceably.

    “What is in it?” asked Steve rather faintly.

    “Um, well, it’s basically that recipe of Mum’s,” replied Trisha on a guilty note. “Well, rice, and onions and a tin of tomatoes.”

    Steve waited, but that seemed to be It. “Aw. Right.”

    “Never mind, it can’t possibly be as bad as Mum’s!” said Harriet bracingly.

    How very true.

    “I did add some garlic,” Trisha added.

    “Good-oh,” replied Steve calmly, pouring them all a second round.

    Jimbo subsequently demanded grated cheese on the rice and was duly refused it, on the score that it was Spanish, not Italian, but otherwise it went down quite well. And Harriet did seem a lot more cheerful. Not that a third of a bottle of red plus a meal of Mrs Harrison’s slightly ameliorated Spanish rice was gonna solve anything, really.

    “She is still working for that Coralie dame,” Steve pointed out to his spouse as they got into bed.

    Trisha picked up his pillow and bashed it angrily. “Yeah, but that’s less than half-time: what’s the betting she starts doing jobs for that awful old Pixie man again?”

    Only about ten to one. Steve didn’t say it. He just said: “’Tis good money, and at least she’s always with a cook, and usually someone else to help with waiting on, as well. Have you finished punishing my pillow?”

    “Plumping it,” corrected Trisha with an evil look.

    “That as well. Have ya?”

    “Yes!”

    Steve got into bed and switched the bedside light out. He could feel her lying there rigid, in fact he could feel the scowl. “Look,” he said heavily, “there’s nothing more we can do, love. At least we’ve managed to persuade her to use the loft, she’s not being rooked for megabucks in rent for a scungy flat. And we’re making sure she doesn’t starve.”

    “Mm. Well, summer’s coming, I suppose we could try... Well, not a barbie this time, maybe. Um, a dinner party?”

    Jesus, inviting who, exactly? Dean Barraclough? Mike Barraclough? Wayne Macdonald? Painwright from work? –Mrs Painwright had just given him the old heave-ho, the rumour being that she’d simply had enough and had decided that helping her sister run an up-market boutique in Byron Bay was a better option than slaving for him until he got his super.

    “Mm,” he replied in a sleepy voice.

    Trisha turned over on her side. “Yes, I might do that!” she decided pleasedly.

    Righto, sufficient unto the day.

    Sure enough, more jobs with Pixie Pearson had eventuated. As well as hiring people direct from RightSmart he was also, it appeared, a client of Coralie’s, usually for dinners. Twenty-four was Coralie’s absolute upper limit for dinner parties but she’d agreed to do this one, even though the host wanted four courses: hors d’oeuvre, soup, a main, and dessert, the last to include an offer of cheese, so as Jan had pointed out, it was technically five, and the only surprising thing was he hadn’t asked for a separate salad course. To which Harriet had retorted: “Those awful sycophants that he calls his friends wouldn’t know what it is!”

    The day had duly rolled round. The main was quail, specially requested by Mr Pearson, so Coralie did a pâté for the starter, managing to make it do the two dozen, and incidentally reducing Harriet to muffled hysterics as she looked at the beautifully laid out results on their trendy expanses of white china. The soup was fish, according to Jan so as they couldn’t say they hadn’t had a fish course—really easy, you made it in advance and then just chucked a few scallops in at the last moment. Harriet had been urged to guess what the dessert was and of course had collapsed in helpless giggles at the revelation that it was Oranges Caramel. A fancy version, since Mr Pearson was the sort of client that went in for, again according to Jan, “those barmy little piles”. The orange segments sat in a pile beside a thick swirl of blackcurrant sauce, or thickened Ribena—more hysterics from Harriet—described by Coralie as “sort of adapted from a cuisine minceur recipe.” A few blueberries, easier to source than blackcurrants, were artfully scattered around the plate, with a bit of thin caramelised peel and one almond wafer on top of the pile.

    It had all gone down a treat, especially the quail, which had been browned in butter and then baked in the oven in a mixture of port, chicken stock and orange zest. Coralie had admitted cheerfully that she’d cobbled the recipe together from a classic one in an old recipe book that hadn’t given much detail. The birds were beautifully presented on a little stack of sweet potato purée, surrounded by a swirl of the thickened sauce, to which Pixie Pearson was heard happily referring as “jus”, and decorated with tiny wings of watercress—one bunch doing twenty-four plates easily. The vegetables were—since the client was paying for them—steamed baby carrots, steamed baby fennel, and steamed baby aubergines, these last being, as Coralie cheerfully admitted, practically tasteless, but very trendy. As Mr Pearson was a very arty client, these weren’t offered in vegetable dishes, but were presented plated up most decoratively, the carrots in a little fan, the others leaning together beside them, the whole scattered with tiny puffs of dill—which the guests were quite at liberty to believe was more fennel, but actually Coralie’s herb garden didn’t have any of that—and, a unique touch, this, lightly toasted fennel seeds. If there hadn’t been two dozen guests they might’ve got a few dots of olive oil round the veggies, too, but enough was more than enough.

    Pixie Pearson was completely thrilled with the dinner and the service, the more so as Harriet in her frilled apron had answered his door and shown his guests in as well as waiting at table, and tipped both Jan and Harriet twenty dollars, into the bargain kissing Coralie’s cheek and presenting her with a bottle of “something special”. Real Cognac.

    Two dainty afternoons for Mr Pearson had followed hard upon the heels of this effort and lo! Trisha’s dire prediction that he was trying to take Harriet over had pretty well come true: Pixie had then invited Harriet warmly to become his permanent housekeeper—not fulltime, dear, if she had other commitments, but perhaps part-time? Not a cleaner, no, but some light dusting of his treasures, and the more personal touches—the dainty touches, looking after the table settings—and perhaps managing the household accounts? And of course showing guests in—that sort of thing.

    Trisha panicked, and rang RightSmart. She’d forgotten the blimming man’s surname, if she ever knew it, so had to ask to speak to Iain.

    “I’m afraid Iain’s with a client at the moment,” cooed the receptionist. “If you’d like to leave your name and number, he’ll get back to you.”

    Limply Trisha agreed, the wind properly taken out of her sails. She then had to fend off the receptionist’s polite but determined enquiry as to what it was in regard to, and finally muttered that it was about a housekeeping job. Well, it was, in a way! She was sure he wouldn’t ring back, but he did. Cripes, talk about a Pommy accent you could cut with a knife! Why hadn’t Harrie said? Um, maybe she had, only she hadn’t listened. At least he said his surname—Ross. Right. Then he assumed she was a client wanting a housekeeper, help!

    “Um, no, sorry,” she said to the expectant pause that followed his nicely phrased question. “I don’t need a housekeeper.” She ground to a halt.

    “Looking for that sort of work?” he said nicely. “We’d be very happy to have you on our books, Mrs Drinkwater.”

    “Um, no, sorry. Um, actually it's about my sister. She works for you. Harriet Harrison.” She swallowed nervously.

    “Of course, you’re Harriet’s sister!” he said, sounding perfectly genuine. “She’s mentioned you! Not sick, is she?”

    “No, it’s nothing like that,” replied Trisha glumly. “Um, well, did you know that she’d been offered a permanent part-time job by, um, Mr Pearson?”

    “Uh—no, I didn’t, ’smatter of fact. This is the Mr Pearson she’s worked for before, is it?”

    “Yes, the one they call Pixie,” said Trisha glumly.

    “Yes. Well, so far he hasn’t come to us about the position, but in any case I can assure you he’d be a very pleasant employer, and there’d be no problem about wages being paid promptly, that sort of thing, and I’m quite sure the work wouldn’t be too arduous.”

    “Mr Ross, you don’t understand!” she burst out.

    There was a little pause and then he said, sounding very warm and sympathetic: “Look, I think you’d better call me Iain, mm? It’s Trisha, isn’t it? What is up, Trisha? Are you worried about your nice Harriet getting mixed up with Pixie Pearson’s circle?”

    “Yes—well, not that so much, it’s—it’s the thing in general, Iain! I mean, heck, she’s never had much of a life, and now she’s gonna shut herself away all day with a silly old gay that spends all day looking at modern art and—and drinking short blacks!”

    Instead of rubbishing this Iain Ross returned promptly: “Mm, not much of a life. Though he’s interested in antiques as well as modern art. But I see exactly what you mean. Unfortunately there’s not much on our books at the moment that’d suit her. Quite a few data-input jobs, but I honestly don’t think she could cope with them, they’re very pressurized and require absolutely no sort of brain-work.”

    “No,” said Trisha dully. “She said you mentioned a really interesting job you did for an old professor.”

    “Mm, verifying his citations: that was a while back. We don’t get much like that, I’m afraid. Er—there is a job clearing up a deceased estate, we’ve got quite a niche in that area, but although she’d have no problem with the inventorying side, there’s quite a lot of heavy lifting involved in this one. –Sorry: dunno if you’d know what it entails, Trisha! It’s not a straightforward will, where everything goes to close relatives, it’s a job where the deceased’s assets have to be valued, and that includes the contents of the house.”

    “I see,” said Trisha gratefully. “Um, we cleared out Mum’s house quite recently, when it was sold, but Steve and a couple of mates did all the heavy lifting.”

    “Mm, it requires brawn,” he agreed with a smile in his voice. “Look, we could maybe split it between Harriet and one of the hefty chaps who do gardening jobs for us—let me look into it.”

    “Thanks. I—I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

    “I’m very glad you did!” he said warmly. “We like to look after our personnel, at RightSmart. Though I quite see it’s not a permanent solution to the problem.”

    Trisha had just been thinking that. “Um—no!” she gasped.

    “I’ll think about it. There is a possibility... It’d certainly get her out of old Pixie’s way. Um, look, Trisha, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but Pixie Pearson’s always struck me very forcibly as the sort who—well, not quite fair to say he’s a user, but... He’s the sort of person who, er, tends to suck people dry, if you see what I mean? Er—chew ’em up and spit ’em out, kind of thing. He loses interest in people, Trisha.”

    Trisha gulped. “Help! I get it. ...Um, in a way,” she said slowly, “Harrie’s a bit like that, too. She’ll tell you that a person isn’t a kindred spirit, or some such thing, just when you’re thinking she’s found a friend at last!”

    “Uh-huh. Quite a few bright people are like that. I think if she does take the job with Pearson, it might last as long as three months, and then he’ll find some other interest to fixate on. Might not even be a person. And from what you’ve said it sounds as if she might lose interest, too, mm?”

    “Yes,” said Trisha gratefully. “You’re right. I shouldn’t of panicked.”

    “I would have, too, if she was my sister!” he said with feeling. “Look, there’s still this other notion, but I need to think about it, and talk to my senior partner. I’ll get back to you, okay?”

    Trisha didn’t really think he would get back to her—though she informed Steve angrily that he would so! And she’d bet him ten bucks he would!

    The misguided Steve drawled: “Make it twenny and I’ll take yer.”

    “All right, then, twenty!”

    To the astonishment of all concerned, Steve lost.

    “Canberra?” croaked Harriet, goggling at Iain Ross. The more so as a stray shaft of sunlight had managed to penetrate its way past the very odd tall slabs of something, probably concrete, that half-hid the building’s very odd tall slits of windows, and was turning his reddish-blond head into a sort of halo. If she’d been superstitious she’d have told herself it was a Sign from Above. As it was, she merely told herself, with the part of her mind that wasn’t numbly failing to process what he’d just said, that she could see what his lovely wife saw in him.

    “Yes. Gail’s been over there for months, setting up our new office,” replied Iain with his persuasive smile. “As I say, a lot of entertaining goes on, and there are a lot of firms who could use part-time serving staff. So long as we can supply reliable people!”

    “Waiting at table or drinks parties?”

    “Well, both, Harriet. Same as what you’ve been doing for Coralie, really.”

    “I’m not very good at carrying trays of drinks,” said Harriet in a trembling voice.

    Those less used to the personnel placement profession might have taken this as a bad sign, but the experienced Iain Ross, on the contrary, read it as encouragement, and pretty soon the day was won. Harriet agreed to go over to Canberra together with a small core of other reliable people they were sending—RightSmart taking care of all the travel and accommodation arrangements—and become part of the nucleus of RightSmart’s person Fridays, as the persuasive Mr Ross put it with a twinkle.

    … “Crikey!” said Trisha, sagging, as the plane to Canberra took off with her sister aboard.

    “Yeah,” agreed Steve limply.

     They looked guiltily at each other.

    “Well, it’s better than working for that Pixie man!” said Trisha on a defiant note.

    Surrounded by pollies and diplomatic types, all looking down their noses at her? That or, unless all the stories were dead wrong—and Steve had a fair idea they weren’t, Canberra was well known to be full of brothels—making drunken passes at her.

    “Yeah. Well, at least this Gail type sounds reliable—I mean, she’s jacked up accommodation for them all, it sounds as if she’ll keep an eye on her.”

    “Yes, she sounds okay,” agreed Trisha.

    Two days later Steve met a bloke in the pub who’d done temping for RightSmart himself and told him that this Gail type that was the boss at RightSmart and would be overseeing the Canberra mob was a Les—known for it. Well, had a partner, yeah, but when did that stop them? On due consideration he didn’t pass this titbit on to Trisha. Canberra might not be exciting, in fact there were those that claimed it was the dullest dump in the whole country—well, full of pollies and civil servants serving out their time until they could retire to the Gold Coast? But at least the change of scene might do Harriet good, brighten her up a bit. With luck.

    Reg Fisher shoved a tumbler full of ice and whisky into Crispin Narrowmine’s hand. “Down the hatch!”

    “Cheers,” replied Crispin limply, perforce drinking. True, the room was filled with a seething, bellowing crowd of suits, and as the central heating was on it was bloody hot, an iced drink wasn’t altogether unwelcome, but— Oh, well. It was clearly the norm, out here. Mr Fisher was a businessman, not a “bloody pollie” or a lobbyist, as he’d long since informed him, and it had been very kind of him to include him in the invitation to Gary Butler from the High Commission, whose flat Crispin was sharing, accommodation of any kind being at a premium in Canberra, let alone accommodation within reasonable distance of one’s office. However, as all the guests rather naturally were either Mr Fisher’s business contacts or those he thought he might do business with or those who might further his business, there was nothing Crispin had in common with any of them. He had tried several topics of conversation but none of them knew what was on at the Sydney Opera House at the moment, none of them had visited the National Gallery of Australia, though one man had admitted his wife was a Friend of the latter and the bloody place was costing him a bomb, and another man had admitted that he hadn’t been to the museum here but he’d been to the Australian War Memorial, you’d like it, mate, in the army, weren’tcha? And none of them appeared to have opened a book within living memory. He tried not to sigh, valiantly drank ice-cold Teacher’s, and tried to look interested in what Reg Fisher was saying—or rather, bellowing: the decibel level had risen to the hideous level.

    Crispin had come out to Australia in the wake of the following conversation with his brother.

    “Canberra?” croaked John, goggling at him.

    Crispin shrugged. “Why not?” he said in an airy voice that wouldn’t have deceived a child of two, let alone his older brother who’d known him since his cradle.

    John took a deep breath. “Look, old man, this wouldn’t be on account of that nice Australian woman you met a few years back, would it? Uh—Harriet, that was it!”

    “No!” he said crossly, reddening. “That’s absurd! And how the Hell do you know whether she was nice or not?”

    “Got something to do with the ear-bending that went on at the time. Sounded a thoroughly decent woman, to me.”

    Crispin had recovered his composure. “Rubbish. Look, this is all highly confidential—”

    John’s pleasant, unremarkable features took on a look of one suffering from a sudden attack of gas. For God’s sake, all the crap bloody ’5 did was “highly confidential,” unquote, in other words dead boring and unrelated to anything real—well, no-one had predicted those bloody bombs on the buses and tubes, had they? And the shooting of that poor South American with his backpack had been the most almighty cock-up.

    “Very well, Crispin, if you say so. But, just incidentally, what about the job with Sotheby’s?” he demanded.

    Not so very long after the Harriet thing Crispin had accepted a position with Sotheby’s, vetting Arabic manuscripts and books, which at the time had looked genuine. However, whether it was just another bloody cover-up was anyone’s guess. He’d already been doing a fair bit of that sort of work on a commission basis, not just for Sotheby’s but for anyone who hired him, as a cover for the counter-intelligence nonsense.

    Crispin looked annoyed. “This is just a temporary thing. And the Sotheby’s job was never fulltime, anyway.”

    No? He’d certainly seemed busy twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four: they’d seen very little of him over the past couple of years—but who knew what the Hell he’d really been up to? John sighed. “Very well, go on. You’d got as far as ‘highly confidential’.”

    Apparently not registering the snide note, Crispin plunged into it. John didn’t point out that his little brother had signed the Official Secrets Act and could be clapped up for telling him anything about any of it, because yet again it was going to turn out to be a mare’s nest, full of cockatrice’s eggs.

    They—the mysterious They, capital T, of course—had, according to Crispin, had intel (not a word), that someone in Australia, They thought based in Canberra, was recruiting young Muslims for terrorist training—which might well have been supposed to be entirely the Aussies’ affair, but there was a contact in Birmingham, not actually at a mosque, but connected—and blah, blah, blah. Totally tenuous. Some of them were Somalis, were they? Mm. They’d be inconspicuous in Australia. The long and short of it was, Crispin was going out to the High Commission.

    “As a spy,” concluded John heavily.

    “No, don’t be an ass!”

    John didn’t say: “All right, counter-spy, ’5 or ’6, what's the bloody difference?” Though he felt like it. “What, then? Military attaché?”

    “N— Well, put it like that if you like. Intelligence officer.”

    “Really? Are you allowed to be called that, these days? Not third secretary, due to be deported—they always show them going up the steps of the plane, don’t they, or was that only in the Fifties?—third secretary, due shortly to be deported to Mother Russia, sorry, Mother Britain?”

    “Very funny, John!”

    “Crispin, you’ll be bored out of your skull. Not that sussing out the Muslim scene in Birmingham, or for that matter Oxford, can have been much more exciting, but at least you were within reach of—I was going to list them: decent music, art galleries, museums, libraries, but let’s just say within reach of civilisation.”

    “I’ll be too busy to be bored,” he said, frowning.

    Yeah, right.

    “And you should talk!” he added, rallying. “You only get up to town once in a blue moon!”

    John sighed again. Did he ever stop and listen to himself? “Town?” He’d had a stint—quite a long one—as attaché with the Embassy in Washington, and that, if anything in the rarefied world of MI5 and their pals in ’6 could ever be said to be related to reality, had been about as relevant as it could get, but he’d been bored stiff: loathed the diplomatic types only one degree less than he loathed the damned politicians. In fact he’d loathed America. He was the most urbanised, Anglocentric creature John knew. Uh—did he mean Anglocentric? London-centred, maybe? Well, anyway, he knew what he meant! “Town” was London, everywhere else in the United Kingdom was “down”, whether north or south, didn’t matter, and, more or less, wogs started at Calais. Crispin was no racist, but on the other hand John sincerely doubted that he saw anyone non-British as entirely real. Er—well, the Australians were down-to-earth enough, weren’t they? Possibly Canberra would, um, shake him out of his rut? Brighten up his ideas? Well, something like that. And he’d certainly seemed to see Harriet as real, at the time—though, please note, he hadn’t made any effort to contact her again after she’d given him the brush-off. True, he hadn’t had her address. He’d moaned about it enough, though.

    “What are you looking like that for?” demanded Crispin crossly.

    “Uh—nothing, old man. Well, uh, it’s inland, isn’t it? But I suppose you can always get over to Sydney for a bit of sun and surf. And—uh, well, perhaps go on a few camping trips, that sort of thing? Um, hiking?” he ended weakly.

    “Of course. There’ll be plenty to do!”

    Mm. John knew a chap—Doug Cantwell, very decent fellow, actually—who’d been posted there as, well, something humble like third secretary to a third secretary, kind of thing, very low down the diplomatic ladder indeed, and he’d reported that the diplomats got dirt money for Canberra and it was one of the most boring, if admittedly safest, holes in the world. Not as boring as Wellington, New Zealand: that was the sort of place where your marriage broke up because your wife couldn’t hack the monotony. But close.

    “Let’s drink to it,” he said, dredging up a smile. He got up and poured them each a hefty belt of whisky—he certainly needed it. On due consideration he refrained from asking if he should fill Crispin’s tumbler up with ice in anticipation of his departure for the colonies.

    “Here’s to it!” he managed, raising his glass.

    Crispin raised his, looking pleased. “To Canberra!”

    In the kitchen nice Merri Dawson who ran Executive Catering straightened from the oven—second oven, there was an eye-level one as well—very flushed, with a tray of nibbles in her hands. “Phew! Last lot, and if they all vanish like the dew as well, too bad!”

    Merri had been thrilled to be one of RightSmart’s first clients: the girls you got for waiting jobs here were so unreliable, the young people didn’t stay, of course, so they were all in their last year at school, and when the Year Twelve exams rolled round of course they all packed the job in. And the young wives that sometimes applied were worse, you couldn’t blame them for being desperate to get out of the house, the suburbs round Canberra were ghastly, but the kids were always coming down with colds and things and they’d ring you at the last moment to say they couldn’t come after all, or worse, they wouldn’t ring at all. There were uni students, of course, from ANU, but they were just as unreliable, and of course they were always having exams, mid-year ones as well. Though they didn’t get the problems here you did in Sydney, with all the waiters and waitresses vanishing at Christmas, because of course Canberra emptied for about three months, there was nothing going on from December to virtually March!

    Harriet looked admiringly at the nibbles. “They look very exotic, Merri.”

    Merri was just as down-to-earth about the fancy stuff she served up to her customers as Coralie or Julia from Sydney—even more so, really. She grinned. “Yeah, look’s right! Well, Her Ladyship vetoed sushi, evidently it’s dead—what they serve up round here is, I can tell ya!—and ordered something hot, nothing on toast, too old-hat, nothing on crackers, too suburbanite—the moo actually said that,” she assured her: Harriet, who had now encountered the client, nodded hard; she could just hear her—“and kindly do not suggest miniature vol-au-vents or puffs of any kind, Mrs Dawson, we’re not living in the Sixties. –Shows it’s a facelift, eh?” she noted.

    Harriet gave a startled snigger. “Too right!”

    “So it’s little squares of frozen pastry with bits of prawn in a chilli and ginger mix with a bit of fish sauce in it—thought soy might be too old-hat these days,” she added with a wink, “thickened with good old cornflour. See, ya put the little pastry squares in the pattypans and they kind of shape them: look quite nifty with their corners sticking up like that, eh? I’ll just pretty them up a bit.”

    Harriet watched with interest as she put the thin green circlets of sliced spring onion, that she’d been mysteriously saving after the white bits had gone into the prawn mixture, on top of the little hot thingos. Two circlets each. Then she added a sliver of some dark green substance and a sliver of sliced red chilli to each one.

    “Gee, that looks really up-market, Merri. What’s the dark stuff?”

    Merri grinned. “That Japanese seaweed stuff. Left over from yesterday’s sushi party.”

    Harriet bit her lip, failed to control herself, and collapsed in giggles.

    “Yeah,” said Merri with huge satisfaction. “The prawns are those frozen Thai ones, of course. The ruddy woman could of done it all herself for a fraction of the price, in fact she could of invited a couple of hundred more of them and it’d still of come to a fraction—”

    “Don’t!” gasped Harriet helplessly.

    Merri grinned, very pleased with the success of her effort. “That’s the top end of the catering business for you, Harriet. Just as well, eh? Or me and Jock and Bunny’d starve.”

    Harriet nodded, groping for her hanky. Jock was the hubby, and Bunny wasn’t a child, he was their big Persian cat. Jock was a Scotsman who’d been out here for yonks. He’d been a building contractor for years but he had a bad back and couldn't do the hard yacker he used to—very frustrating for him, evidently, poor man. So he’d taken on a job as a carer in the volunteer-for-the-dole scheme, the government didn’t call it that, but Harriet couldn’t remember the official gobbledegook and as a matter of fact Merri hadn’t been able to, either. You had to be old enough to qualify, but it was quite a good scheme, in that it actually did some good in the community. The only trouble was, people didn’t tend to retire in Canberra: they got out of the dump as soon as they could, so there weren’t all that many people in need of care. At the moment he had three elderly men in Queanbeyan that he helped: they weren't bedridden, but they needed assistance in showering and their shopping done for them, and part of the job was taking them for outings, Jock really liked that. They were supposed to go for coffees or take in something vaguely cultural or educational that didn’t require too much standing—a band concert, perhaps, or something at the Over Sixties’, but between Merri and Harriet they usually ended up at the pub! One of them was very keen on lawn bowls and though he was too stiff to play much these days, Jock often took him along to the bowling club and, to Merri’s freely expressed relief, he'd got really keen and taken it up himself! At one stage she’d honestly thought he was gonna go into a depression, y’know? It was bad enough when a bloke retired, but heck, Jock wasn’t nearly at retirement age yet! And the job had taken up all of his time, he’d never had a hobby.

    Lawn bowls was, of course, mad, especially when taken dead seriously, the way its aficionados did—and there were thousands of them in Australia, even young men were playing the bloody game competitively these days, though it still only seemed to be the older ladies that went in for it—but it wasn’t as mad as golf, anyone that imagined hitting a tiny, tiny ball with a very, very long stick was gonna be fun was bats. But Harriet was very glad to hear that nice Merri’s Jock wasn’t going to go into a depression after all. So she had smiled and nodded.

    “Better have some clean doilies on your tray,” decided Merri briskly, inspecting it.

    They were paper doilies, of course, the very fancy sort that you bought in packets. They weren’t precisely cheap but Merri of course costed them in in her, frankly, extortionate charges to her clients. Evidently the up-market Canberra set believed that the more you paid the more up-market it was gonna be, kind of thing. Well, good, it meant people like Merri could make a living!

    “Yes: those lovely little minced pork thingos on the lemongrass skewers vanished like the dew and several ladies asked me who the caterer was—I gave them your card,” replied Harriet, smiling at her, “but then they all started putting the sticks back on the tray.”

    “Better than dropping them on the carpet,” noted Merri drily, rapidly setting out clean doilies.

    “Yes. We had some awful ones in Sydney,” sighed Harriet.

    Merri sniffed. “Drink so much they dunno what they’re doing—yeah. Not to say don’t care. D’jew get the ones that do drugs in their host’s bathroom?”

    “Mm. The sort they sniff. In the passage as well.”

    Merri made a rude noise. “Right! They’re all the same!” Carefully she set the little canapés on the doilies. They came out of the patty pans without effort. Harriet watched enviously: she only had to go near any sort of baking tin for its contents to stick to it drastically, never mind if it claimed to be non-stick.

    “Go on,” Merri ordered cheerfully. “Waste them on them!”

    “Too right,” agreed Harriet, departing with her tray.

    Merri looked grimly at the ranks of dirty glasses that Harriet and Kath, one of the unreliable uni students, had been bringing out in relays—the guests were all the type that drank it, abandoned the glass and grabbed another, of course. “Right! Dishwasher! And too bad if it makes a noise like a Boeing taking off, this lot won’t even notice it!”

    In the big main room the crowd had thickened, rather than thinning out as people trickled off to other parties—which, Harriet had by now discovered, was a feature of Canberra does. They fell on the little hot fishy thingos like starving wolves, though with the amount they’d already put away, you wouldn’t think they’d have room. Funnily enough it didn’t seem to matter what nationality they were, either—Harriet was almost sure the lady in the lovely sari was from the Indian High Commission: she certainly had the accent, and the host was cosying up to her hubby like nobody’s biz, and he’d earlier been overheard telling a mate how he was hoping to do business in India—but as she fell on the savouries as eagerly as anyone, presumably she couldn’t be a Hindu after all, even though the odds were in favour of it. One man who she was pretty sure was an Israeli, judging by the tone of his conversation earlier about the Gaza Strip, had gobbled up the little thingos with bacon round them, too. Didn’t you have to be of the Jewish faith to get anywhere in Israeli government circles, though? In fact, didn’t you even have to be, to get married? She’d read it... somewhere. No!

    Harriet gasped, staggered, and dropped her empty tray. The man over there with the fair hair looked exactly—exactly—like Crispin Narrowmine! But it couldn’t possibly be him—what would he be doing in Australia? And more especially with this load of mixed pseuds, sycophants, businessmen with an eye on the main chance, and just general suckers-up to the pollies.

    Luckily she wasn’t far from a wall, because she felt as if she was gonna faint. She managed to get to it, and sagged against it. She couldn’t see him any more, the room was so crowded. Had it been him? Her heart was pounding so wildly and her hands were so sticky and she felt so dizzy that she couldn’t think.

    No-one seemed to have noticed that she’d dropped the tray. Or to have noticed her at all, thank goodness! After quite a period of numbed sagging she managed to grope her way over to the tray, pick it up, and totter out to the kitchen with it.

    “Finished alrea— What’s up?” said Merri sharply.

    Harriet tried to smile, and burst into tears.

    “Shit,” said Merri under her breath, coming to put a comforting arm round her. “Don’t cry, Harriet! They’re a load of bastards, of course, but they get like that when they’re grogged up. Don’t let the buggers get to you. What’d ’e do? Pinch your bum? If it was worse, I’ll take action, don’t you worry!”

    “No!” she gulped. “Suh-sorry!” Merri pushed a bunch of paper towels into her hand and she blew her nose loudly. “Sorry. Um, it was nothing like that, Merri.”

    She’d given Merri a real fright. “What the Hell was it, then? Feeling sick?”

    “No,” said Harriet limply. “I’m really sorry, Merri. It—it was stupid, I thought I—I recognised someone, that’s all.”

    There was a short pause.

    “I see,” said Merri.

    No doubt she did, yeah, there were no flies on Merri Dawson. “Mm,” agreed Harriet, sniffing. “Sorry. It was just so unexpected.”

    Merri sighed. “Yeah, well, at our ages, we all got a past, eh? And some of the jokers I’ve known— Well, never mind that! Siddown, you better have a drink.” She assisted Harriet onto a kitchen chair and insouciantly produced a bottle of the client’s brandy.

    “Thanks,” said Harriet limply, perforce sipping.

    Merri sat down beside her. “Better?” She poured herself a nip, since it was there.

    “Mm. Thanks.”

     Merri sipped, and sighed. “Didn’t expect to see ’im in Canberra, eh?”

    “No. It’s the last place— I mean, not even in Australia!”

    “That right?” replied RightSmart’s client kindly. “It would of been a shock, then.”

    “Yes,” agreed Harriet dully. “I’m not even sure if it was really him.”

    “Yeah,” said Merri reminiscently. “After me and Trev broke up—well, ya needn’t mention this to Jock, least said soonest mended is my motto, can’t understand these people that inflict their ruddy confessions on their partner, what good’s it gonna do? It’ll clear their conscience and make the partner feel like Hell!”

    Harriet hadn’t expected to encounter anyone who shared her view on this point—ever: she nodded hard, goggling at her.

    “Yeah. He was miles too old for me, of course, and we had nothink in common, really... I decided it was never gonna go anywhere, y’know? So I busted up with him Didn’t mean I wanted to, mind you. Only he’d just taken the ruddy wife to Club Med Noumea and it was the last straw, really. This was when I was still living in Melbourne. I moved to Sydney, only it didn’t really work: for years after that I kept imagining I saw him in the street. My heart used to beat like blazes... Only it never would be: just some other joker with sandy hair.”

    “Yes,” said Harriet, sighing. “I’ve had one or two— Yes. He’s got fair hair. Not that it’s a very common type out here, really. But I suppose you get a lot more Englishmen in Canberra, proportionately.”

    “That’d be right, yeah. ’Specially if the clients wanna do business with the Brits, eh?”

    Harriet smiled shakily at her. “Yes.”

    Merri heaved herself up. “Well, that was their lot—they all vanished, did they? –Yeah. Bottomless pits. I reckon you could live in Canberra, if you got in with the right ruddy crowd, of course, without ever having to pay for your own dinner! –We better get on with the clearing up. You can wash and dry some glasses, Harriet, the girls can clear up; if we wait until that flamin’ Boeing’s finished its ruddy cycle”—with a sour look at the dishwasher—“we’ll be here all night.”

    Gratefully Harriet got up and got on with washing the glasses.

    On second thoughts Merri put on a clean apron and went out to help the girls. Um... well, look for a Pommy-looking joker with fair hair? Um... Cripes. If that was him, you couldn’t blame her for coming over all peculiar! Though what he’d ever seen in her—not that she wasn’t very nice, of course! Bright, too. Worth ten of any of the overdressed hags and bimbos in here, though when did a bloke ever take that into consideration? Well, not the nice ones, maybe, but how many of them were there in flaming Canberra?

    Merri looked avidly at Crispin Narrowmine being gushed at by a fortyish lady in a very youthful miniskirted pink thing that a girl of seventeen would have had trouble getting away with. He didn’t look all that unkeen, so poor Harriet. Yeah, well, we’d all made our mistakes... She chivvied Kath and Peta into action, picked up a few token glasses, and headed back to the kitchen. She wouldn’t bring up the subject again: poor old Harriet!

    Even the placid Steve was shaken by this latest fiasco. “You only been over there for three ruddy weeks, Harrie! We thought it was a chance for you! What the fuck went wrong?”

    “Nothing, really,” said Harriet faintly. “I just didn’t like it.”

    Steve took a very deep breath. “Look, I don’t like working with ruddy Painwright, but I keep on doing it, ’cos I gotta earn a CRUST!”

    Trisha swallowed hard. “Don’t shout at her, Steve,”

    “It’s all right, he’s worried about the rent for the loft,” said Harriet quickly.

    “I AM NOT!” he bellowed, turning purple.

    “Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of jobs going at RightSmart.”

    “Yes, but will they want you back, after this?” said Trisha before she could stop herself.

    “Gail said she understood,” said Harriet very, very faintly.

    Maybe, but would she of liked it? Trisha breathed deeply. “Mm. All right. You better pop off to bed, Harrie, you look done in.”

    “Thanks,” said Harriet very faintly, escaping.

    The Drinkwaters looked at each other limply.

    “More to it than meets the eye, don’t say it,” he groaned.

    On second thoughts Trisha didn’t say it, no. Instead she got up and poured them each a glass of sherry. It was a present from Aunty Mary, far too sweet, but Steve downed it gratefully.

Next chapter:

https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-unexpected.html