Aftermath

11

Aftermath

December (ctd.) As predicted, by the 27th of December the temperature in Adelaide was reported to have hit 42 degrees. It was a little cooler in the Barossa Valley, but we certainly wouldn’t have said so.

    “My God,” groaned Flossie, flat out on my bed. The room Mireille and I were now sharing faced south, which is the colder side in the Antipodes, and was the coolest of the bedrooms in Greg’s rambling old bungalow. Which, even tho the room air conditioner (aka “reverse-cycle”) had been turned down to 18°, was not saying so very much. Until one poked one’s nose out of doors, that was. I had read somewhere the phrase “the heat hit like a wave”, but that wasn’t quite it. It was more like walking slap into a solid block. The Cellar Door, which normally reopened on the 28th, was closed: Greg had said Damn the post-Christmas trade, if anyone was mad enough to drive out here in a heatwave, that was their bad luck. We’d re-open on New Year’s Day—unless we got another one, unquote. We Junior Drones had exchanged horrified glances, no-one daring to ask how often did they get this sort of heat.

    Crumpy was sitting droopily by Flossie’s feet. “Yes,” he sighed in agreement. “I s’pose it’s a bit cooler in here, tho.”

    “Then why are you radiating heat all over my feet and ankles?” our Hon. Sec. groaned.

    “Am I? Sorry, old man,” replied the Crumpet dully.

    And a glum silence fell…

    Finally Bean Minor broke it, in rather a small voice. “Where are they?”

    No-one had to ask Who they? We all knew he meant the Egg and Her. And the Bean replied sourly: “Put it like this, Bean Minor. They spent all day yesterday in the room he’s bagged above the garage—”

    “Loft,” I corrected him.

    “What?”

    “Greg calls that room over the garage a loft. It was just an attic before he converted it into a bedsit for Harrison.”

    “Converted it sort of,” my elder sibling replied, tho without animation. “Okay, a loft. They’re in it. –Probably doing it, Bean Minor, yes, if that was going to be your next question.”

    The poor minor legume was rather red. “It wasn’t, actually.”

    “No: QED,” chimed in the loyal Teddy Trelawney.

    “Indeed,” sighed Flossie.

    More glum silence…

    Eventually the Crumpet offered sadly: “He did have lots of blonde bimbos when we were up at Oxford, y’know.”

    “True,” sighed Flossie. “And?”

    The Crumpet was seen to flounder. “Well—uh—well none of them meant a thing to him!”

    “And?”

    “Shut up, Flossie,” I groaned.

    He sighed. “You of all people, Sister Bean, ought to understand that little bits on the side like the frightful Anthea are negligible.”

    “But the Egg’s not me, you prat!”

    Oops, was that a disconcerted silence? Um, did I have that word wrong? Um, prat, um…

    Flossie had actually bothered to turn his head to look at me—Mireille and I were sitting on the other single bed, the Bean was perched on the one bedroom chair, rather a short chair, grasshopper on a tiny toadstool effect, and the two younger boys were sprawled on the rug.

    “One fails to see why this undoubted truth should entail my being a prat, oh deluded companion of the more illicit exploits of my misguided youth.”

    Mireille was looking horrified and rather flushed, not just the heat, so I said quickly: “He means things like pouring treacle into the engine of his Housemaster’s car or stapling all of Miss Hollings’ School Swimming Team’s official swimsuits together and hanging them from the diving board. –They never suspected me for an instant, on that one,” I noted musingly, “’cos the whole Form knew I’m terrified of heights.”

    “Yes,” Flossie agreed. “Well—served the woman right for storing them in the official Team Lockers down at the pool, really. –Incredibly easy to break into, given the appropriate implement supplied by your old Oncle Alphonse.”

    Mercifully at this one Mireille gave a startled giggle, and looked much happier.

    “Yes, well,” he went on, “one does feel that my analogy holds true, Sister Bean, thus rather tending to nullify the ‘prat’ thing—no?”

    “What?” groped the Bean.

    “I second the Hon. Mem.’s remark,” agreed the Crumpet. “You’re getting bally obscure in your old age, Flossie.”

    “Obscurer,” the Bean corrected sourly.

    “Obscurer,” he agreed.

    I sighed. “All right, Flossie, you’re not a prat, and I do understand that the Antheas of the world are negligible. But I just wouldn’t have thought it of Egg, not when he’s got Carrie-Ann at home!”

    The Crumpet gave me a severe look—at least, severe for him. “I have two words for you, Sister Bean. Devon—Holmes.”

    “God, she didn’t?” gasped Flossie, almost sitting up in his horror.

    “Yes, didn’t we tell you? –Of course she did. Well it was after that enormous win on the Melbourne Cup,” the doughy one conceded.

    “Eh? Thought you all lost?”

    Was that a guilty silence now prevailing? I looked around at the faces… Not the heat, no: guilt. They hadn’t let on, had they, the—the pikers!

    “You blighters!” I cried. “That’s really beyond the bally pale! –They lost, Flossie, because they thought they knew it all, especially Crumpy and Egg, just because they can ride on a horse without falling off!”

    “Er—sometimes,” he murmured, eyeing the Crumpet thoughtfully. “And it tends to be ‘ride a horse’ rather than ‘ride on a horse’ in the English vernac., old thing.”

    Ride a… Ride on a …. Oh. “Well yes, but you know what I mean. But I put my money on darling Gold Trip, because he’s a French horse, and so did Sid and Devon, and we all won!”

    “Sid only did it to please her,” noted Bean sourly. “Won about two hundred, I think.”

    Flossie raised his eyebrows slightly. “You could have done it to please her, old thing—tho one recognises, of course, that she is your sibling, and that the juvenile dictates of such as the Marbledown Fifth Eleven would dictate otherwise.”

    Bean glared, baffled, hah, hah!

    “She won a thousand and fifty dollars,” said Crumpy heavily. “Odds of twenty-one to one, y’see. So did dashed Holmes: he got her to put his fifty on.”

    “So they had to celebrate their joint win, did they?” drawled Flossie.

    “Apparently,” he agreed sourly.

    “There was nothing in it,” I noted.

    “No,” Flossie conceded, “and there’s nothing in this thing of Egg’s. But while it lasts, it’s going to be damned tedious, isn’t it?”

    “Yes. Actually it already is,” Bean Minor admitted.

    “Well said, that rather newly elected Hon. Mem., Junior Drones,” he replied.

    “I suppose we could have a meeting?” the misguided cadet de la famille Fullarton-B. then suggested.

    “Too hot,” said Flossie definitely, shutting his eyes.

    “Yes,” agreed Crumpy, drooping.

    “Eugh—Mel,” said Mireille cautiously, “we could fetch some cold drinks, do you think?”

    (No: that would require activity. Such as walking, not to say, movement.) But I dragged myself to my feet. “All right.”

    “Nothing alcoholic,” said Flossie with his eyes shut. “The fruit known as ‘grape’ in English is too warming: ‘Nature: chaud au premier degré, humide au second degré, or if one prefers, ‘Nature: Warm in the first degree, moist in the second.’ So to speak. The same source assures one that such fruits provoke thirst, too.”

    “Ignore him,” I advised Mireille as she opened her mouth.

    “But what is it?” she fumbled.

    “The Tacuinum Sanitatis,” said Flossie with his eyes shut. “Great mediaeval authority on the properties of foods, especially veg. Based on an Arabic authority, actually. Several versions around—all frightfully rare and valuable, of course. I believe the British Library has a fairly early Arabic copy, done for the son of—” He paused. “The gentleman known in the West as Saladin. Some very fine 14th-century versions from Lombardy in various European libraries—known for their profuse illustrations. –It’s all in the W. word: look it up, by all means, Bean,” he added affably.

    “Oh, shut up,” my sibling groaned. “It’s too damned hot for your dashed persiflage, Flossie. –Go on, girls, cold drinks, save our lives.”

    I paused, waiting for Flossie to point out that the Bean could fetch cold drinks, for that matter, but he didn’t, just sighed heavily.

    “Come on Mireille,” I said. “If there isn’t enough for everyone we’ll just drink it in the kitchen: d’ac’?”

    “D’ac’!” she agreed with a sudden giggle, and we exited, not precisely victorious, but not totally defeated either. What is it that prompts the female to cater slavishly to the male? Merely cultural brainwashing? Some sort of dreadful atavism, that raises its ugly head when the figure starts to, so to speak, develop?

    Oh, well.

    … No juice. One lonely bottle of spring water in the fridge. Oops. Um… Well plenty of icecubes.

    Greg came in looking glum as we were standing there with the upper, or freezer, compartment of his giant fridge-freezer open looking somewhat dispiritedly at the said squared-off glacial blocks—tho the cold air was welcome.

    “Looking for cold drinks?” he asked glumly.

    “Yes,” we admitted.

    He scratched his head. “Uh—yeah. Too hot for beer, really. Anyway, we’ve drunk it”. –He and Webber had been lurking in the sitting-room watching sports on the telly, or perhaps it was one of those strange not-telly services that only provide sports and plastic-looking stuff calculated to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Tho “watching” is something of a misnomer: sleeping in front of said technological marvel, last time I peeked in on them.

    “Hang on. Think there might be some lime juice.” He delved in Janine S.’s well-stocked pantry. “Here ya go. Had this? English, originally. Been around for yonks.”

    Rose’s Lime Juice? Good grief. I had a sudden sharp vision of self and sophisticated much older gent, a wine-shipper pal of Oncle Fernand’s, over in England for the Derby last— Help, only last June? Yes, it had been, it seemed like years back—as I say, the two of us in the lobby of his charmingly old-fashioned and totally discreet hotel sipping… Gimlets! That was it. Gin and Rose’s Lime. Oh gosh. Another life.

    “What’s the matter, Mel?” asked Mireille in alarm.

    I managed to smile shakily. “Nothing. When M. de Beaupré was in England for the Derby, we had this, with gin. It’s a cocktail. Called a Gimlet.”

    “Nobbad,” owned Greg. “So didja go to the race, Mel?”

    “Yes. It was a lovely day. We bumped into Uncle Flossie, that’s right; so we all got together. And I bet on the winner!” I beamed.

    “She’s vairy lucky at the betting,” Mireille explained.

    “Yeah, had a win on the Cup, too,” he agreed. “Well, cold lime juice do ya, will it?”

    “Yes, lovely thanks, Greg,” I agreed. “Would you like some?”

    “Might as well. –Hang on, we could use the punchbowl.” Forthwith he hauled it out. Golly, it was huge!

    “Sometimes use it when we have a big do,” he explained to our astounded expressions. “You know: celebrate the vintage, that sorta thing. Well we’re gunnoo, regardless,” he noted firmly. “Duck’s predicting gloom, mindjew. He reckons the vintage’ll be so late this year there’ll be nothing to celebrate at the Barossa Vintage Festival—that’s the big local do they hold every two years. It’s for the tourists, really,” he admitted. “Stalls and stuff. Big parade with floats. Held in April, but Duck reckons we’ll be lucky to get all the grapes in by then.”

    “That is vairy late, I think?” ventured Mireille.

    He made a face. “Yeah, it is, pet. Usually we’re picking the Shiraz in mid-Feb., but at the rate we’re going it’s gonna be well into March. Be a very late veraison, ya see: we’ve had so much rain the sun’s not getting at the grapes for the leaves, let alone developing the sugars. Um, sorry: veraison means when the grapes begin to change colour—ripen, ya see.”

    “Véraison,” I murmured.

    “Yes, of course Mel,” she agreed: “it’s a French word. One must cross one’s fingers, I think, Greg?”

    He beamed at her and patted her on the shoulder. “That’s it, pet, you cross your fingers for us! –Hang on, I think there might be a bottle or two of soda water in the pantry. We can bung that in, too!”

    And pretty soon the punchbowl was full and, Greg producing a giant ladle to match, we were able to ladle out cold, slightly sparkling lime drinks with ice.

    … “Bless you, girls. One feels almost human,” sighed Flossie, setting down his glass.

    Suddenly Trelawney emitted a guffaw. “More than one could hope for, really!” he gasped.

    And never mind the heat and the problem of the Anthea Infestation, as Bean and Crumpy had started calling it, the rest of us Junior Drones burst out laughing at the expense of that esteemed legal beagle and one-time scholar in French, Arabic and Latin, Mr Flossie (James) Nightingale Esq., Hon. Sec. (J.D.), K.I.All.

    Clive Lamont and Uncle Flossie weren’t staying in the Barossa; they’d spent Christmas night at the obliging Silvia’s house but then driven their hire car back to Adelaide to the Intercontinental. They hadn’t been able to get their first choice but this hotel was sort of convenient, in that it was downtown, near the strange combined railway station slash casino, and comfortable enough, but it had a really odd view of the railway yard in the foreground, Adelaide’s modernistic opera house and a muddy, unattractive narrow river in the middle ground, a cricket pavilion beyond that, and then the low hill leading up to North Adelaide, the rise we’d gone up in order to get to old Charlie Lewisham’s place. Around the cricket ground on the far side of the river it was what the locals called “parkland” but apart from that of course it was all suburban. Still, that view was preferable to the one from the front of the hotel, which was merely of block-like, not very high-rise city buildings.

    Several people by now had told us the horror tale relating to the river: the ubiquitous They didn’t flush it out enough by (I think) opening the weir, or possibly the sluice-gates, thank you, Trelawney, for that engineering detail—as I say, didn’t flush it out often enough, so it became stagnant and grew blue-green algae. Those who had had the privilege of watching the D. Attenborough epics on telly at Marbledown School, while I was immured at Merrifield at the mercy of the bimbos’ choice of chick flicks and inane chat shows and similar, then launched into a dissertation on the said blue-green A., but at that point I switched off. Well it wasn’t at all clear how life’s emergence from the primaeval ooze, i.e. the said B.-G. A., related to what was going on in a river in 21st-century South Australia. But we did now realise that it wasn’t safe to swim in the thing.

    Anyway, the two older gents were happy enough with their hotel, is what I started off to say. And not surprisingly had spent the days after Christmas lurking therein because of the heatwave. Patronising the bars—quite.

    But as Greg had predicted, the temperature dropped a lot after the heatwave—to around twenty-eight, in fact, and we had a couple of very humid days, which was, apparently, the norm. After which we could expect the usual dry heat of the SA summer. And if he (Greg) was us he’d head for the beaches. Go early, spend the morning there, then join up with the old boys for lunch, eh?

    So that was what we did. Unfortunately the Anthea Infestation was only too keen to appear at the beach, so it came, too. Mercifully not in the people mover with the rest of us, but in the generous Greg’s car, with Egg.

    … “The sporting type,” noted Flossie with distaste as, clad in something wholly expectable, she offered to race the lads into the sea and, with what was doubtless meant to be an irresistible look at Egg, dashed off immediately, with trills of girlish laughter. Naturally he dashed after her, drat him.

    Bean Minor and Trelawney really wanted to swim: they looked after the pair bitterly. And Trelawney offered: “Shall we go on the jetty?” –We were at the beach we’d visited before with Greg, with the long old wooden jetty. It wasn’t yet quite nine, as we’d taken his advice and left early, and the beach was almost deserted, the jetty adorned merely by a lone fisherman. Not observedly catching anything.

    Bean Minor agreeing to this proposition, they duly headed off.

    “I wouldn’t mind a swim,” the Bean noted, “but I’m not going anywhere near her.”

    “Me too neither,” the Crumpet agreed, as shrieks of girlish glee arose from the frothing wavelets. “Let’s go further along.”

    And they walked off determinedly.

    “One supposes that one could have a dip. Well out of range,” sighed Flossie, eyeing the proceedings in the water without favour.

    “Tell you what, let’s move all our stuff out of range!” I suggested.

    “Good idea, Sister Bean.” He hefted the sun umbrella kindly loaned by Silvia, and he, Mireille and I set off along the sand, already quite hot even at this early hour.

    “This’ll do,” he sighed, planting the umbrella, what time Mireille spread the rug (Silvia, again) and I dumped the “esky” (foam hamper) holding the chilled spring water (ditto, at least, the water itself was courtesy of Silvercreek Cellar Door.)

    Promptly Flossie lay down on the said rug, saying: “I think I’ll have a little rest, now.”

    “Don’t be so effete!” I protested.

    “I feel effete, Sister Bean. The Anthea Infestation has that effect.”

    “Yes. She laughs too much, I think,” offered Mireille.

    “In a nutshell. –For God’s sake lie down, girls, the sight of you standing there is exhausting me,” he groaned.

    “Well I suppose we might as well sunbathe,” I conceded. “Not that I was intending to actually swim, but I may condescend to bob up and down slightly in the shallows a little later. –You could do that, Mireille!” I encouraged her. “It’s easy!”

    Giggling, she lay down. “Okay, we do that later, Mel!”

    And with that we all stretched out, variously adjusted hats and/or sunglasses, and did our best to shut out completely the shrieks from la mer that, alas, were still plainly audible on the still, warm, briny air.

    It could have been a really nice morning. Well bother.

    The two older gents greeted us with beaming smiles, apparently not phased by the realisation that Anthea was of the party. Tho Crumpy had earlier admitted that his dad had taken him aside after first meeting her and asked on a grim note: “What in God’s name is Alan doing with that dumb blonde bit? Thought he had more sense!” To which the Crumpet had reportedly replied: “So did we all, Dad.”

    And, having changed into the respectable nice-lunch-type garments we’d brought with us, off we went to have it. The two gentlemen had tried both the restaurants in the hotel itself, and tho the Japanese-style one wasn’t bad, evidently the main dining-room had been a real disappointment: very basic, far too much heavy fried stuff. And not very comfortable chairs, at all. So we adjourned to a different nosebag chamber, just over the road.

    Jolly nice. Tho the wines, all local, were of course not a patch on Château LeBec. In fact the red that went with the quail that the egregious Anthea ordered because it was there (loud giggle and a batting of the eyelashes at Uncle Flossie), plus also with the filet mignon that the older gents, Bean Minor and Trelawney had all decided on, was drinkable but not a patch on Greg’s Reserve Bin Shiraz’s best years.

    Neither Mireille nor I felt like a heavy lunch, because of course the weather was still very warm by our standards, so we chose a warm beef salad. At least, it had a fancier name but the extra description provided by the helpful menu clarified the point for us. Very thin strips of rare roast beef, warmish, one would not have called it precisely warm, plus lettuce, etcetera. With a slightly Asian touch discerned in the etceteras: bean sprouts, odd putatively Japanese little green fronds, er, sesame seeds? Okay, sesame seeds. Nourishing but light, just right for the day!

    We weren’t up for a red with it, so we chose a Chardonnay, my siblings now having had the Good Word on Aussie Chardonnays from Duck. Of course Bean Minor didn’t trust our palates, so as the only other persons opting for it were Flossie and Crumpet and he didn’t trust their palates, either, he tasted it for us. Mireille and I sat there mumchance, avoiding everybody’s eyes. I don’t know what she was thinking—tho she was looking terrified—but frankly I was praying to all the Gods of Wine in all the pantheons of the world not to let him shove his great hind hoof down the oesophagus. …Phew! He approved, tho adding: “Bien sûr, ce n’est pas un Pouilly-Fuissé.”

    “Nobody expected it to be, don’t be an ass,” said Bean hurriedly. He had chosen a dish with scallops—looked at askance by Flossie, Mr Lamont and Uncle Flossie, so he’d assured them it would be perfectly okay, everything was refrigerated in Australia. So Flossie had given in and joined the Crumpet in a crayfish salad, which the helpful menu—perhaps the place was used to foreigners—explained was Australian rock lobster, freshly caught in our own clear South Australian waters.

    “Have a glass of the white, Bean, old man,” the Crumpet urged, but the Bean had drawn the short straw and was due to drive us back, so he nobly refrained.

    Presumably the Egg was also intending to drive but he had a glass of the red anyway and slavishly joined the frighteningly vivacious Anthea in the quail—a syndrome endemic to the weak-minded male variety, true, but one I had NEVER expected to witness in Egg (Alan) Ovenden. I heard Flossie draw a very deep breath indeed as the blighter chose it, and no wonder!

    Naturally the older gentlemen knew enough to lead us back to their hotel afterwards so that we ladies could powder our noses, so to speak. One could only hope it was sinking in with the younger generation, not looking at anyone, Bean (Michael) Fullarton-Browne.

    And after that Uncle Flossie thought what about some jolly old sightseeing, hey? Well we’d already done some of that with Greg, not to mention the trips to the orange orchards and the olive groves slash vineyards of McLaren Vale, and we knew that frankly, unless one did head off to the far-flung outskirts, there wasn’t all that much to see. Many travellers used Adelaide as a hopping-off point for Australia’s famous Red Centre with its huge monolith, and one could see why. But a helpful chap that the genial uncle had met in the bar the other night had explained you could have a nice run up into the hills, take in the view, and finish up with a real Devonshire tea at… er, a place with a German name, he’d made a note of it.

    “But this is Australia! Does one have a Devonshire tea here?” gasped Mireille in astonishment.

    Hearty chuckle. “Well, this chap said so, my dear! Scones, jam and cream!”

    She was still staring at him in astonishment.

    “The British Empire syndrome,” drawled Flossie.

    I was less stunned, having of course been exposed to Betty Burns’s jammy scones for Queensland elevenses, pardon me, morning tea, but nonetheless rather taken aback to hear that they went in for the full Devonshire bit.

    “Um, yes, I think you must be right, Flossie,” I admitted. “But, um, after all that lunch, Uncle Flossie?”

    “Well—later on, y’know!”

    “Yes; you always used to be up for a jolly good tea, Mel!” the senior Lamont reminded me, putting an arm round me on the strength of it. “Mm, nice,” he noted, sniffing. “Chanel Number Five, eh?”

    Yes well. I swallowed a sigh. The current bottle was a recent donation, but John had originally given me a bottle of it in my last year at school—during the Easter break: he’d taken me over to Rye, read Tilling, to see Lucia territory. That occasion now seemed like a lifetime ago. A lifetime in which I had been up for jolly good teas.

    “I was younger then, Clive,” I managed feebly.

    “Never mind, dare say the boys’ll be up for it! So shall we?”

    Anthea tossed her curls, looking scornful. “I’ve been there before. It’s a real tourist-trap.”

    “But we are tourists!” Uncle Flossie protested, laughing.

    She pouted. “I don’t fancy it, really. What do you think, Alan?”

    Slavishly the idiot replied: “They could go. We could do something else, if you like.”

    Loud giggle. “Well yeah, I can think of a few things!”

    Good show, let them get on with it. And as this seemed to be the general sentiment we all retreated downstairs. Where Uncle Flossie, his arm somehow having got round Mireille’s waist—possibly because mine was now occupied by Clive Lamont’s arm—decided that as we had stacks of time, what about a little stroll by the river, hey?

    Well of course we had been warned about that river. Tho at the moment, Webber had explained helpfully, it wasn’t too bad, it was still early summer, it hadn’t started to stink yet. And had we seen the ducks and swans on it? Not yet, no.

    So as Mireille was very keen to see the swans, down we went, it wasn’t far at all…

    Oh! They were all black swans! Weren’t they extraordinary? cried Mireille.

    Well one would have thought Uncle Flossie had put them there himself, he was so chuffed.

    Loftily the Bean pointed out that of course they were: they were what Aussie swans were. In fact—as we’d know if we ever looked anything up, looking down the nose—the black swan was the state bird of Western Australia.

    Gosh. Black swans. They really were: not just dark, genuinely black. They looked quite at home, either floating on the dark brownish water, or pottering on the grassy bank.

    Er—and were those over there a couple of pelicans?

    Even the Bean was thrown by that one.

    Gulp. Okay, black swans and pelicans as well as some very ordinary-looking ducks were apparently a norm in Adelaide!

    After that we adjourned to the people carrier, and, aided by his trusty technological implement, and after much tapping and frowning, Bean took the wheel…

     “This can’t be right!” Draws in, consults the implement, mutter, mutter. “Um… Oh! I see!”

    … “Hang on! This can’t be right!” Draws in… “Look for a road sign, dammit, Bean Minor!”

    “Um, these Adelaide roads are awfully long,” the minor legume replied feebly.

    We all peered, but no-one could see anything approximating to a road sign.

    “Pity this thing hasn’t got GPS,” noted old Clive, ceasing momentarily to press his thigh against mine, and twisting to peer out of the window.

    “I thought it did have,” put in Crumpy humbly.

    “What?” Angrily the Bean investigated. Angrily he ascertained that it did! Why hadn’t Crumpet said?

    Nobody pointed out that he just had, and the Bean turned the thing on or whatever one does. More muttering…

    “I’d say this area was semi-industrial,” noted Flossie detachedly.

    “Shut up!”

    … “In two killer-metres, take the next turn to the—”

    “Ooh!” we all gasped.

    “Did it say left or right?” asked the Bean frantically.

    Silence…

    He started up, drove on for a few yards and pulled in again. Although it was clearly a main road, there was very little traffic on it: just as well.

    “In two killer-metres, take the next turn to the right.”

    “Why does it stress the ‘two’ and the ‘next’ but not what one would have said was the crucial point, the direction?” wondered Flossie dreamily.

   “Shut up, Flossie!”

    And on we drove, to the accompaniment of the helpful: “In [number] killer-metres/metres take the next turn to the—”

    Not merely maddening: enough to send one quite barking, as Flossie noted bitterly, as at long last we pulled up at what almost undoubtedly was the place we’d come to with Greg to view the lights of the city…

    “I say!” hissed Bean Minor in my ear. “Haven’t we been here before?”

    “If that’s the view we saw in the dark, yes.”

    “But that was quite a straight run up, really,” he fumbled.

    “True.”

    “Um, I think we must have started off wrong,” he concluded, swallowing.

    Quite.

    Mr Lamont, having forgotten to recharge his own technological torture instrument, had now possessed himself of Crumpy’s and was frowning over it. “It looks as if we’ll have to wind our way back over the hills to this German village,” he announced.

    The Bean scowled. “It’s only a matter of feeding in the place you want to go.”

    Oh really? Fascinating.

    But we duly admired the view, well more the spectacle of the wide Adelaide plain under the wider Australian sky, than the jumble of buildings that was the city. And after sips of the spring water that thank God Silvia had put in the esky for us, felt refreshed enough to head for Hahndorf in the hills! Well almost.

    Well it was a pretty little village—yes. But the egregious Anthea was right, alas, and it was horribly touristified. Never mind: as Uncle Flossie had said, we were tourists! And we wandered round in the sunshine looking at all the little cafés advertising unlikely German sausages and, uh, biltong? (Wasn’t that South African?) And all the pretty restored buildings. Er, over-restored in many instances, but never mind! The sun shone, it wasn’t too hot, there were lots of pretty trees in full leaf, lots of little gardens crammed with flowers and all in all it was a lovely way to while away an afternoon.

    And we found what must have been the café the helpful gent in the bar had mentioned, and experienced the truly extraordinary phenomenon of Devonshire teas in a German village in South Australia!

    … “Surreal!” Flossie concluded with a laugh, as we returned to the semi-civilised delights of the hotel. Well its bathrooms were okay but its lounge bar was only so-so and Uncle Flossie and Clive Lamont both admitted that there was a much nicer, more relaxed spot over the road. They hadn’t booked into that one, as it belonged to a cheaper chain: their mistake. The place where we’d had lunch? No, completely booked out, likewise the Hilton, which was right on the main square, further into the CBD. Well a chap in the bar here had informed them that it was starting to show its age: his wife’s work party had been really disappointed by the room they were given for their office’s Christmas lunch; but its lobby bar was nice. They thought it would be a bit far to walk, at this hour, the city seemed to get very, very hot in the late afternoon. But—brightening—there should be plenty of taxis! There was a rank right outside! On them, of course! Jolly chuckles.

    On the other hand if we did that then they’d have to come back this way for dinner, there was a place this chap had highly recommended… No, hang it! The Hilton it’d be!

    So complete with a fresh touch of lippy and a fresh squirt of Chanel Numéro 5 as to the party of the first part, we piled into taxis and headed for…

    Oops.

    “No right turn, ya see!” our driver informed me, Mireille and Uncle Flossie. –The latter seemed to have taken possession of her, neatly pre-empting his nephew. Well it served Flossie right: if one had conceived an interest in a girl one needed to stake one’s claim. He’d looked really put out as his uncle’s large form had steered her possessively not to say uxoriously into the vehicle, a hand round her arm an’ all.

    And an unexciting tour of the Adelaide CBD followed… It took quite a while, what with tram tracks having to be negotiated in order to get to the H. in Q., which was in the central square on the wrong side, so to speak, of the tracks. Um, hadn’t we come this way, more or less, with Greg at one point? Er…

    But the Hilton was reached without actual mishap, and we all forgathered in the lobby bar. It was quite pleasant, yes, but not essentially different from the other one. Oh well! The Bean nobly confined himself to a light-beer but the rest of us partook of various spirituous liquors… So this was a margarita, was it, Clive? Mmm, lovely! –Licking salt off the lips. Meanwhile Mireille was being introduced to a Manhattan, “that all the girls like,” by the uxorious Uncle Flossie. And Flossie, who was merely sipping Black Label, was looking sourly at them as it happened. Well, hah, hah.

    The generous older gents urged us to stay on for dinner, but the Bean was nervous about driving back at night, so we accompanied them back to their hotel, bade them fond farewells, with a promise that they’d see us up at the winery on the morrow—nice little tour of the Barossa Valley, eh?—and piled into the people carrier.

    “That would have been a perfect day, without the Anthea Infestation,” sighed the Crumpet.

    “Well said!” Bean Minor agreed fervently. “I say, chaps, isn’t she frightful?”

    “Abso-bally-lutely,” sighed Flossie. “Too frightful even to have three groans raised, in my opinion.”

    “Puts it well,” grunted the Bean, struggling with the GPS thing.

    “Bean, we’ve taken that road umpteen times now; just head northeast,” suggested his junior.

    “Not umpteen!” he snapped.

    He started up.

    “In two hundred metres, take the next—”

    Oh God.

    Thank goodness, once we were out of the city proper he did realise where we were, and turned the bally thing off.

    “For this relief, much thanks,” sighed Flossie. “So what part of the day did you enjoy the most, Mireille?” –He was sitting next to her and I had cunningly stationed myself so as to have a good view of them.

    She smiled shyly. “Well the beach was lovely… But we did not need to hear Anthea—does one say squealing?”

    “One does,” he agreed.

    “As of pigs,” noted Bean Minor sourly.

    “Hein?” she groped.

    Helpfully the minor legume elaborated: “Pigs squeal. You often read that in English books.”

    “Not the sort of English books they made her read for her degree, tho, Bean Minor!” I said with a laugh.

    “No. Readable books,” he declared firmly.

    “I see,” Mireille said obediently. “But people also squeal?”

    “Frightful bimbos like her do, yes,” Flossie agreed.

    “Yes. She is vairy pretty, of course,” she added. –In another girl one might have taken that as some sort of come-on or, as it were, fishing expedition. But no-one could possibly suspect dear sweet Mireille of that sort of bimbo-ish nonsense.

    “Pretty in a rather cheap, flashy way,” said Flossie firmly. “And she could be a cross between the Venus de Milo and Nefertite in looks, and it wouldn’t count: the behaviour would cancel it out. –So, the beach was good of itself, I agree. What else did you like?” he asked with a smile in his voice.

    “Oh! Well I liked the pretty little village even tho it was for the tourists,” she admitted.

    “Me, too. In fact that made it better! Touristy Germanesque kitsch in the middle of the extraordinary South Australian hills!” he said with a laugh. “With that fantastically incongruous mixture of ornamental European trees and shrubs and the usual garden flowers with the native Australian gum trees!”

    She laughed. “Yes, that was good! –And also I liked the cocktails. Oncle Albert does not approve of them, you see, so I had never had one before.”

    “Really? Gosh, Uncle Flossie was right: the girls all like Manhattans!” he said with a chuckle. “What about you, Mel?”

    I jumped. I had been completely absorbed in the drama, so to speak. “Well I share Mireille’s sentiment about the beach visit. It is a really lovely beach, if not infested. Mind you, I’d vote for the cocktails, too. The margaritas were awfully good… What was that stuff in them?”

    The sophisticated Mr Nightingale had to swallow. “The spirit? Tequila. It’s Mexican. Made from their native agave plants.”

    “Golly; really?”

    “Uh-huh. Strong stuff.”

    “Mm, it was good… Yes, it was very nice just sitting in the bar with the two old dears, chatting.”

    Crumpy laughed. “Dad’d probably explode if he heard you call him an old dear, Mel! He’s convinced he’s still got it, you know!”

    “So is Uncle Flossie,” Flossie noted drily. “So, Mireille, the cocktails get your vote for Best in Show, do they?”

    “Best in Show? Oh, I see; it’s a figure of speech! Like your Crofts dog show. No, really I think that I liked best of all the black swans!” she beamed. “So lovely and elegant and so… unexpected. So vairy, vairy black!”

    “Yes,” croaked Flossie in a very strange voice indeed. “So they were.” And he fell completely silent. An absolute record for the, frankly, rather up-himself Flossie Nightingale.

    Well gosh.

    The Crumpet was of my opinion: he cornered me in my room later that night while Mireille was in the bathroom. “I say, Sister Bean,” he hissed, closing the door cautiously behind him: “did you catch Flossie’s reaction to Mireille voting the black swans the best thing?”

    “Yes, I did.”

    “I think there’s hope for him yet!” he hissed, his eyes shining with altruistic pleasure and excitement, dear old Crumpy. “Never seen him so shook up! –Well, no, I tell a lie: he was when he heard about John’s flat being blown up and you possibly being in danger, but that was different: that time he was furious. This time he was, um… moved,” he finished on a note of awe.

    I nodded hard.

    “Long may it last!” he concluded, exiting.

    Well yes. Fingers and toes crossed.

    … The black swans were lovely, I reflected, drifting off to sleep. But alas, I would never be as sweet as darling innocent Mireille. I’d have cast my vote for the cocktail hour, any old day! Oh well, one couldn’t help one’s nature and it wasn’t as if darling John didn’t also enjoy… a glass… or t…

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