truck. And dole bludger? He’d heard the term on the plane. They’d been flying over the coast and the man in the seat beside him had waved to the beach below.
‘There’s a major social security problem in Australia,’ he’d told Hamish. ‘The weather’s so good and the surf’s so good there’s an army of kids who refuse to work. They go on social security-the dole-and spend their life surfing. Go up and down the coast looking for good surf, sleeping in the back of utes. Bloody dole bludgers’ll be the ruination of this country.’
And it was too much for Susie. He saw the mischief lurking in her eyes and the laughter threatening to explode, and he opened his mouth to stop her but it was too late.
‘We’re no dole bludgers,’ she told them, in a tone of offended virtue. ‘And in truth we’re not husband and wife. I’ll have you know that this…’ she pointed to Hamish as she’d point to some mummified Egyptian remains ‘…is Lord Hamish Douglas, Earl of Loganaich. His address, of course, is Loganaich Castle, Dolphin Bay. And me… I’m the castle relic. And gardener and dogsbody besides.’ She motioned to Rose at her feet. ‘There’s always a baby in these sorts of situations,’ she told them. ‘But it’s probably wiser not to ask any more questions.’
‘You realise they’ll still think we’re dole bludgers,’ Hamish said, when he could get a grip on his laughter and was attempting to get a grip on reality. The couple were putt-putting back out of the cove, with Albert pausing to take one more shot before they rounded the headland and disappeared from view.
‘Yeah, we’re high on dope. I’ll probably get a visit from Social Security.’ Susie chuckled. ‘I should have told them I was an Arabian princess. We would have just as much chance at belief.’
‘But we’ve made their morning,’ Hamish said. The tension he felt as he’d held Susie was dissipating, changing to something different. Shared pleasure in the pure ridiculousness of the moment. Laughter. It was a laughter he hadn’t felt before. He felt…free. ‘They’ve got more local colour than they bargained for.’
‘What’s the bet they go into the post office when they go back?’
‘The post office?’
‘Harriet’s the postmistress and she has a huge sign out the front advertising information. Collecting and imparting information is a passion. If they go in and say they’ve met a crazy beach bum who calls himself a lord, they’ll get told exactly what’s what and they’ll be back here for more pictures.’
‘We’ll retire behind our castle walls and pull up the drawbridge.’
‘If only it were that easy,’ Susie said, and the laughter slipped a little. ‘I… Maybe we should go up now. I want to get some paving done this afternoon.’
‘I need to do some cataloguing.’
‘Cataloguing?’
‘Marcia says I should make lists of contents.’
‘Sure.’ She eyed him with more than a little disquiet. ‘What will you do with Ernst and Eric?’
‘Who?’
‘Suits of armour.’
‘Um…’ He’d seen them. Of course he’d seen them. One could hardly miss them. ‘I might give them to a welfare shop,’ he ventured. ‘If I can find a welfare shop that’ll take them.’
‘I’ll buy them.’
‘Why on earth,’ he said cautiously, ‘would you want two imitation suits of armour that stand eight feet high and are enough to scare the socks off anyone who comes near?’
‘When I go home I won’t have Boris,’ she said with dignity. ‘I need Eric and Ernst. Besides, they’re excellent conversationalists. We’ve reached consensus on most important political points but the ramifications of the Kyoto agreement in developing countries still needs some fine tuning.’
He stared at her.
Then he burst out laughing.
She looked affronted. ‘You can’t think the ramifications of such an agreement are a laughing matter?’
‘No,’ he said at once, wiping the grin off his face. ‘They’re very serious indeed. Only last week I was telling my potted palm-’
‘There’s no need to mock.’
‘I’m not mocking. But Ernst and Eric are yours,’ he told her. ‘Absolutely. Who am I to separate a woman from her political sparring partners? How are you going to get them home?’
‘I guess they won’t let me take them on the plane?’
‘You could see if you could get them diplomatic passports. I could make a few phone calls. Eric and Ernst, born in China and holding views that are decidedly left-wing…or I assume they’re left-wing?’
‘It’s dangerous to assume anything about Ernst and Eric,’ she said in a voice that was none too steady.
‘I won’t. I’ll approach the situation with diplomatic caution. But we’ll do our best, Susie Douglas. When you leave for America I’d very much like to see Ernst on one side of you on the plane and Eric on the other.’
‘Eric is a vegetarian,’ she said with such promptness that he blinked. ‘And Ernst hates sitting over a wing.’
He choked. She was standing in front of him, all earnestness, the sun glinting on her gorgeous hair, the laughter in her eyes conflicting with the prim schoolteacher voice and he felt…he felt…
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he managed. ‘But meanwhile I think we should pack up for the day. I think I’ve had a bit too much sun.’
CHAPTER FIVE
THEY were formal for the rest of the day. Formal to the point of avoiding each other. Hamish did a bit of cataloguing but there wasn’t much point cataloguing imitation chandeliers. Susie did a bit of packing but her heart wasn’t in that either.
They met briefly for dinner. ‘Soup and toast,’ Susie decreed, and Hamish didn’t argue. He ate his soup and toast, and then later, when Susie had gone to bed, he ate more toast. Tomorrow he’d have to go on a forage into town and find some decent food, he decided. Then he remembered the next day was the day of the fete and he felt so faint-hearted that he stopped feeling hungry and went back to bed and stared at the ceiling for a while.
He was right out of his comfort zone. Jodie had told him this was a holiday. Weren’t holidays meant to make you feel rested?
The sounds of the sea were wafting in his open window but the rest of the world was silent. After the buzzing background hum of Manhattan this seemed like another world. It was so silent it sounded…noisy? The absence of traffic sounds was like white noise.
He lay and listened and decided he was homesick for Manhattan. For his black and grey penthouse, his austere bathroom without kings or queens watching from gilt frames, for his traffic noise…
For Marcia? Of course for Marcia.
Who was he kidding? He wasn’t homesick. He didn’t know what he was. Finally he drifted into sleep where Marcia and Jodie and Susie all jostled for position. Marcia was silently, scornfully watching. Jodie was standing with hands on hips, daring him to be different. Susie was laughing.
But while he watched, Susie’s laughter turned to tears and he woke in a cold sweat.
And Susie was no longer in his dream. She was standing in the open doorway and she was neither laughing or crying.
She was holding a kilt.
‘Behold your valet, my lord,’ she told him. ‘Your kilt and all your other various appendages await your noble personage.’
He sat up fast. Then he remembered he wasn’t wearing pyjamas. He grabbed his sheet-and he blinked at the apparition in the doorway.
Susie was dressed in tartan.
She wasn’t wearing a kilt. She was wearing royal blue Capri pants, stretching neatly around every delicious curve, and a gorgeous little top, in the same tartan as the kilt she was holding out for him to wear. Her hair was tied up in some complex knot on top, and it was caught up in a tartan ribbon.
‘What are you staring at?’ she asked.
