By Graeme McGregor aka Grigor McGregor
Chapter 1
For each of her first nineteen years, Inez Macdonald spent New Year's Eve and all of January 'At the beach'.
Being at any beach in mid-summer, is where many New Zealand teens traditionally lose their virginity at the age of eighteen or perhaps a bit later.
But not Inez.
She'd turned nineteen in July and at the end of December, Christmas just behind them and the family relocated at The Beach (they rarely called it Sinclair Beach, named after the district's pioneer surveyor) she worried at the time that she remained a virgin.
Three times prior to December that year, Inez made abortive attempts to lay different guys. In despair she'd whispered her need to her father Keith, half-hoping he would find someone for her.
But he'd just grinned, ruffled her dark hair and said she should just wait, that it would happen naturally.
Miraculously, it did.
In mid-January that summer, a guy aged about forty came across her sunbathing in the sandhills. He began chatting to her and she invited him to sit beside her and share a cool drink.
Inez later went back to the bach (a small and very basic beach house), a huge smile on her face.
That was sixteen years ago.
Her parents sold the bach years ago when two of their four children had settled overseas, the third was married to a tourist company operator in the country's South Island.
The youngest and last to leave home in her late teens, Inez, would eventually become a successful novelist. She'd recently returned from the UK following the end of her childless marriage.
Her older and wealthy husband paid her huge money to hasten the divorce settlement. He'd found a glamorous and socially prominent older woman to spend the remainder of his life with on his third marriage, at peace knowing that his latest wife wouldn't be half-killing him with unrelenting sexual demands like his outgoing former darling.
Inez stepped out of the taxi.
The bach looked almost as she'd remembered it. It would be a great sanctuary for a dedicated writer with an understandable Greta Garbo quotation ('I vant to be alone') when creating romantic fiction.
A woman, too large for her bikini, came to the door in answer to Inez's knock. She didn't look beach-friendly.
"Yes?"
"Are you the owner of this property?"
"Co-owner but sorry lady, we don't rent."
"I might be a keen buyer."
The eyes of the fatigued-looking dyed blonde narrowed.
"Come in. My husband could be interested; I certainly am. We arrived yesterday to find the kids had left the place looking like shit and we talked about selling."
The sale and purchase agreement was signed on Wednesday that week, with settlement date in twenty-one days. Inez couldn't remember being so happy since the day she'd lost her virginity down at the beach and of course her wedding day had come close.
She shifted in with just two bags, having purchased the bach 'as is', the price including all furniture and furnishings and even cutlery but not bedding. Her parents had installed most of the furniture when the bach was built.
A van arrived to deliver bedding including mattresses for the double bed and two single beds. The delivery male and female took away the two sets of double bunks.
During the next three days, decorators repainted the interior while Inez spent those days and two more the following week staying at another nearby seafront bach with Peter Bishop and wife Wendy.
Peter had invited her to stay with them during interior painting and while her floors were being sanded and three coats of polyurethane applied.
Inez had grown up at the beach in summers with Peter who, alas, had taken Wendy's virginity instead of hers. Inez regarded him as a really nice guy.
When Peter had introduced his wife, Inez deduced that Wendy, obviously pregnant, was in need of a friend of similar age. She learned the couple had gone to university together and were accountants with their own business.
"Ohmigod, THE Inez Macdonald," Wendy gurgled when seeing the book award plaques on Inez's bedroom walls when they'd come to inspect Inez's newly renovated home.
"I have five of your novels."
"Ooh, in that case I must be good," Inez smiled softly and knew at that instant she was on the way to becoming one of Wendy's best friends. Well that didn't require many brain cells to deduce because Wendy was hugging her and saying Inez was such a modest darling.
"Open some wine Peter while I cuddle your lovely wife and her baby, err your baby too."
Peter glanced at Inez approvingly as he went to the fridge to pull out a bottle of chilled white wine for the hostess and himself and commercially bottled spring water for his wife.
At that moment, Inez felt she'd truly arrived home.
Every school holiday break plus many weekends, her family had occupied this now made-over bach. Strangely, she had little recollection and less affinity for their more substantial family home in the nearby town.
"I love the beach," she said.
Wendy said they did too and spent almost every weekend there.
"I'm so happy to have you here. I must tell my brother Lockie to visit us. You may find him unexpectedly of interest to you."
Oh yeah, Inez thought. She'd heard that optimistic claim a number of times. Females seemed almost desperate not to allow a previously married woman remain unmarried.
* * *
With darkness only just lifting next morning, Inez smiled, watching the old Maori gentleman Mr Pita Horo, looking even more stooped these days, walking to the reef at the southern end of beach, fishing rod in one hand, tackle bag in the other. She recalled watching Mr Horo for the first time she could remember, when she was perhaps five. He'd seemed old then.
After pouring coffee, Inez booted her laptop and began her new novel, set in the then British Colony of New Zealand in 1863.
<i>Sullen and yawning unladylike, Lady Elizabeth Rowan-Steele stood at the door of the raupo hut on the sandhill, sited just above the highest tide mark in living memory.
She watched intently the fine warrior-like body of the Maori walking towards the edge of the sea. Orange dawn crept into the bay and Elizabeth kept watching, waiting for the native man or Maori that her husband had told her to call Pita, to begin some kind of pagan ritual.
He stood transfixed, knee deep in water when suddenly he lunged and held up a frantically wriggling fish now working its way down the shaft of his spear.
Elizabeth smiled, forgetting the primitive conditions she'd been thrust into since coming off their reasonably comfortable quarters on the brig Lady Liverpool.
Yes, a nice portion of fresh fish for breakfast would go down a treat.</i>
* * *
Inez went to the nearby town by taxi on Wednesday. The Bishop's had invited her to dinner that evening and to stay the night, Peter anxious for her not to drive the winding road to the beach after having consumed liquor. Wendy insisted she accept and so it was settled.
Inez banked two royalties' cheques that had come in the mail and then visited two pre-owned vehicle yards to kick tyres while listening salespeople give their views on the best car to be kept parked in the open at the beach.
The opinions ranged from the ridiculous -- a Toyota soft-top sports car -- to one that send her thinking, a two-year-old high mileage and dented in places Land Rover Defender, priced to sell.
Her style was to drive unspectacularly which meant powerful performance wasn't a top consideration but she wanted a vehicle built to withstand rugged conditions. She purchased the Defender after checking the claim that it was indeed priced to sell.
A light lunch followed, seated alone and ignored, and then Inez found a vacant small table in the town's nearby public library and spent the afternoon researching early history of the district to incorporate some facts in her novel.
She was delighted, for the purpose of building authenticity amid her fictitious setting, to find a reference that the name Pita (Peter) was in use by Maori locally in the mid-1850s, the name Peter presumably introduced by early missionaries from England.
Just before 5:00 when she knew Wendy would be finishing work, Inez called her and said she'd give her a ride home in her new vehicle.
"This is not an economic vehicle to own but it's in great condition overall, and will be when you get the dents knocked out and the exterior repainted," Wendy (an accountant) said, having no idea of Inez' financial position after buying the bach or that her new friend had just banked money from her London publisher that had converted to 18,763 New Zealand dollars.
Wendy ordered a glass of wine and a light soft-drink.
"Thank god Peter will have someone to drink with; he hates drinking by himself and I won't touch it again until three months after baby is born. He even suggested, half-jokingly, that I seek an induced early delivery."
"Christ aren't men cold-hearted."
Wendy looked astonished.
"You know, that was my exact thought when he said that, my very words."
"Did you kick him?"
"No but I thought of it."
"This, is nice wine but your fruit juice looks more water than squeezed fruit."
"It is. I desire to be a good mother bringing a baby into this life."
Inez had a special request to ask her new friend.
"Wendy, can you fit me in as a client?"
Her companion looked pleased.
"Of course, and I could do your work at the beach if you sort out everything for me."
"Um, it becomes rather complex because I wish to avoid double taxation where possible as my investment income comes from all over the place."
Appearing surprised, the accountant asked, "Roughly what annual income are we talking about?"
"Well with my divorce settlement already received and money from various investments, I expect to receive more than a million dollars by the end of this financial year including rather substantial income from my writing."
"Ohmigod, that's a packet. I graduated in law as well as business administration/finance and am licensed to practice as a solicitor and can attend to your legal work, you wish. Who did you use for legal work when you purchased the bach?"
"Old Mr Shields."
"Omigod, believe me darling, real estate conveyancing probably is the only thing he is reasonably competent at these days. I must peruse your ground lease because some around you are due for renewal."
"No, it's fine, eight years to run. I made sure I looked at that but I'll be handing over all documents when I sign on with you. Let's toast to baby."
"Aw, what a sweet toast. You're lovely Inez."
* * *
Inez was sunbathing in the sandhills mid-morning, determined to return inside before the fierce heat of the midsummer day, when a guy walked fairly close to her.
