Doomed Dynasty

---Set in New Zealand---

INTRODUCTION

The gnarled-faced woman, hair white and thinning without a hint of waves to give relief to her aged appearance, sat at ease, her pale violet eyes looked permanently saddened as if life had treated her cruely.

The widow resident of the retirement home bearing her name, pulled out a cheque from her dressing gown pocket. It was signed and dated, the amount correctly entered as $38,000.

"Thank you Mr Drummond," she said to the novelist. "Well done and spend your earnings wisely."

Mark Drummond looked into those steady violet eyes for the final time, his job done.

"Thank you, Mrs Curtis," he said, almost bowing. "It has been a pleasure listening to you and helping you to preserve the history of your distinguished family."

"Go," was all she said.

Well she looked tired and he had money to bank.

Mark wished Courtney Curtis a comfortable and long life in her twilight years, knowing she'd only commissioned this book because she regarded it as her duty. Her son had disgraced the family name land perhaps even worse had lost the family's fortune and not fathered a son. That failure had doomed the survival of this Curtis Dynasty into which she'd married and had influenced the family significantly.

Mrs Curtis had been a pain to deal with but after the third and really fiery row he'd emerged the victor. Sullenly she agreed that she was to tell the stories, fill in the gaps as requested, and he'd write the book anyway he wished. She'd buckled to his ultimatum that he'd walk unless she pulled in her horns and left the writing to him.

Mark drove away thinking Mrs Curtis was one of the most impressive women he'd ever met. It was a magnificent story and virtually had told itself. He'd learned that morning the paperback edition of 'Doomed Dynasty', already out, had won the historic category in the Pfeiffer-Mc Higgins New Zealand Book Awards.

Before turning away he saw Mrs Curtis open her copy of the book, the newly produced hard cover version he'd collected as part of the deal to earn his payment.

CHAPTER 1

Dressed in a baggy grey tracksuit and pink fluffy scuffs, Courtney Curtis stood at the window, nursing an empty coffee cup. She looked at the solitary figure down on the beach. Her husband Matt was gazing out to sea, standing motionless.

After watching a runabout disappear from view around the headland The gnarled-faced woman, hair white and thinning without a hint of waves to give relief to her aged appearance, sat at ease, her pale violet eyes looked permanently saddened as if life had treated her cruely.

The widow resident of the retirement home bearing her name, pulled out a cheque from her dressing gown pocket. It was signed and dated, the amount correctly entered as $38,000.

"Thank you Mr Drummond," she said to the novelist. "Well done and spend your earnings wisely."

Mark Drummond looked into those steady violet eyes for the final time, his job done.

"Thank you, Mrs Curtis," he said, almost bowing. "It has been a pleasure listening to you and helping you to preserve the history of your distinguished family."

"Go," was all she said.

Well she looked tired and he had money to bank.

Mark wished Courtney Curtis a comfortable and long life in her twilight years, knowing she'd only commissioned this book because she regarded it as her duty. Her son had disgraced the family name land perhaps even worse had lost the family's fortune and not fathered a son. That failure had doomed the survival of this Curtis Dynasty into which she'd married and had influenced the family significantly.

Mrs Curtis had been a pain to deal with but after the third and really fiery row he'd emerged the victor. Sullenly she agreed that she was to tell the stories, fill in the gaps as requested, and he'd write the book anyway he wished. She'd buckled to his ultimatum that he'd walk unless she pulled in her horns and left the writing to him.

Mark drove away thinking Mrs Curtis was one of the most impressive women he'd ever met. It was a magnificent story and virtually had told itself. He'd already learbed the paperback edition of 'Doomed Dynasty', already out, had won the historic category in the Pfeiffer-Mc Higgins New Zealand Book Awards.

Before turning away he saw Mrs Curtis open her copy of the book, the hard cover version he'd collected as part of the deal to earn his payment.

CHAPTER 1

Dressed in a baggy grey tracksuit and pink fluffy scuffs, Courtney Curtis stood at the window, nursing an empty coffee cup. She looked at the solitary figure down on the beach. Her husband Matt was gazing out to sea, standing motionless.

After watching a runabout towing two water-skiers disappear from view around the headland, Courtney went to the patio and began clearing away the remains of breakfast. She hurried, wanting to get back to her studio. It was times like this that she missed having a housekeeper.

Matt should be up here doing this because it was largely his mess. She immediately regretted thinking that about the person who was her landlord, her shared lover and father of their only child.

Minutes later her married life ended.

Well to the south on that Sunday morning, the general manager of Mayfield Investments Ltd, Matt and Courtney Curtis' son Reece, was at his office dressed in a green and blue shot silk shirt, blue jeans and white boat shoes, filling in time before taking his wife Chase to brunch at the Slaughter House.

She was out shopping.

Chase liked going to the Slaughter House, as most of the regulars were her kind of people, young, stylish and 'cool', and because the entertainment was unique.

Reece thought it was miraculous a restaurant called Slaughter House attracted any custom at all. Three weeks ago he'd tried to book a table for two and had to agree to go on the waiting list. A cancellation that secured a table for them came only two days ago.

It was the restaurateur rather than the top-rated chef that produced the establishment's enormous popularity. Perhaps it was not surprising that someone who'd named his restaurant after an abattoir that once had occupied the site would be nicknamed Mad Willy. He would be no more insane than most of his clientele, but he knew a thing or two about marketing. At an appropriate moment when many of the diners had their food in front of them, Mad Willy would dash from the kitchen shouting and carrying a meat cleaver in his hand.

"Who ordered spare ribs!" he'd yell. "Gotta tell you, I chopped off one of my wife's fingers; she now wants it back. So who's got it?"

The fun for regulars came from looking at the reaction of newcomers, who'd be watching Mad Willy, mouths agape.

The more nervous of them would be picking through their plate of chicken or spaghetti looking for a severed finger.

Others would have their eyes fixed on the cleaver, swinging menacingly as the terrible man approached their table.

It was sheer theatre, always with some variation.

The last time Reece was at the restaurant on a business lunch a woman just finished stripping her spare ribs and was wiping her mouth when Willy did this act. She'd burst into tears with fright. Willy tossed his cleaver behind the bar and went over and gently apologised to the woman.

Then stepping back he sang 'Oh My Beloved' in a beautiful voice, clearly that of a trained tenor. On that occasion the loudest applause came from his victim and her husband.

"Don't worry, my love," Mad Willy told the woman loudly. "My wife has eight fingers on each hand, so she has fingers to spare."

No surprisingly, Reece was looking forward to returning to the Slaughter House to enjoy the uplifting atmosphere. He was at a low, his marriage was failing; he was struggling to perform in his high profile management job and only by his nocturnal activities was managing to keep his debtors at arm's length.

While waiting for the report to print out he looked at the smaller of two photographs on his desk, a close-up of his parents.

Reece lightly touched the image of his mother, running a finger down the side of her face. It was a lovely gesture, performed almost sub-consciously. He barely glanced at the image of his father, and when he did so it was with the hint of a scowl.

Reece's printer spat out the last page of the report, the dull humming of the motor stopped.

At about that moment on a Sunday in mid June, the man on the beach Matt Curtis collapsed. An incoming flow from an exhausted wave stopped just short of his lifeless body.

Three days later, Reece walked towards the crowded Miranda Valley & District Presbyterian Church on a grey afternoon, his arm around the shoulders of his white-faced but smiling mother Courtney. Walking on the other side of Courtney and holding her hand was his wife Chase. Behind them came his grandmother Patricia.

Two fire engines were parked opposite the church and ten volunteer firemen of the small brigade formed in two lines on the side of the path to the church saluted when Courtney, widow of their chief fire officer, walked with her family between their lines.

Sympathetic eyes fell on the widow briefly. Involuntarily, most gazes drifted to her stunning daughter-in-law Chase.

As Chase Ireland, the Australian had gone on from winning a South Pacific beauty pageant to become an internationally famous swimsuit model, based on Paris. She had retired almost three years ago on the eve of her marriage. However the late Matt Curtis was at the centre of eulogies and later conversations.

Comments made by the Rev Chong and other speakers at the church service would later be amplified and even exaggerated in the church hall, with tea and coffee largely being ignored. Some of the best red and white wines from Matt's cellar would sluice down Thai finger food, club sandwiches, pastries and meringues.

Acting chief fire officer Merv Arnold found to his surprise that townspeople were greeting him with new recognition. He was enjoying this elevated status as head fireman and hoped that a call out to a fire or some other emergency would not ruin his afternoon.

After the gathering ended and most people had dispersed and Merv was about to order crews to return the two fire appliances to the station, he heard the clatter of high heels on the concrete behind him.

"Hullo, Merv," came a soft greeting from just below his right shoulder.

He turned, and looked straight into the baby blue eyes of Vikki Armstrong, proprietor of the Riverside Café. "It's a very sad time for us all."

Merv nodded, being almost tongue tied as Vikki presented her cheek to be kissed. Everyone knew, and he knew better than most, she'd been Matt's girl... er mistress.

Merv was aware that although Matt and Vikki had meticulously tried to keep their secret life their secret, nonetheless tongues found reason to waggle among groups on street corners, in bars and at sewing circles.

Something Vikki was saying jolted Merv back from his musing. Her words excited him. "Come and have a coffee with me one morning. Park under the big pohutukawa tree at the side of the building; if you phone beforehand I'll leave the side door unlocked."

Merv moistened his lips that suddenly had dried. "Right, I'd love to pop in sometime and chat over coffee."

He wondered if Vikki wore black underwear. He grinned, knowing he was the man to kept Vikki's fire stocked as Matt's hand-picked successor.

The head waitress/manager at the Riverside Café, Muriel Jones, saw her boss talking to Merv and concluded that Vikki was wasting her time. Merv the plumber's nervous little wife kept him on a very short lead; it was a wonder he'd been allowed to join the fire brigade that had him rushing out and about at all hours of the day and night.

The unmarried Muriel knew she would feel Matt's departure for a while. She'd often though the café seemed to light up when he walked in. She'd become used to the horsy smell of him when he had arrived straight from the farm. He would kiss her, sometimes before he kissed Vikki, and she'd brace herself for the occasional friendly slap on her butt.

Women had been attracted to Big Matt.

* * *

Miranda Valley starts high in a mountain range and runs out like a mouth of a funnel onto coastal flats.

The town of Miranda of some 4000 people lies on both sides of the river and ends at the start of a narrow coastal reserve on the beachfront. Beyond that is a bay reaching out into Cook Strait, the watery gap between the South and North Islands that link the South Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea.

William Curtis was one of the three British immigrants who purchased land from the native Maori in 1847 and cleared the first grazing areas in the region for their cattle and sheep. In an act of generosity, during a period of high farm prices, those three pioneering farmers jointly gifted a strip of land to the Government to form a reserve in perpetuity. They handed across that land while retaining a small block at it's centre for themselves.

The wisdom of holding on to that small piece of land privately with superb ocean views went unnoticed at the time but over the years its exclusivity became apparent after the block was subdivided into three dwellings sites. The homes built there by the Whitehead and Thompson families, descendants of the original settlers, to abut the existing Curtis home were the only properties for a almost a mile on either side of that block to have direct access to the beach.

Matt's grandfather Charles built a replacement grand home in the 1920s on the Curtis's one acre home site. He named it Aberdeen, after the birthplace in Scotland of his mother Amelia.

Over the years usually a Curtis, Whitehead or Thompson was the chairman of the Town Board, or following local government reforms, chairman of the County Council, then later mayor of the Borough Council and more latterly mayor of the District Council.

At the time of his death Matt Curtis was ending his second term at mayor.

Several communities in the district, ranging in size of between 50 to 300 people are situated on beaches to the north and south while the largest of them developed where isolated supply shacks were built by traders to service the first European settlers and small tribes of Maori whose ancestors arrived several hundred years earlier.

* * *

At least one discussion at the function after Matt Curtis' funeral touched briefly on the subject of his successor as mayor.

"Deputy Mayor Ivan Whyte will be an adequate fill-in until the next local body elections," Ewan Major said to his brother, Steven. "But he won't get things done like Matt did."

Steven nodded, commenting, "Although old Charlie Whitehead doesn't say much as a councillor, he could toss his hat into the ring. You know, the town expects a Curtis, Whitehead or a Thompson to be the leading citizen, and I reckon Charlie will waltz in if he goes for the top job."

"You're probably right, but Matt's boy could upset things if he chooses to come back to live here. The rumour is that he will. Anyway, we've not here to get too involved in discussing politics. Pass the bottle will you."

Similar conversations about Matt and his loss to the community were beginning to decrease as people dropped into their customary patter of commenting the weather, blocked drains and pot holes and, of course, rugby, food, television programming and 'the impossible' younger generation.

Merv Arnold was talking to two of his firemen while keeping one eye on Vikki across the room expressing her condolences.

Newly widowed Courtney had stepped forward to give Vikki a long hug, much to the amazement of those who knew that this was a significant public meeting between her and her late husband's grieving mistress.

"Matt was a hero, he really was," Vikki sniffed, astonished at Courtney's embrace in public.

"Yes indeed, he gave so much of himself," Courtney smiled without apparent malice.

"Mum sorry to interrupt but Mrs Martin is leaving and wants to say goodbye," said Reece, totally ignoring Vikki. He couldn't understand what his father saw in that woman who was all breasts, tum and bum and talked excessively. But at least he agreed with her on one thing, his father was a hero, as well as what she didn't say... an adulterer and a flawed husband and inadequate father.

Chase, becoming bored by the ritual and mindless conversations, looked at her husband. She wondered why Reece had neither the build nor the aggressiveness of his father Matt, whom she had rather fancied. Whenever she'd been around Matt there was always a feeling of excitement, if nothing was happening, he would make something happen. Matt had been like a second father to her. In contrast, her own father had never allowed her to take risks, calling her 'My Princess" just as her mother did. Her parents had treated her protectively, as if trying to shield her from harm to preserve her good looks and an incredibly unblemished skin.

In contrast, her father-in-law had been uncompromising towards her and she revelled in his attention. It had been Matt who had taught her to ride a horse, to catch salmon and to drive his four-wheel-drive vehicle on bone-jolting journeys across paddocks to ford rivers and climb mountains... at least the hills looked like mountains to her when she was going up the scary steep slopes.

He wasn't bothered with conventions or saying what he thought. She recalled a time when the rest of the family had gone down on to the beach to walk off an enormous Christmas lunch. She and Matt were alone beside the pool resting.

"Do you mind if I sunbath with my top off," she had asked nervously, adding, "I will remain on my tummy."

Matt had laughed. "Go to it, and turn over as many times as you wish, it won't excite me. "You're too lanky to get me excited."

That was probably true as Courtney was curvaceous and the woman in town that Reece had pointed out being "Dad's scarlet woman" was an over-inflated Barbie look-alike except that she had brown hair.

Matt had been an incorrigible flirt and she enjoyed the attention when that teasing was directed at her. She sighed and said aloud, "I'll miss you, really miss you Matt."

In the middle of the room there was quite a gathering around a group of Americans, including two blonde women who looked as if they were mother and daughter.

The loudest voice belonged to another in that party, Matt's Aunt Milly, who was telling everyone who was listening how Matt as a 17-year-old had come to her ranch in Wyoming and she sent him home a little over three years later "ready to take on the world".

In the far corner of the room was a man, with a crutch on the empty seat beside him. His right leg was missing from just above the knee. He was unshaven, quite scruffy. On the seat next to him was a greying fox terrier, dozing despite the noise. The teenage son of one of Matt's closest friends returned to the man carrying a bottle of wine. His interest was to pump the old man a bit more for a story that could become an "Incident from the Past" essay required as part of his high school studies.

"Cheers, Mr Thomas. Now let me dump the empty bottle for you. I'm afraid that the Cloudy Bay sav is all gone. But the barman said that this one from Nelson's lower Moutere Valley is every bit as good."

"Doesn't matter laddie, it's all plonk to me. Now, where were we? Matt and I were being swept down the Miranda River..."

Extracting useful titbits from all this chatter was Ali Packard, a reporter from the local newspaper The Bugle. Unnoticed, a feature writer from a national Sunday newspaper was also quietly at work. His story of the turbulent life of Matt Curtis would be featured as a double-page spread in the newspaper distributed around the country.

When finding out of the presence of that uninvited reporter, Reece and Courtney initially were appalled at the intrusion. But the journalist was an elderly, persuasive man, and managed to convince Reece that it would be advantageous to be allowed to continue his fact-gathering to supplement material already on hand at the newspaper.