Chapter 2: Bareback!

We still had another three weeks of holiday left. I talked with Frank about what he expected in terms of work in exchange for board and lodgings, and how that related to the deal he had made with the study group for use of the premises for study and sex in return for cleaning and washing.

“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” I didn’t answer. “I’m offering them paid work here, but they don’t get room and board. Suppose we think about the situation where you have school and extracurriculars. Do you reckon you do ten hours a week renovating?” I nodded, and Frank went on. “Okay, suppose room and board is ten hours renovating, and you and the study group do another five cleaning and washing between you. I’m happy to pay you cash just like them for anything over that. That’s separate from the arrangement with me and Emma for working at Mary’s World. You’ll have to pay tax on that.”

I did some quick mental calculations. I wanted a car. I had saved almost everything I had earned working on the farm and at the Coffee Bar, and I had almost sixty pounds. A clapped out 1936 model Austin 7 was somewhere between five and fifteen quid, but I had seen enough older guys spending all their spare time trying to keep one running to be keen on one of those. I could afford something better, and rather liked the idea of a Morris Minor. They had been around for about fifteen years, and everyone I knew believed that in the first few years’ production of each new model they ‘worked out the problems with the design’.

Between three weeks more holiday work for Frank, and my ongoing evening work at Mary’s World, I would have enough money to buy a car, and run and maintain it. I resolved to start looking at the ‘Cars for Sale’ columns in the NZ Herald and the Auckland Star.

Sunday night at Mary’s World was busy, but I was able to stop to listen to the first NZ folksong I had ever heard. It was quite strange to have something that ‘nailed’ my experiences of rural life in the South Waikato hill country so perfectly while sung with a strong English accent. The opening verse stopped me in my tracks.

’I gotta new brown sportscoat
I gotta new pair o’ grey strides
I gotta real Kiwi haircut
A bit off the top and short back ‘n sides’

It described Uncle Bruce and Robert’s ‘town’ attire perfectly. I stood holding the coffee and toasties I was delivering, and waited for the next verse.

’Soon as I’ve tied up me kuri
Soon as I’ve swept out the yard
Soon as I’ve hosed down me gumboots
I’ll be livin’ it high
And hittin’ it hard’

Nah! – that wasn’t quite right, but I continued paying attention.

’I’m gunna start up the tractor
Gunna back it outa the gate
There’s a dance on down at the hall and
It starts somewhere about half past eight’

Nah again, but I kept listening.

’Lookit the sheilas all cuttin’ the supper
Lookit the kids slidin’ over the floor
Lookit the great big bunch o’ jokers
Standin’ round the door’

Perfect! Absolutely nailed it! I had seen exactly that at the occasional dances I had been to when I had stayed with the Henleys, and I had even been one of those kids! I kept listening. So did everyone else in the room.

’We got the teacher to belt the pianner
We got Joe from the store on the drums
We’re as slick as the Orange in Auckland
For crankin’ things up and makin’ ‘em hum’

Most patrons laughed. ‘The Orange’ was Auckland’s only cabaret, with a substantial cover charge designed to ‘keep out the riff raff’, and the great and the good brought their own liquor and ‘hid’ their bottles under the tables when the police rang the managers to warn them they would be visiting. The singer went on.

’I had a schottische with the tart from the butchers
I had a waltz with the constable’s wife
I had a beer from the keg on the cream truck
And the cop had one too, you can bet your life!’

I wasn’t sure what a schottische was, and there were no cream trucks in the hill country, but the keg and the cop were spot on.

’Oh it’s great bein’ out with the jokers
When the jokers are sparkin’ and bright
Oh it’s great givin’ cheek to the sheilas
Down the hall on Saturday night!’

The singer got a standing ovation, and I delivered the somewhat cooler coffee and nibbles to my punters. New Zealanders are characteristically too polite to complain.

On Monday, the girls were doing various other things, so Frank, Aapi and I started on the veranda. The West end of the structure stretching across the front of the house was nearly six inches below the East end. We removed the boards enclosing the crawl space beneath it and found that what Frank called ‘the boundary joist’ had rotted and that end of the veranda was effectively cantilevered off the house itself and was hanging free. The rest of the timbers were sound.

Aapi was curious. “How come that one rotted, and none of the others have?”

Frank picked at the spongy timber with the claw of his hammer, and then pointed to a stain discolouring the weatherboards enclosing the West end of the veranda. “There’s been a leak from the spouting running down there. The leak was eventually fixed, and it’s not leaking now, but that boundary joist was rimu, and the sapwood rotted after a few years of being wet.”

Now I was curious. “Why didn’t the weatherboards rot?”

“They’re heart Kauri and they’ve been kept painted.” Not completely rotproof, but lots better than unpainted rimu.”

“What about the piling?”

“Heart Totara. Good for fifty years even buried in the ground, and these piles are up on scoria blocks.”

Frank was confident we could remove the rotten boundary joist without supporting the structure, since, as he put it ‘it’s like tits on a bull at the moment’. He was right, and even though it took most of the day, we were able to replace it with a carefully measured piece of treated radiata pine, and then we used a bottle jack to lift the whole veranda corner back into alignment and onto the pile where it belonged.

Aapi rode home, and I showered quickly and then prepped some carrots and spuds and cabbage to go with the pork sausages I was intending to fry for dinner, while Frank, luxuriated in a bath. We had just discovered Ian Fleming, and he had treated himself (and eventually all of the rest of us) to a paperback copy of ‘Casino Royale’.

We were sitting together in the reorganised kitchen after our meal, when Pauline arrived. I was happy to see her, but also somewhat surprised.

She didn’t beat about the bush. “I’ve come to check on the patient.” Frank managed not to laugh but couldn’t quite keep a straight face. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. Pauline looked at me closely.

Gradually, her face fell. “You don’t want to - do you?”

“It’s not that. I’m just surprised.” I was also uncomfortable, but I wasn’t saying that. In later life, I got quite good at identifying when I was uncomfortable and why, but at that moment, all I was conscious of was a vague unease. I must have been sending some signals of my discomfort, because Frank came to my rescue.

He looked straight at me. “You want some help?”

I tried to deflect. “Thanks but no thanks! I think my sick dick syndrome is better!”

“Bullshit! You were surprised to see Pauline, and pleased, but there’s something else there as well, and that something, whatever it is, is in the way of you being easy with each other.”

Pauline looked slightly relieved, whether just because Frank shared her perception that I had an issue, or also because he was clearly going to make me talk about it.

She pushed. “What is it then? What’s in the way?”

“Dunno.”

Pauline looked disappointed, but Frank wasn’t giving up. “What would it be if you did know?”

It still wasn’t absolutely clear, and I knew I didn’t have all the words, but it was obvious I’d been sprung. “I think it’s about you just arriving. What if I’d had someone else here?”

The question was rhetorical, but Pauline answered anyway. “I’d hang out and drink tea with whoever was available.” She looked just a little sad. “I don’t want you to feel obligated or even semi committed. I know we haven’t talked, but I’d hoped we could be friends who fuck sometimes.”

Frank was quite definite. “You’re part of the study group that has a collective deal about using the space here, and you work here as well as at Mary’s World. I don’t feel you should have to ring and ask before you come.” He paused and Pauline looked a bit happier. “Being sexy with David is a separate issue.”

He turned to me. “Pauline turning up here doesn’t impose any obligation on you. You can refuse treatment for sick dick syndrome, or you can accept the offer. Over to you.”

“If it’s really that simple...” I looked at Pauline.

She smiled and nodded. “It is from my end.”

She held out her hand, and I stood up and took it. “My end’s pretty simple too. It wants to be somewhere tight and warm and wet and slippery!” We all laughed and Pauline and I went to my room. I hadn’t been expecting her and the bed wasn’t made and the room wasn’t particularly warm.

I turned on the heater. “Let’s just cuddle for a while till the room warms up.” We did, and the shredded paper that Frank and me had laid between the ceiling rafters provided enough insulation to make the old two bar heater fairly effective.

It didn’t take long for the room to warm up, and for us to warm up too! Gradually our smooches got hotter, with tongue and lots of very close body contact. I was relieved to find I was very soon very hard, and Pauline started to rub her lower belly against the lump in the sweats I used as ‘lounging attire’ after my shower.

When we had been together the previous day, Pauline had taken control and made me lie (relatively) still while she pleasured me. Now, for the first time, I was actively responding to her as a sexual partner. I had held her body against me as we hugged at least hundred times before, but that had been relatively chaste. This wasn’t. We wriggled and ground against each other as we sucked face, and our breathing gradually became ragged and irregular.