Flamingo Flying South Read online

  'It's not a long walk,' called a voice she remembered from her encounter in the store, 'but driving gets you there quicker, I find.' The man who had picked up her shattered shepherdess remains opened his taxi door.

  'I'm quite all right, thank you,' she said coolly. 'I wouldn't care for you to go out of your way.'

  'It's my way, too—the Curium. Could you get in at once, the traffic appears to be banking up.'

  It certainly was, Georgia saw… what else could be ex­pected in this narrow canyon? To save further congestion she accepted the lift, if unwillingly, and the taxi moved off again.

  'Thank you for picking up my ruins,' she offered stiffly as they edged towards a much wider thoroughfare, but almost as congested again as the canyon, since it was shared now by buses, vans, trucks, bicycles, handcarts and laden donkeys.

  'Thank you for being an Australian,' he said calmly back.

  She looked at him in complete surprise, and he nodded coolly.

  'We can't waste time,' he intimated next, 'on preamble. Already I've learned from your sister-in-law that you're booked to leave after tea for Nicosia Airport, thence to Thessaloniki. So what I have to say must be at once… or at least in the hotel.'

  'I don't understand you.'

  'How could you… yet? But until you do, let me assure you I was very pleased when you shattered that gew-gaw, and had to speak up, otherwise I could have gone round for an hour searching for a Strine.'

  'I beg your pardon?' stiffly.

  'Beg away,' he shrugged. 'But please to change your out­raged tone of voice, for I'm one, too.'

  'Australian?' She refused to use that 'Strine' that he had used.

  'Yes.' At her look of doubt, he added, 'Only years abroad have filed off my rough edges.'

  'Meaning—?' she flashed indignantly.

  'Oh, no,' he assured her easily, 'your tone is all right, though there's a little unevenness there. But not to worry, I find it quite livable-with.'

  She looked out at the busy street in anger. 'I don't under­stand any of this,' she repeated, but it was not the Cyprus traffic she meant but the situation in which she found her­self. This man who apparently had been in search of her. His mention of Leone. His knowledge of their imminent departure. His succinct: 'We can't waste time.'

  'Then briefly, very briefly, our hotel clerk contacted me… I saw your sister at once… on her directions I came down here to see you. But where, among all those women, was I to find you?'

  'So you thought up two children to be duly toughened?' Georgia said coldly. 'Then you asked around?'

  'Yes,' he confirmed calmly.

  'Quite a story,' she awarded.

  'Except that it's a true one. They do exist.'

  'The boys?'

  'Yes.'

  'Ages six and seven?'

  'Yes.'

  'And a need for toughening?'

  'Again yes. And that's what I want to talk to you about.'

  'I see.' She absorbed this for a moment. 'And do I look that type then? That toughening-up type?'

  'No. And that sets me back a little, I'll admit. But beggars can't be choosers.'

  'Really—'

  'Yes, really… but quiet a while, please, for here we are now. We'll go straight to my suite if you don't mind. We can talk better there. No, it's perfectly all right, there's a private sitting-room, and besides your sister-in-law, the clerk knows where you will be.'

  'This is going too far!' she protested.

  'We've gone nowhere at all yet, but I hope we will. At least hear me out, if nothing else.' He had paid off the taxi, impelled her into the white and gold inn, and was now lead­ing her to the lift. 'I know you're due at Nickers in several hours,' he said, 'but what I need can be finalized in a third of that.'

  'It is?'

  'I said in my suite, Miss Paul, but you may as well mull things over until we get there. Only don't for pity's sake drop what I propose as quickly as you dropped this figurine.' He reached in his pocket and took out a shepherdess, a new, intact shepherdess.

  'You—' she gasped.

  'Yes, I bought it for you.'

  'You also probably signalled the attendant not to charge me for the breakage.'

  'Just before I picked up the cheques, passport and hotel receipt to assure me that I had the correct person,' he nodded back.

  'For what?'

  'You rather surprise me. Up till now you've been very astute. The answer is the boys, of course. The hothoused fellows of six and seven due to be toughened up.' A short laugh. 'You should have seen your scandalized face at that!'

  'You weren't looking.'

  'I was.'

  'With your back turned?'

  'I have eyes there, too. When you're in my employ, it might be well to remember that.'

  'When I'm in—' she began indignantly, but he stopped her by preceding her out of the lift to lead the way down the hotel corridor.

  At the end of the passage he opened the door to a large suite and bowed her in.

  Two children… boys… were playing rather desultorily on the floor.

  'Bysshe… Segovia,' the man said distastefully, making no pretence, Georgia gathered, that he would prefer a Bill or Jim. Then, not altering his voice, which was distasteful to Georgia, since in John's family the children were always considered as equals, equal rights, equal sensitivity, equal privileges and privacy, he tossed: 'Look them over for a few moments before you accept my offer, Miss Paul.'

  Accept his offer! Georgia could have answered immedi­ately that nothing could be more remote. However, she did look at the boys.

  Experienced now in John's and Leone's trio, two of them fairly age-comparative young males, or so she judged, she decided that this pair were rather smallish for six and seven. Also pale. But paleness, as opposed to pallor, had little to do with health, she knew by now; possibly they had forfeited any colour they normally possessed by being cooped up in a hotel.

  'Many hotels,' the Australian drawled knowledgeably, knowledgeable of the trend of Georgia's thoughts.

  'Bysshe, of course, coincided with his mother's poetic phase,' he went on. 'Being an individualist, or so she liked to think, she didn't want just Percy or Shelley.' His tone was astringent.

  'And Segovia?'

  'Her Spanish guitar period. But please not to be dis­couraged. The pair will answer to Bish and Seg. Or'… a threatening look at the unattending pair… 'answer to me.'

  'Mr.—' began Georgia indignantly, then she stopped. She did not know his name.

  'Plain Smith,' he smiled, 'a bit of a comedown after Bysshe and Segovia,' but Georgia found she could not smile back. She did not like this discussion of the children in front of them like this.

  'Don't worry.' Again he drawled it knowledgeably. 'They're not even listening. Oh, no, they're not slow, just introverted, psychosomatic, complex, maladjusted, self-centred little pains in the neck. Also,' he added, 'spoiled rotten and bored to tears.'

  'At six and seven,' Georgia disbelieved… but un­willingly she secretly agreed they looked an unrewarding, lacklustre couple. However, to make a child, two parents are needed, and though she was no feminist, Georgia did not believe that this man should get away with everything.

  It appeared, though, that all he was getting away with now were the two children.

  'They're my responsibility until I'm ready to take them to Australia for a period. Hence'… he had taken out a pipe and was lighting it, and for the first time Seg… or was it Bish?… looked up with interest… 'you, Miss Paul.' He noticed the boy's curiosity over the pipe, and tossed, 'Prob­ably only ever experienced Turkish cigarettes before, and I think I mean experienced.'

  'You wouldn't know.'

  'But I still wouldn't be surprised or put it past the blasé little sophisticates.' A pause. 'Well?'

  'Well what?'

  'What I've just proposed.' A show of irritation. 'Oh, you mean salary, duration, the rest.'

  'I mean—anything. You've told me nothing at all. No'… as he open
ed his mouth… 'not in front of the boys.'

  'You flatter them. But if you insist—'

  'I do.'

  'Then hi!' He glared down at the pair. 'Hi, kids, hi, Bish, hi, Seg, out!'

  They looked up at him a moment, then did as he said.

  'See,' said Mr. Smith after they had gone, 'not even any fight back.'

  'Now you're being too unreasonable. It appears to me you want it every way.'

  'Why not? My parents had it in me.' His eyes narrowed from the smoke wave from his pipe were directed banteringly on her. Georgia knew he was deliberately baiting her.

  Presently, maddeningly unaware, or anyhow, pretending to be, of her fuming dislike of him, he resumed.

  'The children have been dumped on me. Yes, literally dumped. I can't send them over to Australia unac­companied; I also have nowhere at this juncture there to send them. I can't go myself for some months yet, I have essential work here.'

  'There are schools—'

  'European. For born Australians, I consider they've already been in Europe too long.'

  'An Australian school, then?'

  'In time. But they must be prepared first.'

  'Then you are concerned about them,' she commented.

  He gave her a glowering look, but she knew she had gained a point there, that point that for all his brusqueness this pair was not as completely unimportant to him as he would have liked to convey. At least he had a few shreds still left of decent fatherhood… or was it in his case just per­sonal pride?

  'I don't wish to take them to Australia, even for that short period, in the way they are now,' he said shortly.

  She understood what he meant, and smiled patron­izingly.

  'How long have you been out of Australia?' she in­quired.

  He gave her a quick hard look, and she said, 'For some time, I think. Australia is as sophisticated, blasé, false'… she paused, then went on triumphantly… 'introverted, psychosomatic, complex, maladjusted and self-centred as the rest.'

  'You left out,' he pointed with his finger, 'spoiled rotten and bored to tears. But I see what you mean. You think that I consider Australia as the sole last frontier. I don't. I be­lieve every word you just said, but I also think that as Aus­tralians… which they are… they should be prepared for it, which they are not.'

  'Mr. Smith, all Australian boys don't go round looking like prize-fighters or buck-jumpers, in fact most don't.'

  'Then answer me this: Do many go round looking like Bish and Seg?'

  'Well…'

  'You see?' Again he pointed the finger. 'I don't ask the impossible. But I do want a bit of colour on their faces, a bit of muscle on their arms, a bit of interest in them.'

  'I suppose I could help with the colour and the interest,' she admitted.

  'Then that would earn you what I propose to pay.' He told her; and she wished he hadn't, because it was a very attractive sum, and she didn't want, and anyway wouldn't take, his job.

  'I,' he concluded, 'can see to the muscle myself.'

  'I'm sure,' Georgia said next, 'that if you look around you'll find someone much more suitable than I.'

  'I'm quite sure of that, too,' he said deflatingly. 'By choice I would never select your type, not, anyway, for this pur­pose.' He nodded to the door through which the boys had left.

  'Nor any purpose?' she suggested, incensed.

  He shrugged.

  'However,' he went on, 'I can't waste any more time than I've wasted already, so it has to be you.'

  'It has not!' she exclaimed crossly.

  'Your sister has told me you're not at all anxious to leave Cyprus.'

  'Leone wouldn't know.'

  'You underestimate her,' he contradicted, 'she gathered more than you thought.'

  'Then if I'm not anxious, I'm certainly not un-anxious.'

  He ignored that. 'You haven't a home, as she has, chil­dren, as she has, a husband—'

  'Usually the husband comes before the children.'

  Again he ignored her. 'So there's no reason in the world for you to refuse.'

  'Leone told you a lot of things in a short time,' Georgia said after a long resentful pause.

  'It had to be short. It has to be short now. The tea gong goes in exactly… he checked on his watch… 'ten minutes. After that you leave Limassol almost immediately for Nic­osia Airport, thence Greece. Or'… he waited a deliberate moment… 'you don't leave.'

  'I leave, Mr. Smith,' she assured him.

  'At that salary?'

  'It is attractive, I'll admit, but I still leave.'

  'Liking this place? Still experiencing a pull from this place?'

  'There's no pull,' she insisted.

  He smiled, but said nothing, and it was worse than if he had.

  'Anyway,' Georgia burst out when he still did not speak, 'I could overcome that, overcome any—any pull, as you put it.'

  'Overcome filling a void, which I hear you now have in your life?'

  'Really, Leone—'

  'Overcome a call to help these children?' He brought that out last.

  She hated him for that, hated him for his uncanny knowl­edge, even not knowing her, that those two lacklustre, rather unlovely children could be an armour chink.

  'Bish and Seg,' Mr. Smith said factually, 'require you, Miss Paul. If you can oblige them, you'll oblige me.'

  'I—'

  'It would be your privilege to choose any type of back­ground, either villa, apartment, hotel suite… houseboat, if you like; also any location, any situation, seaside, moun­tainside, city, hamlet, plains. Again, you will be provided your own car.'

  'You make it sound just too fabulous. Apart from brown­ing them up, interesting them, talking Australian—'

  'Strine was my word,' he grinned.

  'What else?' she ignored.

  'A mother's love?' he said sarcastically.

  'A father's love is just as necessary,' she retorted as caus­tically.

  'All right, we'll skip that angle. Just prepare them for something more than they've been having; it doesn't essen­tially have to be the Wild West. Get them so that they won't arrive Down Under looking like indoor plants. I don't want he-men, I want normal, less-than-white, scratched, faintly grubby, smelly little boys.'

  'As you were?'

  'You get the idea. Your answer?'

  'No.' She meant that, she could never work for a man like this.

  The tea gong was going. He let its resonance sink in for quite a few moments.

  'So,' he accepted, spreading large capable hands, 'another day wasted.' He got up and shrugged defeat. 'You'd better hasten, Miss Paul, the car departs promptly at sixteen hours.'

  She had hesitated, she could not have said why, but now his words prompted her up, and she moved smartly to the door.

  About to pass through it, she became aware of something at the other door, the door through which this man's sons had been impelled, and, compelled herself for some reason, she turned round.

  They both stood there, Bish and Seg, two undersized, undesirable young fry, not saying anything, not even looking anything particularly, but suddenly she knew it was just no good.

  She knew he knew so, too, knew it before he said breezily and hatefully: 'So! So we stop after all, do we?'

  'I am neither regal nor plural,' she said haughtily.

  'You'll need to be to do anything with them.'

  'Mr. Smith, if I do do anything, and I'm not saying yet that I will, it has to be not under these circumstances.'

  'I told you that you can choose a villa.'

  'Not under the circumstances of talking in front of chil­dren like this.'

  'I told you that they—'

  'I know what you told me, but these are my conditions.'

  'Then I agree. Beggars can't be choosers. Will you write your name there, Miss Paul?'

  Georgia did, thinking what a fool she was to agree to such an uncomplimentary offer, to consider two difficult children (though she had never known yet a child yo
u could not get round in some way)… to consider one difficult man (she found she had nothing to add to that).

  She stood looking at him. He looked back at her.

  The gong kept resounding, and presently Georgia said a little unbelievingly, unbelieving that she was actually doing this thing, actually agreeing to this farce:

  'I'll go and tell Leone not to send down my bag.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  Georgia's first contact with the boys was taking them with her when she accompanied Leone into Nicosia Airport to wave her sister-in-law off to join her family again.

  When she asked Mr. Smith's permission for this, he said, 'Yes… though if you're thinking it will amuse them—'

  'Of course it will amuse them, all boys love airports.'

  'You'll find these two have seen so many all they'll regis­ter will be an even greater degree of boredom.' He added, 'If such is possible.'

  Georgia did not argue; you should not with an employer; but she had never found a boy yet not fascinated with the rush and bustle of an air terminal, the sounds of engines warming up, the sight of taxiing aircraft, then, when you ran to the spectator platform, the thrilling sight of a plane taking off, or landing, or climbing, or descending, or simply waiting in readiness on the field.

  As soon as she had taken tea with Leone, fitting as much talk in as the time for a quick cup would allow, she went up to Bish and Seg to superintend the changing of their play shorts for something more suitable for a farewell. But one glance told her that with them it was unnecessary. They were both immaculate. She even had no need to instruct them to wash their hands.

  'We're going into Nicosia Airport,' she announced.

  'It's a small one,' demeaned Bish.

  'But an international,' added Georgia. 'Do you know what that means?'

  'Of course. We always come down at internationals,' withered Seg.

  'My sister-in-law is leaving in a Trident 2,' Georgia said hopefully.

  Bish said, unimpressed: 'Oh?'

  Seg said: 'I knew that.'

  'Would you like to see it leave?'

  This time they made the same reply.

  'Not much.'

  In the big car, Georgia put the two of them in front with the driver. All small boys are intrigued with cars, especially cars like the expensive model that had waited outside the Curium to take them into the capital.