‘What is your type?’
Julia considered it briefly. ‘Someone who laughs a lot, who can make me laugh. Dark, handsome … and, of course, short!’ At five foot and half an inch, height was a tender subject with Julia.
‘In other words, a Latin hysteric,’ said Phillip sourly and Julia giggled.
‘Right! And while you’re away I’ll have some time to look around for him.’ Phillip was off on yet another of his overseas business trips.
‘Haven’t you got any work lined up?’ Phillip asked.
‘Not yet. But there’s plenty of time. You don’t leave until next month.’ When he was away for longer than four weeks Phillip usually paid her a retainer so that she was free to find outside work temporarily if she wished. With her reputation she could pick and choose her jobs.
‘July twenty-first, he confirmed. ‘But I have heard of something for you, if you’re interested.’
‘What?’ asked Julia, without much hope.
‘The Marlows,’ he said, sounding insufferably smug.
Julia let out a whoop of delight as she turned on him. ‘I don’t believe it! Where? When?’
‘At Craemar, in August, for a month. I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘How did you come to hear?’
‘I met Constance last week at the theatre and happened to mention I was going away.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me!’ Julia hoped no one else had got the job in the interim.
‘I forgot,’ admitted Phillip with irritating calmness. He could be selfishly casual when his own well-being wasn’t involved. ‘She wants you to ring her about it.’ He shot back a pristine cuff. ‘I must go. No lunch today, Julia, but there’ll be six tomorrow.’ He often entertained during the day as well as in the evenings, so Julia never lacked for variety of challenge.
She turned back to the cluttered bench as he left, wondering about the Marlows. They usually went down to their holiday home on the Coromandel Peninsula at Christmas, not in the dead of winter. Julia had worked for them once before at Craemar, two Christmasses ago, helping their resident cook/housekeeper to cater for an extended family reunion. It had been hard work, but fun.
Constance Marlow was one of New Zealand’s best-loved actresses and her husband, Michael, a leading stage director and playwright. Their children were almost all involved in the arts in one field or another, making a name for themselves in their own rights.
Her curiosity growing by the minute, Julia washed her hands and used the yellow kitchen phone to call Constance and make an appointment to see her the next day. That done she dedicated herself to preparing an elegant birthday dinner to precede the bombe.
The next morning, success confirmed by Phillip’s unqualified approval over breakfast, Julia drove her battered little VW the few miles to the Marlows’ Remuera town house. Getting no answer from the front door, she strolled around the back to find Constance sitting in the weak autumn sunshine beside the pool, studying the typed pages of a script. Julia had not seen her at close quarters for a year, although she had been to several of her plays, but Constance looked as slim, as vital as she did on stage, the glorious red hair swept up into a knot of fire, the green eyes sparkling with life.
‘Julia!’ Lovely to see you again,’ she cried, in liquid tones. ‘Sit down on one of these loungers and enjoy the sun. We’re not going to have it for long by the look of those clouds. I’m glad you’ve arrived, this thing was beginning to drive me mad with boredom.’ She threw the offending pages on to the manicured grass.
‘A new play, Mrs Marlow?’ asked Julia, smilingly taking a seat.
‘TV script, and do call me Connie—I told you that last time. Otherwise I shall start feeling really decrepit.’
‘You’re looking as young as ever,’ responded Julia, instantly put at her ease.
‘Thanks, I needed that,’ Connie laug
hed with the confidence of one who knew it was the truth. ‘Forty-nine I was last week, and do you know what that wretch Richard offered me for my birthday—a facelift!’
Julia watched in amusement as Connie described the gifts she had received from her family with extravagant gestures of the graceful hands. It was incredible to think, looking at Connie’s willowy grace, that she was the mother of six children, including two sets of twins. Incredible too, that one so volatile and apparently disorganised could be the lynch pin of the family, but matriarch was a role Connie enjoyed playing to the full, when she got the chance.
‘Well, are you coming down to Craemar with us? We really need you and it won’t be too onerous. There’ll only be us, this time, not all the aunts and cousins. Not Hugh, of course,’ she added as an afterthought. Julia had never met the mysterious Hugh. He was the eldest son, older than Julia, a lawyer who seemed to steer well clear of the rest of the family’s flamboyancy.
‘Aren’t you going down at Christmas?’ asked Julia curiously.
Connie sighed. ‘I’m afraid tradition has to give way to expediency this year, we’ll all be scattered to the winds at Christmas.’ She began counting off her fingers. ‘Michael will be directing me in a play at Downstage in Wellington—one of his own incidentally, he’ll be working on it at Craemar so bear with him won’t you? Richard has a part in a film that’s going on location to Easter Island. Steven is scheduled to tour Japan. Rosalind is going to try her luck on the London stage, God help her! Olivia is still wrapped up in that artists’ commune and they’re having an exhibition and Charles, Charles wants to go and stay with a friend at Taupo. My baby—wants to be away at Christmas!’
Julia hid a smile. Charley, Charles only to Connie, was the extreme tail-ender of the family. Only fourteen and still at boarding school he was the only Marlow child who didn’t have red hair. He was a solemn but likeable boy, rather quiet, and Connie was at a bit of a loss with him. She loved him as much as she loved the others, but she felt she didn’t understand him. ‘Generation gap yawning at me,’ she had once said to Julia.