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“We’ll stick the ute here.”
Frank swung the pickup around so that the flatbed faced the waves.
“D’ya like yer nose?”
Shaun looked back at him.
“Yeah. I guess?”
“Well, if you do, you’d better get used to wearing these.”
He threw him a soft-brimmed Tilley hat and a bottle of sun lotion.
“Hole in the bloody ozone right above us. Too many of my mates have had melanomas. That fair Pommy skin of yours’ll get burned to a crisp in no time.”
Doing as he was told, Shaun put the hat on and applied the suncream onto his face while Frank got the lines together.
Then, Frank patiently instructed him on how to prepare the kite and bait lines onto the winch, casting far out across the boiling surf. The kite took the lines out further into the ocean beyond the shore, aided by the offshore winds.
When Shaun tried it he caught nothing, but Frank snagged three decent-sized red snappers that any fisherman would have been proud of, except for Frank. It was a pretty average catch he grumbled, passing Shaun a cold beer. But it would do for their supper.
???
The next afternoon Shaun stood with Frank and Celia, keys in hand on the steps of the rotten porch at the lake lodge.
Celia, a small red-haired Irish-looking lady with boundless energy, had a pen and a large pad of paper at the ready. She’d already begun making a list of things that Shaun could do with. It had pretty much everything on there already, and they hadn’t even gone in yet.
“And you’re not getting a shipment, ya say?” she probed.
“No.”
“Most of you Poms when ya come out here, you ship your stuff out too.”
“This place was given to me.”
It was tricky. Shaun was answering as truthfully as he could.
“And no family back home?”
“No. I was in the army.”
He was beginning to feel a little hot under the collar. He needed to close down Celia’s digging.
“Hey, Frank. Can you fish this lake?”
“You’re dead right you can, in season.”
Frank had taken the bait.
“Best trout you’ll find, this side of Auckland. You can try a fly off the shoreline but the fish here go deep, it’s best in a boat.”
Celia huffed.
“Obsessed!”
“You never complain when I bring fish home.”
“I do when you’re too bone idle to gut ‘em.”
Turning the key in the kitchen door, they all made their way in tramping over Shaun’s footprints in the dust and carefully stepping over the piles of empty bottles.
Celia sniffed.
“Kids, I’ll bet. They come up here in summer to camp out and drink. I’m pretty sure it’s not squatters. ‘Sides, who’d wanna stay here after dark, unless you wanted to be scared?”
Her words trailed off as Frank threw her a look.
Shaun hadn’t appeared to hear that. He’d opened a kitchen cupboard and was surprised to see that it was neatly stacked with piles of matching crockery. The place was fully kitted out.
“Hey, you can scratch half of your list, Celia. Look, there’s pans, plates, cutlery. Everything’s here.”
Celia followed him, working her way through the cupboards.
“Well, who’d a thought it?”
Shaun turned to Celia.
“Did ya know Jake?”
Celia coughed.
“Err… I think he was… err... the caretaker for the place… eh, Frank?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Years ago.”
Shaun opened more drawers. Cloths in one, batteries and string in another and one with cooking equipment in. All tidily stored away and clean.
“And no one’s lived here since?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, everything’s been left intact,” Shaun surmised, checking and finding that the ancient fridge and freezer were all empty and cleaned out.
Someone had cleaned up after Caretaker Jack had passed. No tins or packets of food had been left, nothing that could rot.
And now that he’d slept, the place didn’t look quite so bad. They were in a spacious kitchen area. It was dated and needed a damn good clean but it had all the basics, and there was a large range for cooking and heating the water.
It looked like after Jack the Caretaker had died, the British Consulate had simply sent in the cleaners, then locked the door and forgotten about the place.
He turned the tap. Nothing for a second, then suddenly with a heavy knocking of pipes came a spluttering, followed by a steady flow of water into the sink. It wasn’t hot, but at least he had running water.
“What happened to Jake?”
Celia was picking up the bottles, and Frank had his head stuck behind the fridge, busy trying to find the plug and socket.
“Died.”
Shaun tried the door through to the next room. It was locked.
“At least the kids couldn’t get any further into the house.”
Shaun tried each of his keys in turn until he eventually found one that opened it.
Wandering through into the darkness of the next room, Celia grabbed Frank’s hand apprehensively.
The kids called Jake’s Place ‘the haunted house.’ But no ghosts were required. The story of the police grim findings was enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Imagining what happened here creeped her out.
Celia whispered under her breath to Frank.
“Was it here they....?”
He squeezed her hand in affirmation but kept tight-lipped as they found themselves in the main lounge behind Shaun.
He swiped the torch on his new phone and scanned the room.
“Hold on.”
Frank saw Shaun going over to the shuttered windows and promptly gave him a hand to open them up.
The effect was instant.
The light streaming in bounced onto the rimu wood that lined the floors and ceiling, flooding the room with warm, golden light.
Shaun was speechless. The place was stunning.
/> “Ah! It’s clean.”
Frank frowned at Celia.
“I mean, wow!”
She rushed over to the full-length windows and stood beside her husband.
“The view. It’s a beaut.”
Frank looked out towards the lake.
“I’ll say. Who’d have thought it, eh? And I’ve lived out this way since I was a nipper. Needs a fair amount of fixin’ up, but she’ll be right.”
“Yes, she will,” Shaun agreed, taking in the large living room with its high vaulted ceilings and large, stone chimney breast. In front of it, there were three large sage-coloured velour sofas placed in a horseshoe around a large rimu coffee table covered in a thick layer of grey dusty.
“And the guy you got the keys from?” Frank broached.
“The consulate official?”
“Yeah, him. They never said nothin’ about Jake to you?”
“No. Should they have?”
“No, no,” Frank mumbled breezily, “Just wondering... Struth! Is that a split cane Ogden Smith?”
Mounted on the back wall, a couple of rows of antique wooden fishing rods suddenly consumed all of Frank’s attention.
“Please have them.”
“No, mate, these are worth a bit…”
“Please.”
Shaun overrode Frank’s prostrations and pointed at the several mounted stuffed rainbow trout that were surrounding the rods.
“As long only as you take these too.”
Taking one off the wall, Shaun stopped in his tracks.
In an arc, dotted right across the wood-lined wall were twenty or more neatly filled-in dents.
He pushed it out of his mind. Here he was in this peaceful corner of paradise and all he could think about was bullet spray. He was more damaged by his past than he’d realised. And he needed this place more than he knew. To heal. To start over.
And boy, now he saw it properly, he could see the potential of the place. His mind raced with the possibilities; a fishing retreat, a hotel? He wasn’t scared of a bit of graft.
As they wandered around, he saw that the two wings added on to the main house gave four large ensuite bedrooms on each side, in addition to the four bedrooms upstairs in the main body of the lodge. They’d seen better days, but there was furniture in them all, albeit of varying condition. Victorian iron bedsteads, chests of drawers, wardrobes, they were antique and solid, if a little dusty and damp.
