SIMON TOLD POLLY he was leaving. But why? And what about our property partnership? What the hell have I done? Polly shocked, not for a moment expecting this. Not another woman is it?
No. Yet in a way you’re another woman. You’re not who I fell for.
Simon, I don’t understand. I truly don’t.
I know you don’t and that’s what makes this hard.
Just tell me why. So he told her and when he was finished she was shaking her head in denial. You like money, too. The whole world does and those who claim they don’t are liars. Liars, I tell you.
I like money. I like the freedom it brings. But worshipping it, no. Polly, don’t you see how obsessed you are by money?
You’re saying I talk it all the time? What about the other stuff I talk about, not related to money? Or doesn’t that count? What about when we’re making love, do I mention money then? And couldn’t I accuse you of being obsessed with sex and therefore I’m leaving you over it? Don’t you, like most men, want sex all the time? So, is that okay but me, a woman, thinking about money a lot is not okay? Stuff you, Harding, I’m not taking this crap. If you want to go then go.
It’s what I just said, Polls.
Don’t call me Polls. That’s reserved for those intimate with me. And what about our business arrangement? Do we sell up, liquidate the lot when values are on a steady rise? What if I don’t want to sell up?
Then you can buy me out.
With what? How? We’ve already borrowed on a lot of the equity.
The same method we used to buy the properties — leveraged banking.
Your remaining equity is sitting there, as mine is, as the bank’s added security on their loan. We’ve got seventy per cent gearing and they don’t go higher than that. So, Mr anti-money, you’ll be happy to go without your share of the disgusting lucre until we can get higher revaluations in, what, two years’ time?
You’re playing the spiteful game now, Polly.
Go to hell, pal. You can’t accuse me of being a crass materialist and money-obsessed and expect me to be cracking a bottle of Dom with you.
He gave her a look. You see how you’ve changed? Before we met you’d never heard of any of these champagnes, now they’re part of your everyday vocabulary.
So? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be, that life keeps growing, our outlooks broaden? Haven’t your parents been in agreement with me on the Maori problems in particular because most Maori have never got the money thing, how money works, how to make money? Didn’t they think I was oh so wonderful to be a Maori woman talking, thinking, most of all acting like they — you — do? Now it’s so bad you’re leaving me? Who did you say was in the wrong here?
My parents — and I — are in agreement with you, on lots of things, probably most. But I, Simon Harding, with his own mind, does not find a materialistic woman at all appealing. It’s like you’ve won Lotto and your miserable suburban existence can be ostentatiously put behind you. Not how I operate, sorry.
You mean not how we operate. Being your class.
Why don’t you add race to that, Polly Bennett, and be done with it?
Race then. And it is race in the death, is it not?
Could not be further from race. But if you have a need to make it that then go for it, it’s a democracy.
It is race. You’re saying, you can take the girl out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the girl.
Grow up.
Simon, I’ve heard you countless times talk about your money heroes, the ones on the Rich List, and how so-and-so’s bought a boat worth thirty million. Someone’s house is worth twelve million. Jeremy Lyons, or James Whosafloo has got three million dollars’ worth of cars in his garage the size of a warehouse. Now, is that not crass, but Polly Heke, aka Bennett, is crass for wanting a few expensive toys not remotely in your heroes’ league?
I don’t have to live with those people. Sleep with them.
Is that what you call your love-making efforts with me — sleeping? I’d have thought it was closer to a coma in terms of performance.
You’re being cheap now.
Oh, am I just? That still doesn’t make you even half of a good lover, in case you’d been kidding yourself in that department.
Anything else you want to expose of yourself, Polly, who is sounding more like a Heke than a Bennett?
Go, Simon. And I’ll not be selling our properties, nor buying out your share, not for two years at least. You make me sick.
He looked at her for some moments. You’re not even close to crying, are you?
No, she said. You cry for what you lose. You’ve lost, not me.
Though when Simon left she found herself with tears, of course she did. Simon was a good man, including as a lover. She’d just said that. As to being the other things he accused her of, Polly could not see it. Not for one moment, for it meant her house was built on sand. Which said a vital young life, spilling over with future plans, was wrong. And that could never be.