A little lake music

Abstract

It was not hard to find. He drove slowly through the wide gate, over the jolting cattle stop and along the gravelled drive under beech and totara trees, the occasional rimu. The lake to his right played hide-and-seek with him before it emerged as a broad sheet of sunlit, sky-reflected blue under the heavily bushed surrounding hills. By then, the lodge itself had begun to flit in and out of view, now over the steering wheel, now through the window of the driver's door, until once around a final curve he slowed on a sweep of gravelled car park beside the building and came to a halt. In front of him a border was bright with dahlias. One or two native trees towered high above mature rhododendrons. He could imagine how spectacular it would be in spring. No wonder the lodge was famous for its rhododendrons. The lodge was of cream-painted wood, clinker built, nineteen thirties he judged. Disappointing. Looked a bit cutely nostalgic to him. He wasn't that keen on New Zealand art nouveau and art deco. Though he had grown up with those styles he had never liked them much and in this moody landscape they seemed pasted on, alien. It astonished him the way the young so lovingly restored dark, cold houses and pounced on kitsch items of the thirties as if they were nuggets of beauty. He resigned himself to finding art nouveau leadlights and bay windows inside.