Bleak City (19 page)

Tony had been working as an assessor, EQC had taken on people from all over the country and from Australia. They had taken anyone who could, at a stretch, be regarded as having the appropriate skills to assess properties, including ex-policemen. Alice had said she had even seen assessing jobs advertised through the university’s Student Job Search service. Marjorie wouldn’t be happy having her house assessed by anyone but a builder who knew what they were looking at. As for being assessed by a policeman, she was a customer, not a suspect. But she didn’t have to worry about that, her house was well built and had suffered only a few cracks. Gerald had his engineer come through and they had sent his report on to EQC. Tony had used his connections there to see her claim settled quickly and Gerald had the required work done during the winter. The only difficult period was when Marjorie was shut out of her kitchen, but, fortunately, that hadn’t gone on for long.

As for Marjorie’s rental portfolio, having Tony in EQC had pushed most her properties along nicely and payouts had followed, allowing her to make her own decisions about how repairs were carried out. There were four properties that had more serious damage, and Andrew was handling the insurance side of things for her.

‘I was in the area,’ Tony said. ‘So I thought I would drop by.’

That was unlikely. He wanted something, and she was curious, so she stepped back and let him in. He commented on the scent of the baking and she asked if he wanted a cup of tea. Of course he said yes. Through in the kitchen he sat down at the breakfast bar and helped himself to one of the biscuits cooling on the wire racks and asked after the cream horns. She would be doing those in the morning, she said. He shrugged and bit into the biscuit, started telling her about his work while she made the tea.

He moved on to telling her how his children were doing. He definitely wanted something, it was usually his wife who filled Marjorie in on all that. Tony was never one for paying that much attention to his children so he must have assembled the information as some sort of offering to his grandmother. Yes, he wanted something, and it wasn’t just the biscuits. He reached for another one and she was tempted to smack the back of his hand but resisted the urge.

‘What do you want, Tony?’ she said.

He laughed, biting into the new biscuit. ‘That’s what I like about you, Grandmother,’ he said, speaking around the biscuit. ‘You always get right to the point.’

Just as you don’t, Marjorie thought. ‘Well then?’

‘There’s houses going overcap,’ Tony said, wiping crumbs from his mouth. ‘Some are being cash settled and people are sick of the quakes and of Christchurch, so they’re just flicking them on, taking the payouts and getting out. There are only a few at the moment, mostly from September and ones really damaged in February, but it’s going to be big and there are going to be less damaged properties coming onto the market.’

‘And you see this as a good opportunity?’

‘Sure. A foundation might need to be replaced outright under an insurance contract. It’s a full replacement contract after all. But you could repair it to just be good enough to live in for a while. Rent out the place and once the rebuild is over, bowl the place and use the land for whatever. It’ll be worth a fortune, and you’ve had all that high rent coming in during the rebuild.’

Tony had been managing her rental portfolio for over a decade. He was an efficient manager who vetted the tenants well and made sure they kept up with their obligations. He had gotten value for money out of her payouts and now her repaired rentals were full of people using their insurance company’s accommodation allowance while their homes were repaired. Earthquakes were very good for the rental market.

Marjorie thought about what Tony was suggesting. It was a good opportunity.

‘Do you have your eye on anything at the moment?’ she asked. He would be in an excellent position to spot such properties and keep track of them using his industry contacts as they went through the settlement process.

‘I’ve already picked up one for myself, an old lady who wanted to go into a rest home rather than go through the repair process, so it’s not too badly damaged, I’ll be able to do it up easily and rent it out,’ Tony said. ‘I’d like to get a couple more like that, but I thought you’d like to get in as well, too good an opportunity to just let go to waste.’

‘How much are they going for?’ Marjorie asked.

‘Around land value,’ Tony said. ‘Some places that are less damaged for a little more. Now, anyway. I expect that will change as people twig on to what a great opportunity they are.’

‘Is there any dealing with the insurance company?’ Marjorie said. Insurance companies were expensive and frustrating to deal with. Getting one’s full entitlement always involved lawyers, and Marjorie was happy to have avoided that with her own house and was fortunate enough to have a grandson who was a lawyer who could deal with all that for her more seriously damaged rentals.

‘No, as-is-where-is houses are sold with no claims attached, the owner doesn’t pass on the settlement, you just get the place, damage and all,’ Tony said. He reached for another biscuit, his third. ‘It’s like just buying the land but you get a damaged house with it. Advantage for the owner is they get to move on, no worries about demolition costs or foundation costs blowing out. The only snag is that banks aren’t lending for as-is-where-is houses, you have to have cash.’

She said nothing, just watched the last of the biscuit as it disappeared into his mouth. ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ she said at last.

Tony agreed to pull together some information for her and bring it over in a couple of days. He didn’t want to leave it too long, he said, too many good opportunities out there, too good to be missed. Marjorie, though, knew she would be doing her homework. No point buying land that dictated expensive foundations, any money she made renting it out would be lost trying to build on it in the future. The Government was going to be tightening up requirements for building on some land types, and she wanted to avoid buying those properties.

Marjorie put some of the biscuits into a tin for Tony to take home for his family. It was expected, after all, and it was something her neighbour had taught her all those years ago: feed people and they will do what you want them to do. That wasn’t how the old woman had phrased it, of course, she had said that the way to people’s hearts was through their stomachs. But Marjorie wasn’t terribly interested in their hearts, except to the degree that good baking warmed their hearts and made them more likely to do as Marjorie wished them to do.

Once Tony left, Marjorie had her dinner and settled down in the lounge with a cup of tea to watch the news. She wasn’t really watching, though, she was thinking about the property portfolio she had built up and why she was now considering adding to it. She was ninety-one, logic should dictate that she stopped. But she had never been able to resist an opportunity to make money, especially given she had so much expertise available to her in the form of two motivated, competent grandsons.

Tony was like his father in that he was willing to put the interests of the business above the needs of the customers, unlike Gerald, who thought that looking after customers’ interests generated loyalty and built a good reputation. The family business had thrived under Tony’s father’s leadership, whereas Gerald’s business had stayed small, he never had more than a dozen men working for him.

The family business had thrived even more after Stan died and Tony took over. Tony was smarter than his father and didn’t take the risks Stan had. Tony didn’t hire the best workers, they wanted too much money, but he didn’t hire the worst either. He expected his workers to be competent, but not inspired, and anyone who took too much time on a job was quickly encouraged to move on. The same went for anyone whose work had to be done again.

The rapid ramping up of the EQC had been another opportunity, and Marjorie had encouraged Tony to put his most trusted foreman in charge of the family business, just for a time, and to take on a role with the EQC. He was drawing a good salary and he was making contacts that meant that once he left, the family business would benefit considerably from the work sent their way.

Andrew, on the other hand, could not be directed so obviously. His parents had instilled in him the golden rule about doing unto others and Andrew had, for a time, struggled with the way the real world worked versus how Gerald and Sylvia told him it should work. These days, though, that notion of the golden rule was just a distant memory for him, something that only became an issue if he was spending too much time around his parents. But they were away in Sydney, with Gerald making monthly trips back to the city to keep his business going. Andrew was seeing little of them, which was good, given the environment in the city and the discussions that would go on between Gerald and his son, about how the Government should do the right thing and help the people of Canterbury move on from the issues caused by the quakes.

When Andrew said to Marjorie that he wanted Michelle and the children to come home after the February quake, she had suggested he let Michelle’s anxiety run its course in the peaceful mountain surroundings of Wanaka, it would be better for them as a couple in the long run. Their own house was perfectly habitable in spite of the required repairs and staying in Christchurch for work would allow him to ensure the work was carried out to a good standard. He could go down to Wanaka each weekend and spend time relaxing with his family. Too much family time made Andrew soft, he began to question his priorities.

Studying law had been an excellent choice for Andrew. It gave him a foundation other than his parents’ foolish altruism, a framework that helped him understand better how the world worked. He had a good mind, had trained himself well to follow the logic of the law and had learned to hold his own under pressure.

Since the earthquakes started, though, Andrew was getting soft again. Marjorie wasn’t sure if it was the quakes themselves – the threat to life – or whether it was the renewed contact between Andrew and his oldest child. Alice’s outlook was different from the rest of the Moorhouses, influenced by growing up in a more working class family. When Alice had stayed with Marjorie after the February earthquake, she had been up early in each of the days after the quake, out working as part of the Student Volunteer Army. She had decided after the February quake not to continue with her studies, a decision Marjorie would have talked her out of had she known it was in the cards. Alice needed to focus on building her career, her future, in spite of whatever was going on around them. Post-earthquake Christchurch presented untold opportunities for skilled, motivated young people. But Alice’s decision was an emotional one, she was haunted by thoughts of the people who had died in the quake and what their families were going through in the aftermath.

Alice had a good work ethic, unlike so many young people today who preferred to simply ‘surf the net’, filling their minds with what, as far as Marjorie could tell, was pure nonsense. Marjorie had asked Alice what the appeal of the internet was and Alice had said cat videos. At first Marjorie thought the girl was being polite, that ‘cat videos’ was a euphemism for something unseemly, but then Alice showed her one of these ‘cat videos’, a series of scenes where cats interacted with people and with each other in ways that Marjorie supposed could be considered cute. But what a waste of time! Once you’re over ninety, or eighty for that matter, you don’t even think about wasting time glued to mindless videos. Marjorie’s television came on once a day for an hour and a half, for the news at six o’clock through to whatever was passing for current affairs these days on one of the two main stations. Lately, though, she was considering giving up the television altogether, some of the so-called news items were truly mindless, part of the dumbing down of modern society, a society that had more information to hand than any previous generation and yet was less informed.

Gerald and Marjorie had discussed the Government’s decision to red zone parts of the city, to buy people out of their difficult situation by taking over their claim with the EQC and their private insurer. Both saw the Government’s apparently philanthropic conduct for what it was. The Government would, after all, get most of the money they paid out back from the EQC and from insurers. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t the interests of the people of Canterbury they were serving, it was the Government’s interests, which was to stay in power. This was virtually guaranteed for the election that was just over a month away, no nation whose second largest city had been devastated by a series of powerful earthquakes would vote the incumbent government out. No, the nation needed stability, even if the city of Christchurch had nothing of the sort. The Government was looking ahead to the election of 2014, which was clear from their promise to bring the nation back into surplus for that year. Their agenda was to look good, generous even, in the eyes of the rest of the nation, while minimising costs on the ground here in the city. That was apparent from what Tony had told her about the internal workings of the EQC and their cosy arrangement with Fletchers.

Gerald wasn’t foolish enough to think the Government was being philanthropic, no, that wasn’t his problem. His was being an idealist, thinking the world could work in a better way and hoping that one day someone would step up and do it right, form a government that was truly looking out for the interests of all its people, not just those of a select few. Marjorie, though, had lived through a war in which she had lost people she loved. Not that she told Gerald that, she simply stuck to her argument that no government could ever put aside its own interests and the interests of those who cosied up to them.

As far as Marjorie was concerned, governments consumed their citizens, especially those with less, the unfortunates who had weaknesses that opened them up to exploitation. No more was this true than in a war, when it was the sons of the poor, not the sons of the rich, who were sent to die. Or worse, who came back from wars broken, haunted for the rest of their lives by the horrors they had witnessed, sharing out their pain with those closest to them. She had been born into a poor family and had struggled to build a different kind of life for herself. She would never allow herself to go backwards, which was why she would continue to add to her property portfolio.