A Few Surprises

4

A Few Surprises

    So we get back from the beach and she goes: “How did it go, Dot?’

    Gee, how’d ya think, Aunty Kate? Given that Aidan Fortescue’s the most feebleized thing that ever walked. “All right. They got a nice old pub at that beach. And an interesting-looking Greek restaurant, only he brung a picnic, so we didn’t go there.”

    “A picnic? That’s nice, dear. But I do hope you didn’t stay out in the sun too long.”

    “No. He had a beach umbrella.”

    “Oh good! Very sensible! Why didn’t you bring him in, Dot?”

    Because I couldn’t stand another flaming second of the poncy nana, whaddareya? “I got sick of hearing about how marvellous London and Paris are and how boring SA is, acksherly.”

    Swallow. “Oh. Well, I suppose he has been used to leading a rather… a rather more sophisticated life, dear.”

    Yeah, sophisticated like in tries to kiss you in his car without warning merely because he took you on a day to the beach and gave ya lunch, and bumps ya nose really hard, stupid nong. “To hear him tell it, yeah. Think I’ll have a shower.”

    Later. Out in the shed with Uncle Jim. He’s started building a real big birdcage for Carolyn’s dim hubby, he wants one that’s strong because he’s got a cocky, it’s real old, it was his gran’s, only she wants it to be attractive. (Like, she’ll of inherited that gene from Aunty Kate.) Added to which it’s gotta be something the poor ruddy bird’ll want to go into and feel at home when it gets there. So he’s doing stuff with all this heavy wire, bending it with like pliers, I reckon I could— Jesus! Them scrawny wrists of his must be stronger than they look, that’s for sure.

    So after quite bit of Elvis the CD stops and he goes: “Ya don’t get the sound quality on that old set, she was right about that. So, how’d the Boxing Day swim go?”

    “All right. It’s a neato beach.”

    “Yeah. We used to live quite near there—before your time, Dot. Andrew woulda been a baby and Carolyn was only a toddler.”

    “So ya moved before they could get old enough to really enjoy the water—right.”

    “Something like that, yeah. Got a good price for the old place, though. You oughta see it these days: terracotta render till it comes out yer ears, wouldn’t know it was the same house. So what’s wrong with young Aidan?”

    No flies on him, see? “Nothing, I don’t suppose. Just feebleized. And who wants to hear about bloody London and Paris when they’re lying on a beach getting over Chrissie Day?”

    “Not me,” he admits.

    “Makes two of us. Um, won’t it peck that doo-hickey off?” He’s putting this curly doo-hickey on the top, um, think that’s the top.

    “It’ll have a go, if it’s like any cocky I’ve ever met, yeah. But Carolyn wants curly doo-hickeys, see, so that’s what’s she’s getting. I’ll bung a bit of solder on, might be stronger than the average cocky beak, what ya reckon?”

    Uh… My money’d be on the cocky, sorry, Uncle Jim. “Isn’t it like, old and hoary?”

    “Mm-mm…” Heating up the soldering iron. “Yeah, they live to a great old age, ya know. It’s still ruddy fit, though.”

    “Yeah, that’s what I meant, its beak must be pretty strong by now.”

    “Yep, it’ll have a go at these doo-hickeys, all right, but ya can’t tell them.” Solder, hiss, ooh! (Forgotten they do that, since I was last down here.) Solder, solder… “Odd how they seem to take to living with humans, and learn to talk and that: saw this thing on the ABC that said they’re gregarious birds in the wild—you know, like to flock together. That’d be right: ya go down Never-heard-of-it Road, that’s at the far end of the Botanic Gardens, Dot,”—practically right in town, goddit—“and ya sometimes see a flock of them in the big pine trees.”

    “In the gardens?”

    “Nope, the Adelaide Botanic Gardens are too flaming fancy for yer average cocky to have a bar of, love.” Wink, wink. Boy, has he said it, or has he said it! Aunty Kate took me there once, she tried to get a table at the fancy restaurant they’ve stuck right in the middle of the place but the female guarding the door took one look at me in my best clean jeans and told her the tables were all booked up, what a lie, the place was empty. Yeah, literally. Empty. Twelve noon on a fine Wednesday and empty.

    So he solders and bends and solders a bit more and bends a bit more and Elvis dreams of a whaht-uh Chriss-meuhss, and I just watch, it’s real peaceful.

    “Gee, that’s starting to look really ace, Uncle Jim!”

    “Nobbad, eh? What’s the ti—Jesus. She forgot to call me in for afternoon tea.”—That’ll be because she was on the blower to Mum half the afternoon.—“Making Boxing Day phone-calls, I s’pose.”

    Jump! “Um, yeah.”

    “Come on, we’ll go on in, and see if we can get through to ya Mum and Dad.”

    Yeah, all right, let’s.

    So we do that. We get through, the Xmas madness must be over. Mum hopes I liked the prezzie. Yeah, ace, a blue shortie nightie with little blue flowers on it. Well, Aunty Kate approved of it. She hopes I’m behaving myself, of COURSE I’m behaving myself, I’M NOT A KI—Oh, what’s the use. “Yeah, ’course.” Now it’s: “Your Aunty Kate tells me you’ve met a nice boy.” GIVE ME STRENGTH! “Mum, just because we went to the beach, he’s not the answer to a maiden’s prayer.” Aw. Gee. Isn’t that funny? Aw. “Look, he’s a piano-playing nerd and he can’t wait to get back to Europe.” So we have one of those three-way conversations, y’know? Like, Dad’s standing two feet away and she has to retail it to him and then he has to ask why this, that and the other and then she has to say your father wants to know… If you’ve got rellies you’ll know what I mean. Or even mad friends, like my best friend Isabelle’s flatting and when ya ring her up half the time Carla or Glenda’ll be standing there two feet away saying: “Ask her—” Then it’s Have I heard from Isabelle? No, I haven’t heard from Isabelle, she’s immured in Brizzie with her Aunty Maeve, Jesus! Oh, well, perhaps she couldn’t get through or they were too busy visiting the rellies up there—Blah, blah.

    So Dad wrenches the receiver off her and goes. “Look, Dot, your bloody mother’s trying to hint delicately that Isabelle’s got a boyfriend up there.”

    Eh? I’ve known that for yonks, for Chrissakes! That dim Scott Bell, and believe you me, she doesn’t wanna end up being called Isabelle Bell, who would? He lives down the road from her Aunty Maeve’s and all it is, it’s the gotta-escape-yer-Aunty’s-orbit-or-go-mad syndrome. So I go: “Yeah. Scott Bell. So?”

    Clears the throat. “Um, evidently she’s been seeing quite a bit of him, Dot.”

    “So? This is the last decade of the twentieth century, for Chrissakes!”

    “Ye-es… Her mother seems to think it might be getting serious.”

    For Pete’s sake! Mrs McLeod’s been thinking that ever since Isabelle left school! Like, at seventeen: she didn’t wanna go to uni and she’d had enough of bleeding St Agatha’s Medes and Persians. That’s what Uncle Jerry calls them: good one, isn’t it? So I go: “Dad, Mrs McLeod’s granny hormones have gone berserk. Berserk. Read my lips: B,E,—”

    “All right!  Just don’t say you haven’t been warned.”

    No, I won’t say that. Isabelle Bell? Get real! What’d they call their kids, Tinker and Door?

    So she comes back on the line and wants to know more about Aidan! Flaming bloody Norah! We get a few aeons of this and then this screeching in the background gets louder and she goes: “All right, Deanna! You can speak to your sister! Though as you affect to despise every word she says to you when she’s here—”

    And Deanna comes on the line and goes: “Hi. Hey, I got a—” Blah, blah, blah. It’s all either ballet-connected or bodily-adornment-connected and who gives a rat’s? Finally she remembers to thank me for the framed pic of Margot Fonteyn I only sweated blood over. Like, I copied it from a book, she reckons she was the greatest ballerina ever. As Sleeping Beauty, if ya must know. And coloured it by hand, used Danno’s watercolours, Jimbo wouldn’t let me use his but Danno wasn’t interested. Then I bought a cheapo oval frame from the Kodak shop in the Mall and some gold paint for it and on Mum’s advice stuck on some toning sweet pink roses. I kinda tipped them with the gold, that looked ace. Then I hadda find something to seal the whole thing with that wouldn’t ruin the roses, finally hadda ask Bob Springer’s advice. Anyway, she likes it. Good. She thinks what? “Talent? Me?”

    “Yes! Mrs Gray”—that’s the art teacher at Putrid St Agatha’s—“said it was a pity you gave it up in the Sixth Form, Dot, you could have gone somewhere with it!”—Right, into the dole queues.—“Hang on, the twins want to speak to you!”

    They don’t: being forced by Dad taking an ear of each, more like. Anyway I go: “Gidday, liked the water pistol, didja?” And listen to a load of garbage about the other mindlessly violent crap they got for Chrissie.

    So is that it? That is it and Dad comes on the line with a parting shot about the cost of STD calls, what does he care, it’s poor old Uncle Jim that’ll be paying for this lot, and we hang up. Gee, what a waste of Ye Grate Telstra infrastructure.

    So even though it’s well past afternoon-tea time we have some. I stick to grape juice, I really can’t face hot tea on a sweltering hot arvo. Goes good with the Chrissie cake, but. Aunty Kate thinks we might go for a nice drive but Uncle Jim’s asleep in his big chair, so that’s that. Personally I’m gonna get on with Bleak House in my room. And I would fancy cold turkey for tea, since ya mensh, Aunty Kate, plus and just the salads that we didn’t get through yesterday. (See?) Or, contrariwise, knock yaself out, I dunno what’s in ya head and I thought I was saying what ya wanted to hear.

    … Phew. Sanctuary. Bleak House, here I come!

    Later. Given that Boxing Day evening TV in the Land of Oz is almost as putrid as Chrissie Day’s, like, minus the Queen’s message, think I’ll go to bed and read my book. Um, no, Aunty Kate, I couldn’t read in here, I can’t concentrate with the TV on. So she turns it off and puts on a nice tasteful CD, at least it isn’t Carols From You-Know-Where, dunno what it is. Pretty. Classical. Oh, ya got Mum a copy of same for Chrissie, didja? Good on ya, she won’t bother to listen to it and Dad’s particular about music, he’ll say it’s garbage. All right, I’ll give it a go but if I can’t concentrate, I’m going in my room. (Don’t say it, I’m not quite at the stage of the death wish.)

    So after about twenny min of reading choice bits out of her new English country houses picture-book and showing me the pictures and ten hints from Uncle Jim, she gets the point and shuts up and only occasionally shows him a pic he doesn’t wanna see, and I bury myself in it…

    “Jesus Flaming Christ! What’s that?” Bleak House rises in the air and lands with a thud on the bought-specially-from-very-dear-rug-shop-for-the-new-house rug.

    “Dot!”

    “Um, sorry,” I croak. That was Captain Flaming Poncy Picard or my sister’s name’s not Deanna Mallory! “Um, didn’t mean to swear. That speaking gimme a shock.”

    “It would do,” notes Uncle Jim. “Captain Ruddy Picard, reading the Words. In case ya couldn’t appreciate the classical music on yer ownsome.”

    “Yeah. Goddit,” I croak.

    “Really, Jim! Reading the words? It’s The Four Seasons, a really lovely version. His voice is so—” Blah, blah, and so forth. Well, ya picked right, there, Aunty Kate, Mum’ll be glued to it, if so be as she ever bothers to put it in the player, that is.

    Is it over? Yeah, it is; all right, I’ll go back to Bleak House.

    So the old joker goes: “There’s more.”

   “Right, thanks for the warning.” I don’t even look at her, I just grab up Bleak House and go out. Well, heck, enough is enough!

    Next morning. I didn’t think I was doing anything any different than usual at brekkie but she goes: “Is something the matter, Dot? You’re very quiet.”

    “Yeah, ’s’nice and peaceful!”

    “Stop it, Jim, that’s not funny. We love having you here, Dot, dear, take no notice of your uncle.”

    Gee, I wasn’t. “Um, do ya? Thanks. Um, nothing’s the matter, only— ’Ve you read Bleak House, Aunty Kate?”

    Blink. “Well, no, dear, I don’t think so. They did make us read some Dickens at school… Of course, I’ve seen some lovely English television versions.”

    Yeah, I geddit. The old joker won’t have read it, he hasn’t opened a book since he grew out of Biggles.

    So he goes: “Dot, you haven’t done something drastic to Banana-Eater’s book, have ya? Spilled something on it, grape juice or something? Because we can nip into town: Dymock’s might have it.”

    “It’s a classic, Jim. Dymock’s won’t have it.”

    “Oh. Well, uh, would the uni bookshop be open? You know, Kate, where we hadda get that book for Andrew, that time he busted his leg.”

    Before this can develop into a McHale family dispute I say: “No, the book’s okay, I never spilt nothing on it or like that!”

    “Ya haven’t dropped it down the toilet, have ya? Because personally I’m not up for drying it out if ya have.”

    “No.” Dropped it down the toilet? “Um, how could— I mean, you’d have to go in there and— I don't see how anybody could possibly drop a book down the toilet, Uncle Jim!”

    “Not in your bathroom, no, the layout’s wrong. And our ensuite’s is, too. But that house we had when Carolyn and Andrew were tiny—you know, Dot, I was telling you about it the other day—well, it had a very handy layout for cretins that liked to read in the bath, like your Uncle Mike.”—He isn’t my uncle, he’s the old joker’s brother, but we all call him uncle, talk about your extended families.—“A Wilbur Smith, it was.”—That explains it, gee, for a moment there I thought he was trying to claim that Mike McHale’s literate.—“He stayed with us for ages, this was in his carefree bachelor days, the lads’d been chucked out of their flat, forget why. Well, he was useful for moving heavy stuff like that ruddy couch we bought, and giving me a hand to sand down the robes. Anyway, the dunny seat—sorry, toilet seat,” he says quickly, ooh, he is not sorry, he said it on purpose, the old devil!—“it was handily placed at the head of the bath, so when he’d had enough of the book he’d just reach over his shoulder and—”

    He stops, I’ve gone into the long-awaited spluttering fit.

    “Yeah,” he says happily. “Forgot to check the lid was down, see?”

    “Honestly, Jim! Ancient history!”

    “Yeah. Only thing was, it wasn’t his Wilbur Smith,” he says, closing one eye carefully at me.

    “Ooh, help.”

    “Yeah. So he got round to the local stationer’s right smart, of course they never heard of it, he hadda hunt all over the city, but he found one in the end. Only then, he decides that heat kills germs, and the toilet was quite clean, so, believe me or believe me not, he dries the ruddy thing out in the oven, and keeps it!”

    “Ugh!”

    “Yeah, that was Kate’s reaction, too,”

    “I should think so!” she goes, shuddering. “I made Mike clean the entire oven with oven-cleaner, Dot, shelves and all, and then I made him wash it out with clean water and detergent.”

    “Yeah, and after that she turned it up to 450—uh, this was in the old Fahrenheit days, Dot—and left it on for an hour or so.”

    “I don’t blame you, Aunty Kate!”

    “Yeah, well, what with the petrol driving all over the city hunting for the replacement, and our power bill, that hadda be the most expensive Wilbur Smith known to the paperback reading public of the world,” he finishes with satisfaction.

    “And the most revolting,” she notes drily. “I think Dot was trying to say something about Bleak House.”

    “Um, not really… Well, I just think it was awful. Because Esther, she’s the heroine, like, there’s lots of characters, but she’s the heroine, he leaves her with these ugly marks all over her face! Like, it was smallpox, see?”

    They look at each other uncertainly and then she goes: “Dot, these things happened in the nineteenth century. Lots of people died from it.”

    “Yeah. Terrible scourge,” agrees Uncle Jim.

    “Yeah, only why Esther? It wasn’t fair! And she was beautiful before!”

    “Um, Dot, dear, if she caught it she would be disfigured, you know.”

    “So why’d he have to make her have it in the first place?”

    They look at each other again. Finally the old joker says, very cautiously: “Well, did it turn out all right apart from that?”

    “Um, yes. Well, she got the house… And this bloke, Allan, that she was in love with all the time, he married her.”

    “Pock marks an’ all?”

    “Jim!”

    “Well, they woulda been, Kate. So he married her regardless, eh, Dot? Decent bloke, he musta been,”

    “Ye-es… He was, I s’pose. Only he was pretty feeble, really. And her guardian, he was in love with her too, and Dickens makes you think she’s gonna marry him, I mean, it’s fixed up and everything, and ya think, well, it’ll turn out all right in the end, and she’ll fall in love with him after all, because he’s got miles more brains than that dim Allan,”—they exchange glances—“and then she doesn’t, he gets Allan down to their place and makes him see she’s really in love with him!”

    After a bit Aunty Kate says: “The guardian was an older man, was he, Dot?”

    “Yeah, lots. Like, he doesn’t say their ages, but he was.”

    “And Allan was a young man? –Yes. Well, that was much more suitable, dear.”

    So the old joker goes, like, bracingly: “Sounds all right to me! And it’s only a book, after all, Dot!”

    “I know that!” Shit, didn’t mean to yell. “Sorry, didn’t mean to shout. Only I… Never mind.”

    “It’s all right, dear, we understand, you got all involved with it. It’s a very long book, isn’t it?” she says kindly. I just nod. “Mm. Jim, don’t you remember when Carolyn finished reading Gone With the Wind, we could hardly get a word out of her for the next week. And every time anyone spoke to her, she burst into tears.”

    “Uh, yeah,” he says uneasily.

    “And after all, that’s not real literature!” she says brightly.

    “Uh, no. Isn’ it? No, s’pose ya right, love.”

    “We do understand, dear,” she repeats.

    “Yeah. And don’t worry: nobody’ll try and make ya watch the video of it,” says the old joker heavily.

    “Oh, good Heavens, yes, Jim! I’d forgotten all about that! Your Aunty Allyson came over the very next week and of course when Carolyn burst into tears for no apparent reason she had to know why. So she thought, don’t ask me why, that watching the film would be a cure, and she made a special trip into town and found it—now, where was it? None of the rental places had it, of course. At Meyer, I think.”

    “Yeah, but Aunty Kate, the film’s just like the book!”

    “I know, dear. So we all sat down to watch it—well, not Jim and your Uncle Harry, of course, they made a bee-line for the shed—but Allyson and Wendalyn and Martina and I, and Beverley Harris and her Joelene came over specially.”

    “For a nice cry,” the old joker explains redundantly.

    You’d swear he never spoke. “And Carolyn refused absolutely to watch it! Allyson was horribly put-out, but she couldn’t say I hadn’t warned her.”

    “And a half,” he notes. “She never has seen it, ya know. From that day to this.”

    I just nod numbly. Dunno why I feel better, but I do.

    So the old joker goes: “Maybe ya better not borrow any more of Banana-Eater’s books.”

    Is he nuts? They’re all that’s keeping me sane! Make that, alive. “No, they’re ace, he’s got a great collection. I'm gonna start on Ivanhoe next, I said to him, wasn’t it horribly old-fashioned, and he said that given it was written around 1820, you’d expect it to be. But not to expect it to be great literature. Then I’m gonna give Jane Eyre a go, we done Wuthering Heights at school and I thought it was real wanking and Banana-Eater, he said he couldn’t agree with me more, and then Nefertite, she said if I didn’t like Emily I’d probably like Charlotte and he said not to take her word for anything, and she better be warned, I never read books that are warmly recommended to me, especially by semi-literates, like, he was having a go at her, see? So I’m gonna borrow it to spite him!”

    “Mm,” she says, looking at Uncle Jim, he’s wearing that neutral expression of his again. “I hope you didn’t take too many books at once, Dot.”

    “No, he said I could only have two novels, so I just took Bleak House and Ivanhoe. Then he said in that stupid voice he puts on when he wants to get up ya nose that I could have two books of poetry, or one drama and one poetry, so I thought I’d try this Christopher Fry joker, like it’s a book of plays, see? And he said I wouldn’t like it, it was fey.”

    “And ya took it to spite him?” notes Uncle Jim.

    “Yeah.”

    “And is it fey, whaddever that is, when it’s at home?”

    “Yeah. Well, real wanking. Airy-fairy crap, I can’t see how you could possibly stage it. On the other hand, look at Waiting for Godot, two jokers sitting in dustbins, how could ya stage that? Only it’s real good. Anyway, I dunno whether I’ll bother with the poetry, not my scene, really.”

    “So you did borrow some poetry, dear?”

    “Yeah. T.S. Eliot.”

    So she goes: “Oh, goodness! Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats! It's what they based Cats on, Dot! Quite delightful!”

    Yuck, spew! In that case, I’ll pass him up. On the other hand, Banana-Eater said he’d be too hard for me and I wouldn’t get a fraction of the references, so I oughta read it to spite the wanker… At least I never let on to Rosie I borrowed it, so if I can’t hack it no-one’ll ever know…

    “They all sound pretty old-fashioned, Dot,” the old joker says.

    “I suppose they are, yeah. But he’s got lots of modern books, too. Like, Schindler’s Ark,”—he looks blank, she nods approvingly—“and Midnight’s Children, that’s by Salman Rushdie, you know, the guy the mullahs have got the death threat out on? He says it’s his best by miles.”

    “I see, dear,” she says foggily.

    “Just so long as there aren’t any characters in this Ivanhoe thing—didn’ they make a film of that with Errol Flynn?—any characters like this Esther girl, that end up with the wrong bloke,” the old joker says heavily.

    “It sounded like the right bloke to me, Jim,” she says, real firm.

    “Eh? Oh! Yeah, to me, too,” he says quickly. “Just wrong in—Uh, never mind.”

    “Allan was a nong. But what are the odds on picking up two old books in a week where the author marries the heroine off to the wrong bloke?”

    “Very unlikely, dear,” she goes firmly, getting up. “Well, your mother and father will be glad to hear you’re reading something solid. We’ll just pop these things in the dishwasher and get the beds out of the way, Dot, and then I think we might take a run up into the hills, there's sure to be some nice fruit and veggie stalls.”

    “Uh, Dot might want to read her book, love.”

    So she goes: “She can do that this afternoon.”

    So that’s that.

    Much later. So much for reading, she decided we better have lunch in Hahndorf, of course it’s terribly touristified—and a half—but this place does a nice… Etcetera. So by the time we got back it was afternoon-tea time, like, after we’d put the carload of fruit and veggies away. So after that I just come out to the shed and watched Uncle Jim bend wire for  a bit.

    “About time you got changed, isn’t it, Dot, if ya going over to Banana-Eater’s for tea?”

    “Do I have to?”

    “I’d say so, yeah. Well, you went and accepted, don’t blame us.”

    “Not that, I’m old enough to know when I’ve shot meself in the foot, ta very much! Just not old enough to know when not to do it, but. No, get changed.”

    He looks dubiously at my spanking clean camouflage shorts (on sale, I was shopping with Darien, there weren’t any in what he reckoned was his size, good thing I decided to tag along, wasn’t it?). “Well, it’s not what nice girls wore to tea with their weird Pommy neighbours when I was a lad.”

    “All right, I’ll buy it: what did nice girls wear to tea with their weird Pommy neighbours when you were a lad?”

    Scratches the chin. “This is going back a fair bit, mind.”—Ya don’t say!—“Well, as I recollect it, miniskirts so short ya hadda blush when they sat down, let alone when they bent over, them really weird square-toed shoes, panda eye make-up, and white lipstick. Oh, and the hair in a sort of… helmet. With huge great orange plastic bobbles in the ears.” He eyes me blandly. “At least, that was what yer aunt wore when she come to tea at Mum and Dad’s place.”

    Gulp. Hard to know which bit to— I mean, panda eye makeup? Aunty Kate? And orange plastic bobbles— Rude miniskirts? Her? “Not rude miniskirts?”

    “Yep. Orange, that day, and the top was kinda… parti-coloured? Think that’d be the technical term. Oranges and lemons spring to mind.”

    Orange and yellow? Aunty Kate in an orange and yellow get-up with a rude miniskirt? Oh, bulldust, he’s seeing how much I’ll swallow, the old wanker. “Pull the other one.”

    “Eh? No! She did! All the girls were getting round like that. Your mum—well, she was a lot younger, of course, but the state schools didn’t put that much effort into stopping them, not like that ruddy ladies’ academy you and your cousin Rosie went to.”

    “She only went because Aunty May’s nuts and Uncle Jerry lets her get away with it, and I only went because Aunty May suckered Mum into making me sit for a stupid scholarship!”

    “All right, don’t shout, I believe ya. Anyway, when me and your Aunty Kate were first going out together your mum was getting round in blue tights with holes in ’em and a blue and pink mini ya grandma run up on that fancy sewing-machine of hers, thought she was Christmas. Plus and the panda eyes and the white lipstick behind your grandma’s back. Fifteen or so, she’d of been, round as a bung Fritz.”

    Like, that’s the luncheon sausage they have in SA. Gulp. “Yeah.”

    “Right. And yer Aunty May, now she was miles worse. They go on enough about young Rosie, they oughta try and cast their minds back to what her mum was like in her heyday! The day my misguided mum thought it’d be real nice if we had the whole family over, this was after me and Kate had been going out for bit—and I’m damned if I can remember what Kate had on that day but it woulda been more of the usual—May was tricked out in the full makeup, and she walks in wearing these giant black sunglasses with huge white plastic rims, bursting out of a blue and green minidress meant, at a rough guess, for a girl three sizes smaller.”—Gee, gotta be where Rosie gets it from.—“A dozen green and blue plastic bangles up the arm, and these glittery green and blue earrings, double hoops that swung like mad, drive ya crazy to watch. And white lacy tights up to ’er armpits, well, she was always a well-built girl, and they didn’t go in for the anorexic thing back in the Sixties, apart from Twiggy, ya won’t of heard of her, love. My Dad’s eyes were on stalks the whole evening, I can tell ya. Never seen the old joker so cheerful. Think Mum was the only one that actually noticed that the emerald green patent-leather bag didn't match the apple green of the dress, but we all heard about it afterwards.”

    Gulp. Yeah. “Yeah. Um, what about her hair?” I croak. Like, those bubbly curls like mine and Rosie’s are pretty well unmanageable.

    “Well, piled up in a big helmet, only with sort of curly, um, ears? Well, they gave the impression of ears: sticking out.” He describes circles with his forefingers over his own ears and, this may surprise ya, I perfectly see what he means. Like something out of To Sir With Love only worse, geddit?

    “She must of had to use gallons of hairspray.”

    “She had, judging by the pong coming off it. Knock you over at fifteen yards, kind of thing.”

    Goddit. Awesome. “Yeah. Well, I see what ya mean. Frightful though it was, it was their version of wearing something suitable when they were asked out to tea.”

    “Yeah. Like a nice dress, Dot.”

    “I haven’t got a nice dress. And that Chrissie dress she got me, it’s in the wash.”

    “Oh. Well, sorry, love, that was gonna be my best shot.”

    Yeah. But I’d look bloody stupid turning up on the 27th in my Chrissie Day dress, wouldn’t I? Added to which, I look bloody stupid in it anyway. Anyway, it’s in the wash.

    So I mooch in the house to take another look at the collection of old tees and bought-on-sale and inherited-from-Tim shorts I brung, mind you, these are the best of a bad lot, Mum picked them out, ’member? So I’m standing there scowling at them laid out on the bed and she comes in and goes: “You might like to wear this, Dot.”

    No, I—Ooh, whaddis it?

    “I’ve had it for years. It was excellent quality.”

    Right, right, D.J.’s in the dim, distant… Over a bra? All right, over a bra. Not a black bra! Aw. So I get into a white one and put the blouse on.

    “Broderie Anglaise,” she explains. Gee, clear as mud. “It originally had a little red ribbon threaded through it, see the insertion lace?”

    Nope, given that it’s all lace. Oh, there? Just, like, at the top of the bra cups, so thank God ya did remove it, it musta looked really peculiar. And white or not, this bra shows through. Not all that much, no. Not to the extent of making me look trendy, no.

    “Don’t wear it if you don’t like it,” she says with a sigh.

    “It’s a real nice blouse, I do like it. I was just thinking what it might go with.”

    Gee, she looks at my gear and sighs. Then she admits there are a few things of Carolyn’s and Megan’s… Like, Carolyn’s five-foot-eleven, the really gaunt type, takes after Uncle Jim’s mum, I never met her but judging from the pics she was a dead ringer for Germaine Greer. About the only things Carolyn’s inherited from Aunty Kate are the yellow hair plus and the gene that drives ya to control it sternly, the gotta-be-attractive gene that’s activated when anything that’s gonna go in the house or the garden is suggested, and the can’t-stand-it, gotta-intervene gene that’s activated when a male does things all wrong in the kitchen, this last really helps to perpetuate the feebleized male wanker gene in the party of the other part. Anything of hers’ll be thirty to forty centimetres too long for me and won’t go round my hips. Megan’s more my type, or would be if she didn’t starve herself into a size ten and an imminent divorce that Aunty Kate’s pretending isn’t gonna happen. The rattiness, not the dress-size, being the cause, aw, ya got that.

    So she finally produces a bright pink skirt of Megan’s that I can get into—just. Like, really bright pink. Given that whenever I've seen her she’s been in these excruciatingly narrow dark business suits, when did she have this? Don’t ask. Yeah, ace, I’ll wear it. She looks at it doubtfully and notes there’s no time to let it out and she’d forgotten how short it is. Heroically I don’t mention the Sixties or the miniskirts that were worn during same. She thinks I better wear my high-heeled black sandals, she doesn’t know they’re Wendalyn’s high-heeled black sandals, so I do. And wear David’s pendant, Dot. All right; it’ll look bloody peculiar sitting on this here la—uh, broderie Anglaise, but if you say so. Um, the blouse is meant to be worn out, is it? Yes, see the scalloped edge? The what? –Whatever. Okay, right, if you say so. So I’m ready, I better go. Talk about a lamb to the slaughter. So I go.

    Gee, Fat Cat’s on the verandah, so what’s new? He goes croak, croak, and, get this, gets up and rubs round my ankles, the hypocritical brute!

    “Yeah, and for two pins you’d take me arm off. I know your game, you can smell duck.” (I bloody well hope.) So I bash on the door but nothing happens so I ring the bell. Nothing. Maybe they forgot? Maybe they've gone for a drive and left Fat Cat all on his ownsome, maybe that’s why he’s so glad to see me? Um, maybe they’re in the kitchen, maybe I better go round the back? Um… Well, try the door. Gee, it opens. Ugh! –Sag: only Fat Cat pushing past me, boy that fur of his feels funny against ya bare leg. He goes down the passage, tail held high, that’ll be Cat for “This here is my territory, Dot Mallory.” Shit, I don't want ya territory, mate, I don’t wanna be here at all! “Hullo!” Nothing. What the fuck, I’ll go down to the kitchen.

    So I go down to the kitchen and he’s at the bench, gee, there’s a great smell, Fat Cat was right.

    “Hullo, Dot Mallory.”

    Hullo to you, too, David Walsingham. “I rung the bell and bashed on the door, are you deaf?”

    “No. I’m also capable of distinguishing between the past participle and the preterite of the verb ‘to ring.’”—Yeah, hah, hah, hilarious. —“And I’m quite sure St Agatha’s Putrid Academy for Putrid Young Ladies is, too.”—Hilarious again. —“I thought Nefertite would answer it. Possibly she’s huddled in a woolly in her room.”

    Gee, hilarious again. “No-one says woolly out here, ya nana.”

    “Pommy nana, isn’t it? If that’s my Bleak House, don’t put it down anywhere in the kitchen, please.”

    “Yeah. I finished it, thanks.”

    “Like it?”

    “Of course I liked it!”

    “You don't sound like it.”

    “No, well, I thought that Allan Whatsisface was feebleized.”

    “Who?” he says, spooning something up from a small pot and sniffing it.

    “That dumb Allan that she married!”

    “She? Oh: Esther? Strong-minded women like her always pick the feebleized type, Dot Mallory. At least they do if the writer’s got any nous at all, and Dickens had plenty of that. You might compare the two of them to… Lady Macbeth and hubby.”

    Right, thinks he’s funny, nayce English persons don’t say hubby. “Lady Macbeth? Bullshit!”

    ”Very well, don’t believe me.” He tastes his spoonful. “Mmm…. Maybe. Taste this.”

    Ugh, after you? All right, I can only die once. Taste… “Ugh!”

    “Caper sauce, Nefertite ordered it. Is it that bad?”

    “What sauce?”

    “Ca— Oh.” The face is doing that thing it does when he’s trying not to laugh. He picks up this small jar and shows it to me. Ugh, small squashed green things. “The pickled flower-buds of the caper bush.”

    “Pull the other one.”

    “There is a copy of the Concise Oxford in the sitting-room. You could reshelve Bleak House while you're at it.”

    All right, I will, and if you think I’m gonna look up ya stupid dictionary, ya got another think coming! …Oh. Practically word for word. All right, up-himself banana-eating Pom forty-two, D.M. Mallory nil.

    “Hey, there’s some funny words in that dictionary. You ever heard of caprification?”

    “Ah… something to do with figs?”

    Jesus, what is it, he sits up all night reading the flaming dictionary in between the Beethoven? “All right, I give in, you’re a walking Concise Oxford Dictionary.”

    “Remnants of an expensive, not necessarily good, education,” he murmurs. “I've added a little wine to the sauce: taste it again.”

    “Given that I never tasted them flower-buds of the bramble-like South European caper shrub before, I better not. What I mean is, I don’t mind tasting it, but I dunno what it’s meant to taste like. Gee, I might even go and mistake it for the English caper, or, pickled masturshalum seeds, that’d never do!”

    “Mm.” He tastes it himself. “Better, I think.”

    Oh, jolly good. Super.

    “Where did you get that ‘masturshalum’ from?” he murmurs, stirring.

    “Um, dunno, Dad always says it.”

    “Does he, indeed?”–What’s he smiling for? Oh, forget it, who cares?

    “The duck smells good.”

    “Thank you. And kindly refrain from opening the oven.”

    All right, I will.

    So he goes: “How was your day at the beach with Aidan?”

    Not you, too! “How’d you know I went?”

    “He mentioned it this morning.”

    Then that frightful crashing and bonking and booming this morning must of been him. “All right, given that he’s even more feebleized than Allan Whatsisface.”

    “Mm? Oh, Esther’s hubby—of course. Well, he is very young—though some would claim that’s no excuse.”

    “Your dad, for starters.”

    He stops stirring and stares at me. “A Daniel come to judgement, by gosh and by golly.”

    “Hah, hah.”

    “No, seriously. You’re quite right, Dot. Father’s theme-song. Well, one of the many,” he says, making a face.

    “Yeah. There’s a fair bit of it about.” What is he doing? Floating that paper on the sauce? “Hey, won’tcha want that paper off the butter for the butter? Or are ya gonna put it back in the fridge and let it get all fridgey?”

    “Is fridgey a word?”

    “No! And stop taking the Mick!”

    “Sorry, Dot. I wasn’t really. Well, I suppose to some extent, I was.”—And a half.—“Out of myself as much as you.”—Right, that’s the other half!—“I’m going to use the butter, actually. Though I’m not above putting it back in the fridge unwrapped, you’re quite right. You’ve never had the experience of living in a foreign country where they speak what you imagined was your common language, have you? It’s a damned sight harder than you might think. One makes unconscious assumptions —”

    “Assumptions are unconscious, aren’t they?”

    “Mm. Thanks,” he says, think you'd have to call that wryly, folks. “Tautology and verbosity, the twin curses of late twentieth-century popular speech.”

    “Yeah? What about ‘y’know?’?”

    Gee, he’s choking. D.M. Mallory fifty, up-themselves Poms zilch!

    “You’re so right! No, well, I keep tripping over my big mouth—saying the wrong thing when I don’t intend to, this may astonish you.”

    “Yeah, it does.”

    “Mm.”

    “Like, gimme an example. I mean, I read Uncle Jerry’s Observers, he gets them sent airmail, Aunty May says it’s an extravagance but she lets him, and Rosie passes them on to me. And sometimes I do notice you don’t use quite the same words, in England. Like we always say ‘duna’, and you say ‘duvet’, don’t you?”

    “That explains why I was unable to buy a duvet.”

    Gulp. “It would do, yeah.”

    “Then there was the time I tried to buy a simple divan bed,” he says with a sigh. “True, it was a hot day, and I’d managed to lose myself in the suburban wilderness before I found the shop, and I suppose I did look shabby, but I didn’t feel that wholly explained the man’s reluctance to sell me anything. Well, to serve me at all, actually. He was completely blank when I said I wanted a plain divan bed.”

    “He woulda been, yeah.”

    “But there is no other way of describing them!”

    “Ensemble.”

    “What?”

    “On-somm-bull,” I explain clearly.

    “There you are, then. And I kept expecting your corner delis to be delis. I mean, at home a corner shop’s a corner shop and a deli’s a delicatessen! Sorry, does that sound puerile?”

    “No, actually it’s very interesting. I bet no-one knew what ya meant if you asked them was there a corner shop nearby.”

    “You are so right!” he says with fervour.

    “These’d be the same no-ones that watched every episode of Coronation Street and like, Eastenders, and The Bill, and all of them.”

    “Yes. Er, surely you’re too young to have seen Coronation Street?”

    “Yeah, when it first come out. Isn’ it still going in Britain? But anyway, they re-screened it, dunno if it was all of it or not, this was a while back, and Aunty Allyson taped it. And I got exposed to it the winter me and Martina, my cousin, we had the flu at the same time and Mum wasn’t well, they’d just found out she had anaemia, the doc put her on a special diet and said she was doing too much, so Aunty May took the twins for a bit—they were six, and Mum had fondly imagined she could go back to work full-time—and Aunty Allyson come over in the car and wrapped me up in my duna, pardon the expression, and bunged us both in Martina’s room. And every arvo she used to watch something mindless, dunno if it was Oprah or what, something like that, and after it she’d play a tape of Coronation Street: she was working her way through it, see?”

    He does see, he goes: “God.”

    “You said it. But when you’re getting over the flu, ya don’t have any resistance.”

    “No,” he agrees, smiling. “So you noticed the expression ‘corner shop’? How old were you then, Dot?”

    “Uh, dunno. Like, I’m nine years older than the little horrors, so, fifteen, I guess. Why?”

    “Unique amongst your kind,” he murmurs.

    “Well, I’ve noticed that other people have got cloth ears where anything outside their own vernacular is concerned, if that’s what ya mean—yeah.”

    “Something like that. Would you like to help? You’d better put an apron on.”

    “Yeah, okay. This is Aunty Kate’s blouse. It musta been loose on her.”

    His shoulders shake slightly but he only says: “In that case, I’d definitely wear an apron.”

    “Yeah.” –He’s wearing an ace one, like striped, think it might be a butcher’s apron? So I go out, I know where the linen cupboard is. Well, shit! The only other apron’s a wanking frilled thing with huge blue flowers on it! So I put it on and go back looking like a real nana and he goes: “That was a very good buy at Marks and Sparks.”

    “Right, next ya’ll be telling me you actually wear it.”

    “Of course I do. In fact I usually do. This one was a Christmas present from Nefertite.”

    Aw. S’pose I believe ya. “At least ya not brainwashed.”

    “Mm? Oh, into avoiding feminine aprons! I try not to be. Can you chop this lettuce roughly? Um, quarter it, then halve the quarters, I think, Dot.”

    Never heard of anyone chopping lettuce like that, but if he says so…

    Cook the lettuce? What? “Hey, David, this here is lettuce, ya know. Not cabbage.”

    “That’s right. Hang on.” His kitchen his got some open shelves, you don’t see them no more in modern kitchens, do ya? But I can remember Grandma Leach had them. He’s put his cookbooks on them, plus a couple of huge jars. So he gets down a book and finds the place and hands it to me. Ye-eah… Ugh! What? Ugh! “So-called French, goddit. But this here’s an English book!”

    “True. There’s another version in another book—that one. It’s English, too. It is a French recipe, however.”

    “Nobody eats lettuce cooked!”

    “I hate to widen your horizons, Dot Mallory,” he says in that super-up-himself voice, “but quite a few people do. Possibly not in the British Commonwealth, however.”

    “Ri-ight…” I’m looking through it. Every other recipe’s crammed with butter and cream and them that aren’t, they got either butter or cream! “Look, what’s the point of eating vegetables if ya gonna smother them in butter and cream?”

    “Jane Grigson does tend rather to that sort of thing. She’s quite sound, though.”

    “Sound and the size of a house, would this be?”

    “Well, yes!” he says with startled laugh. “How did you know?”

    “Gee, David, I didn’t know, I only guessed, but. She reckons ya haveta shred the lettuce.”

    “Mm? Oh, does she? In that case, I’m combining the two versions.” He watches drily as I get down the other book. Somebody or Other’s Cookery Book for the Greedy? And a half.

    “Smothered in butter and cream, right.”

    “Cookery writers of their generation had gone through the War, you see.”

    “Yeah? I’m not that fascinated, thanks all the same. –What’s he mean, the heads only of the spring onions?”

    “I have no idea. I always follow Jane Grigson’s instructions, they tend to be clearer.”

    Oh, yeah, very clear. Like, what do ya turn the knob to for this stewing crap? Like, so as not to burn the three tablespoons of butter per half a kilo of shelled peas, I kid you not. “So are ya gonna turn the heat on?”

    “Not just yet. I'm going to make a start on the Dauphine potatoes. I know you’ve never had them , so if you want to help, shut up.”

    All right, I will. …Shit. What’s he—I’m shutting up. …Right, he needed some of the butter for that as well as the lettucey peas. Boy, he must have strong wrists; come to think of it, he would do, with all that piano-bashing. Mash the potatoes? Who, me? Don’tcha mean ruin the potatoes? No, they need to be puréed. Very funny. All right, mate, you asked for it. Gee, he’s got an even bigger mixer than Aunty Kate’s, with like giant, um, mixers on it. Whisks? Whaddever. Mix, mix, purée, purée…Gee, I can stop, can I?

    “Can I ask what that stuff is, in ya pot?”

    “Choux pastry.”

    Right, ask a stupid question. Now I gotta beat these egg yolks I thought ya didn’t want into the potato, do I? All right. And a hunk of butter, right. You sure won’t need to put any butter back in the fridge at this rate, David, and I’m gonna have to go on a diet for the next ten years… “Do you normally eat so much butter?”

    “No. For one thing, butter’s quite expensive, at home. And for another, I may appear to have my head in the clouds but I have heard of cholesterol.”

    “Glad to hear it. I’d put the extractor fan on, if I was you, since Uncle Jim went to all the bother of fixing it for ya.”

    Gee, he’d forgotten it was there, fancy that. He puts it on and the steamy heat in the kitchen dissipates slightly.

    “Miaow!” Jesus! Rub, rub.

    “Piss off, Fat Cat.”

    “He does live here.”

    “Yeah.” Why have I gone red, what a total nong!

    “He can smell the duck, it must be done, he’s better than a timer.” So he puts his pot on the side of the stove and looks in the oven.

    “Miaow! Miaow! Miaow!”

    “I’d ignore that. Cats learned up that behaviour as part of their great campaign to get the upper hand of humans, didja know? They don't speak in the wild.”

    “David Attenborough will have told you that,” he acknowledges, straightening very carefully with the duck. It’s sitting on a neato little rack. …Shit, is that fat underneath it?

    “Shit, did all that fat come off it?”

    “Yes.” He puts it down carefully on the grungy old wooden table that’s so far gone it’s past even being turned into trendy distressed. Like, burnt rings all over it and hunks gouged out of it, y’know? “Domestic ducks are very fatty.” He gets out a big meat plate. “There’s a Pyrex bowl in that bottom cupboard, Dot, could you grab it? –Thank you.”

    I see: he puts the duck on the plate and then dumps the rack and pours the fat off carefully into the so-called Pyrex bowl. Like, a microwave bowl. “Are you gonna make gravy?”

    “No, I used the giblets for the base of the caper sauce.”

    Oh, right. Clear as mud. I’d rather have gravy, actually. Oh, now we gotta combine the potato with the choux pastry, do we? I’m past saying anything, I just watch limply, I thought the potato was gonna be, like, potato. Well, potato with egg: it seemed weird, yeah, but that was back then. He gets out a big fryer, it’s got a thermostat and everything, and, I kid you not, dumps like two litres of olive oil into it.

    “That stuff doesn’t grow on trees, ya know.”

    Why that hit the spot don’t ask me, but his eyes are doing that crinkling thing. “Very funny, Dot! We’re nearly ready: would you a like a drink?”

    Thought you’d never ask.

    So we go and haul Nefertite out of her air conditioning, she had her Walkman on, reason she never heard me bashing on the door, and go into the dining-room, like it bears a generic resemblance to Aunty Kate’s dining-room in that it’s got a table and chairs in it. They don’t match, though. I mean, the chairs don’t match the table, but on top of that, they don’t match each other, either. Crikey, reams of cutlery, even more than Aunty Kate had for Chrissie dinner. Sherry, is the go, folks. She seems to think it’s the okay thing so I don’t say anything. He warns me that I may find it dry. Dry? Balls, sherry’s so sweet it grasps ya by the throat and flings ya round and round the room, meanwhile ya toes are doing a kind of cancan all by thems—Shit. Is that dry! Whew! …Like, weird. Dry but not acid at all, that’s impossible!

    “It’s Amontillado, David thought his fino would be too dry for you,” she goes anxiously.

    “Um, yeah. How can it be dry but not acid?”

    “A secret not passed on by the sherry-makers of Jerez to the Australian side?” he drawls, raising the eyebrows.

    For once I’m with him. “You said it. Crikey, that stuff Aunty Kate puts on the trifle… Crikey Dick. No wonder ya had a funny look on ya face when ya tasted it, David.”

    “Oh, Lor’, did I?”

    I didn’t mean to get at him, that time, only I scored a bullseye, shit. “Um, yeah, I don’t think she noticed. Only I was sort of, um… monitoring,” I mutter, I’ve gone red, what a nong!

    “Dot, bad as he is, David would never deliberately upset your aunt,” says Nefertite, anxious again.

    “No. I was afraid he might not like it. Um, well, I dunno what you’re used to, but I do know you’re up-market and we’re not. And, um,”—might as well come clean, well, almost—“I read a recipe in one of her fancy cookery books that she never uses—like, there’s nothing to read in that house, I was desperate—well, it said ya should never use cake, only, um, think they were biscuits.”

    They exchange glances and she says: “I know that sort of trifle, Dot, and it's foul. Gritty.”

    “Yes. Kate’s trifle was superb, Dot, though a splosh of Marsala instead of the sherry would certainly have improved it. The secret of a real trifle,” he says, smiling, “is to use home-made custard.”

    “Hers was home-made, all right: she like, sweated blood over it. Like, dunno how, but home-made custard can get lumps very easy.”

    “It’s the egg,” he says with a smile.

    “Yeah, and it had cream, too.”

    “I could taste that!” he agrees. “Delicious!”

    “Yeah, it is ace, we had some last night.” I try the Spanish sherry again. Oh, boy, does this Spanish sherry grow on ya! “Hey, do English people always have real Spanish sherry?”

    “When they can afford it,” he admits.

    “Yeah. What did ya call this brand, again?”

    He passes me the bottle, smiling, and nips out to the kitchen. I see, right.

    “English shippers,” she says.

    “Yeah, goddit, Nefertite. So do they do other, like wine, too?”

    Not exactly They specialise in sherries and ports, cripes. So she gets up and fetches another bottle off the grungy old sideboard. Same brand, only port. I see. No, I don’t, because “Father” despises it, he only drinks stuff that’s been laid down for twenty years. Huh? Oh, like cellared, goddit. Well, up his. I don’t say it, it has dawned by now that neither of them can stand the old boy, but after all, he is their dad.

    So she tells me a long, boring story about one time her and the Unlamented Corrant were in your actual Jerez. Yep, he sounds like a prick, all right. Boy, this Amon—Hang on, Amontillado stuff goes to ya head in double-quick time, doesn’t it?

    She notices I’m looking at the cutlery, so she goes: “I’m afraid he’s done a cold soup, I couldn’t stop him. Well, I incautiously mentioned the cold avgolemono our grandmother used to do, with fennel, and he was off and running, I’m afraid.”

    “You’ve lost me there, Nefertite.”

    “It’s a Greek soup that can be eaten hot or cold, I’m not quite sure what goes into it, but definitely egg and lemon. And in this case, fennel.”

    “Ye-es…”

    “I think your local green-grocer labelled it finocchio.”

    Gee, that was real Italian! Good on ya, Nefertite, sounded like old Nonna Franchini in person! “Right, yeah, I know finocchio fennel. Never eaten it, but.”

    “Mm. Well, I know lots of English people think it’s foul, so for heaven’s sake leave the soup if you don’t like it, Dot.”

    “I’ll do that.” In spades. Cold soup? Ugh! “So what are all these knives and forks for?”

    … Crumbs. Sorry I asked. And she did try to point out that avocado wouldn’t be exotic to me, but by that time he had the bit between—yeah, yeah.

    She’s gonna put a nice CD on, he’s got it piped through to here—he would—so I nip out to the kitchen. Cripes. He’s put like balls of the potato and choux pastry muck into the deep-fryer and they’re popping up all golden and— Ooh!

    “Stand back, Dot, apron or not.”

    Shit, have I still got—Um, yeah. “Stand back, Fat Cat, you don’t wanna get splattered with hot oil when he digs them puff-balls out, either. Hey, they look ace, David!”

    He grins. “A total indulgence, I’m afraid, and Nefertite just about slaughtered me when I said I’d make them, but after all, the 27th of December comes but once a year!”

    Hah, hah. “By the look of them, it better do. If you are skinny as a rake.” –Guess what he’s wearing to cook the dinner and receive a guest under that striped apron? You got it. Grungy shorts. These ones are denim. Faded denim. Ancient faded denim. Ya got that? Good on ya.

    So we’re just about ready, these can go in the oven to keep warm and given the duck, Fat Cat goes out, we can hear him croaking from the back step, and the peas get turned off. So does he want me to carry the soup through? No, it's the hors-d’oeuvres first, I can take them through if I like, and he’ll just slip into something comfortable, yeah, very amusing.

    Gee, it’s three little mounds of, uh dunno, greenish, sitting on strips of smoked salmon and slices of avocado, very cute. Nefertite doesn’t know what the mounds are, either. But she likes smoked salmon. Yeah, me, too. Would I like another sherry, she thinks David will allow us to drink it with this. Don’t think that’s a joke. I will if she will. Good, we both do. …Yum! Spanish sherry sure grows on ya.

    All right, David, it’s an avocado mousse, very light, no cream, just egg white and blah, blah, don’t need to know, thanks, you’re as bad as Aunty Kate. Tastes all right. Oh, lime juice, right, right… She thinks he was right not to do the avocado and pineapple dish, Jesus, yes! Avocado and pineapple? Jesus, these Poms got no idea, really! It’s because they never grew up with the stuff, see? It’s all exotic to them, so they bung it together and think it oughta go. So now she wants to know what ways I’ve had pineapple! Blow me down flat. Well, all right.

    “Um, like by itself: sliced up. Um, in fruit salad. Um, well, Aunty Allyson does this ace thing, like, ya make a sponge and bung the pineapple on it, sliced, and then ya put this, like, meringue on top and bung it back in the oven. Roughly speaking!” He thinks, like a bombe? Huh? “Dunno. Well, there’s pineapple upside-down cake, ya must of had that, Aunty Allyson’s is great, and just pineapple cake, of course, but that’s a waste of good pineapple, ask me. …Eh? Dunno, not a cook. Dad sometimes gets inspired and cooks it in butter with a bit of sugar, that’s ace, but the twins don’t like it. Um, well, Uncle George, like he’s Mum and Aunty Kate’s brother, he lives in Melbourne, he often does it on the barbie with the sausages, that’s good, and sometimes Aunty May does it for brekkie with bacon, that’s ace. –Yeah, fried. Um, well, Isabelle’s Aunty Maeve, she lives in Queensland, she’s got loads of recipes for different pineapple puddings, if ya that interested, David. Um, Aunty May sometimes makes pineapple jam.”—What’ve I said? What are they staring at me for?—“Only when they’re really cheap in the shops, natch. Like, ninety cents each?”

    “Yes,” he says faintly.

    “Look, ya must have stuff in England that’s cheap there and dear out here!”

    “Not tropical fruit,” he says faintly.

    All right, not tropical fruit, who gives a rat’s? That avocado and salmon thing was quite good, pity there wasn’t more of it, but.

    So he clears away and brings in the cold soup; if we’ve still got some sherry in our gl—No. Possibly just as well, he doesn’t think it would go too well with it. Well, try this. Fetches cold bottle, not a white? Oh, God, here we go...

    So I get back pretty late and only the old joker’s still up, yawning over the paper. “How’d it go?”

    “Good, thanks, Uncle Jim. The food was extra. Hey, have you ever had real Spanish sherry?”

    “Um… Yeah, Ma Fortescue gave us some once. Horrible muck. Why, did Banana-Eater have some?”

    “Yeah, but it wasn’t horrible, it was… miraculous!”

    “Yeah. Well, tell us all about it tomorrow, love.” He’s yawning his head off. “Um, hang on, what didja do after dinner?”

    There wasn’t that much after-dinner, the dinner went on for ages, boy can Nefertite talk the hind leg off a donkey when she gets going! “They played some CD’s, they were good. Bach, mostly.”

    “That’ll have been the booming noise, then.”

    “Uh—shit. Sorry, Uncle Jim.”

    “We could only hear it when she turned the ABC off,” he says drily. “Well, night-night, love. Glad it wasn’t too bad.”

    Too bad? It was corker, ya silly old nit! “Yeah, night-night, Uncle Jim.”

    So I go into the kitchen, late for brekkie, she’s already making the toast and she whips my muesli and fruit salad out of the fridge: put it there to stop Jim eating all the fruit salad, right, hasn’t she noticed the old joker doesn’t even think it’s breakfast, he only eats it on sufferance? And out we go to the patio…

    So she goes: “A Greek wine? Good gracious!”

    “He said it would be fun to try, and it was a Greek soup.”

    “Sounds revolting,” notes Uncle Jim.

    “Nonsense, Jim, finocchio fennel is a delicacy.”

    “Revolting. Can’t stand aniseed. So what was the wine like?”

    “Well, all right. He laughed and said it was a mistake, but Nefertite liked it, she drank all hers, and he said she had the palate of a Greek peasant and she said it was a pity he hadn’t inherited a bit more from Mother and a bit less from Father, and I thought they were gonna have a row, only he said he couldn’t agree with her more and she said: “Sorry, old boy,” and then she apologised to me and explained that she was terribly hungry, she’d skipped lunch in anticipation of the dinner.”

    “Good on ’er. –Thought ya might have had champagne.”

    “We did, only not then, later.”

    “Let her tell it, Jim. The soup sounds delicious, Dot. I have made an avgolemono, Megan used to like it… I wonder if could do it with finocchio fennel… The duck was next, was it, dear?”

    “Yeah, it was really ace, Aunty Kate, and he’d roasted it on this neato little rack, like to let the fat drain, ya never saw so much fat! And he didn’t do gravy, he did this really weirdo sauce, by itself it was real peculiar, y’know? Only with the duck it was… ambrosial. Like, the duck was kinda meaty and the sauce was just a bit, um, tart. Like, caper sauce, have you ever had that?” She has: of course, delicious with duck! He can’t stand capers, they taste like salty little sour nothings. “Yeah, they do by themselves, Uncle Jim, only not with the meat. Hey, and guess what, they’re pickled buds!”

    “Of course, dear.” See, she knew it all along.

    So the old joker goes: “Geddouda here.”

    “Jim, they are! I thought you knew that?”

    “It’s in the dictionary, Uncle Jim! Like, pickled flower-buds off a South European shrub! And English capers, they’re like, pickled mas—” Cof. “Nasturtium seeds.”

    “Caper bushes grow in the South of France, Jim, you must have heard of them.”

    “Nope. So, didja get a leg, love?”

    “Um, no, he gimme a breast. Nefertite said it was much nicer. And if it was a wild duck, you generally get both, there’s not so much meat on them. And guess what? He did these totally ace potato balls with it, now, ya might not believe this, but he made me purée the potatoes up with egg, and he made this pot of choux pastry, and he stirred it up like anything, by hand, his wrists must be strong as anything from all that piano-playing, see, and then he mixed them up together, and made little balls, and fried them in a big deep-fryer just like yours, Aunty Kate. In olive oil!”

    Silence reigns on the patio.

    So then she goes, real faint: “Olive oil?”

    “Yeah. Real extravagant. But they did taste good.”

    “It’ll be the Greek blood coming out,” notes Uncle Jim. “Fried potato balls sound all right, though.”

    “No, Uncle Jim, that’s what I’m trying to explain! They weren’t just potato balls, they were light and puffy, and they had this like, choux pastry mixed into them!”

    “Just a moment, dear.” She gets up and goes into the house. Me and the old joker just sit there under the sun umbrella, looking at the garden. After a bit he says: “Fat Cat get a bit of the duck?”

    “Yes, and David saved him the liver: he made a growly noise over it, ya shoulda heard him, Uncle Jim, he was like a tiger or something!”

    “Yeah, big brute, in’ ’e?”

    “Too right.”

    Then she bursts out of the house in triumph. “Here! I knew I had a recipe for them somewhere! Pommes de terre Dauphine! Delicious, I’m sure, but such a lot of work!” Sits down, panting. Shit, it’s the same book what David had. “Listen to this, Jim!” Reads it out. Yeah, that was what he done, all rightee. Though that Jane lady, she doesn’t specify olive oil.

    “Sounds good!” he says, rubbing his hands.

    So she eyes him drily and goes: “No.”

    “There was a million eggs in them, Uncle Jim, plus and all the frying.”

    “Exactly, Dot. Now, what did you have with the duck? Peas, of course.”

    Yeah, he wouldn’t of dared not to since you told them peas were traditional with duck. At least twice in my hearing. ”You’re not gonna believe this. He cooked the peas—”

    “No!” goes the old joker. “I don’t believe it!”

    “Do stop interrupting, Jim! Let Dot tell it!”

    He opens his mouth and thinks better of it. So I tell them about the peas with the lettuce and they both go: “Ugh!”

    “Nah, it was ace. –Gimme the book, Aunty Kate.” Like, it’s alphabetical by—Bummer. Wrong book. Like, same lady, different book. “He’s got a different book by the same lady, it was in that. All on veggies.”

    “Wait!” She rushes into the house again. Me and the old joker just sit there under the sun umbrella, looking at the garden. After a bit he says: “Can’t find it.”

    “Mm.”

    More peaceful silence.

    “Didja have wine with the duck, love?”

    “Wine! It was real French, like, it was red, and no wonder he said the turkey could stand up to the shiraz on Chrissie Day, because this wasn’t wine, it was liquid red velvet!”

    He blinks. “Cripes.”

    “Ye-ah…” I sigh. “I coulda died happy, right then. And I can’t describe how it went with the duck, like, the sauce wasn’t too tart, y’know? Just, like, touched with tartness, so the wine didn’t clash with it, ya know how sometimes ya have a red with a sweet an’ sour and it like, screams at it?”

    “Ye-ah… Well, yeah. Only I’m usually busy thanking me lucky stars I been allowed a drop at all, don’t waste much time on noticing how it screams at it, but ya right, now I come to think of it.”

    “Yeah. But this didn’t. He said it was fairly robust, and Nefertite said something even more techo, only I can’t remember it, I didn’t really get it.”

    “That’ll’ve been the wine-buff hubby.”

    “Mm.”

    “She say anything more about him?”

    “Yes, lots. She told us lots of stories. She’s been all over the world, that’s for sure, the Unlamented Corrant musta liked travelling. She calls him that, ’ve you noticed?”

    “Mm. Um, how long’s she been divorced, love, do ya know?”

    “I’m not sure. I got the impression it was on again, off again for a bit. They had a big row when she took Pandora, that’s the daughter, off to Greece to stay with the rellies for a bit That was when was she was twelve, and she’s sixteen now, so, um… Dunno. She could of been divorced then, or not. Like, getting the divorce doesn’t seem to stop most people going on having rows, does it?”

    “Not when there’s kids involved, no: look at bloody Andrew and Coralie,” he says glumly.

    “Um, yeah.” Coralie’s a dirty word in this house, so I’m looking fearfully at the French windows, but there’s no sign of her.

    “To hear yer aunt tell it, it was all her fault, of course, but ask me, he was the one made a cock-up of it. Nothing wrong with ’er, perfectly nice girl!”

    Cringe. “Yeah, um, aren’t there usually faults on both sides, Uncle Jim?”

    “Thing is, he expected her to run after him like his ruddy mother.”

    Double cringe! “Um, yeah.”

    He sighs, and we stare at the garden in silence…

    Pant, pant! “Here we are! And I thought, just for a change, we might have some real coffee!” Beam, beam.

    Blow me down flat. All right, let’s. It won’t be anything like real coffee but on the other hand it’ll be a million times better than instant. …Yep. Right on both counts. We get the complete rehash of the Jane lady’s pea recipe, she still thinks it sounds odd but of course it’s classic, and she’s very interested to know Banana-Eater done the carrots the ace way she does them, glazed in honey and lemon juice.

    “So, what was the pudding, Dot, dear?”

    “Um, it was ace, only it wasn’t next.”

    “Goodness, surely you didn’t have the savoury before the pudding? That’s very French, but I wouldn’t have thought an Englishman would care for it!”

    “Yes, we did, only that wasn’t next.”

    “Kate, let her get a word in edgewise, for Pete’s sake!” –Yep, that’s the caffeine talking.

    “Next we had a big salad, like, all by itself, on clean plates. He hasn’t got a salad bowl, he hadda use his—”

    “Banana bowl!” cries Uncle Jim. He goes off in hysterics.

    Aunty Kate’s going to rubbish him only just in time she thinks better of it. “Was it, Dot?”

    “Mm.”

    She catches my eye, gulps, and goes off in hysterics, so I give in and join in.

    “What sort of salad, Dot?” she asks, wiping her eyes.

    I knew she was gonna ask that. “Lettuce.”

    “Really, dear! What sort of lettuce?”

    “Just lettuce lettuce, Aunty Kate. Ordinary lettuce.”

    “What, iceberg?”

    “Lettuce all by itself?” croaks Uncle Jim. “Didn’t ’e even wave a tomato at it?”

    “No. Um, it wasn’t exactly by itself, see, it had a dressing on it.”

    “Salad dressing,” he notes.

    “You couldn’t possibly call it that! He reckoned it only had like, mustard and red wine vinegar and olive oil and salt in it, like, is Dijon a kind of mustard, Aunty Kate?”—A very good sort of mustard. Ya could of fooled me, I thought it was a place in France. Oh, maybe they make the stuff there.—“Yeah. Well, that was what it was, but it was indescribably delicious.”

    “That red wine you were telling me about musta gone to your head,” the old joker decides.

    Aunty Kate’s looking at me dubiously, too. I knew they’d never believe me, well, who would believe it? Ordinary lettuce with a vinaigrette that sounded just like bloody Leila’s and once you’d got a taste of it you’da walked barefoot over broken glass for more?

    “No! I’m telling ya, it was extra. He wouldn’t let me finish the wine with it.” Bugger it, I’ve gone red!

    She’s fixing me with her beady eye. “Dot, dear, you didn't drink too much, did you?”

    “Sounds as if ’e wouldn’t let her. Wouldn’t of credited ’im with that much nous, meself.”

    “No,” I mutter. Like, what he did, see, he leaned forward and put his hand on mine just as I was raising the glass to me gob and stopped me. And I went all thingo like a total nana. I mean, shit, he’s Banana-Eater and he’s real old, gotta be twice as old as me, and not even handsome, and the glam gear he’d changed into consisted of a baggy cotton short-sleeved shirt over the denim shorts. So why I hadda go all colours of the rainbow, and feel as if— Well, you know what I mean, if you're human. Musta been the wine, all right, you’d expect French wine to be powerful stuff, wouldn’t ya? Added to which the Frogs invented sex, didn’t they? Probably after they’d drunk the stuff, yeah.

    So Aunty Kate decides briskly she’ll ask him for his salad-dressing recipe, good, maybe he’ll persuade her not to put sugar in the stuff, and asks about the pud.

   This is getting embarrassing. “Like, we didn’t have it next, Aunty Kate.”

    “How many courses were there?” croaks the old joker.

    “Um… One, two, the duck was three, the salad… Six.”

    “Jesus!”

    “Stop it, Jim! It’s hardly unknown. And I dare say that’s the lifestyle they’re both used to.”

    “In between the bananas,” he mutters. “Well, go on, Dot, surprise us.”

    “Um, yeah. Um, we had cheese next, with French bread. On clean plates. It was English cheese, he got it at D.J.’s, he said he’d asked his father to send some out but that had produced nothing but—” Help, would he want me to tell them this? Um, well, why say it if he didn’t want it repeated? “Um, a diatribe, think it was, yeah, a diatribe on the subject of wasting his talents before, um, swine, and coming home to live a civilised life.” I shut my eyes and wait for the storm to break, given I've just told her that Aussies are swine and uncivilised…

    “Well, really! With a father like that I can understand why he chooses to live on the other side of the world!”

    Eh? Admittedly he did a fair amount of sucking-up on Chrissie Day… It may be safe to open me eyes. “Um, yeah. Um, Nefertite doesn’t seem to go much on the old man, either. Like, um, this may sound silly, but I sorta got the impression he bullies them both, like, not only when they were kids.”

    So she goes grimly: “Once a bully, always a bully.”

    “Yeah,” agrees Uncle Jim. “The mum got on out of it, didn’t she?”

    “Yes, when David started at boarding school. He was only eleven.”

    “The poor little boy!” cries Aunty Kate.

    “No, it wasn’t all bad, Aunty Kate, because she went back to the rellies in Greece, and he went there for his holidays, his dad was always too busy with his conducting and going on tours and stuff.”

    “Price of genius,” notes Uncle Jim.

    She sniffs, but doesn’t argue. “Well, I’m sure if the cheese came from David Jones, it was excellent, dear.

    Yeah, it was, actually, but I won’t tell her what he said about D.J.’s French cheese, I wanna live to see the 29th. “Yeah, it was ace. Stilton.”

    Uncle Jim shudders but doesn’t say anything and she just nods approvingly so I don’t tell them it wasn’t cheese, it was a completely new taste sensation, they’d only think I’m mad. But it was. Like, the usual blue vein’s horribly strong, and sort of sour, isn't it? This wasn't. He reckons Roquefort’s even better, it’s a French one, but he refuses to buy it horrid little plastic packets.

    So I get to tell them about the pudding, it was real simple but delicious, strawberries in tall glasses with cream and he’d put something yummy on them, um, dunno, Aunty Kate, some sort of liqueur. And we had the champagne with that, it was extra.

    So the old joker goes: “Be French, would it?”

    “What? When the country produces—”

    “Acid white crap,” he says, winking at me. “Go on, Dot: it was, eh?”

    “Yeah. Like, it had a year on the bottle, he said that’s what vintage champagne is, see? Like, the year of the vintage, it doesn’t mean old, like vintage cars.”

    “I geddit. So ya thought it was good?”

    Good? Uncle Jim, it was to die for! But she’ll only say I’m exaggerating if I say that. “Super-good, yeah.”

    So he goes: “If not cheap at the price. Last time—I tell a lie, time before last we went to D.J.’s Food Hall, I took a look at the prices of the French fizz in the bottle department while Kate was checking out the price of fish,”—looks totally bland, the old so-and-so, she does buy fish there but that’s not why he said it—“and they had a bottle of Bollinger, that’s French, eh, for a hundred and sixty bucks a throw.” Looks bland.

    “What?” she screams.

    “Yep. Don’t think it even had a year on it, neither. Hundred and sixty bucks.”

    “Surely David didn’t spend that amount of money just to waste it on Dot!” –Gee, thanks very much.

    “Uh—’e is mad, love.”

    “Rubbish, Jim!”

    “This wasn’t Bollinger. But he never got it at D.J.’s, he got it in France. Like at the cellar-door, I think he meant.” Uncle Jim’s relieved, and she’s impressed. Par for the course. So she’s gotta know what we done after the dinner, so I tell her about the Bach, it was really ace, and omit the bits about the liqueurs we drunk, she’s already totted up the amount of alcohol I must of had, and the bit about David playing the piano, that was more Bach, that was the acest bit of all, like, right in the lounge-room with ya, phew! Like, if I said it was passionate but controlled and, um, orderly, like would that grab ya? No, all right, but that’s the impression I got, see? Added to which, in case she’s noticed his hand I don’t wanna get into a discussion about that, thanks very much.

    So the old joker goes: “Introduction to the high life, eh?” Grin, grin.

    And she goes: “Really, Jim!” But quite mildly. “Well, I’m glad they were able to show you some of the finer things of life, Dot, dear.”

    Uh—yeah. Cripes. S’pose that’s what they were, yeah.

    I don’t believe it! Bloody Sir Walter Scott’s gonna let that dumb Ivanhoe choose the wrong girl! Like, he’s setting it up, you can see it, no way is he gonna marry Rebecca, she’s Jewish and never mind in the Middle Ages, in 1820 he’d never of married her, what I am saying, in 1920 he’d never of married her, look at Ben Cross in Chariots Of Fire, they only let him into uni because his dad had multi-megabucks and then they looked down their noses at him the whole time. He’s gonna marry that blonde nit Rowena, well, shit! Why didn’t the stupid nong tell me it was another Esther do? …Um, on second thoughts I never really told him how dished I felt about that, did I? Um, no.

    So I’m ploughing on with it, it is good, once ya start it grips ya, if the style is a bit hard to take until ya get used to it, when the phone rings and she comes into my room and goes: “Dear, it’s your friend Isabelle on the phone, ringing from Queensland.”

    Ringing from Queensland on her Aunty Maeve’s phone, no way would she be dumb enough to ring interstate on that stupid mobile she went and bought, makes her look like a dim teen. But I get up quick anyway.

    “Gidday.”

    So she goes: “Yeah, hi, Dot. Guess what, me and Scott have decided to get engaged!”

    WHAT?

    “Are ya there?”

    “Yeah. Did you say you’re engaged to Scott Bell?”

    “Yeah!” Giggle, giggle. “We thought we might as well!”

    “Look, if you’re pregnant you can get rid of it, or be a single mother, me and Carla and Glenda’ll stick by ya, we could get a bit bigger flat an’—”

    “No! Don’t be mad!”

    All right, ya not, that’s a relief. “Then why him? Thoughtcha didn’t want to be called Isabelle Bell?”

    “Silly! That sort of thing doesn’t matter!”

    “Look, Isabelle, is this the holiday romance bit? Because ya know what you were like that time you and Carla went to Vanuatu on that package—”

    “No! Honestly, Dot, you are silly!”

    All right, I’m silly. Not as silly as some, but: Scott Bell’s as dumb as they come. Quite an agreeable joker, I’ll give ya that. But solid concrete between the ears. And she told me herself he’s the type that, after the merest glance in the direction of foreplay, shoves it up there and if ya don’t come like the clappers, too bad, that’s all she wrote. Like, she hadda tell him to do it with his finger, what a stupid nong. Well, fair bit of it about, yeah.

    “Maybe I’m silly but I’m not the one that went to me aunty’s and got engaged out of sheer boredom.”

    “It’s not like that! We’re in love, we want to get married!”

    Right, tell me he's wonderful and I’ll scream. She doesn’t go that far, maybe she doesn’t wanna make me scream. She’s gonna give up her job in Sydney—fair enough, she hates it—and go up and join him permanently, he’s got a flat now, well, it’s a dump, but they can get a better one, and save up to get married and eventually they’re gonna run a motel, view to buying one of their own. “Uh—yeah. Well, good plan, yeah, you’d never go broke running a motel in Sunny Queensland, that’s for sure. –Is it?” No, overcast and they’ve had a tropical storm, but very warm. Read, stinking humid, I’ve been to Brizzie and you can keep it, thanks. “Well, um, congratulations and everything, Isabelle. If it’s really what ya want?”

    Of course it is! And blah, blah, blah… Yeah, well, as I say, she hates her job in Sydney and she has known Scott all her life, she must know what he’s like. Well, she could do a lot worse, look at Rosie’s friend Joslynne, boy was that a disaster or was that a disaster. At least Scott’s got his head screwed on the right way and if he hasn’t, Isabelle’s just the girl to keep him on the right track. Like, she manages the food budget at the flat, them two dollybirds haven’t got a clue, but with Isabelle in charge they ‘re all putting away a third of their salary every fortnight, I kid you not, and they managed to pay for the package tour real easily, it wasn’t one of those save, save till ya bust then ya come back and ya flat broke for the next eighteen months things, by any means. So I guess she’ll do all right.

    “Um, yeah. Sounds good. Um, ya do realise that running a motel’s bloody hard yacker, do ya?”

    Of course she does, shit, sounds like ruddy Aunty Kate.

    So she plunges into blah about the engagement party, they’re gonna have it up there, his mum wants to throw it, good on her, Mr McLeod won’t wanna be up for megabucks for that as well, because it’s Lombard Street to a China orange that— Yep, she’s plunging into plans for the super-gigantic wedding that the poor bloke’s gonna have to shell out megabucks for, why doesn’t she just ask him for the money instead, then her and Scott could get a start on the nest-egg for the motel… Palest pink silk, draped. Gotcha. I’ll look a dream in that. Not blue, cos Carla looks awful in blue. She sure does, got one of those very dark olive skins, come to think of it she’d look putrid in pale pi— Gotcha. Deep crimson, sort of glowing; that leaves the bright pink for Glenda, that’s okay, she’s got a pale skin and brown hair and brown eyes, and we sure will look like a bunch of roses, Isabelle, yep. Ya’ve left out ya kid sisters, Diana and Courteney. Oops, no, ya haven’t. Isabelle, ya nong, they will never stand for it! I agree that very simple little straight dark green frocks with tiny green pillbox hats sporting large pink roses would look ace, but they’ll scream their heads off if ya ask them to wear dark green while we’re in pink!

    “Um, they won’t wear it.”—What do I mean?—“They’ll scream their heads off at the mere idea., that’s what I mean. –Just listen! If the bridesmaids are in pink no way will they wanna wear dark green. Pillboxes or not. Believe it.”—Gee, she believes it: that’s one of her sulky silences coming down the line or D.M. Mallory’s a Dutchman in his clogs.—“Shove them into pale pink like mine, I don’t care.”

    “That’s you all over, Dot!”

    Sigh. “I mean, I don’t mind if their dresses are the same colour as mine, ya nana.”

    “But it’ll spoil the overall look!”

    “Well, a shade paler then mine?”

    Eventually she agrees to this and after a lot more blah about the flats she’s already dragged Scott to look at, not to mention the rings she’s already dragged Scott to look at, she hangs up.

    So I go into the kitchen, it’s almost lunchtime, she’s at the bench. “Isabelle and Scott Bell are engaged.”

    “That’s nice, dear, he sounds like a very nice boy.”

    “He’s as thick as a brick, but if he’s what’s she wants, why not? She’s already dragged him off to look at flats and engagement rings, she’s planning for one that’ll make a set with her wedding ring and her eternity ring.”

    “I always think that’s a very nice look, Dot.”

    “Yeah, if ya get that far! I mean, look at Rosie’s mate, ruddy Joslynne Gridley-Smythe Harcourt-Rhys!”

    “Its quite a different case, Dot. Isabelle’s a sensible little thing, and let’s face it, Joslynne never had sense, did she?”

    “No. Anyone coulda seen with half an eye that Paul Harcourt-Rhys was an up-himself hyphenated git that was gonna dump her the minute anything more up-market with a Daddy that belonged to the right golf club came along.”

    “Anyone except Joslynne,” she agrees drily.

    “Yeah. Well, I s’pose love is blind.”

    She eyes me cautiously. “Dot, one can never predict these things, and of course I only met Scott the once, that time he was staying with his mother’s cousin and Jim and I were over for your parents’ wedding anniversary,”—and to take in the Lloyd-Webber crap at the Opera House, yeah—“but I’d say he and Isabelle are very well matched.”

    “Yeah, actually, on thinking it over, so would I,” I admit. “Only, it was like, a bit of a shock at first, cos she’s never seemed serious about him at all. I mean, two months back she was besotted by that Damian Anderson, he was all she could talk about.”

    “Until he went off to South Africa to further his cricketing career,” she notes drily.

    “Yeah, I s’pose he made it clear enough she wasn’t his first priority.”

    “Exactly, Dot. Isabelle’s a sensible girl, and she’s realised that a solid boy like Scott who’ll put her and their life together first is worth twenty times as much as the Damian Anderson type. Handsome though he might have been.”

    “Um, yeah, he was a total dish, I godda admit that. Thick, though. Well, he’s got that in common with Scott.”

    “Dot, brains aren’t all that matters, in a relationship. Decency and common sense are far more important.”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “And be fair, dear, I know she’s your best friend, but that was just propinquity, really, wasn’t it? I mean, you sat together on your very first day at St Agatha’s and it just went on from there, didn’t it? She’s not really a bright girl, is she?”

    “No. Well, she has got sort of brains, like she’s got a great budget for the flat, all the girls are managing to save like billyo, even that dumb Glenda that was always broke before Isabelle joined the flat. But she’s not an intellectual type.”

    “No, exactly,” she says, looking at me with great approval. “I’m glad you can see that there’s more than one sort of brains, Dot. So many clever people can’t.”

    Cringe. Who’s that a hit at?

    “Andrew, for instance,” she says with a sigh. Oh! Goddit! Yep, Coralie’s the Isabelle type, that’s for sure. Ten million times more common sense than him. Um, cripes, is she admitting he isn’t perfect after all?

    “And in a way,” she says heavily, “Rosie’s as bad as he is. Well, Dot, when you think of all those nice boys she rejected because they were brainless!”

    “Ye-ah… I think she’s the sort of person that can see there’s more than one type of brains, Aunty Kate: she’s the sort of person that gets on well with everyone, have you noticed? –Yeah. But, um, she knows herself well enough to know she’d get fed up if she had to live with a bloke that hasn’t got the same sort of brains as her.”

    “Yes,” she says with a sigh. “But she’s so bright… Where is she going to find one of those?”

    “Um, well, dunno. Um, well, if she gets a uni job, after she’s finished her doctorate?”

    “Let’s hope so,” she says heavily.

    Gee, Aunty Kate, marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all, this is the last decade of the twentieth century, why can’t she just have a great career? Like, only you and the entire rest of our ruddy brainwashed society would condemn her as a failure for it.

    “Yeah. Isabelle wants me and Carla and Glenda to be bridesmaids, like, in different shades of pink, well, more crimson for Carla, down to pale pink for me, and maybe the flowergirls in very pale pink, whaddaya think?” Course she thinks plenty, and duly tells me. I can’t say I hang on her every word, but she is pretty sound, yeah.

    So by the time lunch is ready and we sit down to it and tell Uncle Jim the whole story and he goes: “So, when’s she planning to buy the toy poodle?” we both happily rubbish him with the information that Isabelle isn't like Joslynne Gridley-Smythe Harcourt-Rhys!

    Later. I’m in the middle of Ivanhoe, she’s actually left me to me own devices this arvo, and I dunno why, it's nothing Sir Walter’s done, but it suddenly hits me. Isabelle and Scott are another Aunty Kate and Uncle Jim! Yeah, honest! Cos see, she’s the one with the energy and the nous, and he’s the feebleized male wanker that just lets himself be bossed around! They don’t look alike, given that Isabelle’s dark, with natural curls and big blue-grey eyes, though she is slim and medium height, they got that in common. Uncle Jim doesn’t look in the least like Scott: he’s a little, thin dried-up man with a sharp nose and Scott’s a blond lump of six-foot-four with one of those flattened faces. (Dad reckons it’s Irish blood, that’d be right, Scott’s an okay swimmer and he plays a bit of cricket but he’s no boxer, can’t be that.) But gee, ya don’t need to look alike to be twin souls, do ya? Yeah, they ruddy well are!

    … Ugh, so that’s where women like Aunty Kate come from! Gee, and to think Isabelle’s been my best friend ever since I was thirteen and I never saw it.

    So I go back to Ivanhoe…

    Oh, cripes! It’s more of the same! It is, isn’t it? Sure, the fair Rowena’s pretty wet, but Ivanhoe’s as wet as ya can get while still being capable of perpetuating ya genes, not that Sir Walter’s written anything to prove he can do that. So what he’d really like is to be managed for the rest of his life by Rebecca, boy is she capable of it, too, only that’s not gonna happen, he’d never flout the social norms to that extent. And I don’t think, by the look of the thing, she’d let him if he wanted to. So he’ll fall back on Rowena and let her do it. Yep. Gee, even back in 1820 there musta been a fair bit of it about…

    What was that Banana-Eater said about Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? …Oh, balls!

    … Um, could it be? We hadda read it at school, Sixth Form, I never glanced at it since, I thought it was a load of boring crap, who cares who ruled Scotland in the Dark Ages, and the witches weren’t as good as what I thought they were gonna be. Um, didn’t she go mad? Aunty Kate’d never give in to that extent, and nor would Isabelle, I can tell ya! …Oh, balls, he said it to get me going. I’m going back to Ivanhoe…

    We didn’t go downtown and party with all the mindless teeny-boppers in front of the town hall on New Year’s Eve, funnily enough, we just sat up and watched the New Year in on TV, shots of mindless partiers with hooters and whistles and fireworks, right, and drank a toast in one of her liqueurs. So we’re up pretty bright and early on New Year’s Day, usual routine, and by ten-thirty I’ve finished my book. Put it like this, I already finished Ivanhoe in spite of the incessant shopping trips and nice drives to the hills or up the Barossa to do the rounds of the vineyards and have lunch at a really nice restaurant at one of them (that took all day and they had a big argument because he wanted to buy a dozen of a red that she thought was too dear). But she wouldn't let me ask Banana-Eater for any more at all until I’d finished all of them, so I ploughed through the rest of the Fry that I wasn’t gonna finish, boy was it wanking, and then read the T.S. Eliot. Some of it I didn’t like but The Wasteland was extra! His edition’s got notes and things, so I dunno what he meant about me not getting all the references. Anyway, it’s not just the references, it’s the way he puts things. That Prufrock thing’s not bad, either.

    So I go: “I finished all David’s books, Aunty Kate, now can I ask him for some more?”

    She’s knitting, ducted air-con means ya don’t mind knitting in summer, it's something for somebody’s baby, she did tell me whose but my virus scanner never let it through, and she gives her gracious permission, don’t think she’s actually looked at the clock, well, after all, it was New Year’s last night, some people might not be up yet— Slide out quick.

    “Hi, Fat Cat, how’s it?”

    “Miaow, miaow, miaow.” Rub, rub, rub. Bad Sign: all the earmarks of a cat that hasn’t been fed. Talking of which, his ears are practically fretwork, like, fringed, ya know? Cos toms go for the ears when they fight. Um, well, to ring or not to ring? Well, if they’re dead to the world they won't hear the bell, anyway, will they? Ring, ring! Nothing. Ring, ring, ring! Nothing. Ring—Ooh!

    It's a tall red-headed dame, voluptuous’d be the word, in David’s grungy old grey dressing-gown. So she goes: “Who the Hell are you?” Another Pom, figures.

    “Dot Mallory. Who are you?”

    “Is that any of your business? What do you want?”

    “I come to bring back David’s books.”

    “What? At this hour?”

    So I go: “Normal people are up!”

    “All right, give me the bloody things, I’ll see he gets them.”

    She looks like she’ll bother to see he gets them, yeah. Like, puffy-eyed and with the mascara smeared all over the shop. “No, I better hand them to him in person, he’s particular about his books.”

    So she shrugs and goes: “Suit yourself. David! DAVID! Get out here, dammit!”

    After a bit he appears in a pair of his shorts, doing them up as he comes up to the door. Boy, does he look hungover. “Why are you screaming at me in the middle of the night, Geraldine?”

    “Very bloody funny! –It’s a kid. She’s brought some books back.”

    “Hullo, Dot,” he says, looking wry. “Meet Geraldine. –Darling, for God’s sake go and put some coffee on.”

    “I suppose I might as well, now that I’m awake,” she says evilly. “Is it still the same sacred coffee-pot, untouched by human hand?”

    “Of course.”

    “You don’t change, David, do you?”

    “No, but then would you still love me, dearest, if I did?”

    So she goes, quick as a flash: “Possibly not, but I might still be living with you!”

    He puts on his plaintive voice, like, it’s totally fake, and goes: “But isn’t the present arrangement much more fun?”

    “Grow up, David. A night of carousing on unspeakable Australian plonk, not to say wild pash on that frightful lumpy thing you sleep on, does not constitute ‘fun’ to normal adults over the age of twenty-two!”

    So he goes: “Ouch.”

    She turns away but turns back and goes: “Do you still like orange-flower water in your coffee?”

    “Not for breakfast. Though I do still like it, yes. But the point’s academic—unless you brought some?”

    “No. Hard cheese, David, darling.” And she goes down the passage,

    So he shouts: “Bitch!”

    And she shouts back: “Sue me!” And slams the kitchen door.

    “She’s not all bad,” he says to me with a grin. “Just ninety-nine percent and counting.”

    “Um, yeah. I finished these books.”

    “Thanks,” he says, yawning. “Thought you’d be back for another novel long since.”

    “Aunty Kate wouldn’t let me.”

    “Wouldn’t let you? Haven’t you got free will, Dot Mallory?’

    “Yeah, but I wanna live to see me next birthday, thanks.”

    “Mm. Which would be what?” he says with another yawn.

    “What’s it to ya? Twenny-first, if ya that interested. Can I borrow some more?”

    “Mm. Go in, help yourself. Want some coffee?”

    “No. We had our breakfast hours ago.”

    I go in the lounge-room and he follows me, bugger. So I put the books back in their places. “Have ya got any more by T.S. Eliot, like, like The Wasteland, not them other ones?”

    “No, The Wasteland is unique, I’m afraid. So you liked it?”

    “Yeah. So?”

    “Nothing. I adored it at the same age, but then I—uh, had had rather a different education.”

    “Look, I might not of reckernised all of the bloody references, but I LIKED it!” I shout. “And I heard of Osiris, see, and if ya wanna know, I read a book of Joslynne’s Mum’s that says God was a WOMAN!”

    “I've read it, too,” he says mildly. “Very badly written, to the point of not-quite-unreadable, and not too well researched, but certainly written with fervour. Some academics have actually accepted that some pre-Assyrian sects worshipped a female figure, and there is some fairly well-known Neolithic evidence which tends to support the notion.”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “Well, help yourself.”

    So I look at the books and after a bit he goes: “Did you see Zingingerber this morning?”

    “Eh? Yeah, he was on the verandah, miaowing. Why?”

    “She won’t feed him. Took one look at him and had the horrors.”

    “Understandable.”

    “Why not try some more Dickens? And if you like him, you may like Zola.”

    Up his. “I do like Zola, ya pr—twit, but Dad’s got loads of his stuff, I’m gonna read Germinal when I get home.” Or die in the attempt—yep.

    “I see. What did you think of Ivanhoe?”

    “Well, it was exciting… I knew he’d never have the guts to let him marry Rebecca.”

    “Marry a Jewess? My dear, unthinkable!”

    “Yeah, right.”

    “On thinking it over, I discerned certain similarities between Esther’s relationship with the lamentable Whatsisname, and—”

   “Yes!”

    He doesn’t say anything, he just goes on hovering at me elbow. So I find the Shakespeare. It’s weird, personally he’s such a scruff, but his books are in rigid alphabetical order, added to which he’s sorted out the literature from the non-fiction. Split personality? Maybe the sorting out ya books bit goes with the music bit. If he’d push off I’d borrow that vol. of Macbeth, looks like a uni text, probably got some good notes alongside the wanking three-times-as-long-as the-text intro what I don’t intend reading.

    “Dot, for God's sake break down and take the Macbeth!”

    All right, I will. “Is it a good edition?”

    “Textually, yes. Ignore the introduction, it’s fatuous.”

    “I was gunnoo. That intro in Bleak House, it was quite interesting only it didn't strike me it had all that much to do with the book.”

    “Exactly,” he says, smiling.

    “My friend Isabelle, she’s just got engaged.” Dunno why I said that, it just come out.

    “Oh, yes?” –Words cannot describe how Pommy that sounds, like only two syllables, and boy has he labelled himself. Well, can’t help it, of course.

    “Yeah. Like, Scott, that’s the fiancé, he’s a great hulking wet-behind-the-ears drip, just like Ivanhoe.”

    “Ah. And is she the managing kind?”

    “Is she what! I've known her since we were thirteen, and it only just dawned: she’s like an embryo Aunty Kate!”

    “Or an Esther,” he says with a smile.

    “Yep. Without the nineteenth-century virtuous crap, natch. Or a Rebecca. And like it or not, Rowena was sure gonna have to do the managing, wasn’t she?”

    “She sure was.”

    “I couldn’t believe it when I realised that Ivanhoe was another of them! I mean, aren’t there any blokes in literature that can stand on their own two feet?”

    He looks at me with this funny little smile. “Are there any in real life? Recollect that we’re socialised into believing that the full domestic support system is our right, from the moment we’re born.”

    Like, ya never do leave go of the tit, yep.

    “Say it,” he murmurs.

    All right, I will! “Like, ya never do leave go of the tit.”

    “Correct,” he says placidly. “Well, talking of Rebecca, why not try Daphne Du Maurier’s version?”

    “That? I read that when I was sixteen! Plus and Mum’s got the video of that old film, she thinks Lawrence Olivier’s the cat’s whiskers.”

    “I’m sure. But did it dawn that the wildly romantic hero—a Heathcliff clone, one feels—was just another hulking wet-behind-the-ears drip in need of the full domestic support system? –Which the anonymous heroine was fully prepared to provide.”

    “Um… I thought she was a weak little drip, actually.”

    “I think you’re supposed to. I very much doubt the other was deliberate on Daphne Du Maurier’s part. I believe there was quite a lot of criticism of the American actress Hitchcock cast in the rôle, but I thought she brought out that side of it very well. But if you want something quite different, try this. He certainly rejected the female support system, but as he turned out to be gay, that’s not surprising.”

    It’s a life of Laurence of Arabia. Next he’s gonna say that pink-faced Pommy actor in the film brought it out real well. “No, thanks. Not into biog.”

    He doesn’t argue, he just puts it back in its place.

    So I end up with Macbeth, this thing about LA by an Alison dame, a French thing by a bloke called Saint-Exupéry, he says I’ll either love it or loathe it, my bet is loathe it, Tom Jones, it's nice and long, he warned me that not everybody cares for the picaresque novel, haven't got a clue what he’s on about, I'll look it up in Aunty Kate’s dictionary, a vol. of Molière, Dad’s only got a couple of the plays but this is a collection, and Our Mutual Friend, if it’s as good as Bleak House, why not?

    So he goes: “No more poetry?”

    “What could top The Wasteland?”

    Smile, smile. “Mm. Have you ever read Hopkins, Dot?”

    “Who?”

    He grimaces. “He’s an acquired taste, but it’d be a terrible pity if you never acquired it. Doesn’t your dad read poetry?”

    “Some. Like, he’s more into the Frogs, actually. Rosie reckons that Baudelaire, he's really good, only I couldn’t get into him.”

    “How old were you when you tried?”

    “Um, well, seventeen, I suppose, what’s it to ya?”

    “Perhaps it was just that you hadn’t read enough French at that stage?”

    “Uh—Come to think of it, it was the next summer holidays I really got stuck into the French, like, there was nothing on TV and Dad said I'd find all his French books much too hard, so I sorta sat down and got stuck in. Hadda use the dictionary all the time, at first; boy, that Malraux bloke’s not easy, is he? Then I tried L’Étranger, it was miles easier, Dad said the style’s deliberately simplistic, but anyway, it encouraged me. It was good, eh? Effective. Short, but.”

    “Mm. Tried any Simone de Beauvoir?”

    If that’s a trap it isn’t gonna work, mate. “No, can’t stand all them old-fashioned Women’s Libbers that spent all their lives hanging off a bloke’s sleeve. She might just as well of married him and be done with it.”

    “Quite. Dare I breathe the words Germaine Greer?”

    Joslynne’s Mum’s got that thing of hers. So I go, like through me teeth, boy did that thing get up my nose, got so mad with it I couldn’t get through it: “She doesn’t give ya the footnotes.”

    At which he bursts out laughing and goes: “Dot, I love you!” Stupid wanker.

    So at this exact point in time the Geraldine woman stomps in, scowling like anything, and says she hadda scour the coffee mugs and that brute’s howling at the back door.

    “He might decide he likes you, if you’d feed him.”

    “I don't want him to like me, the filthy creature.”

    So I go: “He's not, acksherly, like, he washes a lot, that fur of his is just rough, see?”

    “I see you know him well,” she says evilly.

    Look, I’m not ya rival for David Flaming Walsingham, ya silly cow, I’m only interested in his books! And his mind, a little bit. And the Bach, but not that crashing and bonking stuff, that’s for sure.

    “Wouldn’t say that, but I've seen him washing often enough. I better go, thanks, David.”

    “Let me show you out. –Oh, by the way, darling, Dot’s at one with me on the precise quality of Ms Greer’s scholarship!”

    “What are you talking about?” she says impatiently.

    “Ignore her, she’s functionally illiterate; I’d forgotten that, in the intervening five years or so,” he says, grabbing me shoulder and giving me a push in the direction of the door.

    So he opens the front door, like, I’m lugging the books or I’d have got it myself, and Fat Cat shoots round the corner of the house.

    “Miaow! Miaow! Miaow!”

    “Why couldn’t the bitch feed the brute?” he sighs.

    “Probably didn’t want her hand taken off at the wrist. Thanks for the books. See ya.”

    “Miaow! Miaow! Miaow!”

    “All right! I’ll feed you! –Yes, see you, Dot.” He sounds real down, too bad, that’ll be the Australian “plonk”, serve him right for drinking it. I don’t look back, I just march straight home.

    So I haven’t done anything much this week except read, Our Mutual Friend sure is good, like, nothing to attract her notice, and practically the minute I offer to set the table for tea tonight she goes: “Is anything wrong, Dot?”

    “No.”

    “Dear, if you’re still brooding about Isabelle,”—I am not! I was never brooding!—“It’s natural that at her stage in life she’d be wanting to settle down. After all, she left school quite some time before you did, didn’t she?”

    “Yeah, and went flatting. I know. If Scott can hack it with her, I think it should go good.”

    “Then if it’s not that—”

    “It isn’t anything. Well, why are men so feeble?”

    She just looks at me with her mouth open.

    “Like, Scott’s totally feeble, but he’s what she wants, I do reckernise that. And I read all those Lord Peter books of Rosie’s, at first I thought he was, like, a hero, only he’s a real Pommy wa—um, really feeble. Like, she’s a real liberated woman, Harriet, only in the end she has to mother him. And Esther in Bleak House, she ends up with this totally feebleized Allan, like, he’s a nullity, see? And the heroine in Our Mutual Friend, she’s gonna end up with another of them, though I'll say this for Dickens, he shows a few more sides to their characters, I think it is better than Bleak House. And ya might think Macbeth’s a hero, but he isn’t, see. He chickens out and she has to do it for him! And if ya think Ivanhoe’s a real hero, think again!”

    “Ye-es… Dot, dear, they’re just in books.”

    I think she’s at a loss, poor Aunty Kate, shouldn’t of burst out with it like that. “Um, yeah, only see, the really great writers, like Shakespeare and Dickens, they know how people behave in real life, they put it into their books on purpose. And the others, like that lady that wrote Rebecca—you know, Aunty Kate, you’ve got the video of it—they kind of do it instinctively, without realising they're doing it, because like, that’s their art. And it’s not just in books, because Isabelle and Scott are just the same.”

    “Ye-es… Not all men are like Scott, Dot. And there are no heroes in real life, you know.”

    I do know, does she think I’m stupid? Scowl, scowl.

    “Dot, one of these days you’ll meet a really nice young man, and then all this stuff in the books will go right out of your head.”

    Will it, just? Well, I don’t want it to, see, I don’t wanna be at the mercy of me hormones for the rest of me natural like the rest of you moos!

    “And, um, well, perhaps some men are, um, well, not feeble, dear, exactly, but not very capable. But everybody needs support from their partner at some time, dear, we are all human, you know. Goodness, that time Andrew and Carolyn had the mumps at the same time and Megan was on the way—I wasn’t very well at all, dear, blood pressure trouble—I would never have got through it without Jim’s support!”—Blah, blah, etcetera and so forth, well, all right, if you say so, he was a tower of strength.—“And your father’s not feeble, Dot!”

    Right. He only does whatever Mum wants. And even Uncle Jerry, like, he built that business up from practically nothing, he lets Aunty May completely organise his life, like, everything in the house she chose, the new wing’s all her idea (egged on by Aunty Allyson and Aunty Kate—right), and she chose the schools they sent Rosie and Kenny to! Like, she may come on like the complete watering-pot, and she is, no question, but underneath it all she runs his life. Well, total domestic support system, like Banana-Eater said, yep.

    “Aunty Kate, I don’t wanna end up being someone else’s total domestic support system.”

    She gives me this worried look, y’know? And goes into the spiel about missing out on the big things in life, yeah, yeah…

    So we’re sitting down eating it, it’s ham again, as if it didn't take us long enough to eat our way through the Chrissie ham, and Uncle Jim goes: “Were my eyes deceiving me or was that a red-headed dame I saw going into Banana-Eater’s this arvo?”

    “Um, yeah, Uncle Jim, he’s got a lady staying with him. English. Geraldine.”

    Short silence. They exchange glances.

    Then she goes: “I see!”

    So I bounce up. “Ya do not! I’m not even interested in him, so there! And he’s as feebleized as the rest of them!” Rush out, rush in me room, slamming the door, throw meself on the bed and bawl. What a stupid nong.

    So she comes in and goes: “Dot, dear, if you’re period’s due—”

    “It is not!”

    “I was merely going to say, raspberry-leaf tea will help.” Sits down on the side of the bed and sighs. “I knew this would happen.”

    What would happen? Silly old moo!

    “David Walsingham’s far too attractive,” she says glumly.

    He is not! What total balls! He isn’t even handsome!

    “Well, Dot, dear, what can I say? I know it doesn't feel like it now, but you’ll get over it.”—I won’t, see, because there isn’t anything to get over. Glare.—“And I really think all this reading isn’t doing you much good. Couldn’t you— Well, if you must borrow his books, ask him for something more cheerful?”

    “Right, I’ll ask him for The Mill on the Floss.” –Sarky, see? We done it in the Sixth Form.

    “I don't know what that means, but I can guess,” she says heavily.

    “Um, well, this is supposed to be funny.” I show her the book by the Alison dame. She opens it and blenches, probably found a Rude Word.

    “Er—yes. Now, come back and have tea, Dot. And I really do think, next time that that nice Aidan rings up and asks you out, you should accept. If nothing else, it’ll get you out in the fresh air.”

    So I trail back to the kitchen-dining room. “Sorry, Uncle Jim.’

    “That’s all right, Dot, no skin off my nose. Have some more potato salad, it’s calculated to make ya forget ya woes.”

    “It is ace. Yeah, thanks, I will.”

     So dunno why, but next time Aidan rings up I do accept. So never mind the fresh air, we go to the flicks, afterwards we go to a swanky up-itself café in Rundle Street, like with all the other trendies, this is Trendyville, SA, and I have a real down-market Jamaican coffee, I don't care what he thinks. And he gives the complete low-down on how rotten the film was. Yeah, thanks, I seen that at a glance, Aidan, but all the same I enjoyed it because guess what? I am capable of appreciating popular culture at the same time I can see it’s “pabulum for the masses,” quote unquote, and you're not.

    So we go home and he’s learnt his lesson: this time he says: “Can I kiss you?”

    “Not if you’re gonna sound that sulky about it, no.”

    “Well, um, will you let me?”

    Oh, what the Hell, no skin off my nose. “Yeah, only”—talking of which—“mind my nose.” So he kisses me nicely, that was an earth-shattering experience, I don't think. So can we go out tomorrow? “No, I gotta learn up my part for the show, I’ll be heading home soon. And I’m s’posed to be making a costume, I'm gonna have to get Aunty Kate to help me with that.”

    So we settle for lunch, it's gonna be lunch at Norwood shops with Aunty Kate and Uncle Jim but he seems keen.

    So we get home from it, and he goes in next-door for a lesson and she goes: “He is a nice boy, isn’t he?”

    Oh, sure. “Thinks he’s better than the rest of humanity and he’s the only one with brains.”

    “Dot, if you’d let your brains show a bit more, he might not, um, well, he might take you more seriously!”

    “Ya mean, if I talked posh like him. No, thanks. And this’d be taking me seriously in between patronising me to death and never letting me get a word in edgewise, right?”

    “You're being unfair to him. I think he’s terribly lonely, it can’t have been easy, coming back and—” Blah, blah.

    So I divert her with the topic of my costume for the show and she gets all keen and rushes off to find her bag of material scraps. I do feel a bit guilty, but not much.

    I’m due to go home today and Aidan’s rung up five times in the past week and a half but I’ve managed to put him off; except once she insisted we hadda have him round to tea, pardon me, dinner, thank God they haven’t got a piano, she couldn’t make him play. So he’s come round with this big bunch of flowers, they are nice, pink roses and gypsophila, but how am I gonna cope with them on the ruddy plane? Not that Ansett’ll offer more than coffee and bikkies while they divert me through Melbourne, but all the same!

    So he goes: “I’ll be in Sydney after the Festival, of course.”—He means the Adelaide Festival, it’s in March. Dunno what the “of course” means, well, he’s going to the Festival, all the Adelaide nayce people go, probably means that. If he’s told me what he’s gonna be doing in Sydney, musta been when I wasn’t listening.—“Can I ring you?”

    Aunty Kate’s sitting right here with her beady eye on me so I go: “Yeah, sure, why not?”

    So he gets very bright and cheerful and she forces me to go out to the car with him, he's driving his Dad’s Beamer, yet, and we have a tender goodbye. All his idea—you said it.

    So I’m just gonna go back in when Fat Cat appears from nowhere and rubs against my ankles, ooh! “Jesus, ya gimme a fright, Fat Cat!” So I scoop him up and go up Banana-Eater’s path and just as I'm dumping him on the verandah and telling him he’s a fuckwit, does he wanna get squashed by a ruddy Beamer or Volvo being driven by a middle-aged lady in pearls, the door opens, and it’s Banana-Eater.

    “Hullo, Dot. I was just coming to say goodbye. Thought you might like this.” Flat prezzie, book-shaped. “Don’t open it until you’re on the plane.”

    All right, I won’t. “Thanks.”

    He looks at me with this, like, wry smile on his face. “I see you and Aidan have hit it off.”

    If it’s any of your business, mate, we haven’t. “Something like that.”

    “Mm. Well, we may see you when we’re in Sydney. Not quite sure when that’ll be—some time after the Festival.”

    Like I knew Nefertite was coming over, she said it’s been arranged for ages, but I never knew you were. “Um, yeah. Um, we’re in the book. ‘Mallory, A.D. and S.J.’ Anyway, I told Nefertite, she wrote it down. Hey, is she home?”

    “Yes, huddled in her air conditioning in the usual woolly. –NEFERTITE, QUEEN OF THE NILE!” he bellows.

    And out she comes, shit, she is wearing a woollen shawl!

    “So you’re off, Dot. Have a nice flight. I’ll see you in March!” she says, beaming and kissing my cheek, boy she does smell good, gotta be real French perfume.

    “Is it?” he says.

    “Yes, our flight’s on March the twenty-seventh, you are hopeless, David.”

    “All right, Dot, see you on the twenty-seventh, or thereabouts.”

    “Um, yeah. Hey, do ya need anyone to meet you at the airport?”

    They exchange one of those glances of theirs ands she goes: “No, thanks awfully, Dot, but we’re all fixed up.”

    Like, I know by now she knows millions of people all over the world, so I go: “Right, well, see ya. And hey, keep Fat Cat off the ruddy footpath, he was out there lurking, do ya want him to get run over? See ya!”

    “Bye-bye, Dot,” she says, smiling.

    “See ya, Dot Mallory,” he goes, solemn as anything, gee, can’t he drop it for one instant?

    So I go.

    So everyone has to ask me what it was like. What do they think it was like, it was more of the usual! Mum’s quite interested in Nefertite and Banana-Eater only given she’s already got the Aunty Kate version I’m not gonna bother. So she goes: “I thought you liked them?”

    “They’re all right. Well, she is. He’s nuts. So?”

    “Well, what about that book he gave you?”

    It’s a real old copy of The Wasteland, just it, none of the other poems, with real good notes and his handwriting all over it and in the front he’s written: “To Dot, from David. Summer surprised us, coming over the Pyrenees,” dunno what the fuck he means. Well, like, it’s a quote from it, I’m not that thick, thanks, but I can’t see how it applies. Well, him all over, gotta be obscure if it kills him.

    “It’s an old one, he’s got another copy.”

    That shut her up, good.

    … So I’ve been back a while, we had the show, it went off good, according to our up-himself director, or put it like this, all the mums and dads came. I’m sitting in the kitchen on me lonesome, it’s Saturday morning: I got up at the usual time, I can’t get used to sleeping in. Bob Springer doesn’t need me because Kyle’s still doing weekends for him, feels real funny, like Othello’s occupation’s gone. Somewhere in the hinterland the twins are at it: Ping-g-g-g! Yee-ow! Ping-g-g-g! and similar mindless electronic noises but everyone else is in bed. So the phone goes and I grab it up, five’ll get ya ten it’s the cretinous Janyce Hardwycke ringing to exchange ballet goss’.

    No, ’tisn’t. “Hi, Dot, it’s Rosie.”

    “Gidday. What are you ringing for, at this hour?”

    “Um, well, have you seen this morning’s paper?” she says in this funny voice.

    “No. What’s up?”

    “Um, I think you better go and get it, Dot.”

    “All right; ya wamme to ring ya back? It’s probably in the hibiscus tree.”

    “No, I’ll hang on.”

    So I go outside. It is, see, but I whack the tree with the broom I brung out special and it falls down. Paperboy nil, D.M. Mallory forty-two.

    “Ya there?”

    “Yes. Um, it’s nothing tragic but, um, in view of what you told me about,” she swallows, “Banana-Eater and his sister, I think you might be in for a surprise.”

    My throat feels all funny. “Have they been in an accident?”

    “No! I said, it’s nothing tragic! Um, turn to—”

    Righto, I will. Shit, it’s the arty-tarty section. “Now what?”

    “Um, there’s two articles, Dot. Um, ‘Walsingham Conducts New Concerto,’” she croaks. “Just turn over, okay?

    I see it, right in front of me, that’ll be the dad— What? This here is a pic of David!

    Rosie musta picked up the tingling silence. “Um, the critic’s saying it’s the hit of the Adelaide Festival, he’s going to conduct it here next month, see?”

    “Mm.”

    “And, um, the pianist they’re raving about, that’ll be the Aidan Fortescue you—”

    “YES! Um, shit, sorry, Rosie. I never even knew David could write music. Like, I thought he was just a teacher… Well, nobody ever said anything!”

    “No. Maybe they thought you knew.”

    “Mm.” Why am I about to bawl, what a total nong!

    “Um, modern music is all awful crashing and banging,” she offers kindly. Like, she’s genuine, she doesn’t like it, either.

    “Mm.”

    “Um, I’m afraid there’s more. ‘La Femme Égyptienne at the Opera House’—see?”

    “Yeah, pic of an Egyptian head. Um, concert performance of Thingummy’s new opera? What’s that?”

    “That means they just stand up and sing, they don’t have the scenery. Um, if you read what it says about the plot, it is supposed to be about Nefertite, see?”

    “Um, yeah. Funny coincidence department,” I say dully. Why couldn’t David at least of said that he was composing something and Aidan was gonna play it, I feel like the world’s greatest tit! And come to think of it, all that music he used to chuck in his wastepaper basket, that’ll of been his: like, written, not printed… Dot Mallory, you’re the greatest idiot that ever—“Eh?”

    “I said,” she says, “I think it is your Nefertite, Dot. Didn’t you say her married name was Corrant?”

    “Um, yeah, but she’s dropping it, he was a… mistake.” “World-renowned contralto, Antigone Walsingham Corrant,” is what it says.

    “Yeah, it’s gotta be her. That’ll be why she had the trip to Sydney all jacked up in advance.”

    “Mm. Maybe the Nefertite bit was to, um, help her get into the rôle? And you can’t blame her for not wanting to be called Antigone!”

    “No, right.”

    I don’t say anything for a bit and eventually she goes: “You okay?”

    “Yeah. Looking back,”—swallow—“I think Nefertite thought I knew. But she’s one of those people that talk to ya like they’ve known ya forever, so I think she never realised I didn’t.”

    “I see,” she says, she’s got this way of sounding really warm, y’know? Everybody likes Rosie, even females, she’s genuinely interested in people, alongside of the sociology.

    “Yeah. Thanks for ringing, Rosie.”

    “That’s okay, Thought you’d rather hear it from me.”

    “Mm. Thanks.” I am gonna bawl so I ring off, quick.

    … Why couldn’t the up-himself prick have told me? At least I could of expressed interest or, um, wished him luck, or—or something!

    So Mum comes into the kitchen and goes: “What on earth’s the matter?”

    “Nothing,” I say, quickly gathering up the section of the paper in question. “I think I will go up to Brizzie with Isabelle, give her a hand with the new flat and stuff.”

    “Dot, what about your uni work?”

    “I won’t be away for that long. Jill O’Reilly’ll lend me her notes. Anyway, I’ve done most of this term’s work, those assignments were real pathetic.”

    So she goes evilly: “Dot, if you think the work’s pathetic, why are you doing this degree?”

    “Get the piece of paper, of course.”

    Sigh. “It’s your life. So when will you leave?”

    “Twenny-sixth. She’s gonna drive up, but she might sell the Mazda later, depends whether she gets a job near Scott’s work. I’ll come back on the bus.”

    “Come back when, may I ask?”

    “Depends when I can get a booking. Um, tenth of April, maybe?”

    “That’s an awful lot of lectures to miss, Dot.”

    “Nah, includes two weekends, see?”

    Another sigh. “All right, Dot. I suppose she is your best friend.”

    Something like that, yeah. …And what’s the betting Banana-Eater was laughing up his sleeve at me the whole time? I’m buggered if I’m gonna give him the satisfaction of crowing! He can get choked. …Anyway, all that stuff about getting in touch when they’re in Sydney was so much crap, being kind to dim little neighbour thing: are the greatly acclaimed David Walsingham, one of the most exciting new composers to emerge this quarter century, yet, and the world-renowned Antigone Walsingham Corrant gonna bother to ring D.M. Mallory?

    … Anyway, he can get CHOKED!