Dot Again

PART III

SCREEN TESTS

9

Dot Again

    One of us, quote unquote, ought to go over to SA and check up on Uncle Jim, given that he’s had a bad bout of flu and Aunty Kate’s in England with Rosie.

    She’s over there mainly because John’s away on his ship and their baby’s due in September, but several other reasons were in there, too. Like, the row she had with Uncle Jim because she wanted the next trip to be to Egypt and he wouldn’t have a bar of it. Flies, filth and Gippy tummy got mentioned. So she’s decided to come back from England via Egypt. Also, Uncle Jerry failed miserably to get Aunty May to set foot on a plane to be with her only daughter when her first baby’s born. He did get her as far as the airport, this is true. Then she balked. Floods of tears all over Kingsford Smith—you goddit. So Aunty Kate waxed very superior plus and decided that if Rosie's own mother couldn’t go she had to. Then, given she had to be in WA anyway to supervise Carolyn having a cyst removed—benign, was the word—she thought she might as well take advantage of the cheaper flights from there. And she’s always wanted to experience a real white Christmas. Put it like this, she’d long since made up her mind to go, so was anything gonna stop her?

    All right, Mum, you go over to SA and check up on Uncle Jim! The library won’t miss you. And Dad and Deanna and the twins won’t even notice. She’s glaring at me, even though I never actually said it.

    So I go: “So?”

    “I can’t go!” Blah, blah, the twins are getting over bad colds, need to be kept up to the mark this semester, getting lots more homework now, my father’s useless, worried about Deanna, doesn’t think she understands what the work ethic is, blah, blah—don’t think she does, either—wasting her time doing that stupid fabric art with Joslynne’s Mum’s idiot friend, and rave, rave, rave.

    Could be a lot worse, actually: Deanna could be flatting with the sort of party animal Isabelle was sharing with until she joined up with Carla and Glenda. Ecstasy washed down with tequila sunrises, getting home at five in the morning or not at all, always late for work during the infrequent periods they weren’t on the dole, little bit of shop-lifting to assist the wardrobe, three-day pop festivals in thirty-six degrees with the mosh pit hitting fifty—you name it, anything dumb their peer group could think up to do they were in it.

    “At least she isn't flatting with a load of moronic party animals like them nongs Isabelle started out with.”

    “Don’t say ‘them nongs’ like that!”

    All right, how’d I oughta say it, then? I’m waiting… It’s dawned. Wrong tack to take entirely if she wants to shove me into going over to SA.

    “You could do it, Dot,” she says on a plaintive note, who does she think she’s kidding?

    “I’m gainfully employed.”

    “But Jerry owes you lots of leave, you’ve hardly taken any!”

    Like, last Christmas: yeah, yeah. “I wasn’t actually due for any until I’d done a year for him. And I don’t wanna take my leave in Adelaide in winter, thanks. I was planning on going up to Queensland to suss out this spot Isabelle and Scott have got their eye on, if ya must know.” And actually, but I’m not gonna tell you this, I was even more planning on saving up most of my leave and taking a real good holiday in England myself a bit later on: bludging off Rosie and John—right. With a side-trip to Spain, bludging off Joanie and Seve—right again.

    “It’s not really winter any more, Dot.”—Much.—“And I do think someone should check up on—” Blah, blah, blah. Look, Uncle Jim’s got rellies of his own over there, and far from not checking up on him, it’s odds-on at least one of his sisters will have been infesting his house ever since he first sneezed.

    “Why don’tcha ring him, if ya that concerned?”

    She has rung him and she’s sure he was lying when he said he was fine and she didn’t like the sound— And blah, blah.

    “Go yourself. Make it a long weekend, I’ll come over here and force the twins to do their homework, if ya that particular.”

    Nope, she’s got five thousand objections to that one, too. Plus and I could go straight on up to Queensland from Adelaide, she’s sure that Virgin Blue’s flying to Adelaide now! I’m not. Well, maybe they are. Once a week, tops.

    “Look, I’m not made of money, who’s gonna cough up for this side-trip to SA?”

    “Don’t be so mean, Dot! I thought you were fond of Jim!”

    “I am, but I’m not made of money, and I’ve got mortgage payments. If ya like I’ll give Carolyn or Megan a bell: see if they can nip over.” All, right ya been there, done that. Well, that was my best shot. And if his daughters don’t think there’s anything to worry about, why the fuck are you worrying?

    So she admits she rung the old joker around nine forty-five the other night and he wasn’t in. And Kate and Jim are never out that late on a week night!

    This is true, regardless of the fact that neither of them’s working. On the other hand—

    “Mu-um! For Pete’s sake! He’ll of been down the pub or the RSL with ole Barney Jackson. Correction, that dreadful Barney Jackson. Like what she doesn’t let him go boozing with. Geddit?”

    “No! Enid and Barney Jackson have gone to the Cook Islands this winter!” she snaps.

    “Uh—cripes.” Old Enid basking on the sun-drenched Cook Island beaches—in the drenching tropical humidity, right—in a bikini? Likewise old Barney Jackson, the human tortoise, basking on ditto in his Speed— Gee, wish I’d never thought of that, what a horrible picture.

    “Um, maybe they’re back, though?”

    To prove they aren’t she fetches Aunty Kate’s letter. All right, they’re not. But there are other candidates. Only I’m not gonna mention them, because nothing I say is gonna convince her, is it?

    Right, and my Aunty May rang Uncle Jim at nine in the morning and he was out again, and again at eleven, and again at two— He was in his shed, ya pair of stupid moos! God give me strength!

    It goes on for some time but at last she admits that if I do go, Aunty May’ll pay my fares (read, Uncle Jerry will, poor sod), because it’s because of her fear of flying that Aunt Kate’s in England.

    “Yeah, plus and it’s because of the big McHale Egypt row that Uncle Jim’s not in England too— All right! Ya’ve worn me down! I’ll see what Uncle Jerry says, but if he thinks it’s you two stupid moos panicking over nothing, not to mention Aunty May’s guilt trip because she chickened out on going to see her first grandchild born, I’m not going, see?’

    “That isn’t very nice, Dot.”

    Eh?

    “Fancy calling your own mother a stupid moo,” she says, the lip wobbling, for God’s sake! How old is she? On second thoughts, that’ll be it.

    “You plus and ya ruddy sister. Aunty Kate was the only one not behind the door when sense was being handed out in your family, that’s for sure. And just ask yaself this before ya fling poor old Uncle Jerry’s hard-earned in the direction of pointless trips to Adelaide: what’s she gonna say when she finds out I’ve gone all the way to Adelaide merely to help Uncle Jim and his old mates have a boozy weekend?”

    “Don’t be so hard-hearted, you horrid little thing!” she says, blowing her nose angrily.

    “I’m not, I’m merely realistic. –All right! I’ve said I’ll do it if Uncle Jerry agrees! Just don’t expect me to admit it’s sensible!”

    Later, over at the Marshalls’ place. Uncle Jerry thinks I can go and talk to these SA racing mates that might wanna be in his online consortium. Who, me? Like, they’ll all be the huge sort of beefy types, eighteen stone, six-foot-four, red-nosed, ham-fisted, wide as a barn door, that only allow short, blonde women to have three rôles in life: daughter, bit of stuff, or life-support-aid. The last three encompassing wife and mother—too right. Plus and daughter once she’s past her teens, come to think of it. Make that two rôles. Neither of which I fancy meself in, see? So what makes him imagine they’re gonna take me seriously? Oh, talk about the technical stuff, Uncle Jerry, eh? They won’t listen, because nothing that comes out of a short, blonde woman’s mouth can possibly be serious. But you’re the boss, I’ll give it a go. Yeah, thanks, I will stay at a decent hotel downtown if you say so. And when I’m there I will go and see these other webmaster cretins that ya contacts think couldn’t do a worse job than Harry and Kyle and ruddy Jack King, if you like—yeah. Who are they, again? Oh—them. This’d mean switching ISP’s entirely, Uncle Jerry, their offer only comes as a package—All right, I’ll look into it. Thinks: but no way am I gonna recommend having our website hosted interstate, Crikey Dick, it’s bad enough getting the local cretins to pull their fingers out!

    Gee, Adelaide in winter. (Spring according to Mum.) “Dreary” doesn’t exactly cut it. The French have got a word… Morne. That’s it: morne. The taxi-driver tells me they’ve had a wet winter. Mate, ya right there. Looks like ya gonna have a wet spring, too, and believe you me, the sooner D.M. Mallory’s out of it, the better. He thinks that plane was late, was it? Mate, ya not wrong there, either. Ansett. Direct, Sydney to Adelaide, re-routed through Melbourne.

    “Eh?” he says weakly.

    “Re-routed through Melbourne. They do it all the time.”

    Gee, he’s pointing out that it doubles the flying time. Yeah, yeah. Too bad if ya wanted to make a connection to Outer Woop-Woop, eh? Or even to the Alice. I won’t say is that any way to run an airline, because Ansett’s an Aussie icon. I will say I’m thinking of flying Virgin Blue. Ya seen one of their planes going over just the other day, didja? That’s a plus. Didn’t think, in spite of Mum’s claims, they were flying into Adelaide yet. He’s pointing out they’re only flying to Brisbane. Good, that’s where I wanna go.

    The hotel’s ruddy fancy, nothing but the best for Uncle Jerry. All right, he used the firm’s frequent flyer points on me ticket, there was money left over for the hotel. Shit, coulda stayed at a reasonable motel just on the fringe of the CBD, ten mins’ walk into town or fifteen mins’ negotiating the traffic lights and traffic jams by taxi—Forget it. Yeah, desk-man, it is handy for the conference centre, isn’t it? (Is there a conference in town?—Forget it.) Yeah, I have only got the one suitcase—but at this point the Aussie syndrome cuts in and no cute bellboy in a Buttons suit comes panting up to carry it for me. Let alone a huge great luggage trolley like them ones in Big Business—Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as twins, ’member that? It musta had something, because Mum, Deanna and me were all glued to it when it came on the idiot box and, as it was subsequently revealed, so were Aunty Allyson and Wendalyn, Aunty May and Rosie, and Aunty Kate. Most of them having already seen it on the big screen—yep. Gee, the key card works, that’s a first. …Gee, the TV’s only picking up fuzz, fancy that.

    Given that it’s too late for actual Aussie tea, that was the usual Ansett flight, really well-timed even without the detour to Melbourne, I got the choice of going out to some quite handy joints. Handy in Adelaide terms. That means not in this actual street which is lined with giant hotels, conference centres, and the casino—no. Cross over, go along a block. There’s a selection of hugely overpriced fancy nosh-houses in a trendified little side street, the sort with French menus in their windows, right—well, the sort of French menus that assume the French for Thai chilli is “a là chilli Thai.” Or, quite near there, a McDonald’s that specialises in big Macs with the coldest bottoms in creation. Or up the said block and further down, a selection of eating places that might not be la-de-da but are all over-priced, though Rosie in the past has warmly recommended a Lebanese place: no, it doesn’t look exactly clean, but—Yeah. Added to which, is it even there, still? Plus and the favourite after-the-flicks nosh-house that none of the extended Mallory, Marshall or McHale families have ever been able to get into, it’s always crammed with the middle classes desperately trying to be trendy after the flicks. Geddit? What: Room Service and put it on Uncle Jerry’s bill? Do me a favour!

    What I’d really like to do is grab a couple of hot donuts and a cappuccino from this neato little stall in the railway station just two mins up the road. That is, not in the casino, which is the railway station, if you don’t know this extraordinary Adelaide phenomenon just ignore it, but underneath that bit, in the bowels going down to the suburban trains. (Not the interstate trains, that’d be far, far too handy for the thousands of hotel guests and/or conference attendees right in this here street. No, that’s so far out of town that you have to take a taxi, no wonder the rail service is downgraded to the point of near extinction in this country.) Only the thing is, round about just after work when everybody’s rushing to catch their trains except those that know they’ve got a twenty-minute wait because the Adelaide train service is shit even in the rush hour, that donut place closes down. Geddit? Thought ya had, yeah.

    So I’ve just about decided it’ll be the McDonald’s and large fries, no cold-bottomed burgers need apply, when gasp, jump! The phone rings. Eh? Who knows I’m here? Look, if it’s Mum gone all anxious— “Hullo?”

    Uncle Jim. Mum rang the hotel, couldn’t get me, so she rang him, Jesus!

    “Yeah hi, Uncle Jim. Sorry about that, it’s her hormones. The plane got re-routed through Tullamarine, as per usual.” Why didn’t I ask ya to collect me? Because this here hotel’s right in town and you’re over on the other side of it from the airport and I didn’t want you to have anything up to a four hours’ wait depending on the winds over Victoria. Like that. –Eh? Yeah, actually, given that I haven’t had me tea I could just fancy the Norwood Thai, and boy, when the cat’s away you get away with murder, don’t you? Well, good on ya, and it doesn’t sound to me as if you’re fading away, mate!

    So after a short fight over whether D.M. Mallory, aged twenty-four, responsible adult, would, could or should take the lift downstairs, walk thirty yards through the plush carpeting and ask the “concierge” at the desk so marked to get me a taxi (his function: not a single, solitary syllable of that Michael J. Fox film got past the local Can’t-Apply-Here-It’s-Not-Made-In-Australia” virus scanner), I agree he’ll pick me up in twenty minutes.

    Which just gives me time for a shower and to get out of this ruddy business suit I’m in because (a) it goes with the laptop and (b) I was testing to see if the Ansett moos would offer me a copy of The Bulletin or alcoholic liquor without having to be asked, the answer being, fancy that, a lemon. Given it’s bloody brass monkeys, though the restaurant will quite possibly be heated, I get into a respectable and warm pair of black slacks and a newish thin-knit lemon sweater but gee, even with my little gold keepers in I don’t look like one of the girls from Friends! Why not? Well, no strip of skin showing just above the tummy button, cos I don’t fancy pneumonia and SA at the beginning of September isn’t as warm as a Hollywood studio, that’s one.

    And two, I’ve got this mop of ruddy yellow curls, haven’t I? When I was in Canberra I spent megabucks going to the hairdresser, make that a selection of hairdressers, all the girls at work recommended different ones, getting trendier and trendier crops, all of which lasted any time from half an hour (that was a very windy day) to the first shampoo. At which point the curls won. What I really fancied was darker underneath, shaven at the base of the neck grading up to short and clipped at about top of the ears, then a much thicker bit, lighter, and allowed to be just wavy but not actual curls—Forget it. It won’t do it. So I've gone back to wearing it in what Rosie claims is a Shirley Temple cut, in other words, moppish and chopped off shortish at about ear-level. The last ruddy hairdresser I tried in Sydney had the gall to tell me it was a “Lily Rose” cut and charge me thirty-five bucks! Meanwhile telling me I look quite like her. With a blow-by-blow analysis of the last episode of the ruddy Captain’s Daughter. Funnily enough I didn’t tell her Lily Rose Rayne’s my cousin—no. Not going there again, I can tell ya, it’ll be Gigi’s down the Mall from now and put up with the hour of goss.’ from Doreen Di Lunghi while she does it.

    All right, three, I’m five-foot-two against Mum and Dad’s kitchen door, don't ask me what that is in centimetres because Mum’s tape-measure’s an old one of Grandma’s, and, to keep to the old measurements, something like six inches more round the bust and hips than any girl that was ever allowed to appear on Friends and ten more than Courteney Keep-Your-Name-And-Tack-The-Hubby’s-Onto-It. Dunno about you, but girls like that always make me wonder why the fuck they bothered with the marriage routine in the first place. The brainwashing apart. Well, heck, if ya want to get married to the bloke why don’tcha wanna use his n—Forget it. Like I say, brainwashed. And those of us that imagined that that particular manifestation of fake-lib having your cake and eating it went out in the Seventies along with Marianne Gridley-Smythe’s Flower Power gear did have to think again as the words flickered across the square screen before our dazed eyes—yep, I freely admit it.

    I have got a respectable black winter coat, got it the first month in Canberra. But do I wanna favour the Norwood Thai with it? Or, more accurately, though it is a nice coat, I’m sick of it, it’s done me for four winters now. Also, it’s got “responsible and slightly fashionable business exec” written all over it, and while I found that look highly desirable at the time, a person doesn’t wanna look like a female exec in her time off, for God’s sake!

    Right, the Hell with it. I’m gonna wear me Bikie jacket. Genuine. Black leather, fully lined in sheepskin, warm as toast and given that it’s miles too big for me, will not give me a chill in my kidneys, thank you, Mother. It is a trifle the worse for wear, yes. It used to belong to my brother Tim, he bought it second-hand at a car-boot sale yonks back, before him and Narelle got married. He was into bikes back then, and was convinced he was gonna repair it and wear it, in spite of the huge knife-slashes down one sleeve and the fact that the back (a) had a million little holes in it where all the studs had been laboriously removed by hand—you can just imagine a huge, hairy, tattooed Bikie spending peaceful hours in front of the TV with a frostie at the elbow working on the thing, first to put them in and then to take them out—and (b) was heavily defaced with yellow paint. Not painted insignia, no: splashed onto it. As by some Bikie who, having laboriously rescued all his little studs, was determined that no non-Gang back would ever display the sacred— Ya got it, eh? Good on ya. Anyway, Tim never got round to fixing it up and Narelle put the kybosh on the whole idea very shortly after he invited himself to move into her flat. So he was gonna throw it out but I rescued it. Bob Springer found the right stuff to get the paint off, no sweat. It did take off whatever was under the yellow, yeah. And the leather surface didn’t look too shit-hot afterwards, no. However, Deanna helpfully found a craft shop that could supply the right sort of stuff for stitching leather and the right sort of studs to fill the holes. Not all of them, given the price of the studs and the number of holes. So I cobbled the sleeve together using the indicated thread plus and the indicated needle, it looks revolting according to Mum, and Deanna helped me to put some studs back into some of the holes. It not being my responsibility that the result turned into a lovely flower design.

    I’m in it. Looks real good over this terribly nayce lemon jumper, heh, heh.

    Downstairs. Gee, the concierge hasn’t asked me if he can get me a taxi, fancy that. Can’t see Uncle Jim, though, true, there is a non-taxi just parking in the no-parking slot directly in front of the front door, but as he doesn’t drive a Merc— Crikey. He’s getting out of it! When did he buy it? And, tremble, tremble, does Aunty Kate know?

    “Gidday, Little Dot!” he grins, giving me a huge hug and kissing my cheek in spite of the fact that the concierge is looking on with great interest as he ignores the two angry taxis that’ve drawn up behind the Merc. “How are you?”

    “Yeah good, Uncle Jim. How’s yaself?”

    “Good!” he beams. He looks okay, yeah. Sounds perky as all get out, too. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, he’s only liberated from her, isn’t he? No wonder Mum thought he sounded odd! Don’t think he’s on the grog as of this moment, his breath only smells of those butterscotch toffees Aunty Kate reckons he’s addicted to and only lets him have one packet of a week. She thinks.

    “Like ’er?” he says on a casual note, indicating the huge pale silver-green Merc.

    Shit, ’member back when they bought that house with the brand-new pale green body-carpet throughout the hall, lounge-room and master bedroom and two months after they moved in she had it all ripped out because she can’t stand pale green? “Ace,” I croak feebly. Well, it is.

    Grinning proudly, he opens the front passenger door and helps me in, meanwhile the taxis behind are hooting and the drivers are bellowing imprecations and the concierge is still looking on interestedly… So he strolls around the front, gets in slowly, does his seat-belt up slowly and asks me what I think might be the best way to go.

    “Um, dunno. Hadn't you just better move and think about that later, Uncle Jim?”

    “The cop shop’s just over the way, love,” he reminds me. “Two doors down from the McDonald’s, ’member that time I took you and Deanna and the twins there?”

    Yeah, vividly, that was one of the times we had the cold-bottomed Big Macs. “Um, yeah. Oh—yeah! It dawned on Deanna that that’s why the expression ‘blue light’!”

    Snickering, he acknowledges that’s right. Meanwhile, the taxis behind us are hooting and the drivers are bellowing imprecations…

    “So?” I croak.

    “Eh? Oh! So we’re perfectly safe here, Dot, love: we could drive round in never-ending circles meanwhile posing in the nuddy on the bonnet and they’d never come.”

    “Ya not wrong there. I’d say—Um, hang on: that time Dad was driving us, didn't we go down this street and end up at Port Adelaide?”

    Snickering, he acknowledges that’s right.

    “Well, uh, were we heading that way or this?”

    “The other way. Heading this way you end up in North Adelaide, he done that, too,” he notes, snickering. –Meanwhile, the taxis behind us are hooting…

    “Um, ya better go somewhere.”

    “Thing is, if go this way, don’t think I can turn right into King William Street. Or am I wrong? Might only be in the rush hour.”

    The taxis behind us are hooting and the drivers are bellowing imprecations and the concierge finally gives in and comes over to the car and bends down and says loudly: “Move ’er on, mate!”

    Uncle Jim leans across me. “Eh?”

    Obligingly I whoosh my window down, whoosh!

    “Eh?” he repeats.

    “Can you move ’er on?” the concierge says weakly.

    “Thought you’d never ask, mate,” the old joker replies with satisfaction.

    I’m sniggering so much I can hardly whoosh me window up again as we set off, pulling out very slowly and carefully, and looking behind us, in front of us, and behind us again…

    “They're all like that,” he notes complacently. “Goes with the territory.”

    “Yeah! You struck a blow for all of humanity, there, Uncle Jim!” I gasp, wiping me eyes with the back of me hand.

    “Thanks,” he says smugly.

    Oops. See what he means, if you get into the wrong lane you get stuck at the lights by Parliament House and it’s impossible to go anywhere but North Adel—Jesus!

    “Nothing on the roads at this hour of the night,” he says cheerfully, having accomplished the U-ie in the teeth of a 4WD and two Mitsubishis behind us, one oncoming Holden and a wobbling cyclist in full leathers with lots of little bits of reflector tape on his mudguards, gee, that’ll save his life.

    “Maybe not, but ya shortened that cyclist’s life by twenny years or so! Not to say mine. I’d rather of just gone to North Adelaide, thanks all the same. –Don’t turn!”

    “All right, I won’t, if ya that particular. Some nice restaurants up there, though. Think they’ve got a branch of the Norwood Thai, actually.”

    “I’d rather go to the real one,” I say palely.

    “Yeah,” he says with this funny smile on his mug. “Thoughtcha might.” I’m not gonna ask exactly what that means, thanks.

    They are still in Norwood, though not in that bluestone-fronted house they used to have, so he oughta know the way bloody well. Possibly he does. But it entails an awful lot of “Shit, no right turns” and “This’ll be a short-cuts”, so finally, in the hopes of distracting him into just taking the normal route like he would if the usual back-seat driving was going on from the front passenger seat, I ask him how long he’s had the Merc.

    “Just a couple of days, love. Like ’er?”

    Omigod. She’ll kill him.

    “New model, of course,” he prompts as I have still haven’t managed to utter.

    “Eh? Oh—yeah. Ace,” I croak.

    “Like the colour?”

    “Mm. Ace.”

    “Bit different from the usual silver or maroon,” he notes complacently. “Jerry still got that silver job?”

    “No, he traded up to a maroon one, later model. Um—just before Rosie and John came out last April, woulda been,” I croak, not really knowing what I’m saying.

    “Oh, yeah! Decent joker, John,  isn’t he?”

    And even more of a dish in person than in those pics with the shoulders, yeah. Terrifying at the same time, but. He reduced Joslynne to speechless blushing and mumbling, never thought I’d see the day. Not by anything he did, no. Combination of the looks, the accent and the age. Not that, to be strictly truthful, yours truly was all that better. Well, shit, he drives a thing the size of the QEII as his normal daily work and he’s more than twice my age! “I didn’t see much of him, but yeah, I’d say so.”

    “Rosie was telling me he drives an old black Jag. Dead ringer for Banana-Eater’s red one, ’member that?”

    “Mm.”

    “Funny him turning out to be a musical genius after all, eh?” he says with a laugh.

    “Yeah. Uncle Jim, did you trade your old car in?” I croak.

    “No. Well, not the one I had for the last two years, no. Traded in the one I had last time you were over, yeah. –No, Kate can get around town in the old one.”

    Like, for the two mins before the cops realise it was her that took that meat axe to ya, ya silly old joker? Deep breath. “Uncle Jim, does she know about the Merc?”

    “Well, knew I was considering it, yeah.”

    That means she doesn’t know he’s been and gone and bought it! Christ!

    He pats my knee. “Had a couple of investments that matured, Dot, love, it’s not gonna break the bank.”

    That isn’t the point!

    Of course he’s reading my mind. “‘Sufficient unto the day’, eh?” he says happily.

    “Right. Likewise, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’”

    “Yep!” he agrees, sniggering.

    “Or, similarly,” I note grimly: “‘It’s your funeral.’”

    “It won’t be that bad,” he predicts confidently.

    Not flaming half it won’t, mate! Honestly, I can’t think of anything that would make him taking a momentous and very, very, very expensive step like buying a huge new flash car without consulting her anything like not that bad. Not a thing.

    “She’ll get over it!”

    “Like, in hundred years—maybe. Do you wanna spend the rest of ya married life in ya shed?”

    He shakes slightly. “I won’t answer that, Dot!”

    Er—no, on second thoughts, it was a silly question, wasn’t it?

    Funnily enough in spite of all the trendy nosh-shops on the Parade we find a parking spot real close to the Norwood Thai on a cold, damp, windy night in what’s officially supposed to be spring. Gee, it’s not crowded to the gunnels and they can fit us in. Us and an army. ]

    Righto, Uncle Jim, order green prawn curry (think it’s the curry that’s green in this instance) and see what it does to your innards. Sound just like my Aunty Kate, do I? Well, good!

    “Is it possible to drive a big flash new car safely, like, not crashing it definitively and not scraping its sixteen layers of irreplaceable German paint to blazes on a lamppost or street tree while spewing the guts out?” I wonder.

    “All right, ya persuaded me, I won’t have flaming prawns!” he says loudly.

    “Glad to hear it. There’s lots of chicken and meat dishes.”

    “Yeah, but you’re gonna sit there and order seafood, aren’t you?” he notes sourly.

    I was gonna have the seafood soup, yes, but since it’s you, I won’t. So we both order the chicken soup followed by a hot red beef curry and a vegetable dish and—stop us if we’re ordering too much—rice for both of us, and a mild chicken and coconut thing. She thinks that’s a very nice choice so I don’t order the pork thing I had my eye on. Blow! I could just of fancied a nice pork— Yeah, Uncle Jim, we could come back another night and try a pork dish: ya right, there is nothing to stop us!

    As usual the hot soup makes my nose run but as it’s only Uncle Jim I don’t care. He tells me all about the time he brought John here for lunch. What were Rosie and Aunty Kate doing, for cripes’ sake? Oh—ladies’ bowls, right. Heh, heh, what a way to spend your honeymoon! –Yeah, it was, the maniacs came all the way out here for it. Not specifically to spend it watching Aunty Kate play bowls, no, but they mighta known that would happen. Yep, John woulda eaten real Thai nosh in Thailand, Uncle Jim, given that he’s been in the British Navy since Adam was a babe in naps. Oh, and been to Singapore, eh? Right, right. And K.L.? Gee, he must of been there, all right, only British Empah types that know it say that, don’t they? Lessee…Uh, no, don’t think he would be old enough to have been part of the British lot that shot the Hell out of the Malaysian independence movement way back when.

    Gee, his father was in the Navy, too, eh? Oh—yeah, Rosie did mention that in one of her emails, now I come to think of it. Totally upper-clawss and repressed, was how she put it. Right, an admiral, Uncle Jim, fascinating. Oh, he was stationed in Singapore in the Fifties! Goddit. And in K.L.? Right: it’ll of been him that shot the Hell out of the Malaysian— Yep, that soup was extra!

    While we wait for our mains he tells me how good John is at games and how when he took him down the bowling club, even though he’d never played before— Well, ya might think it’s easy, I mean, the thingo’s out there and ya biff the black ball at it, but it isn’t, see, because I’ve tried it. The bowls have got a whatsit that makes them curve. Curve away from the thingo, in my case. Well, good for John. He what? Oh, helped ya with wiring up the new house? Well, good, did it occur to either of you macho idiots that neither of you’s an SA registered electrician?

    “What?” he says defensively.

    “Oh—nothing. So the automatic thingos are working good, now, eh?”

    Yes, the light comes on in the passage, just at the dimmest setting, whenever anyone goes to the toilet at night, likewise in their ensuite. I grant you the ensuite but doesn’t the light coming on suddenly in the passage when ya visitors start their trek— Forget it, the first thing Aunty Kate’ll do will be warn them about the light. No, second: after she’s told them about the customised kitchen. Eh? The outside light what? Yep, it’d be real good, supposing you were just dropping off to sleep, to have this fucking great searchlight come on in ya front garden because next-door’s ginger tom’s just stepped onto ya ruddy verand—

    “What’s up, Dot, love?”

    “Nothing.”

    “It can’t be nothing, Dot! You got a tooth that’s playing up?”

    “Eh? No, ’course not.”

    “Then what?”

    “Nothing. I was just wondering, um, well, Rosie and John saw Duh-David on a TV chat show when the were in Washington last Christmas… I mean, I was just wondering if anyone was looking after Fat Cat. Only of course you wouldn’t know.”

    “I would, actually. Didn’t Kate explain? The new house is only round the corner from the old one. Well, saw the notice go up, ya see, and she’d been coveting its neighbour that’s a dead ringer for it, except it wasn’t done up yet, so we nipped in with an offer they couldn’t refuse. And just do me a favour, wouldja?”

    “What?”

    “Don’t mention to her that it’s only the front and sides that are solid bluestone, the back wall’s been extended times out of sight and if it ever was bluestone, which personally I’d take a bet it wasn’t, they’ve long since sold it off. Brick. Faced with the bluestone round about 1985, I’d say.” Wink, wink.

    “What? Aw—right. ’Course I won’t mention it.” (Dully.)

    “Ruddy Fat Cat’s fatter than ever, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

    “Oh, good!”

    “David reckons he’s not as old as he looks.”

    “Huh! How would he know?”

    He scratches the chin, eyeing me dubiously. “Had him since he was a kitten, didn’tcha know?”

    “No.” Why has my voice gone very small? Jesus, Dot Mallory, take a pull!

    The old joker doesn’t say anything more and the thought has time to surface, is he humouring me, silly old git, before the cute little Asian waitress appears with the main course. Like, those people at the next table but two are eating Aussie-style, each one with his or her own dishes, no sharing, thanks, we’re Aussies, but usually you share. So she puts this giant covered brass bowl on the table and lifts the brass lid. We’ll never get through all that rice! And the red beef curry. Where’s the— Oh, going back for them, right.

    “They must waste an awful lot of rice,” I note in a low voice.

    “Yeah. Well, maybe they take it home, Dot.”

    “After us Aussies have slobbered on it? Do me a favour!”

    “Boil it up in soup?”

    Very funny. “No!” I would suspect them of that if this was a Chinese nosh-shop, actually, but that soup was fresh as fresh. And don’t ask me how they do it, I’ve got three books on Thai cooking and everything I’ve done out of them was a miserable failure. Well, tasted like Aussie kwee-zeen smothered in chilli and coconut milk—right. Whereas that soup was a delicate poem. Yep, a delicate poem.

    … Phew, this red curry’s hot, all right! The beads of sweat are standing out on the old joker’s forehead. “Don’t eat it if it’s too hot for ya, Uncle Jim. The chicken’s mild.”

    “No, ’s’good!” he grins.

    Yeah, but is he gonna be up all night with indigestion? Oh, well, at least she’ll never know. Gee, these vegetables are incredible! “Hey, taste the veggies, Uncle Jim!”

    He eyes them askance. Yep, askance is what he's eyeing them, all rightee. “Can’t stand that bok choy crap. Or ruddy snow peas, as a matterafack.”

    “You’ll like them done this way,” I predict confidently.

    Dubiously he tries some of the green vegetable dish. “Crumbs,” he says weakly.

    “Yeah. You’d never think they came from the same planet as your standard Norwood snow peas, would ya?”

    “No,” he croaks. “What’ve they done to the bok choy, for Pete’s sake?”

    “Same as what they’ve done to this baby spinach,” I sigh, eating a leaf of it. “Added that secret Thai ingredient, ‘Tastes Good.’ Like what ya can’t buy in the shops and the recipe books don’t tell you about.”

    “Yeah. Hey, no funny lime leaves,” he notes.

    “Eh? Oh, help, has she tried them?”

    “Yeah. Putrid. Well, they either contribute putrid or nothing, put it like that.”

    “I know, they’re in all the Thai recipes in the trendy cookbooks with the huge shiny coloured pics. Putrid’d be when ya put too many or crush them up before you add them, and nothing’d be when ya don’t, in my experience.”

    He nods, sniggering, and engulfs more ambrosial Thai veggies. I mean, they’re simple as anything, braised, I’d call it, if the cookbooks didn’t tell me they gotta be stir-fried, with no spices that I can discern. But there’s something different been added. Well, plus and Tastes Good. Um…

    “Sesame oil?” I venture at last.

    “Just don’t try, Dot, love, you’ll never do it,” he advises, lapping up deliciously delicate chicken in coconut milk that doesn’t taste like ya just greased your car’s axles with it and discernibly clog the gut all the way down…

    He’s right, there. I try a bit more of the beef, boy it grows on ya once you’ve got used to the heat. We’re just drinking water with it, he did offer me a glass of wine but as he wasn’t gonna have any, I’m not either, and believe you me, it doesn’t need to be insulted by an acid local white.

    We’re at the digesting stage and the wondering-whether-to-order-a-cup-of-tea stage, because though there are some strange-sounding puds on offer neither of us is gonna be able to cram them in, when he goes: “Did Kate tell you Rosie heard Nefertite Corrant in London?”

    “Um, no, but Aunty May did. Back last year, wasn’t it? She went with her Aunty June—Joanie’s Mum.” (There I go—right.)

    “Yeah. She said it was good. John reckons he’s got a couple of CD’s of hers.”

    “Yeah. Dad gave me a really nice one of her singing Bach for Christmas.”

    “Yeah. She’s really well known, overseas,” he says heavily.

    Um, ri-ight… Not sure where he’s going with this. Well, he thought she was the cat’s whiskers, yeah, that did dawn, actually, what with all the air-con installing and so forth, it wasn’t entirely the can’t-bear-to-see-something-that-needs-the-home-handyman-touch-and-not-touch-it syndrome, though I admit he’s got a real bad dose of that. Chronic dose, yep. “Um, yeah. Um, so hasn’t she been back, since?”

    “Eh? Aw—nah. Been back loads of times. Sort of based with David, really; well, between here and the mum’s place in Greece. Bit fed up with Pongo and the Poms. Not to mention the British weather.”

    Uh-huh, understandable.

    He sighs. “Oh, well… Cup of tea? Jasmine tea?”

    Why not? We do that.

    Over it he suddenly says: “They sometimes come here.”

    “Who?”

    “David and Nefertite. –Antigone, her real name is. Only she’s decided to go with Nefertite. Not when she’s in Greece with the rellies, of course.”

    “Um, no. Well, the food’s really great,” I offer.

    “Yeah. Well, he reckons he can toss up something even better with both hands tied behind—”

    “Huh!”

    “My sentiments exactly. Didja know he’s been writing film music?”

    No, and I didn’t wanna know. “No. Thought he was a serious composer?”

    “Yeah. Well, says he enjoys, um, playing with music,” he reports dubiously, “and inspiration doesn’t strike all that often, for the serious stuff. He was working on it… woulda been the last Christmas we were in the old place, that’s right. Russian.”

    “Eh?”

    “Yeah. Well, Kate reckoned it was all that Tchaikovsky bloke. You know: Swan Lake and stuff. What’s that other one? They made a Disney film of it.”

    “Uh—Sleeping Beauty?” I croak.

    “Think so. That the one with a nutcracker in it?”

    “Um, no, that’s the Nutcracker Suite, Uncle Jim. Um, they are both ballets. Um, all three, actually.”

    “Yeah. Well, dare say they were all in it. Made a real peaceful change from all that bonk, bonk, crash, crash stuff of his.”

    “Oh!” I get it. “It would, yeah!”

    “Yeah. Then he took off for overseas, missed Christmas that year. Hadda go and work on the music in the film studios, think that was the story. Um, Prague or something,” he says vaguely.

    “Prague? Thought you said the film was—Hang on.” Vague memories of various cretinous emails of Rosie’s begin to filter through… Not to mention a cretinous postcard from Paris. “You’re not talking about Ilya, My Brother, are you?”

    “Dunno. Might be. What is it, when it’s at home?”

    “It’s Derry Dawlish’s latest film. Euan Keel’s in it,” I croak .

    “Aw, him! Met him when me and Kate were staying with Rosie and Rupy, that time. Doing plays at Stratford,” he explains with a slight sniff. “Struck me as pretty feeble, but Kate was all over ’im. Well, he was good in the Shakespeare thing we saw, ya could believe in him as this joker, Whatsisface, if ya get me drift, only the other joker that played the Dad, he was miles better.”

    Reinterpreting this speech, Uncle Jim appreciated Euan Keel’s performance as Posthumus in Cymbeline but thought Adam McIntyre as the eponymous hero was a lot better. It’s a good play, if you haven’t read it. I like Imogen, she’s Cymbeline’s daughter. Gutsy but sensible with it, ya know? I never thought there was much to Posthumus, myself, but given that Rosie’s admitted Euan Keel was very good and his performance went over big with the critics, I’m ready to believe he brought the rôle alive. And at the time, Rosie was going round with him, yes, because John was still making up his mind it was her he wanted and dumping the middle-aged hags he’d been going round with for the last twenty years—like that. Well, in the intervals of sitting off the coast of Bosnia with his guns trained, like that.

    “Yes. Um, the music in Ilya, My Brother was wonderful,” I note feebly. “Not just Tchaikovsky; there was quite a lot of folk music in it, too.”

    “That right? Well, glad ya think so, love. He got paid enough for it,” he notes, winking.

    “Um, did he? Good,” I go feebly.

    “Nefertite, she reckoned it was pretty good. Guess she’d be the expert. Anyway, it cheered him up a bit, doing it. Kate and me wondered if he’d move back to England after that, but he come back.”

    “Mm.”

    “Then he took off again—just before we moved, it musta been. So, just before last Christmas. Missed two in a row, eh? Hadda conduct his own stuff in America and Europe, that was the story. That’ll’ve been why he was on TV when Rosie was in Washington with John.”

    “Mm.”

    He gives me a sharp look over his cup of jasmine tea but doesn’t say anything else.

    It’s pretty late and given I’ve got an early meet tomorrow with these IT contacts of Uncle Jerry’s contacts, they claimed it was the only time they could fit me in, usual computer-nerd syndrome, too right—like, don’t they want our custom?—he just drives me back to the hotel, not without the expected reproaches on account I should’ve stayed with him rather than wasting Uncle Jerry’s dough on a hotel. So I explain about the flight being technically free and that mollifies him somewhat. Though he does note, did I want a free flight to Melbourne? So I ask him about Virgin Blue but the answer’s a lemon. Like, this bloke from bowls tried to cash in his Ansett tickets and transfer to Virgin Blue when he found out what they were offering on trips to Brizzie to the sun in midwinter but Ansett wouldn’t give him his money back, and when ya look at the small print— Yeah, right. Should never have let Uncle Jerry tell Betty to make the bookings. So, I venture, this bloke flew Ansett to Brizzie, did he? Yeah, he agrees sourly, direct. That means first they got diverted to Melbourne, no explanation as to why, this is in the opposite direction, please note. As opposite as ya can get without actually going to Western Australia or New Zealand or the South Pole. Then they went up to Sydney though, true, he was expecting that, “direct” from Adelaide to Brizzie always means that. So finally they got there only five hours late, there was a tail-wind from Sydney. Gee, is this a record? Coming back he only come “direct” via Sydney. Gee, that’s gotta be a record!

    So by the time we reach the hotel I’ve agreed to come over for the weekend. So he parks the car in the no-parking slot—the concierge is in his little pulpit arrangement, he doesn’t bother to tell him he can’t park there—and comes in and makes quite sure the desk have got the point. Telling me loudly in front of desk-man to check my bill carefully, ya gotta watch these types like hawks. And good on him.

    “Ta-ta, Dot, love,” he says, giving me a hug and a kiss in the middle of the swanky hotel lobby.

    “Yeah, see ya, Uncle Jim!” I reply. Unfortunately it’s ingrained in me, blow, now desk-man won’t think he’s me sugar daddy (not the concierge, he’s too far away to have heard). And up I go, praying he won’t take too many unknown short-cuts on the way home and scrape her spiffy German paint job…

    Yeah, mate, ya could offer to let us pay X dollars for redesigning our web page that we’ve spent a Helluva lot of time on getting just right in the first place, plus and more megabucks for hosting it, yeah, but what are we gonna get out of it? Well, if you haven’t got a clue, given that you’re only a web-page designer aged approx. nineteen—just out of a one-year so-called Computer College, ’ud be my guess—what does your mate, there, think? (Equally pale and nerdy.) He doesn’t think, either, is the answer. Then Salesman comes back, he only thinks smooth, fast sales-talk, though, true, he is wearing a very nice dark suit and he does look rather like that bloke in While You Were Sleeping, not the nice but nerdy one she ended up with, the dish that was in a coma for most of it. The dark bloke? Yeah, that’s it, Total Dish—him. Sandra Bullock’s a good actress but even she didn’t manage to totally convince me, for one, that she really wanted Nice Guy instead of Total Dish.

    So eventually I go: “No, thanks.” And get up.

    First Nerd looks at me in dismay, forgetting to get up, too. If he ever was told he oughta. Don't think they do Client Reception Manners 101 in Computer Colleges. “Don’t you have to report back?”

    “No. If ya’ll take a look at that card I gave ya that ya never looked at, it says ‘IT Applications Manager’. I know everyone’s a manager these days but in my case it means what it says. Thanks for fitting me in between ya paying customers.” And I go, the Hell with them, pack of dim little nerds! Jesus, they ever even asked me what level of hits we were getting! On the other hand, could their server handle it?

    It’s still ruddy early so given I’m downtown, admittedly in a slightly rundown bit of it, I might as well walk slowly—no, briskly, that wind sure is icy—briskly back to the hotel.

    On the way I might as well nip into the railway station and grab a cappuccino and a donut, yeah. “Hey,” I say without hope to Five O’Clock Shadow Guy behind the counter, “I could just of done with one of these donuts round eight-thirty last night.”

    “We’re not open then,” he says without interest. Even though, as he’s doing the donuts as well as taking the orders and the cash, like, a one-man operation, he probably is the actual owner.

    So I just find a bench and eat my donut and drink my coffee, meanwhile watching with interest the people buying tickets and wandering through to where the trains leave from and sitting down on other benches through there. After a bit, no trains have come in or left, well, none could leave, there aren’t any to leave, I look round for a timetable to, like, confirm the suspicion that rush-hours apart they only go once an hour, but gee! There are no timetables in sight! There is a sort of thingo that tells ya when the next trains are due to leave. Not yet, being the answer. All right, I’m not gonna get a glimpse of a train. So I’ll— No, hang on, is it worth checking out that magazine place first? Probably not, given the booth selling newspapers and magazines outside the entrance. But I’ve got stacks of time in hand, why not?

     … Crikey. This is an English paper, up-to—Uh, almost up-to-date. Relatively recent. …Crikey Dick! This is a French Vogue only two months old! Does the man know he’s in SA Australia, the arse-hole of the world? (Literally. Take a gander at the map.) There are also Greek and Italian papers but I know them, the Sydney newspaper stalls have them, too, they’re all local. Like, for the large Greek and Italian communities, geddit? It’s a very odd phenomenon, actually, because if they’re that keen on reading their own language, why don’t they read the real papers from their home countries? No, well, they’d have to go to their State Library to do that, is one reason. Most unfortunately this cunning magazine shop hasn’t got anywhere to sit down: so I can either stand here reading with counter-man’s eyes boring into me back— Oh, all right, I’ll buy them. Well, the Vogue, I’ve read England’s version of the news for that week: Uncle Jerry’s passing on his copies of The Observer to me. It’s good to get them without that jam Rosie used to smear all over them. …Gee, counter-man changed a fifty without blinking an eye. In fact without moving a muscle of his face. Coulda tried him with a hundred. Oh, well.

    Now, I could buy another donut and sit here stuffing me face while I read this here flash mag full of matchstick-thin model-girls…

    Puh-caa, cluck, cluck, cluck! Ya right, chicken is what I am. But that railway station wasn’t too warm and the hotel’s centrally heated.

    Ugh, it’s all in French-Vogue French. According to Rosie it’s the house style and actually, she finds it bloody hard going too, though she did do quite a bit of French at uni. Not to mention the side-trips to Paris with dishy film stars since—yeah. …Crikey Dick! It’s him! Euan Keel in person! In the goss.’ at the back what I turned to after reading the ads at the front—yep. Lemme see… Yeah, technically dishy, ya right there, Rosie. Also, I’d say he’s lost a bit of weight since he made Ilya, My Brother, it suits him. Oops, can’t understand a blind word of Vogue’s par under the pic. Um, when was it taken? Because unless Aunty Kate was lying, he was in John’s village about a month back: beginning of August, when she inflicted herself on Rosie and Rupy. It took her just over a day to get rid of him. He wasn’t even staying with Rosie—well, John’s cottage is very small, and besides her and Rupy there was her research assistant, plus and his little sister come down for the school hols; and I think, reading between the lines of some very vague emails, the bloke that does odd-jobs in the village was actually staying there while he turned the spare room into a nursery for her. Anyway, Euan Keel wasn’t at the cottage, he was staying with a friend of Rosie’s in the village, plus and he had his new girlfriend with him, but did this stop Aunty Kate giving him the old heave-ho? Did it Hell as like. No-one knows what she actually said to him but given she’d bent Rosie’s ear on the subject of not looking good if the newspapers got hold of the story that her well-publicised ex-boyfriend was down there at the same time as she was down there without her husband— Yeah. So was this pic taken before or after that? Gee, French Vogue isn’t not letting on. Well, before: musta been, this mag’s not that recent. Would Aunty Kate also have given him the push, I hear you cry, if he was ugly as sin and turned sixty? And not totally dishy and about, uh, early thirties? Not that you can tell, these days. Not with film stars. Peer, squint… None the wiser. Nips, tucks, sunlamping, blonding, bleaching, dyeing, plucking, dieting, weight-lifting, and endless massages could all have contributed, couldn’t they? And if I really want to know I could send Rosie an email, couldn’t I? But gee, do I want to know to the extent of having her immediately assume, make that her and Rupy Maynarde immediately assume, that I've got a crush on the guy? No, no, and no.

    … Thirty-five, tops? Oh, stop it, Dot Mallory, ya mad! Read an article. Look at the fashions you’ll never get into even if you give up donuts forever. …Gee, these pics are blurred, can’t see a blamed thing! Artistic, they are. Illustrative of the garments, they are not. What’s the time? Ugh. Better go to the bog, clean me teeth, put on some fresh lippy and get going.

    Gee, just as well I had that donut, I’ll need me strength. Cos I front up to this office where this geezer that’s Uncle Jerry’s racing contact works, and it’s not a bookie’s office at all, it’s a great humungous glossy dunno-what. Like, they got their name outside but no indication of what they do. Well, yeah, “Ya know it cos ya know it” is a very, very common syndrome in Adelaide, but all the same! Reception is on the eighth floor, is it? That’ll be because the lower floors are let to a bank. Nope, the bank doesn’t own the building, this geezer does. Well, put it like this, his name’s on top of it. Shit.

    Well, nothing venture, nothing win. Up I go. Ultra-gloss, yep. Receptionist covered in ultra-gloss, yep. Yes, actually, glossy receptionist, I got an appointment, who’d dare to poke their noses in here without an appointment? Apart from bicycle couriers in silly helmets and strangely coloured biking gear under the grungy parkas, and boy, wouldn’t I just love to be one of them, fronting up to any sort of gloss without giving a shit!

    If Mr Crozier is expecting me, glossy receptionist lady, why the fuck do I have to sit on this here huge shiny sofa that’s three feet too deep for me for five hours? One consolation: it's the exact same turquoise leather as Aunty May’s feature chair that she’s only put in her made-over family-room, not in the really ultra ultra-gloss of her brand new lounge-room that runs the entire length of the old house and into the new wing, so up yours and Mr Crozier’s too.

    … Whaddaya mean, young Mr Crozier will see me? I was under the impression that I had an appointment with one of Uncle Jerry’s old mates, ya wouldn’t call any of them young in ya wildest— The eighteenth floor, huh? Gee, do ya trust me to go up by meself? And, just by the by, if youse Crozier lot were any sort of real posh you’d know that one sends a slave down to collect one’s visitors— Oh, what the Hell. Yeah, yeah, this here key card will let me up to the eighteenth. If it works.

    Shit, it worked. Probably because it isn’t the sort that you bung in a slot. Just wave it at the little lights, kinda thing. Well, yeah, I seen them before—sure. Oh, forget it. Just get it over with and go, because these Croziers aren’t gonna want to be in anything with Uncle Jerry and his Jap mafia mates.

    There’s another glossy receptionist, but nobody thought there wouldn’t be. To see young Mr Crozier, is it? Yeah, second glossy receptionist lady, it is, and some of us would be even more impressed if my name was to come outa that highly lipsticked mouth of yours, but ya not gonna do that, are ya? Nope, that’d be letting the side down and admitting that underneath that suit that cost more than D.M. Mallory earns in a month ya wearing cheap lacy undies from Kmart just like me and Deanna. Not to mention you’re a female human just like me and— Yeah.

    So she shows me into a flashy office with a fab view right out to sea, which Uncle Jim has previously explained is about 11 K away. Not the open sea, it’s the Spencer Gulf, for those that never done no jogafree at school. Mr Crozier will be with me in a minute, will he? Oh, right, in that case I’ll just nip over to his humungous real wooden carved desk and check out what’s on his computer that he hasn’t bothered to turn off, shall I? Or I could sit down in this giant buttoned leather armchair designed for hugely fat old businessmen with giant bums, yeah. One of those.

    Oh, now look! Me feet don’t even touch the floor, this is ridiculous! So I got the choice, don’t I? Sit here perched on the very edge of this ruddy chair in excruciating discomfort for five hours, sit back in relative comfort with me legs sticking out as if I was three years old, or disobey second glossy receptionist lady and not sit at all.

    … I’ll give it five more secs. …two, one. Not a sausage. All right, I’m gonna look out ya window, young Mr Invisible Crozier.

    “It is a lovely view, isn’t it?”

    Jesus! That shortened me life by twenty years, ya stupid nong!

    “Um, yes.” –Lamely. The more so as he’s a dead ringer for Total Dish from While You Were Sleeping. Even down to the ace suit.

    “Miss Mallory, is it?” Smile, smile, comes across to me with hand held out, five’ll get ya ten he’s gonna mangle—

    Shit, he hasn’t. Not wearing a giant ring to assist in the mangling, neither. Rosie reckons the Yanks are worse, you oughta hear her horror stories of the hand-manglers she met in DC last Christmas.

    “I’m Ralph Crozier,” he goes, smile, smile.

    “Good to meet you, Mr Crozier.”

    “Ralph; Mr Crozier’s my dad!”

    Yeah, right: he’ll of been the one that sent ya to that humungously expensive boys’ school where ya learnt to talk nayce. Boy, is that an Adelaide nayce accent or is it what, Aunty Kate oughta be here, she’d be all over ya. “Yeah, sure. I’m Dot.” –Gee, Dot Mallory, did ya have to sound that down market? Your uncle and boss does wanna do business with his firm, after all!

    So he goes smile, smile: “Dot, then! Is this your first visit to Adelaide, Dot?”

    “No, we’ve got rellies here.” For Pete’s sake! Relations. Or relatives if ya wanna be terribly U, but don’t say “rellies” like a stupid kid that doesn’t know any better, Dot Mallory, ya twit!

    “I see!” Smile, smile. Yeah, I just bet ya do. Gee, that dark navy pin-striped suit’s extra. And the dark crimson silk tie. And what’s under them. Gee, ya wouldn’t like to have me all tied up with a bow, like just as a little something on the side that you wouldn’t hardly notice but that I’d remember all me puff, would ya, fancy-accent young Mr Ralph Crozier? Thought not, no.

    Yeah I will sit down, thanks—make that perch on the very edge of this here giant buttoned leather juggernaut of yours. At this point any female visitor with the self-assertiveness of your average earthworm would make the point that this chair’s far too deep but gee, Dot Mallory doesn’t do that.

    So he apologises very nicely because his dad couldn’t make it, one of their horses has got an inflamed tendon. Huh? Uncle Jerry didn’t say nothing about no owners being in the pic. Though it would explain the giant downtown office building with “Crozier” on top of it, yeah. Or, vice versa: being rich enough to own the building means they’re rich enough to—Self-evident, yep. Well, shit, I dunno what to say when Rich Young Dish tells ya his dad’s horse has strained its tendon! Like, if it was one of the lads at Randwick, or even one of the trainers or owners that I know— Oh, the Hell with it.

    “Tough luck. Hope it wasn’t supposed to be racing this week.”

    “Tomorrow,” he says, making a face, even that can’t spoil his, there is no other expression for it, manly beauty. Sigh. Adore…

    “Huh? Oh! Gee, that is bad luck, Ralph. Racing at the Morphettville course, was it?”

    It was, and he tells me which race it was gonna be in and what the trainer thinks of it and blah, blah, do I care? Well, yeah, I’d like it to recover, I’m not into torturing poor dumb animals, but when the words are coming out of a mouth like that it’s bloody hard to concentrate… You know how Total Dish, Sandra Bullock’s one, I mean, had this thick, thick, wavy black hair in this incredibly right cut? Not too short, not too long… Sigh. His is the exact same. The exact s—

    “Uh—yeah, of course I can tell you instead, Ralph.” Fossick hurriedly in briefcase, hand him the neatly bound corporate bullshit. Will he realise it’s corporate bullshit or, appearances to the contrary, has he got a brain?

    He flips through it, not too fast but not exactly lingering, neither. “Mm. This doesn’t say much more than Jerry told us, Dot.”

    No, ya right, there, mate. In fact less, only ya too polite to say so. Yeah, I can tell you a bit more, only the thing is, I’m not a salesperson. Oh, what the fuck, Uncle Jerry coulda come himself if he thought your dad was really interested. Here goes nothing— And avoid the phrase “Jap mafia mates,” thanks, Dot Mallory!

    Crikey, he’s actually asking halfway intelligent questions. Given they’re not in the same line as us. Why the fuck didn't I check out their website or something? Oops, he’s checked out ours, has he? Well, at least I can tell him about the licences we’ve got. And about the hits we’re getting from overseas. And about—Uh, shit, did I oughta tell him about the actual amount we’re pulling in from the overseas punters? On the other hand, he doesn’t look as if he’s gonna be impressed by flimflam. I have got the actual figures here, actually… I get them out very slowly.

    “I have got a breakdown of last month’s trading figures, if you’re int—” He is. Limply I put it into his hand. Can ya get gents’ manicures in Adelaide, like what fancy rich guys are always getting in American films? If ya can, my bet’d be he does. Because his hands are not only very well shaped, but sparkling clean and… Well, they look cared for, y’know? Can’t explain it, only it is a look I've seen on one or two much older gents that are on nodding terms with Uncle Jerry. Like, they’re usually in their owners’ boxes but if they come down to the paddock— Like that. Much older than Total Dish Ralph Crozier.

    The upshot is that it looks very interesting and he thinks his dad would like to see the figures. Is this only a polite Adelaide brush— Oops, no, ’tisn’t, and uh, yeah, gulp, I will accept that invitation to come to the races tomorrow, Saturday, with “us” since that’s where your dad’ll be. Even if I can’t manage a polite smile as I say it, cos in the first place I’m wondering what the fuck to wear, in the second place I’m wishing, what a dill, it was “me” that was doing the inviting, not “us”, in the third place I’m wondering if ya dad’ll have a second to spare, in the fourth place I’m wondering if Uncle Jim’s feelings’ll be hurt if I dump him, or would it be okay to bring him, and in the fifth place I’m wondering if this is just another version of the polite Adelaide brush—

    “Or would you rather come out to Trethewin on Sunday?”—Wot?—“Dad’ll be there, brooding over Rusty’s tendon!” he adds with a laugh, gee, that’s enlightened me, Total Dish Ralph Crozier. It’s begun to sink in that this blank expression on me mug’s not just me habitual dumb-blonde expression, because he goes: “Sorry, that’s his stable name. Rushton of Trethewin!”

    And smile, smile to you, too, Total Dish Ralph Crozier. “Uh—yeah. Um, so is Trethewin like, your trainer’s place?”

    “Oh—no, sorry, Dad’s place. Over in the hills: it’s about a ninety minutes’ drive.”

    Goddit, goddit, it’s your old family mansion.

    “So which would you prefer, Dot?”

    “Gee, can’t I have honey and condensed milk, Ralph?”

    Omigod, did I say that?

    He’s going: “Of course!” and laughing, boy, the way those long brown eyes with those enormous black silky lashes crinkle up at the corners when he’s really amused is guaranteed to turn the average female knee to sludge. Both knees. Nobody ask me to get up, thanks, I’ll fall over.

    Of course I’m red as a beet, what with my big mouth and his crinkling and lashes and perfect teeth, not too long, can’t stand long teeth in males or females, dunno why. I just about manage to smile feebly.

    “Honey and condensed milk it’ll be!” he goes.

    Yeah, hah, hah. Well, at least you recognised the reference, Dishy Ralph Crozier, unlike the vast majority. Like, compare that reaction with what Jack King’s woulda been, to name one.

    So he goes into the politeness bit again and D.M. Mallory fumbles round like an idiot, again, but finally he sorts it out that they’ll meet me and Uncle Jim at X spot at the track tomorrow and he’ll pick me up from Uncle Jim’s at X time on the Sunday. So I get up, smiling feebly, and he shows me out politely and guess what? Waiting in the reception area looking cross is this dame covered in ultra ultra-gloss, even D.M. Mallory spelt M,U,G can see this is the up-market version, and she goes: “We were supposed to be doing lunch, Ralph, or doesn’t that matter in the face of the family crisis over Rusty’s tendon?”

    So he goes: “Sorry, darling,” sounding real sheepish, in fact, if the thought isn’t so mad as to be totally risible, almost sounding like Uncle Jim when Aunty Kate’s caught him out. “Had to take over Dad’s appointments, you see.”

    Boy, that mollified her, I don’t think. The perfectly shaped mouth tightens, gee, ya might be blonde page-boy-bobbed within an inch of ya life, Ultra-Gloss Girlfriend, and be wearing shoes that cost more than D.M. Mallory earns in a month, not to mention that handbag you’ve chucked on his giant black glass coffee table, but that mouth-tightening thing of yours just shrieks “B,I,T,C,H, Keep Clear.” Only of course he can’t see it, they never can until after ten years or so marriage, can they, and can D.M. Mallory wait that long? Or, put it this way, wait that long without physically bursting?

    Meanwhile I’ve pressed the button for the lift, I’m not just standing here with me eyes on stalks and me gob agape, only nearly, geddit? And he goes: “Can you still make lunch, darling?” (To her, right.) “Dot was my last appointment. Dot, let me introduce you to Leanne, my fiancée. Leanne Kirby. She can’t stand the racing scene, so she won’t be with us tomorrow, but you’ll meet her again on Sunday.” I’ll look forward to that, then, Ralph. And gee, she can stand ya family mansion, can she? And I knew it was fifty to one she was your fiancée if not your actual wife, smart ladies like her only have a real go at their males when they’ve got squatters’ rights, but— Oh, what the fuck, Total Dishes never look twice at dumpy, curly-haired blonde girls like me that can’t afford to chuck away two months’ income on a pair of shoes and would look real ridiculous in a long-skirted, narrow-cut tweed suit like hers even if we could manage to squeeze into it in the first place. –Tweed, it is. Dark brown and black, mixed. Boring or countrified, it isn’t, fancy that. Gee, why don’t I just give in entirely and pin a label to me chest that says: “Me hair won’t go straight, sleek and smart, not even for megabucks at the most expensive hairdresser in the federal cap—” Forget it.

    So I hold out me mitt and she holds out her elegant hand, is that possibly real pigskin? Gee, ya know how in any polite English book worth its stuff written like, before about 1970, real ladies do not shake hands with their gloves— But I’ll lay ya ten to one in fivers he’s never heard of that one. Well, his face doesn’t took as if he has. She’s not real interested in who I am, in fact she doesn’t bother to look anything but bored, but his anxious look has been replaced by one of approval. Well, anxious approval. Poor sap.

    So, yeah, I’ll look forward to seeing you on Sunday at Trethewin, Leanne—never could stand that name and this confirms me instincts weren’t wrong—and thank God, here’s the lift, so I escape. Gee, as the doors close she’s saying angrily: “Who was that girl?” and he’s saying meekly that he just told her…

    Looking back, I think I’m gonna draw a veil over the entire weekend for as long as I live. Well, good old Uncle Jim had a great time at the races—Aunty Kate doesn’t let him bet on the gee-gees, but you’d already guessed that, huh?—and loved being in the swanky Croziers’ swanky box, not even noticing that it was totally unclear whether it was Old Man Crozier’s box or a corporate box that counts as entertaining so he gets the tax— Forget it. Likewise being taken down to the paddock to see the nag that was running today being saddled. Ruthven of Trethewin. Some of us thought, looking at the racing form, that it mighta been pronounced “Riven” and certainly the way that Dishy Ralph Crozier, Old Man Crozier, and Incredibly Up-Market Ultra-Ultra-Ultra-Gloss Lady Mother Crozier pronounced it tended to confirm this suspicion; only the commentator’s voice-over made it Ruth Venn. Whatever, it came fourth but Uncle Jim didn’t even mind dropping fifty nicker on it, he was having such a great time. On the way home he let me drive—had to, after the amount of Old Man C.’s booze he’d absorbed—and entertained me with a highly amusing comparison of the Croziers’ lady friends’ flash outfits and unspeakable hats with the Polaroids of Aunty May’s last ditto for the Cup. Shortly before he fell asleep, this was. Oh, well, I was glad that one of us enjoyed it.

    No, ya wrong, see, Ultra-Gloss Leanne Look-Down-The-Nose didn’t turn up after all. No, Dishy Ralph Crozier didn’t ignore me, in fact he was quite pleasant to me. And no, wrong again, Old Man Crozier didn’t patronise me more than what came natural to a big beefy type of around Uncle Jerry’s age that owns a glossy multi-storey office building downtown plus and several gee-gees. In fact he treated me more or less like a favourite granddaughter, causing Up-Market Lady Mother Crozier to frown horribly. And no, the latter fact didn’t upset m— Oh, ya guessed that? Yeah. He was quite interested in coming in with Uncle Jerry’s consortium—said we’d definitely talk about it on the Sunday, so that didn’t spoil my enjoyment, either.

    So what did? Well, first off the box was jammed with over-dressed ultra-gloss Adelaide ladies all trying to beat Lady Mother Crozier in the looking-down-the-nose stakes, even though I had actually refrained from wearing my bikie jacket. It was the lemon jumper and the black slacks and, given the weather, a perfectly respectable raincoat of Aunty Kate’s. Navy blue, she wears a lot of navy. Fairly shapeless, true, but not a cheapo nylon raincoat by any means. Gabardine? It wasn’t too long on me, in fact I thought it was quite a trendy length until I copped a gander at Lady Mother Crozier in the original cream gabardine trench-coat with flaps, pockets, belts, buttons and vents galore. Buttons on the vents, yet. And yeah, it did make all the other Adelaide dames look flashily over-dressed, and yeah, that was its intention, before you ask. She’s dark, like him: it’s just allowed to have one white streak at the front; not quite a page-boy bob like Leanne Look-Down-The-Nose’s, but that sort of thing, except quite a bit shorter and fuller, and the ends very curled under. Clear as mud? Sorry about that. Smallish pearls in the ears. All the accessories in genuine pigskin, dare say that’s where Leanne got the idea, and, get this, not a flashy hat like the other Adelaide dames, but a jaunty beret perched on the side of the head. Cream, like the coat: ultra taste, see? So the only two touches of colour were the bright puce lipstick and the twist of silk scarf at the neck in a riot of bright coral, bright puce and bright watermelon stripes, not that I was looking that closely, of course. Then when she took off the coat there was this to-die-for narrow dress in cream wool plus and the figure of a twenty-year-old model. At that moment I almost pitied Leanne Look-Down-The-Nose.

    But gee, all this would have counted for nothing—less than nothing—if only Total Dish Ralph Crozier had been instantly, hopelessly and completely smitten with yours truly. Only he wasn’t.

    So Sunday was more of the same except that me and Old Man Crozier had a cosy confab in his “study” at Trethewin, twice the size of your average Sydney suburban lounge-room, and he’s gonna come over to Sydney for a real talk with Uncle Jerry, so it’s probably a good thing I came. Something like that. Well, the horses were ace but Ralph Crozier appeared lightly amused by yours truly the whole day. Leanne Look-Down-The-Nose appeared to be in a foul mood but given the fact she’s five-foot-ten to the Dish’s six-foot-two and given the tan daks moulded to the long slender legs and the genuine R.M. Williams waterproof riding coat and the narrow tan jumper two shades darker than the daks and straight out of Friends, she could afford to be.

    Ralph’s younger sister was there, too, her name’s Jenny and she actually seemed quite normal; goes to the Adelaide version of Putrid St Agatha’s Academy for Putrid Young Ladies and hates it. She urged Leanne to show me the engagement ring so she did, looking bored stiff, informing me that it was only an amethyst. Like, a huge square-cut hunk of amethyst about a hundred and fifty millimetres across, supported by two very twinkly diamonds more than six times the size of anything on Isabelle’s engagement ring—yeah. So Jenny’s face took on the exact same anxious look as Ralph’s does whenever Leanne opens her mouth and she explained that the stone had been in the family for a long time, one of their ancestors mined it, but of course Great-Granny’s ring was very old-fashioned, so Ralph had it completely re-set for Leanne. Gee, that was a need-to-know. But given the anxious look, I smiled anyway.

    We stayed there for dinner even though Lady Mother Crozier was moaning about some appointment she had first thing Monday back in town. Funnily enough even though Ralph and Jenny had driven me over in his four-wheel-drive and Leanne had her own car with her, I ended up in the back of Old Man Crozier’s Beamer next to Jenny while Ralph and Leanne— You get the picture, huh?

    Uncle Jim musta noticed I wasn’t exactly a box of birds because he said cautiously, after making sure that it wasn’t just that the business side of things had gone badly, that the Croziers’ house is next but one to the Fortescues’ and that Aunty Kate reckons that Mrs C. thinks she’s too good for the said F.F.’s.

    So I said dully: “Yeah, I hadda admit I could only think of her as ‘Lady Mother’ Crozier. You know: like what Rosie always calls John’s mother: Lady Haworth.”

    “Eh?”

    “Um, not to his face, Uncle Jim,” I said lamely.

    “Not in anything she writes to your aunt, either! Lady Mother, eh?”

    “Mm.”

    He sniggered. “Kate hasn’t met her yet—treat in store, eh? Mind you, any other mother-in-law’d be round there looking after the girl when the baby’s due, but if she’s that type—!” Sniff.

    “Mm. Well, I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall while Lady Mother Crozier looks down her nose at Marion Fortescue.”

    Snigger, followed closely by an anxious look. “No. Well, not our type, eh, love?”

    Oddly enough I got the point. But did that ever stop a person with female hormones from pining after a Total Dish with the opposite hormones? Ya right: it never did, not since the two sexes were invented.