Fa-La-La, La, La And All That Jazz

3

Fa-La-La, La, La And All That Jazz

    Gee, Rosie won that bet, Aunty Kate did put in an order for a fresh turkey as well as the ham. I tell ya, even the ducted air-con had trouble the day she baked the ham, if she did get up at five, I kid ya not, to get it started. So it’s taking up half an acre of her giant fridge but there’s still room for a big dish of trifle plus and the turkey. It isn’t a very big one but of course we gotta have Xmas dinner at 2 o’clock so she gets up at crack of dawn to get stuff started. Dad sent on all my Xmas prezzies, the great nit, so she lets us have breakfast and open stuff, and then, glory be, she lets Uncle Jim go back to bed! Only her and me have to get going. So we start: chopping stuff up for the fruit salad and in her case making the puff pastry for the cherry pie that she’s decided to have hot! Only Aunty Kate in all the world would decide to bake a hot cherry pie on the same morning as she’s doing turkey. I know she’s got a double oven, nevertheless. Talk about multiplying the aggro.

    So I get ordered to lay the table. Like, not in the kitchen-dining room, that’s too down-market. No, this house has also got an actual dining-room with a much flasher dining suite that she only uses for special occasions, like, she hadda buy the suite once she’d bought the hou— Ya got that. Also it’s got folding doors that mean it can be thrown together with the lounge-room, this would be useful if she was planning like a wedding reception but all her kids are married off. Well, Andrew’s married and divorced, boy is that a sore point.

    The huge white cloth, and, natch, the Xmas place mats and serviettes. Real linen, dark red with dark green crochet edgings. They look ace but you oughta try ironing the things! She’s already done the big centrepiece, it’s on the sideboard, so I lift it very carefully, heart in mouth style of thing, and put it in the middle... Phew! It’s a big silver bowl full of bunches of fake pine needles, real pine cones with silver or gold tips, loops of bright red satin ribbon, more loops of fancy gold lacy ribbon, real oranges and plastic grapes that she’s sprayed with fake snow, and bits of fake holly on wires. It looks really professional, y’know? I arrange the little fake wreaths of Xmas pine down the table and just dot them with gold and silver bobbles, she’s got a huge box of bobbles, and scatter the whole table with gold and silver stars. It looks ace but I can’t take the credit, she’s explained the look she wants, she’s got a mag with a pic in it. (Guess what mug’s gonna have to pick up all the stars at the end of the day?) What else? Oh, yeah: candles. Ya can’t have Chrissie dinner in the middle of a steaming hot Adelaide afternoon without candles. Whatever. I put out the red candles in the silver candlesticks and the dark green candles in the other silver candlesticks, she hasn’t got any gold ones. Get this: we need three lots of glasses: water, white wine, red wine, ’ve you ever seen anyone do that in their house? I mean, it’s like a full-blown five-star restaurant, for Pete’s sake. And bread rolls on the side plates? Who’s gonna want a bread roll on Chrissie Day?

    Uncle Jim comes in yawning, still in his pyjamas, and says the best Chrissie Day he remembers was the year they took the kids to what they thought was gonna be a caravan camp over on Eyre Peninsula somewhere and it turned out to be just a huge empty field. There was no-one for Kate to impress, he explains redundantly. So they just slung some sausages on the barbie and drank the Coke and the bottle of champagne they’d brought, and ate up the Xmas cake Grandma Leach had sent over, it was ace. (This must have been back before she went gaga.) And they had lots of swims and spent the rest of the day lounging under the tent flap: they had one of those ones that you attach to the side of the campervan. Sounds good, doesn’t it? And luckily the mention of the champagne makes him think of checking that I’ve put out the right glasses, and I haven’t. Aw. So he shows me which ones she uses for champagne. Gold rims. Tasteful.

    At long last it’s time to fetch old Mrs P.-P., so I’m about to escape with Uncle Jim but no. She gets out the Dress. Aunty Kate’s idea of a nice Chrissie Day dress. Ye Gods. First off it’s red, like with my yellow mop? Then it’s got shoe-string straps: when she’s the one that’s been going on unendingly ever since I got here about not wearing a bra not being nayce? What’s she imagine I’m gonna wear under it? (I’m not asking.) Quite a with-it cut, narrow, with the skirt a bit flared, but can that count? For one thing, it’s long. Not full-length, but almost to my ankles, maybe she’d forgotten how short I am when she bought it? But the worst thing, on top of the red it’s got this all-over pattern of little silver stars, all different sizes. Boy, do I look like the ghost of Christmas Present or what. It’s silk or something, anyway horribly slippery. Granted, cool to wear, but with the fully ducted air-con, why bother? I get into it, of course, well, wouldn’t anyone? And off we go…

    Fortunately the sight of me in it doesn’t drop old Mrs Price-Powell in her tracks. So we get home and have the traditional yucky eggnog, spew, I’d forgotten how vile it was, and Mrs Price-Powell’s traditional mince pies, and a nice chat, and then Aunty Kate thinks that someone had better pop next-door and just remind David and Nefertite. Guess Who? (Given that Uncle Jim’s already got himself round a good slug of neat Johnnie Walker to deaden the taste of the eggnog and has put on his Jingle-Bell Rock tape.)

    So I go trudge, trudge. No sign of Fat Cat. Ring, ring! Nothing. Try the door, unlocked, so I open it and stick my head in and go: “Hullo!” Nothing, so I go: “HEY! Anybody HOME?” Nothing. It’s like the Marie Celeste.

    No, hang on, somebody’s singing in the shower. Nefertite. Un-real! And I thought her speaking voice sounded like a ship’s hooter. This is indescribable. She’s gotta be a contralto. Or a bass. It isn’t opera or anything up-market: White Christmas. Well, seasonal. Cripes! She’s started singing it in German! ? I think. Weird.

    I check out the lounge-room and the kitchen: no sign of him. So I bash on his door and yell: “Hey! HEY!” Nothing. Bearing in mind that Guess Who’s gonna cop it if the pair of idiots are late for Aunty Kate’s Chrissie dinner, I barge in. Flat on his back, snoring. So I pull up the blinds and yell: “HEY! WAKE UP!” Gee, he’s woken up.

    “Get out of that pit! You’re gonna be late for Aunty Kate’s Chrissie dinner!”

    He blinks at me. “Good grief. The ghost of Christmas Present.”

    “Yeah, highly original, I thought of that hours back, and if ya wanna know, Aunty Kate chose it. Get up!”

    “If you insist,” he says with that fake courtesy of his, and gets up. Gee. He’s starkers. Put it like this, I seen most of it before, since all he normally wears is shorts, but I go red anyway, what a total nong.

    “Them as can’t stand the heat, Dot Mallory,” the wanker says, doing the not-quite-laughing bit, thinks he’s hilarious, “should stay out of the kitchen.”

    “Yeah, hah, hah. Big deal, I seen it all before.” Actually he’s not bad at all, dunno why I thought he’d be real lacking down there, but he’s certainly not that. Dark, y’know? But not too hairy.

    “Our mother,” he says, still doing the not-quite-laughing bit, “was Greek. They tell me it’s typical.”

    “Gee, I’m interested,” I retort, stalking out. “And hurry UP!”

    Behind me I can hear him laughing, stupid nong. So I go into the kitchen, still as red as my dress, don’t be so pathetic, Dot Mallory, you’ve seen them before!

    After a bit he comes in, in the dressing-gown, done up, probably got nothing on under— Do I care. “I can’t get dressed, Nefertite’s monopolising the bathroom.”

    “Yeah, White Christmas. Worse than flaming Bing Crosby.”

    “Mm,” he says with a funny grin on his face, what’s he looking like that for? “I must remember to tell her that. Oh—Merry Chrissie, Dot Mallory.”

    “No-one says ‘Merry Chrissie’, ya Pommy nong!” Shit, didn’t mean to say that, it just come out. “Um, sorry. But nobody does.”

    “Merry Christmas, then,” he says mildly, no reaction one way or the other, doing it on purpose—right.

    “Um, yeah. Thanks. Merry Christmas to you, too.”

    He leans on the bench. “How’s Bleak House?”

    “Really great! I reckon it’s the best Dickens book, whadda you think?”

    “Um… It’s a toss-up between that and Our Mutual Friend, I’d say. The dark character of the schoolmaster adds an extra dimension to that—less caricatural than most of his characters. Have you read it?”

    I shake my head.

    “Well, I won’t recommend it, it might put you off,” he says lightly.

    “Yeah! Hey, don’tcha just hate it when people try to force books on ya?”

    “Mm,” he says, funny little smile, what’s that in aid of? I’m not gonna bother about it, if ya started wondering what David Walsingham’s funny little smiles were all about (a) there’d be no time for nothing else and (b) you’d pretty quick end up in the loony-bin.

    “I wouldn't call Esther a caricature,” I note dubiously.

    He just smiles.

    “Um, shall I give Nefertite a hurry-up?”

    “It’s like trying to move the mountain,” he says with a sigh.

    Uh—think that was a No. “Um, yeah. Hey, ya will have a shave, will ya, David?”

    “Mm? Oh—ah, certainly,” he says, feeling the chin. “Do you dislike it so much?”

    Shit, I’ve gone red again. “Not me, ya nong! Aunty Kate! She can’t stand that look, she thinks it’s sloppy.”

    “It’s not a look, it’s just sloppiness,” he says mildly.

    “In your case, yeah, I believe it.”

    “So would she refuse to feed me if I turned up unshaven?”

    “Probably not, that wouldn’t be nayce manners, but the atmosphere’d be several degrees below absolute zero.”

    “I’ll definitely shave, then!” he says, shuddering. Yeah, hah, hah, does he give a stuff about Aunty Kate? Can’t imagine why he’s agreed to come, actually. Yes, I can, saves him the bother of cooking. Or of being screamed at by Nefertite until he keeps his promise to cook, kind of thing.

    “Good. Hey, didja remember to cancel the duck?”

    “Why?”

    “Why? Ya don’t imagine it’ll be needed, do ya?”

    For answer he opens the big old lilac Frigidaire. (That fridge has actually got a personality.) Shit, it’s full of stuff and the duck’s there, all right.

    “Shit.”

    “We had paid for it, if you recall.”—Yeah, right: she had, bet he never paid her back.—“Thought I might do it on the 27th. Not Boxing Day, we both intend to be comatose all day tomorrow.”

    “Ya will be, if Aunty Kate’s on form,” I concede.

    “Glad to hear it. Would you care to come over and help us eat it?”

    Eh? Me? So I go: “Eh? Me?”

    “Yes, you, Dot Mallory; is the prospect so appalling?”

    Dunno. Depends how recently ya washed the dinner plates. “Um, no. I never had duck. Um, yeah, all right, thanks very much.”

    “No worries,” he says, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “So, what would you normally have for Christmas dinner at home?”

    “Us? Well, depends whether Mum’s gone mad, or we’ve joined up with Aunty May and they’ve both gone mad together, ya see. Well, turkey, usually. Not ham as well, unless it’s a very big do and they’ve invited half Dad’s side or Aunty Allyson’s lot or like that. Um, usually we have roast potatoes and roast sweet potatoes and pumpkin with the turkey, and cranberry sauce or jelly. I like the sauce best, it’s got more taste. And gravy, of course. –What?”

    “You really have hot turkey with the trimmings in the middle of an Australian summer?”

    “Um, yeah, didja think it was just Aunty Kate? No, most people do. Um, we always have salads as well. Like, cherry tomato and lettuce, usually Mum doesn’t buy cherry tomatoes, they’re too dear, only for Christmas she always does. And Aunty May always does her special coleslaw, I usually hate coleslaw but hers is ace. And sometimes their neighbour, she brings over a special salad she makes, she uses fresh peaches and nectarines but you’re s’posed to eat it with the meat, it’s not a fruit salad. With plain yoghurt and fresh tarragon. It’s ace but I like the version she does with raw tamarillos better, only they’re not in season at Christmas. Like, maybe you still call them tree-tomatoes back home?”

    “I’m sorry, Dot,” he says, real limp. “I don’t understand. What are they?”

    What are they? Heck, every second scrubby back yard in Sydney’s got a tree! ’Ve you ever tried to explain a fruit to someone that’s genuinely never heard of it? I can see he hasn’t, I can tell when Mr Up-Himself David Walsingham’s taking the Mick, and he isn’t.

    “I think,” he says groggily at last, after I’ve been reduced to explaining that they’re Solanaceae and originally from South America, “that they’re a fruit that I’ve been charged fifteen pounds for in a foul nouvelle cuisine London nosh-shop.”

    “Fancy restaurant, ya mean? Cripes, most of the time Joslynne’s Mum, that’s Aunty May’s neighbour, she can’t give the things away, they got two trees and they both bear like billyo.”

    “I do love your vernacular, Dot Mallory,” he says in a dreamy voice and I go, you got it, red as a beet again.

    “Sorry; that just slipped out!” he says with a laugh. “What else does your mum do for Christmas dinner?”

    I’m giving him a suspicious look but he appears genuine so I go: “She’s got this recipe for a pecan pie, it’s like a flan, open, y’know? It’s ace, the filling’s like all pecans smothered in a kind of soft toffee. She always does that. And ice cream, of course, and fruit salad. And the twins like jelly, so she usually does jelly. Layered, if she can be bothered. It’s like, boring, because ya gotta let one lot set and let the next lot cool down but not let it set before ya pour it on. And Christmas cake, she buys a Lions’ one and puts the fancy icing on herself, only sometimes Aunty Kate sends one over. No, well, not everybody has pecan pie but otherwise it’s just like anybody’s Christmas dinner, I guess.”

    “Mm,” he says, smiling, like, he gets these crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he really smiles, like, not the superior sneer, but really smiling.

    “You wanna give Nefertite a hurry-up?”

    “Not really, but I’ll do it.” So he strolls out to he passage and I follow him to make sure he does. She’s stopped singing, that’s a plus. So he bangs on the door and hollers: “OY! ’Ow much longer you goin’ to be in that barf-room?” in fake Cockney, I know where he got that from, Uncle Jerry’s got the record.

    So I go: “Peter Sellers, Uncle Jerry’s got that ole record.”

    “Jesus!” he gasps, jumping ten feet. “Don’t do that!”

    Gee, Dot Mallory one, Pommy fakers nil, eh? “Did she hear ya?”

    “Doubt it. NEFERTITE!” he shouts.

    “I'm doing my face!” she hoots.

    “Christ, this could take hours,” he mutters. So he flings the door open, too bad if the poor moo was starkers, and goes: “Do your face in your own room, for God’s sake!”

    She’s got a satin dressing-gown on over her undies, thank God for small mercies. “The light’s better in here. Oh, hullo, Dot. Merry Christmas. Not late, are we? I’m afraid my watch has stopped.”

    “Merry Christmas, Nefertite. Um, ya not technically late yet, only Aunty Kate sent me over to give you a hurry-up.”

    “Yes, and go into your own bloody room, I need to shower and shave!” he says irritably. “Or stay here, of course. God knows I don’t care.”

    “No, I don’t want to get soaked, thanks,” she says, gathering up her stuff. “Give me a hand, would you, Dot? Thanks.”

    “Gee, ya got a real fancy make-up case an’ everything!” I note admiringly, gathering up hairspray and mousse and half a dozen lipsticks and a whole plastic case full of different coloured eye-shadows.

    “Of course,” she says in a vague voice and we take the lot into her room. She’s turned the air-con off so I put it on for her. The room looks quite different now she’s got her stuff in it, like, she’s draped this gauzy purple scarf over the bedside lamp, and there’s a bright pink one hanging off the lampshade in the middle of the ceiling, no wonder there isn’t enough light in here, and she’s nicked the big coat-stand from the hall and draped the big striped dressing-gown on it, she didn’t weave it herself, she got it in North Africa, well, goes with his ruddy Moroccan stew, yeah, and she’s got these huge coloured sunhats pinned up on the wall, I never knew anyone before that pinned hats on their wall but actually they look ace. And a big lacy black scarf draped over the window that hasn’t got the air conditioner in it, admittedly it looks ace, but it sure is obscuring the light. So I go over and take it down very carefully and she admits that's better. And I watch in awe while she finishes the face, it’s a real professional job.

    “Aida to the life,” he says from the doorway and I jump ten feet, never realised he was standing there. Shit, he’s in a white suit, never knew he owned a suit at all, let alone a white one. Your draped Armani look, shit, he looks actually fashionable, not to say, almost human.

    “Nefertite, you fool,” she corrects him.

    So he shrugs, and goes: “Così e, se vi pare. I’ve dropped a cufflink, Dot. Can’t see it anywhere. Would you mind awfully helping me hunt for it?”

    “No prob.”

    So we go into his room and I crawl round the floor, can’t see the damned thing anywhere. “Can’t see it, David. What’s it s’posed to look like?” I say, sitting back on my heels.

    So he holds out the wrist that he’s done, like the left one, and it’s only at this point that D.M. Mallory, the greatest fool that ever walked, notices his hand. Oh, shit! Shit, shit, shit!

    “I’m sorry, Dot, hadn't you realised?” he says.

    “No,” I croak. “Gee, I’m Helluva sorry, David.” Like, the hand’s got this huge puckered scar, an old scar but dark purplish red, all the way across the back of it, and you can see that there’s something awfully wrong with the two smallest fingers. Like, very scarred, and sort of bent and a funny colour.

    He shrugs. “It happened years back. A car accident. They tell me I was lucky not to lose the hand. And my left leg was badly smashed.” He makes a face. “Got a pin in my hip, and I’ve lost a knee-cap. Can’t crawl too well, or I’d be down there with you.”

    I’ve never seen him walk much, but yeah, come to think of it, he does limp.

    “Yeah, buh-but what about your piano playing?” Gee, that was tactless, Dot Mallory, why can’t you learn to shut up?

    Luckily he doesn’t seem to mind, he just says: “That’s why I teach. Well, I should have made the choice between the piano and the cello long since, my father had got really hot under the collar about it. Saved me having to decide, didn’t it?” I’m not feeling blank, I’m feeling horribly shocked and terribly sorry for him, but I must be looking blank, because he looks at the hand and makes another face and explains: “Fingering’s completely out of the question: there’s almost no feeling in my little finger. But I’ve learnt to manage the piano quite well. Well, not at concert performance level, of course. And there are a few pieces where Herr Liszt or Herr von Beethoven have made it impossible to readjust the left hand.”

    “Um, yeah,” I say numbly. “I see.”

    “These things happen, Dot Mallory,” he says lightly. “And quite possibly I’d have been a disaster on the concert stage. According to my father I haven’t got the single-mindedness it requires.” He shrugs. “Possibly he’s right, or I’d have been home studying my score, not out joy-riding in an unsuitable car with an unsuitable bird with whom I was spending far, far too great a proportion of my time.”

    “Yeah. Was she okay?” I croak.

    He shrugs again. “Escaped without a scratch. Ironic, in its way. –Look for a piece of rock crystal set in gold, they were a present from the Old Man at a point when I was quids-in with him.”

    “Yeah, pretty,” I croak, starting to crawl round the grungy old fawn carpet again. “So, what does he do, ya father? Does he play the piano?”

    “Er, no,” he says in an odd voice, the foot’s in the mouth somehow, Dot Mallory, only I can’t see how. “Conductor. Sir John Walsingham, you may have heard of him.”

    “Nah,” I grunt, think I’ve spotted—Nope. Screwed up Crunchie Bar wrapper. I dump it in the wastepaper basket that he’s chucked some of his music into. “Don’tcha want this music?”

    “No.”

    All right, ya don’t. Crawl, crawl… Hang on, I do recognise the name. “Sorry I didn’t reckernise the name at first, David. Dad’s got a recording of ya dad’s, like, Sir John Walsingham at the Albert Hall, that him?”

    “Exactly!” he says with a laugh. Is he pleased because— No, he goes: “One of the most appalling pieces of aural pabulum ever recorded, isn’t it?”

    Fair comment. “If it’s the CD I think it is, I thought it was shit, yeah. Only don’t take my word for it, I like Uncle Jim’s Jingle-Bell Rock.”

    Why’s he collapsed in a helpless fit of the wheezing giggles? Oh, well, let him, at least he’s not mooning over the hand. God, poor bugger. I crawl round the floor a bit more, he’s given up looking, he’s just watching me.

    “Look,” I say at last, “I think we better reason it out. Where were ya standing when ya dropped it?”

    “Mm? Oh, over there. –Was I? Yes: by the dressing-table. I’d just taken the case out of the drawer.”

    “Right.” I go over to the dressing-table. He comes, too. “Don’t stand in the light, ya nana!”

    “Oh—sorry.” He stops blocking the light from the window.

    “Right, ya were standing here. Facing into the room?”

    “No, facing the window.”

    Goddit. I turn round. Stupid wanker, if he was facing this-a-way— “Will you get out of the LIGHT!”

    He gets out of the light. Gee, there it is, sitting neatly between the turned foot of the dressing-table and the skirting-board. “Here.”

    “Thanks awfully,” he says in a sheepish voice.

    “Why didn’tcha use logic in the first place?”

    “Not in the working vocabulary, Dot,” he says with a silly smile.

    “You said it!”

    I’m stomping over to the door only he says: “I’m sorry, Dot, could you possibly?”

    So I turn round. “Now what?”

    He pulls an awful face and holds out the cuff-link to me.

    “Can’t you—Oh! Sorry, I never thought.” Guess whose face is red again? “Give it here.” So I come up to him and put it in for him, it’s tricky, wouldn’t want to have to do it one-handed even with a good hand. Gee, he smells nice. Well, warm, and he’s got a smell of his own, ’ve you ever noticed that about men? Not sweat, no. I can’t describe it, it’s kind of a skin smell. But today he’s wearing some sort of after-shave as well. “Gee, ya smell good. That’s a really nice after-shave.”

    “Cologne,” he murmurs. “Technically, Eau de Cologne. You don’t seem to be able to buy it here.”

    I look up at him doubtfully. “You tried D.J.’s?”

    “Um, sorry, what?”

    “Like, David Jones, it’s a big fancy shop downtown.”

    “I think I tried at all of the big fancy shops.”

    “Yeah, but did you ask at D.J.’s, David?”

    He smiles at me, he’s got really nice grey eyes, I don’t like the pale, wishy-washy ones but his are dark, like the Sydney sky before a real good thunderstorm. “No, I didn’t ask at D.J.’s, Dot.”

    All of a sudden it dawns that he might be old but he is a bloke and I’m standing far too close to him and it is his ruddy bedroom, and—Shit. So I back off hurriedly.

    “Look, I gotta report back. I’ll see you over there, okay?”

    “Okay, Dot Mallory,” he says, smirking: he noticed, all right, he’s not past it.

    So I shoot out, red as a beet yet again. “And Merry Bloody Christmas to you, too, Fat Cat!”

    It gives a sad miaow, more like a croak, so I open the front door again and let it in, even though I saw that dokko on cats, they learned up that behaviour to deal with humans, it’s one of their tricks for getting the upper hand, they don’t naturally speak in the wild.

    In the lounge-room they’re still knocking back the eggnog, in Uncle Jim’s case the Johnnies, and the folding doors are open, the table looks ace, and Aunty Kate’s put the Chrissie poinsettia that ole Ma Price-Powell brung on the sideboard, looks just right. Luckily she doesn’t notice how long I’ve been. Yeah, I will have a drink, actually, Uncle Jim. Thanks. Aunty Kate and Ma P.-P. are yacking away so he comes over to the drinks trolley with me and says in a very low voice: “Everything all right, Dot?”

    “Yeah, um, only— Uncle Jim, ’ve you ever noticed David’s hand?”

    He makes a face. “Ssh. Yeah, poor bugger. Oh, didn’tcha realise? Well, yeah. Car crash, his sister tells me. Get this down ya, Dot.”

    Cripes, neat whisky? I never actually had— What the heck. So I down it before she can spot me.

    “Better?” he says in a low voice.

    “Yeah! Phew! Thanks!”

    “Good. –Here we go, Dot, nice eggnog!” he says loudly, filling up the glass with the muck. He gives me a quick wink and wanders over to the tape deck. Jingle-bell, jingle-bell, jingle-bell rock… before she can say haven’t we had enough of that, Jim.

    So they ring the front door bell, and Uncle Jim goes to let them in, gush, gush the minute they come in the room, she calls them both by their first names fifteen times in the course of five seconds, admires Nefertite’s outfit, blah, blah. Well, it makes an impression, ya gotta admit: blue and turquoise shot silk, full length, dead straight except with her in it that’s impossible, and the sleeves come to the elbows and are kinda permanently pleated, somehow they’ve got a bit that goes behind like a cape as well. Yep, unusual is what it is, Aunty Kate. Also the huge Egyptian gold collar. Not coins this time, like graduated rows of gold wire wound onto, um, something. The earrings are giant triangles of turquoise set in gold on a long stem. Genuine North African, real-ly? Most unusual. She lets Aunty Kate force an eggnog onto her but Banana-Eater holds out for a whisky, very wise.

    Oh, and they shouldn’t have! Gee, they’ve brought prezzies, just as well Aunty Kate made us get something for them, eh?

    For once, good old Uncle Jim scores. First off, big fat box of cigars from Banana-Eater, he does know he doesn’t smoke, really, he doesn’t actually wink as he says it, but he might as well. So Aunty Kate goes: “You men!” That won’t stop her from making the old joker smoke them in the shed, though. And a really nice gent’s scarf, gee, Nefertite musta got it at D.J.’s, that’s for sure. Like, dark Paisley? Yeah. And she’s just so grateful for all his help, Kate. Dunno if Aunty Kate’s chuffed or not, actually. Though she’s really pleased by the beautiful coffee-table book Nefertite chose for her. Gee, how’d she know? I’m positive I never mentioned the house is full of the things. No, she certainly hasn’t got this one: look, Jim, lovely English country-house gardens, now they’ll really be able to plan their trip!

    “Yeah, that reminds me, Aunty Kate, why’d ya decide not to go this year?”

    “Well, we’re only just settled here, dear. We thought we’d try Bali next August instead, and plan for England later.”

    Right, goddit, goddit. As much as any normal human being could ever seize her logic.

    Oh shit, Banana-Eater’s got her something edible, it’ll be the Wrong Thing— Blow me down flat. Dunno what it is, exactly, like, in a tall jar, fruit or something, but she’s thrilled. He must of got it at D.J.’s Food Hall, that’s for sure. Oh, brandied fruit, right, right.

    So in return he gets a Ditter’s Cake, like, really up-market dried fruit and nuts pressed together, virtually no cake mixture. Joslynne’s Mum can make them, no sweat. No, he doesn’t know them, and he lets her explain that one slices them thinly.

    “It’s, like, an Adelaide thing, she often sends one over like for Mum’s birthday, or their anniversary. Ditter’s, it’s a special shop.”

    He does that crinkling the eyes smile at me. “I see, Dot.”

    Yeah, ten hours since, why’d I bother?

    “Open this, Dot,” says Nefertite, smiling.

    Shit, for me? I never done nothing for ya, Nefertite, only like held the screws for Uncle Jim… Jesus. It’s beautiful. Whaddis it?

    “It’s a caftan. North African: I got it in Morocco. The men wear them: the women’s clothes aren’t half so interesting,” she explains. “Try it on, Dot.”

    It’s like, very pale lemon-yellow, shimmering. Silk, I guess. Embroidered down the chest in white, um, silk, I guess. I get into it. Gee, it fits. Well, it comes to my toes, put it like that.

    “It’s a boy’s one,” says Banana-Eater unexpectedly.

    “I geddit. Like a special-occasion one, right?”

    “Yes, I’d say so. It suits you.”

    “Why, yes, Dot, you can wear yellow!” cries Aunty Kate. “So few blonde women can.” She can’t, that’s for sure, looks as yellow as a banana if anything yellow even comes near her. Aunty May looks all right in yellow, though. Don’t think I’ve ever seen Mum wearing it.

    “I suppose it’s rather Seventies,” says Nefertite on a dubious note.

    “No! I love it! Thanks awfully, Nefertite!”

    “Good,” she says, smiling. “I bought it for my daughter, to tell you the truth, but she informed me that the girls at her school would say she’d fallen out of her tree if she wore it. The girls at her school being law, you see.”

    “Yeah, lots of girls are like that. My sister Deanna, she’s just as bad, except that her ballet teacher’s in on the act, too.”

    “Ghastly!” she agrees, shuddering and laughing. “Well, I’m so glad it’s gone to a good home, Dot.”

    “Yeah.” I stroke it slowly. Dunno when I’ll wear it, but. Never mind, it can be for best, and um, well, not the student rave after the show, no. If it has to, it can wait until Mum and Dad’s thirtieth wedding anniversary. So I take it off carefully and fold it up in its tissue paper.

    Meanwhile old Mrs Price-Powell is being horribly embarrassed by a lovely box of chocs from both of them. So Banana-Eater tells her to think nothing of it, very nicely, nothing of the snide about him. Shows he can do it if he bothers, doesn’t it?

    Aunty Kate assured me that nayce soap is always acceptable, not to say, led me by the nose to the nayce soap display in a nayce shop, so that’s what they get from me. Nefertite smiles and says: “Lovely: English soap!” Good on her. He takes his with a funny look on his face.

    So I go: “It’s s’posed to be for gents. It was from a fancy shop.”

    “Yes. Thank you, Dot. Merry Christmas,” he says, producing a small parcel.

    Shit, ya mean the caftan wasn’t from both of them? Slowly I open it…

    “Good Heavens!” says Aunty Kate sharply, ouch, he’s done the Wrong Thing.

    “It’s lovely,” I say lamely. Is she gonna make me give it back? It’s a pendant on a gold chain, not very big, diamond-shaped, maybe three centimetres long. Like, gold, um, filigree? Yes, filigree. With tiny gold drops hanging off it.

    “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it, Dot,” he says with a wry look.

    “No, um, it’s ace!” What is Aunty Kate about to say?

    Deep breath. “Let me see, dear.” Picks it up, gets out the jeweller’s glass—No, not quite. But that is what she’s doing. “My dear David, it’s far too much.”

    “I’ve got no-one else to give it to, Kate,” he says mildly.

    “Nonsense. What about your niece?” That she’s only just heard of, right.

    “She despises this old-fashioned stuff. It was my grandmother’s, when she was a girl. There’s a lot of it about in Greece. It’s nothing very special.”

    “It’s solid gold!” she says sharply. See, she’ll of told that by the weight of it. I kid you not.

    “I suppose it is, yes. I’d like Dot to have it.”

    Dunno how, but this convinces her. “It’s very kind of you, David. Just make sure you take very, very good care of it, Dot.”

    Of course I will, am I a stupid kid? “Yes, um, thanks awfully, David. Are you sure?”

    “Of course,” he says mildly. “Try it on.”

    Suddenly Uncle Jim gets up. “Yeah, come on, Dot, give it here.” So I get up and let him put it round my neck and lead me over to the big mirror over the mantelpiece. “There! Looks good, eh? That kid sister of hers, she's always done out in little bits of this, that and the other, but Dot hasn’t got any jewellery.”

    “I’ve got my gold keepers.”

    He sniffs slightly. “Yeah.”

    “Don’t blame Deanna, she always asks for that sort of stuff for birthdays and Christmases, but I always ask for books.” Gee, it looks really ace!

    Uncle Jim drifts over to the drinks trolley. “If you were one of my girls—”

    So she goes in this significant voice: “Yes, dear, but I think that’ll do, Dot’s father has got a tribe of them, you know.”

    “Yeah, and no spare dough,” I agree: why not call a spade a spade? And Ma P.-P. oughta know all about us, she’s known Aunty Kate for years, and what’s the point of lying to Nefertite and him? They can see I’m not out of the top flaming drawer, for Chrissakes. “The twins are gonna have to go to the orthodontist next year, didja know, Aunty Kate?”

    “Both at the same time, eh?” says Uncle Jim sympathetically, rattling bottles. “Gee, and to think when they come, me and ya dad agreed it was cheaper by the dozen. –Blow, thought I had something special here.”

    “Not before lunch, Jim.”

    “Eh? Aw—maybe not, no. Well, fill ’er up, Nefertite?”

    “Thought you’d never ask!” she says with that fruity laugh. “I’ll have a whisky, thanks, Jim.”

    “Sound woman.” He pours them both whiskies and takes Ma P.-P.’s glass, he thinks no-one can see him, but I can, he puts a small slug of eggnog in it and adds a really good belt of whisky.

    “Hey, Uncle Jim, can I have another?”

    “No,” he goes, doesn’t even have to think about it.

    Aunty Kate gets up. “You can come along and give me a hand, Dot. And Jim, for pity’s sake, spare the guests another round of Jingle-Bell Rock.”

    “I like it,” says David, grin, grin. “But try this instead, Jim.” He feels in the coat pocket of the draped Armani-type gear and hands him a CD. In a plastic case, but not a commercial one. Uncle Jim puts it in the player, looking dubious.

    “Yeah, just coming, Aunty Kate.”

    Aah’m dreamin’ of a Whaht-uh Chriss-meuhss—

    Nefertite gives a gasp and claps her hand over her mouth. Even little old Mrs Price-Powell blinks. I give a gulp and then I can't help myself, I fall all over the sitting-room, laughing myself silly.

    “Christmas Elvis,” says David, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “It’s a selection, Jim, not a commercial recording; I got onto to some old buddies in the music business, and they dredged them up for me. He’s really good on The Little Drummer Boy. Don’t think he’s got a blind notion of what a word of it means. Him and his dreuhm.”

    “I bet,” he says, grin, grin. “Thanks, David. I’ll treasure it.”

    “You’ll treasure it out in the shed, Jim,” says Aunty Kate on a weak note. “But it was a very kind thought, David.”

    –and-duh chuh-hildren list-unn-nuh, to those ole suh-lay b’hells in the snoo-ooo. Aa-ah’m dreamin’…

     And we escape to the kitchen.

    “He actually said ‘ole slay bells’.”

    “Yes, dear. Now, put an apron on, and shell these.”

    Real peas, whaddelse. No-one’s gonna want veggies at Christmas! I shell peas…

    Is she boiling the spuds? “Um, thought we were gonna have roast potatoes, Aunty Kate?”

    “I thought better of it,” she says on a grim note. “Considering that cherry pie your uncle ordered. And I’ve done the stuffing balls in canola oil.”

    “Mm.”

    “Someone has to watch his cholesterol intake, Dot!”

    “Yeah, I know, Aunty Kate. I think it’s sensible.”

    “I’m glad to hear it. And David Walsingham is not a young man.”

    Why’s she sounding so firm about it? No-one’s arguing. “No.”

    Now she’s giving me a sideways look, why?

    “Dot…”

    “Yeah?”

    “Nothing. Your uncle tells me you met a nice young man next-door, just a few days back.”

    “Eh, I mean, pardon?”

    Deep breath. “One of David’s pupils. Was it?”

    “Aw! Him! Yeah, he’s quite often there. Thinks he’s God’s gift to the Classical music audiences of the world or something.”

    “Oh? What does he play, dear?”

    “Like, the pieces? Like, the usual, Aunty Kate. Crash, crash, bonk, bonk, bonk, doh-ray-me-fah-soh-la-tee-doh.”

    She bites her lip. “I see.”

    “Oh, but David let him play a little bit of Chopin, I think it was a waltz, Dad’s got a record of it.”

    “Really? Very nice, dear!”

    “Yeah, but Banana—David said something about the judges not wanting that.”

    “Oh?”

    “Yeah. So Aidan got all sulky and got on with the crash, crash, bonk, bonk.”

    She pounces. “Aidan? Not Aidan Fortescue?”

    Oh, God, here we go. “Yeah.”

    “But he’s terribly talented, dear! Marion was telling me he’s been studying in Europe for years, but his father’s been quite ill—Peter Fortescue, Dot, the judge,”—go figure—“so he came home, but there was a terrible scene because he’d insisted on bringing out this frightful woman as his coach, so-called, and poor Fiona Fortescue—his mother, dear—found them in bed together on a Friday morning when her bridge club girls were due, and of course sent the woman packing! Well, she and poor Peter paid the woman’s fares, after all, and she was twice the boy’s age.”

    “Gee. What a nit, to go and get caught.”

    “Really, Dot,” she says on a weak note. Bet that was her thought, too. Yeah, it was, because she goes: “I must admit, the thought did occur that he could scarcely have done anything sillier. I mean, there are plenty of motels around.”

    “Exactly.”

    “Mm. Just keep an eye on those potatoes, Dot, we don’t want them to collapse.”

    Eh? You are gonna mash them, aren’t ya? They look all right to me. Well, boiling their heads off—Oh, turn them down: right.

    “And the upshot of that was, Aidan was threatening to go back to London, and Fiona was at her wits’ end, and then that wonderful Guy Adams from the university said he knew of a really first-class teacher, but there was absolutely no guarantee he’d take Aidan, he’s terribly particular about who he takes.”

    I can see that, yeah. Explains the holey carpets and the Sixties kitchen, too. Particular won’t bring in the shekels. Specially not in this burg.

    “Evidently he made the poor boy go through the most gruelling audition!”

    Right, I can see that, too. In that hot-as-Hell front room of his without the fan on—yep.

    “But of course he accepted him. Aidan’s quite brilliant, you know,” she says in this awed voice.

    “Ya mean his mum and his aunty say he is. And he’s not that much of a boy, he’d be older than me.”

    She blinks. “Oh—well, yes, Dot, I suppose he’s about twenty-two. Just finished his music degree, you see.”

    So I go: “Not young.”

    “No… Well! I had no idea our David was that music teacher!”

    No, too right ya didn’t. Gee, better get on the blower to Marion Fucking Fortescue straight away.

    “Of course, you can see he’s truly talented,” she says in this low special voice, the awe’s in there again.

    “Ya said that, Aunty Kate.”

    “What? Not young Aidan, Dot! David!”

    “Balls. He’s a banana-eating weirdo, I’ve heard ya call him Banana-Eater with me own ears.”

    “Only because I caught the silly phrase off you and your uncle, Dot,” she says, very weakly indeed.

    And the rest. Still, if she wants to believe she’s always known he was a genius, let her. No skin off my nose. “Yeah. I think these spuds might be done.”

    “Potatoes.” –Inspect, inspect. Yes, they are. And gee, she is gonna mash them, yeah. Oops, no, I am, in the big mixer-bowl and not to let it splatter. Gee, Aunty Kate, if ya don’t want it to splatter don’t turn on your electric mixer with the huge beaters. Uh—squash them up first, eh? Right. Squash, squash. “Hey, Aunty Kate?”

    “Mm-mm?”

    I look up, she’s getting the cherry pie out. Ooh, wow! “Hey, wow! Ace!”

    Smirk, smirk. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”

    “Better than ace. Splendiferous!”

    Gee, she’s thrilled, they’re simple-minded in many ways, aren’t they? Even though I know she’s pretty sharp, really. She puts it very carefully on top of the fridge to cool. Gee, it smells ambrosial.

    “What a wonderful smell!” says a male voice from the door and we both gasp, gee, thank God she put the pie down.

    The musical genius in person come in, grinning. “Mm! Not cherry pie, Kate?”

    “Well, yes, Jim insisted.”

    Ooh, he never! He wouldn’t bloody well dare.

    “Wonderful! –The Elvis is still going in there, I’m afraid,” he says, smile, smile, the suck-up.

    “Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame, David!” Quite flustered. Partly it’s because he complimented her cooking and partly—don’t get me wrong, Aunty Kate’s the most moral woman that ever walked, oh, ya got that—partly it’s because bloody Banana-Eater knows how to turn on the charm with middle-aged ladies. Jesus!

    So she goes: “What were you saying, Dot?”

    “Eh—Pardon? Oh!” I give Banana-Eater a cautious look,

    “Shall I go away again?” he says, doing the immense courtesy bit.

    So she goes: “Don’t be silly, David. –If it was something rude, Dot, we don’t want to hear it, thank you.”

    “It wasn’t rude, um, at least it wasn’t personally rude.”

    “No?” she goes dangerously.

    “I mean it wasn’t rude about a person.”

    His mouth’s doing that thing it does when he’s trying not to laugh. “In that case, I’d be grateful, for my part, if you’d enlighten us, Dot.”

    “David, it’ll be something and nothing: you know what they are that age. But if you must, you must, Dot.”

    Um, yeah? Oh! Right! So I go: “All right, David, but don’t say ya haven’t been warned. See, what I was gonna say is— And this is without prejudice, see? It doesn’t mean I like the thing, and if it was a dog it woulda been put down for attacking Aidan like that, though I’m not saying he’s not a total nit—”

    So she goes: “Dot, what are you talking about? Did your uncle give you whisky?”

    “No,” I lie quickly. “David knows.”

    She looks at him, he’s shaking slightly but he manages to say politely: “I think she’s trying to indicate delicately that she’s about to refer to Zingingerber: our cat, Kate."

    “Delicately!” A slight pause. You can see she’s sending up a prayer. “Go on, Dot.”

    And make it good—right. “Yeah, um, well, could it have a bit of turkey? Like, it’s huge, and there’s bound to be little bits left over… And it is Christmas,” I end glumly.

    “Good Heavens! Of course the creature can have— Is that what you were on about?”

    “Mm,” I say, nodding hard.

    Deep breath. “Dot Mallory, sometimes I wonder about you.”

    “Don’t, Kate!” he says with a laugh, “My sister and I both adore her!”

    Sharp look. “I dare say. Well, remind me about the cat after dinner, Dot.”

    “Um, I thought, maybe if I put a plate out now— Stop laughing, David! There’ll be less chance of us forgetting, you don’t know what Aunty Kate’s Chrissie dinners are like!”

    “She means, how much she and her uncle eat. And drink,” she notes drily. “Well, why not? Um, well,”—weakly—“one of the old plates, Dot.”

    He’s still laughing but up his, I get out an old bread and butter plate and put it carefully aside.

    So then Banana-Eater wants to know if he can do anything and she remembers that of course, he’s the cook, not Nefertite, and they have a cosy chat, so I just whip the potatoes until— Until forcibly stopped.

    “Potato purée,” he says with a smile. “Don’t panic, Kate. Get me the butter, Dot, and a piping bag.”

    I know what those are and where they live, I watched her do the cream on the trifle, so I get one out and a nozzle. “Like, is this nozzle okay?”

    “Fine. Now, an oven tray. And is there any—” Whatever sort of paper it is, she tells me which drawer it’s in and he puts that on the tray and mixes some of the butter into the potato, so much for cholesterol levels, and then pipes these neato little mounds, round and round like snails, on the tray. Gee. He’ll just pop them under the grill at the last minute.

    So she goes: “Well, I think we’re just about ready to go, David.”

    “Yeah,” I note in a strained voice, “the timer’s popped out.”

    They watch in frozen horror as I heave the giant roasting dish full of turkey out and bung it on the table. Well, heck, I’m not helpless, and I’m wearing oven gloves on both hands. “There!”

    “My God, that’s shortened my life by a good ten years,” he says in a faint voice.

    “Mine too, David!”

    “Pooh, I always get the turkey out for Mum, she always loses her nerve at the last min, um, shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell ya that, Aunty Kate. Ya won’t let on, will ya?”

    “No, of course not,” she says faintly. “Why?”

    “Because she’d slaughter—Oh! I dunno why she loses her nerve. But the timers are quite reliable. Ya wanna let it rest for a bit. Like, while ya make the gravy.”

    “Yes,” she says faintly. “Of course, dear.”

    “Dare one ask why your father doesn’t do it for her?” asks David, poking the thing’s leg with one of her, um, not pokers. Whatever. Steel knitting-needle things. Like shish-kebab sticks. “Done,” he says, smiling at her. “Or is he one of those males who feign helplessness in a kitchen?”

    So I go: “No, he’s usually keeping the peace in the lounge-room. The twins usually fight over their prezzies, you see.”

    “Of course!” Smile, smile. Gee, don’t bother, mate, I’m not an impressionable middle-aged lady.

    So they make the gravy together, agreeing that draining the peas into it would be the go— Who gives a rat’s. I mooch back into the lounge-room, pardon me, sitting-room. Cripes, what’s that?

    “Blue Christmas,” he says, grin, grin. “The King at his peak.”

    Old Ma P.-P. volunteers: “He really had quite a nice voice.” Not as if she believes it, though.

    “Yeah, him and the rest of the cows stuck in a ditch. The dinner’s nearly ready. Are we gonna have the wine like with it, and the champagne after, Uncle Jim, or ya wamme to open the champers now?”

    The old joker eyes me real dry, y’know? “Not now, or ever, thanks, Dot. Whether or not we have wine with the dinner.”

    “Gee, comprehensive.” So I mooch into the dining-room and look at the table. Did I forget— Uh, yeah, actually, I forgot the Xmas crackers but someone’s put them out.

    So Nefertite comes up to my side and goes: “It looks lovely, Dot.”

    “Yeah, really suitable if she was feeding the whole mob. Oh well, whaddever turns you on.”

    “I can assure you we appreciate it!”—Thinks: Yeah, one of ya does, Nefertite.—She lowers her voice and hoots in my ear: “What happens to the little stars afterwards?”

    “Ya got me there, Nefertite, I never had Chrissie din-dins with little gold and silver stars all over the table before, neither. Best guess, D.M. Mallory spelt M,U,G picks them up for next Chrissie?”

    So she collapses in this helpless sort of mixed wheezing and hooting fit. Yeah. But I bet I’m right: just you wait.

    She’s recovered from it enough to ask me in this sort of filled-with-foreboding voice if David’s making a pest of himself in the kitchen when there’s this triumphal fanfare and the procession enters with the first course. And we get to sit down. Not to eat: Ma P.-P. has to say grace but I’m expecting that, I been to Aunty Kate’s for Chrissie dinner before, ’member. It took the other guests by surprise, though: stopped him in his tracks, hah, hah.

    So she lets them get one mouthful down their gullets and then apologises all over the shop for the hors-d’oeuvres. Like, avocado halves, but she’s put some mushed-up muck with minced nuts and something else inside them, um, not ham, some sort of special stuff a bit like ham. Of course it’s quayte traditional in Adelaide to have a seafood starter, and Marion Fortescue, whom (yet) she thinks David may know, does the most delicious crayfish and prawn cocktail with a real cuisine minceur sauce—when’s she gonna notice that him and Nefertite have both turned green and are looking at her in horror?—but with poor Jim’s allergy, she’s always felt seafood is best avoided.

    Are they allergic to it, too? Cos surely they musta heard up-market ladies say “whom” and “or derv” and “kweezeen man-sir” before, or is it just the mention of Dame Fortescue that’s making them both look sick as dogs?

    So Nefertite goes, very, very faintly: “Seafood in this weather?” And Aunty Kate actually blinks.

    “Oh! Well, of course, Australians are used to refrigeration.”

    “Yeah, even Grandma Leach had a fridge, like before she went gaga. Bit like that lilac thing of yours. When its motor started up ya thought a Boeing was crash-landing on the roof.”

    “Mum had a fridge as far back as I can remember,” she says firmly. Overlooking the gaga bit because it’s Christmas, geddit? And forgetting to call it a refrigerator, nyah, nyah.

    So Banana-Eater says nicely: “Of course.” Up-himself wanker. “Just call us old-fashioned: I’m afraid we were brought up eat seafood only when the month had an R in it.”

    So good old Uncle Jim goes: “Eh? December had an R in it when I went to school.”

    Nyah, nyah! “Right. Like, you’re in the Southern Hemisphere now, David.”

    “Of course, Dot. Mea culpa,” he says nicely. Silly wanker.

    That lot didn’t touch the sides, personally I wouldn’t of minded a chunk of crayfish or a few fat prawns, when are we gonna get the real food? Come on, Ma P.-P., finish your mucked-up avocado, for Pete’s sake! “Aunty Kate, shall I bring in—” All right, I won’t. All right, let flaming David go out to the kitchen to help you.

    So they stagger in with the turkey and the veggies, meantime Nefertite’s absent-mindedly picked up one of her unfilled wine glasses and hurriedly put it down again, so whatever goes at nayce Norwood Chrissie dinners is sure as Hell not the done thing in England, but guess who isn’t volunteering to point it out to Aunty Kate?

    Uncle Jim’s shot out to the kitchen to lug in the ham and David shoots back for the gravy boat, like, gravy aircraft-carrier, think’d be more accurate, and is that it? Gee, it is, and now we can get the actual food! Yeah, I will have a leg, Uncle Jim, why not? And some white meat, since there’s plenty—thanks. I don’t think I’ll bother with a flaming sweet pot—Yeah, thanks, Aunty Kate, honey-baked sweet potato with sesame seeds, eh? Yum, yum. I’ll skip them p—All right, David, I will have some lovely fresh peas. (Ya wanker.) And one of his delightful potato balls? Potato balls? Ya mean potato snai—Uh, yeah, one of them, thanks, Aunty Kate. Yes, they do look nice. Have some gravy, Mrs Price-Powell. Gee, have more than that! Uh, no, sorry, Aunty Kate, of course she—Um, yeah. Ooh, thanks, Mrs Price-Powell, I will have it back, yeah. And if anybody ever remembers I’m here, I’ll have some of that cranberry sauce before a certain Banana-Eater takes the ruddy—Phew! Thought it was never gonna come my way. The best part of Christmas! Pass ya the mustard, Nefertite? All right, have the mustard, personally I think ya mad, mustard on ya Chrissie ham when ya could have cranberry jelly? And talking of which, where is the flaming—Um, yeah, thanks, David, I would like a slice. Or two. Lemme pass ya this here salad, I’m buggered if I’m gonna—Yeah, I will just have a cherry tomato and a bit of up-market curly lettuce, Aunty Kate, it is just like Mum’s Chrissie salad, yeah. That goes in the fridge and gets eaten up on Boxing Day with cold turkey—that Chrissie salad. Yep.

    And pour the wine, please, Jim! Gee, he was gunnoo, anyway. Okay, if you say so, Uncle Jim, no champagne yet, and if you can’t see the look on Nefertite’s face, I won’t point it out to ya. Ya can spare me the white, thanks: I don’t care if it came from the Barossa, whites are all the same, dead acid and give ya Hellish wind. Gee, the turkey’s robust enough to stand up to this here Clare Valley shiraz, is it? Thanks for that, David, we needed to know that, and in that case, I’ll have some.

    So can we star—Oh, that there muck what I deliberately overlooked is chestnut purée, is it, Nefertite? Must be in your honour, that’s for sure. And given that Aunty Kate’s eye is upon me, I will have a spoonful of it but—reinterpreting the eye—just a small spoonful.

    So now can we—No, all right, we gotta raise our glasses, and in that case, why couldn’t we of had the champers? Yeah, Merry Chrissie. Whaddever. Jesus! Can we eat? Blow me down, we can. Gee, this cranberry sauce is good! Also with the ham, yum!

    “Hey, Nefertite; you were mad to have mustard on ya ham.”

    “Dot!”

    Whaddid I say? Well, what did I?

    “Uh oh-ee men’—Shorry.”—Swallow.—“Sorry. I only meant the cranberry sauce goes with it real good. Well, if ya don’t like the seeds and the little bits of skin and stick—”

    “Dot!”

    The record’s stuck. “Well, it’s jam, really. Jam’s like that, Aunty Kate. I was only gonna say, if ya don’t like the sauce, try the jelly with it.”

    “It’s delicious,” he confirms, gee, thanks for that, Banana-Eater, I needed your support.

    So Nefertite tries the cranberry jelly with the ham and agrees it’s delicious and asks Aunty Kate what she used to make the wonderful crust on the ham, dunno if it’s technically a crust, but she’s mollified and peace reigns…

    Yeah, thanks, since you’re asking, a bit more white meat would just hit the spot, Uncle Jim. And some gravy, too. Lemme pass ya this here chestnut purée, Nefertite, that’s right! Like, take the lot, for mine, gee, it’s weird. And actually, I will have some more peas because I dunno what she did to them but they taste like—well, not like peas, no, like some other veggie entirely. Though that isn’t a Need-To-Know of youse Poms. Yeah, thanks, Uncle Jim, one of those potato snails of David’s ’ud go real good with this lot (given the flood of gravy, it sort of globbed itself out of this up-market aircraft-carrier). And thank Him on His Birthday, plus also His Dad, that it was you that went and called them that, not me. Ooh, yeah, thanks, David, I will just have another gla—

    “Not for Dot, I think, David, even if it is Christmas.”

    “But it’s good!”

    “It is rather good, Kate,” he says, doing the charm thing again, ugh! Spew!

    “Youngish but with considerable complexity,” adds Nefertite. She catches his eye. “The Unlamented Corrant was a wine buff: some of it rubbed off,” she explains.

    In case you were thinking Uncle Jim’s slow on the uptake, he isn’t, see, and to prove it he goes: “Yeah, well, in the Southern Hemisphere”—who’s that a dig at?—“we tend to drink ’em rather than cellaring ’em. But if ya fancy it, I could take ya down the vineyard, they might have some left at the cellar-door place.”

    “Lovely!” she hoots. Boy, did that go down well, the old joker’s  beaming all over his face.

    So up-himself Banana-Eater goes: “South Australia produces gallons of the stuff, Nefertite, where have you been living these last thirty years?”

    “Greenland, wasn’t it?” says Uncle Jim helpfully.

    So Nefertite’s eyes meet Banana-Eater’s again. Look, there is something definitely odd about this, and it isn’t the one glass of wine speaking, thanks. And it isn't the best behaviour in front of ya weird Aussie neighbours thing, either, Nefertite isn’t like that. Though he well could be, who knows or cares? Well, in front of Aunty Kate; he doesn’t give a stuff what he says or does in front of yours truly and Uncle Jim, he’s proved that.

    “Greenland, Jim?” says Aunty Kate with a laugh. “I hardly think so!”

    “I did come straight out from Greenland, Kate, that's what Jim’s thinking of. But of course I wasn’t living there for thirty years, what an awful thought! I just spent a few weeks there.”

    Aunty Kate thinks that must have been really interesting, she’s seen this dokko on it—yawn—and the Arvidsons actually went there, when was it, Jim? Does he care, poor old joker? Three winters back, she thinks. Of course that would have been your summer!

    “In the Northern Hemisphere,” goes the old joker, poker-face.

    Gee, that passed right over that freshly set yellow rinse, she’s well away: fascinating, but of course they are rather into the back-packing sort of holiday— Blah, blah. Yeah, right, Keith Arvidson’s into back-packing through the Outback in a giant campervan with air-con, a TV, a dishwasher, I kid you not, and a portable washing-machine that he makes Erin A. wash his ruddy safari shirts in. To look at her, you’d swear she’s totally liberated, like round the place she’s usually in a washed-out tee and khaki shorts and elastic-sided boots, and when she goes to the shops she wears a back-pack to carry the stuff and a kangaroo pouch purse like what no other Norwood lady of turned fifty-five would be seen dead in. No make-up, she’s very tanned, and her hair’s in this short, dead groovy cut, rather like a man’s, short back and sides as Dad would say. Gotta all be camouflage, eh? Anything he wants to do, she’s in there panting along in his wake, gathering up the discarded safari shirts as she goes. If ya call that liberated, all I can say is, you’re as dim as she is.

    “Eh? Sorry; what did you say, David?”

    “I said where were you, Dot?” Smile, smile, dunno if that’s genuine or not.

    “If ya wanna know, I was thinking about Erin Arvidson. Mrs, that is.”

    So Aunty Kate goes quickly: “Quite a free spirit!”

    “Aunty Kate, she’s not! Them khaki shorts and that ace hairdo and the kangaroo pouch, that’s all camouflage, she’s practically his slave! Miles worse than Mum or even Mrs Franchini! On second thoughts, make that specially Mrs Franchini, boy does she rule him with a rod of iron! And them dim Franchini boys.”

    “Er—well, yes, that’s traditional in those big Italian families, I think, dear… His slave? I really think you’re exaggerating, Dot.”

    “Bullshit, Kate.”—Guess who got round a second glass of that shiraz while she was blahing on about the flaming Arvidsons?—“The man only has to snap his fingers and she's rushing off to gather up tent-poles and climbing-ropes and camping-gas burners!”

    “Yeah! She is, Aunty Kate!”

    “I suppose I never looked at it in that way before,” she says weakly.

    So he goes: “Right. So next time you're feeling unliberated and oppressed,”—the shiraz on top of the Johnnies, right—“just thank your lucky stars you’re not married to flaming Keith Arvidson.” Grin, grin. “Open another, shall I, David?”

    “No!”

    “No-one asked you, Little Dot.” Boy, is he well away or is he well away? No-one in the family’s called me that since I was about five. Got something to do with the screaming it provoked when they tried—yeah.

    “But it’s not fair if you two are gonna sit here knocking back the red and I’m not allowed!”

    “Three,” says Nefertite, with a smile.

    “Four!” chirps old Ma Price-Powell and we all jump where we sit, Jesus, how much did he let her— And on top of them slugs of Johnnie she never knew she was getting, what’s more.

    “Five. And that's definitely a quorum, Dot,” says Aunt Kate. “You are only twenty, dear.”

    “If I was at Aunty May’s, Uncle Jerry’d let me drink!”

    “He would until May spotted him, yeah,” notes Uncle Jim fairly, getting up to open another bottle. Like, I read in an old book, actually I think it mighta been one of Uncle Jerry’s, that a good red oughta be opened about an hour before the meal and left to breathe. But I've never met an Aussie that knew that one. Though, given the air-con, probably pointless, anyway. Twenny-one Celsius, right? Old Ma P.-P. always brings a cardy. A special fancy Chrissie one, true, with little bits of embroidery, this year’s has got horrible little flowers done in beads as well, but nevertheless a definite cardy.

    So Aunty Kate goes: “Open the grape juice, Jim,” and we now realise that that’s what that bottle of grape juice is doing sitting in the wine cooler that only sees the light of day on Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries. The old joker’s allowed to put the juice in my water glass that I haven’t got water in. So D.M. Mallory, M,U,G, knocks back the grape juice while the rest of them get down on the second bottle of red. …Actually, it’s really nice. Sweet and fizzy. Though the thought that as we speak, or in the case of some, just eat and drink, Bernice the Ballerina’ll be knocking back ditto, is what ya could call a humiliating one—yeah. Even though they are an hour ahead of us. Well, Mum’s Chrissie din-dins never gets to the table on the dot of two, or even har’ past. Gee, I wonder who took the turkey out for her?

    “What is it, Dot, dear?”

    “Uh—nothing, Aunty Kate. I was just wondering who took the turkey out of the oven for Mum this year.”

    Gee, they’ve all burst into speech at once. Look, ya load of ancient nanas, I am not homesick! NOT HOMESICK, read my lips: N,O—What’s the point? Let them think it. And I’ll just grab that last potato snail and— Thank you, David, I could manage a slice of ham. And if ya keep that anxious expression on ya banana-eating face Aunty Kate may just let me get away with eating it, too. …Yep. Yummy.

    Gee, I’m full. Better not go near that last sweet potato, or I won’t have room for pud.

    Some people do it different, I know that, but at Aunty Kate’s first ya eat the main course, and then ya pull the crackers and put the funny hats on. Possibly the idea is that everybody, even Uncle Jim’s brother-in-law Geoff Robson, Uncle Geoff to some, that’s about as cheerful as a wet week in July, will have got enough food and drink down them by then to be softened up to the point of actually wearing the things. Like, the years they come over. Oh, ya got that, huh? It usually works, only not the year that Heather and Geoff’s Judy’s little Quentin was two, he screamed blue murder when they tried to put one on him, and then when dimwit Grandpa Geoff tried to encourage him by putting his on he screamed blue murder again. It was real good: one of the best Chrissies the Mallorys ever had… Eh?

    “I mean, Pardon? Oh! Me hat! Yeah.” Put hat on, effect of total nong, it’s yellow and pink and this dress is—Right. Ya couldn't forget, no. “I was just thinking about that time Judy’s little Quentin screamed blue murder when they tried to put a hat on him.”

    Old M P.-P.’s well away. “Oh, of course! Poor little soul! And then his grandfather had to go and make it worse!”

    “Yeah, like,” I explain helpfully to the puzzled Poms in our midst, “Quentin was only two—and don’t ask me where they got the name from, my guess’d be an Enid Blyton book, it’s about Judy’s reading level—and he didn’t like hats anyway, so what made them imagine he was gonna wanna wear a party hat, God only knows.”

    “Poor little boy,” agrees Nefertite, smiling like anything.

    So Banana-Eater goes: “Didn’t it occur that he was recalling the birth trauma?”

    “Honestly, David!”

    Boy, I’m one with you there, Nefertite. Yes, sirree, bob. Stupid wanker.

    “But of course that was what it was.” He’s like mildly surprised that anyone would protest. Yeah, right. “It’s a very common syndrome in young children.”

    “Like, ya sister’s point might be that we don’t wanna hear about birth traumas over our Chrissie dinners, David.”

    “Indeed it might, Dot!” she agrees with feeling. Boy, that red pointed hat with the fuzzy green paper thing on its point sure looks good above ya blue Egyptian gear, Nefertite.

    “Oh. I do beg everyone’s pardon.”

    So Aunty Kate goes very quick, hasn’t realised that he’s been taking the Mick the whole time: “Not at all, David! Of course, you’re perfectly right, but then, Judy isn’t the brightest of the bright, I’m afraid.”

    “She doesn’t sound it, no, Kate!” he says, giving her a lovely smile, the total hypocrite that he is. “Enid Blyton?” He waggles his eyebrows at her and she collapses in giggles.

    So on the strength of it, Uncle Jim gets up and puts some music on. Gee, guess what?

    Aah’m dreamin’ of a Whaht-uh Chriss-meuhss, jes’ lahk the werns Ah used to—Yeah.

    We clear the first course away rather slowly, Nefertite and Mrs P.-P. are joining Elvis and making it a trio while they help, Nefertite’s taking the bass and I think you'd have to say the old girl’s something above soprano, ouch. And now we can bring in the puds. There is a huge Chrissie cake but we don’t get that now, it’s for the afternoon when we’re sitting round totally stonkered. Like, there’s a real Christmas pudding, as well as the trifle, the cherry pie that’s been back in the oven to keep it warm, the ice cream—dunno what you might have, but I’ve never been in an Aussie house that didn’t have it on Chrissie Day—plus and the trifle, it hadda be made in its special dish, did I mention that? Glass. Beg ya pardon, crystal. Crystal bowl. And the fruit salad, like, it’s not just Aunty Kate’s normal exotic brekkie mixture, by no means. It’s got the usual things and as well, lychees (Dad calls them scented slime balls), fresh pineapple, fresh peaches, lashings of passionfruit, the orangey-pink kind of paw-paw, and star fruit. Gee, didja think they were never served outside of Kirribilli House? Well, you were wrong, there. See, ya slice them up thin, that like cross-section sure does explain why they’re called that, and sprinkle them with raw sugar and a squeeze of lime, I kid you not, to bring out the flavour, before mixing them in with everything else so that any taste they might of had in the first place is completely—yeah. Like that. Plus and these tiny, tiny whiskers of lime peel that yours truly got to grate off with this special thingo, like, not a grater, an implement, and then dump in a basin of ice water so that—Oh, forget it. It’s ace, and it’s wasted on this lot, we’ve all had far too much first course.

    Given the fuss that went on about the cherry pie, think I’d better start with that. While it’s warm. Funnily enough everybody else thinks so, too, so we all have slices of that with giant spoonfuls of whipped cream. Well, heck, it is Christmas. And she’s got this special silver dish, Rosie calls it a pobby dish, dunno where she got that one from but it suits it, sort of short and fat, with a special pobby spoon to match that forces you to take giant spoonfuls. Like, not a ladle as some have tried to claim in the past, but a short fat spoon with a bent handle. Banana-Eater’s so inspired that he favours us with a reminiscence of the farmhouse cream, so-called, he had in his boyhood but if anyone’s actually listening I’m Charley’s Aunt from Brazil where the nuts come from, this cherry pie is ACE!

    … Cripes, am I gonna have room for fruit salad and trifle? Um… yes, on the whole. Clean plates? But heck, there isn’t even a smear of cherry pie on mine—All right, Aunty Kate, clean plates. …Oh, goddit, goddit, these are the special glass thingos ya got at that fancy shop near D.J.’s that specialises in fancy crap for the table that you use once a year. Like, um, not exactly glasses, sort of halfway between a glass and a bowl…? Forget it, they hold mountains. The last time, I tell a lie, second to last time I was over here, we had trifle in them cos it was Carolyn’s birthday and her and the martyred hubby had come back from WA for it. Dunno why, except that maybe she fancied eating her mum’s cooking instead of having to do it herself, he’s the sort that goes into the kitchen looking helpless and makes such a cock-up of anything, down to burning the fucking toast, that the brain-washed females in his family rush in and do it for him. Twenny-eight if he’s a day. And there is a fair bit of it around, last decade of the millennium or not. Anyway, the glass meant that ya could see the individual layers of the individual trifles, geddit? That sort of fancy pudding dish.

    Nefertite thinks the trifle looks wonderful, but she really doesn’t think she can, Kate. She’ll just have a little fruit salad, we get such lovely fruit out here! Do we? Take ya word for it, Nefertite. Thankfully old Ma P.-P. follows her lead.

    That leaves me and Uncle Jim and Banana-Eater up for the trifle. It’s got peaches and passionfruit in it, so the only problem is, to have it with the fruit salad or by itself? Uncle Jim’s having it with. Hmm… Banana-Eater’s having it by itself. Hmm…

    So she goes: “There’ll be plenty left tomorrow, Dot, if you’re full.”

    I’m not full! I may shortly be fullish, I don’t deny it. Hmm…

    “You won’t have room for Christmas pudding if you fill up on trifle.”

    Yeah, but Aunty Kate, I thought ya wanted us to eat ya delicious trifle? Oops, can’t be all that delicious, Banana-Eater’s looking really startled. Or maybe it’s just the strength of that sherry she pours on the sponge, boy does it hit—Hang on. One of those books of Uncle Jerry’s that Rosie wouldn’t read, she said it was Pommy garbage, was on about real sherry, like from Spain. So maybe the expression is because of the sherry but not entirely because of the strength of it? Cos I know where she gets it, she gets it at Liquorland where Uncle Jim stocks up on the frosties, and Español it ain’t. And olé to you, too.

    “Um, well, ya did say there was brandy in the pudding, didn’tcha?”

    “Of course.”

    Hmm…

    So the old joker looks up from his trifle and fruit salad and goes: “Dot, you’re full.”

    “I am not!”

    “The fruit salad’s lovely, Dot. Very refreshing,” says Nefertite.

    “Ya made me mind up for me, Nefertite.” So I have fruit salad and, um, just a bit of cream. Well, it is Christmas. …Yeah, she’s right, it is quite refreshing. Them star fruit still don’t taste of nothing, though.

    Old Ma P.-P.’s launched into a long, boring story about one Xmas she and the dear departed, Reginald, I kid you not, spent at Never-heard-of-it in the Never-heard-of-it, oh, the Austrian Alps, eh? Never knew they had any. And everyone listens politely. Or looks polite while they allow their minds to…

    Huh? Oh, pass ya the cream, David? Sure, it’s all yours. –Is this a case of hollow legs, or is he gonna chunder all night like the ruddy twins after Joel Anderson’s birthday party? Gee, now Nefertite’s launched into a story about how her and the Unlamented Corrant—either the man never had a first name or she loathes him so much she can’t bear to pronounce it, one or the other, take ya pick—spent a perfectly frightful Xmas at Never-heard-of-it in the Never-heard-of-it. Somewhere in Europe, who gives a rat’s? You’d expect to be snowed in, wouldn’tcha? …Nope, don’t think I can manage the trifle after all, sigh. Not and a small slice of Xmas pud.

    Not Elvis again, Uncle Jim, please, please, please! Not on top of all this—Phew! Jingle-bell, jingle-bell, jingle-bell rock—

    “…So the ghastly man said, of course in the local dialect, my dears, so it took a while to sink in: ‘Eat the pony!’”

    Yeah, hilarious, screams of laughter, all that… Jingle-bell what, Jingle-bell plop! What are those lyrics? …Banana-Eater’s capping their long, boring stories with a long, boring story about a Xmas he spent in Greece with the rellies, Aunty Kate’s thrilled, why? What’s up-market about Greek rellies, for God’s sake? And that time she was staying with us and Rosie came round for tea with Christina Giorgopoulos she looked down her nose at her the entire evening. Well, she didn’t look too pleased with Rosie, either, but that mighta had something to do with the types the two of them had in tow, that was in Rosie’s surf lifesaver period. But they were clean enough, if solid concrete between the ears. …Geraldine Who, when she’s at home? And it’s not a Greek name. Nefertite’s got a very funny look on her face: is he making it all up, is that it? Or is she hoping he won’t trot out the juicier bits in front of Aunty Kate? And are the juicier bits closely connected with this Geraldine type? Because on second thoughts that look could well of indicted that. Who give’s a rat’s, anyway? Aren’t we ever gonna get the champagne? …Ugh, now Aunty Kate’s giving us the complete low-down on the Simpsons’ trip round the Greek islands. Yeah, well: the way Noelle Simpson tells it, her dad spent the entire time hanging over the rail, combination of Greek food and a small boat.

    Yeah, actually, Uncle Jim, I would fancy putting another tape on. Or CD.

    So she goes, quick as flash: “Not Elvis, thank you, Dot. Put on that lovely CD of Carols from K—” Oh, God! Fa-la-la, la, la, la-la-lah in fourteen-part refayned tasteful harmony, spew! Dunno whether it’s worse when they deck the halls with it or when they start describing it when it’s well grown, boy is that one a pain. She’s sure David will appreciate it, being musical. Judging by the look on her face, Nefertite’s not so sure. He’s smiling, the suck-up. Hang on, there’s a really good word for it… Sycophantically. Yep, that’s it. Sycophantically. Uncle Jim’s just looking dreamily at the trifle, all ya can do, really… ’Tis the season toow be jolly, fa-la-la-la— Boy, there’s nothing like a group of Anglicans for taking the joy out of anything even approaching a ruddy Chrissie carol, eh?

    Oh, no! Now Old Ma P.-P.’s got all inspired again: she’s telling them about the time she actually heard them in Cambr—Aw. Cambridge. Thought it was Oxford, actually. Well, same diff. Aunty Kate’s thrilled, natch. In fact this possibly justifies all the Chrissie dinners she’s fed her these past fifteen years. Let’s just hope the old bat never went along to hear ruddy Banana-Eater’s up-market Sir Dad at the flaming Albert Hall, because if she starts telling us how marvellous that was—

    Bless you, Uncle Jim! In fact, have a medal—have a cartload of medals. We do think it’s about time for the champagne, yeah! No “about” about it, in fact.

    Gee, she’s taken the hint, that’s a first. So the pudding is borne in, flaming, and put on the table, still flaming, just, and Uncle Jim opens the—gasp, grunt, tug, BANG! Opens the fizz. We already had a toast to Merry Christmas, if you lot noticed. No, they can’t of, they’re all beaming and toasting it again. All right, Merry Christmas.

    Cripes! Dry as bejasus, and as acid as any white I’ve ever drunk, and believe you me, I’ve drunk some Château Cardboards that’d de-coke yer engine and then some. What the fuck is it, extra-brut or something? Uncle Jim’s picked up the bottle again.

    “Where’d ya get this, Kate? Liquorland?”

    Certainly not, she got it at that very nayce wine shop in North Ad— Yeah, right. Me and Uncle Jim know that very nayce wine shop and any shop that isn’t properly air-conditioned, and isn’t air-conditioned at all after-hours, and stories its bottles less than two feet from a huge plate-glass window that gets all the afternoon sun knows less than nothing about wine. But probably everything about flogging acid-as-Hell whites to up-market Norwood ladies, yeah.

    “Shoulda got it at D.J.’s,” he says, dead serious, and Banana-Eater, hah, hah, chokes.

    “Like, they have got a bottle shop, David.”

    “I see, Dot,” he says, limp as Darien’s windscreen rag, nyah, nyah.

    “White wine’s always acid, anyway. And at least this is fizzy. You can top mine up, thanks, Uncle Jim.”

    “It’s your stomach.” But he pours. “Come on, Kate, love, what about the pud?”

    Poor Aunty Kate, she’s looking quite disconcerted. But Nefertite tells her the pudding looks marvellous so she cheers up and slices it up, just small slices, and everybody gets a slice, on a third pudding plate, hope Someone Up There is watching over the dishwasher, and not off-duty getting round the heavenly equivalent of— Be birthday cake, I s’pose. These aren’t technically pudding plates at all, they’re bread and butter plates, but very, very, very fancy ones— Yeah, right, Ma P.-P., Royal Whaddever is what they are. D.J.’s. Fifteenth wedding anniversary, you betcha.

    Cripes, Nefertite’s reckernised the pattern! Or is it on the back…? Nope. Oops!

    Aunty Kate takes a very deep breath as I reclaim my slice of pud from the tablecloth but on account it’s Xmas kindly refrains from comment. Heck, it’s not that bad, I hadn’t even put any cream on it yet! Or sauce. …Is that muck sauce? Better not ask, it’ll be great boot in gob again.

    So the old joker goes kindly: “Hard sauce, Dot. One of Aunty Ethel’s.”

    Ooh, the old dame that give her the recipe for the cherry pie filling, I’ll be up for some of that! … Cripes. Hard is what it is. Crumbs. Can brandy set this hard? Phew, gasp!

    “Dot, if you don’t like it—”

    “No, it’s ace, Aunty Kate!” Gasp, pant. “It’s got brandy in it, right?”

    “That’s right, dear.”

    “The brandy helps it to keep, Dot.”

    I think that was sincere on Banana-Eater’s part but in case it wasn’t, better hit back. “Dare say. Only it ain’t gonna get the chance to do that, David.”

    Gee, ya couldn’t of guessed, that gives him the chance to suck up to her again…

    Coffee? Coffee on top of all this food, ya gotta be— Coffee in the sitting-room plus and Uncle Jim’s special bottle, right, goddit. Just don’t inflict flaming White Christmas The Video on us— Oh, no, that’s Aunty May’s special, come to think of it. Burp!

    “Ooh, pardon! That champagne’s awfully fizzy!”

    Aunty Kate’s bustled out to the kitchen so this gives the old joker the chance to go: “Yeah, it got the bubbles right, eh?” So him and Banana-Eater collapse in wheezing giggles, pair of wankers. He could of put his foot down and insisted on buying the plonk himself, couldn’t he? Gee, the Hell with them!

    “Give you a hand, Aunty Kate? –Crikey Dick!”

    So she goes: “Mm.” And we look feebly round the mountain of wreckage that the kitchen’s turned into while we were stuffing our faces…

    “Gee, and the pudding plates are still in there.”

    “They can stay in there!”

    “Right. Where do we start?”

    “Well, uh—Ugh!”

    “What? Oh: some cretin’s put a plate down on the sweet-potato dish and squashed that last one, that’s all, Aunty Kate. Gee, it does look like a dead mouse, eh?”

    “Don’t, Dot.”

    All right, I won’t. Who the bleeding Hell dumped their paper hat into their pudding dish, it’s kind of melted into the remains of whatever that was, trifle, I think, and the colour’s run, yuck! Some helpful twit’s scraped a great pile of turkey skin and bones, and fatty bits off the ham into the ultra-posh, in fact antique dish the peas were in, into the bargain putting said dish into the greasy, globby, only half-rinsed oven tray the gravy was made in. One step better than dropping the thing on the floor, true.

    “I’ll just—” Oops, she’s shut her eyes, poor old Aunty Kate. “It’s all right, I'm being very careful.”

     “Dot, please,” she goes, very, very faintly.

    “See, I’ll just dump all these bones and things into the gravy pan. There! You can open your eyes.”

    She doesn’t open her eyes, she goes: “Is that dish all right?”

    “Yeah, fine. I can wash it by hand, if ya like.”

    So she opens her eyes and goes: “No, I think you'd better put it—” And stops. Cos there’s nowhere to put it down.

    The double sink’s full, of course. “This is like, a problem in logistics, see? Tell ya what, you put an apron on and grab some of that stuff out of one side of the sink, then I’ll wash this dish and put it back in the sideboard and at least that’ll be one thing saved from the wreck—” Cof. “One thing done.”

    Gee, she’s doing it. “Six people,” she says limply, as I start washing the thing. “We had less mess when I did a three-course dinner for thirty, for Andrew’s twenty-first.”

    Twenty-first that he didn’t want a family party for, yeah. In a flaming marquee that he didn’t want, yeah. “Eh? Aw. Yeah. Only ya did go a bit overboard with all the food and all the different plates, today.” Not to mention the cutlery, never seen so much cutlery, in fact put all the cutlery I ever seen together and it still wouldn’t add up to what’s hanging around in this here kitchen, sticky and greasy and revolting.

    So I get a clean tea-towel out of her clean tea-towel cupboard and dry the thing by hand and go through to the dining-room and put it in its place. Phew!

    Uncle Jim wanders in. “What was that, a brand from the burning?”

    “Exactly. And if you value your sanity, whaddam I saying, if ya wanna live to see Boxing Day, you’ll get on in the kitchen and volunteer to make the coff—” He’s got.

    Gee, I don’t think she even argued, she comes out and sits down on the sofa and lets Banana-Eater give her something out of a very peculiar bottle. So I go in the kitchen and Uncle Jim has taken that great pile of pots that was perched on one corner of the stove off the stove and has put them on the sacred, clean-enough-to-eat-off kitchen floor!

    “Did she see that?”

    “Shuddup. Find me the ruddy coffee, will ya?” he grunts, inspecting the innards of the coffee-pot in the light at the window over the sink.

    “That thing grown mould since last Chrissie?”

    “Shut up, Dot,” he sighs.

    “Don’t drop it in the sink, those are the good dinner plates some cretin’s dumped in there without rinsing them.”

    “Some Pommy cretin, that’ll of been,” he notes. “Think it’s all right.”

    “Rinse it out with the hot.”

    “Yeah.” He rinses it and puts the coffee in it.

    “Is that right? Dad’s doesn’t—”

    “Shut it, Dot. This is a bought-special-from-ruddy-D.J.’s flaming coffee-pot that makes the worst coffee known to m—” He breaks off with a gasp but it’s only Banana-Eater.

    “Known to man, would that be, Jim?” he says smoothly.

    “Martyred man, it was gonna be, actually, David.” So they both break down in sniggers.

    “Oh, shuddup, ya pair of wankers, she’s been slaving over a hot stove for ya for hours!”

    “Is this female solidarity, Dot?” he says, the up-himself Pommy wanker.

    “Yeah, it ruddy is, ya wanna make something of it, Pom?”

    “Oy, Dot!”

    “That’s all right, Jim: totally deserved. I was going to offer, in my feeble male rôle, to carry in a few demitasse cups, but actually,” he says, putting Aunty Kate’s apron on, “I’ll make a start on rinsing things, shall I? Got plenty of hot water?”

    So the old joker goes: “Yeah, it’s continuous. thanks, David.”

    “A Rheem. Install a Rheem, install a—” Uncle Jim’s clapped his hands over his ears, so I stop.

    “Dot, try this,” says Banana Eater with a grin, turning the hot water on. “Install a Rheem, install a Rheem—”

    “She’s not a bass, David!”

    David just looks at me, so I go: “Install a Rheem, install a Rheem, install a Rheem! Shit.”

    “She is a bass, beg ya pardon!” gasps the old joker, collapsing in splutters.

    “Contralto,” he says, smiling. “Been trying to sing soprano all your life, have you, Dot?”

    “Y—Uh, they wouldn’t have me in St Agatha’s school choir.”

    “More fools they,” he says calmly.

    “Um, Rosie took me to one of her singing lessons at Signorina Cantorelli’s once, well, um, she was supposed to be looking after me after school, y’know? Only it was the day of her lesson. And the old bird made me sing and said I oughta learn properly, only me and Rosie thought she was just trying to drum up custom.” Oops, Banana-Eater’s screwed up his face in agony. “Anyway, Mum and Dad couldn’t have afforded it, Rosie only went because Uncle Jerry’s got pots and he lets Aunty May spend it on whatever crap takes her fancy. And she imagined Rosie was gonna be this generation’s Dame Joan.”

    “And is she?”

    “Rosie? No way! Like, Signorina Cantorelli said her voice production wasn’t bad but she had no true musicality and her voice would never be operatic quality. Though she could do quite well in musical comedy. So Rosie told Aunty May to stop wasting the money.”

    “She doesn’t fancy musical comedy, then?”

    “No, she’s not a nit. Or Julie Andrews,” I add fairly. “Turn the waste disposal on, ya don’t need to fish that stuff out.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah. That switch there, and keep ya fingers well clear.” Gee, he’s managed to turn it on.

    “And for God’s sake,” says Uncle Jim above the din, “don’t let any of her ruddy best teaspoons go down there!”

    “No. –No!” he bellows, grinning. He switches it off, still grinning. “Does it always make that racket?”

    “Yeah, like, your old one didn’t, did it, Uncle Jim?”

    “No, this one makes a racket since I hadda replace its ruddy motor after she’d stuffed it up by dropping a fork down it.” He winks. “So I put in something with a bit of grunt, ya know? Like Tim the Toolman.”

    “Yeah!” I’m in ecstasy but Banana-Eater hasn’t got it. “Don’t you ever watch TV?” I say feebly, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

    “No. –That coffee’s boiling, I think, Jim.”

    “Eh? Aw. Fuck.” Rescue, rescue. “It’s all right. Well, no worse than usual. And listen, Dot—”

    “I’m not gonna say anything about it in front of her, whaddaya think I am?”

    “Um, no. Not that. Uh—the liqueurs.”

    “I’m old enough to—”

    “Yeah! Will you for Pete’s sake shut up and just listen?”

    All right, I will.

    “However peculiar ya think the muck she’s gonna force on you may be, just shut up and drink it, will ya?”

    Blank, blank. “Um, yeah.”

    “At that age,” says Banana-Eater in his up-himself Pommy drawl, “they lap up anything and think it’s marvellous, Jim. The sweeter the better.”

    “Uh—well, yeah, I do have a distinct memory of me and me brother Mike getting ourselves round half a bottle of old Aunty Ethel’s apricot brandy and being as sick as— Uh, yeah,” he ends limply as we both go into fits of the wheezing giggles. “What I was gonna say was, she’d trotted it out for their anniversary and we thought it was the cat’s whiskers.”

    “So you tried some more: mm,” he agrees.

    “Yeah. But this muck Kate made me buy, make it this selection of muck, it’s even worse, Dot, so be warned,” he warns.

    “Okay. Can’t be worse than that Scotch Mist stuff of Aunty May’s, but.”

     He gulps. “Ya prolly right. Well, come on. Got them fiddly cups, Dot? Good on ya.”

    So we go back in the lounge-r—Pardon, pardon, sit-ting-room, and have it. ’S’not that bad. Well, grows on ya. Appropriate: it’s greenish—like mould, yep.

    Quite some time later. I will have a drop more to go with this second cup of coffee, thanks, and to help wash down the minute slice of Chrissie cake that I may just be able to cram in, thanks again. …Boy, this Chrissie cake’s ace, like, real huge glacé cherries in it. Whole ones, not little chips of red plastic. I’m not saying it’s making her CD’s of lovely tasteful Xmas music bearable—no. Almost bearable. Bearable without actually having to spew ya heart out, gedd— Oh, ya did. And Yuletide roundelays to you, too.

    Quite some time later. Old Ma P.-P.’s long since got her pre-ordered Chrissie Day taxi home. “Gee, thought they were never gonna push off!”

    Funnily enough Aunty Kate’s not looking as displeased as I thought she was gonna the minute the words were out me mouth. In fact her and Uncle Jim are exchanging glances and hers is almost distinctly pleased. His is neutral, well, almost neutral. Neutral like he’s got a real fair idea of what she means.

    “Whaddare ya looking like that for?

    She doesn’t know what I mean. Not much. But all right, let them exchange funny looks, I don’t give a rat’s. Think I’ll have a bit of a lie-down before a nice night of watching the Queen’s Xmas message and the re-runs of, take ya pick, Carols from You-Know-Where on the ABC, and on the commercial channels, It’s A Wonderful Life, Scrooged, Miracle on 40-Whatever Street, Different Version of Scrooged (Possibly with Singing), Even Naycer Version of Scrooged Verging on Yer Actual Xmas Carol (Very Possibly Pommified)—Yeah, well. ’Tis the season to be joll—WHAT?

    Have I forgotten? They always go round to Marion’s on the evening of— God give me strength! Dame Fortescue in silk Chrissie Day lounging wear, I kid you not, gushing graciousness all over Aunty Kate as she gushes graciousness back and they sum up each other’s little Chrissie gifts. It’s nothing, really, dear, click, click, click. Gee, the old joker thinks I might like a bit of a lie-down first, does he? He’s right, there. Don’t care if I never wake up, frankly.

    “The dust shoulda cleared by then, too, Dot, we may be able to get through to ya mum and dad”—Look, ya silly old joker, I know ya mean well, but I AM NOT HOMESICK—“without the entire fucking Telstra infrastructure bursting into flames.”

    “Jim!”

    “Eh? Aw. Well, it is. Couldn’t even get an engaged signal, last time I tried.”

    “Nevertheless there’s no need to use that language in front of Dot, thank you.”—No? It made me feel better. Well, slightly better. Better as in didn’t wanna cut me throat on the spot, y’know?—“Off you go, Dot, dear, you’re yawning your head off.”

    (Yawn.) “Yeah. Thanks for the wonderful Chrissie dinner, Aunty Kate.”

    Beam, beam. “It was my pleasure, Dot. Come and give me a kiss.”

    Eh? I’ll say this for her, she’s a not a kissy aunt, boy do I loathe that. So I kiss her cheek and she gives me a peck and a hug, cripes. Uncle Jim gives me a real smacking kiss and a good hug, think that’s largely the green muck topping off the champers on top of the shiraz and the Johnnies. Though he’s not a bad old joker.

    I’m not gonna sleep, that’d be a waste of the afternoon, what’s left of it, I’ll just lie on my bed and read a bit more of Bleak…

    “Dot! Oy, DOT!”

    Blast, musta nodded off. “WHAT?”

    He opens the door, too bad if I’d of been starters, eh? Bad as Dad, really. “Put ya Chrissie dress back on, love, and come on, we’re running late for the F.F.’s.” Big wink, no prizes for guessing what that stands for, eh?

    Well, you can only die once. A long, slow, lingering— You said it.

    Aw. Gee. Dame Fortescue’s still in the same mansion. But note, she’s had that cut down, and all new turf (her and Wendalyn, uh-huh), and that planted, and new Federation wrought-iron railings, (a direct contradiction, but who’s correcting her, more accurately, who gives a rat’s ass), and the stonework completely blah, blah. Yeah. Ace. Whatever.

    Funnily enough it isn’t dark, this is the 25th of ruddy December in ruddy SA, after all, nevertheless all the strings of twinkling tree lights are on in the gracious and exotic plantations of the F.F. mansion (think I’ll adopt that one, good on the old joker), and the tiny lights in the HUGE Chrissie wreath on the front door are twinkling, too, nice touch, Aunty Kate’s already green as grass, how do they do that, she’s never seen one of— Oops, Uncle Jim’s giving it an electrical inspection, found the battery. Really, Jim, but she’s not so displeased, battery-driven isn’t up-market, black mark, Dame F.F. Look out, the door’s opening…

    Gee, and I thought downtown D.J.’s was festive but frayghtfully tasteful. Like, them outside twinkling lights, it now occurs, introduced the motif, because inside it’s festoons of the same, and the other dekkos are all white and gold, no colours need apply, thanks, this is Planet Tasteful Chrissie. Well, spew. Hasn’t anyone ever told the bloody woman that Christmas is meant to be merry? Apparently not, no. So we get past the kiss-kiss, miss ya cheek by miles bit, and the So this is Little Dot bit (I’ll kill the woman, on second thoughts I’ll kill both of them), and the Nothing very much, Oh my dear, you shouldn’t have, click, click, click bit. And now we gotta circulate. So good old Uncle Jim immediately circulates in the direction of the Johnnies and downs a triple before she can stop him. Serve her right, she’ll have to drive home and she won’t be able to indulge in Dame F.F.’s special fortified Chrissie punch, or, MUCK! Gasp, retch!

    “Hullo, Dot, it is you!”

    Gasp, retch. “Eh? Aw. Gidday, Aidan. What the Hell is this muck?”

    “Horrible, isn’t it?” he says happily.

    “Yeah. And green. Dead things floating on it, too.”

    “Um, lime and cucumber slices,” he says weakly. “Um, well, Aunty Marion wanted to have everything white with touches of gold, you see—”

    “This is green. G,R,E,E,N. Green.”

    “Yes. But the only base she could find that looked sort of gold was pineapple juice, and Uncle Roger’s allergic to that, it gives him hives.”

    He’s the male F.F., and he’s over there knocking back the triple Johnnies, in fact it was him that poured Uncle Jim one. Or two. “So? Isn’t that him in the Hawaiian lounging shirt knocking back the triple Johnnies, or has one mouthful of this muck turned my eyes fuzzy?”

    “Um, no. I mean, yes, it is him. Um, not Hawaiian. Gianni Versace.”

    “How much?” Gee, he’s gone red, how entrancing.

    “Gianni Versace, he’s a famous Italian designer!” he gasps.

    I don’t say Of what, he’ll probably tell me, and if it hasn’t sunk in by now that I was kidding, what’s the point of bothering? “Whaddever turns you on. So given he was never gonna come within coo-ee of this muck, why couldn’t she use pineapple juice?”

    “What? Oh! Well,” he says, in this lowered voice, gutless nong that he is, “she always imagines he’s going to drink it, you see.”

    “Goddit. There is a fair bit of that about,” I allow, watching as Uncle Jim lowers that one. Gee, and accepts another. “So what was wrong with white? Like, she coulda used vodka and lemonade,”—Why’s he wincing?—“like, Schweppes is up-market, isn’t it? Well, its ads sure are. And added a belt of Bacardi for the taste.”—Wincing again, well, no-one can say those “You live on an island, you drink Bacardi” ads aren’t up-market, so he can sit on it.—“And peeled the cucumber slices before she floated them in it, why not? Gee, and if she wanted real up-market”—Yeah, go on, wince—“she could of dropped some slimy lychees in the muck.”

    “Um, ye-es… Well,”—lowered voice again, boy is this tedious—“evidently there was a tantrum.” Significant look.

    Gee, fascinating. “That right? So it hadda be green, did it?”

    “Well, yes. Uncle Roger had to dash out at the last minute and get something special for it.”

    Midori, five’ll get ya ten. Leila waters it down and splashes it on plain vanilla ice-cream that she buys in bulk and sticks a mint-leaf lolly in it that she buys in bulk, too, if ya don’t believe me check out ya local corner deli, and calls the result Leila’s Minted Melon Delight and charges the punters seven bucks fifty a throw. Does a roaring trade with it all summer: there’s a clutch of up-market middle-aged lady shoppers that have discovered it and think it’s something really quite different, I kid you not. Likewise the dim dollybirds that work locally that she’s told it’s low-cal ice-cream. Not entirely a lie: how many calories can there be in a scoop that mingy?

    “That right? Not worth the effort.”

    “Um, no!” he agrees with an uneasy laugh, Jesus, what a feebleized wanker. Makes ya realise that ruddy Banana-Eater isn’t all bad. “Um, can I get you something else?”

    Yeah, thanks, ferociously acid champers that’ll have me burping all night. “Depends. Whaddis there?”

    “Oh, well, anything you care to name, really!” he says with yet another of those laughs, what’s wrong with him? Look, he’s a good three years older then me, he’s lived overseas for yonks, according to reliable report he’s had this Older Woman mistress— Forget it. What can ya do: if they’ve got the feebleized gene they’ve got it, and age shall not wither it, believe you me.

    Actually, a Bundy and Coke, talking of Bacardi, ’ud really hit the spot round about now. “I could really go a Bundy and Coke, thanks, Aidan.”

    “Er, well—”

    ’Look, if it's too down-market for your ruddy rellies to get it in, forget it.”

    So he gasps: “No, um, well, Uncle Roger might have some! Um, well, he has got Bacardi.”

    “Whaddever. And not too much ice, thanks.”

    “No,” he says obediently, putting his horrible hot hand on me elbow, ugh! Oh, goddit, gonna take me naycely over to the drinks troll—Shit. Make that full-blown bar, that trolley stationed handily just by Roger F.F.’s elbow (and Uncle Jim’s elbow, right) ain’t the half of it. Or the tenth. “God Almighty, he’s got enough booze here to stock the QEII!”

    “They do do a fair bit of entertaining, especially at this time of the year. Here we are…”

    “Are those all rum?”

    “Yes. –This is nice, I had it when I was in Paris.” Suddenly he grins at me. “Actually, it’s a cheap rum there!”

    “Goddit. Down-market, only yer aunty doesn’t know that, eh? It’ll do. Throw some Coke at it, wouldja?”

    Guess where the Coke lives? Yep, in a special bar fridge, the size of any ordinary family’s kitchen fridge, stuffed with cans and bottles of soft drinks that none of this lot are drinking. So he opens a can instead of opening a bottle and putting one of those fancy stoppers on it so as not to waste it. Aw, he’s gonna join me in the rum and Coke, is he? That makes him a Type 2. Rosie reckons there’s three types of bloke, see. Type 1 is the most common, they just knock back what they always knock back and give ya what they think you oughta have, not asking what ya want. Or if ya want. Type 2’s the Aidan type, ask you first and then slavishly join you in it whether or not they want it or like it. There is a fair bit of that about, according to her. Type 3 she's only met a few of, they’re very uncommon, like, ask you what you want and let you have it without criticising it or suggesting something else that’d be more suitable for ya, meantime having what they want. Objectively you may say this is only common sense and it can’t be that uncommon, Downunder. Think again. And just by the by, this is three basic types of bloke, not just three basic types of blokes’ attitudes to offering females grog. Ya don’t get it? Think about it.

    So we knock back Ronrico and Coke. Tastes just like Bundy and Coke, sorry about that, Paris. After a bit he says would I like to come out on the terrace. Terrace? Okay, why not? So we go out and guess what? It’s a patio. Terrace must be the up-market word for it and Aunty Kate can’t ever of heard Dame F.F. calling it that or she’d be calling hers that and telling Aunty May she must have one put in with the new wing.

    So he goes: “Lovely night, isn’t it?”

    Oh, sure. Slap! For Pete’s sake, haven’t these up-market F.F.’s ever heard of mosquito coils? Or, be fair, citronella candles, they don’t stink quite so much. “Yeah. It is Ross River virus ya get from mozzies, is it?”

    So he’s very, very crestfallen and we go inside again, just as well, really, because he was getting a goopy expression on his face and I don’t want a sloppy Chrissie kiss from feebleized Aidan Fortescue, musical genius or not. After he’s finished his drink he manages to ask me what I'm doing tomorrow, and instead of lying I dopily say “Nothing.” So he says, would I like to go to the beach, boy did I set myself up for that. Glenelg? Look, mate, it’ll be covered in bodies from end to end, and the only good thing about it’s the tram that goes there, what you’re not suggesting we go on. Fair enough, on Boxing Day there’d be a two-hour wait for the thing each end, never mind that it’s the day that Aussies spend at the beach. So I go: “Isn't there a beach with a bit of like, grass or that instead of rows of high-rises and foul kiddies’ Adventurelands or whaddever right at the back of it?” Cheers up, thinks we could go to Never-heard-of it Beach instead. How far is it? Just the western suburbs. Sounds all right, not that D.M. Mallory wouldn’t be a match for him if he got any thoughts in his head about wrestling in the passion-waggon or on a nice deserted beach.

    So I go: “Yeah, why not?” Flaming Norah, that wasn’t encouragement, mate! That was nothing-else-to-do-on-Boxing-Day-in-SA, combined with gotta-escape-Aunty-Kate’s-orbit-or-go-mad. He’ll pick me up at about eleven. And not to bring anything, he’ll bring a picnic basket. This means he’ll make his mum pack one. Oh, well, if she’s that enslaved, let her.

    Thank God, Aunty Kate’s waving the semaphore flags, so we can get on out of it. In the car she immediately drags it all out of me but I'm not kidding myself there was ever any hope she wouldn’t. Most appropriate, Dot!

    Appropriate? Funny way to put it. Hang on: she’ll mean he’s from a nayce home. Eh? Aw. All right, Aunty Kate I won’t be so tactless as to mention the judge to him. …It’s what? Alzheimer’s on top of the Parkinson’s? Yuck. Only he won’t pop off straight away with that, will he, what was the panic— Aw. Had a very bad fall, broke the hip and—

    “For Pete’s sake, call a spade a spade for once in yer life, Kate! Peter Fortescue’s mad as a hatter, has been for years, reason he hadda retire from the bench. And the so-called fall was nothing of the sort: ’e jumped off the garage roof. Thinks ’e’s the Red Baron.”

    “That’s apocryphal,” she says grimly.

    “All right, you tell us why ’e jumped off the garage roof.”

    “It was a fall. He was merely cleaning out the gutters.”

    “Yeah, well, maybe Lady Marion told you that, and I dare say it is the story Fiona F.’s put about, yeah, only not twenny min since Rog F. gave me the dinkum oil. Mad as a hatter. Thinks ’e’s the Red Baron. The boy thinks she oughta have him put away only Fiona F. won’t hear of it. And you can take that look off your mug, Rog has found a really decent place that’ll take him, at the cost of only megabucks. But the stupid woman’s digging her toes in.”

    After quite a while she says weakly: “I had heard rumours… Poor Fiona. But it’s understandable, Jim, he is her husband.”

    “Not her fault if ’e’s gone gaga.”

    “What? No! I mean, naturally she’s resisting having him put aw—into a home.”

    “You an’ Mum an’ Uncle George an’ everybody put Grandma in a home, eh, Aunty Kate?”

    “Well, yes, we did, Dot, and it wasn’t an easy decision, by any means, but it was the only thing to do.”

    Yeah, right, who’d want to have a crazy old bat that’s always accusing ya kids and grandkids of nicking her chocs sitting permanent in ya lounge-room? Added to which she kept going down the shops and forgetting where she lived. So I go: “Yeah. Well, Fiona Fortescue doesn’t sound to me like she’s got much sense.”

    “I dare say,” she says with a sigh. “Anyway, Dot, just don’t bring the subject up tomorrow.”

    Shit, I don’t wanna talk about his Dad’s Alzheimer’s! “No, course not. Thanks for the warning.”

    “Er—not at all, dear,” she says, really startled. Look, I’m not a stupid kid, do I wanna go and put me foot in me mouth and hurt his feeling into the bargain?

    So we get home and those who might of imagined that D.M. Mallory was wrong and she’d forgotten all about them stars she wanted on the table were wrong, see, because although we’ve missed the Queen’s Chrissie message, gee, she’s taped it, and we can sit down and watch it and have a nice cup of tea—not another drink, Jim, Christmas or not—and Dot can sort through this box of stars and make sure I “discard”, quote unquote, the dirty ones. Like, it’s not a box as such, it’s the lid of the chocs that someone gave her for Chrissie and given there’s only two left the box doesn’t need it. So Uncle Jim and me have a cuppa and a slice of Chrissie cake, since it’s there, and a choc, since they’re there, and she just has a cuppa.

    “S’pose that wing-ding at the Rog Fortescues’ll go on into the small hours,” he goes, yawning.

    “Mm? Oh—yes, dear.”

    “Give ’em till,” glances at the watch, “quarter to twelve or so, and they’ll be leaping into that Olympic-size pool in their fancy Gucci whatsits.”

    “Er—mm. Well, Marion and Roger do know some, uh—”

    “Middle-aged swingers,” he says with a yawn. “Read, morons. I’m for bed, think that’s enough Christmas for this year. You coming?”

    “Er—But we can hardly desert Dot, Jim. Not on Christmas Night!”

    “No, that’s all right, Aunty Kate, I’ve had enough TV. Think I might read my book in bed.”

    So that’s it, and we dump the teacups and the cake plates in the dishwasher and crawl thankfully off to beddy-byes.

    So I realise I’ve used up all Bernice the Ballerina’s pink soap: like, been over-enthusiastic with it in me eagerness to Fit In in a nayce Norwood home, and I go along to their room cos I don’t know where she keeps the mountains of spare soap she’s bound to have, and just as I’m about to knock I hear her say, clear as clear: “I must say, having the Walsinghams over went off better than I’d hoped.”

    “Well, yeah, Kate, ya the best cook in Adelaide, what were you worrying for?”

    “No!” she says with an actual laugh, can I interrupt now, or should I give the old joker time to bask in it? “Not that, silly, though I’m glad to know you think so! No, er, in view of Dot, dear.” (Heavily significant.)

    Eh? In view of me? What’s she on about?

    “Oh! Yeah! Too right!”—Well, he knows, that’s for sure.—“Can’t see it, myself.”

    “Oh, pooh. David Walsingham’s a terribly attractive man,” she goes.

    Eh?

    “Apparently not as attractive to Dot as wet-behind-the-ears young Aidan.”

    What? They’re a pair of up-themselves cretins!

    “Well, yes, dear. And thank God for it: I could never have faced her mother if— Well, you know.”

    “Don’t think she’s old enough to notice him in that way, Kate.”

    “No. And long may it last!” she says with feeling.

    Boy, are my ears burning or are they burning? I wouldn’t go in there for all the tea in China. Soap can wait till tomorrow. So I go tiptoe, tiptoe, creep, creep, back to the nightmare of co-ordinated Laura Ashley she’s got in here. Phew!

    … Banana-Eater? Terribly attractive? Bullshit! Knows how to grease up to middle-aged ladies, yeah, I’ll give ya that. …And as for feebleized Aidan, I wouldn’t have him if he was the last bloke on earth. Younger Richard Gere lookalike or not.

    Well, so much for flaming Chrissie Day. And we never did manage to get through to Mum and Dad, neither. Though very likely they tried to ring us while we were out at the F.F.s’.

    … Banana-Eater? Bull-shit.