Parent And Child

11

Parent And Child

    My God, what’s the time? We walked out of David’s house yesterday leaving the ruddy cat shut in and the front open and— Shit!

    Fall out of bed and fling my parka on over my pyjamas and rush—

    “Oh, hullo,” I say feebly as David’s discovered in his overcoat over a pair of Uncle Jim’s pyjamas fumbling at the array of locks Aunty Kate’s made the old joker put on the front door.

    “Hullo, Dot. I’ll bring the milk in for you: I’m just going to rescue Zingingerber.”

    “Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t gonna fetch the milk in, they don’t have it delivered. I was gonna rescue old Fat Cat, too. I’ll come with you. Um, hang on, think this door’s double-locked—yeah, ’tis, ya need the flaming key. Come on, we’ll go through the garage.”

    We go through the side door into the garage and he watches numbly as I raise the giant double garage door with a mere push on the button.

    “Uncle Jim like gizzmos.”

    “Er—yes. Is this a new car?”

    “Oh, Hell, yes! Haven’t you seen him driving it? No, well, he’s only had it about a week.”

    He totters numbly in my wake. “Does Kate know?” he croaks as we round the corner.

    “No.”

    After a moment he says limply: “That might once have seemed to matter.”

    “I know exactly what ya mean,” I agree with a sigh.

    “Mm.” Suddenly he puts his arm through mine and holds it hard against him. “It makes you wonder how in God’s name people ever got through the War, doesn’t it?”

    “I’ll say.”

    “Father was called up in 1944, when he turned eighteen,” he says heavily. “I always completely discounted every word he said about the War, but now—”

    “Mm.”

    Neither of us says any more, we just walk on arm-in-arm.

    “Croak, croak, croak!” Fat Cat shoots outside the minute we open the door.

    “In spite of his love of routine, he is accustomed to a certain amount of healthy neglect,” says David with a sigh as we go into the sitting-room.

    “Yeah.” Sniff, sniff. Gee, he hasn’t pissed in a corner. Or not in here.

    “What are you looking for, Dot?”

    “I’m not looking, as such, I’m checking. I think I’ll just check the other rooms.”

    He doesn’t say don’t, so I do it. Crikey, the poor brute musta held on all night! I go back in and report: “As far as I can tell, he hasn’t pissed inside at all.”

    “Good,” he says dully.

    “I’ll feed him, shall I?” I say as he resurfaces, croaking.

    “Mm. Thanks.”

    “Come on, Fat Cat!” He shoots down the passage, nearly tripping me up.

    Oh, shit. There’s some milk left, but nothing that looks as if a cat could eat it. No packaged cat food in the cupboards, no tins…

    “Hey, David?”

    “What?” he says, sniffing and rubbing his cheeks with the back of his hand.

    “Nothing.” I go back into the kitchen. He looks up from his saucer, shaking his whiskers with this real weird rattling sound. “I’ll see if there’s something I can defrost for you, fella. Failing that, I’ll nip back and get the rest of that casserole.” We-ell… There’s something shoved into the minute freezing compartment of the old lilac Frigidaire… No, I won’t risk it, it’ll be something he put in there five years back and forgot about.

    So I go back into the lounge-room and say: “You better have a shower and get changed. I’ll just shoot back to Uncle Jim’s and get something for Fat Cat to eat, okay?”

    “What? Oh. Okay.”

    So I rush off as fast as I can. The street’s empty, dunno what time it is, whether it’s too early for the cars to be pulling out of the driveways or they’ve already gone, but all the houses are silent and anonymous, and all the garage doors are firmly closed.

    Pant, pant, gasp! Only quarter to seven, well, that explains it. Unless— I put Aunty Kate’s flash kitchen radio on, my fingers are sweating so much I can hardly turn the knob, dunno if it’s exertion or fear. Phew! The usual cretinous radio voices. True, they’re reporting on the terrorist attacks, but— Phew. …Um, can cats eat carrot and onion? Wish I’d paid more attention to that nature programme, now, but ya get so many of them… Um, think it’s dogs that can get poisoned from onion. Hang on, I’ll check out the freezer… Ah! Packets of frozen steak, all with home-made labels neatly annotated in Aunty Kate’s writing: “Grilling steak, 1 portion. Heat elec. grill for 10 mins before grilling 5 mins on each side,” and like that. It isn’t that he’s completely helpless, it’s more that she believes he is.

    Um, how long do ya defrost grilling steak for? Oh, what the Hell, I’ll give it two min and if that doesn’t work I’ll blitz it again… Anyway, Fat Cat won’t mind if it’s half-cooked.

    So I rush back with it. The shower’s on, good. “Here ya go, Fat Cat!”

    “Croak, croak, croak!” Rub, rub, rub!

    I sit down on an old wooden kitchen chair and watch him eating it. You’d think he’d been starved for a fortnight, not merely skipped his tea. Um, was that enough? Musta been: he’s having a wash. Good. So I've just started to feel like a spare part when David comes in in clean clothes, well, different to what he had on yesterday.

    “I found some meat for him. The rest’s in the fridge.”

   “Thanks, Dot.” He looks round the kitchen in a lost way, is he looking for something?

    After a moment I go: “Ya wanna make some coffee?”

    “Yes, I’ll do that,” he says in a relieved voice.

    God, I wish I believed in You, because if I did I would ask You to please make Nefertite be all right, he’s bad enough now, what he’ll be like if— I won’t think about it. “Is there any bread? I could make some toast.”

    “What?”

    “Bread. I could make some toast.”

    “Um, yes. Thanks. Um, but I don’t think there’s any bread.”

    So I take a deep breath and get up and look. There’s a packet with one white crust in it and another plastic bag with some very, very mouldy rye.

    “That’s highly poisonous,” says David dully. “I ate some once: didn’t realise it had started to go mouldy, hadn’t bothered to turn the light on. Had awful stomach pains and then the runs for a week. I thought it was some ghastly bug,”—like, it was, mate, some ghastly bug that lives in mouldy rye!—“only then it dawned that the last thing I ate was that.”

    Right, only it didn’t teach you to chuck old rye bread out, did it? I don’t say anything, I just bung it in his kitchen tidy.

    “It’s this foul wet weather we’ve been having: everything’s started to grow mould, just like at home.”

    Eh? Oh, ya mean in England! “Yeah. We get mould in Sydney, too, it’s a much more humid climate than Adelaide. –Hang on, don’t put the coffee on the heat: let’s take it back to Uncle Jim’s.”

    He hesitates. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits wanly. “I suppose someone might try to ring here.”

    Bummer, he’s right. “Yeah, ya don’t want to miss a call.”

    “I—I’d rather not— I suppose you wouldn’t stay, would you, Dot?”

    “Um, the thing is, I don’t wanna leave Uncle Jim by himself.”

    “No, of course not. I was being selfish—sorry,” he goes, biting his lip.

    Shit. “Um, well, come back for breakfast, anyway. No-one’ll phone at this hour.”

    “But what time is it in New York?”

    Deep breath. “David, it’s much too soon for anybody to be getting through from New York: the infrastructure’ll be out.”

    “Oh—yes. But I—I suppose I should try to contact Mother. But— Um… I don’t know what the time difference is. I did work it out once, but…”

    “Ring her from Uncle Jim’s. The phone book tells ya the time differences, I hadda look it up once for Aunty May when she wanted to ring Rosie. Come on; I’m not saying a decent brekkie’ll make ya feel better, but you do need to eat.”

    “Very well,” he says in this exhausted voice, shit, am I bullying him?

    “Hey, David, if I’m bullying you, just tell me to stop, okay? The family all say I’m a bossy-boots.”

    “Bullying me?” he says dazedly. “No, I—No. I’m past making any decisions, I’m afraid. I don’t seem to be able to think, at all.”

    “All right, then, I’ll do ya thinking for ya. Come on, Uncle Jim’s got illegal strawberry jam and peanut butter.”

    He’s gonna go as he is but I grab his coat from the sitting-room and find his keys, they’re in the pretty little dish that sits on the mantelpiece in the sitting-room next to the kitschy Fifties chromium yacht he bought for a joke, he usually puts them there. And we go. This time I put Fat Cat out, his fur’s real thick, he’ll be okay.

    Most of yesterday was more of the same like the day before, really. David couldn’t get through to his mother, though the number seemed to be ringing. I dialled again for him, just to make sure he wasn’t ringing Brazil or Japan or Wagga Wagga, like that, but still no dice. Carolyn and Megan both rang Uncle Jim, and his sister Valerie came round and earbashed us for a while. David went home, he couldn’t take it. When she went me and Uncle Jim each had a good stiff belt of Johnnie, never mind what the yardarm was doing. David came back around teatime. He didn’t say anything, just sat down on the sofa beside Uncle Jim, so I just went and got the tea for us all.

    Isabelle finally got through in the evening. Her and Scott had driven in to Brizzie on the Wednesday, never knew anything about anything because he was playing his country music tapes in the car, until they got to the airport and found all flights were grounded. They hung around for a bit but finally gave up and went to his mum’s for the night. So yesterday they tried to get through to us but the phone was engaged, dunno whether it was when Uncle Jim was dialling up or—Whatever. So they drove home, no point in hanging around in the city. Since then they just been glued to the TV in their lounge-room with the two sets of holiday-makers from the caravan park: Mr and Mrs Gifkins, they’ve got a portable TV but ya don’t get much of a picture on them, and anyway they fancied the company, and three girls that’ve got a tent, they were really miserable because the weather hasn’t been too shit-hot, well, not cold but very windy and raining off and on, and their trannie wasn’t picking up much.

    Uncle Jerry rang, Aunty May was lying down, the doc came and gave her a sedative. He said not to bother about how much leave I was due. Well, “bloody leave”, actually. Just to stay on with Uncle Jim for as long as I wanted to, and of course go up and see Isabelle after that, and not to worry about the job, it’ll still be there when I get back. “The fucking job”, actually.

    One good thing, Aunty Kate finally got through. Uncle Jim was really on edge, he had managed to get through to the flat in London but the number just rang out. They were next-door with Rosie’s friend old Miss Hammersley, was the story. She seems to have had a crowd of them, not just Aunty Kate and Rosie, but Rupy, too, and Miss Winslow from downstairs, and the girl that’s been chosen to take the main rôle in the next series of The Captain’s Daughter, Katie Herlihy, her name is. She’s Euan Keel’s latest girlfriend, the one that was down in the country with him when Aunty Kate gave him the old heave-ho last month. Last I heard she was staying in Euan’s flat in London, so when Rosie came on the line I said, more because I couldn’t think of anything to say, Wasn’t he there, too, and she said sourly No, he seemed to be keeping his head down, she didn’t think “supportive” was in his vocabulary and she always had said he had the backbone of a jellyfish. Oops. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I mean, I could think of a lot of things not to say, like was there any news of John’s American friends, like that. So finally I said feebly: “How’s John?”

    “Dunno, really, Dot,” she said with a sigh. “We’ve hardly laid eyes on him, he’s been at the Admiralty non-stop.” Ouch. So I didn’t say how was she keeping, or had she seen the doc or like that.

    When I hung up and told Uncle Jim he said of course John would have to be in at the Admiralty at a time like this. Well, yes, I agree, but does that make it better? The baby’s due any day now.

    I’ve decided to hang on here with Uncle Jim until Rosie’s had the baby. It just seems the natural thing to do. Anyway, David’s still a wreck, there’s been no news of Nefertite. He did manage to leave a message with the Foreign Affairs contact number but whether that’ll produce anything, God knows. I mean, these are the same lot that when Rosalie Johnson and her boyfriend were stranded in northern Thailand with all their money and their return tickets pinched first told Mr and Mrs Johnson they didn’t have no record of them and then told them that Australian nationals who got themselves into trouble were not the responsibility of the Australian Embassy (I kid you not) and they, Mr and Mrs Johnson, would have pay for their fares back. He’s on a disability pension, and she’s been unemployed since the fucking shirt factory closed down under Paul Keating, for God’s sake! I didn’t tell David this encouraging story, for one reason or another.

    So it’s been nearly a week since the tragedy and the phone rings. He’s making a cuppa so I nip out and grab— Aunty Kate? It’s nearly midnight our time, what the Christ time must it be over—Oh, behind us, aren’t they? So, three in the afternoon, something like that? Rosie had the baby this morning, a boy, mother and son both doing very well! Phew! Uncle Jim’s followed me, he’s so relieved he has to sit down on the stupid little stool with the spindly wrought-iron legs that she keeps in the passage by the matching phone table. So I generously give him the receiver but don’t go away, in fact I put my ear next to his. Crikey, it came so quick she didn’t have time to go to the hospital! Well, the pains had started during the early hours but she thought it was just wind, she’s been having very bad wind lately—me and Uncle Jim exchange incredulous looks—so Aunty Kate and old Miss Winslow from downstairs hadda deliver it!

    “Jesus, Kate, are you all right?” he croaks.

    Of course she is. It was meat and drink to her! She doesn’t put it quite like that but she might as well. Phew. Turns out old Miss Winslow used to be a nursing sister, but given she’s well into her seventies… Anyway, the doc turned up shortly after the fair, said they were both fine, he’d recommend tap dancing up until the sixth month to all his mums, no need to go to the hospital. So Uncle Jim goes: “Eh?” And I cry: “But Aunty Kate, it isn’t hygienic, what if she catches something?”

    Apparently childbirth is a perfectly natural process and “Sister” Winslow is right there and they have home births much more in Pongo than they do here. (Like, that’d be right: I have read about it occasionally in the women’s mags but I don’t know of anybody that was daft enough to actually do it.) In any case a clean home is far more hygienic than any modern hospital, the temperature they keep those places at and blah, blah, something about staph infections, we’re not really listening. The baby is a splendidly healthy little chap and the doctor will pop in twice a day.

    So the old joker goes feebly: “Yeah. Uh—what’s John think of it?”

    Over the moon, of course. That isn’t what he meant, ya silly moo! I open my mouth and then think better of it, as he pats my shoulder. –I’m now kneeling beside him, geddit?

    “And they’ll probably call him Something John or John Something,” she says briskly, “but at the moment he seems to be Baby Bunting!”

    “That’ll of been Rosie,” I discern unerringly.

    “Of course, dear! Now, Jim, I hope you’re seeing that Dot keeps to a sensible diet; I know it’s been a very trying time for everybody—” At this point I give it away and go into the family-room and turn the sound off, let’s hope she couldn’t hear it. Given the time, also given what programme it is.

    So he comes back in, grinning like anything, and goes: “Well, that’s good news, eh?”

    “Mm!” Suddenly I burst into tears.

    He doesn’t seem surprised, I register groggily, he just pours me a belt and comes to pat my shoulder. “Come on, love, get it down you.”

    “I sort—of thought—“

    “Never mind that, drink it up.”

    I drink it up and finally reveal, blowing my nose on his hanky, mine got used up during this afternoon’s session of TV watching, “I was afraid she might go into labour prematurely.”

    “Yeah, well, in the ninth month, it wouldn’t have made no difference, love. But I know what ya mean.” He fetches himself a belt and refills my glass. “Well, all’s well that ends well, eh? Here’s to ’em: Rosie and the baby!”

    “Rosie and the baby!” I manage to croak, almost managing to smile.

    Whatever crap we were planning to watch tonight, forget it. We both stagger off to bed.

    Seven-forty-two ack emma. I’m in my pyjamas and dressing-gown just about to start making toast and Uncle Jim, still illegally in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, has just decided real coffee might be in order this morning and is inspecting the coffee-pot’s innards over by the window when the phone rings. I’m nearest so I belt out.

    “Dot, dear, is that you?”

    Aunty May. Uncle Jerry will of held her back bodily until eight twelve their time.

    “Yeah hi, Aunty May.”

    “How are you, dear?”

    “Yeah good, thanks, Aunty May.” Uncle Jim appears, raising his eyebrows, so I mouth: “Aunty May” and he disappears, shuddering. Right, a nod’s as good as a wink, I’ll tell her he’s sleeping in.

    Yeah, great news, Aunty May. Yeah, I’m sure John’s thrilled it’s a boy. (I’m equally sure he’d of been thrilled if it was a girl: I mean, at his age?) Yeah, it’ll be lovely if they name it Something John or John Something. A pale blue knitted suit? (You already sent her five hundred sets of pale lemon, pale green and ordinary white!) Ace, Aunty May. Yep, a baby can always do with them. Eh? No, I’m sure the English baby foods are just as good as ours (and I’m also sure Rosie doesn’t want Commonwealth food parcels, for Chrissakes!). And anyway, Aunty Kate’s on hand, she’ll make sure Rosie gives it the right stuff! (And I sure hope I’m striking the right bracing note without overdoing it.) Um, yeah, I have heard from Isabelle, her and Scott are okay. Um, no, I haven’t rung her with the news (given the time Aunty Kate rang us last night it would of been one in the morning their time before I could of rung her, ya silly hen), but of course I’ll let her know today. This morning, yes. What? No, I don’t think you oughta ring the papers, Aunty May! Yes, true, it would be nice for them to be able to publish some happy news for a change and yes, we know Rosie is a Household Name now, but I don't think it would be a good idea! (And in two secs I’m gonna demand to speak to Uncle Jerry; for God’s sake, woman, they’ll be round your doorstep like flies round a rotting roo carcass anyway, ya wanna go and ask for it?)

    But before I can say another word she bursts into sobs, gasping through them: “I’m—so—happy!”

    Suddenly Uncle Jerry’s voice says in my ear: “At least she didn’t tell you it’d be your turn next.”

    Feebly: “Uh, no. Hi, Uncle Jerry. Um, congratulations.”

    Silence.

    Then he goes politely:  “I was waiting for you to call me Grandpa.”

    “Hah, hah. Uh—oh, cripes, I geddit. Everybody has, eh?

    “Mm. From Betty and Deirdre from work”—gulp; well, they have known him ever since Rosie was in naps herself, true—“to the infant’s cretinous uncle.”

    “Kenny? He would!”

    “Yes. He appears, alone of humanity, make that near-humanity,” says his father grimly, “to be completely oblivious to anything that’s been happening in the world arena lately.”

    Shit. Stupid toad. “Um, that’ll be his way of coping with it, Uncle Jerry.”

    “I dare say. Funnily enough I’d rather he was round here helping prop up his mother. Or at least giving me a chance to belt into the office to see it hasn’t burnt down in the interim,” he says acidly.

    “Shit, ya mean he—” No. Well, him all over. He didn’t even phone after the terrorist attacks, Uncle Jerry hadda ring him and the toad said if he was getting himself worked up because of Rosie, childbirth was a natural process and there was no logical reason to suppose the Brits would be attacked just because the Yanks had been. This might be true, well, yeah, it is true, but Jesus!

    Uh—yeah, since you ask, Uncle Jerry, I do know of one other person in the civilised world that’s behaving like that, but would it do any good to tell ya? Well, might calm ya down. “Um, yeah, well, I’ve heard of one: Rosie said that Euan Keel was keeping his head down. His new girlfriend—you know, Rosie’s friend Katie Herlihy that’s in the new series—she came round and stayed with the old lady next-door to them.”

    “Yes,” he says grimly. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am that Rosie dumped that worthless prick.”

    Er—yes, and I won’t say anything about John being in at the Admiralty for the past solid week plus and having gone off to it in the morning and missed the birth of his son. “Mm.”

    “At a time like this,” he says grimly, reading my mind, “John wouldn’t be the man he is if he didn’t put duty first.”

    Uncle Jerry, you sound like someone out of one of those bloody Pommy War films with Noël Coward or John Mills being stiff-upper-lip! Gee, I manage not to say it. “I suppose.”

    “Why do you think she married him?” he says, think he’s smiling.

    Look, to tell ya the truth, which I’m not gonna, I’ve been wondering that for some time! I mean, yeah, if you can overlook the age and the baldness, it doesn’t turn me on the way it does her and apparently half the current generation, he is the dish to end all dishes. And bags of charm—which, I may add, he knows how to use, I mean, he didn’t use it on me, he’s also highly intelligent plus and possessed of ultimate good taste, but ya shoulda seen him turning it on with Mum and Aunty May!

    “Well?” he says with a definite laugh.

    “Well, she’s admitted to me in the past that she didn’t want a bloke that’d let her walk all over him, if that’s what ya getting at.”

    “Something very like that, yes!”

    “But he might at least have been supportive!”

    “What? Oh: catch-phrase of the liberated twenty-first century,” he says, the snide bastard that he is. “I don’t know how much Kate said to you—and I don’t want to know, thanks—but Rosie had been having frightful wind for days, not to say nights, so they both thought yesterday morning’s pains were more of the same. Otherwise, given that the idiots at the Admiralty seem to be back to some sort of normal schedule, he’d’ve stayed home with her.”

    “Oh,” I go lamely.

    “Get it?” he says, laughing again.

    “Yeah.”—Help, I can hear Aunty May gasping in the background—through the sobs, this is: “Stop being-horrible to Little Dot!”—“I better let you go, Uncle Jerry.”

    “Mm, back to the next session of mopping. –May! Stop bawling, just be thankful Rosie and the kid are fine! –How’s that David of yours, by the way, Dot? Any news of the sister?”

    Why have I gone red as fire at the end of this here phone line? What a dill! And I don’t even suspect him of saying it on purpose, he’s too lit up over the baby to do that.

    “Um, well, he’s just about holding it together,” I go lamely. “We haven’t heard from Nefertite.”

    “No. Well, I’d say there should be some news soon. Uh—well, between you and me, Dot, John’s let on that his friend Wes Schneider bought it in the Pentagon do. Don’t know if they ever mentioned him? He saw a lot of him when he was in Washington.”

    “Wes. Oh, yes,” I croak, in the background Aunty May’s wailed: “See?” and burst into a fresh storm of sobs.

    “I’ll have to go, Dot. Don’t mention Wes to Kate or Rosie, they don’t know.”

    “Oh—right. Well, thanks for ringing, Uncle Jerry,” I go lamely.

    “Don’t thank me, I couldn’t stop her. –May! Stop that watering-pot stuff this instant! I’ve had enough!” he shouts, hanging up.

    Shit. So much for supportive spouses. Well, he has had a fair bit of it, over the past nearly thirty years of married life.

    I go back into the kitchen and Uncle Jim says drily: “Don’t tell me: May bawled and Jerry shouted.”

    “Um, yeah. Well, they are both pleased.”

    “Yeah. Well, life’s like that,” he says wryly. “We seem to have eaten all the strawberry jam, better do some shopping today, eh? And what say we nip over to Goodwood for young Deanna’s beads? It’ll be a change of scene, at least.”

   So we do that

    A couple more days have gone by, no news about Nefertite. I’ve just been over to David’s for a bit. The front door was unlocked so I went straight in. He was just sitting in front of the TV. He didn’t say anything at all, not even Hullo. So I made him a cup of tea and sat with him for a bit. He drank the tea, I suppose that was something. After quite a while I said: “Maybe no news is good news, David.” And he said, not looking at me: “One can only suppose these cretinous popular myths spring from the cretinous collective mind.”

    Right, a nod’s as good as a wink, so I came on back to Uncle Jim’s. The old joker’s gone back to his shed during the day, think he’s had all he can take. So I went out and joined him.

    So I’m standing here watching him, dunno what it is, something that involves bits of wood and planing, I love it when the shavings come off in big curls. The wood smells good, too. Out of the blue he goes: “It’ll be his way of coping with it, Dot.”

    “What will?” Shit, didn't mean to shout.

    “Whatever he done or said. Or didn’t do.”

    “Sometimes I think he’s as bad as that creep Euan Keel!”

    “Eh? Who?”

    Gulp. Feebly: “Rosie’s ex-boyfriend.”

    So he goes drily: “Dare say. Which one of the many, though?”

    “Uncle Jim! The actor! You said you and Aunty Kate met him when you were in England!”

    “Aw! That joker!” Plane, plane, curl, curl. Picks up his sanding block. Sand, sand, blow. Sand… “Wouldn’t say that. Well, never saw that much of him. Struck me as pretty feeble, though.”

    “That’s my point!”

    “Yeah, well, no need to make a mess with those shavings on the strength of it.”

    “Eh? Oh—sorry.”

    He sighs. “Go on, what did ’e say?”

    “Something real stupid, whatcha think?”

    So he puts down the sanding block and eyes me dubiously. “What?”

    “Nothing! I asked for it, all right? But there was no need for—” Choke, gulp.

    “Given he hasn't heard a blind word from New York—”

    “YES! All right!”

    Uncle Jim picks up his piece of wood and squints at it. Then he puts it down on the bench. Then he goes: “Ya gotta make allowances for people, Dot.”

    Ya know what? I thought I was, and then the prick goes and— “Especially when they’re deliberately flattening you, is this?”

    “Ye-ah. Well, I’m no psychologist. Only don’t they say people tend to hit out at their nearest and dearest when they’re hurt or scared? Words to that effect.”

    What flaming nearest and dearest, ya stupid old codger? I just stand here, red and glaring.

    So he goes: “Cut him a bit of slack, eh?”

    “A bit!”

    “All right, a lot,” he says mildly. “And um, just bear in mind, Dot…” Stands there like a nana with the piece of wood in his mitt.

    So I go, sulky as all get out: “What?”

    “Um, well, people don't change. What I mean is, don't expect him to change, or that you're gonna be able to change him.”

    What? What the fuck is he on about? Stupid old—

    “Just because it's a flaming world crisis, he isn’t gonna… Um, well, ya do hear of cases where people rise to the occasion, that’s true.”

    “Highly relevant!”

    “Yeah. Um, well, my philosophy’s always been, ya gotta accept people for what they are. Warts and all.”

    Zat so? Really? Look, if ya come out with one more cliché, ya stupid ole bugger, I’m gonna CROWN YA!

    “A cup of tea’d hit the spot about now,” he notes, feeling the edge of his fucking piece of wood.

    All right, all right, all right! It’s ten thirty-two a.m., so by her flaming timetable ya running two minutes late, so given ya never even looked at ya watch, ya just a pathetically brainwashed old dickhead!

    “Not if ya don't feel like making it, though,” he notes as the silence lengthens.

    I was gonna say, real snide, isn't it a bit late for morning tea—“No, I'll make it.”

    “Thanks, Dot,” he says mildly as I go. Give me strength! I don’t care if I live to be a hundred, I am never gonna get that set in my ways! And if he dares to bring up the subject of David again over morning tea—

    He doesn’t. What he does do is get out this fucking gardening magazine and bury himself in it. Silly old nit.

    Next morning. Making toast. Ring, ring! It’s barely seven-thirty, if that’s bloody Aunty May— “Hullo!”

    Short silence, odd quality to it, kind of echoing? Is it a heavy br—

    “Hi, Dot, it’s Rosie. I didn’t get you out of bed, did I?”

    So I go lamely: “No, I was just making some toast. Um, sorry, thought it might be Aunty May. Um, sorry!”

    “That’s all right, Dot, quite understandable!”

    Ulp. After all, the woman is her mother. “Yeah.” She sounds okay but I ask anyway: “Are you okay?”

    “Yes, fine. So’s Baby Bunting,” she says, you can hear she's smiling.

    “Oh, good!” So why is she ringing? Ooh, help! “Is Aunty Kate okay?” I gasp.

    “Yeah, she’s fine.”

    Sag. “Oh. Um, what’s the time over there?”

    “Only about half-past ten. Are you okay, Dot?”

    “Yeah.” –It’s not me that’s just had a baby, is it?

    “Good. Thanks very much for the flowers, they’re lovely.”

    “Heck, that’s okay. Well, I gotta admit, me and Uncle Jim just went to the florist on her list and put the system in motion, like we were ordered to. Glad it worked.”

    “Of course it worked, it wouldn’t dare not to! And is Uncle Jim keeping his pecker up?”

    “Pretty much, yeah. Well, um— Is she there?” I hiss.

    “No, she’s down at Doris Winslow’s swapping crochet patterns. And John’s walking Tim.”

    That's his big black dog, forget what sort he is. I get the picture, there’s no audience, so the first thing she does is ring up obscure rellies at the other side of the world. So why?

    So I go: “I get the picture. So go on, speak freely.’

    “Um… Well, is he there?”

    “Eh? No, sleeping in.”

    “Good. How is he really?”

    “Um, very edgy about Nefertite,” I admit in a small voice. Aren’t you supposed not to worry nursing mothers, like, it sours the milk or something?

    So she goes:  “Uh-huh.”

    Right, she knew it all along. Well, she is pretty sharp, yeah. “Um, Aunty Kate hasn’t said anything, has she?”

    “What? No! She’s spent the last thirty-odd years believing he’s totally under her thumb, why would she start suspecting him now?”

    “No, right. Well, there’s nothing in it apart from the odd meal at the Norwood Thai, far’s I can gather.”

    “No, of course not. I wasn’t imagining it was a wild fling, though God knows I wouldn't blame him for having one.”

    “Um, no. Nor would I, acksherly.”

    “Of course not!” she says with a laugh.

    Then there’s a bit of a silence. I can hear her take a deep breath. “How’s David?”

    Look, if this is why ya rung up, Rosie Marsh—Haworth, you’re as bad as the rest of them, that’s all I can say! “Um, about as bad as you’d expect.” –Why the flaming Christ has my voice gone so small, this is only Rosie, she is the same generation, for God's sake!

    “Mm. Well, I’d be in a state if it was Kenny, nerd though he is.”

    “Um, yeah. He told Uncle Jerry— Never mind.”

    “I heard!”

    “Yeah. Ya can’t blame Uncle Jerry for being pissed off with him. Has he rung you at all?”

    “What, Kenny? Don’t be a flaming nana!” replies his sister in astonishment. “That’d be an international call, they cost money!”

    “Right.”

    “Dad asked him that, you can imagine how pleased he was at the reply,” she admits. Ouch! Yes, I can, actually, very vividly. “So then he said had he sent me some flowers, at least, and Kenny said I didn’t need flowers from him. So then Dad said, or shouted, I think was the story, had he at least sent me a card, and guess what he had the nerve to reply?”

    Kenny? He’s got about as much nerve as your average jellyfish! On the other hand, he has got a hide like a rhinoceros. Um… Ah-hah! “An email?”

    “You got it!” she squeaks, laughing like a drain.

    My God. I wouldn’t of thought even Kenny Marshall— I mean to say! Boy, does that take the cake or does that take the cake. Poor old Uncle Jerry. Well, imagine if it was your only son. Yeah.

    “So have ya looked?” I go eagerly.

    “What? Oh—no. Well, Aunty Kate’s not letting me anywhere near the laptop.”

    Gee, that’s a pity. I’d of really liked to know what he actually said.

    “Tim and Narelle sent me a lovely bunch of flowers,” she notes with a smile in her voice.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, that’ll of been mostly her. But I have to admit he’s not all bad, as brothers go. Talking of which, you can expect something really horrible in the woodwork line before long from the twins. It’s not that they’re taking it at school, they’re doing all academic subjects this year, but Bob Springer’s got them all keen on it—dunno how, but somehow he seems to have slipped it in between the Nintendo! Mum reckons they’re round at his place every evening using his lathe.”

    “We’ll look forward to it! But don't you mean every evening he’s not at the gym with Deanna?” she says slyly.

    Cringe. “Uh—yeah.”

    “How old is he, again?”

    “Don't. Just because you’ve got a thing for older men— Um, shit. Sorry, Rosie, that just came out!”

    “That’s all right!” she says with a laugh.

    “Um, I think hers is just the Everest principle—because it’s there, y’know? Only I’m not too sure about his.”

    “No, exactly! What does Aunty Sally think?”

    “I don’t think she thinks anything, as yet. Well, Bob’s in her good books, ya see, because he come round and did the tower of strength bit on the day of the terrorist attacks, while Dad sloped off to work as usual. She kind of hasn’t stopped to notice anything else.”

    “Sufficient unto the day, then!”

    “You said it.” I wait, but she isn’t saying anything. Help, is she getting over-tired? Should I say goodbye?

    Only she goes: “Um, we did have some news from Washington the other day.”

    Oh, God, here we go. “What?” I croak.

    “Fred Stolz was killed. He worked at the Pentagon. Um, I met him last Christmas,” she explains lamely. “Captain, U.S.N.”

    You what? Oh! U.S.N. Goddit. “I remember, the man that laughed a lot. You all went to a great steak-house with him.”

    “Mm.”—Blast! Think she’s sniffling.—“John’s friend Wes Schneider was killed, too. I only met him the once, but John knew him really well. He had more in common with him than Fred, really.”

     I don’t say we already know, I just say: “I’m really, really sorry, Rosie.”

    I can hear her blowing her nose. “Yes. Thanks, Dot. –It’s all right, John, it’s only Dot. I was just telling her about Fred and Wes.”

    Oh, help, has he come— Yeah. In the background this terrifically upper-class English voice goes: “I see, darling. Here, have a tissue.” I can hear her blowing and sniffling and then the voice says in my ear: “Hullo, Dot, my dear. How are you?”

    Gulp. “Yeah good, John.” Dot Mallory! Do you have to sound that down-market? Though admittedly after having Aunty Allyson and bloody Wendalyn and Sickening Little Taylor inflicted on him during the honeymoon, he could hardly get a worse impression of his wife’s rellies, could he? Um, shit, the new father bit, forgot! “Um, congratulations!” I gasp.

    “Thank you,” he says, you can hear he’s smiling but exactly why he’s smiling, I’m not gonna speculate.

    So I go cautiously: “Rosie sounds pretty good.”

    “Yes, she’s come through it amazingly well, and has already started complaining that Kate’s keeping her in cottonwool.”

    So she blows her nose and goes: “Well, heck, John, when Wendalyn was in the hospital with Sickening Little Taylor she was up within two days wandering—”

    So he goes: “Ssh! –I’m, sorry Dot, did you hear that?”

    “Yeah. Um, well, she’s right.”

    “Of course!” he agrees with a laugh. “Wandering round the hospital in diaphanous garments nicking other people’s chocs and complaining there was nothing on the telly, isn’t that how it goes?”

    That “diaphanous garments” bit will be his interpretation of Rosie’s report, and she won’t of said “telly” because only Brits say that, but yeah, he’s right. “Um, yeah.”

    In the background she’s blowing her nose again and she snorts: “Diaphanous garments!”  So he’ll of said it to distract her, he’s not slow, I admit that.

    “So, um, how’s things at the Admiralty, John?” Shit, shouldn’t of said that, none of my business, and he’s probably not allowed to say.

    But he goes: “Well, it was pretty much panic-stations for while, as you can imagine, Dot. But things have settled down, now.”

    So Rosie says real loud, right in my ear—she’ll of grabbed the receiver back off him: “Yes, like only getting home at half-past nine every other day, now!”

    In the background his voice says with a laugh: “Give me that!” And then he says: “Sorry about that, Dot. We really are pretty well back to normal, as you can hear!”

    Yeah, hah, hah. “Um, yeah. Good.”

    “And how’s Jim?”

    In the background she goes: “I already asked her that!”

    “Did she?” he says, the smile’s back in his voice again.

   Gee, those three-way phone conversations aren’t confined to the Aussie side, are they? Never thought an up-market Brit like him would— “Yeah!” I gasp.

    “That’s good. But perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me?”

    Ulp. “Um, he’s good, really. Um, a bit worried. Y’know?” How much will she of told him or be intending to tell him or— Cos letting on the lot was never Rosie’s bag, not so long as I’ve known her, and that is only all my life.

    “She’s saying he’s a bit worried,” he says to her in this like neutral voice, ouch! Boy, has he spotted her or has he spotted her!

    So Rosie goes, calm as anything: “That’s because she’s wondering if you’ve heard about the crush on Nefertite. Go on, put her out of her misery.”

    So he goes: “There is an extension in the kitchen, Dot; I suppose I could go out there and we could all talk without the third party’s contribution having to be rep—”

    “Give me that, John Haworth! –Look, ignore him, Dot, he’s doing it on purpose. I’ll tell him what you said, okay? We’d better go, she’ll be back any minute. Give Uncle Jim our love, okay?”

    “Yeah.”

    “And take care of yourself,” she says in that warm voice of hers.

    “Mm. You too,” My voice has got very small, think I’m gonna bawl, blast! I’m just gonna croak out “Ta-ta” when suddenly his voice goes: “Goodbye, Dot. Lovely to talk to you.”

    Swallow. “Um, yeah. Ta-ta, John.”

    Nothing. I can hear he’s still there.

    “John, you can hang up, I rung her!”

    “Did you, darling?” Smile, smile. “Goodbye again, Dot. All the best to Jim.” And he hangs up before I can gasp “You, too!” or “Ta-ta again” or anything. Phew.

    So I’m eating toast with mixed strawberry jam and peanut butter on it, take my tip, if the toast’s hot put the peanut butter on first, then add the jam, when Uncle Jim comes in yawning. And after a certain amount of ill-feeling over that being the last of the peanut butter and a certain nana not having warned him we were nearly out of it, he sits down to strawberry jam lightly supported by toast and a mug of strong Instant.

    So I tell him Rosie rung and more or less what they said. And that they're all fine.

    He gives me this shrewd look and goes: “And?”

    “Um, nothing. Well, John seems to of got her measure, you betcha,” I admit lamely.

    “Eh? Rosie’s? I should koko!” Suddenly he goes into a terrific spluttering fit. Then he tells same this long, boring story he got off John one of the times he dragged him down the bowling club, yeah, yeah, yeah… Got her measure and a half: right.

    “Don’t think she’s realised it, yet,” he notes blandly, reaching for the jam jar. “–Not much of this left, might as well finish it.”

    Like there’s enough for three generous—What the Hell, let him: he paid for it.

    “Ya mean, she’s gonna go and do the equivalent of buying a huge great German car behind his back because she doesn’t realise he’s spotted her?”

    He doesn’t even blink, let alone jump ten feet, the cunning old beggar. “Yep. Don’t ask me what, but yeah. Dare say that wet-behind-the-ears ex-boyfriend won't come into it, with a bit of luck. She can’t see past John, I’ll give ya that.”

    Will ya? Glad to hear it. “Um, yeah.”

    “Five’ll get ya ten it’ll be something to do with the TV crap. Well, she seems to think he believes she’s dropping it for good after she’s done that stuff she promised the producer she’d finish off in October.”

    “Um, the wedding scenes from the Christmas Special. Um, yeah. Well, isn’t she?”

    He gives me a mocking look. “Whadda you think?”

    “Um, I know Derry Dawlish has commissioned David to do the music for the film of it,”—why the fuck have I gone red as a beet, what a cretinous nana, Dot Mallory!—“but he hasn't got Rosie to agree to be in it.”

    “She will. And don’t tell me she’s told you she doesn’t want to be a film star.”

    “She has!”

    “Yeah. On her past form she coulda told you anything, Dot, love, and her mother something else, and poor old Jerry something else again, and John something else entirely.”

    I’ve opened my mouth angrily, but I shut it again.

    “Yeah,” he says drily.  “Any bread left?

    So I go feebly: “Loads, only there’s nothing to put on it except marg.” Look, ya silly old nana, Rosie doesn’t lie to me! Granted she tells Aunty May the first thing that comes into her head that’ll keep her pacified, and Uncle Jerry the, um, think you could only call it the politic thing, and of course in the past she’s told the boyfriends any bloody thing, and while not actually lying to John she has let him believe stuff that isn’t true, which has always been one of her specialities, I’m admitting that, yeah, but—

    He’s got up to bung four more slices in the toaster. “Ya know what Jerry once said to me?”—No, and I don't wanna know!—“Well, admittedly he was in the Devil’s own temper, forget what she’d been and gone and done, but it was something that got right up his nose. Right up his nose right after she’d sworn she wasn’t gonna whatever-it-was,” he notes pointedly.

    So I croak: “Um, what?”

    “He said,” says Uncle Jim, leaning on the bench beside the toaster and looking dreamily into space, “that the whole concept of truth as generally conceived of in conventional Western morality—don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure that was it—was a closed book to her.”

    Ulp. That sounds like Uncle Jerry, all right. “I wouldn’t go that far.” –Weakly.

    “No-o…. Well, on the whole I wouldn’t, either. And as I say, John’s got her measure. It just hasn’t dawned on her, yet.”

    Feebly I go: “That toast’s sending up smoke-signals.”

    “Good, it must be done,” he says blandly, turning the toaster off at the wall and forcing the thingo up manually, no wonder it’s stopped popping up properly, he’s gonna have to buy a new one before she comes back. A new one that’s the exact same model and with luck she won’t notice it on the Visa acc—Yes, she will, I’m dreaming.

    Uncle Jim sits down and engulfs huge amounts of illegal and carcinogenic blackened toast with mountains of marg. Concluding, just I’m thinking that he’s dropped the subject and it can flaming well stay dropped: “Of course, with the new baby, everything in the garden’s rosy, no pun intended.”—What? Not flaming half!—“But he’s not gonna let her get away with a thing, don’t run away with that idea.”

    “Look, why do you all assume marriage has to be like that?”

    Completely poker-face. “Like what?”

    “You know bloody well like what! One side getting way with murder while the other side either tolerates them or spends their entire life hunting them down and catching them out! Not every human being that ever walked wants to be a Parent or Child to their partner’s Child or Parent! Some people want an equal partnership!”

    So he goes, dry as Hell: “Think one or two technical references ya had in there mighta passed over me head, Dot.”

   “Yes, well, the accusatory stance is actually the subjugated Child, rôle-playing as the—”

    “Never mind the home psychology crap, Dot!” he says loudly. “I’m talking about real life, here!”

    “So am I!” Gulp, did that sound silly, or did that sound—Yeah. Not as silly as what just came out me gob, though. He’s waiting for it to dawn. “You mean psycho-babble, actually. Or pop psychology at the least. Um, sorry.”

    “So I should think, shouting in me nice Norwood kitchen, dunno what the world’s coming to!”

    Silly grin. “Yeah. Sorry. Um, well, you did say John wasn’t gonna let her get away with a thing….”

    “No, he’s not. But he’s gonna let it dawn on her, see? Then maybe she’ll grow up a bit, at last.”

    Swallow. Goddit.

    “Ya can’t lead ya husband the sort of dance she’s always led the string of boyfriends. Not when it’s a bloke like John in question. And I’d say he does want one of these equal partnerships of yours. Doesn’t want to be led by the nose by her any more than he wants to come the heavy father, if that’s where you were going with that Parent stuff.”

    “Um, something like that.”

    “Yeah. So did she say anything about the TV stuff? Or the film idea?”

    Weakly: “No.”

    “No. Well, like I say, she’s not gonna necessarily tell you the whole truth, Dot, love, if you are the same generation, any more than she’s gonna tell anyone else including John. But like I say,” he finishes complacently: “he can handle her.”

    What? Look, ya silly old nit, ya just talked yaself right round in a flaming circle!

    “What?” he says mildly.

    “Um, nothing.”—Why do I instinctively feel, at the same time as I can see his flaming circle, clear as day, shimmering before me eyes in his nice Norwood kitchen, that the silly old joker’s right? I must be as brainwashed as the rest of them!—“Acksherly, I was just thinking that it might be a good idea to make a shopping list after all, because we seem to forget half the stuff we need every time we—”

    He’s gone into hysterics. Yeah, well, can’t blame him. We were both so sure that we weren’t gonna need a list cos there’s just the two of us— Ya get the picture.

    So we make a list and have our showers and drive into Norwood, even though it’s a mild day and the walk’d do us good, and buy the half-dozen things on our list. All of which we coulda bought, and shoulda bought, yesterday.

    Later. David’s come over, he’s just sitting on the sofa by himself, given that Uncle Jim’s out in the shed again. I'm making a cuppa, maybe a whisky’d be a better idea only it’s too late, I already poured the water into the pot. So I bung it all on a tray and bring it over.

    “Bought biscuits,” he spots, trying to smile.

    “Yeah. Evidently she’s baking up a storm over in London. Though mind you, you got the wrong flour, in England.”

    “Mm? Oh: we would do, yes,” he says wanly.

    I siphon up tea and eat a biscuit blindly, can’t think of anything else to say.

    Out of the blue he goes: “Have you seen The English Patient?”

    Yeah, mate, I have, and don't ask me to tell ya it’s the greatest film to come out of Britain this last twenny years or like that, because I thought it was a piece of over-written, sentimental crap. Well acted, I’ll give ya that, and the exteriors were good, though given it was North Africa and Italy, why wouldn’t they be? “Yeah, why?”

    “You remind me a little of the girl,” he goes wanly.

    What? “Which one? Not that dim upper-class bimbo that didn’t have the brains or the guts to see that not leaving her husband when she was in love with the other guy, never mind if he was the sort that couldn’t commit, was a piece of sheer selfishness guaranteed to ruin three people’s lives?”

    “Not her, no. –I think that was largely a plot device, Dot.”

    “Right. Now tell me her going with the husband to see the lover one last time wasn’t the biggest piece of selfishness ever portrayed on the silver screen!”

    “I won’t tell you that, though I think it was understandable. But I was thinking of the nurse.”

    Right, the one that walked off from her unit in the middle of a war, as if, then met a dishy Indian that happened to be an officer in charge of English sergeants and stuff, as if. (In the 1940’s? Give over!) I tell ya what was running through my mind all the time they were at it: what were they using for birth control? Given this was the middle of nowhere in the middle of a war and they didn’t have the Pill in those days. Never mind what the other silly pair mighta been supposed to be using back in Cairo, like when he gets up her behind the door two yards from this courtyard filled with the British Army having its Chrissie din—Forget it. Coldly dishy Ralph Fiennes, it had, thrill, shiver. Sense, a coherent plot, or anything remotely approaching life as ordinary human beings experience it, it did not.

    “What is it, Dot?” he says uneasily, as I haven’t replied.

    “She was a total nit. Walking off from her unit in the middle of a war?”

    “Er—mm. I suppose that wasn’t explained very well…”

    “You betcha boots it wasn’t! So why am I supposed to be like her?”

    “Well… Little, pretty, but practical?” he says with a sad smile.

    Words fail me. Literally. In fact I can’t even breathe, for a moment. I mean to say!

    “Practical?” I manage to croak, eventually.

    “You are.”

    “What? Not me! Her! Jesus, David! Like, she’s living in this bloody ruin in the middle of the Italian countryside in the middle of the War with a bloody great case full of morphine, and then this weirdo turns up that keeps giving himself shots and she barely notices him? And then she has a mad thing with this unlikely Indian officer, in real life the British Raj were not letting the natives run their army for them and boss Brits like Kevin Whately around—Morse’s sergeant!” I say crossly as he’s just staring at me with his mouth open—“and not a word breathed as to what if anything they mighta been using for birth control?”

    After a moment he goes feebly: “Possibly that was the last thing on their minds.”

    “Come off it, David! It mighta been the last thing on his, yeah: a bloke from a different culture on the other side of the world, would he care who he got up the spout? Only it wouldn’t of been the last thing on any normal girl’s, I can tell ya that free, gratis and for nothing!”

    “But this was an extreme situation.”

    “Crap, David. I never been in anything like it, that’s true. The terrorist attacks are the worst things that’ve ever happened in my lifetime, and ya needn’t point out they weren’t happening to me, it felt bad enough as it was. But that didn’t mean I automatically stopped thinking about practical things.”

    “No-o… But her best friend had just been blown up, and then, didn't they mention her fiancé was killed? Or have I got that wrong?”

    “No, ya right. But she was managing to cook and feed the patient—though where the food came from, apart from the plums in the garden and the eggs the weirdo brought, was never mentioned, please note—so ya can’t say that all practical considerations had gone out of her mind.”

    “No. Sorry. It was just— The analogy sprang to mind,” he goes wanly.

    “Well, it was dumb.”

    “Mm. I— Well, I wouldn’t call it a first-class film, I suppose. But I thought, as a study of people in extreme situations, whether caused by their own emotions or external events… No?”

    “No. I grant you the acting was good. But I’d class it as over-written, sentimental crap.”

    “I suppose it was. But I liked the little nurse,” he says sadly.

    Flaming Norah! Of course you did, mate, you’re a normal red-blooded male and she was clearly chosen to appeal to same! Complete with the totally-devoted-to-the-male-patient bit!

    “Yeah, and if she’d of had a face like the back of a bus and a figure like this here sofa of Aunty Kate’s and behaved exactly the same you’d of felt exactly the same, right?”

    “No,” he says, grimacing.

    “See? Over-written, sentimental crap. And I admit if Ralph Fiennes had of had a face like the back of a bus in the first place I wouldn’t of been so cut up about him ending up fried to a crisp on the dope.”

    “No,” he agrees, making a worse face.

    “David, it was Jim Henson’s Creature Shop! It was all effects!”

    “What? Oh—the make-up. It was real enough for me.”

    “Yeah, well, I suppose as a man you mighta been imagining yourself in the hero’s place. Me, I was wondering how long it took to get the make-up on and if Mr Fiennes was sweating like a pig under it. Well, sorry, but I was.”

    He’s trying to smile, shit, shouldn’t of said it, why don’t I just keep my big mouth shut? So I get up and take the tray over to the bench. “The best parts were the shots of the desert, I thought, and the cave paintings with the swimmers. Real interesting. I was sorry the film didn't bother to explain it at all.”

    “Mm, well, it wasn’t a documentary,” he says, smiling a genuine smile this time. “I can lend you a book on it, if you like.”

    “Really? Ooh, yeah, thanks! Now?”

    “Uh—well, yes, why not?”

    So we go back to his place. Colder and more dismal than ever, don’t think it’s just the pathetic fallacy in action. He finds me a couple of books, great, these look really interesting! Oops—uh, not that German one, David. Yeah, I do believe it’s better than these here, only I can’t read the lingo, see?

    He stares at me, frowning. “I was sure you could.”

    Blink. Were ya? Buggered if I can see why, mate. “No.”

    “But— You do read French, don't you?”

    “Yeah, but that’s a different language, David.”

    “Mm. It’s a pity, this book’s much the best… I don't think there’s a translation. You’d probably find German quite easy,” he goes on a hopeful note.

    “Do me a favour! I’m wasting half my evenings struggling with the Japanese, I’m not gonna start another foreign language!”

    “No, mustn’t risk anything like an actual education,” he says in this acid voice.—All right, Uncle Jim, I'm cutting him some slack—a lot of slack—so I’m not gonna snap back at him.—“But why choose Japanese, for God’s sake? Most Westerners never get to the stage where they can read anything decent in an Asian language.”

    “Always supposing there is anything— Forget I spoke. But I don’t want to read anything, except the odd shop sign or like that: I just wanna be able to address a few polite words to Uncle Jerry’s Jap muh—” Cof. “Japanese business connections.”

    “Konichiwa, Dot-san,” he goes drily, bowing. “How many evenings can that take?”

    “All right, and be able to exchange a few words about business. It’s much more useful to me than another European language would be.”

    So he goes, fake-cordial: “Oh, of course! Never mind that a grasp of German would help you to sit intelligently through the occasional bit of Wagner or Bach!”

    “Thought Bach only wrote like organ music?”

    “My God, I think you’re genuine!” he groans, collapsing theatrically onto the sofa.

    I am. Well, at least it’s made him forget his troubles for a few mins. “So enlighten me.”

    So he blahs on, then gets up and gets these CD’s out and then these old LP’s, shit, he’s got a cupboard full of them, thought it was, like, a cupboard, but it’s for LP’s, taller than I am, about the size of Aunty Kate’s new fridge-freezer, in fact. All right, I believe you, these are the words to what he composed and yep, this is German, all right. Gee, isn’t this bits of the Bible? Well, the English looks likes bits of the Bible. Oh, zat so? Really? Matthew as well, huh? Fascinating… Lighter? Balls, David, I may not know beans about Bach but I know the man never wrote light in his life, so don't bother to put it on ya huge great LP play—Too late.

    He comes and sits beside me, unasked, and starts pointing at the words, this one’s only got them in German, don’t ask me why. Didn't want to break into the English-speaking market? Assumed that anyone that bought it would be so over-educated they’d be able to follow the German anyway? It’s nice, though. Lighter: yep. Lots of music bits, I mean instrumental bits, as well as the singing… Hey! I know this bit! …Daah, da-da, dah, dah, diddle da! Da, da-da, dah, dah, did-dle, dum! Twiddly, isn't it? A recorder? Geddouda here! He does, he gets up and turns it off. Pity, I was starting to enjoy it.

    “Yeah, all right, ya pointed out the words and I didn’t understand a blind one of them even though I could hear it was what the lady was singing—was that a lady or a boy?”—Yeah, go on, wince. All right, it was a lady, you already knew I’m ignorant, why the surprise?—“I’m sure I’ve heard it before only, um, think it was a different version. Look, what does it mean in English?”

    His mouth twitches but he says mildly enough: “You can do it, Dot!”—I can’t, see?—“’Sheep’—see? That’s sheep; ‘can’, or ‘may’ in polite English; sicher is ‘sure’ or ‘safe’, both adjective and adverb in German, there’s no equivalent of our adverbial ‘-ly’, so, ‘safely’; and weiden is the infinitive, governed by the können: the verb is used of herbivores eating grass—”

    Gasp! “Sheep May Safely Graze! You wanker! The choir done that at Putrid St Agatha’s putrid school assemblies!”

    “Really? It was a nice school, then,” he murmurs.

    “It was putrid, more like… I see, Herder has gotta be the shepherd, the person that herds, right? Ending in E,R, same like English, um, words like worker, writer, right?”

    “Mm.”

    “Why all the capitals?”

    “What? Oh, good grief!” He passes his hand across his forehead, but explains. Gee, zat so? Peculiar, huh? At least you’d never have to worry which were the proper names, this is true.

    “Can we have a bit more?”

    “So you did like it?” He gets up, smiling, and goes to put it—

    Ring, ring, ring!

    David's standing stock-still by the player, shit, he’d forgotten all about everything, I think.

    Ring, ring—“Shall I get it?” He doesn’t say anything ,so I dash out and grab it.

    “Hullo?” Trying not to pant.

    There’s an echoing silence, I’m just gonna say Hullo again, only this deep voice that’s like floods of dark blue velvet goes: “Dot Mallory! It is you, isn’t it?” And I burst into tears of relief all over his ruddy phone.

    So she goes: “Dot, don’t cry! I’m perfectly all right! I couldn’t get through earlier, Foreign Name was sight-seeing in the downtown area and we’ve all been frantic over her, her husband’s been in a terrible state, poor man, but those wonderful New York firemen dug her out and she’s just come round and the hospital has just contacted us!”

    “Yes—what? Good!” I gasp, the tears are pouring down my cheeks. “We thought they musta got you!”

    “No. I’ve been trying to ring David for days, but— Well, Georg claims I had the code wrong.”

    I don’t ask who he is when he’s at home, I just say: “Ya coulda done, if you were all stirred up. It’s a lot of numbers to get right.”

    “Yes. How are you, Dot?” I can hear she's tired, now, her voice is kind of strained.

    “I’m fine, nobody I know was in it except you; and my cousin Rosie, she’s in London,” why am I burbling on like this, “she’s had her baby and she’s fine! Aunty Kate’s over there, she’s looking after them.”

    “Good. And how is Jim?”

    “Um, he’s okay. He’s been worried about you, though.”

    “Yes,” she says with a sigh. “I did contact Australia House in London, but… And the Consulate here, but they went on about was David an Australian national or was I an Australian national, and I—I’m afraid I just gave up.”

    “No wonder! Ya wanna speak to him? He’s okay; well, he’s a bit of wreck, but he’s just been demonstrating that I got to learn German so as to understand the words in Bach, so that took his mind off it for a bit.”

    “My poor Dot! Have a medal!” she says with this like, warm smile in her voice, why the fuck I start bawling again, don’t ask me.

    “What is it?” he says from the sitting-room doorway, I can see he’s hanging on tight to the door surround.

    So I sniff hard and say: “It’s Nefertite, she’s okay.”

    “Then why the HELL hasn’t she rung before?” he shouts, making a dash for the phone. So I give it to him but I don’t go away, I know I oughta be polite but if he’s gonna earbash the poor woman—

    Well, bummer, that must be Greek cos I can’t understand a bloody word of it! Yes, I can, he definitely said “Antigone”, then. I can understand that it’s shouting, though.

    “Hey, stop shouting at her David! She couldn’t through to you before, and the fucking Australian Consulate was worse than useless!”

    So he says, not lowering the receiver: “I’m not shouting, you absolute ass, this is a Greek conversation! –Yes, of course she’s just the same !” he says to the phone with laugh. “What? My God: women!” So he looks me up and down and then he says to the phone: “A baggy greyish-brown woolly that might at one stage in its history have been intended as a skiing jumper, and very worn jeans of the sort that I believed the current generation didn't go in for.”

    “I’ve had them since I was sixteen, ya nana.”

    “She’s had them since she was sixteen, and I’m a nana, apparently!” he says happily to the phone. “What? Well, no, Antigone, the boot’s very much on the other foot! In fact, though my recollection isn’t perfectly clear, I rather think she apologised for bullying me, the other day!”

    So I stick my tongue out at him but say: “Hey, I can dash over and get Uncle Jim if she’d like to speak to him.”

    “Did you hear that? –No, it’s all right, Dot, she seems to have got the right area code for Australia at last,”—wince, she went and admitted to him that she mighta had it wrong?—“so she’ll ring him.” He smiles at me and says: “What you could do is make a nice cuppa.”

    I’ll give it a go, but is there any milk? I don’t say it, I just say :”Righto,” and go into the kitchen. Humming. Wo-ho ei-hein gooder Herder humm. Da, da, da, da-dah, diddle-diddle dumm. What the—? Oh! Sheep May Safely Graze—right. Boy, do I feel one million percent better! So I make a pot of tea and then the knees give way entirely and I gotta sit down on his old kitchen chair.

    He comes in smiling. “I don’t know if you got that, Dot, but it was the tenor’s wife who was sight-seeing at the foot of the World Trade Centre. Anyway, all’s well that ends well! We’d better pour this tea before it gets stewed.”

    Better we? “Yeah. There isn’t any milk, though.”

    “I prefer it without,” he says calmly, pouring. Do ya, just? Well, ya coulda fooled me, mate, because you been lapping up Uncle Jim’s—Forget it.

    “Actually I prefer it with lemon, but there isn’t any of that, either,” he goes, smiling.

    “Much! If you’ve looked in your own back yard, which I concede ya can’t of done for the last fifty years, that’s a ruddy great lemon tree growing next to that ruddy great mandarin tree what you’ve let all the fruit fall off!”

    “Those little oranges? I ate some of them.”

    “Mandarins.”

    “Er—if you say so. But that isn’t a lemon, it’s a Mayer.”

    “That is a lemon, ya nit!”

    “Go on, then,” he says heavily.

    “Gee, I don’t want lemon in me tea, what a putrid idea!”

    “Well, I certainly don’t want slices of Mayer in mine!”

    “Gee, then we’re agreed, David!” Glare, glare.

    He shrugs, and picks up the tray. “Apparently. Next time, don’t put so much tea in the pot. The idea is that one should be able to taste more than tannin, though I grant you this could well be a concept that hasn’t yet reached the colonies. When the tongue goes furry as the tea hits it, the Great Tea God is sending you a message, Dot.”

    “Hah, bloody, hah. I dare ya go down the pub and tell them we’re the colonies!”

    “At a Norwood pub, they’d probably agree with me,” he drawls, the supercilious bloody wanker.

    “Oh, shut up! Ya can keep your fucking tea, I’m going back to Uncle Jim’s!”

    “I wouldn’t.”

    “Shuddup, ya weren’t INVITED!” I holler.

    “No, I mean that Antigone was going to ring him,” he says—lamely, only I don’t care how lame he gets, I’ve had it up to HERE with up-himself David Walsingham AND his fucking Mayer lemon tree!

    “All RIGHT! I’ll go for a walk instead, and SHOVE YA BLOODY TEA!”

    So I march out, and UP HIS!

    Behind me I can hear him saying from the front verandah: “Dot, come back! Don’t be silly!”

    I am NOT SILLY! Tears are pouring down my cheeks and I wouldn’t go back there if me life depended on it!

    … Gee, he hasn’t run after me. No, well, him all over, and I never expected he would.

    Much later. Uncle Jim wanted to go out to celebrate so we went to the Norwood Thai and guess who was there and did their best to ruin it for us? No! Not him, and I don't give a fuck what he was doing! The flaming Arvidsons, that’s who. First off bloody Erin told us what Keith thought of it all, and then Keith told us what he thought of it all plus and a blow-by-blow account of his own visit to New York. Gee, didn’tcha scale the World Trade Center with ya fucking climbing-ropes, Keith? Ya do surprise me. –No, I didn’t say it, in fact I didn't say anything except “Aw. Was it?” and “Aw. Didja? Yeah.” Like that.

    So then the old joker thought we better go home and ring Aunty Kate, not specifying whether this was gonna be before or after the illegal three-flavour ice cream, so I just agreed.

    So he chirps, after the usual session of ear-bashing from her end: “Oh, by the way, David’s heard from Nefertite at last. Seems she is okay, just couldn’t get through before now. Don’t ask me whether that was Telstra’s fault or him not hanging up his receiver properly!” What? The cheeky old— The phone’s going yack, yack, yack, she’s either doing her nut about Telstra or about David. Or both, yeah.

    So he lets it die down and then he goes: “Ya right, there, Kate! Oh—there is something else, love. Ya might not like it, but after all, that investment did mature, and it was a lot more than I calculated on. So I bought the Merc.”

    Yack, yack, yack, is she doing her nut?

    “Yeah, all the newer models”—newer, that’s a good one—“have got passenger-side air-bags. And I knew I’d be driving Little Dot about a fair bit—” Good one, Uncle Jim. She hasn’t even let him finish the self-exculpatory bit, she’s earbashing him again, I can hear it’s pleased earbashing from here. He winks at me. Yeah, very clever, Uncle Jim.

    “Saw Keith Arvidson a bit back,”—something like that, yeah—“and he reckons he’s put in an order for a silver one, but it’ll take three months to arrive. So when the joker said it was this pale green, well, grey-green, s’pose you’d call it,”—you wouldn’t, unless you were half-blind—“or bright red, thought I’d better take the greenish one.” Greenish. Yeah.

    Blah, blah, blah, yack, yack, yack. The upshot is, she’s approved it. Oh, help, she wants to speak to me!

    “How are you, Dot, dear?”

    “Yeah good, thanks, Aunty Kate. …Yes, it is good news about Nefertite. …Um, yes, he was pleased. Well, what brother wouldn’t be? …Um, yeah, Rosie did mention Kenny only sent her an em—” And blah, blah, blah, yack, yack, yack. According to her, John thought it was funny. Yeah, thought it was funny in front of you and Rosie, Aunty Kate! (Don’t say it.) Ya what? “Um, nuh-no,” falter, gulp, “I suppose thuh-things like cars duh-don’t seem to matter in the light of everything, no.” Gee, she won’t ask whether he bought it before or after the terrorist attacks, that’s a relief. And has he been driving me in it? Ulp. Like, apart from to the Norwood shops and back? “Yeah, um,” wrack brain madly… Oh! “Yeah, we went out to your bead shop at Goodwood, we bought some silver beads that Deanna wanted. Um, it is a very comfortable ride. The upholstery’s nice, it’s pale fawn.”

    That’s good and get him to take me somewhere nice, the Barossa Valley’s always pleasant even at this time of the year… I don’t hear much else, though it does go on for some time, because I’ve gone numb all over from sheer relief.

    “That wasn’t too bad!” he goes, perky as all get out, the old bugger, after she’s finally let me hang up.

    “For some,” I croak. “I’m a nervous wreck!”

    “Rats. Want some ice cream?”

    “No, I want a good stiff belt of Johnnie,” I croak, tottering into the lounge-room.

    “Ya can have both,” he notes, strolling after me.

    All right, I bloody well will!

    Next day. It’s around three, the old joker’s out in his shed and I’m looking at one of her coffee-table books, pity I never got round to grabbing those archaeology books of ruddy David’s, and thinking that I oughta work out how I’m gonna get up to Isabelle’s, when the phone rings.

    “Hi, Dot, it’s Rosie.”

    It must be about nine in the morning their time, so what’s up? Aunty Kate’s gone to the shops—right, that’s one. And John’s in at the Admiralty. That’s two. No, Rupy isn’t there, he and Katie are rehearsing at the Henny Penny studios today. So is she just at a loose end? Given that Aunty Kate will not only of got her her breakfast and made sure she ate it, she’ll of bathed the baby for her. She can’t feed him, Rosie’s breast-feeding him, but she’ll of stood over her while she done it.

    So she goes: “That was very good news about Nefertite.”

    “Yeah.”

    “So did you and Uncle Jim celebrate at the Norwood Thai?”

    “You’re so sharp you’ll cut yaself, Rosie Mar—Haworth! ’Course we did. He ordered the duck before I could stop him, it’s the dearest thing on the menu barring the crayfish. He would of ordered that, only he knows there’s no way I’m gonna let him spew all night.”

    “I can see it all!” she assures me, laughing.

    I’m sure she can. “Right; so assimilate this: bloody Erin and Keith Arvidson were there and we got the full second-hand report of what flaming Keith thinks of the terrorist attacks followed by the horse’s mouth version, neither of them is capable of stopping and listening to themselves for an instant!”

    “Ugh, it would have to be them!”

    “Yeah. But at least it wasn’t—” Why did I say that?

    After a bit she says cautiously: “Who?”

    “No-one.”

    “David?”

    Blast! I’m gonna bawl. “How—did you—know?” I wail.

    I can hear her say “Oh, shit.” She lets me bawl for a bit and then she says: “Don’t cry, Dot. What happened?”

    “Noth-thing!” I sob.

    She just waits, so eventually, don’t ask me why, I say: “He’s an up-himself supercilious prick, Rosie! And all I said was, a Mayer is a lemon!”

    “Um, was this compared to a Lisbon lemon, Dot?”

    “A what?”

    “The ones with the hard skins. Paler, much more aromatic. Not as juicy, though.”

    Sniff, gulp. “Mum’s always had a Mayer tree.”

    “Yeah, I know. Um… Hang on! Joslynne’s Mum’s got a real lemon tree, Dot! Um, sorry, a Lisbon lemon tree.”

    “I see, the lemon set all know a Mayer’s not a real lemon, that it?”

    “Um, yes. Well, um, I’ve been to the Ritz’s tea place a couple of times, now, with John or Admiral and Miss Hammersley, and they always have slices of Lisbon lemon there, so I’d say that proves it. I can see David must have put you down, Dot, but did you say anything to set him off?”

    “No! I said, all I said was, a Mayer was a lemon!”

    She’s waiting, I can hear a sort of dubious silence.

    “Um, he asked me to make some tea, like, it was when Nefertite rung, I’d already talked to her, see, so I went into the kitchen.” Sniffle. “Um, and then he came in, and I thought he was okay. Only then he said we better pour the tea before it got stewed.”

    “In a nasty voice?’

    “Um, not really. So I warned him there wasn’t any milk and he said he preferred it without, not a blind word on the subject of why he’d been lapping it up at Uncle Jim’s with milk in it for the past week! So then he said actualleh—well, maybe you can hack those Pommy accents, and I got to admit on John it sounds good, but his gets right up my nose—he said actualleh he preferred it with lemon but there wasn’t any. So I made the mistake of saying there was, too, he’s got a ruddy great tree. Um, maybe I did say he hadn’t bothered to eat his mandarins, but there was nothing in that! And then he went on about a Mayer not being a lemon, looking down his nose at me!” I wail, starting to bawl again.

    After a while she says: “I see. So then you lost your rag.”

    Angrily I get out my hanky and have a good blow. “Wouldn’t you?”

    “Of course. Anybody would.”

    “Yeah, and he went on about the tea being stewed and too much tannin making your tongue go furry and the colonies!” Pause. “Um, that might not sound like much, only he was really horrible, Rosie!”

    “I see. Supercilious—yes.”

    “Yeah. Deliberately trying to provoke me,” I say, blowing my nose again. “So I told him where to put it and run out. And up his!”

    “Ye-es…”

    “Look, he coulda run after me and stopped me, Rosie—heck, he coulda grabbed me when I run into the passage, um, maybe he was holding the tray— Anyway, he coulda stopped me if he’d of wanted me to stay, only he didn’t! And I thought we’d been getting on really well! I mean, he started going on about learning German, and he was gonna lend me these archaeology books, and I’m sure he wasn’t wild because I didn’t think much of The English Patient, and he put an LP on and started explaining the German in this Bach thing, and it was all going good and then Nefertite rung and I thought he’d—he’d be better!”

    Even I can see that was awfully muddled, only she doesn’t ask to me to explain, she just goes: “Mm. Relief does funny things to people, Dot.”

    “Right, like making them turn on the person that’s been feeding them and their cat for the past week and—and being nice to them!”

    “Exactly like that. Especially if they’re a person that’s shit-scared of anything that even smells like an emotional tie to another human being, let alone commitment.”

    “Right, now tell me he’s just like that prick in The English Patient!” I shout.

    “I never saw it. Rupy made the mistake of going to it and gave me an earful,” she says tranquilly.

    Gulp. Never knew he had that much taste. True, he wouldn’t of been blinded by the hetero sex. “Um, the Ralph Fiennes character,” I say lamely.

    “Yes, I realised that must be who you meant. Rupy said he was The-Man-You-Love-To-Hate, slightly à la Olivier in Rebecca, dear, unquote. Oh, but without the faint lithp.”

    I’ve opened my mouth to refute the whole of this claptrap hotly. Uh—crikey. “Yeah, well, there you are. The author’d be the Daphne Du Maurier of the present day, that’d be right. Sentimental tripe. Um, David’s not good-looking, like Ralph Fiennes. I admit that makes the rudeness harder to overlook,” I note grimly.

    “Mm.”

    “All right, what would you have done if you were me?” I demand angrily.

    “Um, probably exactly the same as you did.”

    So I shout: “Bullshit, Rosie, don’t patronise me!”

    “I wasn’t,” she says mildly. “I’m thinking about it… Um, well, John doesn’t lose his cool in that sort of circumstance, so it’s a bit hard to… The thing is, when one person puts the knife in, it’s human nature to hit back, isn’t it?”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “I can’t see that anyone would have reacted differently. Or that he wanted you to.”

    No, exactly, the bastard!

    “Don’t cry, Dot.”

    “I’m not!” Choke, gulp.

    “All I can say is, he’s a very difficult man to deal with—”

    So I shout: “I don’t want to DEAL with him!”

    “Yes, you do, Dot, there’s no point in pretending, with me.”

    Gulp, swallow. Eventually I say: “All right, go on.”

    “Um, what was I saying? The milk’s making me awfully fuzzy,” she goes in this confused voice. My God, for a mo’, there, I coulda sworn it was Aunty May speaking!

    So I go, very weakly: “Um, ya said he was a very difficult man to deal with.”

    “Oh, yes. Um… The idea’d probably be not to lose your cool, whatever he comes out with. Like Mum always says, count to ten before you speak? Um, tell yourself he’s a very vulnerable person, Dot: that might help.”

    “What you mean is, I have to make allowances for him, but he’s allowed to be as horrible to me as he likes!”

    “Yes.”

    “That’s the most sexist thing I ever heard!” I shout.

    “No, it’s not. It isn’t a matter of what sex you each are. That’s totally irrelevant, I thought you would of seen that?”

    “But— Oh. Yeah, I think I do see. Um, Uncle Jim told me to cut him some slack; I guess that was his way of saying the same thing.”

    “Yes. He’s pretty sharp,” she says mildly.

    “Mm.”

    “I'm not saying this’ll work, mind: David could just go on getting crueller and crueller until you finally give up on him as a bad job. And I’m not saying it won’t hurt like Hell, because I think it will. But I do think it’s the only possible way to deal with a person like that.”

    “Ye-ah… What about forcing him to bring it all out in the open?”

    “You could try. But I’ve never known pop psychology to work. Well, John's a very different type, but even he doesn’t like talking about his emotions. And David sounds like an even more inhibited product of the English stiff-upper-lip, we’re-all-little-gentlemen shtick.”

    Gulp. “He is half Greek… No, ya right.’

    “Mm.”

    I’m waiting, but she seems to have done her dash. So I admit: “I don’t think I can, Rosie. I mean, I really tried, for days on end… And he’s not interested. I mean, we haven’t got enough in common, what with the age gap and the culture gap…”

    “That needn’t necessarily matter.”

    “I think it does, with him. I mean, even he if he wanted to, I don’t think he’d let himself. Um, well, would you keep on with it?”

    “For God’s sake, Dot! I’m not you, am I?”

    “No, I just want to know what you think.”

    I can hear her sigh. Then she goes: “In your shoes, I’d say the Hell with the prick, there’s plenty more fish in the sea, and walk out. But like I say, I’m not you.”

    “Lots of people say we’re quite alike,” I note dubiously.

    “Not when it comes to men, though!”

    Boy, is that right or is that right! When I think of those strings of them she had back before she went to England! Not necessarily sequentially, either. Like, in my shoes she would of had something real tasty lined up in Sydney to go back to, she wouldn’t of needed to give an up-himself, self-satisfied prick with loads of hang-ups and baggage like David Walsingham another thought. Added to which she wouldn't of been attracted to him in the first place, one thing her blokes have all had in common, and that is, not a neurosis in sight. Um, well, Euan Keel apart, and she dumped him pretty quick, didn’t she?

    “No. Well, given I’m bloody sure he’ll never let himself be interested if I play the sweet little martyr to his flaming English Patient or Whatsisface from Rebecca until I’m old and grey, I’m gonna forget him. Let him stew in his own juice.”

    “Dot, you’re doing it out of bitterness, which is precisely the emotion he was trying to provoke—”

    “YES! It worked, all right? I’m as human as the next woman!” I shout.

    “Yes. Well, I do think you’d be better off forgetting all about him.”

    I know ya do, Rosie Marshall, sympathetic as you are, you haven’t managed to hide that!

    “Yeah. Well, thanks. And take care.” And I hang up before I can bawl again.

    So barely have I marched into my room and started stuffing things into my case than the phone rings again.

    “Hullo!” I snap.

    “Hi, it’s me.”

    Deanna. What the fuck does she want? And shouldn’t she be at work? She is, she’s on her tea-break (so-called) and Bob knows she’s ringing me, in fact she’s ringing me because he knows this couple that are driving over from SA and blah, blah. Right, good one, if they want a passenger that can spell them at the driving, I’ll go with them, better than having Uncle Jim offer to drive me in the Merc. Which, please note, Aunty Kate’s just given him the perfect excuse to. Thousands of K it may well be, but he’ll twist it so as she’ll accept it, I’m not in very much doubt at all, the devious old bastard that he is.

    I’ve agreed to it all and I’m gonna hang up when I remember we never told her we got her beads, so I tell her that.

    That sets her off, I hear all about the pink thing, yeah, yeah, yeah… Aw. Not for ballet. A party frock, yeah, yeah, any party Rita Giaccaglia gives will be a dressed-up backyard barbie, that’ll be thrilling… What was that?

    “Dot, you’re not listening! I said, have you seen dishy Ralph?”

    “Um, no. They didn’t re-screen Schindler’s Ark, did they?” I grope.

    “What?

    “I mean Schindler’s List. Um, The English Patient hasn’t been on TV yet, has it?”

    “What are you on about, Dot?”

    “Eh? Ralph Fiennes, of course! What are you?”

    “Dot! Ralph Crozier! The Real Dish!”

    Uh—oh. Shit, I haven't given him a thought for—

    “Um, haven’t seen him, no. Um, well, had other stuff on my mind.”

    Short pause. I can hear Bob’s radio in the background.

    Then she goes: “Yeah, the terrorist attacks made all that, I mean, um, I’m not getting at you, Dot, but silly crushes and like that, um, look pretty silly.”

    “Yes.”

    “So will ya come over with the Walkers?”

    “Why not, if they’ll have me?”

    “Good! Then you can get the bus up to Queensland. It’ll relieve Mum’s mind!”

    “Mm.”

    “I wish I was having a break,” she goes wistfully.

    Look, do you imagine I’m gonna drag you along with me so as you and Isabelle can go into cretinous huddles over curtain material or the best fluffy mat to put round the dunny or— Oh, what the Hell. “Come too. If Bob’ll give ya the time—”

    He will, of course he will! It isn’t his busy season!

    Like, it is spring, it is traditionally the time when the sap quickens and the do-it-yourselfers of suburban Sydney start thinking about getting out and doing stuff to the house or garden in the weekends instead of just watching other people play sport on the box. Oh, well.

    “Great. Don’t bring too much stuff: it’ll be warmer up there and we’ll have to carry our bags oursel—” Too late, she’s off and running.

    Oh, well. She is my only sister. And she’s not all bad.