Slices Of Life

26

Slices Of Life

    “Hey, this brings it back, doesn’t it? Funny to think it’s all over,” noted Tony, stuffing a cream donut into his gob. “Sorta seemed like it was gonna go on forever, eh? I’d even got used to Ole Fatty bellowing.”

    “Shut up,” warned Ann.

    “Oh—sorry,” he muttered, reddening. “I sorta forgot Bernie’d have to go with them— Sorry!”

    Ann sighed. “I suppose you can’t help yourself. It was only a visiting firemen thing, anyway.”

    “Um, yeah—was it? Yeah,” he said uncomfortably.

    She repressed another sigh and got up. “’Nother Coke? Polystyrene container of brown dye?”

    “Um, yeah, I will have a coffee. Thanks,” he said, trying to smile.

    Ann clumped off to the counter. Funnily enough at seven ten a.m., yes, a.m., of a fine October day—October was often glorious in Sydney: that or putrid—there were very few other people queuing at the counter of, guess where? The International Airport, just for a change! Oh, well, plus ça change. It wasn’t a fillum star or a Grate Director today, it was a multi-media tycoon, if that mattered. Bernie had written a couple of times. The second time from Bermuda, if you please: Dawlish had sent him there to suss out loca— Oh, what did it matter, there was half a world between them, and you could take that any way you liked. And a few letters were not going to change it.

    Molly’s come into my office looking cautious, now what’ve they done? “Um, Dot—”

    “Go on.”

    “Um, yeah. Um, have you seen the morning paper?”

    Why’ve I gone red like a total nana? “Yeah, more or less. I stopped getting it delivered, they were chucking it into—” She’s nodding, I’m getting repetitious in me old age, ya see. “Uh, yeah, tole ja that, eh? Um, yeah, picked one up at the servo. What about her?”

    “Not that!” she gasps, turning puce. See, Nefertite’s in town at last—D. Walsingham had all the details totally wrong, it was November she was due, not September—and there was this huge pic of her plus some hefty male singer, think he’s a baritone, not a tenor, for once.

    “Um, what, then, Molly?”

    “Old Man Harbottle’s dead, and Deirdre’s sending out the invoi—”

    “Shit! Thanks, Molly! I mean, fair enough, the estate owes us if he’s into Uncle Jerry for anything like his usual six figures, but a whacking great betting bill the day after he’s popped his clogs the widow does not need!”

    “No, and he knows her, doesn’t he?”

    “Uncle Jerry? ’Course. She’s quite nice, actually. The original model: in spite of the moolah the old joker never realised as a tycoon he was entitled to trade her in for something skinny and expensive. I’ll speak to Deirdre. You wanna wise up Uncle Jerry?”

    I don’t think she does, particularly, because she gives me a sickly smile and says meekly: “Okay.”

    “Molly, you don’t have to.”

    “No, that’s okay.” And off she goes.

    And that leaves me to settle Deirdre.

    So it goes more or less like this. “Oh, how dreadful! I’ll speak to Jerry at once!”

    See? I knew it. She doesn’t like it at all when I tell her I’ve already asked Molly to tell him, but then she decides that of course the office has to send a sympathy card. From all of us, separately from Jerry’s. Though the upstairs office doesn’t need to sign it. Right: they’re not people. And she thinks she should speak to May—and really, a wreath would be appropriate! (Brightening tremendously.) After all, he was one of our biggest customers!

    Actually I do think a wreath would be appropriate but I don’t think the inordinate amount of time it's gonna take for them all to decide what it should be like— Hang on!

    “Yes, I think that’s a great idea, Deirdre. And I think it should be your choice: I mean, you are the senior person in the office, nobody else has had so much contact with Old Man Harbottle over the years.”

    This goes down real well, go to the top of the Office Manager class, D.M. Mallory. Though of course she tells me it isn’t appropriate to call him Old Man Harbottle now.

    Morning tea. Uncle Jerry comes into the tea room that some of us are actually remembering to call the canteen almost half the time and announces: “Can I have everyone’s attention, please? I’ve got a rather sad announcement to make: Old Man Harbottle’s just died.” So up hers. Not that she’ll make the connection.

    Lunchtime. Micky O’Flynn’s. Think this is the unofficial wake, dunno quite why Uncle Jerry’s invited me and Daniel and Molly to it. Uh—well, maybe ’cos we’re the only ones he can stand? Or just the comfort of familiarity, goes with the comfort of Micky O’Flynn’s Irish stew? Louise is real sympathetic, she saw it in the paper and there was a bit on the midday news, as well. The Guinness is for comfort, too, I think, can’t be specially in memoriam, never saw Old Man Harbottle knock back anything but triple whiskies.

    “End of an era, eh?” he goes with a sigh, draining his glass.

    “Yeah; I guess he was one of your first clients, wasn’t he?” I agree sympathetically, since Molly and Daniel are both just looking sympathetic and slightly desperate.

    “Oh, Hell, yeah, he was on the books when I started with old Grant.”

    “Heck, how old was he?” goes Daniel with superb tact.

    Uncle Jerry gives him a wry look. “Well, older than me, Daniel.”

    Molly sips her Guinness very cautiously, it sticks out a mile she doesn’t like it but she’s much too nice to say so. “Um, didn’t he do the new pavers for you after Rosie had her accident?”

    “Yeah—well, Harbottle Hard Paving did, yeah, that’s right, Molly. Hadda bribe the old joker by writing off the slice he owed us, mind y— Uh, never mind,” he says quickly, as Daniel’s jaw is observed to sag. “Yeah—did a good job, too. The ones with little knobs on them like what May always thought I should’ve got in the first place,” he notes heavily.

    “Yes, um, well, Rosie knew him, too, didn’t she?”

    “Yeah, in fact back in the days when he owned a leg of Heaven Sent—no, Daniel, she was Heaven Can Wait’s dam,” he says as Daniel frowns, the lips moving silently—“back in those days, he put her up on her: thought she was Christmas, little navy blue granny frock rucked up to show the pants and all! And May’s got the Polaroid to prove it!” He grins, but then sighs, and swigs the Guinness.

    Daniel’s now looking distinctly uneasy but Molly just smiles and nods and says: “Yes, those Granny frocks were cute, weren’t they? So maybe Rosie ought to be told?”

    “Eh? Oh. Well, May’ll have that well in hand, Molly. Well in hand.”

    Cof. Only if she knows where she is. “Um, acksherly this week she isn’t at the cottage, Uncle Jerry.”

    “She can’t be doing the tap crap for Dawlish yet: the doc told her to stay off that leg until after Christmas.”

    “No. She sent me an email. She’s at a conference.” Cringe, quail, wait for the sky to fall.

    “With her leg in plaster?” he says limply.

    “Um, yeah. Um, she went with Mark Rutherford. The professor.”

    “Why?” he croaks.

    “She must be giving a paper, Uncle Jerry!” says Molly quickly.

    “I did sort of gather that, Molly. That’s the ostensible reason. What I’d like to know”—ouch, here we go—“is the real reason why a person who claims to loathe travelling and who’s just been halfway round the world has gone waltzing off in a wheelchair, presumably without the husband she’s always claiming she never sees enough of, after moving Heaven and Earth to get him transferred to a bloody shore job, not to mention suborning the senior echelons of the Navy!”

    “Not to mention all that ear-bending of you she did before she knew for sure he was gonna take the Portsmouth job,” I agree.

    “Dot, where is this fucking conference?”

    Yes, well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? “Only up in Edinburgh.”

    He takes a deep breath. “Is she seeing that Keel prick again?”

    “No! It’s a coincidence,” I say miserably. “Far’s as I know Euan’s not in Scotland. See, Mark Rutherford persuaded her that she hadda go to the conference in spite of the leg. What I mean, she was gonna use it as an excuse to get out of it and get him to read the paper for her, ’cos Greg—he’s her research assistant, Molly—um, he’d got some really fascinating data for the village study and she wanted to stay there.”

    “With her husband and her child, one presumes,” notes her father acidly.

    “Um, yeah. Only Mark said it’d only be for a bare week. Um, and he is her boss. He said she needed to make the contacts, Uncle Jerry.”

    He breathes heavily.

    “It does sound like just a coincidence,” says Daniel nervously.

    “Daniel, it’s the sort of coincidence that only happens in Rosie’s life— Oh, forget it. Anyone want an Irish whiskey?”

    So I go: “No, we’ve gotta work this arvo.”

    “Yeah. All right. I suppose I’ve wasted enough of your time. You’d better get on back. Think I’ll stay on for a bit. And do us a favour, Dot, and ring May and give her Rosie’s contact number, will you? Don’t mention Keel at all and maybe she won’t make the connection.”

    “No—right,” I mutter, and we all slide out, leaving him to Irish whiskey and Louise’s personal service. Well, yeah, she knows he’ll order triples, but it isn’t entirely the cash nexus.

    At first nobody says anything, we just head back silently to the office. It’s a lovely day but nobody remarks on it. Then Molly says: “Is Euan up in Scotland?”

    Swallow. “Don’t think so.”

    Suddenly Daniel says hoarsely, going very, very red: “Forget him, Molly. You’re worth ten of him!”

    Ten thousand, I’d say, but good on him.

    Molly just smiles that serene smile of hers and says: “Thanks, Daniel. But I’m not pining, you know. And he never made me any promises, or anything like that. It was just…” Think we’re both expecting her to say “one of those things” but she doesn’t. “Just that he was a rather sad person that needed some comfort at the time.”

    Daniel gives a real snort, sounds just like Aunty Kate! And goes: “Too bad what you might of needed!”

    Suddenly she laughs. “I think I needed a really dishy film star to fancy me, Daniel! To tell you the truth it’s done wonders for my ego!”

    “Oh, good,” he says weakly.

    “Yeah, good,” I agree quickly. “Listen, no way is Uncle Jerry gonna be fit to drive the Merc this evening: any takers?”

    There’s a stunned silence. Then Daniel croaks: “Us?”

    “You’re the only ones that are here, aren’tcha? Or wouldja rather Deirdre done it?”

    “No!” he gasps. It’s not that he doesn’t want her to have the treat—though he wouldn’t if he thought about it, of course—but she’s a dreadful driver, the sort that’s convinced (a) she’s the only one with a right to be on the road and (b) every other driver on the road is in the wrong.

    “She will volunteer, ya know.”

    After a moment Molly says in a small voice: “It’s not an automatic, is it?”

    “No way. Anyway, have you ever driven an automatic?”

    “No, I just thought it might be easier…”

    “You better do it, Dot,” admits Daniel reluctantly.

    Yeah. “Okay. You might as well take my car, then. I suppose I can come in with Uncle Jerry tomorrow, or take the train. Blow: I was planning on an early start.”

    “Yeah: see, she had an email from Lucas Roberts this morning that took ages to answer,” he explains to Molly, the tiny pointy-headed, make that dick-headed nerd!

    She’s looking at me in naked horror.

    “Not a personal one, a business one. He’s gonna make a formal offer for a copy of our database structure plus and a formal offer to contract me to set their system up.”

    “It wasn’t she was doing it or anything,” Daniel explains hurriedly, “but it took her ages to decide what to say in reply. Like, just an acknowledgement or that—y’know? So she wants to make up a bit of time tomorrow. –Go on, Dot, ask her!”

    “Um, yeah, um, the thing is Peta’s so bright and competent, we thought maybe she could take over from Daniel while he takes over from me.”

    “Yuh—um, I should think she could, yes,” she falters, “only who’d do her job?”

    Me and Daniel exchange glances. My glance can’t of said what I thought it was saying, cos he goes: “You.”

    “Me?” she gasps. “But I haven’t been here long enough!”

    “Pooh, you got ten times the brain power of the rest of them rolled into one!” he notes scornfully. “Tom as well,” he admits.

    “But won’t it put people’s backs up?” she gasps.

    “In Peta’s section? No way!” he scoffs.

    “He’s right,” I concede. “The other moos’ll get their backs up, but when didn't they?”

    “We need some more juniors, anyway—bright ones,” he notes, “so what we thought, take on a junior to replace Shona and promote her to your position. You wouldn’t start cold, Peta’ll have time to give you some coaching and we’d have you in with us for a bit before Dot goes—teach you more about the system, see.”

    “Um—well, yes, I—I’d like to. Only I haven’t had any experience of—of management, Dot. And—and Peta does IT trouble-shooting for her section, too.”

    “Dot’s got heaps of books you can read,” says Daniel confidently before I can so much as open me gob. “Anyway, our system’s a breeze to work with, isn’t it, Dot?”

    Right. Setting aside whole mornings spent on database recovery—yeah. “Yeah. Well, as databases go, it sure is.”

    Molly nods dazedly. Daniel seems to think it’s all settled, because he plunges into a rapt description of his master plan to digitise every blessed piece of paper the office ever receives, then linking the graphic files to our databases (including those that only exist in his imagination as yet). True, he got the idea off the bloke that sells the software, that job they did for a big soft-drink wholesaler a bit back; also true, we do not need to track invoices and delivery notices and receipts all over the country at umpteen outlets, and, also true, some physical body will have to be in charge of actually scanning these bits of paper— Never mind, he’s keen and he’s happy, and Molly seems genuinely interested.

    And, I think, genuinely not worried that Euan Keel’s waltzed off to the other side of the world without a single phone call or greeting card, let alone a bunch of flowers. Well, wouldn’t you think, after all that cheering up she did up at Big Rock Bay, not to mention the huge improvement in his performance that resulted from it, that even a self-absorbed film star might think she rated a miserable bunch of flowers? Well, no, apparently.

    And I will say this for Lucas, underhand he may be and button-down introvert he most certainly is, but he did send me a really beautiful bunch of flowers. To my home address, what’s more, not embarrassingly to the office. So yeah, it is a factor in me thinking seriously about accepting his offer to set their system up, I’ll admit it. And do I think that was at the back of his mind when he decided to send me the flowers? Not exactly— No, wait! What I think is, he’d’ve realised that I would think it when he made the offer, but he sent the flowers anyway, because, see, a decent joker sends a bunch of flowers to a girl he’s had a good time with, never mind if the busting up was pretty much her idea or what motives she’s gonna read into it later on. Geddit? Good, well, if ya have got it, perhaps you could pass it on to Euan Keel if you ever happen to bump into him. That or shoot the bugger—right.

    “Hey, Kirrian just rung up—”

    Ann was actually at her desk, for once. “What?” she groaned. If this was the latest report on Kirrian’s morning sickness she didn’t actually want to hear it.

    What it amounted to, Kirrian was looking in the Engagements section for the announcement of her cousin Elaine’s engagement that she already knew was gonna be in there ’cos she already knew Elaine and her Orwin (Erwin?—whatever) were engaged— Yeah, yeah. At this juncture some would have pointed out that in that case she did not need to seek visual verification of the fact in smudged computer-generated Times New Roman—Forget it. Young women like Kirrian were like that, in fact ninety-nine percent of the world’s population was apparently like that. And, Kirrian had just happened to— Read every single syllable, nay character, of the other engagement notices right, right; and— Huh? Wasn’t who what?

    “Um, Tony,” she said cautiously, “Marshall is a really common name.”

    “Yeah, but Myfanwy Griffiths?” He brandished the paper at her.

    That was probably a very common name in Wales, and even out here people with ethnic surnames tended to go for the ethnic first names even if they couldn't speak a word of whatever and had never set foot for five generations in the mother country—but, yeah. The combination of the two was probably not all that common. Apparently Kirrian had already verified that there was no pic, so Ann didn’t bother to check, she wasn’t that far gone.

    “Uh—well, nip out to the Marshall parental home and interview Mrs M?” she ventured hazily.

    Tony went very red. “No! I just thought you’d be interested!”

    Ouch. Beg ya pardon. “Um, sorry, Tone,” she croaked. “Of course I am. Really good news, eh? The poor girl deserves some happiness in her life.”

    He brightened. “Yeah, that’s what we thought!”

    Right. Tied to that thick-headed nerd Kenny Marshall, in a 21st-century suburban box. Eh? “Card?” she echoed. “Oh! Um, yeah. You could send it to the parents’ address, why not?”

    Oops, that was wrong, apparently it had to be from both of them, as in Ann and Tony, not Kirrian and—

    “Yeah, fine,” agreed Ann limply as he shot off to ring Kirrian on the office phone.

    Well, okay, it was good news. And very possibly Lily Rose would not come out for the wedding as Kirrian was already speculating and she, Ann, would not be ordered by Her Master’s Voice to— Like Hell. All right, but she was gonna get expenses out of the bugger! And the flaming petrol!

    Ann looked round warily. There was no-one within coo-ee that she knew—hardly surprising, the Sydney culture-vulture scene was not her bag—and, most unfortunately, no-one with “Press” on a notice on their chest, either. Well, bugger. The thing was, The Sydney Morning Star’s official culture-vulture follower had the flu, so as Muggins had got her story in bright and early complete with a lovely pic by Bill Evans, Muggins had been told to get along there and if she’d stop whingeing for one minute she could charge her tea to the paper. So here she was. Half the ladies were in evening dresses—hideous evening dresses. The other half were just in hideous dresses. Ugh, were those actual fur stoles? True, the ladies under them were about seventy-five, but—Ugh. There was a large easel over there with a pic of the performers on it so she went and gloomed at it. Ugh, she just hated bearded ten— Uh, baritone? Okay, she was quite prepared to hate them, too! Sighing, she got out her notepad and wrote the names very carefully in clear. …Supposing she ran mad and bought a programme instead of relying on the very, very sparse information on this here easel, would she ever be able to get a receipt for it? And if not, would Jim ever believe the humungous amount of moolah the things cost? She hadn't asked the price, that would have been beyond the Sydney culture-vulture pale, she had just hung around very close to a programme seller until a gent actually asked, this took some time, evidently the done thing was just to hold out a fifty, receiving very, very little change therefrom.

    “Um, hi, Ann,” said a small voice as she thus stood and gloomed.

    Ann turned round. “Christ! –Oh, hi, Dot, it’s you,” she said very limply indeed.

    “It’s this dress,” replied Dot glumly. “Six people have already asked for my autograph.”

    “Yeah, uh, how is Rosie?”

    “Good; she’s still bandaged up but she’s getting around a bit. Having lots of physio and they reckon she’ll be able to start a bit of cautious tapping in the New Year.”

    “Cripes, you mean Dawlish still hasn’t been able to finish the filming?” she croaked.

    “Nope,” replied Dot happily, grinning.

    “Right! Um, don’t suppose you know what’s gonna be on tonight, do you?”

    Dot reddened, Ann couldn’t see why, and produced a crumpled piece of paper from her purse. “This was in the paper.”

    “Not ours,” recognised Ann drily. “Thanks. Uh—shit. How authoritative is it, do you know?”

    “No idea. Um, you’re not here officially, are you?”

    “Yes!” Ann looked down at herself. “Oh,” she recognised. The once-trendy floating scarf was completely obscuring the “Press” notice. She took the ruddy thing off, wadded it up and shoved it in her bag. “It’s been nothing but a nuisance all evening: had the car window open and it just about strangled me.”

    “Isadora Duncan,” agreed Dot obscurely. “Yeah. Um, I think it’s back-to-front.”

    “Eh?” Ann peered down at herself. “Oh!” Resignedly she righted her “Press” notice. “There. Official.”

    “Mm. I see, you’ll have to list the pieces. Won’t your paper pay for a programme?”

    “No, ’cos have you realised how much the fucking things are?” replied Ann heatedly.

    “Um, yeah, they call themselves souvenir programmes.”

    “Yeah. The thing is, will they give a receipt?”

    Dot looked dubiously at the nearest programme seller, a very up-market young woman indeed, in a discreet black slinky thing with a small Singapore orchid behind her sculptured ear, against her sculptured hair. “I don’t think she will, but there’s a window, too.”

    “Lead me to it,” said Ann resignedly.

    After that embarrassing episode was over and the receipt was stowed carefully in Ann’s wallet she noted glumly: “Could leave now, really.”

    “Um, so you’re not musical?” replied Dot dubiously.

    Ann’s eyes twinkled. “There are two possible answers to that, Dot!”

    “Ye-ah!” she gasped ecstatically, going into a paroxysm.

    Grinning, Ann enquired: “Aren’t you, then?”

    “No,” said Dot, blowing her nose. “Um, no, only I sort of know Nef, um, Antigone Walsingham Corrant.”

    “Cripes, how?”

    “Um,” she said, going bright red, “she’s David Walsingham’s sister and I met her in Adelaide.”

    Ann associated this remark vaguely with tree-tomatoes, though she was buggered if she could see why. “Oh, right,” she responded blankly.

    “Um, my Aunty Kate used to live next-door to him. I mean, she moved—they’re always moving,” she muttered.

    “Right.” It was quite clear the girl didn’t want to pursue the topic, but, alas, Ann let her reportorial instincts take over and demanded: “Do you know her well enough to get me round for an interview after the show?”

    “Um, yes,” said Dot with an agonised expression, again turning very, very red: “Acksherly, she’s asked me round. Um, see?” she said, producing a note.

    Ann grasped it eagerly, breathing very heavily. It was on embossed cream notepaper, if ya please, headed in embossed gold lettering (very fancy font), “From the desk of Antigone Walsingham Corrant.” Cripes. And one address in London and another in—shit. “Athens?” she croaked.

    “Um, yes, I think that’s their mother’s address,” said Dot in a tiny voice.

    “She really is Greek, then, it’s not just— Hang on, but if their surname’s Walsingham?”

    “Um, their father’s English and their mother’s Greek,” said Dot, still in the tiny voice.

    “Oh, right!” Ann got out her notepad and wrote it all down—providently in clear. Well, how many Pitmanners would know the symbols for “Greek” or “Athens,” for Pete’s sake?

    After that it was time to go in but she made damn sure that they’d meet up in the interval. The excuse was a drink but Ann didn’t kid herself the poor girl didn’t see through that one.

    During the interval she dragged what she knew about the famous dad out of her—jolly good, and if she had the facts a bit wrong, never mind: the paper’d be sure to have something about him somewhere. Dot didn’t seem to know much about what Antigone Walsingham Corrant had done, but if she’d been out here before the paper’d have something on her, too. The explanation as to why she was calling her Nefertite was completely muddled, so Ann skipped it. The paper could go by what was on the official fucking souvenir almighty-expensive programme. Dot didn’t have any opinion on the music as such, though she thought “Nefertite” had a lovely voice, so during the second half Ann just listened to what the pompous-voiced gits in front of her were saying to each other and scribbled it down in shorthand. It included the intel that the programme was almost exactly the same as what she’d sung at a concert in London that one of them had been to last March, so with the power of the Internet at her fingertips— Um, well, say she told Speedy Gonzales she’d been unable to find it— Yeah! Ace!

    The second part of the second half was really, really horrible but as none of the composers were names she recognised and one of them was a local, Ann had been expecting that. The encores were good, though. She even recognised them. Well, not what they were, no. But real music that she’d heard on the ABC’s music station in between the poncy announcers listening to the sound of their own over-inflated and completely unnecessary egoes.

    Dot was obediently waiting for her by the easel, looking miserable, when the crowd surged out in the rush to be first out of the carpark. Ann didn’t allow herself to feel sorry for her, that was the way reporters lost their jobs and failed to eat for the rest of their lives.

    “Where do we go now?”

    “Um, she said to go to the box office and someone would collect me,” Dot reminded her miserably.

    When they got there it was of course closed and Dot was just saying that perhaps they should go, when a panting, beaming young man with a Singapore orchid in his buttonhole arrived. Of course! Lady Corrant was expecting Miss Mallory! And a friend? Certainly!

    “Lady?” croaked Ann, tottering in his wake.

    “Um, the Unlamented Corrant, um, he was a Sir, like, an inherited title, not anything he ever, um, did. Um, English. She’s divorced now,” said Dot miserably.

    “Gee, wonder if that’s in the archives?”

    “Um, don’t put that she calls him that, will you?” asked Dot miserably.

    “No, ’course not!” –Would the readers be interested? Would it be actionable? Well, not if it was true, but would she be able to prove that it was true?

    … Phew! Antigone Walsingham Corrant was overpowering enough on stage, but close to—! Well, very, very gracious and welcoming, even though Ann admitted she was Press, and genuinely, Ann would have bet her miserable salary plus and her mingy petrol allowance, genuinely fond of Dot, and completely thrilled to see she was wearing the elegant pale yellow silk garment that had made Ann—only at first sight, until it sunk in that it didn’t lovingly outline the tits—take her for Lily Rose Rayne in person.

    “I’ve never had anything to wear it to before, really,” admitted Dot, smiling at the singer, very flushed.

    “Not the opera?” she murmured.

    “Um, they did do La Bohème a bit back, only I was really broke, I just went up in the top circle.”

    “Up in the gods! Goodness, that takes me right back to my student days!” she said with a sort of gurgling laugh. “And did you like it, Dot?”

    Ann watched with unashamed interest as Dot went very red and held up that determined chin of hers. “Not much, I thought it was awfully silly. And the music seemed sort of… squashy.”

    “Squashy,” she said thoughtfully. “What a good word for him. And was the tenor any good?”

    “Um, the hero?” Antigone Walsingham Corrant merely nodded seriously, so Ann stopped wondering where to look—even she knew that the tenor had to be the hero in opera! “I didn’t think so. Everybody clapped, except the man in front of me, he shouted Boo, only we were so far up that I don’t think anybody heard him. Um, he was sort of… Well, I thought he sounded sort of strained, if you want to know,” she said on a defiant note. “Sort of… not clear.”

    “Ugh! Very amateurish, what a pity, Dot! It can be rather nice if the tenor’s good, though it is terribly silly—very nineteenth-century, in its assumptions as well as its style, isn’t it? But a bad tenor makes it very hard to sit through.”

    “Um, does it? You mean it wasn’t just me?” said Dot limply.

    “Certainly not,” drawled an offensive male Pommy voice from the direction of the doorway. “A muddied tone, some would call it, but ‘strained’ and ‘not clear’ puts it very well. The man in front of you wasn’t the only one to boo, I promise you. I walked out—couldn’t take it. It was almost as bad as that bloody Ring in Adelaide a few years back—and the local talent can’t be blamed for that one, they were all imported.”

    Ignoring the Adelaide reference, his sister cried: “David! After the poor man’s first aria?”

    “No, in the middle of it,” he said coolly, coming in. “Hullo, Ann.”

    At this point Ann felt fully justified in giving the prick a good hard glare, so she did. Not that anybody noticed, she didn’t think, because his sister was crying loudly: “David! That was beyond the pale!” and Dot was crying loudly: “Don’t you ever give anybody a second chance?”

    “Not when it’s my ears being tortured, no.”

    “Your soul in torment, don’tcha mean?” she retorted crossly.

    “You said it,” he agreed calmly. “Ronald Searle—Punch,” he said to his sister. “One of those ‘the best of’ vols that Grandfather insisted on giving Father for Christmas and he insisted on not looking at. I salvaged them.”

    “He’s got three of them, Nefertite,” said Dot calmly.

    “Oh, yes! Of course! –Grandfather was quite a decent old fellow,” Nefertite-Antigone explained to Ann with her lovely smile.

    “And Father wasn’t, and still isn’t,” added David sourly.

    “Yes,” said Ann feebly. Wasn’t this developing into a family fight, after all? Nor into, as far as him and Dot were concerned, what she had a fair suspicion could have been described as a lovers’ tiff; why hadn’t it ever dawned that the reason Walsingham got so obviously up Dot’s nose was that she fancied him dead rotten and didn’t want to it admit it to herself? And, contrariwise, that he fancied her dead rotten and—uh, well, Ann had a fair idea that he had admitted it to himself and wasn’t doing anything about it, for whatever reason, and that that was what the trouble was. Well, admittedly there had been one or two other distractions at the film studios, and again up in Queensland, as far as she was concerned. Actually, she couldn’t remember ever having seen him and Dot together at Big Rock Bay.

    “Look, David, she’s wearing it!” his sister then said, beaming.

    “Mm? Oh, of course, the North African thing you gave her! One of the few blondes who can wear pale lemon,” he said with a smile. “My God, didn’t poor Amaryllis look ghastly in that mauve and lemon nylon thing?”

    Dot had gone very pink, so Ann said quickly: “No. I grant you it was ghastly, but Amaryllis as such wouldn’t look ghastly in a sack.”

    “You’re right: aren’t those bones wonderful? And then, of course she isn’t a natural blonde,” he added thoughtfully. “Her skin tones are far too dark, and the brows and lashes are a dead giveaway.”

    “Shut up, David, leave us some illusions,” said his sister mildly. “This was a dress for the film, was it?”

    “Yes,” agreed Dot. “Her and Michael Manfred—he was playing the Captain, like in the series—they were walking on the beach. Um, well, kissing,” she said, flushing.

    “Dawlish wanted Red Sails In the Sunset, but as it would have clashed ’orribly with every other note we’d decided on for the thing, I refused point-blank to let him have it,” said David sweetly. “With the results that can be imagined.”

    “Yes. Then Rupy Maynarde suggested Yes, We Have No Bananas, and he exploded all over again—’cos it’s in Sabrina, you see: the scene where he takes her out in the boat!” explained Dot eagerly.

    David raised his eyebrows. “‘He’ being Bogart, of course. Isn’t it extraordinary? The man didn’t have a fraction of William Holden’s looks but it’s bloody obvious that poor Holden, though he was damned good in the rôle, simply could not hold a candle to him as far as the distaff side’s concerned: I’ve never heard a female say ‘he’ and not mean Bogart in relation to that film. In fact several of the women I mentioned it to had completely forgotten Holden was even in it.”

    “I had,” admitted his sister serenely.

    Suddenly Ann collapsed in helpless sniggers. “Sorry!” she gasped feebly.

    “No, that’s all right, Ann,” said Nefertite-Antigone with her lovely smile. “We’re used to him.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Dot, suddenly grinning.

    “Apparently, yes,” he conceded, unable to hide a smirk. “Though I think that in this instance I wasn’t the precise object of Ann’s hilarity.”

    “No, I mean yes. I mean, it seems so self-evident to the distaff side that no-one could possibly mean anyone but Bogie if they said ‘he’ when they were talking about Sabrina!” said Ann, mopping her eyes.

    “Yes!” gasped Nefertite-Antigone, suddenly collapsing in—well, you couldn’t call them sniggers. Or only if sniggers could be gurgling musical ones. Gosh.

    “Poor thing,” said Dot in tremendously pitying tones to David.

    “Right—got it,” he acknowledged, grinning. “Have you decided where you want to eat, Nefertite?”

    His sister just shook her head helplessly, mopping her eyes, so Ann took the opportunity to say: “Oh, do you call her Nefertite, too?”

    “Unless we’re speaking Greek or I’m in the actual presence of our terrifying Greek aunties: yes,” he said, suddenly giving her an actual genuine smile. Cripes. Talk about your Bogarts! Well, Ann had always recognised he’d be bloody attractive, if he’d drop the needling, but—Phew. Same type, too: not very tall, slim, dark, nothing specially remarkable about him but—yeah. Well, not in the same class, no mere human being could be, but—yeah. No wonder little Dot felt it!

    “Anywhere not too fancy that can provide a nice plain steak, I think, David,” decided Nefertite, blowing her nose.

    “Help. You’re a Sydneysider, Ann: any ideas?”

    “Um…” Was Nefertite intending to wear that blue thing she was draped in, or was it a dressing-gown? And Dot was really gussied up—not just for the concert, Ann had now decided, and not just to please Nefertite, either. “Hog’s Breath?” she suggested limply.

    “Or Kooka’s? Their steaks are better,” said Dot placidly.

    Ann quailed.

    “It’s all right, Nefertite and David aren’t really up-market!” said Dot cheerfully.

    No? Those accents were. And that blue thing of Nefertite’s was. And the scent. French, two hundred dollars for a mere drop, or Ann Kitchener was a Dutchman in his clogs.

    “No, we’re not,” agreed Nefertite cheerfully, getting up and going behind a screen. “If their steaks are better, let’s go there. Is it warm out?” she boomed.

    It was only November. Um, well, was she more used to Greece or England? Ann looked wildly at Dot.

    “Very mild. You could wear a blouse and a light cardy, Nefertite,” she said calmly.

    “Or a tee-shirt,” added David mildly. “But do the world a favour and don’t wear the one with the cat’s face on it.”

    “But I love it!” she said with a fruity laugh.

    “Um, not a leopard?” ventured Ann very cautiously. Those had been extremely In, some years back.

    “No, a cat, she bought it because she was convinced it had been created as a piece of inspired pastiche,” said David heavily.

    “It was!” she boomed from behind the screen. Suddenly she emerged in it. “See?”

    “Ooh, yes!” cried Dot, beaming. “It’s ace, Nefertite!”

    Ann gulped. It was a vastly inflated—no pun intended, but with Nefertite in it, it was all of that—very ordinary cat’s face. A tabby. The tee-shirt itself was pale apricot, actually a very pretty shade, but one didn’t realise that for some considerable period.

    “A plain moggy, see?” said David, shutting his eyes.

    “Yes,” agreed Nefertite placidly, putting on a light-weight turquoise cardy that managed not to tone with either the tee-shirt or the well-cut but no longer fashionable tapered tan slacks. “Mother had a cat just like it, remember?” Suddenly she said something in what must be Greek and Ann jumped ten feet where she sat.

    “Was that its name?” asked Dot.

    “Yes. Ariadne,” she agreed, smiling.

    She’d said a lot more than that, but Ann for one wasn’t game to ask for a translation. Inadvertently she caught Dot’s eye. Dot winked at her. Ann smiled feebly. “Um, my Dad used to go to Kooka’s with his mates. Um, you won’t like it, Nefertite.”

    “If the steaks are good, she’ll like it,” said David mildly. “Are they?”

    “Uh—yeah, but it’s terribly scruffy,” replied Ann weakly.

    “Not full of gays, is it? Not that we object to gays as such, but Nefertite finds gay cafés boring.”

    Ann took a deep breath. “In that case you’ll be riveted by Kooka’s, Nefertite, I can guarantee it. In fact, if the average macho Aussie had the guts of a louse I’d say you’d have to fight them off with a stick, but as it is, you’ll only have to fight off the very drunk ones.”

    “What a pity!” she said with that gurgling laugh. “Well, I think I can do that. But we won’t go there if you don’t fancy it Ann, of course.”

    Ann didn’t know that she did fancy Kooka’s all that much with only David Walsingham as male support, actually. But suddenly the door opened and a voice even deeper and more resonant than Nefertite’s boomed: “You’re not going without me, are you?”

    So that was all right. Ann was in no doubt whatsoever that Daffyd Owens—such was his terribly ethnic name, poor man, what on earth must his parents be like?—would be capable of beating off any number of drunken Aussies armed with rude propositions and very, very feeble repartee. With one of those hefty arms tied behind him. So they went.

    In very short order it emerged that everyone called him Daffy, that he wasn’t gay, not that Ann had imagined that he was, and that, actually, he fancied pretty little Dot Mallory a lot more than he fancied his extremely glamorous and clearly very experienced co-performer. And that Dot didn't fancy him as much as he fancied her—though still not being immune to him.

    As might have been expected by anyone that wasn’t all keyed up by being in the company of two famous singers and an extremely superior needling Pom that came over a bit like Bogie, the clientele of Kooka’s, though eyeing them cautiously sideways as they entered, ignored them completely. Completely. So much so that you could well have said they were not even on the same planet with them.

    Which they pretty well weren’t, were they? concluded Ann Kitchener, reeling into her virtuous bed at a very advanced hour of the morning indeed—Daffy and Nefertite didn’t have a performance tomorrow, make that today, and so had been very keen on seeing the Harbour Bridge at night and crossing the Harbour Bridge at night and, on hearing that koalas were nocturnal, on looking for koalas at night, not to mention on finding bars that were still open and sampling their wares. Never mind that Nefertite’s brother lived in Adelaide in a suburban dump (which had become pretty clear during the course of the evening), she and Daffy between them had sung in twenty-four, yes twenty-four countries in the last six months, and, again between them, could sing in fourteen languages. Fifteen if you counted his claim to have drunkenly sung in Inuit (Eskimo to youse yobs) at a drunken party somewhere north of Nome. Neither of them claimed to speak that many, but Daffy had admitted to being able to get along in six, and Nefertite had at first also claimed six and then remembered, gurgling terrifically, that she’d left out English! Seven. Daffy then remembered he’d left out Welsh, so that made seven each. David, by contrast, could only speak English, Greek, German, French and Italian. Though conceding he could make himself understood in Spanish and could limp through Cervantes with a dictionary. Help.

    Ann’s phone rang at crack of dawn that morning. Uh—eleven fifteen. “What? It’s Sunday!” she snarled into it.

    “Yes. Sorry, Ann, thought you’d be up by now,” said a superior Pommy male voice.

    “Who is that?” replied Ann suspiciously.

    “Sorry. David Walsingham. I think I’ve got your watch.”

    Ann peered blearily at her bedside table. “Yuh—Uh, hang on.” She peered blearily at her wrist. “Nope, mine’s on my wrist. If it’s not Nefertite’s it must be Dot’s.”

    “Er—yes. I’d better ring her.”

    “Yeah. Well, I’d give it a bit longer, though I don’t think she drank as much as I did.”

    “As much as we did!” he said with a smile in his voice. “No, she’s never been much of a drinker.”

    “How long have you known her?” demanded Ann baldly.

    There was a little silence. Then he said: “Five years. It seems like several lifetimes. Several agonising lifetimes, as a matter of fact.”

    “Look, for Pete’s sake, go for it! Or do you want her to end up with some useless prick like Euan Keel, or a Harvard Business School smoothie like Lucas Whatsisface?”

    “Thanks for those words of encouragement, Ann.”

    “Uh—yeah. Sorry, think I must still be drunk. But anyway, I mean it. She’s obviously fallen for you, it stuck out a mile.”

    She heard him swallow. “Did it?” he said weakly.

    Ann took a deep breath. “Yes.”

    “I see. I’m astounded that you should offer me any encouragement, actually, Ann,” he said lightly, sounding much more like himself.

    “I probably wouldn’t, if I hadn’t seen you with your sister. Well, with her and Dot. It sort of struck me: you all seemed really comfortable together.”

    “I—damn,” he said faintly.

    Ann grimaced horribly at her phone. “Um, are you okay?”

    There was a pause and then he said: “Sorry, it’s since 9/11: Nefertite was actually in bloody New York when it happened. I tend to weep at unexpected moments.”

    Ann swallowed hard and managed to say: “I’m not surprised. Anybody would.”

    “Yes? It doesn’t make me much of a bet for a lively young thing in her mid-twenties, though, does it?” he said bitterly.

    “I’d say it doesn’t, no, but we’re not talking about one of those, we’re talking about Dot. I think she’d be about the last person on earth to let that sort of thing count against you—in fact I think she’d be incapable of it,” said Ann on a firm note. “But don’t take my advice: by all means make yourself miserable instead.”

    “Thanks,” he said drily. “I will ring her about the watch.”

    “It’d be a start. And if you want my further advice, which I realise you don’t, try not to say anything sarky to her. See ya,” she said, ringing off very quickly before she could shove her foot any further down her great gob.

    After quite some time she came to and realised she was just sitting staring at the phone. “Cripes,” she muttered.