The Captain's Daughter & Other Relations

PART II

STORYBOARDS

5

The Captain’s Daughter & Other Relations

    The trouble with rellies is, they expect you to be the same as you were when you were a kid. Heck, I’m twenty-three, I’ve had over two years in Canberra on my own—well, the last year with Alan Fairbright, the name suits him, think I’m gonna have to break it off, it’s not working out too well—and I’ve long since finished my B.A. and just finished a Master’s in Computer Science at ANU. Well, I dropped the drama crap and did a few computer sci. subjects in the last semester of my B.A., Dad thought it might be the go. They were pretty feeble, fitted them in easy as easy, plus and a couple of extra Adult Ed courses while I was at it. I only had the one semester to do in my last year, so by August I’d got the job in Canberra. Government Stats, right. Not as good as I thought it was gonna be, actually, so when I found out the times of the lectures at ANU I decided I could fit in the Master’s, no sweat. Well, it was feeble but at least I’ve got the bit of paper. Or I will have at the end of the year when they deign to issue the official results, but I’ve passed everything and completed my thesis—boy, were those requirements pathetic or were they pathetic—so I forced the Registry to print out a copy of my results, because what if I want to apply for a better job in Sydney? Well, I might, since I’m here. Never came back last Christmas, was that a sore point or what, Mum actually did an Aunty May, bawled down the phone, but Canberra was practically deserted, it was the ideal time of year to get in a bit of hard yacker on the thesis. I saved up some leave, too, so now I’m free to spend it admiring Aunty May’s ruddy new wing! Given that I already got my own copy of Aunty Kate’s masterpiece, The New Wing The Video, do I need to?

    So me and Uncle Jerry stand shivering in the wind of late September, don’t let anyone tell you Spring in Sydney’s mild, and after a bit he goes: “Well, it’s what she wanted.”

    Yep, uh-huh, see that, Uncle Jerry. Like, the house is now L-shaped, where before it was just a square block, the long leg of the L being the new wing that stretches practically the whole length of the section, and in its lee there’s this gigantic bright turquoise oblong pool. Fenced off by this gigantic iron-railed fence, given the Australian reggos on pool fencing, but she’s had it painted turquoise to match, yep, likewise the gutters and down-pipes, plus and the very narrow window frames, not sills, sills are Out, O,U,T, in Trendyville NSW, and the entire house has been cream-rendered into featureless blah. Or, as good old Uncle Jim would put it (though not in Aunty Kate’s hearing, to my knowledge), till it comes out your ears.

    So after a bit I ask: “Is there any back garden left?”

    “No. Well, see those bits of turquoise and navy trellis down the back?”

    Hard to miss them, actually. “Yeah.”

    “There’s a bit of a drying-green behind there, we’ve still got a Hill’s Hoist,” he says wanly.

    Shit. That means she’s razed the citrus trees and the peach tree along with the veggie garden!

    “Well, nothing to mow,” he says valiantly. “Even got some sort of creeper put in down there that doesn’t need mowing.”

    “Yeah? Well, good, one less chore for the weekends when you’d be better off at Randwick, Uncle Jerry!”

    “That’s true,” he says, smiling at me. “Pity you couldn’t get over for the Cup last year, love;”—he means the Melbourne Cup, all racing people do, heck, all Aussies do—“had a good year. May seems to think it was all down to her new hat.” Wink.

    “Yeah, Mum sent me a copy of the Polaroids.” What else can I say without actually lying in my teeth? Covered in puce bows and roses, wider than she is. “It certainly looked expensive.”

    “It was that, all right, Dot!” he says with a laugh. “Well, come on back in, you’ve seen all there is to see out here.”

    So we go back into this, like, nightmare of Year 2000 flash hotel décor. Oh, well, it’s what she wants. The old lounge-room and the kitchen-dining room were all in one anyway, but she’s turned it into a “family room” officially, rather than by default like it was when the family actually lived here. The new dining suite’s got that white-stained wood that shows the grain, y’know? Personally it makes me feel ill, but if it’s what she wants, why not? Exactly why the new puce suite and the turquoise feature chair are real leather but the dining-chair seats are vinyl is a mystery known only to Aunty May. Or possibly not even to her: think it’s silvery-yellow fluff between the ears inside as well as out.

    She’s at the granite-topped bench, it’s nearly time for lunch. She’s done my favourite, curried chicken with mashed potato topping! Aunty May, that was my favourite when I was ten years old, for Chrissakes! I’m not gonna say it, no: why upset her for nothing? Well, her curried chicken isn’t wholly inedible, or it wasn’t thirteen years back, but given we’re in the New Millennium, will she of modernised it, allee same like the house?

    … Yep. Where it used to have sour cream mixed in with the sauce, now it’s got yoghurt, Joslynne’s Mum swears by it with chicken curry! Yeah, but unlike you, Aunty May, Joslynne’s Mum makes real Indian cur— Forget it. “Yeah, yummy, Aunty May.”

    Maybe Uncle Jerry didn’t come home for lunch—only from the office, not the racetrack, he spends a lot of time doing accounts and that sort of stuff—like I say, maybe he didn’t come home for lunch in order to get the complete re-hash of Rosie falling out of her tree, but that’s what he gets. Like, it all happened a while back but the family’s only known since about April-May, like that, when Aunty Kate won that trip to London on a quiz show and her and Uncle Jim went and landed themselves on Rosie for a couple of weeks.

    Rosie’s been in London since, um, end of 1998, must’ve been, she got the fellowship at the uni with the sociologist guy she approves of, Mark Rutherford, he was on the interviewing panel. So it’s for three years; and Aunty’s May’s in floods of tears, right? Rosie going off at the age of twenty-six to the other side of the world for three—Ya got that. Anyway, she jacked up for her to stay with Uncle Jerry’s niece, Joanie, sharing her flat somewhere in London. Joanie isn’t ultra-main-stream like the rest of Uncle Jerry’s boring middle-class rellies he happily left behind in Southern England, she’s an actress. Doing reasonably well, we’ve seen her in several awful BBC serials, usually in costume with silly hats. Well, I say silly, not as silly as that thing Aunty May wore to the Cup, nothing could be. So this is good, Rosie’s within reasonable travelling distance of the uni, the Prof.’s okay, like, a clone of the Sir John Gielgud character in Chariots Of Fire, ultra-smooth, but letting her do her thing, and Mark Rutherford co-opts her into some mega-study of small group dynamics he’s got this group of slaves doing, like, Ph.D. students and research assistants, gonna work it up into a book. She meets some of Joanie’s actor friends and starts going to tap dancing classes with some of them, it’s fun as well as good exercise and it helps to work off some of the flab she’s put on sitting round watching English TV and eating chips or instant mash with Joanie, whose cooking’s about as good as hers. So she uses the dynamics of the tap group for her pilot study, this goes over good. Meanwhile she’s starting some research on her own account, wants to take a look at nationalism in Britain since the end of the Cold War, well, whatever turns you on. So the tape-recorder’s working overtime, hidden in the handy carryall she got at Cunningham’s Warehouse in Adelaide, I may just have mentioned it, I’ve never been able to find anything half as sturdy, she must’ve just struck it lucky—typical Rosie.

    Then Mark Rutherford decides he’s gonna do small group dynamics within the workplace environment for the main study, and Rosie’s a bit stumped, her tap group isn’t a workplace. He’d like her to tag along with Joanie and observe a TV series in production (according to Rosie, with one eye firmly on the possibility of The Observer publishing bits of the book), only gee, this depends on Joanie getting a part in a TV series, doesn’t it? And so far all she’s landed have been supporting rôles in nauseating drawing-room comedies that on this side of the world we assumed went out around 1955. Or whenever Alan Bates came in, kind of thing. But evidently in London busloads of Australian and American wrinklie-belt tourists get trucked to the things. Be that as it may, it isn’t TV and Mark’s starting to get ratty, it’s not gonna appeal to the Sunday Supps. (Rosie could just tell him to take a running jump, but she doesn’t want to, because he’s the coming man in the Department in spite of being a mad Yank with beady eyes behind Buddy Holly specs, and slated to get the chair when the Prof. retires in a couple of years. So she’s gotta keep in good with him.) Anyway, to a cut long story short, Joanie does get an audition for a new TV series but as she’s simultaneously having a thing with a married Spaniard, when he decides to ditch the wife and buy a little bar on the Spanish coast she opts to help him run it. Well, according to Rosie he is a total dish, one of those short, slim, dark little characters with a high-bridged nose and a pointed chin and flashing dark eyes. So on the one hand, that leaves Rosie and the flat, but one of the actors, Rupert Maynarde, he’s gay, they all call him “Rupy darling”, he decides to let his own flat and move in, so that’s all right. But on the other hand, what’s she gonna do now about observing a TV series in production?

    Anyone else would just have decided well, that was that, good idea while it lasted, and looked round for another workplace group to observe P.D.Q., given that Rutherford’s getting antsy, but not Lily Rose Marshall, M.A., Ph.D. No: she goes to the TV audition as Joanie—egged on by Rupy, he sounds even madder than she is. And gets the part! Not without having to admit she isn’t Joanie, I’ll give you that. None of us know the details but evidently it was a bit sticky for a while, there. You may well say that sort of thing can’t happen but you see, they were looking for someone to be the Marilyn Monroe of the New Millennium, and Rosie sure is that type: all curves, firmed up nicely in view of the tap dancing, and huge blue-grey eyes; and she was wearing her hair in a Shirley Temple cut that the tap place made her have done for their show, and Rupy’s spies knew it was gonna be a Fifties-look show so he dressed her up all Fifties. And given that they wanted someone who could tap and could put over a song, she was always gonna be in there with a chance: ’member those singing lessons she used to go to with Signorina Cantorelli? Right: the right kind of voice for musical comedy, and this show’s gonna feature song and dance numbers. Set in the Fifties on a boat in the Mediterranean. A British Navy boat, she’s the captain’s daughter and he’s a widower, I leave the rest to your imagination. Naturally she doesn’t tell the TV people that she’s a sociologist, not an aspiring actress: they think she wants to be a Star. And equally, she doesn’t tell the trusting rellies back home a thing, as they send weekly dispatches and wait for hers in reply.

    So everything’s hunky-dory, the show goes into production, and we all don’t know zilch about it, the studio’s publicity machine hasn’t yet got going publicising her as the 21st-century Marilyn Monroe and anyway they’re calling her Lily Rose Rayne, not Rosie Marshall. So she goes to a festival with Rupy and meets quite a nice bloke, an actor, but meanwhile, only she doesn’t tell Aunty May or any of the aunties this, only me and her oldest friend Joslynne, she’s met this other bloke, to die for, a real British Navy captain (the Navy motif being totally coincidental): John. But given that he’s gotta be twenty years older than her and involved with something married and fortyish in model suits and huge hats that frequents the Ritz’s afternoon-tea place, he barely knows she’s alive. So she takes up with the actor, Euan Keel, if you watch the more tediously serious kind of BBC TV thing on the ABC you might’ve seen him, and even though she doesn’t tell Aunty May all that much about him except she’s going round with him—given that she saw the New Millennium in with him in Paris she more or less had to say something—Aunty May’s all hopeful.

    So the year 2K rolls in, nobody’s computer falls down dead in a heap that we hear of, and Rosie’s show goes to air and is a riotous success. The Captain’s Daughter, if you read the English women’s mags slavishly you may just of heard of it, we’re slated to get it very soon. However, nothing of all this filters back to the rellies in Oz, cos unless it’s showing on our TV screens our media don’t wanna know, see? And she’s told me and Joslynne about the real captain, John, yeah, but nothing about the TV stuff, the mean cow, we wouldn’t have told anybody, for Pete’s sake!

    So Aunty Kate wins this trip to England and her and Uncle Jim go over there and for a whole week Rosie and Rupy, the pair of nongs, manage to pull the wool over their eyes, I kid you not, even down to pulling something out of the back of the TV and claiming it’s on the blink. And gee! Then Aunty Kate finds out. Well! You can imagine! The shit hits the fan with a roar! At the English end there’s Aunty Kate in it boots and all, giving interviews to the paparazzi: “My Niece the Talented Comedienne and her Boyfriend the Highly Artistic Shakespearean Euan Keel” or: “Little Lily Rose As We Knew Her Back Home,” or again: “How Little Lily Rose Got Started in Show Biz at the Age of Six, A Personal Interview By Her Aunt”—get the picture? Meanwhile at our end it’s floods of tears, Aunty May on the blower every day to the whole family, that or round at Aunty Allyson’s or in Mum’s lounge-room, bawling. “How could she do it without telling us?” or: “Acting’s such a risky profession, how could she do it without telling us?” Or: “When she’d worked so hard for her lovely fellowship, how could she go and give it up without telling us?” And: “You’d think she was ashamed of her family, doesn’t she realise we’d be pleased at her success, why didn’t she tell us?” Like that. So poor old Uncle Jerry rings Rosie up and tears a strip off her, doesn’t get much joy there: like, she tells him not to be a fusspot, think was the word that was bandied about. Ouch. Though he cheers up a bit when she tells him what they’re paying her.

    So Aunty Kate and Uncle Jim make a triumphal return, having seen the actual Euan Keel at the actual Stratford. And things cool down for a bit—well, put it like this, Mum isn’t on the blower to me every other day complaining about Aunty May bawling in the lounge-room. So the next thing we hear from Rosie she’s in Spain—last July, this would of been. Doing what? Well, visiting Joanie and her Seve at their bar, the rellies all assume. Only then Aunty May gets a letter from Joanie telling her how lovely it was to see Rosie and John. Not to mention enclosing holiday snaps of them all, the blokes in shorts, with or without shirts, and Rosie in a bikini that fully demonstrates that she has lost a couple of stone over the past few years but all the curves are more than in the right place.

    Immediate total tizz: who’s John, she’s never breathed a word! On the blower to Aunty Kate: the word is, not suitable. Well, no doubt nice enough and very well spoken— Turns out she only spoke to him on the blower, never met him. But that lovely Euan did tell her he’s a very much older man.

    But this can’t be— Does she mean that this one’s John? It can’t be!

    Funnily enough, not having long-distance X-ray vision in spite of her descendants’ claims to the contrary, Aunty Kate can’t tell her it is. But gee, they stopped off for a few days with Joanie and Seve on their way back home, so she can tell her that Seve’s a short, dark man, very Spanish-looking. So Aunty May goes into total hysterics.

    And believe you me, she isn’t over the shock yet. In fact, it totally eclipses the TV-actress, why didn’t-she-tell-us, not-like-Rosie bit, so it’s not all bad.

    So she goes tearfully, and not for the first time: “He’s too old for her, Dot!”

    “Um, yeah. Um, Mum reckons he doesn’t look that bad, Aunty May.”

    “Dot, that’s because he looks like Patrick Stewart! Wait!” She gets up and rushes out.

    I look limply at Uncle Jerry. “Who?”

    “Captain Picard,” he says heavily. “Or, take your pick, Captain Ahab.”

    “Cripes! Patrick Stewart the actor? But he’s—” Cof.

    “Old,” he says heavily. “That’s May’s point.”

    Cringe. “Um, yeah.”

    He looks sadly at the chicken curry dish and after a bit takes some of the mashed potato off the top of it—like, it’s like shepherd’s pie, geddit?

    So I go glumly: “Doesn’t she ever do it with sour cream any more?”

    “No,” he sighs. “Marianne G.-S. has vetoed the appearance in this house of anything that smacks remotely of real food.”

    Marianne Gridley-Smythe, he means, Joslynne’s Mum to the rest of the family, but Uncle Jerry’s a Pom, he hasn’t adopted all of our habits of speech. He doesn’t always call Aunty May “your aunt” when he’s speaking to me, either. Like, he’s the sort of husband that allows the wife to be a person in her own right. Not that it’s observedly done her any good, has it?

    “I getcha. Um, he was rotten as Ahab, don’t ya think?”

    “Mm? Oh: yes, foul. Can’t do character rôles. Though oddly enough he was very good as Scrooge; have you seen that version of A Christmas Carol?”—I can only shake my head numbly, the visions of face-fungus and nose-paste are turning me eyes fuzzy and me tongue’s sort of swollen up and stuck to the roof of me mouth.—“Your mother gave us a copy,” he says on a dry note. Ulp. “He plays it totally straight, none of the false-beard crap. Makes him human: the best Scrooge I’ve ever seen, actually.” He eyes me drily. “Better than he was wrote, in fact.”

    “Uh—yeah, Dickens was into the caricature stuff at that stage.”

    “Mm,” he says, smiling a little. Bright bloke, Uncle Jerry, as if ya hadn’t guessed. “It’s damn well directed, and the costumes are excellent: he just wears a dressing-gown or a plain black suit.” He eyes me drily again and adds: “May was quite overcome by the figure.”

    Wince. “This woulda been before she coped a gander at John, would it?”

    “Mm. Last Christmas.”

    Goddit. The one Rosie spent with Euan Keel in Paris—yep.

    Look out, she’s back, waving the Polaroid. Like, wow! Captain Picard or not. Well, he’s certainly got the chest and shoulders. And the thighs. And the—Cof. Yeah.

    So I go feebly: “Um, yeah, he is a bit like Patrick Stewart, um, but I’d say he was younger than him, Aunty May. And Rosie reckons he’s got sky-blue eyes.”

    “What? When did she say that?”

    Very feebly: “Um, when she wrote to me one time, Aunty May.”

    “May, for God’s sake leave the girl alone, she didn’t come over to be interrogated.”

    “I’m not!” Gone into a huff, typical.

    “Just let’s have the pudding, all right? I’ve got to get back to the office.”

    So she gets the pudding, looking huffy. It’s apple crumble with packet custard but she’s mollified when I tell her it’s ace. Well, as apple crumble goes, it is. And Uncle Jerry has two helpings—think partly to mollify her, partly because he didn’t like the curried chicken and he’s hungry. He can’t wait for coffee, he has to get back. Probably a lie, after all he is the boss, but it’s understandable he doesn’t want to share the magnifying-glass examination of Rosie’s pics that’s about to take place in his made-over family-room.

    There’s quite a lot of curried chicken shepherd’s, uh, shepherd’s curried chick—uh, shepherd’s chicken curry p—There’s quite a lot of it left, but she thinks Kenny will probably like it—that’s Rosie’s brother, a certified nong, he’s flatting with some other certified nongs who all seem to spend half the time over at their mums’ and dads’ places eating them out of house and home. So she bungs it in the fridge: next time he comes over for tea, he can take it with him. Like, it’ll be tomorrow if it’s not tonight, it won’t need to go in the freezer, that’s for sure.

    She lets me get the coffee, cos why? Cos she’s settling down on the new puce leather lounge with a great pile of letters and photos…

    “This is Euan Keel. Kate took it at Stratford on Avon.” Boy, dig the pout on her, no two guesses needed as to what side of the family Wendalyn’s Sickening Little Taylor gets it from.

    “Um, yeah.” Peer, squint. Right, one of them collarless white shirts, Rosie reckons the Stratford pseuds are always either in those or black rehearsal clobber. It’s hard to see much past the trendy sunnies, but I think I have seen him on the box, yeah, in something wanking, arty, and very long-drawn-out. Shot in shades of grey and navy, was it, or am I getting mixed up? Eh? Oh, yeah, much closer to Rosie’s age than John, Aunty May. Though as far as I can see for the shirt, he hasn’t got the figure. And certainly not the shoulders, those shoulders of John’s are really something, can I cop another gander at that other pic? She’s going on about how Aunty Kate thinks Euan’s such a nice young man, blah, blah, very talented, mm, yeah, is he? Mm… Wow, this is the actual Adam McIntyre in person!

    “What, dear? Oh—that actor, yes. Isn’t he handsome? Rosie said he was wonderful in um, I forget what play it was, but Shakespeare, of course!”—It was Cymbeline, ya dozy moo, she wrote me all about it, he was the eponymous hero, but ya don’t use them words to your rellies, so I don’t.—“But evidently a very insecure person in real life.”—Like, she wrote to me that he was a real drip, but yeah, insecure’d just about cover it.

    So we do the minute examination of all the Stratford pics, is this gonna go on forever? Think Rupy must’ve taken the ones Aunty Kate didn’t, he isn’t in most of them, like, medium height, slim, very good-looking in a smooth way and, given that he landed a part in The Captain’s Daughter, too, usually dressed as a younger Leslie Phillips-lookalike. Doesn’t ring any bells? Any weak Brit comedy of the late Fifties, early Sixties, not necessarily about boats? Always in a navy blazer with a hanky puffing from—No? All right, if ya never heard of him ya never heard of him. Oh, here he is: yep, blazer in place. “This is Rupy, eh, Aunty May? He looks nice, doesn’t he?”

    “Very nice, dear, and Kate assures me he’s taking such good care of Rosie!” True, Rupy’d be forty, but the boot’ll be on the other foot or my name isn’t Dorothea May Mallory. Doesn’t she realise how strong-minded Rosie is? No, apparently not. Aunty Kate must’ve missed the times Rupy stayed out until three the following afternoon or ended up outside someone’s flat at the other end of London at three in the afternoon with his wallet missing and had to phone Rosie to come and get him in a taxi, in fact she must’ve missed the story of who made him get a phone card and keep it in his trouser pocket and why. Eh? Cripes, now she’s telling me very delicately that he’s one of them. Does she imagine I’m gonna fall for him? So I tell her I know he’s gay and she looks relieved, oh, dear, dear, dear.

    Thank God, she’s finished the Strat— Er, not good, she’s got started on the Spanish ones: is she gonna bawl? So I go quickly, real bright: “This is Joanie and Seve’s bar, isn’t it? Looks cute, eh? See, all those strings of red peppers and onions and stuff, they’re for the British tourists. Like, there’s this huge tourist hotel just round the bay a bit, Rosie wrote me all about it.”

    “Yes, it sounds the ideal spot for a nice little bar that does English food,” she says wanly, oh, cripes. “Though Rosie’s Aunty June was very doubtful about Joanie dropping her career and going off to Spain like that.”

    Like, Rosie’s Aunty June isn’t an autonomous being in her own right, is she? No, she has to be characterised by her relationship to someone in my generation, “Joanie’s mother” being the alternative, geddit? Oh, well, they’re all like that. “Um, yeah, but then she wasn’t too keen on Joanie going on the stage in the first place, was she?” In fact, according to Aunty May’s daughter, she had hysterics long-distance on the phone to poor Uncle Jerry: Joanie didn’t know what she was doing, such a risky profession—you goddit; plus and George, the hubby, was worse than useless. Possibly the reason she eventually divorced him, but as for why they’re now sharing the house, don’t ask me.

    “Well, yes, but she’s done so well, dear!”

    Yep, supporting rôles in genteel drawing-room comedies on the stage, and supporting rôles in silly hats in genteel costume dramas on the box. “Quite well, I wouldn’t say she was a household name, and at thirty-six, where was she gonna go from there?”

    “Ye-es… Though Seve’s a lot older, dear.” Good, has this diverted her? She looks sadly at a pic of Joanie and Seve with their arms round each other, grinning like anything, and sighs.

    “Yes, but buying the bar and leaving the wife’s a real commitment, isn’t it?”

    “That’s true, Dot, you’re such a sensible little thing… I only wish Rosie had your common sense.” Oops, she’s looking at another pic of Rosie and John. Are those shoulders ace or are they ace! Fortunately he’s wearing a panama, because I rather think the Captain Picard motif extends as far as the head, and the shaven look may be In but that doesn’t mean a suburban mum of Aunty May’s generation’s gonna want a daughter of hers who’s only, um, shit, she’d be twenty-eight by now, doesn’t time fly?—A twenty-eight-year-old daughter of hers taking up with a bloke who must be around, cringe, fifty. Ouch! She’s found one of Rosie and John sitting together under the, um, pergola or whatever of the bar, the panama’s on the table and he is bald, yeah. A tear rolls down her round, pink cheek.

    “Don’t bawl, Aunty May, John sounds really nice, and, um, well, ya know what Rosie is. It’s probably just another of her things. Um, like, fling.”

    Black Mark, Dot Mallory, that was the wrong thing to say, because she bursts into tears. In between the sobs we receive the intel that it’s time Rosie was settling down, she doesn’t need another fling, and John’s far too old for her. Yeah, well, does this mean he’s looking for a middle-aged fling or does it mean he’s looking for a second wife? He was married once, but they busted up messily, yonks back. Don’t think Rosie’s favoured Aunty May with that choice morsel, so I’m not gonna mention it.

    So I eventually get her calmed down and get a cuppa into her and she remembers we haven’t done the lunch dishes so we go into the kitchen and never mind that she’s got this humungous dishwasher, we do the lunch dishes by hand because there’s just a few of them. Oh, well. Gee, and now it’s time for Oprah! Cripes, is it that early? Feels more like har’ past forty-two. Though I s’pose we did have lunch early, well, Uncle Jerry woulda wanted to get back to the office in time for the two o’clock from Randwick, yeah. So I leave her to it, she’s got the knitting out, doubt very much that Rosie’ll want a big pale blue fuzzy jumper for Chrissie, Aunty May, given that no-one’s wearing huge loose fuzzy jumpers in the first year of the New Millennium and given also that that thing’s guaranteed to make the wearer look the size of a house and Rosie’s got it written into her Captain’s Daughter contract that she’s not allowed to get around in public looking the size of a house. Yep, you bet, it’s all in black and white, when Henny Penny Productions take on the Marilyn Monroe of the 21st century they sew up all the loose ends. Given they don’t know she’s an undercover sociologist they sew up the loose ends, yeah. So I’ll just nip in and see Joslynne’s Mum, right?

    “Of course, dear,” very vaguely, “and I’ll run you home afterwards…”

    Look, in the first place I’d rather be driven by Ray Charles and in the second place, we are on the same train line even if your suburb’s choice and ours is a dump. I’ll argue about that later. “Yeah, thanks. See ya, Aunty May!”

    Gee, out on the footpath in the whistling Sydney September wind that, Canberra being much further inland and a lot colder, I’d sort of forgotten about in the last two years, this strange reluctance to go anywhere near another suburban moo comes over me… But Joslynne’s Mum’s not like Aunty May, in fact if they weren’t neighbours and if their daughters hadn’t been best friends at school they probably wouldn’t even bother to have anything to do with each other. So I go over to the slightly crooked wicket gate, painted very dark green and sanded down in parts to give it the distressed look and heavily polyurethaned over that, I kid you not, she’s what ya could call an obsessive personality and Mr Smythe has long since given up and retired into his orchid house, and go up the crazy-paving cottagey path that’s overhung with flowering cherries and flowering acacias and a rustic arch of wisteria in bud, and interspersed with Mercury Bay weed—this’ll be what poor old Uncle Jerry’s drying-green now sports—and edged with borders featuring sweet alyssum and lobelia coming along nicely, and nearly-over daffs and over freesias and green stuff that’s gonna be a riot of delphiniums blue, and giant sage and ordinary sage, and upright rosemary plus and creeping rosemary coming out of old, old, mossy terracotta pots and old, old, mossy marble pots and a mossy, licheny, peeing cupid with a broken nose…

    Yeah, well. What ya do is, see, ya buy a new terracotta or whitish concrete pot and force your unfortunate hubby to unload same from car and place in good pozzie, than ya paint it carefully with, I kid you not, a mixture of yoghurt and water off the boiled rice. Yes! It’s what makes the moss and lichen grow, see? Look, me and Isabelle, and Rosie and Joslynne, and, come to think of it, Christina Giorgopoulos, all went with her the day she bought the cupid, I was about eleven so Rosie musta been sixteen, I remember she was still at St Agatha’s, her and Joslynne were in their uniforms, musta picked them up straight after school, that’s right, we did, and Chris had come round to Joslynne’s place, that’s why she was with us, she was in a gold jumper with giant shoulder-pads and a leopard face on it in black sequins, with black denims. And the reason I remember it so clearly, see, it wasn’t a garden place at all, it was a monumental mason’s. Really ace, with angels and cupids and cherubs all over the show, not to mention your marble head of the dear departed, and giant tombstones with a place for the photo of the dear departed under glass, think they do a lot of work for the Italian community, or possibly Greek, Chris was terrifically impressed. Anybody else would just have gone down to the garden centre but Joslynne’s Mum had spotted this much better cupid, see? Real marble. Greatly reduced price because of the broken nose: the man couldn’t sell it for a grave.

    Why didn’t she pick it up the day she spotted it and talked down his greatly reduced price to an even more greatly reduced price? Because, see, she made him drill a hole right through it and down the penis, oh, yeah, too right, so it could be a real peeing cupid. Not done in one swift move with ya Black & Decker from Bob Springer’s, if ya take me drift. True, Mr Smythe could of done it, but she was sure he’d ruin it. Even though me and Isabelle were only eleven we both immediately thought, as later consultation revealed: “Accidentally-on-purpose.” And by the time we got back after the detour to the approved health-food shop that sells the approved tofu ice-creams that don’t taste one millionth as good as Wendy’s anything, Mr Smythe was home from work, so she made him haul it into position. And while he was having a lie-down to let his back recover she mixed up the glop and painted it on, see? And, sure enough, the cupid’s been streaked with moss and lichen ever since. He pees good, too.

    So I go up the verandah steps, they’re new steps in very old recycled brick, and the verandah floor’s the same dark green as the wicket gate only not distressed, they had a big row over that and for a miracle, he won. But she won over ripping off the iron lace that was older than the house (the suburb’s not as old as I am) and replacing it with a rusticke trelliswork of fake intertwined boughs that matches the arch of fake intertwined boughs over the front path. The effect’s good when the wisteria on the arch and the climbing roses on the verandah, genuine old English varieties, are in actual leaf, but pretty bloody dismal when they’re not. The front door’s very distressed wood complete with actual burns and old nails, smothered in polyurethane to protect it from the elements, she won that one, too. And on either side of it she’s got these large pots that she done in her mosaic phase, like, jazzy colours and crazy patterns, Barcelona comes to mind, set in white grout that she didn’t realise wasn’t gonna like the damp Sydney winters and that’s sprouted genuine grey mould all on its ownsome, no rice-water and yoghurt glop need apply. Filled with tortured succulents, they’re doing well. This effect does swear at the cottagey garden, yep, you’re right there. Though it has something in common with the stained-glass slot, jazzy pattern, that she had let into the front door when she was in her stained-glass phase.

    The front door’s locked, she has attained that much sense over the years, so I bash on the knocker. Then I ring the electric bell that he insisted on, she was real cheesed off, but she made a bronze plaque to fit round it. Think you’d have to say that pattern on it’s pure William Morris, given the book she got it— Yeah.

    Gee, she’s answered it. She often doesn’t, or the phone, it drives him, as if ya needed to be told, absolutely ropeable.

    “Hi, Mrs Gridley-Smythe.”

    “Hullo, Dot. Call me Marianne, these formal term of address are so ageist and unnecessary, don’t you think?”

    No, given that you’re Joslynne’s Mum and older than Mum is, and I’ve known you since I was eight. “Yeah, sure, Marianne. How are you?”

    “Much better now that I’ve switched to Never-Heard-of-It brand of natural plant oestrogen.” Like, if it’s from plants, what good’s it gonna do you, you’re an animal. Well, faith-healing, yep. So we go down the passage, she’s telling me all about this new brand of pills, I’m not asking if they’re the same as what she got Mum on some years back and I am wondering why the Hell she thinks she still needs them at her age, is it addiction or brainwashing, meantime I’m looking at the passage with interest. Like, Rosie reckons when her and Joslynne were thirteen and just moved into the street and the suburb was new, it just had plain walls with a picture rail, and she done it out with plain yellow paint as to the bottom bit and a genuine William Morris pattern in shades of yellow and green above it. And hung some strange black and brown paintings, interspersed with a natural cotton and black Colombian woven wall hanging, tied threads and stuff. The pale yellow paint’s been replaced with some very authentic dark brown panelling. The William Morris wallpaper’s gone, too, been replaced by rag-rubbed dark red paint, personally I’d say it’s a mistake, the passage was pretty dark to start with, but at least it means ya can’t really see the rag-rubbing on the red. The strange black and brown paintings have long since disappeared and I forget what crap replaced them in the interim but at the moment one wall features one of her best quilts that’s been there for a while: a big black and white Yin and Yang circle surrounded by small crazy-paving in jazzy colours dotted with appliqués of white birds in flight, they look like seagulls to me, but they’re symbolic of something, and black um, symbols. Phallic symbols according to Rosie but I wouldn’t go that far. It is beautifully made, all by hand, well, obsessive, yeah, but a Helluva lot of work for a pretty weird result. On the opposite wall the Colombian hanging’s been joined by a lot more weaving, oh, into weaving now, is she? She always was interested, of course, but now she’s really taken it up. Goddit. The great big mirror over the occasional table dates from the hammered-bronze stage, definite indications of William Morris in the design hammered into it but those green loops and wings and things sticking out from it are all Marianne Gridley-Smythe. The glass is greenish and spotted but it’s meant to be. The hand-thrown pots filled with succulents on the little table are all hers, from about, um, before Joslynne was born, I think, but the big brown one standing beside it that they use as an umbrella stand was a present from an artistic friend. An artistic friend with an astigmatism.

    Ooh! Yep, that hanging macramé plant holder does surprise ya, uh-huh, every time. It’s about Joslynne’s age, she was really into that back then, and made an ace swing out of it, there’s a pic in the album of Joslynne in it. Taken about a year before the Great Little-Joslynne-Falling-Out-of-Rotted-Macramé-Swing Gridley-Smythe Marital Row. Broken arm, right?

    So we go into the big room at the back, opening onto the patio, designed as an indoor-outdoor room for entertaining, if your climate doesn’t allow them forget I spoke. The Marshalls have never known it put to its proper use, though the word in the street is that the people who built the house, a couple of years before the Gridley-Smythes bought it, did use it like that. No, it’s Marianne Gridley-Smythe’s studio and always has been since the day she ordered the moving men to take out all the family-room type furniture they’d helpfully put into it and then went to bed with one of her migraines leaving him to sort out the chaos. There is a sitting-room as well, true, but it’s awfully small and after about two weeks of edging round the end of the chesterfield every time he opened the door, Mr Smythe gave in and sold it and bought a two-seater. Yep, that’s a loom, all right. Cripes. Big enough to weave a full body-carpet for the average lounge-room! You hardly notice its two smaller brothers. Yep, there is only one of her, so don’t ask why she needs three, will ya? As usual the studio’s crammed with stuff, this year it doesn’t include a gorgeous bloke in the nuddy for her life-drawings, so possibly marital relations between the two of them have settled down at last. Or he’s given in completely and moved into the spare bedroom, he was threatening that a while back. You could hardly move before for the huge pot plants in giant pots, some of them she's had since before she got married, he hates them, he’s only into orchids, and the potter’s wheel and like that, so with three looms as well it sure is difficult to—Ouch! Um, get around.

    Oh, that big set of industrial metal shelves painted dark red (left over from the passage—yep) is new, is it, Marianne? Uh-huh, just the thing to hold ya bins and sacks of potter’s crap down the bottom, and ya bags and bags of whatever, oh, right, dyes, and ya squidgy bags and bags of what? Raw wool, goddit; oh, yeah, the spinning wheel’s over by the window next to the easy-chair that ya hubby probably imagined was gonna be a lounge-room chair, specially when ya had it re-covered in that very expensive patterned velvet ya fell in love with in a shop in, I kid you not, Double Bay. And huge um, spools? Whatever, of coloured wool. So do ya weave in wool, Marianne? Other natural fibres as well, so long as the feng shui is in harmony— Here we go.

    The weaving’s all South America inspired, though that loom there’s strung for something Persian, so exactly where the Chinese mystic bit fits in— Don’t ask. She’s always been like that. So after a detailed demo of the big loom—couldn’t you automate that?—she offers me a cuppa. It’ll be herbal and not just your ordinary health-shop herbal, real revolting, but I accept anyway. And we go into the kitchen, shit, it’s chaos in here! Oh, she says vaguely, she must of forgotten to do the dishes. Lunch, breakfast, and last night’s dinner dishes by the look of it. He’s bought her a really good dishwasher, he’s not short of a few bob and he’s not mean, I’ll say that for him, except where unnecessary pieces of printed Italian velvet from Double Bay are in question, so all she has to do is remember to use it, but she’s not capable of that when the artistic inspiration’s struck. The kitchen hasn’t changed, it’s all tiny very dark brown tiles and varnished wooden cupboards and floorboards, looks ace, and yeah, those tiles are murder to keep clean, but she’s got a cleaning lady that comes in twice a week and helps with the housework. And today can’t be one of her days or them dishes wouldn’t be piled up like that. –Meanwhile Joslynne’s doing other ladies’ housework over in the direction of Double Bay because she couldn’t afford the mortgage after Paul Harcourt-Rhys dumped her and Davey and the toy poodle, cleaning out the joint bank account just before he did it, the shit, and taking the Porsche and the boat, and she even more couldn’t afford the mortgage after the Rough Trade type she took up with about nine months before Rowan was born nicked her credit card and her Mazda and the cash she kept in the M. Gridley-Smythe pottery jar on the kitchen windowsill. Funny old world, isn’t it?

    … Yep, the tea sure is revolting. The mugs are good, though, have I seen them before? No, Laurel Hannigan made them, she had a very successful showing at Never-Heard-Of-It Gallery but of course these are just her domestic ware. Right, that helps to feed her and the three hulking teenage Hannigans that Mr Hannigan left her flat with.

    “Has Joslynne still got Dandy, Marianne?” –The toy poodle.

    “Yes, but he’s getting an old dog now, Dot,” she says with a wistful smile.

    Eh? He can’t be! I mean, Joslynne’s the same age as Rosie, and she married hyphenated Paul Harcourt-Rhys when she was ninet—Shit. I suppose he is, yeah. So she shows me the clay model of him she’s making for Joslynne for Chrissie, cringe, tremble—Phew! Realistic, it is. Psycho with bits of broken arrows sticking out of its brain like the bust she did of poor Mr Smythe it ain’t. Ooh, my legs have gone all funny. Yeah, really ace, Joslynne and the kids’ll love it! Gonna cast it in bronze, eh? That’ll set ya hubby back a megabuck or two, Marianne, but yeah, a bloody good idea in view of Davey and Rowan rampaging round that little house she hadda get with a huge mortgage and a huge loan from her dad when she couldn’t make the payments on the Harcourt-Rhys mansion.

    Never mind, Mr Smythe could afford it, he’s got megabucks, he’s something high up in banking, only reason he’s never made it to CEO is Marianne Gridley-Smythe refuses to play executive wife. Well, good on her, ya may say. But on the other hand she knew she was a banker when she married him, and to hear Joslynne tell it he was quite up-front about the sort of life she’d be expected to lead. Well, who knows what the true story is, they’re coming up for their thirtieth anniversary and it’s all lost in the mists of time. Which’d make her well over fifty, given she was twenty-seven when they got married (and old enough to be thoroughly set in her ways—but Aunty May maintains she had a lot of charm when she was younger). So that black hair, that she wears loose and curly and just below shoulder-length, has absolutely got to be dyed. Apart from that she’s sallow and thin, quite tall, in fact a dead ringer for Joslynne. Today she’s draped in one of her flowing smocks, she’s got loads of them, each more artistic than the last, some she made herself and some she bought from artistic friends that run little artistic shops and stalls that are always folding, if you’ve ever visited a so-called craft market you’ll know what I mean. And if you haven’t, my advice is, don’t. They’re all middle-class moos with some sort of income in the background, usually maintenance from the well-off ex. Or in cases like hers, with comfortably-off martyred hubbies—right. Don’t get me wrong, Marianne Gridley-Smythe’s not like Margot from The Good Life, she has got actual talent, but she’s never stuck at any art or craft for more than three years at a stretch. And absolutely never had to support herself by any of them, she was an art teacher when she met him.

    So she wants to know have I tried crystals? No, I haven’t, nor the foot therapy crap, forget what ya call it, reflexology? Or is that something to do with the eyes, nor yet the feng shui (again), but I’m ready to believe that provided the feng shui (yet again) is right, you can hang a crystal of the right sort in X position and it will have a beneficial—No, I’m not. And how the Hell does she reconcile— She doesn’t, it’s all floating about in there between them dangly craft earrings that keep catching in the black curls in a misty mess, ugh. Finally I break down and ask what is that smell, it’s not ordinary incense, is it?

    Burning sage. Right. Serves me right for asking, dunnit?

    So I get on back to Aunty May’s with the nice little woven hanging Marianne forced on me, these burnt oranges and dark reds and natural black wool shades are gonna swear at every piece of Year 2K pastel plastic crap Alan Fairbright’s put in my flat, could it be a weapon in the coming campaign to give him the push? Likewise the rag rug, not woven, dunno how she makes them, that I might like to put in front of my kitchen sink because kitchen floors are so hard on the feet and Canberra’s so cold, isn’t it? Yeah, in winter it sure is. And given the kitchen floor is adorned by an almost-white matte-finish vinyl carefully chosen by Alan Fairbright to tone with the new Melamine off-grey cupboard doors he had put in to tone with the industrial steel bench tops that the trendy cretin it belongs to had installed before he moved on to a much better-paid job in Sydney, he’ll hate it.

    “Oh, Joslynne’s Mum gave you some rugs! That’s nice, dear!”

    “Yeah. Well, this one’s technically a wall hanging, but I s’pose it could be a rug, yeah.”

    Of course. And how did I think she was? I thought she was daft as a brush, but then the whole of Sydney’s agreed on that one. “Um, good.”

    “Yes,” she says, smiling at me. “She’s finally given in and had flu shots, this year.”

    My jaw hits the newly laid slot-together wooden floor.

    “Yes, well, we’re all getting older, dear. I expect you’d like a cup of real tea?”

    “I sure would, thanks, Aunty May.” We go round the divider and I go: “Um, why’s she burning sage leaves?”

    “What? Oh, that pongy stuff! Well, I don’t know, Dot. She did explain, but”—lovely smile, she’s very like Rosie in looks, not in brain-power, though—“I’m afraid it was in one ear and out the other.”

    “Understandable. Seen the statue of Dandy?”

    “Yes, isn’t it lovely? If only she’d stick to that sort of thing!”

    Yeah. Well, the rag rugs aren’t bad, like, you’re standing on one at this min, Aunty May, but, yeah. Couldn’t agree more.

    I don’t let her drive me home but I do let her drive me to the station, where she gives me a big hug and kiss on the platform, you’d think I was heading for the North Pole instead of just down the line. Oh, well. She's that sort of aunt. Added to which she’s missing Rosie. “See ya, Aunty May!”

    Tearfully: “Bye-bye, Little Dot.”

    Yeah. Something like that.

    Mum’s not home yet, it’s one of her afternoons for the library. She doesn’t let the twins home alone because she doesn’t want the house set on fire or the front door left open for the burglars. Their school has after-school supervised homework for the thirteen to fourteen-year-olds, got up by a load of desperate working parents and some of the younger teachers that need the extra dough, so they’re at that, and she’ll collect them on her way home. So I start getting the tea ready. After a while Bernice the Ballerina trips in. “Hi, Dot!” Trips off to her roo—

    “OY!”

    “What?”

    “You can wash your hands and give me a hand.”

    “I’ve got to do my homew—”

    “Balls, Deanna. You know and I know that you’re not gonna pass Year 12 with anything higher than a C. And in any case you can do ya homework after tea instead of watching Anorexia McBeal or The Practice or any of the other feeble-minded crap you're addicted to. And if ya don’t get in here and gimme a hand, I’m going out for tea. And you can explain to Mum why there’s no tea ready.”

    So she comes and washes her hands at the kitchen sink and starts washing potatoes very, very, very—

    “You do realise that potatoes take ages to cook and it’ll be perfectly obvious, once I tell her about all that washing, why the rest of the tea’s ready and we’re standing around—” Gee, she’s hurrying up.

    After a while, think it’s a Pavlovian response to standing at the bench next to the person who’s in charge of the tea, she goes: “Hey, Penny Cartwright’s mother, she’s got a new—” And blah, blah. The trouble with flaming Putrid St Agatha’s is, it’s full of stupid girls whose families can afford to send them there, the sort of girls that have no values at all and actually believe that life isn't worth living unless you own a double string of pearls and a Mercedes sports model (like Penny Cartwright’s mother, yep). And if you’re wondering how Bernice the Ballerina got into it, they offer reduced rates for the second child even if the first one’s only there on a scholarship like me, so Mum decided they could swing it, because it wasn’t fair to send me to a nice school and make her go to the perfectly okay state school that all the local kids she’s known all her life go to. Added to which a delicate girl like her (she’s got the hide of a rhinoceros and barely gets as much as one cold a year) would do far, far better at a nice school. Not that she’d have learned any values at the state school, either, because she’s the sort that takes her tone from her peers and is incapable of perceiving that other people even have other standards. Yeah, there is a fair bit of that about.

    Now she’s whingeing because Mum won’t let her go up to Queensland to get bombed out of her tiny mind with the rest of the Year 12 cretins that make life hideous up there for a week at the end of the scholastic year. After the results are out and whether or not they’ve passed anything, think the story is. Well, I never took any notice of it when I was in Year 12, too busy buying my uni texts before the crowds got down on them and reading up for the next year and finding a couple of holiday jobs that’d help to support me for the next year. Plus and, not interested in getting bombed out of my brain with a crowd of mindless cretins—right.

    “You know they’re a crowd of mindless cretins, all they wanna do is get pissed on the strength they’ve turned eighteen and the cops can’t stop them any more and take as much Ecstasy as they can before they drop down from the dehydration and the accelerated metabolism and/or the cops stop them.”

    “I wouldn’t!”

    Much. It’d take one cretin, say, Penny Cartwright or Janyce Hardwycke, to be doing it, and she’d be in there boots and all, unable to stop herself from conforming. “Right, like you wouldn’t drink Bourbon in Janyce Hardwycke’s boyfriend’s car because the rest of them were drinking it. You’re lucky to be alive.” –Yeah, he did crash it, but only into a lamppost and as they weren’t going all that fast and as his rich Mum bought him the car it did have crash bags, bloody lucky for some—and as it was, Janyce had whiplash for the next six weeks and had to wear a neck-brace.

    “I wasn’t driving!”

    “No, but ya were under-age drinking, Deanna. And it’s no use going on at me, I’m entirely on Mum and Dad’s side and always was. Added to which I think your and Janyce’s crowd are a pack of mindless, conformist little cretins, hasn’t that sunk in yet?”

    “We are not!”

    And the rest. “Peel those carrots.”

    She starts peeling the carrots, looking sulky, but after a few min she goes: “Did you go and see Joslynne’s Mum today?”

    “Yeah. Same as ever. Daft as a brush. Though Aunty May reckons she’s started having flu shots at last, been real well  this year.”

    Even though Joslynne’s Mum’s always had bad bouts of flu every year, usually twice a year, as long as we've known them, this hasn’t struck Deanna. “Oh.” Short silence. “Um, didja see her ace quilt in the passage?”

    “Yeah, same one she’s had there for yonks. So?”

    “Um, Mrs Gray thinks my fabric art’s quite good.”

    I know, ya wrote me endless letters skiting about it. And yeah, St Agatha’s does let the more mindless sort do nothing-subjects like art, fabric art in her case, in the Sixth Form, Year 12 to the rest of the country, means they’ll pass something and their parents’ll feel all those megabucks they chucked in the direction of their so-called education weren’t totally wasted. “Yeah, I know. Well, that quilt you sent me was ace, and I really needed it in the Canberra winter, I can tell ya.” Specially on the nights when Alan Fairbright was sulking because I hadn't stroked the male ego enough and went home to the scungy little flat he didn't keep on long enough. Yeah.

    She brightens. “Good! So, um, do ya think I could do that?”

    Eh? “Ya ca , can’t you? Doesn’t the quilt prove—”

    “No! Like, professionally.” Swallow. ‘For a living.”

    “Nope.”

    “You are horrible, Dot! You never even thought about it!”

    “I didn’t have to, because I’ve already thought about it: every time I see Joslynne’s Mum’s studio I think about it again. Nobody makes a living out of quilting, because in the first place half the middle-class moos in the country are into it for themselves, there’s not much market, ya see, and in the second place the ones that do sell their stuff, they only do it part-time, while their martyred hubbies are supporting them. Joslynne’s Mum being a case in point. And I dunno if you’ve met her friend Pauline Smithers?”—Nods hard, Ma Smithers makes ace quilts.—“Yeah, well, her hubby’s in banking, too. And Lynne Albertson, she got a humungous divorce settlement when she divorced him, heck, she drives a Lam—” Right, ya weren’t thinking of her. “–borghini. No, she is an extreme example. Um, well, Meredith Parsley.”

    Smothered giggle. “Purcell!”

    “Right, knew it was some name like Parsley.”

    “But she is a professional, Dot! Her shop’s doing really well!”

    Shit, as she knows nothing, but nothing, of economics, how can I explain this to her? “Um, it’s kept open for five years or so, and it’s usually got over-dressed dames from Double Bay in it, yeah. But the thing is, Mr Pars—Purcell and her business partner’s hubby, forget their name—Right, Worthing,”—wonder if his name’s Ernest or Jack?— “they bought the shop, see, so as they could claim it as a loss on their taxes. Like, discount it against their mega-humungous incomes from their law firm, so as they wouldn’t have to pay so much tax, see?”—Blank. Shit.—“Like, they own it, it’s in their names, not the ladies’ names, see? So what the ATO does, is add up all their income and take away all their losses, and tax them on what’s left,”—she can’t do simple arithmetic, think I’ve lost her—“and the bigger the loss the shop makes, the better it is for them. They pay less tax, see?”

    “Ye-es… Do ya mean they never wanted it to make money?”

    Gee, got it in fourteen. “That’s right, yeah.”

    She’s looking at me in horror.

    “There’s a lot of it goes on.”

    Thinking, thinking… “But some people make money at it! Look at that ace craft warehouse down the—” Blah, blah.

    “That’s a bit different. They’re mostly young people from the art-school crowd, except for those two middle-aged metalworkers, and they’re all living on the smell of an oily rag, living in really scungy flats, in fact I think half of them sleep in the warehouse, and um—” How I can I put this tactfully not to say convincingly? “They’re not into the sort of fabric art you do, they’re into the sort of crap that’s popular with the young trendies from the shiny downtown towers. Uh, strange slimy metal vases and coffee-pots and um, spindly tortured chairs and, um, plastic crap like, um, well, those kind of bent plastic coffee tables and that.”

    “They were ace!”

    “Yeah, until the next fad comes in. But that’s what I’m saying: they’ve got nothing in common with your fabric art. Um, I know those two dykes in the little corner stall were selling fabric art”—Eh? They aren’t? Is she blind?—“’Course they are, well, good on them, whatever turns you on. Um, but their stuff wasn’t pretty, like yours. It was, um… clever,” I say glumly. Clever, it was. Ugly, it was. Very probably art, it was. Well, I thought it should’ve been in a gallery, put it like that. Lots of torn and ripped bits of this, that, and the other, dangling out of the shape of the things (not frames, they didn’t have frames) and lots of black, and actual themes. Well, art, yeah. “And actually, I tell a lie: they didn't appear to be selling anything, did they?”

    “Um, well, we weren’t there that long, Dot.”

    “No. And their stuff isn't like yours anyway. And how long does it take ya to do one quilt?” She doesn’t know. Ages. “Right. Work out how many you’d have to make per year to support yourself.”

    Blank, blank.

    Well, the tea’s on, so we go through to the dining side and sit down at the table and I work it out for her. Based on what my flat, minus the Alan Fairbright factor, costs per year. Plus and the electricity and everything. Yeah, even if ya cram three other girls into it and share it. Gee, she bursts into tears.

    Sigh. “That’s economic reality, Deanna.”

    “Well, what am I gonna do?” she sobs.

    Gee, do a scungy, boring job like the rest of the community? Them that are lucky enough to be in work at all. Marry a rich banker like Joslynne’s Mum done? And spend the next thirty years wrangling with him, yep. “Um, well, Mum and Dad might wear art school.” Gee, ya haveta have the marks, and the portfolio, do ya? Good for the art school. “Well, if ya serious, I’d start working up the portfolio this summer while ya do a part-time job to help Mum and Dad pay to feed your big mouth. And if ya marks are that bad, you could probably go back as an adult student and re-sit. Probably not at Putrid St Agatha’s, though: it costs cash money to go there.” Gee, horror, consternation, they don’t do Year 12 art at the local school and the next suburb over, the art teacher’s awful, not nearly as good as Mrs Gray! Read, not as soft as Mrs Gray. “Well, sorry, Deanna, that was my best shot.”

    Bursts into tears and rushes off to her room, gee, that’ll help.

    So Mum and Dad get home about the same time and want to know what's the matter with her? So I wise them up about the art school bit. Gee, they don't tear a strip off me, they just sigh and say heavily they’ve both told her that.

    “Yeah? Have ya told her exactly why that shop of Ma Purcell’s keeps going?”

    “Dean Purcell’s tax bracket?” says Dad on a blank note: thinks it’s self-evident, poor chump.

    “Yeah, ’course, only she never realised that, Dad, she thought Ma Purcell was actually making a living.”

    He chokes, probably thinking of them silk dresses and Italian shoes she gets around in.

    “Yeah. Likewise all them dumb affluent middle-class friends of Marianne Gridley-Smythe’s.”

    “Um, that potter’s making a living,” says Mum weakly.

    “Laurel Hannigan. Yeah, barely. Out of the domestic ware that she despises having to do. Added to which, Mr Hannigan does cough up the maintenance for those three hulks of hers.”

    “Mm. There’s the additional point that she’s got talent,” says Dad drily.

    So Mum goes weakly: “That isn’t funny, Andy.”

    “Sal, we’ve had this discussion before. The world is full of genteel middle-class women with a little talent making lovely fabric art or lovely painted glass jars, or whatever the latest fad is.”

    “Yeah. What she needs is a husband with a regular income.”

    So Mum goes: “Dot!”

    “Be realistic, Mum.”

    “Thought young women didn’t think like that in the Year 2000?” says Dad, very dry.

    “I’m not speaking for myself, Dad. But she’s got no brains and no real talent, what else is there for her? And before you start, the thought of her bringing up kids is enough to make ya hair curl, yeah. But it’d be the best thing that could happen to her, if some sucker comes along that thinks she’s the ideal vehicle to perpetuate his genes, admit it.”

    He doesn’t admit it, he goes, real grim: “There is a trifle more to life than that, Dot.”

    “Yeah, only I’m thinking about when the romantic mist dissipates, Dad. Well, be realist—”

    “Dot, I think we’ve had enough of the realism for one day,” says Mum heavily.

    Okay, if that’s the way ya feel. “Yeah, all right. Well, tea’s ready, ya wanna wash ya hands and have it? And I better warn you now, I’ve done the carrots in lemon and honey like Aunty Kate does.”

    “Well, don’t mention it in front of the twins,” says Dad weakly. “Come on, Sal, you’ll feel better once you’ve changed your shoes.”

    Well, that’s true, why anyone of her generation still believes she has to wear them crippling things to work—! Shit, the Librarian wouldn’t mind, she wears flats and pants suits, herself.

    So they go out and I can hear her saying in the passage, clear as clear: “Dot’s got worse. She’d run all of us with both hands tied behind her, if we let her.”

    But Dad just goes: “Yeah, well, thank God one of them’s got some common sense, Sal.”

    You said it, mate. In spades.

    Aunty May’s asked me round again, for tea this time, like I say, think she’s missing Rosie. And that cretin Kenny only comes over when he wants a free meal, he makes it so obvious that even his loving parents have got to have noticed it.

    So we sit down to it, she’s made a real effort, there’s a first course. Something hot topped with cheese in very small individual soufflé dishes. Oysters Mornay? Uh… Uncle Jerry tells me they’re those Jap ones, tinned, that’s a relief, wouldn’t trust her to recognise a really dead oyster. Gee, not bad, given the oysters are pretty tasteless. Followed by chicken in apricot sauce, real mashed potatoes, frozen peas, and, um, what are these? Roast yams, my Aunty Allyson does them steamed but they’re revolting like that—look out, her and Aunty Allyson will of had a tiff—but this is my Aunty Kate’s recipe! Beam, beam. It’s the only way to cook yams.

    “I thought yams were big?” I say limply, these look like, well, honestly, little turds, no other possible way to describe them.

    “No, you’re thinking of sweet potatoes, Dot.”

    Am I? If you say so. …Gee, they are delicious! So I ask her how to do it and it’s real easy, you just roll them in canola oil and roast them for about twenty minutes. Nothing about oven settings or like that, never mind, I’ll figure it out.

    “They’re pink when they’re raw,” Uncle Jerry offers unexpectedly. “You may think they look physiological now, but when they’re raw—”

    “That’ll do, Jerry!”

    “I was going to say,” he says wryly, “sweetbreads, but I already know Australia’s never heard of them.”—Ya right, there, mate.—“Make it small pieces of intestine, Dot.”

    “Jerry!”

    He’s wearing his poker-face, drat him. “Um, is he kidding, Aunty May?”

    “Well, not entirely, dear, I have to admit. They do look funny.”

    Right. I’ll look for small pink pieces of intestine, goddit.

    So he goes: “How’s the job-hunting, Dot?”

    Grimace. “Not good. Like, I rolled up for one interview and made the mistake of telling the cretins why their ordering system’s inefficient. Well, it is, only they didn’t wanna hear it. So that was no go.”

    “Dumb,” he says, smiling a bit.

    “You said it.”

    He eats chicken and stewed dried apricots as if he’d been doing it all his life, only I now know from Rosie, she’s been wised up by his sister June, that he hasn’t, see? Their mother was an ace cook, but only in the traditional English style, like, chicken didn’t get done with a sweet sauce. If you stewed it at all, it was with onion or leek, and diced carrots and celery.

    “And the statistical research job with the university?” he asks.

    “It turned out to be just a project some nong in the History Department’s doing, he wanted a slave, and most of it was compiling the research for him anyway, barely any stats involved, so I told him to keep it. He wasn’t gonna offer it to me anyway, what do I know about history?”

    “I didn’t think any of the local historians”—he doesn’t mean local history—“could add two and two. What sort of stats?”

    “Federation crap, he’s got a grant, reckons he’s gonna publish it next year for the centenary of Federation. All I can say is, he better get off his bum P.D.Q.”

    “Quite. What sort of Federation crap, or wasn’t that revealed?”

    Boy, I’d hate to have him on me job interview panel! “Sort of. How they lived then, kind of thing. Don’t say could there be enough evidence at this point in time to make any stats meaningful, I asked him that and he got all huffy.”

    “I can imagine,” he says drily.

    So Aunty May goes brightly: “Goodness, that sounds more like Rosie’s sort of thing, dear, not history!”

    “Social history, so-called, Aunty May. If he was gathering the same sort of evidence on how people live today, it would be sociology, yeah. False distinction, isn’t it?”

    Uncle Jerry eats her superb mashed potato calmly. “Yes. May’s got the sort of brain that grasps fundamentals. Not necessarily what the rest of the world sees as fundamentals, true.”

    “What’s that supposed to mean?” she cries.

    “I’m not putting you down, May. Very few people have the gift of seeing things as they are, unaffected by the preconceived notions their peers swallow holus-bolus. –If that’s a mixed metaphor, Dot, just let me get away with it, will you?”—All right, I will.—“Gift or curse,” he amends thoughtfully. “Somewhat unfortunately for her, Rosie’s inherited it.”

    Plus and his brains, yeah. …Yeah, I’d go for that. “Yeah, see whatcha mean, she has always insisted on doing her own thing, hasn’t she?”

    “Mm,” he goes, not looking at Aunty May.

    So blow me down flat, she comes out with: “I’d say Dot was more like that than Rosie, actually, Jerry.”

    “Yes, it’s on your side somewhere, darling,” he says, suddenly looking up and smiling at her. Shit, she’s gone all pink, after how many years of marriage? I happen to know Rosie was already on the way when they got married, not that that was the reason. Twenty-eight, right.

    “It must be!” she chirps. “Dot, dear, you should have been more tactful at your interviews.”

    “Yeah, only I decided I didn’t really want any of the jobs, ya see, Aunt May.”

    She sighs, but nods.

    “Yes, well, Rosie could probably use your stats stuff at some stage, if she ever pulls her head out of her bum—”

    “Jerry Marshall!”

    See? Aw, ya didn’t believe me when I said he was worse than Dad when he gets going? Don’t let that nayce accent of his fool ya, he’s the type that’s more than capable of calling a spade a bloody shovel.

    “As I say,” he says, totally unabashed, that idea I had at one stage he’s just another version of Uncle Jim was cracked, must of been feeling sour or something, “if Rosie ever wises up to herself and drops the telly-star crap, she may need a statistician to give her a hand with analysing her results.”

    “Jerry, that’s if she ever gets a proper job again!” she wails.

    He’s got a funny look in his eye, or is it just the giant helping of frozen peas she’s given him? “Yes, well, she’s making plenty at the telly crap, anyway, love.”

    “But that sort of thing doesn’t last, Jerry! The public’s so—so fickle!”

    Gee, good on ya, Aunty May, fickle is what the public is, yep. Two whole syllables, an’ all. Uh—well, grasp of fundamentals, yeah, true.

    “Yeah. Um, think you’ve given me too many peas, here, May.”—It was the peas.—“In the meantime, Dot, how about coming to work for me?”

    Funnily enough I’ve gone very red. “Thanks, Uncle Jerry, only ya don’t need—”

    “It’s not charity, you birk, we need a statistical analyst. Moving into online gambling,” he says with a grin.

    Ulp. “Is that legal?”

    “We’ve got a licence. Games as well as betting. Well, the consortium has,” he says with a wink. Omigod, is he in with the Hong Kong mafia, or what? “Added to which, once we’re online, our client base isn’t limited to Australia, is it?”

    “Um, no. Um, well, what sort of stats? Cos if it’s just the number of hits at ya webs—”

    “Don’t talk yourself out of a job before you’ve even got it, Dot. No, well, our IT simpletons are capable of putting a counter on the website, yes, but not of looking beyond the ends of their noses, I’ve discovered.”

    “They teach them that in their computer sci courses, Uncle Jerry.”

    “Yes, that did eventually dawn on me. Together with the refusal to communicate meaningfully with the end client, and/or employer.”

    “Yeah, well, if they don’t make it a mystery they’ll be out of a job, that’s Lesson One in Computer Sci 101!”

    “I’d thought you’d done Computer Science, Dot, dear?”

    “That’s right, Aunty May, only I wasn’t taken in by it, see?”

    She sighs. “Sometimes you sound just like Rosie, Dot.”

    Uh—do I? Cripes. “Um, so what ya want, Uncle Jerry?”

    Someone that’s capable of gathering the data from all their results and analysing it by individual game and/or race and/or track, plus type of game, type of account slash customer, gee, that’s real simple. Wouldn’t even need a proper statistical analysis program. Oh, and of interpreting the results of the analysis meaningfully, eh? Yep, no program’ll do that for ya.

    “Yeah, no prob., Uncle Jerry.”

    “Good. And, um, well, anything that you could extract from our antiquated accounts program—I mean, I am capable of compiling a few statistics and analysing them for myself but I’m getting damned sick of doing it. The thing is, our Accounts staff are used to it.”

    “Like, MYOB, is it?”

    “Something very similar,” he sighs.

    “Yeah. Well, might find that an ODBC driver’d be the ticket, interface with something more sophisticated… Or switch to something more flexible, stick a nice little input screen on it for them, that looks exactly like what they’re used to?”

    “That sounds good. We had a demo from a very nice chap,” he sighs, “but although I thought the software sounded good, and it will allow complete invoice tracking, he was on about intranets and stuff, and our Betty and Deirdre and the rest are barely capable of entering the right client name, let alone linking digitised images of each invoice to the non-existent intranet. –They’re doing something similar for a  big soft-drinks concern, or so the story runs,” he ends on a tired note.

    “Sounds interesting. But do ya need it?”

    “Quite. Well, come on board and tell us if we do need it, Dot. Mind, the fancy stuff for the big clients has got to be managed in concert with the cash from the on-course boys, we don’t want to run two systems side by side.”

    “’Course not. Don’t tell me this bloke suggested that?”

    “No; as I say, it seemed… Only Deirdre went home with a migraine after the demo.”

    Goddit. What he needs is to put in a proper office manager and get rid of those moos that have been with him practically since he started out, well, since he joined up with old Mr Grant, but he won’t do it, he’s too kind-hearted. “Yeah. When’s she due to retire?”

    He eyes me drily. “Not soon enough.”

    “Offer her a package?”

    “Dot, coming to work’s her life,” he sighs. “Old Cliff Henderson is useless, he’s down at the RSL sinking them when he’s not sitting on the lounge sinking them, and the boys have long since left the nest. One of them’s pulling down over a hundred thou a year in Toronto, but that doesn’t mean he sends his Mum a ticket to go and stay with him.”

    “Oh, right. Wasn’t there another one?”

    “Yeah: he only lives in Melbourne, but the wife and Deirdre don’t get on.”

    I could pretty well have guaranteed that, given that she’s the sort of mum that smothered the boys when they were at home, at the same time never letting them call their souls their own, kind of thing. Hadda know if they were gonna be out and what time they’d be home, even when they were turned twenty-one. “Yeah, well, something with a nice user-friendly input screen for Deirdre. Do the girls”—he usually calls them that—“have to do any searching?”

    “On the database? Heaven forbid, they’re barely capable of looking up the client files.”

    “That leaves plenty of scope, then. –Gee, ya mean ya client files aren’t automated?”

    “Of course not, Dot, our accounts package doesn’t do that.”

    “Um, but where do ya store their credit rating, and, um, like that?” I croak.

    “In my head,” he says wryly. “No, well, it’s all in the filing cabinets.”

    “Right. And does your accounts package run a like, separate file for each client showing their history? Like, the last bill they paid and what they’ve been invoiced for, like that?”

    He scratches his chin. “It is supposed to… Well, Betty and most of the girls are capable of looking up the number of the last invoice and putting in the payment, or alternatively sending out an invoice reminder.”

    “So they do search it.”

    “Yeah, well, in a limited way—yeah. Not Deirdre, though.”

    Goddit.

    “This bloke reckoned that they use the software to run their own office accounts as well as this super-duper invoice and packing-slip tracking thing for the soft-drinks people.”

    “I better talk to him. What was the name of his package?”—He can’t remember.—“What was the name of his firm, then?”

    He can’t remember that, either, but he has got his card in his card-holder.

    “Ya know, if ya put the contact details of ya contacts into a database, like, maybe ya suppliers database, probably no point in running a separate one if some of them are gonna became ya suppliers, you’d be able to put ya finger on them.”

    “I can do that anyway, I just look through the cards. And if I can’t remember the bloke’s name or his firm’s name or his product’s name, how could I search for him in a super-duper database?”

    “You’d of put in the keywords ‘accounts’ and ‘database’, that’s how.”

    “Start tomorrow, Dot!” he says, grinning like anything.

    I can’t, I am still fully employed by— Hang on. I got three weeks’ leave to go, given that I hadda take some I didn’t take in the previous—yeah. Okay. “I will, if you’re serious, but I can’t be paid for another month, read, I can’t put you as my primary employer on my ATO form for another month. But if I can use your fax to fax my resignation, I only gotta give three weeks’ notice, so I’ll make it effective from the day I’m supposed to be back from leave, okay?”

    “Very much okay! Though the Public Service’ll probably blacklist you forever and a day, Dot!” he says with a laugh.

    “Yeah, well, they’re always claiming they wanna cut back, they oughta be glad to get rid.”

    “Jerry, this is supposed to be Dot’s holiday!”

    “Uh—oh. Got carried away, there, for a moment,” he says, grinning. “Sorry, Dot.”

    “Shit, that’s okay, Uncle Jerry, I’m bored stiff doing nothing.”

    “Dot, everybody needs a break, it helps to—to refresh your organism!”

    She musta been talking to Joslynne’s Mum, that’s for sure. “I’m all right, Aunty May, I’m dying for something to get my teeth into. Well, if you’re going down for the Cup this year, Uncle Jerry, maybe I could come down for that, spend a couple of days with Uncle George?”

    He says solemnly that we’ll put it in the contract and Aunty May says threateningly see you do, and bustles off to get the pud. What I’ll do tomorrow, see, I’ll have a real hard look at what they’re doing, and see if they really need me. And if they do, I’ll fax my resignation, only not if they don’t, because I don’t want a nothing job.

    Gee, peach cobbler with tinned peaches, why does this ring strange bells? …Aw. With yoghurt, bugger it, she has been listening to Joslynne’s Mum!

    “Yoghurt’s good for you, Dot.”

    “Yeah, but I hate it with pudding, Aunty May.”

    “Give the girl some ice cream, May. –Brain-food,” he explains to me with a wink.

    Hah, hah. But she does. Gee, that’s better, yum! …Ooh, I know! “Is this Aunty Kate’s recipe for peach cobbler?”

    Yes, but she usually does it with fresh peaches, only they’re not in season, of course. And she, Aunty May, has got Aunty Kate’s recipe for a lovely cherry pie— What on earth’s the matter, Dot?

    “Um, nothing, um, that Chrissie I spent with Aunty Kate and Uncle Jim sorta seems like a lifetime ago… She did that cherry pie.”

    She’s looking at me anxiously.

    “I hadn’t even finished my B.A., back then.”

    “No… And Rosie was still finishing her thesis,” she sighs.

    Had just finished it, if I remember rightly. And had celebrated same with a gorgeous hunk of an American Major of Marines… Hank. Hank the hunk. Not that John Whatsisface isn’t a hunk, too, in his way, but—never thought I’d hear meself thinking this—Aunty May’s right, he is too bloody old for her.

    So Uncle Jerry goes: “Wasn’t that the summer you met Kate’s neighbour, David Walsingham, the composer?”

    Yeah. What’s it to ya? “Yeah. And his sister, N—Antigone Walsingham Corrant.”

    He nods happily. “Of course. June and Rosie heard her in London, quite recently. Bach, mainly. Schlummert ein: I’ve got a rather nice recording of her doing that.”

    Rosie went to a concert with an aunty? When London’s full of blokes? The thought must be writ loud and clear on me mug because Aunty May explains: “The thing is—well, we don’t know the details, dear—that although June and George are back together again—”

    “Sharing the house,” he says temperately.

    “Yes, back together sharing the house, they don’t do anything much together.”

    Goddit: so Rosie’s Aunty June—there I go—wanted someone to go to this concert with.

    “They never did do much together,” he says drily. “That was the main bone of contention, I gather.”

    “No, well, he does sound like the brother-in-law in that series with Judi Dench, Jerry. Have you seen it, Dot?”

    “ABC,” he says laconically. “On its fourth round of repeats.”

    “Jerry! Not fourth.”

    Which of the many is she on about? “Not the really good series with Mike, the garden-centre bloke, isn’t she married to him in real life?”

    “No, that was really good, so they never bothered to repeat it,” he says drily.

    “I’m sure they did, Jerry.” Shit, she didn’t realise that was a leg-pull! “I can never remember its name, Dot, but it’s got that lovely man that looks like one of those droopy dogs, and they meet again after thirty years or so, they had a War romance, it’s so romantic! And of course he was never really in love with his wife, he married her on the rebound.”

    “Before your brain starts whirling in speculation, Dot,” he says drily, “it was either the Korean War or the private war the British had in Malaya, not World War II: it isn't supposed to be a geriatric romance, though if you work out the supposed time-lines it bloody well would be. And purer than the driven snow: she’s a widow and he’s divorced: they don’t have a mad illicit whirlwind of middle-aged passion—”

    “Honestly, Jerry!”

    “–they have one of the most tepid relationships ever depicted on the square screen, to which the only possible reaction is, never mind if it’s Judi Dench, why bother?”

    “Oh! That thing! I tried not to watch it. All that stuff with the daughter and the gay boyfriend and the girlfriend, that was total crap, too.”

    “You said it.” He helps himself to more peach cobbler.

    “No that lovely— He isn’t gay!”

    Helpfully I elaborate: “The one that calls the old bloke ‘Li’ all the time. He may not be, but that’s what he comes over as, because he’s one of those wet British actors that can’t do comedy without coming over as limp-wristed as all get out. They might just as well of cast Rosie’s friend Rupy Whatsisface and be done with it.”

    “‘Been done with it,’” Uncle Jerry corrects solemnly. “Absolutely. What was the point, May?”

    “The point of what?”

    He takes a deep breath. “Bringing up the Judi Dench epic.”

    “Did I bring it up, dear?”

    So we both go: “Yes!”

    “Oh.” Thinking, thinking… Me and Uncle Jerry just eat peach cobbler, boy it’s good. “Oh! I know! The brother-in-law! You know, Dot!”—No, I don’t.—“He’s a dentist.”

    “Oh, him. Yeah. I thought he was the best thing in it, actually.”

    “Yes: the writers do their best to turn him into a—I was going to say caricature, but lampoon would be nearer the mark,” notes Uncle Jerry thoughtfully. “But the actor successfully defeats them. –What about him, May?”

    “What, dear?” she goes vaguely. “Oh! Well, you see, I think George must have been irritating in the same way, Jerry, that’s why June wanted the divorce.”—We look at her blankly, we like the dentist.—“Stodgy. Stay-at-home. Never doing anything. Never wanting to go anywhere.”

    Eh? Yes, he does! “He goes to visit her. Judi Dench.”

    “Well, there you are! They’ve always done that, haven’t they? Back when the husband was alive!”

    Uh—have they? If you say so, Aunty May.

    “If you say so, May. I agree the wife normally appears fed up with him, but I’d assumed that was just her.”

    “Me, too.” In spades.

    “No! All he's interested in is his dentist stuff!”

    If you say so, Aunty May.

    “And George must be the same, because poor June had no-one to go out with, and she did so want to go to the concert—”

    “Coulda gone by herself. London’s full of taxis, according to Rosie. They can’t all be occupied by Rupy Whatsisname’s gay friends, late for their shows.”

    “Nuh—Uh, don’t be silly, Dot. Of course she wouldn’t want to go alone! In a big city like London?”

    The up-market bits of it, like where they have flaming posh concerts with the world-renowned Antigone Walsingham Corrant in them, sound a damn sight safer than any part of Sydney ya care to name, actually. But I’m not gonna argue with her. “No. Well, did Rosie like the concert?”

    There’s a strange silence. Gee, and I expected her to say of course she did.

    Then Uncle Jerry admits: “Musically, yes. She hasn’t inherited her mother’s cloth ears”—her mother glares—“though her tastes are still damned naïve.”

    So she goes: “Just because she doesn’t like that horrible Mahler stuff that you like!”

    “I don’t like it, either.”

    He eyes me drily. “QED. Do you want to hear this story or not?”

    It’s better—marginally better—than hearing about Judi Dench middle-aged love epics I did me best to avoid for several years. “Yeah. Go on.”

    “She and June enjoyed it up until the interval, when they incautiously went out to get a drink, and Rosie was recognised.”—Eh? Who by, for Chrissakes? Some ex-boyfriend?—“Then only June enjoyed it.”

    “Honestly, Jerry!”

    “Yuh—Uh, reckernised who by?”

    “Astrayan as she is spoke,” he notes drily.

    “Ya can cut that right out!”

    “Yes, stop it, Jerry. –He does it on purpose, Dot, dear.”

    “Yeah, I know, Aunty May. –Go on: who by?”

    “Her public,” he says blandly.

    “Eh?”

    It’s only at this point that it dawns on Aunty May I haven’t got a clue what he’s on about. “Wait there, Dot!”—I wasn’t going anywhere, actually: I was wondering if I could fit in a fourth helping of peach cobbler.—“I’ll get the letter and the cuttings!” Rushes out.

    He just sits there looking poker-faced so I just sit there looking fixedly at the remains of the peach cobbler.

    So he goes: “Split it?”

    Jump! “Oh—right.” So we split the remains of the peach cobbler between us.

    “Here we are!” Pant, pant. She might just as well keep all the letters and the new album, Rosie’s Adventures In Pongoland, whatever, on the flaming sideboard next to that flaming white china soup tureen she never uses, Rosie reckons it cost megabucks and she bought it as a decoration. Given that that was when she was about sixteen and it’s never been used since, I’d say she’s not wrong.

    What? Good grief! It’s a cutting, all right, quite a large cutting, from an English newspaper, think you’d have to say tabloid, of Rosie in something skin-tight and, um, satin? Strapless, only with a bow on one shoulder not holding it up, if ya get me drift, thought that look was Out? The headline’s really weird: LILY ROSE DOES BACH.

    “That’s June,” explains Uncle Jerry, getting up to come and look over my shoulder, and pointing to an excited if smudged middle-aged face in the background. “The price of that thing she’s draped in possibly helps to explain the divorce.”

    “Stop it, Jerry. –Rosie didn’t choose that dress, Dot,”—glad to hear it—“the people at the studio choose all her dresses for her. Because this was a public occasion, you see!”

    Oh, sure: clear as mud. I’m fighting my way through the very small article under the very large photo and the large headline. To sum it up, “Lily Rose” went to a Bach concert. They don’t bother to give Nefertite a credit.

    It must of penetrated past the outer layer of silvery-yellow fluff that I’m totally blank, because she goes: “It’s because of her show, dear!”

    “Ye-ah… That Captain’s Daughter crap, ya mean, Aunty May?”

    “Of course! It’s doing very well, you see, dear, and she’s been on Parkinson, too, and so she was recognised, you see!” Beam, beam, what happened to the “fickle public” bit?

    “By autograph hunters as well as paparazzi,” notes Uncle Jerry drily. “You may well say what were autograph hunters doing at a Bach concert,”—yeah, I may well—“but we gather that The Captain’s Daughter, whilst pandering to the lowest common denominator by showing Rosie”—he just glances at Aunt May—“in bikinis and sunsuits at every opportunity, likely or unlikely, also panders to the equally prurient but more up-market sector by ostensibly taking off the Fifties ethos it’s cashing in on. Well—written by Varley Knollys?” He raises his eyebrows and looks wry.

    “The author of Simeon’s Quest?” I croak.

    “Mm.”

    “What’s Fifties Navy stuff in the Mediterranean with Rosie showing her tuh, um, in bikinis and stuff, got to do with sensitive English middle-class lads at their hugely exclusive Pommy university in the Sixties, for God’s sake?”

    “Nothing. And the technical term is ‘Med.’”

    “Eh?”

    “Fifties Royal Navy stuff in the Med,” he says blandly.

    “Oh. Right.” I’m still staring at him blankly.

    “Don’t look at me. Rosie tells us that Varley Knollys is the writer, cordially loathed by all who have to work with him, and suspected of being born Dick Short or Cecil Winterbottom. Though apparently some female hack writes most of the actual dialogue, Knollys just, er, does the storyline.” He shrugs. “Something like that.”

    Groggily I reply: “Goddit. He’d appeal to the more up-market sector, all right.”

    “Mm. Rosie’s come to the conclusion that that’s why he was hired. There are, apparently, no flies on the fellow who owns Henny Penny Productions.”

    “Brian Hendricks,” she says, beam, beam. “He sounds like a lovely man, Dot! And his wife’s Penny, you see?”

    No. Oh! Henny Penny, yeah, yeah, a mom and pop company.

    “She’s recognised wherever she goes, now,” Aunty May reports complacently. “Did I tell you about that time Kate went with them to Greenwich to see the International Date Line?”

    “Observatory, May,” he corrects mildly.

    “Yeah: the International Date Line’s in the middle of the Pacific, Aunty May.” Too late I catch his eye.

    “That can’t be right, Dot, they do it all at Greenwich!”

    Yeah, yeah, whatever. “Um, yeah. Um, ya did mention it, yeah, but I thought, um… Well, Rosie hasn’t said anything to me about being reckernised.” –No, mostly her latest letters have been huge rave-ups about how marvellous John is and how wanking his best mate, one Commander Nigel (“Corky”) Corcoran is, and how bloody frightful John’s parents are, they loathed her on sight and though the dad made an effort (proves he is a male, yeah), the mum didn’t bother to hide it.

    “Oh, yes, dear,” she says smugly. “Rupy says she’s a Household Name, now, in England!”

    “Capital aitch, capital en,” Uncle Jerry clarifies unnecessarily.

    “Yeah, got that…” Rosie? A Household Name? Our Rosie? I take another look at the pic. It is a large pic. And there is a lot of her on display.

    “That dress was based on one Marilyn Monroe wore in How To Marry A Millionaire,” she notes complacently. “Dark puce. It looked surprisingly good. But of course hers wasn't.”

    Uncle Jerry gives me a mocking look. “Henny Penny Productions have decreed that Lily Rose Rayne will wear only pastel creations or little black suits.”

    “Marilyn suits, yeah, she mentioned that. So what colour—” Silver-blue. Goddit.

    So Aunty May opens the Rosie’s Adventures In Pongoland album, there’s a lot she hasn’t stuck in, yet— Yep, there is, and why the Hell is Rosie bothering to send her all these cuttings, has it gone completely to her head, or— Oh, her Aunty June sends them! Goddit, goddit. Yeah, lovely, Aunty May. Opening a fair? Really? Uncle Jerry corrects this to “fête” and collects up the pudding plates and goes out to make the coffee, don’t think she even noticed him. On a yacht? Mm, lovely. –Rosie? She gets sick as a dog on anything that moves! Well, she’s okay on the Manly ferry unless it’s a rough day, but that’s her limit: what the fuck was she doing on a— Don’t ask. With Rupy, helping at a children’s charity? Ye gods! Only needs the model frock and the jewellery that cost enough to feed all the underprivileged kids of the world for a week and she’d be Princess Di reincarnated. Pale lemon, eh? (Swallow). Pretty. And this one’s at an Opening Night, is it? Pale blue, with frills, very Fifties, yes. (Yuck! Spew!) With who? Oh, the middle-aged actor that plays the Captain in her series, yes, very good-looking, never heard of him… I’ve given up, I’m not asking what happened to the “fickle public” bit, because by now it has penetrated to the dazed D.M. Mallory brain that Aunty May is more than capable of believing two contradictory things at once. More than.

    So I get home, Uncle Jerry insisted on driving me even though I coulda got the late train, and Dad’s still up, reading.

    “What’s the book?”

    Silently he holds it up. Shit. The successor to Varley Knollys’s prize-winning semi-autobiog Simeon’s Quest. This one’s about a sensitive young(ish) English writer’s struggles in Hollywood, its brilliant title is Tinseltown, CA. It didn’t win a prize, think something very ethnic won that year, um, semi-autobiog epic of a sensitive middle-class Moroccan girl struggling to come to terms with an arranged marriage and her own literary genius. Like, ethnic and Women’s Lib? Poor old Knollys didn’t stand a chance, did he? –In translation, of course.

    “What are ya reading that for?”

    “I was just asking myself that. Well, principally because Jerry mentioned that Varley Knollys wrote Rosie’s TV show: it’ll be on in a week or two, wondered if it might be worth watching.”

    Is the man mad? “Dad, they won’t let ya get away with not watching it!”

    “Your mother and her ruddy sisters? No, realise that. My plan was, if this thing suggested something written by Knollys might be worth watching, I’d watch the first episode willingly. It was a case of hope springs eternal, I’m afraid,” he concludes dolefully, closing the book and putting it on his little table.

    “More like cock-eyed optimistic, talking of Fifties crap.”

    He eyes me warily. “Oh?”

    I collapse onto the lounge with a groan. “I got the whole bit. Aunty May’s Rosie’s Adventures In Pongoland album, all the cuttings, blow-by-blow descriptions of the Fifties gear the TV company’s got her wearing, bits read out of her letters, much juicier bits read out of her Aunty June’s letters… God! This all alongside the risky-profession, wasting-her-degree, the-public’s-so-fickle bit.”

    “What did you expect?”

    “A lot less, to tell ya the truth. I certainly didn’t expect to hear that Rosie’s a household name in England; is Uncle Jerry’s sister as daft as Aunty May, or what?”

    “My impression’s always been that she’s a relatively sane middle-class woman who breeds boxers.”

    “Um, well, yeah.”

    So he goes: “Jerry drive ya home?”

    “Yeah. Have you been plotting with him?”

    “Eh? Well, only about how to get out of watching Rosie’s TV series, but funnily enough neither of us could dream up a foolproof scheme for that.”

    “I may or may not believe that, Dad. He’s offered me a job.”

    “What? Look, Dot, filling in for the odd tic-tac man was all right—well, not in your mother’s terms, true—but while you were still a student, it was harmless enough and it brought in a few dollars. But you can’t chuck in a good Public Service jo—”

    “No! Whaddaya think I am? Though I wouldn’t mind being an on-course bookie. But it isn’t that, he does wanna live to see the first episode of his daughter singing and dancing in an under-wired Fifties bikini on a fake British Navy boat in the fake Mediterranean. No, IT support.”

    “Uh—thought he had some firm doing that for him?”

    “Yeah, a firm of tiny Computer Sci cretins, Dad! They’re barely capable of designing a web page: none of them would know a meaningful stat if they fell over it, and they’re completely incapable of telling him what his database system should be doing for him or even what it could be doing for him and he’s never discovered it can. Let alone finding out what the best system for him might be and getting it to generate the stats for his new online bizzo.”

    “I see. Um, look, I know he’s done bloody well for himself, but have you thought that he knows nothing about online gambling and he might come a cropper?”

    “Yeah. Then I’ll be out of a job.”

    “Well?”

    “At least I’d of had some solid experience, Dad! Couldn’t hurt, on the résumé, could it?”

    “What, to put that you’d been IT support to an online gambling syndicate that had gone bust?”

    “It’s not a syndicate, ya nong, it’s a consortium.”

    “Yeah. Your Uncle Jerry and the Jap mafia.”

    Really? One step better than the Hong Kong mafia like what I was thinking, then.

    “It could be, yeah, that’s one of the things I’m gonna find out tomorrow. Gonna make him show me all the dokko before I sign anything.” Wink.

    “Oh. Well, that sounds sensible, Dot,” he says weakly.

    Yeah, ’course it does, cos guess what? I AM NOT A KID ANY LONGER! Jesus! Parents!