Trial By Adelaide

2

Trial By Adelaide, Or, Out Of The Frying Pan

    So I’m like, incarcerated in the back of the car and for a miracle she’s actually letting poor old Uncle Jim drive and she’s already asked me about the rest of the family so she goes: “I haven’t heard from your Aunty Allyson for a while, dear.”—Good old Uncle Jim goes: Cof! but you’d swear it never even percolated past the yellow rinse and the fresh set.—“So how are Wendalyn and that dear little Taylor of hers?”

    So I go: “Good, Aunty Kate.”

    Only this isn’t enough, natch, so I have to give her chapter and verse, like, Wendalyn and Namby-Pamby Bryce, her second, are planning a baby, and little Taylor, like, joint offspring of Wendalyn and Namby-Pamby Shane, her first, is really well and no, hasn’t had any more of those awful tummy upsets and yes, does seem to be coming through the teething really good, Aunty Kate (who the fuck knows or cares?) and yes, has settled down after they discovered that food dye allergy—not mentioning any orange splodges on any handed-on halter-tops, not to mention what was last seen stuffed into same. After that I just lean back exhausted and try to look at bits of Adelaide but she has to ask me about Wendalyn’s house. Look, it’s the same giant mansion she made feebleized Shane get in hock up to his cauliflower ears for, and all she’s done to it since she dumped him and took on the clone is rip out the kitchen, that Aunty Kate already knows about, and have all new turf laid down, that she knows about too. (And don’t ask me why females like Wendalyn dump one namby-pamby, feebleized, useless great lump of a helpmate and then take on another, but ya see it all the time). So I go stutter, stutter, uh—body-carpet! New body-carpet in the lounge-room! (Phew.)

    “Really, dear?” Directs a significant glance at poor old Uncle Jim but he’s looking firmly at the road. “New body-carpet? I wouldn’t have thought— Well!” Significant pause. “How old is that house?”

    “Dunno, Aunty Kate.”

    “She means, how long is it since Wendalyn suckered that limp Shane into having it built,” explains Uncle Jim kindly.

    She can’t deny it, but she goes: “That’ll do, Jim. Surely not more than four years old, dear? Didn’t they have it fully carpeted when it was built?”

    “Yeah. Shane’s mum and dad gave them the carpet as a wedding present, so wouldn’t ya think he’d of been like, legally entitled to half of it?”

    “Don’t be silly, dear,” she says on a weak note.

    To listen to her, like leaning back in the back seat of Uncle Jim’s car with your eyes closed like what I am—she’s giving us the low-down on Bryce’s side, who gives a rat’s, they sound about as bad as anyone else’s rellies—like, to listen to her, you’d swear she was six-foot-four with shoulders on her like an all-in wrestler, but actually she’s medium height, and very slim, the smallest of all Mum’s sisters, and, um, the word “spry” comes to mind. One of those horribly smart, quick, efficient women, y’know? Yeah.

    “Eh?”

    “Good gracious, Dot, dear, don’t say ‘eh’ like that!”—Here we go again.—“You know better than that!”

    “Um, sorry. What did ya say?”

    “Kate, the girl’s just had a so-called direct flight from Sydney via ruddy Melbourne,” notes Uncle Jim.

    “It takes no time by air, Jim. Though I must say, I am not pleased with Ansett!”—Was it? Coulda been.—“I specifically asked them before we left whether the plane was on time, and they said yes!”

    “It was, from Melbourne,” he notes.

    “Jim, it was supposed to be a direct flight from Sydney!”

    “Tim says they’re always doing that,” I offer without hope.

    “Exactly! That time he came over for his conference, we had a two-hour wait for his plane!”

    Yeah. So does that mean you had a two-hour wait for mine? Or, hang on, Sydney to Melbourne, Melbourne to Adelaide, plus the wait at Tullamarine, plus and the forty min late taking off from Kingsford Smith, less the nominal flight-time to Adelaide— “Eh—Uh, sorry, Aunty Kate. Beg ya pardon?”

    Shit, she’s on about Sickening Little Taylor again! (That’s Rosie’s name for the kid, and I must say it fits her to a T. What with bloody Aunty Allyson and dumb Wendalyn telling her from the moment she was born what a pretty little girl she is and what a clever little girl she is, how could the kid turn out halfway decent?) “Yuh—Uh, dunno, Aunty Kate.”

    “Kate, if ya want to know, ring Allyson,” sighs Uncle Jim.

    “I just thought that Dot might know, dear.”

    “I haven’t seen them for a bit.”—Though I have seen Wendalyn’s old sandals and halter-top and pale orange dress, yeah.—“I’ve been doing my holiday jobs.”

    “Of course you have, dear! And how’s that lovely Bob Springer?”

    Cringe, could the claim of the younger members of the family that she’s a mind-reader be right after all? –That or a witch, yeah. “All right, Aunty Kate. Well, same as usual, y’know? He hasn’t got a new girlfriend since that awful Doreen Di Lunghi that ruined your hair that time.”

    Have a medal, D.M. Mallory: that really struck the right note, she's off and running, never forgotten what the woman did to her hair, blah, blah. I catch Uncle Jim’s eye in the rear-view mirror and have to look away, real quick.

    So at long last, he’s come that way and not that other way, and taken this turning and not that, and etcetera, we turn into a street of fancy old done-up villas hardly visible for the huge old trees down the edge of the pavement and Uncle Jim says in this neutral voice: “This is it.”

    Shit, don’t say they’ve moved again! Or is it just that they’ve stuck new bluestone facings on the thing’s front, that I’m supposed to know about?

    “We were in the old place, last time you were over, Dot,” the old joker adds kindly.

    Phew! “Um, yeah. Um, this is lovely.” Like the last place didn’t have a bluestone front, true, and having one of those labels you as not only dripping with it, in Adelaide, but laden with frayghtully good taste and probably as an old family, as well. But it had a verandah, all right, and it had a shiny black front door with a faked-up brass knocker and it had a putrid English-ee Cottag-ee Garden-ee, spew, plus and a garage like what she’s ordering him to drive straight into, like, ruining the look of the old house but enabling the owners to walk the three feet from the car door without getting wet on the two days a year it actually rains in Adelaide. I’d say without getting scorched in summer—it does get very, very hot and it’s dry heat, Mum reckons it's good for ya, burns the germs out of you or some such crap, not like our muggy Sydney heat—only the locals never seem to really notice the heat, apart from the obligatory moans when it’s hit forty-three for three days solid and the cretins that sell SA power to Victoria (I kid you not) have had to institute a power cut because there isn’t enough left to handle this unusual demand that only happens every summer! Jesus!

    She’s explaining we can go right through into the house, yeah, I did get that. Just as well the next lot of owners will be just as lobotomised and actually want an eighty-year-old bluestone-fronted house with a whacking great hole cut in a side wall to let you into the fucking garage, eh?

    Jesus, she’s already started in on how it isn’t entirely bluestone, and though of course very many homes were built like that back in— Poor old Uncle Jim, I don’t dare to catch his eye.

    “Norwood, Dot, love,” he says, grabbing up my suitcase before I can stop him.

    “I see, Uncle Jim.” Think that’s two suburbs over from where they were before. And if I remember rightly, that should make us nearer to the Parade and Cunningham’s Warehouse. Good, I’ll get on over there and see if I can pick up a really solid carryall like that one Rosie got that time she was over here, my purple and yellow nylon one’s developed a split. In fact Uncle Jim notes as he wrests it off me with his spare hand: “This bag doesn’t look too strong, love, want me to patch it for ya?”

    Inspect, inspect, not worth patching, Jim, but if you want to waste your time— The thing is, she made the poor old joker retire early and take the super because he’d come in for all that lolly from his dad, and now he hasn’t got enough to do. Like, Mum reckons he’s a real handy bloke about the house: back in the olden days when they were first married he used to make built-in cupboards and robes and lay new vinyl and re-tile the bathroom and like that. Which of course meant the value of the dump shot up and she could sell it and buy a much better— Yeah. And so now they’re in the socio-economic bracket that just orders a new ready-made kitchen. So she comes into my room and after pointing out a few features I might of missed because they’re like so invisible, e.g., the giant double walk-in robes and the tasteful body-carpet with the pile so thick ya trip on it and the matching duna and valance and curtains and blah, blah, takes me in there and explains that she ordered it from the catalogue, but of course they came to measure and quote, quite a nice man, wasn’t he, Jim, and that’s customised and that’s customised and that wasn’t quite standard but for very little extra, and the rolling whojamaflickies in the cupboards and blah, blah, blah.

    “Um, yeah. Ace, Aunty Kate. Um, Aunty May was saying something about maybe she’ll get granite bench tops, too, when they get the extension.”

    “New wing, dear,” she corrects kindly.

    Uh—God, yeah. New wing: poor old Uncle Jerry. Still, it’s better than buying a new house every three or four years.

    No, of course they haven’t had their tea yet, what a scandalous suggestion, Dot Mallory, nayce people don’t have their teas at teatime when they’ve gotta go out straight after and collect a person off a plane that’s timed to arrive just after teatime. She doesn’t put it like that, she merely looks it. So we have it. Home-made quiche, though she has broken down to the extent of buying frozen pastry. Shit, it’s got real asparagus in it, Mum never buys that, well, not for us yobs, that’s for sure. Once in a blue moon she buys a bunch for Dad, for a treat. No ham in it, has Aunty Kate gone vegetarian? Tossed salad in a big bowl with a vinaigrette dressing. Ugh, she’s put sugar in it. Still, at least it isn’t ruddy balsamic vinegar, I don’t say I loathe it as much as Leila and Rosie do, but I wouldn’t nominate it for Flavour of the Month, neither. She knows all us girls are watching our weight—I’m too broke to be able to watch mine at lunchtime and Mum and Dad can’t afford for me to watch it at home, but on second thoughts it’s probably a hint, she actually bought Rosie a diet cookbook last time she was over here—but just for once— Boy, oh boy, oh boy! Aunty Kate’s special caramel-banana flan with real cream on it! Dunno what she does to the bananas, it’s a trade secret, but they look sort of brown, not gone off, deliberately browned, and they not only taste like ripe bananas, they taste of caramel as well as the filling, that’s all caramel. Um, technically caramel custard? Whatever. Ace.

    “Enjoy it while ya can, it’ll be Weight-Watchers’ ice cream mucked up with minced watermelon, when this is all gone,” warns Uncle Jim, tucking in.

    “Nonsense!”—That’s good to hear, in this instance.—“Minced, indeed!”—On second thoughts, no, ’tisn’t.

    She’s given up coffee in the evening because it keeps her awake so no-one gets offered it, but Uncle Jim offers me the choice of “some non-caffeinated muck” or tea. According to Joslynne’s Mum, tea’s got even more caffeine in it than coffee, but judging by the completely neutral look on the old joker’s face, I’d say he knows this. So I refrain from pointing it out and we all go into the lounge-room, all right, Aunty Kate, sitting-room, if that’s what the nayce Norwood people say—and sit down and have it. Same rotten TV programmes as we get back home, fancy that. Uncle Jim tells me wistfully what ya can get on Foxtel. But gee, we don't want the house to be mistaken for that frightful pub you will go to with that dreadful Barney Jackson, Jim, so he subsides. Though noting wistfully that there might be some cricket on Nine. We’re never gonna know, she’s in charge of the blab-out and we’re watching the nayce programmes on the ABC. …Gee, this is shit. Total shit. Wanking shit, in fact…

    I don’t believe it! Now it’s a programme on Liberace, and she wants to watch it! I mean, it’s hard to believe that the cutbacks in funding at the ABC would force even them to run a bloody Pommy documentary on Liberace in prime-time on a Sunday night, and it’s also hard to believe that anyone under the age of eighty-seven and not totally gaga like Grandma Leach would want to watch it. I’m really tired, Aunty Kate, it must be the strain of wondering whether I was gonna end up stranded at Tullamarine. So after a short tirade on the subject of Ansett—again—she lets me creep off. Yeah, actually, I had realised that the bathroom was all mine because you and Uncle Jim have got the ensuite, you only mentioned it ten times in the course of the evening…

    The bed’s comfortable. Super-comfortable. Is there any way I can convey this fact tactfully but pointedly to bloody Aunty Allyson, her spare bed’s hard as a rock? …Uh, on the whole, no. I wish I’d brought a few more books, but there wasn’t room for them in my suitcase. Maybe it was stupid to ask Dad for money for books last birthday, maybe I shoulda given in and let him buy me a Walkman instead, he’s right, I am the only living, breathing, walking person under the age of thirty-five that doesn’t own…

    Shit, it’s morning. Musta gone to sleep after all.

    So I go into the kitchen and though it’s only seven-thirty she’s nailed to the bench already! So she goes: “Good morning, Dot, dear. Did you sleep well?” Looking the long tee up and down. It’s perfectly respectable, it’s not even the faded purple one that doubles as an actual tee-shirt-type tee-shirt, it’s a pale blue, well, greyish one, that Mum got me at a sale in the Mall, and it’s meant to be worn as a nightie. Even though it hasn’t got a giant picture of Torval and Dean twirling on the ice down its middle like the pink one she got for the ballerina.

    So I go: “Yes, thanks, Aunty Kate, it’s a really comfy bed.”

    Smirk, smirk. “Thank you, dear. That looks very comfortable.”

    Cringe; read, sloppy and unladylike and unfit for a nayce Norwood kitchen. So I go: “Yeah, Mum got it for me. She thought I’d like a plain blue one, but she got a pink one for Deanna with a picture of some skaters on it. Like, they were on sale, down the Mall.” –Look, it’s her. Ya can’t stop yaself: it all just comes out. Rosie’s just the same when she’s under her eye.

    “Of course, dear. Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

    This is a Trap, of course. “Um, what are you having, Aunty Kate?”

    Muesli with fresh fruit and skim milk, wholemeal toast with margarine—don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say the actual whole word before—and Vegemite. And coffee. Funnily enough I’ll have the same.

    Good, and we’ll have it on the patio—that’d be right, the last house never had one of those—and if I’d like to have my shower while she gets it, then perhaps I could give my Uncle Jim a wake-up call?

    Shit, the poor old bugger is retired, doesn’t she let him sl—Oh, forget it. Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it. Whatever. Oh, and shall I get the paper in? That’s very kind of me, but after I’ve had my shower and dressed, Dot, dear. Right, goddit, a nod’s as good as… Look, when ya think of some of the gear bloody Wendalyn gets round the house in at this hour! Well, two trousseaux in under six years, she’s gotta get some use out of the stuff. But crikey Dick!

    So I have my shower and get dressed. And being as how Mum’s entirely responsible for what’s in my bag— Um, no, on second thoughts, I’ll just shut up about it, after all she’s been taking shit from Aunty Kate for the last forty-eight years.

    So I go out the front door and down the verandah steps, trying not to look at the huge great pot of flowering English-ee lavender on this side of the steps and at the huge great pot of flowering whatever on the other, and go down the recycled-brick path. Dodging the showers from the sprinklers that are going full-bore over the English-ee Cottag-ee fucking herbaceous borders because, actually, the climate on the Adelaide plains is ENTIRELY UNSUITED to— What the Hell. The rest of Adelaide is also busily draining the Murray dry, the sprinklers are on all up and down the street. Like, this is at the same time as the pollies pay lip-service to the idea of water conservation. Gee, there’s a man out hosing down his car in the drive of one of the houses opposite, pardon me, hosing down his 4WD, is he possibly preparing for an expedition to the Outback of the DRIEST CONTINENT IN THE WORLD? Stupid wanker. His sprinklers are on full-bore, too.

    Can’t see the paper. It certainly isn’t in the round thing on the side of the letterbox designed to hold a rolled-up paper but that’s just as well, it if had of been the shock would of killed me. So I like, very carefully negotiate the um, hollyhocks? and um, more lavender, and, um, dunno those pink ones, and, um, shit, kangaroo-paws, and um… hang on, hang on— Goddit! Delphiniums blue, of the herbaceous border and get onto the thick patch of grass—how the fuck does the old joker get the mower onto it, it’s surrounded by herbaceous shit—and have a good hunt for… Nope. Definitely not. Try the other side, same story: dodge, jump, dodge, leap! …Nope. Not so much herbaceous palaver on this side, they hadda fit the garage in, didn’t they, so Nature, well, arty-tartified Nature that never ought to of crossed the English Channel, lost out. That rambling rose is doing good, well, roses do do good in Adelaide. Would she kill me if I just picked one— Yeah. Just for a change I go down the drive and round the outside of the Federation-style picket fence that fences off the low, carefully squared-off hedge, and open the Federation-style picket ga—

    “HEY!”

    Jesus! That shortened me life by approx. twenny years, mate! So I turn round and bellow: “WHAT?”

    “You looking for the TIZER?” he bellows.

    Whaddelse, ya fuckwit, I’m not hunting the Snark, that’s for sure. Like, it’s the Advertiser and he can’t be quayte nayce because quayte nayce people don’t shorten the name of the paper like the rest of the population. “YEAH! Has it COME?”

    “YEAH! Think he chucked it NEXT-DOOR!” Obligingly he points with his hose. Water gushes out all over the road.

    “THANKS!”

     “NO PROBLEM!” he bellows, turning back to the spotless, shiny 4WD.

    Yeah, thanks. If I go next-door and there’s a paper there, will the owners rush out and accuse me of nicking their paper?

    Cautiously I go next-door. This must be what Aunty Kate meant when she said there were still one or two undesirables in the street. Like, it hasn't got a fake-Federation picket fence. (Look, Federation was in 1901: with the white ants and the climate, wooden pickets do not last 96, nearly 97 years, no way can any of these ruddy fences be genuine.) It’s got a solid-looking brick wall with tufts of this and that growing out of it and a nice wide concrete top, cracked in places, with tufts of ditto. Just the right height for sitting on. The front lawn’s as bumpy and patchy as ours at home, blow me down flat. But there’s a nice big tree on it, unlike our mangey thing. Dunno what sort. The front path isn’t poncy recycled bricks like Aunty Kate’s, it’s large flagstones with grass sprouting between them. Unlike the rest of the street, no sprinklers. There is a paper, yeah, sitting right in the middle of one of the big stones. I’m just gonna pick it up but I catch the very large yellow eye of the huge ginger cat that’s sitting on the verandah step, and stop. Um, well, maybe I better ask if it’s theirs. Only thing is, there are people in the universe that don’t get up religiously at seven every morning like Aunty Kate McHale… Though it is a working day. Oh, bugger it, I’ll give it a go!

    So I go up the sagging wooden steps, avoiding the cat, and onto the sagging wooden verandah that needs painting and— Cripes. No poncy brass knocker, neither. And ring the ordinary electric bell.

    It’s a thin joker in a scruffy grey dressing-gown open over a pair of bathers. Think so. Probably not boxers. Faded floral cotton, put it like that, nothing like those poncy silk-look underdaks Narelle makes Tim wear. He’d be about—um, dunno, no good at ages. Fortyish? Old, anyway. Eating a banana. He’s got untidy dark hair, not long but not short, and a five-day growth. And as he stands there out comes this wave of Lah, dee-dah, dee-laah, dee-dah-dee; Lah—

    “Ooh, lovely! Is that Elgar?” I go before I can stop myself.

    “Yes,” he says, not looking interested or surprised or nothing, really. “Come in.”

    So he like, turns away down the passage, so what the heck, I go in. If he’s a nutter or a rapist or something, Aunty Kate’ll be sure to hear me scream. Well, she’s already given me a diatribe about the Beethoven being played at midnight, so I’m presuming she’ll hear me. Anyway, he doesn’t look like a nutter. Possibly nuts—yeah. Not a nutter, though.

    We’re in the lounge-room, it’s really shabby, like all faded fawn and faded brown except there’s this great bank of ace electronic gear and a huge piano, not a speck of dust on it, and a cello leaning against it. Think it is, I never seen one this close before. Golden-brown and shiny. And the walls are lined, no, more than that, um, fully lined, with bookcases, I’ve never seen so many books outside the uni library.

    So he like waves me to a big old grungy fawn armchair and sinks into one himself and closes his eyes, so what the heck, I sit down and listen to the Elgar, too.

    “Jacqueline du Pré,” he says when it’s over. “Old but still good. I had it transferred to disk a while back.”

    “Yuh—Um, yeah.” Is that a Pommy accent? Poncy, anyway. “It was really great. Um, I came about the paper.” He looks blank. “Like, the Advertiser?”

    “Oh, that rag. We don’t want it, thanks all the same. We had a fellow round not long since trying to sell it to us. I’m afraid all I can tell you is what I told him: the reason we don’t want it has nothing to do with the price or the convenience of being able to rescue it off the roof or out of the tree every morning: it’s that it contains nothing approximating to journalism or even news, let alone informed comment.”

    I’m just gonna tell him he’s made a mistake—not about the quality of the Tizer, though—when a deep lady’s voice from the doorway goes: “Hullo. You’re early.”

    She comes in slowly, chewing. Crikey. She’s tall, she’d be as tall as him, and not young, must be the wife, and she’s got a huge mop of black curls, like that faked-up Greek Effie on the TV, y’know? With big black eyes and a hooked nose, on her it looks good, and she’s wearing a dressing-gown, too, only hers is more like a coat of many colours, actually it reminds me of Joslynne’s Mum’s hand-woven rugs, maybe she wove it herself? Open over a cream satin-look nightie that may be technically five times less revealing than all those semi-transparent horrors of Wendalyn’s, but shows every curve and bulge and—Crikey. Small she ain’t. Impressive, ’ud be the word. Impressive.

    So he goes: “Not a pupil. Come to sell us the foul local paper.”

    “No, I—”

    “Not worth the paper it’s printed on. –Is there anything to eat in this house besides bananas?” she adds on an acid note.

    There’s certainly a huge bowl of bananas on the coffee-table in front of him. Like, huge, think it’s a mixing bowl. All stages of ripeness, too. Maybe he’s got a potassium deficiency? He takes one, dunno if he’s doing it deliberately, the face isn't expressing anything behind that five-day growth, and says: “There’s some cold Moroccan stew in the fridge.”

    “With couscous?” she says suspiciously.

    “Don’t think so, no. –Oh—allow me to introduce my sister, Antigone,” he says with, like, immense courtesy, only I think he’s doing to get up her nose.

    “Um, hi, I’m from next-door. Dot Mallory. They’re my aunt and uncle,” I croak.

    “Hullo, Dot. Not Antigone,” she says firmly. She lays her hand on her hefty chest and goes in like a kind of moan: “Nefertite, Queen of the Nile.”

    “Balls, she was thin,” he goes, not as if he’s interested, though.

    Like, they’re both nuts, see? She’s a Shirley Maclaine in her nuttiest period nut, and he’s a banana nut and plain nuts.

    “Yeah, um, Nefertite. Um, I haven’t come to sell you the paper, I’ve come to collect ours. The man over the road reckons it got biffed into your garden. Only I thought it might be yours, so I didn’t want to grab it without asking.”

    Like, anyone that wasn’t a nut would just say: “Take it.” Only he goes: “A Daniel come to judgement.”

    Antigone-Nefertite wanders over to the front window and peers between the grungy lace curtains and the grungy brown velvet curtains. Specks of dust dance in the sun, probably the house’s original curtains. “Would this be the man currently pouring your Murray River all over his horrible four-by-four as we speak?”

    Huh? Oh: 4x4; she means his FWD. So I go: “Yeah. Like, maybe he figures his contribution doesn’t count, given the sprinklers are on all up and down the flaming street?”

    “All over the flaming suburb,” he corrects sourly. “Have a banana, Dot Mallory.”

    I wouldn’t mind a banana, but Aunty Kate’s expecting me to eat every crumb of that healthy breakfast… Mind you, a banana’s not much…

    “Untouched by human hand,” he says lightly.

    So she goes, real sour: “Unlike the sweetcorn.”

    “In our delightful local greengroceries they peel back the hygienic covering provided by a bountiful Nature in order to expose the kernels to dust, flies, and deterioration,” he explains, boy does he think he’s clever or does he think he’s clever. “Have you ever noticed that?”

    “Nah, Mum usually buys it frozen, or sometimes we grow our own. I would like a banana, thanks.” He waves his hand at the bowl so I get up and take a ripe one. Speckled only not too brown, y’know? “So is it okay if I grab that paper?”

    “Grab as many papers as you like, Dot Mallory,” he says lightly, he is a Pom, and boy, is he up himself. “Oh, unless there’s a large ginger cat sitting on it.”

    “It wasn’t when I come. I better go, Aunty Kate’ll do her nut if I’m late for breakfast.”

    He gets up very slowly. “There is a packet of couscous in the pantry,” he says to the sister. “Pour some hot water on it, if you’re that keen.”

    “Is it instant?”

    “No idea, I’m afraid.”—Yeah, I was betting he’d say that.—She gives him an annoyed look, and goes out.

    “Allow me to show you out,” he says in this, like, weary voice, y’know?

    “Don’t bother, I can remember where the front door is. And thanks for the banana. And the Elgar.”

    “Not at all. This way,” he says, going over to the door and holding it wide, if the up-himself wanker dares to bow I’ll probably scream.

    He doesn’t bow but it’s a close-run thing. So I go into the passage and bugger me, he comes too, and opens the front door wide. The cat’s still sitting on the step, phew! Because what I was gonna do if the ruddy thing had plonked its great, fat, hairy, ginger bum down on the paper—

    “What’s its name?”

    “Puss,” he says, simultaneously the sister comes up the passage and says “Zingingerber.” –I think. More or less.

    “Yes, but he answers to Puss,” he says, he’s not phased. “Nice to meet you, Dot Mallory. Come into our garden and retrieve your paper any time, won’t you?”

    “It isn’t mine, it’s Aunty Kate’s and Uncle Jim’s, but I will. Thanks. See ya.”

    So I go down the steps and grab it up. Behind me I can hear the great Pommy wanker saying to her, he isn’t even trying to lower his voice: “Dear me, what a tame valediction. And I was hoping for ‘No worries’ at the very least.”

    So she goes: “You’re not funny, David. And that couscous isn’t instant.”

    “I was afraid it wasn’t, mm.”

    “All right, I’ll eat your damned Moroccan stew!”

    “Do that. And say goodbye to the kid, for God’s sake.”

    “Me!” But she goes: “Goodbye, Dot! Nice to meet you!”

    So I like, turn round at the gate and wave and shout: “No worries!”

    I can hear him collapsing in giggles, no, more like wheezing giggles, but I don’t look back. D.M. Mallory one, up-themselves next-door Pommy wankers NIL!

    So we’re sitting out on the patio, eating it, and Aunty Kate gets it all out of me. Down to correcting my “Pommy” to “English”, nice people don't say “Pommy,” as if ya couldn’t of guessed.

    “They do sound odd, dear.” she concedes.

    “So what was the female’s name?” asks Uncle Jim.

    “Dunno, Uncle Jim. I mean, he said Antigone, and she does look Greek, but on his form, it coulda been a leg-pull. Dunno if she’s a real nut, or not. Well, like, does she really think she's the reincarnation of Nefertite, or would she just like people to think she thinks she is?”

    “In either case, dear, she can’t be normal,” notes Aunty Kate before the old joker can open his mouth.

    “No, right. Hey, and listen: as well as the great big piano”—“Grand piano,” she murmurs, she’s already corrected that—“yeah, right, grand piano, it took up an awful lot of the lounge-room, as well at that, there was a cello!”

    “That’s logical, Dot: Jacqueline du Pré was a very famous cellist.”

    “Yeah, I know, but you can like her without having one!”

    “She’s got a point,” notes Uncle Jim. “So, which do ya reckon was the cellist, Dot? The banana-eater with the five-day growth or the giant-economy-size Nefertite?”

    When I’m over the choking fit I admit: “Dunno, Uncle Jim. Cos, like, I only seen musicians like in the symphony orchestra or like that, and they all looked normal. And even the ones at the uni lunchtime concerts are always, um,”—I was gonna say “clean and shiny”, he’d appreciate it but she wouldn’t—“like, normal.”

    “Of course, Dot! You remember Cynthia Sprague, Jim. A delightful woman! She was a clarinettist, Dot, with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.”

    “Yeah, only then Bill Sprague—” He catches her eye, and stops.

    “Never mind that. Poor Cynthia: none of it was her fault.”—Uncle Jim’s got “Not much” written all over his face.—“I believe she’s living in Perth, now, and doing very well for herself.”

    “Still playing the clarinet, Aunty Kate?”

    “Of course, dear.”

    “That’s good.”

    “My money’d be on the Nefertite. Sitting there hugging the cello between ’er— Um, sorry, Kate.”

    “Really! What must Dot be thinking of you?”

    Actually I’m thinking he’s a real decent old joker, or could be, if given half a chance. “That’s all right, Aunty Kate, Dad comes out with much worse stuff, specially if he’s got a few beers inside him.”

    “That’s hardly the point, Dot.”

    Aw. I thought it was. And Uncle Jerry, never mind that nayce English background of his, can be miles worse, but I’m not gonna open me great mouth and cram the other foot in as well. So I just eat my wholemeal toast and Vegemite up hungrily. That muesli and fruit hardly went anywhere even on top of the banana, though the fruit was good. Talking of bananas, that’s about our level, at home, but when Aunty Kate has fruit on her muesli she has like, fruit. I mean, strawberries and cherries, I know the Adelaide hills are full of cherry orchards but nevertheless, plus and rockmelon and that other green melon? Not to mention the kiwifruit. I don’t track them all that closely, this may surprise ya, but I’d take a hefty bet the things aren’t in season. Well, true, they were thinnish slices but we each got three. Like, technically, it was muesli and fruit salad. Must remember to tell Bernice the Ballerina all about it, she’ll be green as grass: according to her, Mum’s ruining her chances by not chucking megabucks away on the approved Ma Pinchot diet.

    “More toast, Dot, dear?”

    “Um, yeah, thanks, Aunty Kate. I’ll get it.” I go inside, behind me I can hear her having a go at him over the cellist bit and the Cynthia Whatserface bit, shit. Poor old bugger. Like, what I’ve always wondered, are women like Aunty Kate born or made? Well, take something of Sickening Little Taylor’s age—Ugh, no, don’t, on second thoughts. But take the girls you knew at school. Were any of them obviously slated to develop into an Aunty Kate? Um, well, leave out the refayned bit and Rhonda Innes’d be a front-runner, that’s for sure, only it never showed at school. Must only start to develop, fester’d be a better word, when they meet the feebleized male that’s slated to be the soul-mate… Cripes. So does the feebleness of the mate kind of bring it out, like, encourage it in them?

    … Oops. The magic electricity won’t come out of the wall and activate this super-efficient four-slice toaster unless ya press the thingo, Dot Mallory. Press. Toast, toast… So does that mean Uncle Jim was always feebleized? Must do. Shit. …Oh, bugger, maybe four pieces is too much and I’ve wasted her bread. Only if I chuck two down the waste-disposal (of course she’s got one of those) she’ll hear it, and if I chuck them in the bin she’ll see them…

    So I go out with the evidence and good old Uncle Jim goes: “Oh, good, ya did four. Okay if I have one, love?”

    “Yeah, help yaself, Uncle Jim.” Phew!

    “So that ginger mog’s theirs, is it?” he says, having put too much margarine on his toast and followed it up by far too much Vegemite, quote unquote.

    “Yeah, must be, the lady said its name was Zingingerber or something and he said it answers to Puss.”

    “I can believe that!” she goes, acid as all get out. Jesus, what’s the poor brute done? Oh, only come into their garden and used it as its toilet. Well, cats have got to go somewhere. Mind you, this is at the same time as its owners allow that ivy of theirs to go mad along the fence, she doesn’t believe they’ve ever trimmed it back.

    “Not judging by the size of the stems, no. Thick as me forearm,” he says, winking at me.

    “Help. I never knew ivy could get that thick.”

    “Nor did I, until we came here. Mind you, the old hedge-trimmer’ll—”

    “Jim, that isn’t the point! It’s entirely irresponsible of them, and completely unneighbourly, I may add, to let it get to that state.”

    “Dare say they're not that interested in the garden, love.”

    I’d of said that was self-evident but she goes: “Then why are they living in a nice suburb like Norwood?”

    “Uh—well, dunno. Bought the house before the street went up-market? Um, did you say they were English, Dot?” I nod and he says: “Can’t be the old family home, then.”

    “Of course not!” she snaps. (Think she thinks he’s taking the Mick but actually, I think the poor old joker was genuine, that time.) Pause for reflection during which him and me just get on with our toast. “You are sure their accents were English, are you, Dot? Not just—well, a nice school, dear.”

    “Um, well, they sounded like Uncle Jerry only fancier, Aunty Kate.”

    “That’s English, all right!” says Uncle Jim with a laugh. “Hey, ’member him when he first come out, Kate? Talk about a plum in the— Well, he was!” he says defiantly.

    She ignores him completely. “Frankly, Dot, they sound to me like what back in your great-grandfather’s day would have been called remittance men.”

    Like, does she mean the great-grandfather that was the dad of the grandfather that was a wharfie? But I haven’t got a death-wish—yet—so I don’t say it.

    “Useless younger brothers and that, that got sent out to the Colonies because their fancy English families couldn’t think what else to do with them, Dot,” Uncle Jim explains.

    “Yeah, I know. Yeah, they were odd all right, Aunty Kate. Like, the Winslows down the road from us, they’re English, and they’re just like us. Megan Winslow, she’s at uni, she's doing a B.A. in English and Sociology and then she’s gonna do her Grad Dip. in Ed.”

    “Education, I think you mean, dear. Well, there you are.”

    Uncle Jim’s got himself round the best part of a second cup of coffee like what she doesn’t usually let him have, he poured it while she was on about the cat, don’t think she noticed him, so he's real Up and he goes: “Yeah, so it can’t be the Englishness that’s causing the oddness!”

    So she goes: “I think that’s more than enough caffeine for today, Jim,” and wrests the cup out from under the poor old joker’s nerveless hand.

    “Well, I know what he means. It can’t be the musician-nuh, um, the musical side, either, cos like I say, I’ve never seen any odd ones in real life. Only he did remind me a bit of that pianist in Shine, like the Geoffrey Rush character, y’know, Aunty Kate?”

    She knows, of course she knows, and she tells me who the real man is and adds that she and Jim went to a concert of his and he was really very good, wasn’t he, Jim? He’s trying not to wince and he just goes: “Mm.” I know he’s not musical, so either he’s wincing at the thought of what they heard, or it’s because the real joker was just as much of a weirdo as in the film. Or, be fair, both.

    “But of course, he’s a musical genius,” she notes smugly.

    He’s still on the caffeine high so he goes: “Well, maybe Five-Day-Growth Banana-Eater is, too.”

    “Very likely,” she says drily.

    “They gotta live somewhere, Kate!”

    “Jim, I have yet to hear anything approaching music coming from that house. Apart from the Beethoven in the middle of the night. And don’t tell me it was him, it was a full symphony orchestra, the man was playing it at concert pitch—” Blah, blah. Plus and she is aware of the musical scene in Adelaide, and there are no peculiar English cellists in it! Gets up, starts collecting up crockery.

    “Um, the piano might be his, though, Aunty Kate.”

    “In that case, Dot, my dear,”—glances at the gold watch—“in approximately forty minutes you’ll hear exactly what he’s capable of.”

    “Unless the sky falls—yeah,” agrees Uncle Jim.

    “Um, ye-es. Um, but couldn’t it be a pupil? They did say something about pupils. She thought I was one.”

    “Well,” concedes Uncle Jim heavily, hauling himself up—he’s a little, skinny, dried-up joker, but sometimes you’d swear he had eighteen stone to haul to its feet—“in that case, Dot, you’re gonna have a demonstration of the old saying ‘Them as can’t, teach.’ Kate’ll be the first to tell ya I’m no expert, but believe you me, love, the music that comes out of that dump isn’t good. Right, Kate?”

    She’s actually looking quite pleased. Well, majestically pleased, y’know? “Exactly. Come along, Dot, bring your plate, these dishes won’t wash themselves, you know!”

    Aw. Gee. Won’t they? I really thought they were gunnoo.

    And we trail off in her wake…

    Forty min later. Sweet Christ!

    Her and me are making the beds. Making theirs: about to remake mine, after she’s stripped the bedcovers back to let it air what I never knew ya hadda do in up-market Norwood.

    She bustles over to the window and shuts it. “Don’t tell me that was a musical genius at work!”

    All I can produce is a very faint: “No.”

    “It goes on most of the day. Of course, we’re very pleased with the house, but you can see why we’re thinking—”

    In spades I can. That racket all day? Shit.

    Later. The really good thing about this holiday is that she’s not interrupting her usual routine, in fact she’s said she hopes I won’t be bored by their usual routine. In other words if I am, I better ruddy well keep it to myself. So given she'd already bunged the washing in the machine, after the beds it was the dusting and the floors and after inspecting my bathroom she admitted she only does them on Saturdays and, opening the window and squirting the lavender muck round briskly, use as much of this as I like, dear, I'm not at my Aunty Allyson’s, now! Boy, that was a good one. Just a pity Aunty Allyson wasn’t here to hear it, eh?

    So now we’re at the shops. Like I thought: the Norwood shops are so near that we coulda walked, it’s not that hot today, only instead we hadda haul Uncle Jim out of his shed and drive there. He always comes with her, and they usually have morning tea or lunch out, it’s one of the nice things about being retired. I wouldn’t say that his face looks as if he agrees, entirely, but so long as she believes it…

    Yes, Dot, we do need chicken and that is a very nice chicken shop—like, it’s a shop that just sells chicken, all cut up and skinned, ooh, and some of them are rolled up in pastry, too—but we’ll come back later, we don’t want to carry chicken round in the heat, do we?

    “No, good one, Aunty Kate, I never thought of that. We haven't got a chicken shop in our Mall, but Aunty May’s got one in her Mall.”—Uncle Jim sniffs slightly but refrains from the obvious.—“So, um, shall we get the stuff that won’t go off? Ooh, there’s a supermarket: shall we—”

    No. We’ll go up the road to an excellent little Italian grocery.

    Cripes. All right. So we trudge up Norwood Parade in the sun, we’re on the hot side. Boy, that café looks tempting. …Jesus! Far from tempting, the Italian grocery looks real ethnic and sort of dusty and there’s huge open sacks of like, beans and, um, lentils?—whatever, and like that outside. Um, chickpeas, those other ones are chickpeas! And inside it doesn’t look as if it’s had a coat of paint this century, not that you can see much of the walls because it’s all lined with stuff, it’s really tiny but crammed. The lady that’s serving really is Italian, she sounds like old Nonna Franchini that lives near Aunty May. Bloody Aunty Kate has a really good look at all their cheese and demands tastes, of course the poor thing has to offer me and Uncle Jim tastes, too—and then she doesn’t buy any! What she buys is exactly what’s on her List, like, today cheese isn’t. So she tells me loudly in front of the poor lady that I can be sure that everything will be excellent quality and thanks her so much, can shopping with the Queen be worse? And we go.

    “There is another place over the road that has some unusual gro—”

    She rubbishes that one, and Uncle Jim subsides. Now it’s fruit and veggies, so I don’t point out that it’ll be cheaper at Woolie’s that we walked right past earlier, I just follow her back down the road, boy that café looks…

    Not that place, no, it’s not bad but not such a wide choice and the quality is never quite what one would like. Gee, saw that at a glance, Aunty Kate. Trudge, trudge… This place.

    Yep, this is a nice greengrocer’s all right, even I can see that, clean as a whistle, and real up-market fruit and veggies. Five varieties of curly lettuce. Mixed curly lettuce leaves, washed and dried, at sixteen time the price. Packets of rocket leaves. Not only packets of sprouts, huge bin of sprouts you can help yourself from. Ooh, some of those long, skinny yellow capsicums, Rosie once took me round to the Franchinis’ for lunch and the old Nonna had done something miraculous with those… Nope. They disagree with Uncle Jim’s digestion. And may she see the List, please, Dot? Dunno why she wanted me to carry it. So we get exactly what’s on the List, not choosing the fruit from the bins out the front, no… They got a display of locally-made jam and chutney but Uncle Jim’s hauled off that.

    Trudge… Um, isn’t this the chicken place again? Yeah, ’tis. But Uncle Jim’s gotta go and dump the shopping in the car and then we’ll have lunch. In that dump? It’s full of grannies!

    “Uh, don’tcha think Dot might like something different from limp quiche, Kate?”

    “Very well, Jim, suggest another place.” Ouch! Think you’d have to call that icy-sweet.

    He does. Her jaw drops for a moment that she makes a swift recover. “Of course! Very nice, dear! –You’ll like it, Dot.”

    Ye-ah. Not if it only sells Cornish pasties, I won’t, I hate those. So we all go off to the car and dump the stuff because this Cornish place is only just over…

    This is all right, the food’s not actually as good as Leila’s and the choices are a bit odd, but at least there are no Cornish pasties in sight. The old joker wasn’t allowed to have the sausages, even though he explained they’re real meat sausages. I'm having bruschetta with sardines, it’s not as good as Leila’s bruschetta and the sardines are tinned, dunno why I imagined they’d be fresh just because certain Adelaideans go on forever about their seafood. Well, if ya don’t know it, just imagine kind of thick toast with like an up-market pizza topping. The cheesecake’s not that exciting and the coffee isn’t bad but not as good as Leila’s. And nothing like as good as Nonna Franchini’s; but according to Rosie, nothing could be, and I think she’s right. Yeah, well, nayce Norwood nosh, geddit? Yeah.

    Over the coffee Uncle Jim tells me how good the Norwood Thai place is, back on the main drag, even though he does know what chilli does to his digestion, yes. Lot of business people go there for lunch, he explains. That’d be right; well, they aren’t here, that’s for sure.

    So we go back to the chicken place. Those rolled-up packets do look nice.

    “That pastry’s pretty ordinary,” he tells me sadly. “You think it’s gonna come up all golden and flaky and oozing, only it doesn’t.”

    “Your mother’s pastry explains why your father had to have his gall-bladder out at forty-two!”

    Ulp. It would do, yeah.

    “Yeah, well, she didn’t often make it after that,” he says to me with a sad smile. “Birthdays and Christmases, really.”

    Don’t ask me why, but I take the old joker’s hand. “Yeah.”

    Heavy sigh. “Very well, Jim, I suppose I could make some sort of pie for Christmas with a real flaky pastry crust, if you insist.”

    So he doesn't just thank her meekly, is this the year of living dangerously or what? He goes: “Butter?”

    “Yes, butter! –Thank you, I’d like three skinned breast fillets. Full fillets, please.”

    Like, the girl behind the counter was just being real snotty to a hot-looking lady that came in lugging piles of shopping and wanted to know if they have cooked chicken pies, they don’t sell cooked chicken being the word, but she hasn’t got the guts to be real snotty to Aunty Kate, so up hers!

    And we exit with three approved full fillets of chicken that she inspected before she let the girl wrap them.

    “They can’t of needed to make a sale, that’s for sure.”

    “Oh? Why not, Dot?”

    Gee, why’d I open my mouth? “Well, if she’d of wanted to, she could of told that hot lady that the wrapped chicken packets are real nice and they only take twenny min in the oven, like you were telling me. Only she didn’t bother to mention it.”

    “No, well, I have noticed that that particular girl is not an asset to the place. One wonders if the manager knows how she treats the customers.”

    So Uncle Jim goes: “Yeah. Only that hot dame, she didn’t look like your usual Norwood shopper to me, and what’s the betting the girl had spotted it?”

    Very tolerantly she says: “Yes, but that’s hardly the point Jim, is it? When one goes to a shop of that quality one expects service to match.”

    Yeah, right; if you ask me, that was service to match, cos see, one time I was staying with them and wanted to come over to Cunningham’s Warehouse she asked me to get some stuff for her from a couple of the nayce shops, writing out a List, natch, and I got treated just like that. Well, just like that or with total ignore. I don’t say it. Instead I say: “Yeah, it was a nice shop, all right. So, um, do ya think you will make a real pie for Christmas, Aunty Kate?”

    Fortunately she takes this as a compliment to her culinary skills and goes: “Oh, well, with the two of you ganging up on me, I suppose I’ll have to! But what sort of pie, Dot?”

    She’s got me there.

    So good old Uncle Jim goes: “Mum’s rhubarb pie was great.”

    “At Christmas?”

    Right. Scrub that.

    “Um, well, that peach pie ya make’s good, Kate. Miles better than Mum’s ever was.”

    That hit the right note, like, think the technical term here’s bridling. “Thank you, dear, but you’re thinking of my peach cobbler. That’s more like a shortbread crust.” Slight pause: goes in for the kill. “Your mother always used tinned peaches, of course. Fresh peaches are the secret of a really good peach cobbler.”

    “That right? Um, well, dunno. Come on, Dot, what sort of pie do you like?”

    Actually I like that huge egg and veggie pie that Joslynne’s Mum makes, it’s got a wholemeal pastry crust and don’t ask me what it’s got in it besides the wholemeal but it’s really ace. And I can just remember eating a meat pie at Grandma Leach’s before she went gaga and got put in the Home that was totally ace. But I dunno what sort of meat. And I do know meat pies won't be approved Norwood Chrissie fare, I’m not that dumb, thanks.

    “Um, well, we never have real pies at home, ya see, Uncle Jim. Um, well, ya do mean like with the pastry on top, don’tcha?” Right, he does. Well, bugger me, I dunno! Ye good old Aussie meat pies have got something that calls itself a crust but believe you me it’s not the stuff that dreams are made of. And that’s the limit of my experience, pie-crust-wise.

    “That American mag ya got off Marion Fortescue, that had a cherry pie in it,” the old joker recalls helpfully.

    “Jim, Americans pies are—” We never get to hear what American pies are, because this lightbulb goes on over her head and she gasps: “Cherry pie! Of course! I could base the filling on that wonderful English recipe of your Aunt Ethel’s for a cherry sauce!”

    “Yeah, um, but Aunty Kate, don’t they always put the price of them up just before Christmas?”

    So Uncle Jim goes, real quick: “Could nip back, buy a few kilos, freeze ’em?”

    “Ooh, yeah, good one, Uncle Jim!”

    And we both look at her hopefully.

    Tolerantly: “I hardly the think the price is going to shoot up before tomorrow. And freezing won’t improve fresh cherries, you know. But,” the eyes narrow, “I could certainly pre-prepare the filling… Yes, why not? I think it might work very well.”

    “Good,” says Uncle Jim. “Put it down on the shopping list for tomorrow, Dot, love: five kilos of black cherries.”

    She rubbishes that and corrects it to the right amount, but you can see she's really pleased. Blow me down flat.

    The thought does occur, as I cram into the back seat with the shopping that didn't want exposing to the heat of the boot, What if it turns out she can’t make this flaky pastry crap of the old joker’s and the whole thing turns out disastrous? Well, no way will Dot Mallory refuse to eat it, I do have some slight sense of self-preservation, but what if it’s so awful she can’t pretend it was a success? …Oh, well. Sufficient unto the day.

    “Eh—Uh, pardon, Aunty Kate? Oh: yeah, that is next-doors’ ginger cat”—could be any great fuzzy ginger cat—“with its buh—uh, sitting on our verandah, yeah.”

    So she makes him pull up in the driveway and I go tread, tread, LEAP over the wanking herbaceous whatsits, this doesn’t frighten the thing, and heave it up. Cripes! It weighs a tonne!

    “Come on, Zinger-Puss-Whaddever-ya-name-is, ya don’t try this trick more than once at the McHales’.”

    It’s too heavy to do any leaping with, so I go down the recycled brick path and, hanging onto the brute like grim death, manage to open the bloody wicket gate and don’t manage to shut it and stagger over to next-doors’ and dump it on its own front path. So it sits down and washes its bum. Yeah, I geddit: Cat for “Up yours, Dot Mallory.” So I poke my tongue out at it for good measure and take off for the inevitable cuppa and rehash of the thrilling shopping expedition. Yep, it sure is a good thing they’re not interrupting their routine on my account.

    Today was just the same like yesterday only we got out to the shopping earlier, so we had morning tea in Norwood instead of lunch, not at one of the trendy cafés with the trendies in sunnies and five o’clock shadows that don’t know enough not to puff on the cancer sticks, no. In that granny café she fancied yesterday. Oh, ya guessed that? Have a medal. And she bought lots of cherries, think Uncle Jim and me better pop in the Cathedral and say a few Hail Mary’s, the price hadn’t gone up yet.

    So we’ve had lunch and now she’s making the filling, she’s finished letting me use the ace cherry-pitter, it gets less ace when ya get down to number thirty or so, and I’ll just nip out—No, I won’t. I will just wash that gigantic mixing-bowl by hand, not in the dishwasher. Is it too big for the thing, or— Don’t ask.

    “Hey, Aunty Kate, is this, like, a real mixing-bowl?”

    Of course. Gives me the low-down on your genuine English-style traditional mixing-bowl-type mixing-bowl. Like, as opposed to that huge white plastic thing that Joslynne’s Mum bought in the Seventies, and also as opposed to that giant white china thing of Mrs Franchini’s that actually came out from Italy with the old Nonna.

    “Banana-Eater next-door, he had one just like it, only he was using it on his coffee-table to hold the bananas.”

    She does this thing that’s halfway between a sniff and taking a really deep breath, grim aunts, they specialise in it. Like, after they’ve done it, they really don’t need to say anything. And if they do say anything it’s something like “Typical.” So she goes: “Typical.”

    “Yeah.” So I’ve washed the gear by hand and now I’ll— Watch as she stirs the pot and adds this stuff, not the stuff I might of thought it was, see, but some fancier Norwood stuff that thickens it up. (Like, I might of thought it was if I’d of heard of the first stuff in the first pla—Ya got that.)

    Ten aeons later. I’ve escaped to the shed. So I just stand at the old joker’s elbow, watching. He does ace stuff in his shed, like woodwork and that. One time I was over he built a really ace doll’s-house for their Andrew’s little Hillary. And another time he built this like, Swiss cottage, no, um… chalet, Swiss chalet letterbox for Mr Burns down the road, like, Mr Burns paid him for it, but Aunty Kate was cheesed off, he doesn’t need to take on odd-jobs. So when Mr O’Malley from the bowling club said that Mrs O’Malley wanted one just like it he wouldn’t take any money, but Mr O’Malley got quite upset and finally bought him two six-packs, one of real German beer and one of real Pilsener Lager, I thought that was German too but it isn’t, like, for a change, y’know? Because it’s miles dearer than Aussie beer and of course normally ya don’t buy it. And Aunty Kate was real cross and said did the man imagine he was an alcoholic like those frightful creatures that hang around the RSL club all hours of the day and night. So he might just as well of taken the dough for it in the first place.

    This arvo he’s fixing my bag. Like, he’s already glued a piece of real vinyl on, he hadda use a special kind of Selley’s for that. Ya can get it at Mitre 10, though I must admit there’s not that much demand for it round our way, Bob doesn’t sell much of it. Well, Mrs Pearson, she was gonna buy some and then he got her to admit she wanted it for their Rachel’s school raincoat and that’s not vinyl, so he sold her the right stuff for cheapo nylon raincoats that come adrift the first time the kid pulls its sticky crumpled mass apart from after she stuffed it into the school-bag after the first time she wore it. Anyway, now he’s putting in these studs, they’ll help hold the patch on. Wow! Ace, Uncle Jim! Thanks!

    For good measure he's strengthened the straps with some more vinyl, and he’ll just put some studs—Ace.

    So he grins. Then he goes, sort of slow, he’s picking up a bit of wood and ya can see most of his mind’s on that: “Hey, Dot—”

    So I go: “Yeah?”

    “Ya did say that Giant-Economy-Size Nefertite next-door, she called Banana-Eater David, that right?”

    Uh—did I? Did she? Uh… “Oh, yeah, that’s right, she did, when she come up the passage after she’d found out the couscous wasn’t instant.”

    “Ye-ah.” He rubs the chin slowly. “That piano-playing weirdo in that film—”

    “Geoffrey Rush.”

    “Uh—not him, love, he’s the actor, right? The real piano-playing type. Help—Uh—Helf—Whatsisname.”

    “Yeah? What about him?”

    “Well, uh, isn’t his name David, too?

    “Helfgott, I think,” I say slowly.

    “Yeah. David Helfgott?”

    We look blankly at each other. It does sound sorta familiar.

    “Um, what I mean—now, don’t for the Lord’s sake repeat this to your aunt, she’ll get all agitato—I s’pose it couldn’t be him, could it?”

    “Nah, he didn’t look anything like—Oh, shit.” As it percolates that the real musical genius doesn't necessarily look anything like the actor. And that I certainly haven’t got a clue what he does look like. “Um,”—very weakly—“you saw him, Uncle Jim. What does he look like?”

    “Uh—like a weirdo playing a piano,” he says sheepishly. “Well, what does your one look like?”

    “Like a weirdo in a dressing-gown eating bananas,” I admit sheepishly.

    “Well, um, middle-aged?”

    “Um, ye-ah… Old, anyway. Like, um, younger than you, I’d say.”

    “Younger than ya dad?”

    Shit, do I know or care? One old joker’s the same as another old joker, unless he's got a revolting fluffy beard or a giant red nose or a huge, hairy wart on his chin or like that. “Um, dunno. Could be, I s’pose.”

    “Mm… Wouldn’t say the real joker looked younger than ya dad.”

    “Anyway, it can’t be him: in the first place, does he live in Adelaide, and in the second place, Aunty Kate says ya never hear any actual music coming from over there!”

    “’E’s not in the White Pages. Well, I looked at all the weird names in Hel-something, and ’e wasn’t. Could have a silent number, I s’pose. No, well, dunno I’d classify what ’e played as music, ya see. Well, there was one bit that you could almost fall asleep to,” he admits with a wink. “Most of it was Rack-something. Goddawful.”

    “Um, Rachmaninov? Dad’s got a couple of CD’s of him.”

    “Coulda been, yeah; I just tried not to listen.”

    “Mm… But that’s at least recognisable music, Uncle Jim! Hang on.” I turn his cassette player off: it’s been playing one of his Elvis tapes that she won’t let him play in the house, Love me tender, love me troo-oo… Dad reckons he sounds like a cow stuck in a ditch. I’d say, be fair, a melodic cow stuck in a ditch. I open the door of the shed.

    Crash! Crash! Doh-ray-me-fah-so-lah-tee-doh! Crash! Crash! Crash! Bonk! BONK! BONK! BONK! Doh-ray-me-fah-so-lah-tee-doh! Doh-ray-me-fah-so-lah-tee-doh! Doh-tee-lah-so-fah-me-ray-doh.

    “Shit, ’e rounded it off,” says Uncle Jim numbly into the sudden silence.

    “Um, yeah.”

    “Well?”

    “Don’t they call that scales?”

    “Uh—ya could be right, Dot.”

    We look limply at each other.

    “Well, shut the door before it star—Bugger me! What’s that?”

    Gotta be the cello, only I can’t utter, I’m gonna laugh, ooh, help! I fall out the shed doorway and roll about helplessly on the grass.

    “’E’s never done that before,” admits Uncle Jim limply when I’m more or less over it. “Sounds like a cow st—”

    “Stuck in a ditch! Yeah!” I gasp, I’m off again.

    So he goes: “Be the cello, eh?” and gives me his hanky.

    “Thanks! Yeah! Isn’t it awful?”

    “No argument there.”

    And we close the door firmly and go back to Elvis …Oh, my dolling, I love yoo, and I always will-ll… The consensus being, if that’s a famous musical genius over there, or, be fair, two of them, one might be Giant-Economy-Size Nefertite at it, we’re both Charley’s Aunt from Brazil where the nuts come from.

    There’s a bit in one of Dad’s books of poetry that would just describe this; hang on, hang on… Goddit. Wanking Wordsworth. This bit’s good, though:

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy.”

    Yeah. Or in my case, Girl. It hasn’t got better. Or even, different. Like, Wednesday’s ladies’ day at the bowling club so she’s usually there in the mornings and often in the arvos if the game goes on or they win or whatever, and Thursday mornings it’s bossing the Over-Sixties into doing bits of crochet or stuffing stuffed toys or whatever that they learned at their grandmothers’ knees, and true, she spared me the bowls, but I got dragged along to the Over-Sixties, all right. All of them said wasn’t I like Rosie, well, the more gaga ones thought I was Rosie, so at least it proves she wasn’t spared either. Every so often the noise from next-door starts up and Aunty Kate mutters and closes the windows and puts on the TV or some nice light music, her choice, not mine or the old joker’s, that’s part of the routine. The prices of strawberries and cherries and, would I believe, tomatoes, have shot up, this proves Christmas is coming very soon. Every evening it’s the flaming ABC. Good old Uncle Jim put in a word for me and so I’ve been let off the leash a couple of times, like, I went into town on the bus but it was bloody hot and I couldn’t remember how to find the cheap shops, so I just went to the flicks. Didn’t have an ice cream, because they always charge fifteen times as much at the flicks. Then I found a Wendy’s and had a triple-header with a Flake for less than one mingy cone at the flicks, so up theirs. So as town was a wash-out I did my shopping at Cunningham’s Warehouse and the other cheapo place in Norwood, instead. Those have been the highlights so far.

    So today we’re gonna go to her special butcher’s and collect the Chrissie ham. Yep, a whole ham. There’s her and me and Uncle Jim. Though of course “dear old Mrs Price-Powell” will come for Christmas dinner. She’s an old lady they used to live next-door to and because her hubby was English and she’s got a hyphen, Aunty Kate’s adopted her. She’s all alone out here, so sad. Well, yeah. But does that mean she wants to spend Christmas with the McHales? She’s a very polite old lady and by the look of her, too scared of Aunty Kate to tell her to take a running. She has got lots of rellies back in Pongo, and once in a blue moon some of them manage to make the trip out, but they’re not of the affluent classes—Aunty Kate actually said that, so much for dinkum fourth-generation Aussies, eh?—so it’s more your once-in-a-lifetime thing. Well, coming back to Oz was her choice, when the hubby retired: they coulda stayed in Pongo and frozen to death every winter but she’d had more than enough of that. So really, she’s got nothing to complain about, and in fact she doesn’t complain. Or say anything, much. So like I say, no knowing if she actually wants to spend Chrissie Day with us or not.

    So Aunt Kate and Uncle Jim and me all get in the car and after we’ve got the non-perishable-type stuff, yep, it’s the special butcher’s. He knows her, poor guy. So he looks up, there’s a crowd in here today, and nods and smiles, but he can’t serve her yet so we wait. Nobody seems to be buying sausages to bung on the barbie, funny, that…

    Shit, is that Giant-Economy-Size Nefertite that’s being served now? In the flowing purple thing. That hooting voice and that mound of black curls sure do seem awfully familiar. Like, awfully, get my drift? Aw. All right, it is self-evident. …Goose? Is that goose she’s on about? No-one eats goose in Oz, whaddareya, woman, mad?

    “What do you mean,” oops, the hoot’s got very loud, “no goose because it's too near Christmas?”—Mutter, mutter from the butcher, anguished look at other customers, oops, fat lady with giant meat parcel’s paid up and gone and smart lady in black leisure gear moves up to the counter and gets the assistant so now there’s no-one between us and her, and the poor guy gives Aunty Kate an anguished smile.—“Christmas is precisely when one wants goose!”

    Can I possibly slide out, like, there’s three more ladies come in besides the three that came in just after us, and I’m jammed between Aunty Kate’s elbow and Uncle Jim’s armful of shopping— Nope. She’s turned round, gonna share the—

    “Dot Mallory! Hul-lo, my dear! Can you believe it? The man’s trying to claim he can’t supply goose!”

    “Yeah, um, hi, Nefertite,” I go, like, I thought anguish was what was coming from the butcher? “I think ya might be thinking of England, cos we don’t eat it out here.”

    “That’s not quite correct, Dot, dear,”—think the expression on Aunty Kate’s face can only be described as “avid”, lemme die now—“very few shops supply it, but Mr Michaels certainly does. –Good morning, Mr Michaels, how are you? But I’m afraid one has to order well in advance.”

    Boy, is that telling her or is that telling her.

    “Yeah, that’s right, lady, like I say!” Boy, is he steamed up, he’s forgotten to kow-tow. Oops, he’s remembered and he goes quick as lightning: “Morning, Mrs McHale. Got a lovely ham for you.”

    “Splendid. But please, finish serving this lady.” Lovely smile. Directs lovely smile at Nefertite. “Our neighbour, I believe.”

    “Is that right?” says the poor man, limp as a rag down the servo after Darien’s dunked it in the bucket and not squeezed the excess off before he goes splot! on some unfortunate’s windscreen. “Um, yeah, sorry, but goose just isn’t possible. I could manage a nice duck for you.”

    “Can you cook duck?” she says to me out of the blue.

    “Um, no!”

    “Nor me. I don’t cook. He told me to get a goose.”

    Ouch.

    Aunty Kate’s had more than time to size up the flowing purple thing, like, if you were being kind you could say it’s a loose long dress but normal people don’t use twisted gold cords as belts, it goes round her twice and it’s got tassels on it like, actually the looped cords on Aunty Kate’s lounge-room curtains come forcibly to mind, only they’re not gold, they’re tasteful. Very fortunately it’s not see-through because I wouldn’t take an oath there’s anything under it. The neck sports a lot of gold chains and, um, coins? All right, coins, and there’s some more coins dangling from the ears and similar junk round the wrists, and the long fingernails are purple to match the robe. So if she wasn’t bursting with curiosity and if the hoot wasn’t a very up-market Pommy hoot she wouldn’t, but as it she goes: “I can certainly let you have an infallible recipe for duck. And peas are in season: duck with green peas is quite traditional, you know!” Bares the teeth again.

    –Quayte traditional to whom, pray? I’ve never eaten it in me puff, and ya hardly ever see duck in our supermarket.

    “Yeah, Mrs McHale’s had a few nice ducks off me,” the poor butcher puts in.

    “That’s right,” agrees Uncle Jim unexpectedly. So far he’s been dumbfounded, make that goggle-eyed and dumbfounded, well, Nefertite does that to ya, no sweat. And today she’s got make-up on, too. Like, more eyeliner than five Ma Pinchots rolled into one, it’s incred—Silly me. Egyptian. Right. The lipstick’s just modern lipstick but given that it’s bright scarlet it looks real good with that purple.

    “Oh, very well,” says Nefertite, actually it’s more like “Eeow, veddeh well,” Aunty Kate’s drinking it in. “I suppose it’ll have to be duck. He told me to order it for Christmas Eve, is that possible?” Briskly the butcher wises up her up as to the exact last min when she can actually collect it, gets the dough off her in advance—very wise, I can see them two forgetting they ever ordered the thing—and having tried but failed to get their phone number outa her, she can’t remember it, gets the address plus and confirmation from me and just by the by Aunty Kate that it’s next-door to us. And sells her a nice totally overpriced leg of lamb for today.

    “According to him,” she says heavily to me while the butcher’s laboriously changing the hundred buck note the silly cow gave him, “he’s going to make some Persian thing with yoghurt out of this, have you ever heard of that?”

    Gee, I can reply real confidently to that one. “No.”

    “Goodness!” says Aunty Kate, very coy, “that sounds like a Claudia Roden recipe!” –Like, she’s got this bookcase full of fancy cookbooks, only Rosie and me have discovered that she hardly ever makes anything out of them, they’re too fancy and the spices wouldn’t agree with Uncle Jim’s stomach, the answer to the question has she ever tried any of them on his stomach being a lemon.

    “Don’t ask me. –Nefertite Walsingham Corrant,” she suddenly says, sticking out a purple-clawed paw.

    Aunty Kate’s fully prepared for that. “Kate McHale. My husband, Jim.” –She’s given up trying to call him “James” in front of up-market types, the old joker relentlessly corrects it to “Jim”. So she shakes naycely and Uncle Jim leans forward real eager and says, so she’s their neighbour, Dot’s told them about her.

    “It’s my brother who’s your neighbour, actually: David Walsingham.”—Me and Uncle Jim meet each other’s eyes for a fleeting second and look quickly away. Not the genius: right.—“I’m thinking of dropping the ‘Corrant’, actually: he was a mistake,” she says. “What would you do, Dot?”

    Me? I’d like, move away from the counter, Nefertite, so as other people can get served. “Um, dunno!” The butcher is serving Aunty Kate, actually, so I go: “Um, are you in the carpark? Can I give you a hand with ya stuff?”

    “What?” she says, looking at her bulging bags of shopping. “He always makes a huge list…” Cripes. A List? I would of said he had nothing, bar membership of the human race and living in Norwood, in common with Aunty Kate McHale. Nothing. “And then it always turns out I’ve bought the wrong things…”

    “Yeah, so does he, like, lose his rag?” I grab a couple of the bags off her anyway and, under the firm pressure of Uncle Jim’s hand in the middle of me back, edge towards the door.

    “What? No, loses all interest and refuses to cook the stuff.”

    “Here, gimme those, Mrs Corrant,” he says, grabbing a couple with his spare hand, and we all edge out. “Whew! What a scrum, eh?” he says as we reach the relatively unclogged air of the, like not technically mall, it’s like, a cul-de-sac? and it’s only got nayce shops and no cars are allowed up it. Whatever.

    “Yes. Terrible.” She looks hot, poor Nefertite. Come to think of it, it would be a bloody hot day for a Pom. But given it’s only thirty-twoish heading for thirty-five this arvo, she’s gonna do it real hard the days it shoots up to forty-three, isn’t she? Not to say when it’s hit thirty-five or over all week and hasn’t gone down below twenty-eight at night.—“Not Mrs Corrant, actually.”

    “Oh, right, Nefertite,” he says, grin, grin. “I’m Jim.”

    “Of course, Jim. Though it’s Lady Corrant, technically,” she says, giving him a real nice smile.

    “That right? Your ex a Sir, then?” says Uncle Jim with simple interest. Bet he’s wondering how soon he can warn me not to tell Aunty Kate that one, she’ll be all over the poor dame.

    “No, he’s never got off his chuff and worked at anything that could have earned him that, Jim. Inherited it from a long line of similar hopeless wankers.”

    Uncle Jim blinks a bit at this expression in Lady Corrant’s intensely up-market tones but nods and says: “I getcha. So you’re staying with ya brother for a bit, eh? That’s nice. Dot was saying he's got a great big piano in there: so which of you’s the musician, then, Nefertite?”

    “Oh, well, I suppose you could say we both are, though according to him I’ve got cloth ears, Jim!” she says, giving him the smile again— Hang on, is she coming on to him? Surely not. I mean, he's a decent old joker, but— No, hang on. Got it. She’s a Rosie type, can’t help turning it on for anything even faintly male. Crikey. Is this what they develop into? Well, Rosie’s not tall, but… Crikey.

    He’s looking dished, can’t see why—Oh. Right. That didn’t solve the mystery of who bashes the piano and who tortures the cello. He’s asking her where her car is and she’s saying vaguely “over there” when Aunty Kate appears looking pleased, with a GIANT bag.

    “Didja buy a whole one, Kate?” the old joker goes faintly.

    “Of course. We can always use it. And poor dear Mrs Price-Powell will like some, I’m sure. –A former neighbour of ours, Mrs Corrant,” she says in her most gracious tone, spew. “English, like yourself, and quite alone out here, so we always have her for Christmas dinner.”

    So Nefertite goes: “Call me Nefertite,” omitting the “Lady” bit and not bothering much with the smile. “Could get I possibly get that recipe from you before I go home, Kate? Otherwise David will definitely kill me.”

    “Of course, Nefertite! My pleasure! We mustn’t upset the temperamental genius, must we?” she trills.

    If that one was supposed to provoke a revelation of what he actually does for a living, it bombs, see, cos Nefertite just goes: “Genius! Him! Though temperamental certainly hits the nail on the head, Kate. Would you believe, all I said was the instant couscous is much easier and tastes the same anyway, and he—” Rave, rave. Bad as Mum, really. Must be her age. Aunty Kate looks terribly interested, meanwhile you can see the calculator’s going click, click, click, unfortunately there are no actual facts in there between the raving, so she can’t draw any conclusions, and she urges us all on towards the carpark...

    Well, here’s Uncle Jim’s car, just where she told him to put it, under a tree with the shadow going thataway so as it would still be in it when we got back—’course it is, it wouldn’t dare not to be—but where’s Nefertite’s car? She was sure she parked it here.

    So Uncle Jim goes: “What make is it, Nefertite?” and she goes: “Red.” Ouch.

    So we look round and it’s definitely not that very old red clunker over there, in fact Aunty Kate cannot imagine what it’s doing here, and it’s not that red Mazda over there, and it’s not that maroon Merc like what Uncle Jerry’s thinking of trading up to from his silver job, neither. Red’s not a very In colour for nayce Norwood cars, so that’s It. Helpfully Uncle Jim points out the next carpark, see, just up the a road bit, past them trees. She doesn’t think she walked that far to the shops…

    “No, but see, ya might not of come this way, Nefertite. What I mean, there’s another end to the not-mall place, ya could of—”

    “Just shut up, Dot, love.”

    Gee, thanks, Uncle Jim, what did I say? Why does everybody shut me up?

    ”We’ll dump ya shopping in ours, and go and check,” he says kindly. “You and Dot better nip in, turn the air-con on, Kate.”

    Aunty Kate wasn’t gonna give in before an English lady but at this she gets thankfully into the car. “Come along, Dot.”

    So I, like, deliberately don’t look her in the eye and I go: “Nah, thass okay, Aunty Kate, I’ll give Uncle Jim a hand.” And I shove my bags in the back seat real quick and off we go.

    So the old joker’s trying to get out of her what make the thing actually is. It’s David’s car and she does remember that he used to have a Bentley. He’s real pleased, Bentleys are real easy to spot even in this neck of the trendified Norwood woods—he does say that, he’s out from under Aunty Kate’s eye, ya see—only then she says that he sold that, and anyway it was black. That sets him back for a bit, only then he goes: “Well, an English car?” Yes, David always buys English cars. Good, this is progress.—I wouldn’t of said so: don't they assemble Fords in England? All right, Uncle Jim, I will shut up.—Would it be newish or oldish? Very old, she says definitely.

    Right, good, we’ll look for a red vintage car. Or, alternatively, the Norwood vintage car thieves have struck and the thing’s on its way to Sydney in the back of a— Ooh, there’s a red— Nope, lady and man getting into it. We watch sadly as they drive off. On her form, that could well be Banana-Eater’s car they’re driving off with.

    So we’re actually in the other carpark now and there’s a red thing over there, ugh, squashed Honda sports job. Not that, he hates them. Right, cross out, um, does that mean cross out sports jobs or anything flat, or— Forget it. Look for something red. Ooh, wow, is that a red Ferrari? Me and Uncle Jim just follow its magnetic attraction and drool and drool…

    Nefertite comes up slowly. “Definitely not. I said, he hates those.”

    Ulp. “That other one was a Honda sports job, Nefertite. Like, cheap Jap clone? This is a Ferrari. A Ferrari. Read my lips: F,E—”

    Uncle Jim’s claw-like hand comes down hard on my shoulder, ow! “That’ll do, Dot, love, the rest of the world outside the extended Mallory family can find it a bit hard to take, ya know.”

    I’ve gone bright red, like the F,E—right, only Nefertite turns on that smile and says: “It’s quite all right, Jim. I think she’s lovely.” Spew! And I am not a kid!

    So he goes, grin, grin: “Yeah, we do too, actually, Nefertite. Never thought this was ya brother’s, actually—though I did hope it in me wildest dreams, wouldn’t mind living next-door to one of these jobs.”

    “Because like round their way, it’s all horrible four-by-fours,” I note.

    “Yes,” she says, with the smile again. “Sorry, Dot, I was in a rotten mood that morning, the fool had nothing to eat in the house and I’d just slept for eleven hours on top of thirty-six hours travelling.”

    “Gee, no wonder ya felt capable of facing the Moroccan stew.”

    “So, you just come out from England, then, Nefertite?” asks Uncle Jim with great interest.

    “Mm? No, well, actually it was Greenland, Jim. Same thing!” And suddenly she goes into a roar of laughter, can’t see why, exactly, but somehow we’re all laughing.

    “So how’d ya know about the local sweetcorn?” I ask nosily.

    “Mm? Oh: I made him go to the shops the evening I arrived, or there’d have been no dinner, either. But unfortunately it didn’t dawn that when the wanker said he usually had bananas for breakfast he meant it literally.”

    “Right, ya would of thought he was trying to be witty,” I concede.

    “Exactly.”

    So we look round a bit more, it's just as hot but we’re all quite cheerful, and awkwardly parked in the shadow of a large acacia bush and almost hidden by a GIGANTIC 4WD, there it is. She said it was red.

    Jesus God Almighty, woman, whaddareya? It’s a red Jag! Classic. Just like Morse’s, ya know them wanking sunny-Oxford-with-its-thousands-of-gracious-country-houses sagas? Like, John Thaw? He’s all right, well, the daddy type, but turns in quite a good performance. And the sergeant’s really ace. But don’t tell me any part of England gets that much sunshine in any given year. Or ten. Faked up for the Yanks, whaddelse, like at the end it’s co-produced or something by some Boston WCRAP-TV or like that? Only if ya think the series is crap, don’t bother with the books, I’ve tried them and Morse as he is wrote is a real wanker, I mean, REAL wanker. Like, it dawns how good John Thaw is: he makes the up-himself, introverted, upper-class, personality-less, totally wet Pommy dreep actually likeable? He oughta get ten BAFTA awards.

    “It’s a Jag,” I croak.

    “Oh, yes; I always forget their silly names,” she says comfortably.

    A JAG? How could ya forget ya brother owns a red Jag? Ooh, it’s got a real walnut dashboard! “HEY! Leggo!”

    Uncle Jim’s claw-like hand’s grabbed my tee-shirt and dragged my nose off the window. “You’re smearing Ban—uh, Nefertite’s brother’s car window with ya sunscreen.”

    Oops. “Sorry, Nefertite.”

    “That’s all right, Dot.” She unlocks the thing and gets in, smiling.

    “Hey, we got ya shopping, remember?”

    “Yes. But I have to get that recipe of Kate’s, anyway, Dot.”

    “Oh, right.”

     Uncle Jim goes round to her side. “Ya better follow us, then, Nefertite.”

    “That’s a good idea, Jim!” she says with that fruity laugh of hers. “I may have a fifty-fifty chance of getting home, in that case!”

    So he tells her it’s the silver Mitsubishi Lancer and drags me away before I can point out there’s a million and two of them here, I mean, for cripes’ sakes, they assemble them in Adelaide, and volunteer to go with her to help her recognise it.

    “I coulda gone with her!”

    “Sitting on Banana-Eater’s real leather seats with that sunscreen muck you’ve got on your legs, yeah, Dot,” he says on a tired note.

    Oops. Forgot. Aunty Kate makes me sit on a towel in theirs on the days she's made me put the muck all over my legs because I’ve got shorts on.

     … “Is she following us?”

    “Yeah. Sit back, Dot, your aunt doesn’t want you breathing down her neck like a friendly two-year-old filly.”

    Hah, hah, very funny. And five bucks says he got that one off Dad: they quite often ring each other up and blah on about nothing.

    Drive, drive…

    “She is still following us.”

    “What? Yeah! Don’t peer out the back window like that, Dot, for Chrissakes, I can't see a thing!”

    Drive, drive…

    “Wish I’d of gone with her.”

    “We know. But there’s no air-con in lovely old Jags, ya know, Dot.”

    “He coulda put it in!”

    “Yeah,” he says drily. “Banana-Eater.”

    “Ya got a point.”

    “Jim, I really do think you’d better drop the ‘Banana-Eater’ now that we’ve got to know Mrs Corrant.”—Uncle Jim’s eyes meet mine for an instant in the rear-view. “Mrs” Corrant. Right.—“However justified,” she ends on a dry note, sometimes ya forget that in her way she’s got quite a sense of humour.

    “Don’t think she’d mind. Seems like quite a good sort, eh, Dot? Well, nuts, of course.”

    “Jim, she didn’t seem nuts to me. Well, that dress is a trifle odd, but then I dare say she didn’t realise how hot it gets out here: she’s probably got nothing suitable.”

    “Ya don’t imagine Nefertite’s her real name, do ya, Kate?”

    “No, well, of course there is that—”

    “Hey, Uncle Jim, I think we’ve lost her!”

    “If I could see more than your head in the rear-view mirror, maybe we wouldn’t have lost her,” he says with a sigh, pulling in. “We’ll give her a few minutes, think she got stuck behind that campervan.”

    We wait…

    “We have lost her!”

    “Fifty-seven seconds,” says the old joker pointedly.

    “Really?”

    “Yeah.”

    Ulp.

    We wait…

    “Uncle Jim, we better go back—”

    “Nah, here she is.”

    Oops, so she is. She pulls up beside us, leans over and lets down the window on the passenger’s side, wind, wind, and hoots: “Sorry, Jim. I got stuck behind a campervan. Thought I was following you and it turned out to be someone else. This isn’t our street, is it?”

    Whoosh! The old joker’s got automatic windows, see? “Nah, it’s only another one lined with big trees and old bluesto—”

    “Put that window up, Dot, ya letting all the chilled air out,” he says, is he trying not to laugh? Silly old wanker. Whoosh! Glare.

    So he goes: “No, we’re two blocks over, Nefertite.”

    “Right! Lead on, Macduff!” she hoots, sitting back.

    “She’s forgotten to wind—”

     But Uncle Jim drives off before I can finish me sentence, well, really!

    “She is following us.”

    “Proves she’s not blind,” he grunts, pulling in at the stop sign at the next intersection. It’s not discernibly different from any other Norwood back-street intersection, like that don’t have stop signs, only the thing is, the old joker reckons there’s a local politician lives down there.

    “Here she comes.”

    “Dot, sit down!” the driven man shouts.

    Aunty Kate twists round. “And do that seat-belt up immediately.”

    Flaming Norah, we’re in a back street with nothing in sight except Nefertite and a parked Lexus on the other side of the road. But I do my seat-belt up immediately.

    So to punish me she tells me all about the appalling SA road-toll the rest of the way home. All right! Crikey, a nod’s as good as a wink— And hasn’t she ever heard of the bodies that regularly smear themselves all over the Pacific Highway every public holiday back home? Busloads, more often than not. Huge articulated trucks with their drivers hyped up on uppers and gone without sleep for thirty-six hours. And none of them was ever caused yet by one female passenger in a back seat not doing up her— Yeah, quite right, Aunty Kate, I could shoot right over the front seats and through the windscreen and there have been instances of those, yes. Though not so many instances of anybody over four stone and more than twelve years of age—but, yeah.

    “Added to which,” says Uncle Jim very, very mildly, pulling into our driveway, “SA drivers are the worst in the world, haven’t ya realised, Dot?”

    Gulp. She’s ratifying that without a second thought. Doesn’t she realise he's referring to that time I was over here and she had Mrs Fortescue with us so me and Uncle Jim were in the back and she was talking so hard she drove right through a stop sign without even seeing it? No, actually, she doesn’t, cos what that’d be, see, is—

    “Here she is!” Gee, they’ve seen her, they’re not blind, appearances in at least one case to the contrary.

    —As I say, that’d be lèse-majesté. And he’s not up for it.

    So Nefertite has to come inside, we all go through the garage, dunno if this strikes her as odd or not: she’s looking stunned but maybe that’s the combination of the heat with Aunty Kate’s décor plus and the finicky neatness of Uncle Jim’s garage, ya never seen anything like it, it’s like, maniacally neat. Well, anally, according to Rosie. And we automatically go through to the kitchen-dining room, it’s actually not that different in design from ours back home, though I haven’t stuck out my bonce to get it whacked off by Aunty Kate by saying so. Big bench that’s a divider, kind of thing. Though our humble abode certainly doesn’t feature giant slabs of grey granite on the benches, no. Nefertite doesn’t admire them. Shit. She’s the only female of over the age of eighteen that’s been in Aunty Kate’s kitchen-dining room, make that fourteen, thinking of young Melanie Whatserface from down the street that come in the other day with a message from her gran, that hasn’t admired them. Maybe she doesn’t know she’s s’posed to? Like, maybe it isn’t a natural aversion to the things, it’s um, different cultural assumptions? Like in Pongo ladies in her socio-economic bracket aren’t interested in kitchens? Well, don’t ask me. S’pose I could write a line to Rosie, at least she wouldn’t automatically rubbish me like the rest of the rellies. But she’s never been to Pongo, even if Uncle Jerry is a Pom, so in spite of the sociology it'd be a best guess, so maybe I won’t bother.

    So we all score a cuppa and some of them stuck-together kisses of Aunty Kate’s, these ones are made with marg and there’s no butter added to the filling on the score of Uncle Jim’s cholesterol but they still taste ace, and Nefertite scores the duck recipe, plus and the advice on which greengrocer to go to for the peas. So she thanks her dazedly and notes dazedly that this is a really cool house and Uncle Jim goes: “It’s the air-con. Ducted air conditioning, Nefertite. Shit, don’t tell me he hasn’t had it put in?”

    “Well, no,” she says, um, think wanly is the word, yes, wanly. “If it’s practical, David won’t have done it.”

    He gets up. “Look, I’ve got a spare unit out in the shed, we don’t need it, ours is all ducted, ya see. I’ll come over with ya, take a dekko at the place—see what I can do for ya, eh?”

    I'm looking nervously at Aunty Kate but she’s still under the spell of Nefertite’s accent so she goes: “Yes, do that, Jim.”

    “I thought that unit was air conditioning the shed, Uncle Jim?”

    “Not that one, love: got another spare tucked away. You coming?”

    I’m up like a shot.

    “Very well, then, Dot, see if you can give your uncle a hand. But don’t forget, Jim, lunch is at one.”

    It always is, rain or shine, Hell or high water, why would today be different?

    “Yeah, sure, Kate,” he says easily, shepherding us out. Aunty Kate comes too, ya don’t just stay in ya kitchen when a visitor is leaving, this is nayce Norwood, remember. “Not through the garage, Jim!”

    “Eh? Aw.”

    So we go out the front door, luckily ole Ginger hasn’t put his great hairy paw in his great fat gob by infesting our verandah today so we don’t have the embarrassing scene that one of us was fully expecting. On second thoughts she’d of offered the brute a saucer of milk.

    Nefertite drives the Jag up their driveway. Their garage, unlike Aunty Kate’s and Uncle Jim’s, is right down the back of the drive set well away from the house. She’s left the doors open, ya never seen such a collection of unidentifiable bits of rusty iron. Uncle Jim realises she can’t manage to shut the fucking things and dashes up to help.

    And we take the shopping into Banana-Eater’s house.

    Jesus, the kitchen looks as if it was actually done up within— Well, not living memory in my case, if ya can count. But Sixties? Lateish Sixties? Lots of orange wall tiles, and the cupboards are painted a nice cheerful lilac, and someone’s done a really ace fake mosaic on the floor, with vinyl tiles, um, maybe lino tiles, like, a big flower outlined in black and filled in with orange against a green and black checked background. Uncle Jim blinks a bit.

    “This refrigerator,” says Nefertite, indicating the tall, rounded-topped old Frigidaire that looks like the original Frigidaire only the cupboard painter did it out in lilac to match, as a matter of fact it looks good, “actually works.”

    So Uncle Jim goes: “Be an accident.” Grin, grin.

    “Exactly, Jim!” She opens it and stands in front of it with a sigh, the kitchen is pretty hot, I guess. Only it’d be cooler if some idiot had the nous to pull down these bright orange, purple and lilac flowered blinds at the windows. Helpfully I pull all the blinds down.

    “That’s better, Dot. –It’s a Continental climate,” he tells the mystified Nefertite. “Ya gotta think about keeping the sun out, ya see. Not like in England. Or Greenland, I guess.”

    “Mm,” she says limply. “I see. There are outside blinds, too, but David claims they don’t work.”

    “I’ll check ’em out,” he says comfortably. “Come on, Dot, give us hand, get this lot put away, eh?”

    So we put Nefertite’s shopping away for her. Banana-Eater is home, we can hear him crashing in the front room: CRASH! CRASH! BONK! BONK-BONK-BONK-BONK-DONG! Doh-ray-me-fah-so-lah-tee-doh! Doh-ray-me-fah-so-lah-tee-doh! He doesn’t surface and none of us is volunteering to go in there, thanks. Nefertite doesn’t know where anything goes so we just put it where we think. There is a nice big pantry, built into a corner, just like Aunty Kate’s hugely expensive customised one, actually. Well, generically. Not in its detail, no.

    Then Uncle Jim has to know which room she spends most of her time in and she says limply: “Well, my room, I suppose,” so we go in there. This is all wrong, see, Banana-Eater’s given her the hottest room in the house! She thought it faced north? This almost throws him and then he remembers she's a Pom, so she gets the Good Word on that. The hot side, Downunder. She wants a room facing South. So we look at the spare bedroom. Just the ticket. Squints out the window. Ya might get a bit of early morning sun, but next-door’s house (the other side from us) will keep most of it off, and ya won’t get the midday sun at all, see? It’s not getting it now, for sure, so she nods limply. And none at all in the afternoon. This means the room’ll have a chance to cool down a bit before night-time, see? He can fit the air conditioner in this window, no worries. She doesn’t smile at the “no worries”, she’s past smiling, she just sits down limply on the bed.

    “Thank you, Jim. It’s terribly good of you.”

    “No worries. We’ll just nip over and get it.”

    We do that. Just as well I’m here or he’d of had to make two trips, no way can he carry the air conditioning unit plus and his tool kit, even though he does put his leather apron on with all the doo-hickeys hanging off it or in its pouch. Dunno if they got reggos in SA about only registered electricians being allowed to wire in your air-con or not. Prolly do, most of Oz has got reggos about the most unlikely crap but anyway, he installs it, no sweat. This entails taking out the glass from the bottom sash of the window and nailing the whole thing shut and for good measure putting some Selley’s right round the frame, no way this century or the next are they ever gonna open this window again, fortunately the room’s got two. Just as well we got out to the shops real early this morning, cos by the time he's almost finished, like the thing’s on and an amazed smile has spread over poor Nefertite’s face, it’s one o’clock. It’ll do for the time being, but he's gonna need to put a lick of paint on the supports he's put in outside to help the window-sill hold it in place. So he’ll nip over after lunch, if that s okay?

    “Okay? It’s wonderful, Jim!” she says with a laugh. “Mm-mmm…”

    So he shows her how to work the controls for a second time and warns her to keep the door shut or she’ll lose the benefit of it, and we push off. Still without glimpsing so much as a whisker of Banana-Eater, though we cop a gander at the cat sitting under the tree, glaring.

    “Hey, what’s the betting bloody Banana Eater comes and installs himself in her room?”

    “He’s got to discover it first, love,” he says drily.

    He’s got a point. And we wash up and sit down to sliced ham (not THAT! Jesus, whaddareya, crude? It’s got to be slathered in muck and slashed into diamonds and roasted for five hundred hours and like that, first!). Sliced bought “Virginia” ham, and lettuce, cucumber and tomato salad with low-cal dressing and these neato little poppy-seed buns her bread place always has, they got a technical name but my virus-scanner excised it, had it on at the Norwood crap setting that day, followed by Aunty Kate’s miraculous home-made apricot and walnut loaf, yum, with—all right, just a scraping of marg or I’ll get fat (-ter, understood).

    “Hey, ya know what, Kate? That huge tree in next-door’s front garden, it’s an apricot!”

    “Never!”

    “Yeah. I’d say it’s probably the original apricot that came out from England—”

    “Very funny, dear.” She’s trying not to laugh, heh, heh.

    “–never been pruned in its puff,” he finishes.

    “Yes, and what’s the betting he’ll let the fruit fall on the ground and rot?” she goes acidly.

    “Thou’ to one, Aunty Kate!”

    Uncle Jim winks. “Yeah. But what’s the betting yours truly’ll get on over there and ask him if he minds if I pick them? Might get a net on the tree before the birds get at it, too,” he adds thoughtfully. “That is, if ya fancy making a bit of jam and doing a bit of bottling this summer, Kate?”

    “Yeah! Hey, and ya could dry them, too, Aunty Kate: you know, like Mrs Fortescue does with those ones she buys!”

    Have a medal, Dot Mallory: if the up-market Mrs Fortescue whose hubby’s family is an old Adelaide family does it she's gonna be in it, boots an’ all.

    “We-ell… Why not?”

    That’s settled. …Bugger, think I’ll be home before they ripen.

23rd December.

Dear Rosie,

    Hope you got the Xmas card. I posted it the day Aunty Kate ordered me to, so blame her if it never got there. She reckons this won’t get there before Xmas, never mind, I’ll post it anyway.

    It’s all been more of the same so I won’t bore you with any of that. But get this: she decided that it was pointless for two small households to serve two large dinners on Chrissie Day, so we’d combine forces with Banana-Eater and Nefertite! It’s only because they’re Poms and talk with plums in their mouths. She still hasn’t found out about the Lady bit, and Uncle Jim and I aren’t letting on, that’s for sure. You might ask, what made her think they’d agree, but even a couple of certified Pommy weirdoes could hardly refuse point-blank, given that Uncle Jim’s put in an air conditioner for her and got all his outside blinds to work, not to mention got the big ceiling fan in the lounge-room to work that the wanker hadn’t even tried to have fixed. Aunty Kate hadn’t actually met Banana-Eater, but did that stop her? So Guess Who was appointed to get over there with a nice note on her best notepaper in a fancy envelope.

    So I went trudge, trudge, usual story, Fat Cat was on the verandah, he gave me a dirty look so I stuck my tongue out at him. So I rang the bell but no way was he going to hear it, he was in there crashing away at the piano. It’s one of those old front doors with a big central knob, and I know that though he's got a Yale lock, too, he keeps it snibbed back. So I went in. He was at the piano, all right, in the usual shorts and nothing else, but at least he had the fan on. But it wasn’t him playing, it was a thin guy with a five o’clock shadow like a dim tennis star and black hair, much younger than him. He didn’t look up but Banana-Eater was looking really bored and he looked round and got up when I came in. The pianist didn’t stop so he yelled: “STOP!” Gee, he stopped.

    So Banana-Eater said in his usual smarty-pants way: “Hullo, Dot Mallory. Good to see you.”

    So I said: “Yeah, something like that, David Walsingham. I got a note for you from Aunty Kate, you mind reading it?”

    So he said: “Certainly.” And read it out, boy is he hilariously funny.

    “These are your next-door neighbours, are they?” said the pianist.

    “What? Oh—yes. Oh: Dot Mallory, may I present Aidan Fortescue. Aidan, this is Dot Mallory, our neighbours’ niece.” Overdoing it, see? Silly wanker.

    So I said Gidday, not asking if he was related to the Mrs F. that’s Aunty Kate’s bosom buddy because I didn’t want to know. And he said “Hullo, Dot, it’s good to meet you.” Like, why? What am I, the Queen? Why not just say Gidday like a normal person? Needless to say he had one of those poncy boarding-school accents. Though the gear was fairly normal, pale khaki cargo pants with nothing in the pockets and a pale blue tee. Horribly well pressed, but.

    Banana-Eater didn’t say anything so I said: “Will you?”

    “Goodness, how can I refuse?” he said with this real clever smile.

    So I said: “Up to you. If it was me, I’d ask my sister if she wants to.”

    “You know Mother’d be glad to have you, David,” said poncy Aidan in a suck-up voice.

    So Banana-Eater said, very lightly, I think is the only word: “Perish the thought,” and poor little poncy Aidan went red as a beet.

    So I said: “Yeah, well, Chrissie dinner with Aunty Kate McHale’s no sinecure, either.” Why that should make up-himself Banana-Eater grin like the Cheshire cat, don’t ask me. So he went out to consult Nefertite, that left me and poncy little Aidan. Well, he’d be about six foot. Little psychologically, get it? I could see he couldn’t think of a thing to say to his piano teacher’s neighbours’ scruffy niece in a washed-out red tee and a pair of blue and pink floral shorts I picked up for a song at a cheapo shop just up the road from Cunningham’s. Have you ever been there? I forget its name.

    So after a bit I said: “Teaches you the piano, does he?”

    And he brightened up like nobody’s business and said, sort of breathless: “Yes, he’s a wonderful teacher!” So maybe he’s gay. Well, pretty well got to be, don’t you think? Because anybody that thinks Banana-Eater’s a wonderful anything has either got to be gay or have rocks in their head, and he looked quite compos mentis, apart from the five o’clock shadow.

    So Banana Eater came back and said in this totally artificial voice: “We’d love to come, Dot, it sounds quite soo-pah.” Up-himself wanker. “Just hold on while I dash off a note to your Aunt Kate, would you?” Even dim Aidan got it; he had to cough and put his hand over his mouth. So I just said: “Yeah, do that. I’m not going back there without documentary evidence.” So he sat down at his big table that’s covered with piles of music, and wrote it. I couldn’t decide whether that was a victory or not. Because do I want them inflicting themselves on us for Chrissie Day? So then, get this, suck-up Aidan went: “Let me walk you home, Dot.”

    So I said: “And do what? Protect me from that ginger brute of theirs?” And Banana-Eater said: “I doubt it,” and grabbed poncy Aidan’s wee white arm, actually it was quite muscly, I guess bashing at the piano does develop your muscles, but it sure was white as a lily, and showed me this big scratch, all the way up from the wrist to the elbow. Bright red. So I said: “Jesus, what did you do? Fall over it?” And he scowled like anything and said sulkily, sounded like Bernice the Ballerina in her worst mood: “No, merely tried to pat it.”

    “Big mistake. Big. Huge,” I said, the Julia Roberts line from Pretty Woman, you know? He didn’t get it, of course, so I just grabbed the note and left the two wankers to it. It’s a pity Aidan’s gay, because he does look a bit like Richard Gere in his young days.

    I was home before I remembered that I’d forgotten to remind Banana-Eater about the duck. Too bad. What’s the betting neither of them would ever have remembered to collect it anyway?

    Me and Uncle Jim have seen a bit of Nefertite what with the air-con and the blinds and the kitchen tap that needed fixing but not much of him, he’s always in the front room with the piano. But there’s nothing to read in Aunty Kate’s place unless you fancy that great pile of women’s mags she keeps in the hall cupboard, and I finished everything I brought from home. I wish I’d brought Dad’s copy of Germinal but he said I’d find it pretty hard going so I chickened out. So I waited for a break in the noise and then I barged in there and said could I borrow a book. That feeble Aidan was there again, he said: “David never lends his books.” And Banana-Eater said, like in this kind of superior drawl: “Not to pupils, certainly. What sort of book, Dot Mallory?” So I said just a book to read. And he said to help myself. So I started in to have a real good look at his books, they’re not all on music by any means. After a bit he and Aidan started to talk about music behind me. I wasn’t listening but I did notice that Aidan sounded real sulky. So suddenly Banana-Eater came up to my shoulder and said: “Aidan’s going to play something. Don’t take it as evidence of anything, will you, Dot Mallory?” I jumped a foot but just said: “If you say so.”

    Blow me down flat, Aidan actually played a bit of Chopin, I can’t remember what it’s called but Dad’s got it on a record and it sounded real. So I said: “That was great!” Which went down real good with him, but Banana-Eater only said: “Not bad. Try this,” and went twiddle-twiddle-twiddle, like with one hand. Dumb Aidan tried to argue with him, when one look would be enough to convince you he’s not the type you argue with. So I went back to the books. After a bit Aidan played it again. It sounded the same to me but Banana-Eater said: “Slightly better, mm. Unfortunately the judges won't be wowed by a programme of Chopin waltzes.” And Aidan went very red and shouted: “I KNOW that!” And they went back to CRASH, BONK and the doh-ray-me crap and I stopped listening.

    He let me borrow Bleak House, I told him that Dad’s got a full set of Dickens so he needn’t be afraid of not getting it back. He said had I read it before and I said no, of course not, that was why I wanted to read it, and he smiled like I’d said something really funny, up-himself twit. And a vol. of plays by Christopher Fry, I’d never read anything by him. He said I wouldn’t like them, I’d find them “fey”. Have you ever heard anybody ever use that word? Actually I wasn’t sure it was a word, I had to look it up in Aunty Kate’s dictionary that she never uses. Think it was the first time it’s been opened since she got it on the Book Club special offer. Anyway I've started Bleak House and it’s ace, I can recommend it if you haven’t tried it.

    Well, I guess that’s the latest from the trenches. It’s pretty hot out but I’m going to post this anyway, I need to stretch my legs. Have a great Xmas.

Love from

Dot.

P.S. Love to Aunty May & Uncle Jerry.

P.P.S. Not expecting it to get any better in the New Year, only if Banana-Eater keeps letting me borrow his books, I may survive! XX, D.