The Aunts' House 9780702261954

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Elizabeth Stead is the Sydney-born niece of acclaimed novelist Christina Stead. From childhood, Elizabeth was greatly inspired by her grandfather David George Stead, pioneer naturalist, conservationist and storyteller. Elizabeth has published short fiction and five previous novels: The Fishcastle, The Different World of Fin Starling, The Book of Tides, The Gospel of Gods and Crocodiles and The Sparrows of Edward Street. The Aunts’ House is her sixth novel.

Bookclub notes are available at www.uqp.com.au

Also by Elizabeth Stead The Fishcastle The Different World of Fin Starling The Book of Tides The Gospel of Gods and Crocodiles The Sparrows of Edward Street

Elizabeth Stead

First published 2019 by University of Queensland Press PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia uqp.com.au [email protected] Copyright © Elizabeth Stead 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover design by Christabella Designs Cover illustration by Lavandaart/Shutterstock Author photograph by Rex Dupain Typeset in 12.5/16 pt Bembo Std by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group, Melbourne The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia ISBN 978 0 7022 6035 3 (pbk) ISBN 978 0 7022 6195 4 (pdf ) ISBN 978 0 7022 6196 1 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7022 6197 8 (kindle) University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

To all I have loved.

The green place

North, north of the Sydney shore.

It was the afternoon of the day Angel Martin’s mother died. At barely ten and a half years old, Angel was escorted to Missus Potts’s boarding house. After her mother’s death she was taken from the sanitarium and ushered through what Angel thought was the gate of a sort of hell, also known as Missus Potts’s front door. Angel had not cried. She never cried, but she sighed for the damaged and orphaned boarder she was. Angel had probably sighed when her father was murdered by a truck while riding his motorcycle on the Parramatta Road five years earlier and when her mother died of pills in the sanitarium that very day and if it had not been for Angel’s music and their colours that were constant inside her – great orchestras of it, soft or loud with the change of moods, playing in the concert hall 1

of her brain – if it hadn’t been for that to ease her instinctive wariness, keen as something wild, and the deep dislike she felt for Missus Potts, she would have run a mile and not cared if she died too. There was a chill in the air at this rickety, fibroed, dry-rotted and God-knows-what else, up-and-down house at the dead bottom of a steep road in the shadow of a forest. It seemed the sun was not allowed in at that time of that day, or indeed of any other day. A mist, however, from the gully behind the house, sprayed everything with the sweet, scented oil of eucalypts and even Missus Potts couldn’t stop that small pleasure. A green and cream sign near the letterbox said: Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment – Reasonable Rates. To Angel’s eyes the notice was very nicely done even though it probably gave the wrong impression. ‘What are you grinning at?’ demanded Missus Potts, glaring down, sweet as rust. She was a tall woman. And blemished. Rough and red from a thousand dishes washed and Monday washdays stirring a steaming copper, hot as a branding iron that left its marks on her. ‘The mist – did you notice the mist from the trees, Missus Potts – winding its way through those branches like chimney smoke? Is there a fireplace inside the house?’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Fires cost money – and stop grinning. How can you grin with your mother dead?’ ‘It’s not on purpose. It’s the trees. It’s the green and something I can hear.’ And so, this strange child was taken in reluctantly by Missus Potts, who saw her as something inherited through trickery and lack of better judgement. A waif whose spirit was as hard as the steel of her spine. 2

Not once did Angel think of herself as an orphan even though it was true. Inside her being – every inch of it – was her music and the colours of the earth and the sky and the sea and choirs of thousands singing, just like Saturday afternoon at the pictures. Always something to hear and see outside and inside her. Angel Martin was never alone. ‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ Missus Potts said, over and over, crushing Angel’s small-fisted hand in her own and dragging her up to the front door of her establishment. ‘It’s like getting last prize in a raffle – a girl not right in the head.’ ‘I can’t help it.’ ‘You’ll have to pay your way, girl. What can you do?’ ‘There’s my music. I listen to the music inside me and its colours but I can do other things.’ ‘I bloody well hope so – music inside you? Colours? God Almighty, what am I stuck with here?’ ‘Well, I’m stuck with you, too!’ Angel Martin snapped back through lips pressed tight together and a determined look in her dry eyes. Fierce. Unafraid. ‘And God Almighty, I don’t want that either.’ ‘You mind yourself, girl!’ And Missus Potts slapped the side of Angel’s head.

It was towards the end of August in 1942 and another war to end all wars was in full swing. Angel was unaware that Australia’s finest were being stuffed down gun barrels, into aircraft and ships at the press of a foreign general’s button and sent to die in places they had never heard of. She was aware, however, of women weeping over telegrams and slept, like the rest of Sydney, in uneasy darkness as Japanese submarines, quiet as grey, scaleless fish, cruised through the ocean and on 3

through the north and south sandstone Heads and without warning shelled the harbour. Along the ruined shorelines, people who had never been so close to a war were outraged and afraid. Women, lined up like extra palings on the rows of picket fences lining the backyards of countless terrace houses, gossiped about the invasion. Hotels were similarly crammed with labourers and wharfies doing nothing of the sort, solving the problems of the warring world over slopping schooners. The assault resulted in trenches being dug near the toilet block at the back of the local public school Angel Martin was forced to attend. Angel loved the unfamiliar excitement of it all, even when a boy in fourth class fell into one and broke his elbow. There were impromptu war drills when, at barely a moment’s notice, students had to practise diving under their desks as if that would save them if a bomb was dropped. Angel told the teachers what she thought about this plan and had her knuckles caned. Boys from fourth to sixth class learned about tanks and guns, while the girls were taught to knit thick woollen scarves and socks and to turn heels for brave Australian soldiers fighting the Japanese in the tropics, even though their efforts and the dye caused serious skin rashes and probably did more harm than good. Windows were blacked out with sticky paper and the night sky, unused to anything but the stars and moon, became blacker than itself with bat-like flocks of Lancaster bombers on their way north to kill people they’d never met. It was an anxious earth that spun at that time and it seemed that even the sun and moon were unsure whether to shine or not. Children everywhere missing their fathers tried to make sense of it all by playing war games. On the harbour, rivers and in sailing clubs, yachts that once fluttered across the 4

water – white and quick as cabbage moths – put their masts to rest and hid their sails by order of the Navy. Food, of course, was rationed as part of The War Effort so women experimented in their kitchens and farmed vegetables in backyards. Angel overheard talk about foreign countries in ruins and even oceans on fire. In just a few weeks, everything changed. Angel remembered one day seeing a man in a tram read something in his newspaper, blow his nose and wipe his eyes with a cloth.

5

An unusual friendship

Angel Martin’s mother had not known Missus Potts very well, but well enough and long enough, it seemed, to bequeath Angel to her just in case. Angel was told that she mustn’t be afraid; however, as things were at the time she thought things couldn’t get much worse and really did not care one way or the other – most of the time she tried not to think at all. Angel had heard talk at school about dirt-poors who were ‘boarded out’ because they’d been abandoned but she hoped saying that she was ‘bequeathed’ would make her a cut above, even though there were those who were not fooled. Angel hated it all but tried not to think about it. In any case, her head was so crowded with symphonies, their colours and orchestras, it was difficult to fit another single thought in.

On one very particular day in a room in the sanitarium it was explained to her that if anything happened – and it was obvious 6

that it was happening – she was to be a strong little girl and dear, kind Missus Potts would take her in. Angel thought her mother had never looked so pretty and serene as she lay there. She was told it was quite common for people to look beautiful at the end but a curtain was drawn around the death bed in case the sight of dying be offensive to a passer-by. On that particular day Angel didn’t cry – Angel couldn’t cry. She could not remember the last time. In fact, she grinned in her strange way – in her sharp, small-teeth way and her half-lidded eye way, almost feline, sharp as darts, but somehow pretty with it – and told her dying mother not to worry about her and she kissed her cheek and tried to make light of things by remarking that Missus Potts ‘taking her in’ sounded like she was a dress that didn’t fit. Angel told Missus Potts that her mother sewed very well and could knit anything. ‘That’s why I said that, about the dress.’ But the praise was sadly too late for her mother. ‘You’re a fierce child and very, very strange.’ Missus Potts stood behind Angel, eyes dry with grief and not a little put-out since she’d discovered that the bequeathed child had not a thing in the world to offer. Not what she’d expected at all. Missus Potts had always thought Angel’s mother – a petite, neat woman – had the sort of class that only came from old money. It might have been her brooch – a small circle of pearls worn on the left shoulder of a dress that had seen better days but was never-the-less of quality fabric and well-cut – or it could have been the way she bobbed her salt-and-pepper hair or her ivory skin with its touch of honey or how she moved and the almost regal way she held a purse in her left hand ready to shake with the right. 7

Missus Potts had met Angel’s mother on at least eight occasions on the bus seat outside the grocery store. Angel’s mother was always interested in Missus Potts and her boarding house and she never talked about herself – in the way of ladies. ‘Here, let me put that basket on the seat, dear. You don’t want to spoil those nails – where do you get them done?’ Missus Potts said, silking up. She knew one from another, did Missus Potts. She could tell class. She paid attention. Her eyes could study microbes without her glasses. ‘You are so kind.’ ‘Where do you live, dear? I’ll help you home if you like.’ Missus Potts always dusted the bus seat for her. ‘O, there’s no need. Here’s the bus now.’ And so it was that Missus Potts had no idea that home was the sanitarium and this lady had been allowed out on those days to do a little shopping and keep in touch with the world. In fact, Missus Potts had no idea at all when she’d agreed to take the lady’s sweet Angel and all that she owned in to her boarding house. ‘You are kind, Missus Potts. Angel and I have been through a difficult time. I have wondered what kindness brought us together. It’s such a delight to have a supportive friend. Angel is a clever girl and will help you, I’m sure. What we have to give is not a great deal, but the silver is nice and there is a little money.’ ‘I like silver. I’ve always fancied a bit of silver. There’s something about silver even if it is a bloody pest to keep clean pardon the language but of course you’ve never had to worry about cleaning silver or anything else, have you?’ And as far as Missus Potts was concerned the deal was done right there on the bus seat – Lady-side dusted. ~ 8

Angel intensely disliked Missus Potts. From the first meeting on the bus seat Angel could see difficulties, and from one look to the other, knew it was mutual. She didn’t say so but it must have shown. And there she was at the sanitarium, this big, awful woman moving from one foot to the other with something like impatience and boredom in a room beside a bed with a curtain around it. She kept lifting her wrist and glancing at it as though she owned a watch. ‘I think she’s gone, now. Dear O dear, I think we’ve lost her this time,’ Missus Potts said while a nurse pulled a sheet over Angel’s mother’s face and Missus Potts put on her jacket and the leftover grapes back into a paper bag. ‘We have not lost her! She’s right there on the bed. Are you blind?’ Angel almost screamed. ‘How can you lose dead people when they’re right in front of you? You know where they are. They don’t run away and hide, Persia Potts! She’s right there. Dead as dead!’ ‘Never mind the Persia – it’s Missus Potts to you. What a bloody monster of a child you are!’ Angel brushed the remark aside – she’d heard worse. But she knew she must have looked monstrous – awful – standing there with her bag o’ bones body, straight and thin and tight as a spring, a brown haystack of hair, fists clenched by the side of an old skirt with its hem down (for it had been a long time since her mother had sewn), and bare feet with toenails chipped while she’d waited for a death and to be taken in like a dress. ‘What are you chewing?’ Potts said in the corridor. ‘Is that gum?’ ‘No.’ ‘What then?’ ‘My hair. It tastes of salt.’ 9

‘Well, stop it! It gives me the creeps and you could at least have worn something on those feet.’ ‘Haven’t got any shoes.’ ‘Well, I’m not buying shoes. I’ve got enough on my plate and there’s nothing on yours!’ And Missus Potts paused for a moment and glared at Angel. ‘Haven’t I been taken for a fool! Here, get your mother’s bag and yours. I’ve got things to do. Whoever named you Angel made a serious mistake!’ ‘It was my father,’ she replied, letting her mother off the hook.

Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment was at the bottom of Duffy Street. The fortress of blue gums and eucalypts around it kept it in shadows the sun couldn’t penetrate no matter how hard it tried. The gully behind it all, Angel was told, had a creek with water clear as a mountain spring running through it, with ferns and moss and brambles and a bushland full of birds tuning up. She imagined escaping forever through the forest’s filtered light to this world of wild beauty. ‘Can anyone walk through the gully, Missus Potts?’ ‘Yes. It’s nice enough for some,’ she said, ‘but it’s nothing but a fire hazard for me. Now, get yourself inside. I’ve got tea to get ready.’ ‘I’ll help.’ ‘You’re going to be doing a lot of helping, Angel Martin.’ Inside, the house was crammed with small rooms, and outside bits were snapped off like broken biscuits. The whole place was in dire need of repair and was about as welcoming as a crypt. ‘Where I’m going to fit you in I don’t know!’ said kind 10

Missus Potts. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to make the best of it with you and wipe your feet, there’s mud! And stop chewing your hair.’ ‘I can’t. I’ve tried but I can’t. I don’t chew my fingernails …’ ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’ There’d been boarders’ complaints about holes in the mosquito nets over the beds so Missus Potts mentioned Angel’s hair chewing to the chemist while she bought calamine lotion for the bites. ‘Kids do a lot of crazy things – I’d leave things be – maybe she’ll get over it. Could be trouble if you try to stop her.’ ‘She gives me the creeps – she’s not at all like her mother.’ ‘Now there was a proper sweetheart,’ said the chemist.

Duffy Street was a terrible hill to climb to the school bus and the shops – even the milkman’s horse was afraid to clop to the bottom in case he slipped and so the milkman had to meet his customers halfway with supplies. The only human who could stride up the slope, no trouble, was the blacksmith on his way to his workshop. At seven each morning he took off fit as a brick on his strong legs. But the gully at the back of the house made up for the hill, and a lot more besides. Angel, after she’d explored and discovered, felt untouched and comforted by it. With newspapers wrapped around her legs for protection, Angel picked through brambles for berries, wandered in and out of ferns and sat by the creek with its rocks of impossibly green, soft moss and watched as the maidenhair ferns licked the surface of the sweet water and the red-breasted parrots honeymooned in the lower shrubs, with kingfishers a little higher and the ravens lauding it over the lot from nests in their blue gum towers. 11

Angel hid in the gully like one of its wild things and was stroked by it, there there, when something she thought must have been the edge of grief and loneliness left a cloud that even dulled the constant music that played inside her. There she found protection beneath the tree canopies and serenity, sweet as a kiss, from the gentle flow of the creek. The gully became Angel’s sanctuary and it took her in its arms and seemed to know. On one particular day it was ready for her. On a day that Angel thought must be the worst day of the worst year in all of history, Mister Daisyfield, who was the headmaster of her local school, slipped his hand down the back of her bloomers on the stairwell where the light was broken and probed around her as though he’d lost something. Angel didn’t tell anyone because she knew she would not have been believed but when she ran away she knew she’d kill anyone else who did that but then Mister Canning had done more or less the same thing in the upstairs hall of the boarding house and she was surprised she let him get away with little more than a punch and a spit. She’d been warned he was a terrible old bugger. Angel had never taken an interest in hands and their fingers but she was fascinated after the events in the stairwell and hall with the hands that had touched and probed. Mister Daisyfield’s were long as a skeleton’s but with spatula fingers and white, neat nails at the end of them and Mister Canning’s had blue veins like ropes all the way down to his stubs with their dirty nails. She wondered if it would be wise to study hands and fingers so she could know them well enough to judge if their owners were good or bad. I will think about this carefully, Angel said to Angel. I wonder what the music for hands will be? I know the colours – black – dark brown spider hairs and ugly and she carefully listened to the 12

music inside her for help or a clue but the current offering was unchanged and into its second movement.

Persia Potts’s boarders mostly referred to her as Pottsy, but only in the privacy of their minds or in whispers. There were five boarders (six if one counted Angel Martin). Four were permanent and others came and went. There was always a room (if you could call it that) waiting for a casual. Some boarded for the house’s proximity to the sanitarium but most who found themselves at Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment were like lost souls with barely two pennies to rub together. Like ghosts, they were, floating in and out. Always hungry. Tramps in their way, for a night or a bludging day. They went out as skinny as they came in and, for a reason Angel could not possibly have explained, she always tip-toed, ssshhh, past their rooms, as a sign of respect for the lost. One of the permanents was Mister Barnaby Grange. Barnaby was from Suffolk, not far from London, and had the pale complexion and hair of an Englishman. He was very tall, and seemed to be a nice man who, when asked his age, simply said ‘five eight’. He didn’t bother anyone and was always scribbling and solving mathematical equations, calculations, problems and theories about everything he saw. Barnaby Grange reminded Angel of an alabaster sculpture of a man she had once seen in a book – pale, a little fragile, with a head clearly full of lines and wires and connections and a heart that delicately pumped when it was necessary to do so. His jacket was crumpled and a little worn at the cuffs but, as Missus Potts had observed once: Quality is quality, even if it’s scuffed. 13

‘And see how his shoes are always clean. The Kiwi’s smudged a bit as though he’s not used to doing shoes himself – well, he wouldn’t be would he, where he comes from. His family pay well to look out for him – not like some. And close to the sanitarium if he ever needed it.’ ‘Is he royal?’ ‘Not far off so you be good-mannered around him, Angel Martin, and don’t chew your hair in front of him.’ Angel studied Mister Grange’s pale, clever hands, never without a pencil in the right one and notepad in the left, and felt quite safe to be near them. He wrote in numbers, spoke in numbers, numbered his days and all he observed. He probably dreamed in numbers, she imagined. Inside his jacket was a pocket watch. His father had given it to him, she was told. The watch was gold with wings beautifully engraved on it and it ticked exactly an hour slow. Missus Potts once asked, Why the wings? and Mister Grange answered in his quiet way, for he rarely spoke in words at all, To make time fly. Missus Potts told Angel he was what they called a remittance man – more often than not they were mad geniuses sent out from the Mother Country by their toffee-nosed families who didn’t want to be embarrassed by them. ‘But left to themselves, harmless in their way,’ she said. ‘And there’s no trouble with paying, like I said, not like some,’ which was of course aimed at Angel. A bull’s eye. Barnaby Grange did keep himself to himself and Missus Potts was so grateful for the regular money, plus any extra for things he needed and some he didn’t, that she often served him an extra potato with gravy. Angel hoped she would understand his language one day so he wouldn’t be lonely. She knew nothing about numbers but she could learn. Missus Potts mumbled away while she stirred tired and 14

greying sheets with a worn copper stick in a copper that had become lukewarm. Angel was told she had to stay and help with the wringer. ‘But why would Mister Grange choose this house, Missus Potts?’ ‘What’s that supposed to mean? This place is as good as any!’ ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’ ‘Then, think. Why do you think? Peace and quiet for one, and it’s close to the sanitarium. I told you, Lord and Lady Up Themselves wanted him close to the sanitarium.’ ‘Is Mister Grange a genius with music as well?’ asked the dear little wise orphan at the wringer. ‘Not that I’ve heard – not a sound has come from him but his numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers, but you’re always humming something when you’re not chewing your hair and talking to yourself. Come to think of it you two should get along like a house on fire.’ ‘Doesn’t he ever talk in words?’ ‘If he does, it’s nothing much I can understand. Just numbers, numbers, numbers. There’s no harm in him, he’s just mad.’ Missus Potts had to remind herself that she was talking to a child, but a child was better than nothing at all. Apart from the clothes prop man, she had no friends. In Angel’s opinion she’d been ‘taken in’ to a boarding house packed to the roof with mad people or people teetering on the edge of madness, but she wanted to get to know each one. Even then, she thought that. Angel only knew a little bit about madness, but she could learn. There must be many levels of madness and Angel imagined that by now Missus Potts would have got to know every one of them. Not her though – not Pottsy, Angel whispered to Angel. She’s not clever enough to be mad. 15

Early that morning Angel had been to the gully to pick flowers for the long dining table. She put them in a water glass and sat them in the middle of the stained sheet Missus Potts used for a tablecloth. There were fresh stains, recent stains and old stains. Like the rings of a tree you could count the numbers of washes the old sheet had had. The Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment tablecloth was a history of stains. Angel placed the flowers over a recent egg. ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ asked the lady of the manor. ‘Wildflowers. I picked them this morning.’ ‘Well, don’t! I don’t want weeds cluttering up the place.’ And Missus Potts threw them out the window all over the terrified blowflies trying to get in. ‘More mess to clean up.’ For breakfast, Missus Potts slopped something lumpy and warm with two-day-old milk into tepid plates, laid down a chipped bowl of boiled eggs, courtesy of the chooks down the back, and placed pepper and salt and jam and toasted old bread standing in a single file next to an urn of weak tea on the long table with the stained sheet. She then told the old, familiar story of her Mister Potts who couldn’t join them for meals owing to the fact that, while he was very rich and dealing in timber somewhere in a jungle in Brazil, he was too busy floating logs down the river to be with them. She wanted them to know that the very table they were eating from was Brazilian, but no one had ever seen the table because of the cloth. One of the boarders, who imagined Angel had not heard the story, said she felt sorry for Missus Potts but the story changed a little each time and she’d begun to doubt the existence of the man in Brazil. ‘Maybe she’s just lonely,’ said Angel. ‘It’s easy to make up people if you’re lonely.’ 16

But in Angel’s eyes, Missus Persia Potts was a foul woman and nothing like the neat doll of her mother. Missus Potts was big and brawny and tough as the stews she stewed and stewed until the ingredients were drowned and decomposed. A big iron pot on a wood stove boiled rabbits to bits with their scrags and gristle and innards – nothing was wasted – and carrots dug from their graves, potatoes with their eyes cut out, tough runner beans that wished they’d died before they were drowned and celery with strings strong enough to tie up ships. One of the dirt-poor boarders once retched into her handkerchief and despite a ‘sorry’, Missus Potts needed to remind her of the importance of the war and doing without and the poor woman had hung her head and excused herself from the table. On occasion, Angel would pick at a potato and leave some and Missus Potts would preach to her, too. But Angel was not afraid of her – in fact, she was afraid of very little, not Missus Potts, nor any of the boarders. If she felt at all uneasy she would simply turn up the music in her head. No one could sneak up behind her after old Mister Canning did what he did – worse, if you like, than Mister Daisyfield on the stairwell. Angel’s eyes and ears were ready for anything. At that period in 1942 Angel considered herself to be experienced and experience to Angel meant trusting nobody. It was for Angel the year of the beginning of knowledge for human females. ‘Go on,’ Mister Daisyfield had whispered to her on the stairwell, fingers ready. ‘There’s good marks for composition your way … go on. You’re not much good for anything else.’ ‘I’m better than anyone here!’ Angel had said before she ran in disgust from him and down behind the weather shed in the rain to read one of her stolen books about another world far, far away from a very disappointing plot on Planet Earth. ~ 17

Angel Martin firmly believed that books were the key to all knowledge. She’d found one or two in the school to be entertaining, but there were not enough of them. She adopted a quiet corner in the local library and thought of it as her private classroom. The books she borrowed from the local library but never returned were those she loved – she only returned those she didn’t. Her current book, The Gorilla Hunters, will be a book she will forget to return and would be seen by the librarian to be stolen but Angel did not think of herself as a thief of the worst kind, but as an adoptive reader and guardian of books that might otherwise have been damaged or forgotten. It had always been so, ever since Angel could read. ‘I’ve never seen a child read so many books but you must return them. This is a lending library. You’ll be the death of us.’ But the librarian was kind and intrigued. ‘You will bring them back, Angel, won’t you?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘And you mustn’t come during school hours. We’ll all be in trouble.’ ‘O, don’t worry about that. Mister Daisyfield said I can do what I like,’ said Angel Martin.

‘I expect I’ll have to find you a bed somewhere out the back. I need the room you’re in,’ said Persia Potts glaring down at Angel with her hands on her wide, childless hips. She had a cold sore on her lower lip and a growth above her right eye that sprouted stiff, grey hairs. It was hard to guess her age – ​ somewhere between fifty and death, Angel thought. Missus Potts was a cranky woman – there was anger and frustration so close to her skin surface that it was possible sometimes to see 18

it move. Angel had long known that the condition of anger is not the fault of its victim but of some outside force. Like the sufferings of her mother. Her poor, poor mother. Angel Martin had a favourite writer at that time. It was Mister Charles Dickens and he would have loved Persia Potts. In fact, she thought Charles Dickens would have loved the whole bloody thing – the boarding house and its madness and milk carts slipping down the surface of Duffy Street, never mind the season. He would have loved it all. Mister Dickens would have wrapped Angel up in an old torn shawl and tossed her into snow if he could find some. She had stolen a Dickens book from the library – not the first and not the last – and she’d read and read it and there were old-fashioned illustrations and in one was a woman just like Missus Potts – big, with a stomach and chins! Around her stomach, Pottsy wore an apron she called a pinny that was never taken off unless she was at the shops, demanding service on the cheap, in her business capacity. The old bag of the manor born, was Missus Potts. If anyone had asked the grocers, green or dry, or the butcher or the deli man, they would have all agreed that worst was best for what she offered – lard for the roast scrags and stews, the stale end of a corned cow for a special occasion, potatoes, potatoes by the sack, dying cabbages and the turnips the cows rejected. ‘And is that the best you’ve got to offer?’ Missus Potts poked a cringing carrot. It was generally thought that if the Potts boarding house was not so close to the sanitarium its owner would be begging for alms by the side of the dirt road where she belonged. There was never a sign of the rich Mister Potts and it was thought that if he existed he must still be in Brazil or maybe one of the hungry ghosts of casual B & B boarders who sneaked 19

in and out without anyone seeing or hearing them. There was no sign of Mister Potts, only tales of timber and jaguars and pythons long enough to circle the world and of cedar and mahogany jungles cut down and sent to the saw mills on river currents. Angel once wondered if his wife had killed him and put him in the stew pot. There was one particular day when the stew was almost edible.

After her mother’s death, Angel was left with a few belongings, which of course she had to hand over to the disappointed Missus Potts. There were just a few pounds, the pearl brooch, a Japanese tea set fine as new egg shells, a very old silver tankard from China with a bas-relief dragon on it, a cedar standard lamp, a gold-plated motorcycle speed trial trophy, a fine-timbered wireless and an old Wertheim sewing machine, which was operated by a wheel that Angel remembered being allowed to turn when she was tall enough. ‘I never told your mother I’d take you in for nothing and nothing is what you’ve got there, Angel Martin. You’ll work hard for your keep, my girl.’ Angel knew Missus Potts got a good price for the lot. She would have liked to keep the gold star speed trial trophy and the tankard for a memory of mother comfort, but she knew she should not ask. Angel stood straight with her hands on her hips and her thin lips jammed together. Persia Potts stared at Angel and Angel stared right back. It was hard not to stare at the face of a woman Charles Dickens would have wanted at any price. He would have paid a fortune for her. ‘So, what do you want me to do?’ ‘After school you’ll do what I say and you won’t give me cheek.’ 20

‘Can I sleep upstairs down the back, somewhere with a door lock?’ ‘You’ll go where you’re put.’ ‘It’s because Mister Canning touched me.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘He touched me – down there – you know what I mean.’ ‘No, I do not, missy.’ But her cheeks were red. ‘Don’t play games with me.’ And of course, Angel hadn’t told her about Mister Daisy­ field. However, she was given a bed upstairs down the back with a door lock. It wasn’t much bigger than a broom cupboard (in fact all the rooms were not much bigger than broom cupboards) but she felt safer and there was a window where she could see the gully and its trees at the back of the house, the honeysuckle over the old paling fence. She could even see a bit of the creek if the sun shone on the water, like stars swimming and a breeze that made them swim like fireflies. Angel was given her list of chores to work on after school. One involved climbing up Duffy Street to meet the ‘rabbito’ for rabbits he’d killed – mind the shot he’d always warn – and then on to the shops where the butcher kept Missus Potts’s stew scraps and then on to the grocer for cheap day-old bread and a ration of butter on the turn and something in a bottle, not coffee, and then to the green grocer for roots and tubers and anything else that was cheap and not grown near the septic tank behind the boarding house. Once, when the ice man was overdue, she was given a canvas carrier for a heavy block for the ice chest. It was very hard work. Occasionally, there were shoes to take to the bootmaker for repair. The bootmaker had no legs – they were cut off right up to the hips – and he propelled himself around by the biggest arms Angel had ever seen. He could even climb onto 21

the counter with his great arms and Angel clapped and they laughed and became friends. Not far from the bootmaker was the blacksmith’s shop, all horse shoes, anvil and hammers and sparks and the smell of metal. Angel liked to watch him and he didn’t mind. After all, they were neighbours in Duffy Street. As sparks flew like on cracker night through air of metal there was some very small thing that hid behind the music in Angel’s mind that was familiar. Her father? There was something about that smell. Angel earned a little pocket money for doing after-school shopping and anything the boarders wanted her to do. As little as it was, she was grateful for it. The grocer once told Angel he was sorry for her, she didn’t know why, but he gave her a bag of broken Monte Carlo biscuits and she wondered how he could possibly have known that they were her favourites. Chore two was cleaning the up and downstairs bathrooms, and the dunny out the back. When she could, Angel minded the neighbours’ babies for two shillings and pushed their strollers up the hill for a little more. She saved like mad. She saved for the local picture theatre on Saturdays, if there was something decent on, but she saved mainly for Sundays. On Sundays she took the train to the city and then a tram to the aunts’ house at the Bay. She made herself a rag bag to carry her money. And Angel saved on shoes – she never wore them. ‘You’re too young to be riding in trams all that way alone,’ Persia Potts said one day in a rare change of mood. ‘No wonder things happen.’ ‘Don’t call me young! I’ve never been young,’ said Angel. ‘And what things do you mean?’ ‘Men!’ ‘I can look after myself.’ 22

‘The aunts don’t want you down at the Bay, anyway. They hated your mother. She told me all about the troubles.’ ‘I’ll make them love me.’ ‘What about her – your mother?’ ‘You can’t hate dead people, can you? There’s no fun in that.’ Angel, armed with a billy can and a matchbox, escaped to the gully. She went to the green place whenever she could. It was her green-leafed, perfumed and peaceful retreat. She picked blackberries and sucked honeysuckle and once made a fire to cook two yabbies she caught in the creek. She ate and drooled like something feral but the smoke was seen from the house and the brigade was called and a fireman told her she could go to jail for lighting fires in the bush, but Angel said she didn’t care and told him where she lived. ‘It couldn’t be worse than that,’ she said.

23

The aunts' house

Angel Martin had memories, somewhat fragmented, of another, earlier time, another place almost lost when the earth spinning in reverse subtracted her years with no one being particularly interested in how many. It was the time between her birth and the death of her father. And the memories, if she could not prevent them showing their tears at that time, were sometimes as shadowed as night and some were stronger than her heartbeat. Angel thought her life at the Bay was like one of her tattered books: stolen, even at her age. She was not quite eight years old when she and her mother moved to the Bay but was sharp as a tack and quick. There was even an imaginary book she composed in her symphony of a mind and she could turn the scribbled pages to try to learn something of herself. She could only read the book in her dreams at night when her eyes were closed. But it was a troubled book, the Book of the Bay, and in her dreams it was difficult to turn pages wet with tears. 24

It was a sad book. The empty shopfront that housed Angel and her mother was even sadder. It was on the main road running down to the Bay, near the bus stop, and Angel was shamed when she squatted on the doorstep waving to passers-by and no one waved back – even then, she felt shame and anger. ‘Why don’t we live in the aunts’ house?’ ‘They’re angry with me. Your grandfather is too angry.’ ‘I’ll make them love us … the aunts and the grandfather.’ ‘I wish they would – they blame me but it wasn’t my fault,’ said Angel’s mother and she swallowed another pill. Still, Angel ran across the park every morning to Brooklyn Street and the aunts’ house and sat on the path outside the locked gate until the grandfather padded down the drive on his wide, bare feet to get the mail. Once again, when Angel asked if she could go in, he said, ‘No! Go away – goodbye, child’ and slammed the letterbox lid down as he always did, and padded back, this old man, a lover of the sea, its fish and its mermaids, up the drive, bare-chested, wearing his sarong with a branch of kelp stuck into the waist. But Angel, despite everything, was mad for the love of the old man. ‘Go where? Goodbye where?’ Angel had shouted, straight up and down, even then, with her hands on her hips and a look in her eyes. ‘Why don’t you love me – you’re my grandfather. You’re supposed to love me!’ ‘Your mother killed my son.’ ‘A truck killed Daddy. My mum is not a bloody truck!’ Even then. And the grandfather stood still and glared at her, one side of his mouth wet and drooling and she shook the gate and glared right back. Angel could tell there was a hopelessness about him but no more was said and the grandfather turned his back and 25

continued up the drive. From behind, he looked like an old, spent bull with a hide dry as salted air. Angel knew then that was how terrible sadness must look. And when, halfway to the house, he turned and shouted to her, ‘Stop shaking the gate! I don’t want you here!’ she hung her own head low, sat on the kerb outside the house and howled. Much later, Angel tried hard not to think it was the end of a love and she never stopped trying. But it was another three days before she could leave her mother in one of her nervous states. All Angel could do was squat outside the shop door where people passing by tried not to notice her. When her mother had recovered sufficiently to be left alone, Angel ran across the park to the aunts’ house, but there was a sadness in the air dense enough to cut. She could feel it. She waited for the postman to leave the mail then shook the locked gate. One of the aunts walked slowly down the drive. They were not the plods of the old man’s bare pads but quiet steps in soft leather. Not a pebble disturbed. Toes pointed in her sandals, like a dancer’s. The aunt’s eyes were red and dry. Her hair, still damp from its dip in the harbour, was grey at the tips but her body was slim in its cotton dress. There was a terrible sadness about her. Different. ‘No use you coming here again – ever again!’ ‘Why?’ ‘He’s dead.’ ‘That’s not true – you’d be crying …’ ‘He had a stroke last night and he’s dead. Do you know what a stroke is? His brain died and dragged his body after it. He died of grief – tell your mother that! He died of the grief of losing a son – our brother – now, go away and tell your mother that!’ And she turned and walked up the drive, shoulders slumped, and Angel, knowing that must be the sign 26

of grief as well as sadness, did the same thing and sat on the kerb of Brooklyn Street and howled all over again. ‘Here! What’s going on?’ asked a man as old as the grandfather, smelling of fish and bait, on his way back from the Bay with a very big octopus in a bucket doing all it could to get out. ‘Why all the screaming? Getting a bit sick of it. How old are you?’ ‘Nearly nine.’ ‘Nine going on fifty from what I see, girlie. And why aren’t you in school? I seen you before, girlie, shaking the gate and not in school. What’s happened this time?’ ‘The grandfather’s dead.’ ‘Is that right? Not before time if you want to know what I think! Couldn’t stand the old bastard.’ ‘I loved him but he didn’t love me – none of them do.’ ‘That old know-it-all loved himself. Don’t know about the others. You mustn’t fret. Where’s your mother?’ ‘In the village. Behind the shopfront with the white all over the glass.’ ‘So, that’s you I see on the street. Why aren’t you here in this house?’ ‘They said there’s no room.’ ‘That place is a barn,’ said the old man, pushing the octopus back into the bucket. ‘What does your mum do?’ ‘Nothing much. She takes pills.’ ‘What for?’ ‘They’re for her nerves.’ ‘Well, now. If you want anything you come and see me. See the old house over there on the other side – the green gate with the fish net over it?’ ‘Yes – okay.’ ‘You can come to see me, girlie – and bring your mum 27

if she wants a feed of something. Haven’t got much but you make do, don’t you? Have to.’ The octopus had climbed out of the bucket and was halfway up the old man’s arm, leaving terrible red sucker marks. ‘Is it trying to kill you?’ ‘Probably,’ the old man laughed. ‘But I never seen one big enough to do it yet.’ And it was such a terrible sight that Angel ran as fast as her grief allowed back to the shopfront and her mother. ‘The grandfather’s dead!’ ‘Mmmmm?’ Half asleep, already mid-morning. ‘They said you did it but I told them you weren’t a truck.’ ‘O, o, it’s too much, my baby.’ Her words coming slowly and as thick as treacle from a jar. ‘It’s all – too – much.’ Angel’s mother, even in the purple world of her medication, ran one of her long nails under her lip to clear a smudge of lipstick. Angel hated her mother’s long nails but she could not possibly have said why.

The aunts’ house at the Bay had been her father’s birth house and his domain, whenever he wanted, even after Angel’s birth and up until his death. His wife was never welcome. Long before experience made Angel hard and wise there were things she couldn’t understand, such as why the people in the aunts’ house hated her simply because her mother had their brother’s baby too soon. And that they said it was all right for him to join a motorcycle club and be murdered by a truck. Angel could not understand any of it but she knew there must be a lot of pages in her imaginary book stuck together by tears that would have mostly been her mother’s. She would have loved the grandfather and in the end he would have 28

loved her. She added more tears and pretended they were the grandfather’s.

Angel’s clearest and worst memory was of her mother screaming while two policemen told her about the accident and how her young husband had left one leg on the road and the other under the truck – her mother crying and howling what was she supposed to do now and fleeing from their room in Red Hills to the Bay for help, comfort and shelter, but instead of being taken in by the aunts and the grandfather they were put into the vacant shopfront in the Bay village and given a whole tin of Bon Ami bath cleaner to paste over the window so no one could see in to the two mattresses on the floor, a basin, a gas ring, a toilet out the back and nothing else. It was very cold in the shop. Angel and her mother seemed to be there for a very long time. ‘It’s like being buried in a very clean bath.’ And Angel’s mother laughed. She could still laugh from time to time, but it was a rare thing in that place. Hundreds of book pages are stuck together in this shop, let me tell you! Angel whispered to Angel. I’ll start another one. And for that moment all in her young world was darkness and fright. But then, when the sun shone on the harbour and there were swings and a see-saw in the park, a sandy cove close by and rock pools at the end of Brooklyn Street, in Angel’s mind not all of the pages were blank or black or wet – they couldn’t possibly be. There were those precious times when Angel could see, below the storms, the beauty of rainbows and moons. She did not know the meaning of hatred. When the sun shone outside the shopfront on the big park a few doors away, there were clear images of families, picnic 29

baskets, castles of sand and salt on the small beach below it, another small park on the ocean side with giant fig trees making a purple mess, skies blue as topaz with white cloud balls playing, rotting weed on rocks, tiny pools of starfish, kelp sunbaking on the shore and gulls arguing. Angel imagined the joy of paddling through wavelets. There were beds for sunbaking bodies with pillows of sand and towels for their cases, the slippery feel of kelp before it dries, the skin of Bay humans – even that – harder than other skin and tough and smelling of putty and bait. Above the cove, hot paths on both sides of the road burned the soles of feet and glinted in an eastern sun hotter than no other. Brooklyn Street, old as the hills, was a narrow road with weatherboard hovels along the Bay side strung with wet lines and dry bait and a dinghy or two ready to slip down to where the fish danced. At the end of the road, a corner shop was full to its beams with musk sticks, penny chocolates, sherbets and two-in-ones, and a bell above the door. Skinny waifs with bare feet played in the middle of the road to save money and of course there was the aunts’ house at the other end, the dead end on the harbour side, where the tip of Brooklyn Street met the harbour rocks. The aunts’ house, a weatherboard up-and-down with a balcony and flaking timber, teetered over rocks splashed by the tides. All of it, house and all, wet and sharp-shelled and close enough to the harbour to slip through the wild grass of the yard like a fishing boat and float away. These were the dry pages in Angel’s imaginary Book of the Bay, made clear with the warmth of the sun. Her hair, always stiff with salt, tasted like the Bay and she later chewed it to remember. ~ 30

Angel was often hungry and her head hurt. She began to have nightmares and sometimes felt there was no point to anything at all. Her mother managed to get a job knitting baby clothes for a shop across the road from their shopfront that she named, in one of her calmer, more cheerful moments, Bon Ami. Every now and then her sense of humour managed to fight its way through the cloud of chemicals she consumed. Sometimes she could be quite funny. Angel thought it was very brave of her mother to make an effort to find employment but one day from the street door she watched her mother crossing the road with a delivery and hesitating as though she was lost and terribly frightened, and when the bus blew its horn she almost fell under it. Angel’s mother had not screamed. Angel had to confess that she didn’t think that would have been such a terrible thing to happen, things being as they were. But of course it was terrible! Funny in a way, but terrible. Almost squashed under a bus and holding up her parcel of matinee jackets so they would be safe. Angel thought that was very brave of her and in her mind she scribbled the details of her mother’s bravery into her imaginary book. Those pages would be dry forever. She could see the baby shop lady sitting her shocked mother in a chair. She told Angel they’d keep her on because she was such a good knitter. Angel squatted by the door until her mother came back and tried to open her pill bottle, but she was nervous and knocked it onto the floor. Angel helped to pick up her mother’s pills and put one in her mouth to try but it was purple and bitter and she spat it out. Her mother swallowed more than one. ~ 31

Their shopfront home was below an escarpment of sandstone upon which the tram terminus sat. On its right it was close enough to the ocean for Angel to hear waves crashing against the cliffs. A narrow lane behind the shop and a boundary of enormous fig trees, parks, beaches, gulls, kiosks and the pub clearly marked the line between the harbour and the ocean, but Angel did not doubt that if the ocean was in a fury nothing would stop it. In the quiet of darkness it sounded as though it was trying to break its way through the high cliffs and drown everything in its path. This sound frightened Angel so much that once she took half of one of her mother’s pills and dreamed only of wavelets gently splashing the shore at the end of Brooklyn Street. Angel slept for a long time and later wondered how her mother could stay awake at all. Then, there was one day when her mother would not wake and hardly breathed. The man who owned the second-hand shop next door called the doctor who brought a nurse. They seemed to take a very long time to bring Angel’s mother back to life. Angel, having been told to leave the shop and run away and play somewhere – the park – anywhere – and not knowing what to do, squatted under the awning outside the shop door in a rain storm, with hair looking like burnt hay, dark eye rings, a running nose and a very grim view of the world. She called to the nurse, who was rushing about. ‘What about my mother?’ ‘She’ll be all right – just don’t come inside,’ said the nurse. Angel saw the purple vomit on the front of her. ‘Do you understand me, child?’ ‘I’m not a child!’ Angel screamed. But she did not cry. While she waited, the woman from the baby shop crossed the road holding a bright blue umbrella and gave Angel a cheese and pickle sandwich. 32

‘I thought you might be hungry.’ ‘I am, a bit – thanks.’ Angel with expressionless dry eyes had already stuffed half the sandwich into her cheek. If Angel had known what a squirrel who’d found a nut looked like, that was how she looked. ‘You poor child.’ ‘Why does everyone call me a child? I’ve never been a child!’ ‘I’m sorry. You must be very frightened.’ The woman gave Angel some money. ‘Here’s what’s owed to your mother. Can you cross the road and buy some food by yourself?’ ‘Yes, of course I can.’ ‘I’ve just been told someone is coming to help your mum. There’s a place up on the north side – they’ll take her. She’s pretty sick but you mustn’t worry, darling. There’s an ambulance coming and you will go with her. It will be a nice place. Everything is packed and ready.’ ‘Where is this place?’ ‘North of here where there are lots of trees and everything is green.’ ‘Will they look after me, too?’ ‘They said they would.’ ‘I don’t want to leave here.’ ‘You can always come back to visit.’ ‘Well, I’ll have to won’t I? There’s the aunts’ house.’ ‘Your mother told me all about Brooklyn Street. It was your aunts who arranged for you to go to the place on the north shore.’ ‘There was a grandfather but he died and the aunts told me not to go there anymore but I’ll make them love me, you’ll see. I’ll make them.’ 33

‘How old are you, dear?’ ‘About a hundred, I think.’ ‘Sweet Jesus,’ said the baby shop lady and Angel thought it was a weird thing to say under the circumstances but she did not remark. After all, the baby shop lady was only used to babies in bunny rugs, all bootiful goo goos, loved and cuddled and not a worry in their bootiful little heads. ‘Come and see me before you go, Ang—’ ‘It’s Bessy now, but I might change my name again. I want a colour. I want something red like anemones or starfish or even blue like your umbrella, maybe. Bluebottles. It’s all I can see in my head. Colours. Colours and their music.’ ‘I’ll bring over soup. I’ll bring chicken soup. Would you like that?’ ‘I don’t mind. Will it make my mother feel better?’ ‘Chicken soup makes everything better.’ But Angel was so unhappy and felt so alone. She knew that her imaginary Book of the Bay must be sopping wet by now, even the rainbows.

34

The tram conductor

It was always a Sunday in Brooklyn Street when Angel visited the aunts’ house. It was Sunday all over the world when Angel left Missus Potts’s boarding house and the gully for the day and headed east in her beloved trams to the Bay and the aunts’ house. But those Sundays were not restful Sundays – never a church and hymnal Sunday, never, though spire bells made Angel laugh with the pleasure of their sounds. No. Sunday was adventure and trams and east winds and the eastern suburbs where the gardens were more blue than green. Sunday was glimpses of harbour swells between the harbourside houses, bejewelled by the sun-tipped roofs. Sunday was the day Angel became alive. She began to visit the aunts in the old house in Brooklyn Street when she was almost eleven – a quarter to, to be precise. It was a long way from Missus Potts’s boarding house to the Bay but the trams from the city made up for everything. Angel worked hard for the fares. She ran errands for one of 35

the permanent boarders who was old. Almost every penny she earned went into the rag bag she’d made for Sundays and the Bay. It had been difficult. It seemed to Angel to be a long time since her grandfather had died of grief and she expected it would be a long time before the aunts began to love her, in their way, with their games and tricks. But in Angel’s crowded mind it was difficult for time to find a space to pass or stand still. She had no music for it. There were days when Angel could not possibly have had an answer to a question of time … The Sunday aunts pretended to not be at home when she arrived at their gate, but she knew it was just a game. They would have known it was Sunday and Angel always came on Sundays. Angel imagined they would watch her from the harbour side of the house, running from the tram and through the park, and hide. At first there would be silence behind the locked gate – suddenly the music from Aunt Clara’s upstairs gramophone would stop, perhaps a window would close quiet as a whisper and shoes would be exchanged for soft feet or slippers. But Angel wasn’t fooled. It was a game of ‘lost and found’ and it made her laugh. It was Sunday at the aunts’ house and it was the day to be happy. ‘I know you’re in there. I can see you hiding.’ Angel climbed the gate, sneaked around the side and climbed in through the downstairs bathroom window. Once, she slipped and broke the glass and there was blood all over the toilet with its seat and lid always up as though they had a man. ‘What do we have to do to keep you out?’ The downstairs aunt, Elsa, pretended she was not pleased but she bandaged Angel’s arm with an old tea towel. ‘Clara said next time we’ll have to get the police!’ 36

It was all part of the game they played. After all, it was Sunday and Angel could smell baked mutton and tomatoes topped with onion and breadcrumbs, which was usual for Sundays. Elsa would have cooked that specially for her. Sunday baked dinner! She was sorry about the window. ‘I’m sorry about the window,’ said Angel, grinning with her lipsticked lips and getting the grease on her teeth. ‘Where’s Aunt Clara?’ ‘Upstairs! We’re at the end of our tether with you, Angel. Don’t come anymore, do you hear me? Don’t come anymore or we really will have to call the police.’ ‘But it’s Sunday. I have to come. You’re the best cook in the world, Aunt Elsa. I tell everyone. Can I have some Sunday dinner?’ ‘There’s not enough!’ But in the end, she gave Angel a tomato and a sliver of mutton and six peas, scraped onto a plate like a dog’s dinner. ‘When you’ve finished you must go! Go and play in the Bay – down on the rocks – anywhere but here.’ ‘Don’t you love me yet? How long will it take do you think?’ ‘We can’t cope with someone not right in the head, Angel.’ ‘Missus Potts said that too.’ ‘What?’ ‘Scarred for life. That’s what she said. She said I was not right in the head and scarred for life.’ ‘She could be right. And get that red muck off your face. Fancy, at your age! Why! Where did you get it?’ ‘One of the boarders.’ ‘You’ve left lipstick all over the fork. And get that hair out of your mouth – it makes me feel sick!’ ‘Anyway, I think your tomatoes are the best in the world – can I have some more?’ 37

‘No, you cannot. Please …’ ‘Please?’ And Elsa said no more for if the truth was known she liked praise for her cooking even from a child not right in the head. Elsa was glad that Clara had stayed upstairs with her ballet music playing. She could feel her misery even from downstairs.

Angel had only vague memories of younger days, the begin­ ning of days at the Bay. The exact timing of everything was lost. She knew there were forgotten days and their terrible nights but there were others that made themselves known to her, like the touch of sand and the salty taste of her hair, the rock pools and hot paths. The Bay village shopfront had become a blur of shattered glass, smudged white with a bath cleaner and stored so far away in her mind that the image was almost impossible to reach. There were those days, but Angel thought she must have died a little with the memories of those days and the madness of the boarding house and only breathed again on Sundays. Angel knew it could not have been a Sunday when her mother died of pills and certainly not a Sunday when her father was killed in the accident. Those days couldn’t have been Sundays because on those days the world was a shadow and everywhere she looked people were howling their eyes out or having rows and she was like a dead thing herself. But then, it was 1942. So many things happened in 1942. It was a ‘headline’ year everywhere – even the sea nation outside the monumental sandstone cliffs of Sydney Heads that she had named Mariana had to put up with metal, guns and oil and the burning bodies of men. In the centre of Sydney there was one sad day among so 38

many in 1942 when a tram conductor slipped off his running board in the rain. It was city peak hour when he hit his head so badly he died of brains and bone all over the slippery road and traffic was held up for ages. It was not Angel’s tram but it was in all the newspapers and it meant something to her because of her father’s accident a long time before that. There was blood then, too, but it wasn’t her father’s brains all over the place. And that traffic was held up for ages as well. Angel would have liked to have seen the tram conductor’s accident. She would have liked to have seen the bones and scattered parts and run her fingers through the blood. Then she would have known what her father might have felt when he died. It was difficult for her to remember her father alive. A face like hers, perhaps. Pretty. People said she was pretty. She remembers a leather jacket, faded black leather and the smell of it and his motorcycle’s racing fuel. ‘But he was too young to go, wasn’t he?’ people said to her later. ‘So young, tsk tsk tsk.’ So many facets of death and not one the same as the other. Angel often thought about it. She wondered if she could possibly write a sort of directory for the many aspects of death. There were no scattered parts or blood when her mother died, either. All in one piece, she was, on the sanitarium sheet, tightly drawn under hospital corners and nothing out of place, the whole thing like something made of plaster in a crypt. But in the end, it’s the same thing. Dead is dead, Angel whispered to Angel. She remembered standing by her mother and clutching her skirt while her mother screamed and howled as the policemen told her everything in that special ‘matter of fact’ way. ‘After the collision, Madam, the motorcycle rider’s vehicle spun out of control throwing the rider of the vehicle onto the road – the vehicle then finished up in the doorway of a dress shop that was empty at the 39

time so no one else was hurt and for that we’re thankful but we are very sorry.’ The policeman who gave the terrible news, straight up and down like an actor doing a monologue, was taller and older than his associate who’d removed his cap and looked sad. Angel could not possibly have noted at the time that policemen bearing bad news travelled in pairs for support, like nuns. But she wondered if her mother took it all in because she held a tea towel over her face, as sopping tears leaked like a tap all over the place, and shook while the younger policeman held her steady on the front step while she went on and on screaming, ‘What am I supposed to do now!’

The rocks below the aunts’ house were at the tip of the Bay where it meets the ocean currents and the orchestra in Angel’s head was more or less conducted by the swell of the harbour or the sea. She loved the rocks. She was allowed to play on the rocks. No splash of the harbour was ever the same. Nothing was ever the same. She loved the wind and the taste of salt on her face and hair, crescendo waves when the tides were high, and when the tide was low there were splashed lullabies soft enough for babies and nestlings under the wings of gulls. Angel could play around the rocks for ages, jumping from one to the other but there was an occasion when, because she had eaten, Angel fell asleep. It was Aunt Clara who shouted from the upstairs balcony. Clara and Elsa, the two of them sat on the upstairs balcony with a cup of tea to watch the end of the day. They wore wide-brimmed hats to protect them from the moon. ‘Where are you, Angel? Are you still down there?’ And even with Clara’s music playing in the background her cocky 40

screech was loud enough to wake the Bay. It was unusual for Aunt Clara to speak to Angel at all. ‘I’m down here! I fell asleep – sorry.’ ‘You’ve missed the last tram, you stupid child!’ Angel panicked for a moment. She was afraid the tram driver would be worried. ‘Where will I stay tonight?’ ‘Stay on the rocks as far as I’m concerned.’ ‘Clara! She’s only a child,’ Elsa said, remembering praise for her tomatoes. ‘She can sleep here, on the balcony.’ ‘You’ll have to sleep on the balcony!’ Clara shouted as though it was her idea. ‘But this will be the first and last time you stay here. Do you understand?’ Angel was nervous and excited. She’d never slept in the aunts’ house before and sleeping on their balcony upstairs would be a dream to remember always. At the boarding house she was able to look at the ceiling of her room no bigger than a broom cupboard and watch the memory of her night at the Bay – a sky with stars all over the place, the crash of an ocean not far away and the lap of the Bay, a night breeze pushing the scrub near the fence aside. So many sounds. Different sounds. Clara might play a ballet on her gramophone and then at dawn there would be the fishing boats stuttering their way to riches with their lines, nets and gaffs and the first hungry cloud of gulls. She was in heaven! She would lie on the balcony’s bare boards for it and not care if she froze to death. She wondered what Elsa would make for breakfast. ‘Can I come up now?’ Angel called. ‘Can I have some tea? I’ll be quiet.’ ‘Come up,’ said Elsa. ‘Are you wet?’ ‘A bit.’ 41

‘Come up.’ The aunts, still wearing their straw hats, sat in old cane chairs on the north side of the balcony. Angel, in her wet dress and seaweed between her toes, sat cross-legged on another. She’d been given half a mug of hot tea and it was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. A dinghy, on its way home to its mooring with its tired crew, shouted something and Angel waved. ‘You don’t think they’re going to see that, do you?’ Clara spoke in splinters. Her words thin and sharp enough to cause pain. ‘Maybe.’ ‘How dare you! Letting that tram go.’ Elsa pushed herself out of her chair. ‘I’ll get more hot water. She’s only a child, Clara.’ ‘Mmmmm! Still, the first and last time.’ A late breeze came with a sliver of ice clinging to its tail. Two fishing boats, full of bait and beer and late for dinner, chugged past them and Clara, not smiling, raised her hand to the one she knew. The sky had become soft and sleepy and wisps of clouds had rings under their eyes. Gulls, mourning the end of a day, yawned on the masts of yachts. Harbour channel markers, one by one, softly played bells as though it was Christmas Eve and Angel thought she had never heard anything so wondrous in her life. She was convinced that missing the last tram was fate stepping in, forcing the aunts to have her overnight in Brooklyn Street. Angel hoped it was the beginning of something like acceptance and Angel whispered to Angel to be still, be quiet and make every minute count. Elsa came and topped the pot with hot water. She gave Angel a blanket and a pillow and two slices of bread and 42

dripping. ‘Here – roll up in the blanket and we do wish you’d stop talking to yourself.’ ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m not right in the head,’ said Angel. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Elsa. ‘You can’t be the only one.’ ‘Well, it’s not from our side and never get the idea that it is!’ said Clara. Angel followed her own orders and remained as still and as quiet as she could in case a breath out of place might upset the aunts. Clara particularly. And Elsa? Angel wondered if Elsa might have begun to love her – just a little. The aunts sat in their chairs with their moon hats on and gazed over a Bay they’d seen so many times. Clara had named the tides and their swells. ‘Here comes Orlando – every which way, Elsa. Never knows if it’s coming or going, and there’s Captain Cook, look at him, bumping into rocks and buoys like something blind …’ ‘You’re so clever, Clara. I love your imaginings. Don’t you love the way she goes on, Angel?’ ‘O, yes.’ ‘Clara has even named the rocks below us, where you went to sleep. I think you were asleep on Humperdink, but don’t ask me where she gets these names.’ ‘Don’t talk to her as though she’s normal, Elsa. We’ll never see the end of her!’ Clara sat up straight as a rusty nail and watched the water.

They stayed there on the peeling, ancient balcony, the three of them, cool as cucumber, until the setting sun made late colours on the water and the breeze curled in and out of the balcony railings. 43

‘What’s that? Down there?’ asked Elsa, pointing. ‘Where?’ said Clara. Angel hung over her end of the balcony and looked but chose not to talk – in case, just in case, a word was wrong. ‘Coming ’round the rocks.’ ‘Looks like a bag of rags to me.’ Clara pulled her hat down hard. ‘But it’s moving like a fish flapping its fins,’ said Elsa. Angel saw what she thought was a jacket, probably a man’s jacket, ballooning in the water. At the top of the jacket was a head. She thought it was a man’s head and it was moving from side to side in time with a splash of hands. ‘I think it’s a man fallen off a boat or something and he’s still alive,’ said Angel at great risk. ‘I don’t want to know what you think, my girl!’ said Clara. ‘It’s an old bag of rags someone’s thrown away.’ ‘It’s a man, Clara. And he’s alive – see? His arm’s up and signalling to us,’ said Elsa. ‘Well, he’s not going to make it to the rocks that far out, is he?’ But the aunts had the good manners to wave back. Angel waved, too. ‘He’s alive, Clara. I can hear him. He saw us. Maybe we could throw a rope?’ ‘We haven’t got a rope, Elsa. Let it be! I’m not letting my tea go cold for a man swimming in a jacket.’ ‘I really don’t think he’s swimming, Clara, in his clothes.’ ‘Well, we didn’t ask him to jump in the water, did we? Let him work it out for himself.’ ‘I can swim that far, Aunt Clara. Maybe I can get him to the rocks.’ ‘You’re wet enough as it is! I don’t want you dripping all over the balcony!’ 44

‘Clara, we should try,’ said Elsa, knitting her anxious fingers together. ‘Why? Why should we?’ ‘O, Clara.’ So Angel, on a late spring afternoon, observed another death. It was different – for the arms disappeared and the head followed. A different death. A body cleansed by the sea and blood, and it sank out of sight to feed the fishes. So many deaths. So many different deaths. She slept in the aunts’ house for the first time, but at the end of the day it was not the sleep she’d dreamed about. There were no dreams and the sky was suddenly without its stars as though a switch had been turned off. And Angel whispered to Angel, Maybe there’re a lot of people not right in the head. Born to it. And not just because of grief. I’ll look it up.

The next morning, unknown to the occupants of the aunts’ house but close enough to it, men fish-hooked the body out of the water. ‘Poor bugger,’ one said. ‘He was so close to the Brooklyn Street rocks. Pity the old girls didn’t see him.’ ‘Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. They’re mad as cut snakes, both of them!’ said another.

45

Sunday trams

Angel loved the trams. She could ride in trams at any time and if ever she was offered a spare tram, she could live in one. But the best of the lot were the Sunday trams headed for the Bay and the aunts’ house. Trams to her were the harbingers of sand and salt and bare toes in rock pools and the tides with strange names. Trams were freedom with the driver and his cap at a jaunty angle and his lever skating over rails smooth as ice. Angel had two cotton dresses, a yellow cotton top worn thin, and a cardigan, no matter the season, which she wore with no shoes. She had never made an effort to own shoes, loving the feel on her bare feet of the earth and the Bay sand, and even the bush behind the boarding house, despite the dangers. Angel’s feet were an artwork of scrapes and grazes and bites and splinters and she was lucky that there was always someone at the boarding house armed with a pair of tweezers. There were many days that were not Sundays when Angel skipped school and changed in a split minute from her 46

clothing-pool uniform into a dress, hiding her school clothes in a hollow log guarded by a possum behind the boarding house. Those days were not Sunday tram days but book days at the library and colour days at the art gallery. There was so much more to learn outside the school gate. Angel had also begun to wonder if the aunts had just as much to teach her in their unusual way – madness, for example, Bay madness. It was an interesting sort of madness, different to the kinds in the boarding house. Angel looked like a scarecrow for sparrows – all bones and joints. Passengers stared at her as she sat by the tram window, always alone, but she didn’t care. She had the Bay to look forward to. But Angel knew she drew attention. She imagined they’d be mostly men who thought she was older than she was because of the lipstick, but she could be wrong and she didn’t care about that either. She was experienced. She was now eleven and knew one look from another. There were dozens of looks in the eyes of tram faces … disgust, fair game, anger and occasionally sorrow. One day a church man dressed in black and white spoke to her and asked if she was lost. He had a pinched look to his face and spit at the corner of his mouth. ‘No! I’m not lost and touch me and I’ll bite your fingers off!’ She hoped there was lipstick on her teeth and it would scare him away. The church man spoke to the conductor and then the tram driver but all they did was shrug. The tram crews had got to know Angel. She paid her fare out of the rag bag she’d made, caused no trouble and generally, as strange as she was, they liked her. They admired her love of trams. There were not many who loved trams so much and drivers who knew her turned corner rails faster than they should have and ding dinged just to see her laugh. 47

‘She’s a bit over the edge but who cares. She never causes trouble.’ Angel heard that!

After the tram conductor’s accident in 1942 his work mates slow-marched down George Street in front of a tram and afterwards passed their caps around for the widow. No one passed the hat when Angel’s mother took her pills or when her father, for that matter, died on the road. Not even the motorcycle club did, as far as she knew. She tried to remember what her father looked like before the accident but her remembrance was more a smell. Not a tram smell. Sunday was a tram smell, the electric smell of wood and rails and hot cables. No, the smell of her father she remembered was motorcycle racing fuel and the sight of it in leaked black patches on the backyard grass. Angel had always remembered the smell of racing fuel. Her father had won a star trophy for a motorcycle speed trial. It was gold-plated in part and set in a base of Bakelite. Angel had wanted to keep it but Missus Potts got three pounds for it. So, Angel couldn’t remember her father’s face but it must have been very nice, she thought. He might have been pretty, like her, but all she could actually remember was that he was the smell of racing fuel and her mother was the smell of hopelessness. But none of it mattered. After all, dead’s dead and that’s it, Angel whispered to Angel. From the city, the tram rails twisted and snaked ding ding through narrow streets and ding ding dinged on their way east, where the sun rose over the Bay, the sandstone and the ocean. The trams were, to Angel, her toys, her treasures, swaying, stopping ding ding and slipping along the Sunday rails with Sunday smiles all over them like a ride at The Easter Show. 48

Then there were the wooden seats polished by a thousand bottoms to the colour of honey trees, passengers with their legs crossed cuddling shopping bags, or deeply reading newspapers close to their faces, and all of them keeping themselves to themselves and no one ever sitting next to Angel. There was the conductor and his running board, the pepper-and-salted breeze through the window as they got closer to the sea, the driver winding the tram, ding ding ding, up and down past the harbour houses with his lever like a plaything of his own. On and wonderfully on went the tram towards the edge of sandstone cliffs with an ocean below and the terminus made from four stout railway sleepers shaped like a cross. Angel knew every inch of the journey. One Sunday a boy crept up to Angel and poked out his tongue – not a word – just poked his tongue close to her face and Angel wondered if she still had lipstick on her teeth. Eleven years old and wearing her old, yellow top thin enough to show what she was developing. She knew there were passengers who thought she might be unusual or even worse than that but she had come to terms with it. Angel dressed up because she thought the tram drivers would like her more if they thought she was older. And it was a Sunday when Angel heard the driver tell a man that the trams were soon to be stopped and there’d be buses, and she was so horrified she clamped a hand over her mouth and smudged her red grease paint all over the place. ‘Where will they go?’ she cried to the passengers, to anyone who might be listening and would know. ‘Where will the trams go?’ ‘A graveyard,’ shouted the driver, dinging! loud as he could. Angry. But Angel was familiar with graveyards and never saw one big enough to bury a tram. 49

‘They’re smashed up if they’re not sold – smashed up for parts and metal,’ he said. ‘And chucked away as though they were never born.’ The tram driver looked angry enough to go off his rails and told Angel she could buy a tram if she wanted and laughed. She kissed his cheek and left a stain. ‘I don’t have any money.’ ‘Or shoes by the look. Why don’t you ever have something on your feet? You’d better sit down. And don’t forget to wash your face.’ ‘I like bare feet.’ ‘You’ll be a cripple,’ he said. ‘And there’s glass.’ ‘I don’t care. How will I get to the aunts’ house then?’ ‘Bloody bus!’ and he ding dinged his bloody way towards the end of the line. Bloody wasn’t the worst word Angel knew – the boarding house was a directory of swear words. She used the word herself sometimes but was sick of it. The words and the winks and the suggestions. She would go to the creek in the green place and scrub herself with moss. A terrible place, the boarding house. Everyone there was mad. Angel had come to the conclusion there was madness in all its forms all over the place. A passenger in the tram with her hair still in curlers and holding a string bag glared at Angel and shouted to the driver, with no kindness at all, ‘She should be in a home! You should be in a home, my girl, just look at you!’ ‘But I am in a home,’ said Angel. ‘I’m in a tram.’ After that day, Angel vowed to make herself a Book of Trams so as never to forget them and the things she saw because of them. For example: Once upon a time, in her tram, Angel found a love story. It was carved into the shiny, wooden slat of the 50

seat next to her that was always vacant. Someone had carved a heart with an arrow through it with the initials B and K. Angel noticed it when the tram left the city and she knew she had at least an hour to wonder about B and K. In her mind she made up a story about them. Some of the story, she had to admit, was a bit strange but mostly it was good. B was for Bessy. K was for Kevin. Did Bessy or Kevin use a knife on the seat? She wondered about that. It would have been a pen knife with a red handle. Did they really love each other or did one just love the other, and the other didn’t know? The carving must have been old because dirt was stuck in the letters and she knew the tram cleaners would not have felt very romantic when they were told to clean it up, but maybe they did. Angel wondered about the cleaners. Angel liked to think B and K truly loved each other – she wanted them to love each other and she wanted them to be married and have lots of babies. But perhaps the whole thing might have been just a dream and nothing happened at all. It might just have been hearts on fire at first sight between stops. Angel called out to the other tram passengers and pointed to the carving. ‘What do you lot think?’ And of course, there was no reply. Newspapers were raised over eyes, women were suddenly interested in the view they’d seen a thousand times outside the windows but Angel thought of B and K and imagined a wedding veil and a suit and tie and she whispered to herself, If it wasn’t like that at all, it must have been nice to be loved by someone – even for a short time. As the tram made its way towards the terminus, there was a certain point where, if she looked out to the right, Angel could see glorious Sydney sandstone – great cliffs of ancient creases, jutting cuts and all the colours of monuments of stone. It was a 51

great sight. So powerful was the view that the music in Angel’s head had Wagner frog marching with all the pomp of an army. The cliffs, south and north, were the gate houses of stone guarding the harbour from the ocean but there were no gates, no locks, only an invisible line, like a welcome mat always open to craft and sea creatures. Below the sandstone, to her right and beyond as far as Angel imagined, must be the edge of the world with an ocean powerfully huge, its depth beyond her comprehension and always grey or dark green. In her eyes it was never sky blue, the clear blue that painters paint and writers write about. She had no idea why they saw the ocean that way, like the top of a biscuit tin. It was not the ocean Angel knew. If Angel had occasion to look at the ocean for any length of time it seemed to her to be another nation, alongside her own country, a parallel universe, vast and beyond the horizon. Angel discussed it with Angel and came up with a very good name for this world. It was Mariana, a nation with its own creatures – alien, not at all like her own – a language and culture not like her own, houses and shelters not like her own. Angel had learned from two library books (too big to keep) that Mariana had mountain ranges so high there was no safe way to reach their floor, ravines, rivers and canyons, and a trench that was seven miles deep. Can anyone believe seven miles deep? she’d asked herself when she’d read about it. There were great gardens of rock and flowering coral and giant kelp forests high as blue gums with fish birds winding through their fronds and whales big enough to sink ships. And in the depths where it was always night were creatures who could change shape, creatures with blue lights and no eyes. She’d heard some call the ocean the ‘open sea’ and some had run away to the ‘open sea’ as though it was something to play with. Angel had more 52

respect for Mariana and was inclined to run the other way. It excited and terrified her. On that day the tram driver continued to ding louder than he needed to and for a moment she felt the rails were too close to the cliff but Angel laughed because though she could see the driver was angry she knew what he was doing.

53

Jews understand music

Music was constant inside Angel’s head and it had its own colours. Her veins ran with the blood of it. Her nerves twitched to it. She pulsed to the rhythm of it. Music and its colours played in her mind always. Soloists, mainly on piano, and full orchestras took up much of the space in her head. Angel loved most instruments and notes, except those played by the clarinet, which physically hurt her. She could not have possibly said why. Before her mother died Angel wanted somehow, some way, to make music – the piano, violin, tin whistle, anything at all would have done – but there was no money. So, by listening to the wireless she learned every note of every symphony or concerto she heard and sang them over and over, movement to movement, and became so familiar with them she was sometimes very angry if the conductor or the soloist made a mistake. Music played inside Angel’s head as soon as she woke in 54

the morning and it was the last thing she heard at night. The compositions or their colours were not always what she would have chosen but she had no choice but to simply go along with it. Angel hummed. She hummed passages of music more often than she spoke. There were often complaints about her humming and the way she talked to herself but on the whole that she was making the sounds at all. But there were, on occasions, musical headaches that made her head so heavy that Angel held her hands hard against her cheeks to stop it falling off. Angel would find a Jew to help her understand. Jews were very musical – her mother had told her that. There was one terrible morning when Angel’s musical head almost drove her mad. The same music, a symphony with full orchestra and a passionate conductor, wouldn’t stop. Over and over and over they played and she was forced to listen. There were no mistakes but it was so relentless that Angel banged her fists against her head in an effort to make it stop. Even Missus Potts was sufficiently disturbed to call a doctor. ‘Now you can see there’s madness in that girl. I always knew it,’ she said, sweet as a razor. ‘I’m not mad. It’s just the music.’ Angel developed a fever and became sensitive to light and she covered her head with a towel but still the music wouldn’t stop. The doctor was kind and curious. ‘I don’t really know what the matter is with Angel, Missus Potts. Some infection she’s picked up in the gully, perhaps. Maybe the creek. Do you drink the water in the creek, Angel?’ ‘Of course! That’s what it’s there for.’ ‘Well, Angel. You should go to bed for a day or two. I’ll give you something for the pain and to calm you but there should be no light. Is there a quiet room where the windows can be shaded, Missus Potts?’ 55

‘Yes!’ Angel almost screamed. ‘There’s my room. There’re no lights in broom cupboards.’ ‘Ungrateful brat!’ said Missus Potts. ‘Just by the way, Angel, what is the music you are hearing?’ ‘Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony! Can’t you hear it? It’s loud enough.’ ‘No, I’m afraid not. But I do like to relax with the radio at the end of a busy day. Go to your room, Angel, and pull the blinds and I’ll pop in from time to time.’ ‘I’m not made of money!’ Missus Potts informed the doctor. ‘I’ll arrange something,’ said the doctor with fair hair and grey eyes and a kind smile. Angel’s torture lasted for almost a week. One of the boarders brought her soup and potatoes. The doctor had ‘popped’ in three times and gave her pills to ease the pain and gradually the symphony, the conductor and the orchestra became sick of the whole thing and stopped for a rest. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony had been one of her favourites, a monumental work of glorious sounds, and she loved it. She could not understand why it had chosen to hurt her so badly. She could not understand why the colours of a composition of such passion had become so drab and shadowed. The backdrops, curtain and the concert hall were all grey. Suddenly, everything had turned grey and its colour was very loud. She hoped she would never hear it again but wondered why she’d suddenly become afraid of something so beautiful. Angel whispered to Angel that she would ask someone. She would ask a Jew. Angel loved it but her mother had told her Jews understood it. She confirmed this when one day after sneaking away from school and catching the train to Town Hall for a lunchtime concert she told the woman next to her that she didn’t think much of Scarlatti. The woman was 56

angry and said ‘Ssshhh!’ and whispered, ‘Go away – you just don’t understand it – you’re too young. Go and sit somewhere else – you smell.’ Angel knew then that the woman was a Jew and she could not have been a Jew even if she tried. She thought it curious that she had to believe in a God to understand Scarlatti and wondered if not having a God at all made it impossible to understand music. She also wondered if she should think about finding a God to suit.

In the aunts’ house there was music – upstairs there was always music and she didn’t think the aunts were Jews. The aunts’ house was music and trams and Sunday and ballet and colour. It was everything that mattered in Angel’s life at that time. There was a day in Brooklyn Street when all was quiet and the gate was shut and secured as Angel stood outside. It seemed as though the air around the house had slammed its door but Angel knew how to climb over the locked gate quietly and slip around the side of the house to where the bathroom window was always open or through the laundry if the aunts had forgotten to shut the door. The two aunts, one up and one down, lived in the old, flaking timber house but it was the up aunt, Clara, who liked music. It was mostly ballet music. Elsa, the down aunt, was more into keeping everything spick and span, with a sink scrubbed until she could see her reflection, the stove a’gleaming and dish towels hanging white with the corpses of bacteria boiled to death. Aunt Elsa had been to a school that taught domestic skills and Angel thought she must have got top marks – she had the red hands and chipped nails to prove it. It was an effort to visit the aunts in Brooklyn Street but Angel thought it was definitely worth it. They were so different. Interesting. 57

Angel smiled a thin smile and whispered to Angel, I think I will learn more about Elsa and Clara later. Aunt Clara, who lived upstairs with old theatre costumes stuffed into drawers, books and music, once taught ballet but Angel was never one of her students. She loved Clara because of her music that always played in the background and the books and pictures about dancing she sometimes brought downstairs. She loved Clara for that, even though Clara did not love Angel. When Angel first started trying to find ways into the aunts’ house, Clara would shoo shoo her away, telling her to go to the Bay, the park or down to the rocks to play with the crabs. But when she refused, Clara would play her music very loud, so loud that Angel imagined Clara thought it would act as a barrier of some kind – at the very least interrupt the sounds Angel constantly hummed to – but she loved it and learned every note of Swan Lake and Giselle and The Nutcracker and even began to imagine the moods Aunt Clara might have been in when she played them. There seemed to be a different ballet for each one. Later, at the boarding house, Angel would dance around to the orchestra of music playing from her mouth until Missus Potts told her to stop her madness or she’d do it for her. There was a day when Angel was sure she understood Swan Lake and she said to Clara, ‘I think I might have been a Jew once, Aunt Clara, I’m beginning to understand the music.’ But Clara, suddenly red in the face and angry, slapped her and said, ‘Don’t ever, ever use that word again.’ Angel thought at the time she could only have meant the ‘Jew’ word and wondered why the key to understanding music was so offensive. ‘You’re not going to tell me you didn’t know!’ said Clara. ‘Know what?’ 58

‘We all knew what your mother was – your mother who took my brother from this world! A young son from his father!’ ‘Well, she’s dead now,’ said Angel, still not sure if she understood what had made Clara more angry: brother or Jew. ‘And not before time! You’d better get up to the tram before it goes without you. Don’t think about missing another one. Don’t think you’re ever moving in here, because you’re not.’ Her words were spat out like slivers of ice and as usual they hurt. Angel knew, of course, that it was possible for a person to love someone who doesn’t love them right back, but she was determined to make it happen in the aunts’ house. She believed this because of what might have happened to B and K carved into the tram seat. Angel would take wildflowers and some maidenhair from the gully behind the boarding house next time. She would pick the best the gully had to offer. Clara and Elsa would love her then. She was only eleven – there was plenty of time.

59

Colours

Angel loved the swirls of colour inside her. Thick and oily or gently splashed and tinted, depending of course on the particular musical composition, and she often wondered if an orchestra could play from a score of colours undulating across the page, flowing like streams of water and oil or Clara’s ballet dancers, instead of the stiff black-and-white notes she could not understand anyway. Angel’s music was as full of colour as it was of sound (with the exception of the terrible run-in she’d had with Tchaikovsky when every note was a dense shade of black or grey, dark as storms, and the sounds in her head like thunder. The memory of that made her very hot and she longed for cooling green.) The gully was her green – well, of course there were the odd patches of greys and brown from the bark of trees and tree ferns and bracken fronds when they die – but the overall impression was of green. There were so many shades of green that might take a person’s fancy and Angel loved them all. 60

In the gully were greens dark in shadow and bright in the sunlight. High eucalyptus leaves with their hint of blue and grey. Maidenhair ferns on the banks of the stream paler, stroking the water, and emerald moss lying soft across rocks, quiet, as though it slept. Angel could not possibly say which was her favourite. She decided she must leave it all for others to be enchanted.

If it wasn’t a Bay Sunday with trams, a salted breeze and Mariana at the end of it, it was a green day for Angel and somehow her music and colours adapted. Clever, she thought. The green place behind the house gave her a feeling of safety and protection. Once, Angel fell asleep covered with the fronds of a tree fern on the green velvet by the creek and even in the dark she could feel their colour. Angel was in the gully all night and she wondered if Missus Potts had missed her or worried but no one turned an eye when she sneaked back at dawn into her bed. She was hungry and cold but didn’t dare go to the kitchen. Hunger was so much part of her life she could put it aside and barely notice, and there were always berries and water in the gully, but she was so cold she wound herself up in her blanket tight as a bandage. Angel didn’t eat much in the house because the food was very, very bad! Very bad! She had no idea why the paying guests didn’t complain. Perhaps it was because board was so cheap. There was usually stale bread, sometimes growing something on its crust, eggs from chooks on their last legs, and the house specialty – the gristly stews of old cows, tough as their hides, potatoes boiled with their eyes open and beans turned grey before their time, everything suiciding in a broth made of heaven-knows-what bones. Angel thought her mother was 61

the worst cook in the world but after suffering the sacrificial offerings of Missus Potts she decided she might have only been the second worst. She found it hard to believe that the food was eaten with only the odd complaint despite the Reasonable Rates promise on the sign at the boarding house gate. Before Angel’s mother died she made a pudding from layers of crushed arrowroot biscuits, custard and bananas. She often thought of that. Her mother wasn’t much good at anything else in a kitchen but Angel loved that pudding. Angel mostly survived on what she found in her green place. Blackberries were her favourite and she thought they would have made a nice pie. She suggested it to Missus Potts with little hope. ‘Too sour this time of the year and there wouldn’t be enough.’ ‘There’s plenty down there. I’ll fill up a billy can and you’ll see.’ ‘Too much sugar needed. I’m not made of coupons. You want a blackberry pie? Make it yourself.’ ‘I will!’ And Angel filled a can even though the brambles scratched her and made her bleed. She was careful not to let her blood drip onto the greens. Angel knew that blood, when it dried, became a dark shade of reddish brown and would not have suited the green at all. She wondered what colour the blood would have been when the tram conductor fell from his running board. She wondered how quickly the blood would have died and changed colour. Another death. A different death – but Angel thought it was interesting that even spilt blood had its own range of colours. Angel did not make a blackberry pie but a pot of jam with half the sugar required and it was terrible. No one ate it. ~ 62

One day that was not a Sunday Angel sneaked away from school to learn about colour. She swapped her tunic for a dress in the usual way knowing Mister Daisyfield, who had become a little afraid of the Angel of sixth class, would ignore her absence and she went to the art gallery. The gallery was a grand building in the city on the edge of the Botanic Gardens and it was her second visit to such a place. When she ran up the steps to the entrance the excitement made her head swim and she desperately wanted to pee. ‘I need to go!’ she cried to a woman behind a desk. ‘Where is the toilet, please?’ Holding herself hard. ‘Down the stairs and to the right,’ said the kind woman, with a laugh. ‘Do I need a penny?’ ‘No,’ she replied, still laughing. But after relief without a penny Angel saw herself in the long mirror of the Ladies – ​a scrawn in a worn dress, bare feet, wild hair. A creature that might have been born in one of Charles Dickens’s dirt-poor establishments. A woman, washing her hands, said, ‘How on earth did you get into the art gallery?’ ‘Easy,’ said the old child, grinning in her way. ‘I didn’t know it was hard. I hope it’s better up the stairs than what’s in the mirror.’ ‘I can assure you it is,’ came the reply with nose up, lips pursed and a towel dropped into the bin. ‘A lot better. I’m on the committee and I’m not sure about waifs like you running around here like wild things. Look at your feet for goodness sake. I’ll have to have a word.’ ‘Okay.’ Angel ran back up the stairs and after thanking the desk lady she saw the first of the framed, glorious colours and there came a shock so intense she could barely breathe. She sat on the floor, wide-eyed, mouth open, legs splayed and 63

her back against a wall. A group following a guide stepped around her and looked at her with different expressions – like the tram passengers did. ‘Where are your parents?’ asked a woman dressed like a page from a magazine. ‘Dead,’ said Angel. ‘Shall I get someone to help you?’ asked the guide. ‘No. I just want to look at the colours. I won’t touch anything.’ And it seemed to be enough, for after a moment’s hesitation the guide continued to explain the paintings to his group. O! the colours! O, the richness of it all! Everything was so overwhelmingly beautiful it made Angel cry and the crying disturbed her because she never cried. Angel crept from painting to painting close to the floor and in such a way she hoped she might make herself invisible or possibly part of the display. There was one painting in the main gallery that was so big, bigger than all the walls in the boarding house stuck together, and there was a seat to sit on to watch it. Angel just sat there with tears running, like the creek in the gully, down her face with the joy of it all … O, the colours! And the music inside her turning summersaults was loud enough for the whole place to be deafened by it and its colours poured all over the place … O, the colours, the colours. A man in uniform and a cap went to her. ‘Are you all right, love? Where’s your mum?’ ‘Ssshhh,’ said Angel placing a finger to her lips and not wanting to be disturbed. ‘Come on, now – you can’t just sit here crying. Where’s your mum?’ ‘I haven’t got one.’ ‘Dad?’ 64

‘Dead.’ ‘Are you lost?’ ‘Not anymore,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the art. ‘I could live here – have you seen this? Have you seen it all? I could stay here forever …’ ‘Not with bare feet, you can’t.’ ‘I’m not hurting anything.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’d better stop crawling around the floor for one and the doors close at five so you’d better be off by then.’ ‘Okay. Can I come back, please?’ ‘Shoes?’ ‘Haven’t got any.’ ‘I’m sorry for you, love, but those are the rules. I can see how much you like it here and I reckon that’s unusual for a kid like you, but rules are rules and footwear comes under the dress code heading. But I have to say, on the quiet, mind, that it does me good to see a kid enjoying this place so much.’ This show of kindness – this show of potential intimacy – had her briefly looking at the man’s hands and their fingers but there were no suspicions there. ‘O, it’s as beautiful – no, it’s more beautiful – than my green place. As beautiful as my music, if you can believe that – well, maybe you can’t. But I can explain it all to you if you want to know.’ ‘Not just now, love. I’m working. What’s your name?’ ‘Angel, but I’m thinking of changing it. What colour do you think my name could be?’ ‘That’s up to you, love. Have a look around – and don’t forget – next time, shoes!’ ‘The colour of oceans might be okay, I think. Like that over there, with the waves of white horses racing right off the wall. What do you think?’ 65

‘I think you are a very unusual girl. Behave yourself. Keep out of trouble and come to me if you need help. I’ll keep an eye out. There are some pretty strict people in this place.’ ‘I won’t touch anything. I’ll be quiet and I’ll hide if someone comes – I’m okay.’ But she wasn’t. Angel was so maddened by beauty she thought she felt her brain move a little. Click. O, the colours! The next Bay Sunday she would add a few nice things to the wildflowers from the gully, maybe a few berries, small bunches with the thorns stripped, and take them to Clara and Elsa and they would love her so much for the gesture and maybe buy her shoes.

66

The well-read visitor

The day was warm. On this Bay Sunday it became in fact warm enough to peel another flake or two of old, grey paint off the side of the aunts’ house. Angel had taken the route across the big park and by the time she reached the house she was perspiring. Angel was, for a turn or two of the earth, as far as she knew, climbing from the age of eleven and towards the hedge of twelve. Like sheep counted, she was still there, in the eleventh year, wondering how far away the next hurdle was. Angel was not sure if it was because she was older, or the aunts had run out of ideas to keep her out, but it was the third Sunday in a row that the gate to their house had been unlocked. The laundry door had been opened just far enough for Angel to creep inside where it was dark and cool. There was no sight or sound of Elsa or Clara but the roast tomatoes downstairs and the scratched ballet record playing upstairs indicated they were in the house somewhere. Or maybe they were down by the rocks. Angel thought of calling out to 67

them but decided a surprise would be nicer. She tip-toed into Elsa’s sitting room over to where Elsa kept her mending chair near the corner window where the sun shone. But on that day, the sun had moved and the room was in shadow. Angel saw the chair and Elsa’s work basket on the floor beside it and in the chair she saw a woman. Different. ‘And who might you be?’ The woman had a book on her lap and eyes in the back of her head as far as Angel was concerned for she had not turned. ‘Well, come! Come and make yourself known,’ said a voice as crisp as a ginger snap. Angel did as she was told and stood by the window to face the woman who sat straight, barely balanced on the edge of the chair. She seemed older than the aunts and was pale as parchment, even in the shadows. She wore a black cape and a plait of grey hair hung down her back. Angel thought she looked as though she’d been locked in a schoolroom for years and had only recently escaped. ‘Well? Who are you?’ ‘Where’s Aunt Elsa and Clara?’ ‘Down on the rocks scraping for shellfish. Answer me!’ ‘I’m Angel Martin – Elsa and Clara are my aunts.’ ‘O, it’s you. Come away from the window where I can see you.’ Finding a stranger in the aunts’ house was a shock but Angel did as she was told. ‘You look like a bag of bones. Bones! That’s what I’ll call you – Bones!’ ‘No, you won’t! My name is Angel and I would never change it to Bones! Who are you?’ asked Angel, standing as straight as the woman sat and coming to her senses. ‘The cheek of you! No respect for your elders – universities are full of ignorant, stupid young girls like you. Should have 68

been drowned at birth. Your aunts told me all about you. Why are you holding a bunch of dead weeds?’ ‘They’re not dead. They got a bit spoiled in the heat. They just need some water. I picked them for Elsa and Clara.’ ‘Where from? They’re not local.’ ‘In the gully behind the boarding house where I live of course.’ ‘O, yes. You were boarded out, weren’t you.’ ‘No! Missus Potts and my mother were friends. Missus Potts took me in because she loves me.’ A lie of course, but a lie white as a snow flake. ‘Do you know what those weeds are? Do you know their names?’ ‘This one’s maidenhair and this is bracken and there’s lily turf and honeysuckle and—’ ‘What’s the purple one?’ ‘I’ve forgotten.’ ‘Hardenbergia – look it up.’ ‘I do look things up. I bet I’ve looked more things up than you have—’ The woman rose from the chair with a flourish of agitated black cape so that she looked like a bat hanging the wrong way. She pulled Angel to her and slapped her over the ear. ‘You old bat!’ said the Angel. ‘Don’t you think for a minute that’s the worst thing that’s happened to me. I’m experienced.’ But she put her hand to her ear and it felt very hot. Elsa came into the room smelling of seaweed and shells. She was wearing her moon hat and had her skirt tucked into her panty legs to keep it dry. One of her toes had blood on it. ‘O, there you are again, Angel. My goodness. I see you’ve met Jessie. We found a few oysters but mostly pipis. There was a small octopus but I don’t like catching them. But you 69

like catching occos, Jessie, don’t you – I’ve seen you – I used to watch.’ Elsa turned to Angel. ‘What’s the matter with your ear?’ ‘This person – Jessie? – well, she hit me.’ ‘Never did me any harm,’ said Elsa but she glanced hard at Jessie. ‘Jessie was living with your grandfather when your mother killed him with the grief of losing his son. Jessie lectures at university and writes books about plants.’ Angel didn’t know what to say, but only for a moment. ‘I brought you and Clara some wildflowers from the gully, Aunt Elsa, but they need water.’ Elsa ignored the gift but turned to Angel and spoke about something quite different. She spoke nervously and was short of breath. ‘I used to watch Jessie and my husband’s father catch octopuses and she’d drag them off his arm and put them in a bucket and send them up to me to cook. Jessie didn’t cook them. I cooked them. I hated cooking them but that’s what I did! I was the one who did that sort of thing, you see – cooking and the cleaning and the flower beds because Jessie said I was a qualified domestic and she—’ ‘For God’s sake don’t go on about it now, Elsa. Not now! Where’s Clara? I called but she didn’t answer.’ ‘Upstairs. It’s Giselle today.’ ‘The miseries?’ ‘Might not be, Jessie. Might be Clara just loves that music.’ And Angel said, finding herself in more familiar territory, ‘And where did Aunt Clara say the swell was coming from today?’ She asked Elsa, not taking her eyes off Jessie’s. ‘Was it Orlando or something else?’ ‘The boats have all turned their backs. She thinks it might be Titania coming from the west – the gulls have all turned into it.’ 70

‘Did you know that, Jessie?’ Angel asked with a slight smile. ‘I bet you don’t know the names of the rocks down by the water.’ ‘Don’t you give me any more cheek or I’ll clip the other ear.’ ‘She’s only a child, Jessie.’ ‘That one’s never been a child, you only have to look. They’re all over the lecture halls like vermin.’ ‘Angel likes my cooking, Jessie.’ ‘That old mutton and potatoes and tomatoes? It’s always the same and as tough as hide. You bought the teeth to deal with it, Elsa. I still have my own!’ ‘Elsa’s the best cook in the world! And where do you think she gets the extra coupons for Sunday dinners?’ screamed Angel at Jessie. ‘There’s an old man in Brooklyn Street who catches octopuses. He’d love to share the suckers with you. I can show you where he lives.’ Jessie advanced, flapping black towards Angel with her hand ready to slap. ‘She’s only a child, Jessie. It’s not her fault.’ But in a strange turn it was Elsa she slapped and then flapped out of the room shouting, ‘Where’s Clara?’ ‘Upstairs. Jessie, don’t disturb her.’ And Elsa said not a word of complaint about the assault. ‘She won’t want you up there.’ ‘I’ll go where I like on my own property,’ she said, flapping up the stairs. Shortly after, there came the sounds of a foot stamping and an argument. Elsa was shaking. Angel knew how she must have felt – humiliated and hurt and not saying a word for fear of something worse happening. It was a terrible thing. Angel had been Missus Potts’s target more than once, but to see a grown woman slapped was a terrible thing. 71

‘You’re late this Sunday, Angel. Did the tram break down?’ She was in the kitchen now, washing shells as though nothing at all had happened. Her cheek was red and Angel was sure she saw a tear in her eye. ‘Did the cable lose its grip?’ ‘No. Are you frightened of Clara and Jessie, Elsa?’ ‘Certainly not! Mind your business. There are things happening, that’s all. Now, tell me why you’re so late.’ ‘What things are happening, Aunt Elsa?’ ‘Rent! Rent’s happening! Now, will you answer my question?’ ‘I met a friend, that’s all.’ ‘I didn’t know you had a friend. Not a boy I hope.’ ‘It’s a lady who used to live near the shopfront. Just a friend and we talked and—’ ‘What’s it like?’ ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘What’s it like to have a friend?’ Elsa turned from the sink, all wet from the shells and hands hanging by her side, red from scrubbing. And under her moon hat was a creased, dry face with its creek beds running wet from eyes to chin. She just stood there, defeated and scrubby like one of her dish towels. She just stood there looking at Angel and Angel ran suddenly to her and hugged her and snuggled into her shoulder. ‘Having a friend is like this!’ ‘O, Angel – you are the strangest Angel I’ve ever heard about …’ Trying not to cry. ‘O, what an old fool I am.’ ‘Elsa, does that Jessie really own this place?’ Angel still clutched the gully wildflowers. The maidenhair fern had died of thirst. She threw them into the kitchen bin. ‘Yes! And don’t start me on the subject. Jessie and her family got everything from your grandfather. She charges rent and it’s rent she’s come for and it’s rent we haven’t got.’ 72

‘Can I help you with Sunday dinner, Aunt Elsa?’ ‘Too late. I kept some tomatoes for you and a slice of meat – ssshhh.’ ‘O, Elsa, thank you. I’m very hungry.’ Suddenly Clara and Jessie were standing at the kitchen door. ‘Jessie’s decided she wants something to eat, Elsa, if there’s anything left she likes – pipi porridge, sea snails all alive’o, occo ink sauce, bluebottles with the stings left in! You know what she likes. Same as the old dad.’ Clara’s voice was thin and mean. ‘And what’s she doing here?’ ‘Angel is only here for a little while. I’ll see what I can do, Clara. Don’t make a fuss, please,’ Elsa said mildly. ‘She wants us to mend the balcony railings with money we don’t have, like the rent!’ ‘We’ll manage somehow, Clara – don’t make things worse.’ ‘And she wants the yard cleaned up! How are you going to do that at your age?’ ‘You simply don’t look after the place,’ said Jessie, sweet as gravel. ‘Renters are expected to look after the places they rent. I could turf you two out if I felt like it in a split minute.’ And her black cloak flapped around her like a devil’s brolly. ‘O, Jessie, stop saying such things. You wouldn’t. You couldn’t do such a thing to us.’ Elsa’s greatest fear was eviction from the beloved ramshackle in Brooklyn Street on the point of the Bay that she and Clara had lived in for almost half-a-century. ‘She could and she would in a devil’s minute! What’s she still doing here? I’m sick of the sight of her.’ Pointing to Angel. ‘It’s Sunday, Clara. She’ll go after she’s had something to eat.’ 73

‘We’re not paying for Sunday food for outsiders every Sunday!’ ‘There’ll be something.’ Then she turned to Angel and changing the tone of her voice for the benefit of Clara and Jessie said, ‘But don’t think you’re getting much, girl! It’ll be leftovers if there are any leftovers.’ ‘Thank you, Elsa,’ said Angel, understanding completely. ‘Can I go down to the rocks?’ ‘Sooner the better.’ ‘But if you call me I’ll come right away and help you, Aunt Elsa.’ ‘Stop calling us “Aunt”,’ spat Clara. ‘We didn’t want you in the first place so just stop it! Imagine Peggy called an aunty. She’d be sick.’ ‘Who’s Peggy?’ asked Angel. ‘My sister, Peggy – she had the sense to leave. None of your business anyway,’ said Clara. ‘She wouldn’t have liked you. She had the sense to be in London when you were born.’ ‘My mother never told me about her. Did my mother know her?’ ‘No! Peggy would have throttled her,’ snarled Clara. ‘Your father was her favourite brother!’ ‘Don’t bother with it now, Clara. Go down to the rocks for a while, Angel.’ Elsa gave Angel an apple to go on with. ‘Okay,’ said Angel. ‘But I reckon I’m not the only one around here not right in the head if you really want to know.’ ‘Shut your mouth and mind your manners!’ Jessie shouted behind Angel as she ran through the long grass to where the rocks took small things into their pools and sheltered them from the rising tides so close to the ocean and the old house. For a short time, for she was nervous about missing the tram, Angel cooled herself by the harbour’s salt breezes and 74

splashes on her tough, bare feet. She sat cross-legged on a flat ledge, held her hands against her ears and sucked strands of her hair. She could still feel Elsa’s soft shoulder. She wondered and wondered why Clara was so angry and she gave a thought to the witch, Jessie. Angel would have liked to have seen her floating around the point in her wet, black cape until she drowned just out of reach of the rocks instead of the poor man who’d waved to them. Angel would have enjoyed that. She was beginning to see that the water could be a friend and not just something to fear. Angel stroked a small crab and sucked her hair and was content – one Sunday she would ask Clara to teach her the names of the tides and their swells. ‘Leftovers if you want them,’ Elsa called to the rocks. ‘You’d better hurry, it’s nearly time to go.’ ‘Coming, Elsa!’ Just like family, that was, being called. Almost belonging. A beginning. Another performance of Giselle wafted down the stairs to the kitchen and Angel hummed the music between mouthfuls. She loved Giselle. It was the music of betrayal. ‘I’m beginning to understand the music. It’s beautiful.’ ‘Ssshhh,’ Elsa said, with her finger to her lips. ‘Leave her quiet.’

Angel had not mentioned the need for art gallery shoes. She had not forgotten about them, but on the way to the aunts’ house that Sunday she’d had an idea. Angel visited a friend she had not seen for a very long time. ‘Angel, darling! What a long time it is since I’ve seen you.’ The babywear shop that was over the road from where Angel had once lived with her mother had not changed a bit. Bonnets and bibs, booties and rattles, shawls and bunny 75

cuddles filled every corner like a population explosion. The woman waved her hand through the air of the shop. ‘Still all handmade, but we miss your mother. Just sit on the step for a moment and I’ll be free soon. Won’t be long.’ A cheerful soul was the baby shop lady. Baby’s breath and bubbles, that’d do it, determined Angel. She sat on the step at the entrance and looked across the road to the shopfront her mother had called Bon Ami but she couldn’t remember what it was like inside. ‘It’s a hat shop now. Jannette. Very expensive. Some of my customers have bought hats there but they’re mostly grandmothers with money …’ The baby shop lady chattered on as though everything about her visitor was normal. She pretended not to see the dark rings under Angel’s beautiful eyes, the worn cotton dress with a tear at the back, the almost skeletal look of her. ‘You’ve grown, Angel – well, of course you’ve grown, silly me. You’re taller, I like the way you stand so straight. Where did you get the wildflowers?’ ‘The gully up north. I picked them for the aunts but I think they need water.’ ‘I’ll drip the tap over them. Come out the back with me. Did you have a good tram ride down?’ ‘O, yes. I always do. I love the trams. I ride in them as much as I can.’ ‘And what else do you do?’ The baby shop lady asked at exactly the right moment and the experienced Angel knew she was moving traffic in exactly the right direction. ‘I read a lot. I go to the local library and there’s always music inside me to listen to, always. And I went to the art gallery in town and I was swimming with all the colours – every colour in the whole world. I wanted to live there. I could have died 76

there and I told one of the guards that and he said he was glad I liked it so much but that I couldn’t go again without shoes.’ ‘Shoes?’ ‘I’ve tried to save up but there’s the tram fare to the aunts’ house and—’ ‘What sort of shoes? Don’t you have any at all?’ ‘No.’ ‘O, sweet Jesus! I thought you were barefoot just for the Bay. Shoes? I’ll get you some shoes, darling. Will sandals do? What size are you – O, silly of me. If you have no shoes then you wouldn’t know your size …’ ‘Five.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I pretended to buy some and they measured me and said I was a five.’ ‘Five it is then. I just can’t believe you go to school in bare feet.’ ‘I’m not the only one and the headmaster Mister Daisyfield doesn’t care what I do.’ ‘You come and see me next time you come down, Angel, and in the meantime I’ll look around for sandals – size five. I might get a five-and-a-half as well just in case. When will you be here again?’ ‘Next Sunday.’ ‘Well, I’ll have to get going, won’t I? Will you mind if they’re second hand? Nice, but second hand?’ ‘No, anything will do. You’re a nice person. Do you have children of your own?’ ‘Sadly, no.’ ‘You should. You’d be a terrific mother.’ ‘What a nice thing to say.’ ‘I will pay you back but it might take a while.’ 77

‘We won’t fuss about that now.’ ‘Well, I think you’re the kindest person I have ever known.’ ‘O, Angel. Shoes. O, my goodness. We remember your mother. I have a customer waiting, dear, don’t forget your flowers. Go out the back and get them out of the sink. Your aunts will love them.’ ‘I don’t care if they do or not, now.’ And Angel quickly kissed her cheek. She was glad she was not wearing lipstick that day.

On the way back across the park at the end of the day at the Bay, Angel whispered to Angel that it was sure to be the bootiful liddle goo goos that made people kind. It was all those cuddles – all that love. The memory of being so close to Elsa made her feel soft inside. She grinned all the way to the tram and climbed on board. ‘You look pleased with yourself.’ The tram driver smiled while he waited for stragglers. ‘I’m getting shoes for the art gallery. Next Sunday there’ll be shoes and I’ll go to the gallery and study pictures of oceans and all the other colours. O, the colours. Have you seen them?’ ‘No. And what about oceans?’ ‘It’s another country right next to ours – didn’t you know that? There’re things living there with their own language and their own music and mountains and valleys and forests of kelp, tall as cathedrals, and canyons deeper than anything we have and—’ ‘All right, all right, that’s enough. Where did you get all that?’ ‘The library – in big books about the sea – and, well, I just know.’ 78

‘You’re all over the place. Got your fare home?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then, stop jumping around – we’re off.’ And as the last straggler climbed aboard the driver turned his lever and ding ding dinged away from Angel’s Mariana with its high sandstone borders. She was unfamiliar with the music playing inside her at that moment but she was sure it had something to do with the ocean, colours and the art gallery. Angel asked Angel to listen carefully. Two of the stragglers, women, were regulars and sat across the aisle from Angel Martin. They studied her while she gave herself instructions. ‘If you want to know what I think,’ said one, ‘it’s some sort of autism.’ Ding ding!

79

Sea pictures #1

It was still high summer over the gully behind Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment. All was gently cooled on the hill but not as much as in the east where the sea breezes blew from the water. In high summer the gully had its own cool climate at the end of its northern day – moist in the shadows and the damp light of the yawning sun that dappled through the trees and ferns – and it was the colour green. Angel thought it extraordinary that in a matter of an hour or two she’d sat on harbour rocks splashed by low swells sent to delight her by Mariana and was then in a world of thick scrub and trees dripping from the humid – almost tropical – day in a jungle that could have been created by RL Stevenson. The earth that spun her backwards and forwards in time was different at every turn. Humans, animals, birds, heat and ice – all different in their way and there was a greed in her to know more and more of her earth and the great ocean nation she had named Mariana. 80

Angel wondered how she was going to survive the wait for shoes so she could go back to the art gallery and study the colours of paintings and paintings of oceans – their white horses and enormous waves and everything that was powerful about them. She hoped the baby shop lady had not realised that she had begged for shoes like a trickster. Angel was aching to go to the toilet when she got back from her Sunday with the aunts and she went to the gully and peed behind a fern tree near the creek. She didn’t think it would mind. She was reluctant to go to the boarding house for a while and stayed until dark in the gully where she felt safe. It was around seven o’clock when she finally went inside the house as though she’d just arrived. ‘You’re late! There’s nothing left,’ snapped Missus Potts. ‘She can have mine,’ said a casual. ‘What’s on tonight?’ asked Angel. ‘Don’t ask.’ ‘Terrible times frightful triple-squared!’ Barnaby Grange laughed. Angel didn’t know what Barnaby Grange’s numbers meant when he described the food that way, but he spoke in words and she thought they might have been the first unmathematical words he’d spoken in a long time. And he seemed as though he was quite pleased to see her. ‘The aunts gave me food at the Bay – I’m not hungry.’ Added to the egg yolk stains on the old stale sheet that covered the long table were other stains of other colours and Angel was even fascinated by these. A dob of berry jam reminded her of the red tops on the summer bottles of school milk cooking in their crates, which were made of a particular shiny red foil. Angel liked the tops but she never drank the milk. 81

‘Aren’t music and colours really, really, the most wonderful things?’ she said, almost to herself. ‘And not one the same as the other – reds and reds and reds and gullies of green and …’ ‘Take no notice,’ said Missus Potts. ‘She’s not normal.’ ‘She’s got a right,’ said another. ‘Not for what she pays,’ said Potts. ‘And with no idea what’s going on here in the house. She doesn’t know, does she? Out all day mucking around at the Bay with things happening here.’ ‘What things?’ ‘Well, just for starters, Mister Canning dropped dead with his heart.’ ‘Old Mister Canning? Did he really?’ Angel grinned her small, sharp teeth. ‘Good riddance!’ ‘Angel! That’s a terrible thing to say,’ said a casual, not knowing. ‘Yes! It was a terrible thing to say,’ said Missus Potts, know-​ ing. ‘And not a relative to be found. What am I supposed to do about that, Miss Know-It-All? This residence is not a boarding house for the dead. Does this establishment have a notice out the front saying “Dead people welcome”?’ ‘Dig a hole down near the septic tank and bury him there, Missus Potts, who’s to know?’ Angel said, still grinning. ‘And then he can lie there in peace and stick his finger up his own bum!’ ‘There’s a mind for you – dirty!’ But everyone else laughed – even Barnaby Grange. ‘And of course, there’s his relatives. His people must know. There’s the ambulance to pay, for one.’ Barnaby Grange silently left the table with his papers, pads and pencils but smiled at Angel as he passed. His glance was kind and friendly. She felt comfortable with him; her experience could easily tell the difference. Angel followed him down the 82

passageway to the door of his room. Barnaby seemed to be aware of her but did not turn until he put his key into the lock. He still smiled his blond smile but there were tears in his eyes like something lost and found. ‘Do you like colours, too?’ Barnaby nodded. ‘I’m going to sneak away from school one day soon and go to the art gallery in the city – want to come? I’ll have shoes by then – you have to have shoes – and they’ll let me in and I have to tell you about everything in that place. The colours are enough to make you faint dead away, let me tell you. I’m not making it up. Do you want to come with me?’ ‘O, Angel, yes, yes.’ Barnaby Grange in words. In perfectly good English words with not one number attached to them. ‘We’ll go then. After next Sunday at the aunts’ house. I have to go to the Bay on Sundays.’

The babywear shop on the main road to the Bay opposite what used to be Bon Ami had its door open just wide enough to let in one customer at a time. Sundays were by appointment only so as to never break a sacred law. The baby shop lady heard the Sunday tram stop at the cross-beamed terminus and she waited, with a little excitement, for Angel Martin – she had been shopping like a mother for its child. Angel ran to her wearing her usual Sunday clothes of worn and faded cotton, bare feet and her hair, by accident or design, in tangled disarray. Angel on that Sunday could have brought tears to the eyes of a marble bust. ‘O, darling girl, there you are. I’m so happy to see you. I’m so glad you came here before the aunts in Brooklyn Street.’ ‘I wanted to. You’re the nicest person I know.’ 83

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Angel, but I have a surprise for you.’ ‘I’ve never had a surprise,’ said Angel with wide eyes and excited smiles and putting Mister Daisyfield and the stairwell and dead old Mister Canning on the back burner. ‘What is it? What is it?’ ‘Come in, come in. You know I shouldn’t be open for business on Sundays, don’t you? But if I do, it’s my best day. It’s when all the families and their babies come here to the park and the beach.’ ‘I think my mother told me that.’ ‘Now, if a customer comes in I will have to leave you sitting for a while but right now I can show you what I have bought for you …’ ‘How can I pay you? I don’t have enough.’ ‘Don’t ever think about that. It’s given me so much pleasure. I think because of something you said.’ ‘What?’ ‘You told me I’d be the best mother in the world – I will never forget that, Angel.’ ‘Well, it’s true, I think.’ The baby shop lady brought a parcel out from behind the counter and gave it to Angel. It was fluffy, as though it was full of feathers, but firm in a corner. ‘O, can I open it?’ ‘Of course – and I hope you will be pleased.’ Angel pulled the string away from the brown paper as gently as she was able and carefully unfolded the parcel, even though her instincts were to tear and scratch and rip the body of the surprise like something feral. Inside were two pairs of Roman sandals, sizes five and five-and-a-half, and a dress of fine cotton with a sash and 84

short cap sleeves. The dress had a white background, illustrated with tiny bunches of flowers in rustic colours. Folded inside the dress was a pale-yellow hair band and a small brush. ‘Are you pleased, dear? I’m sure the dress will fit – I’m used to guessing sizes.’ ‘O! O! It’s all so lovely. I can’t believe it. They won’t recognise me at the gallery.’ Angel had laid the dress on the floor with the hair band above it and below, the sandals in their right places. She walked a circle around it all and held her hands against her cheeks. ‘These will be my special gallery clothes.’ ‘I’m so happy you like them, dear.’ ‘I – I can’t tell you now. I can’t talk now. O, the dress is so beautiful – the colours – you’re the kindest person in the whole world.’ And Angel, though flowery pretties were not her taste, in the second living memory of her eleven years, burst into tears and hugged the baby shop lady so hard for her act of kindness she had to plead for release. ‘Your aunts will be pleased, I think.’ ‘I don’t care.’ ‘Wouldn’t you like to wear your new clothes for them?’ ‘No.’ ‘No?’ ‘One Sunday – not this Bay Sunday. There’s an art gallery to go to first and O, the colours! And a friend is going with me – Barnaby Grange. He’s going to be my friend forever, anyway I’m going to save all these beautiful things for them.’ ‘I wish I understood you, Angel.’ ‘I’ll explain one day. I know I’m hard to understand – I hardly understand myself.’ ~

85

Angel ran across the big park and up the hot path to Brooklyn Street holding the brown paper parcel close to her breast, close as one of the baby shop lady’s newborns. She would ask Elsa for some string to tie it up again. She was terrified of losing it – not in a tram, though – somehow, she knew it would be safe in a tram. No. Afraid of dropping it in another part of the world. The Bay? She had a brief vision of her parcel floating past the rocks at the bottom of the aunts’ house bloated and just out of reach like the drowning man. She held the parcel painfully close to her chest. The gate to the aunts’ house was not only unlocked but slightly open as though there was a shred of a welcome mat hanging from the top hinge. Angel, even from the driveway, could hear music and knew Clara must be at home but she wasn’t ready for Clara’s pokes and picks and questions and held the parcel even closer. Worse, she thought, would be Jessie, whom Angel had come to think of as the Missus Potts of the Bay. As she trod her way quietly over the gravel to the laundry door she wished the house belonged to Elsa – the one, Angel thought, who really deserved it – but despite the music from ‘up’, Clara was standing in the laundry shadows by the old zinc tubs with hand on her hips. ‘Don’t tell me it’s Sunday already!’ Clara said with her special look and knowing. ‘You sound sneaky. What are you sneaking around for?’ ‘I’m not sneaking.’ ‘What’s that parcel? What have you stolen?’ ‘I don’t steal! It’s rubbish. I’m going to put it in the bin out the back. Where’s Elsa?’ ‘What sort of rubbish?’ ‘I bought some fish and chips on the way.’ ‘Fish and chips come in newspaper. Here, let me look.’ 86

‘No!’ And something in Angel’s eyes made Clara briefly turn her own away. ‘Where’s Elsa?’ ‘She’s in her bed with a bad cold so if it’s baked dinners and tomatoes you’ve come for, you can just get the next tram back.’ ‘Can’t I stay for a while, Aunt Clara? I’ll make Elsa tea and look after her.’ ‘You don’t think that’s what I’m doing, you wretched girl? As if I haven’t got enough to do and I’m here in the laundry scrubbing and no one making me tea.’ ‘What is the music today, Clara?’ ‘Chopin, and don’t think you’re coming upstairs.’ ‘Aunt Clara, why are you always so unhappy?’ And the woman turned abruptly, dripping from the elbows down and thumped into the house and up the stairs and Angel, shaking with relief, went to Elsa’s room.

Aunt Elsa was a red-nosed head with a wheeze and a cough just visible above a sheet and a blanket in a darkened room. Beside her was a pile of toilet roll paper, rags and a steaming bowl of water and menthol. Aunt Elsa’s small head of greying hair, cut short as a man’s, sat atop her small frame. Angel thought she looked like a doll in the bed. Elsa’s room was closer to Brooklyn Street than the waterfront. It was always darker than the others – even the floorboards were painted black but Angel did not know why. ‘Aunt Elsa, it’s me. I’m sorry you’re sick.’ ‘Angel? Is that you?’ ‘Yes. Would you like some tea or maybe a hot drink?’ 87

‘Tea,’ coughed Elsa. ‘I’ll get it now. Do you have any string?’ ‘What? What for?’ ‘I just need some string. Would you like something to eat?’ ‘No. Third drawer down on the right—’ And she coughed all over again. ‘Tea in a minute, Elsa.’ The ball of string was exactly in its place and scissors were next to it. Nothing less would Angel have expected from Aunt Elsa. She quickly put the kettle on the stove then re-wrapped her parcel and with triple the length of string tied the parcel tightly around her waist. While the tea brewed in its pot, Angel searched for something to eat. There was bread, of course, and a scrap of butter and she found a sliced tomato. The sandwich eased the famished growl in her belly even though most of the tomato juice ran down her chin into a puddle between her small breasts. She took the tea to Elsa. ‘I made some bread and butter, Aunt Elsa, in case you got hungry but I have to go now.’ ‘Why?’ sneezed the doll. ‘It’s late again and I have to go. Will you be all right?’ ‘O, Angel,’ croaked poor Elsa. ‘Where is Clara?’ ‘Upstairs. She’s done the washing.’ ‘Tell her I need her. What’s that tied to your stomach?’ ‘Nothing – just some old rubbish.’ ‘That’s what she tells us. Something fallen off the back of a truck more like it,’ said Clara, suddenly at the door. ‘And she’s been sneaking around in the kitchen. There’s bread missing and half a tomato and crumbs all over the place—’ ‘I made tea and bread and butter for Elsa and I made a sandwich. I didn’t think you’d mind.’ ‘Well, we do! Every penny could be the last in this place.’ 88

‘O, for goodness sakes! I won’t come close, Aunt Elsa. I don’t want to catch it.’ ‘She’s not to be trusted!’ ‘She’s only a child, Clara,’ Elsa wheezed through mucus and little breath. And before anything else could be said Angel ran to the tram stop and waited for the safety of the next one.

‘Ho, ho,’ said the driver. ‘What have we got there, tied around so tight?’ ‘Something beautiful. You’ll see it one day.’ ‘It’s a wonder you can breathe. You’re early today. Did you see your aunts?’ ‘Yes, but one is sick in bed and they still think I’m not right in the head.’ Angel was suddenly very tired and the tram driver, glancing at the waif with the parcel and the string and red stains with pips all over the place, smiled at her. ‘You’re okay, love.’ And they sat there in silence and waited for the stragglers while Angel gazed from the window at the ocean nation she had called Mariana and watched intently in case she missed the white horses racing over its swell on the horizon.

89

Sea pictures #2

It was not a Sunday. Skipping school was never a Sunday. What a waste of time truancy on a Sunday would be. ‘Mister Daisyfield’s been down asking about you,’ Missus Potts said in a tone that suggested Angel was under police surveillance. ‘He wants to know what you’re up to when you skip school.’ ‘None of his business – ask him what he’s up to when he’s at school – but if he wants to know, I leave school to learn things.’ ‘What sort of an answer is that? School’s for learning. He gave me a form to fill out but I didn’t have my readers on. I don’t want to even think about what you can learn out of school.’ ‘School’s for words and how to write them and I know words enough to get books from the library. I’m glad about that, if they want to know. I know all the homework maps of New South Wales: where the bits of tin foil go for mines and 90

the cotton wool for sheep, but what’s the use of that? What’s the good of learning about English kings and queens breeding with all the other royals all over the place? I don’t need to know that, Missus Potts – there’re more important things.’ ‘You watch your tongue, my girl. I told Mister Daisyfield I had no control over you and never wanted to. I told him I’d tell you what he said and that’s all, and I told him I do not want truancy knocking at the boarding house door giving this fine establishment a bad name so you’d better get back to school where you belong.’ ‘I’m there most days, Missus Potts. I’m there for the six times table and the Norman conquest of England and the Sun King of France and Sir Francis Drake and his bowls and the whole Spanish thing but there’s nothing about colours and music and the numbers of colours and the colours of numbers or the number of stars and planets in the sky and how old Australia is and why Australia is older than God took to make the world or how long a cicada is under the ground before it sings. Can someone tell me that?’ ‘My Godfather! You’re eleven, my girl, and you learn what they teach because they know what they’re doing and I’m not paying any fines for you – I’m not your mother!’ ‘You could never be my mother! Why don’t you get rid of me and send me down to the aunts’ house then?’ ‘Don’t think I haven’t wanted to a hundred times … And what was that parcel you ran to your room with? You think I can’t see sneaky parcels?’ ‘Something so beautiful, Missus Potts, you wouldn’t understand in a million years.’ ‘Did you steal it?’ ‘No! I don’t have to steal. Did Mister Daisyfield say he missed me a lot?’ And Angel grinned her little teeth. 91

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘Remember I told you what old Mister Canning did? Well, Mister Daisyfield was the first – you didn’t know that, did you?’ ‘Any more lies, Angel Martin, I’ll have to get advice!’ ‘I’m not lying, Missus Potts, I’m not. Didn’t anything like that ever happen to you when you were at school?’ ‘No! Indeed it did not, Angel Martin. Now, get into the kitchen where you belong. You’re giving me a headache!’ And Missus Potts waddled at speed from the room, holding a towel to her eyes and, unknown to Angel, briefly remembered an afternoon in late autumn when she was in fourth class, catching the eye of a teacher, Miss Spooner, a middle-aged teacher of third class, whose party trick it was to expose and scratch her enormous breasts in front of a group of children who couldn’t remember such things since they were born and not even then.

‘I don’t have to go to school today. Do you want to come with me to the gallery?’ And Barnaby Grange nodded and smiled and held up ten fingers to indicate when and Angel held up emphatically ten of her own in agreement. Missus Potts was currently stirring a boiling copper of sheets in the laundry and, like everything else in the boarding house, was giving the sheets no more than ‘a bit of a rinse off’ and would be finished rinsing and hanging in no time at all. They needed to make their escape before then. For Angel to be late for escape to the city would be, to say the least, a bad move, but in exactly ten minutes Barnaby emerged from his room looking very dapper in tweed, shirt, tie and his best trousers. ‘Don’t let Missus Potts see you or she’ll tell Daisyfield – not that that really matters.’ 92

‘Ssshhh,’ Barnaby signalled. ‘Back door.’ In words. Angel, in her new dress with brushed hair, led the way.

It was clear that the city made Barnaby Grange nervous. Angel walked beside him and noticed that he glanced quickly from one place to another like an animal lost and in unfamiliar territory and she thought, Poor thing – he’s afraid. She had never seen him outside the boarding house for any length of time except for during a morning walk, mumbling numbers and jotting in a notepad. She took his hand and led him. ‘We’ll have to take a bus to the gallery,’ she said, just by the way so as not to alarm him. ‘Pity there’s not a tram. Do you like trams?’ ‘I don’t know.’ In words. ‘Well, it’s a bus.’ Angel paid the fares from her rag bag. In order to sit together they had to go right up to the back. Barnaby Grange sat straight and still like something sculptured. Angel continued to hold his hand, which was moist and tense with anxiety, until they reached the gallery stop. Once inside the gallery she could feel his hand loosen and she gradually let it go. When they were inside the palace of colour the guard came to her almost unbelieving. ‘Well, I never … Well, young lady. Is there something you’d especially like to see? Can I help you in some way?’ The guard who’d told Angel she couldn’t come back to the gallery without shoes appeared to be genuinely delighted by her transformation. He tipped his cap. ‘We’ll let you know,’ she said with a grin and her nose in the air like visiting royalty. ‘This is Mister Barnaby Grange. 93

He’s from England and he wants to make sure all your colour numbers are right.’ Not even trying to understand, the guard said, ‘How do you do’ and went back to his post. When that happened, it was not a Sunday. Barnaby Grange said it was number three. ‘Beautiful.’ In a word. ‘Constable,’ he said, pointing. ‘Father has Constable.’ In words. ‘Hundreds of numbers in the colours of Constable – I did try to explain to Father …’ In words. ‘But Father did not like my numbers.’ Words, the most in a very long time. ‘Never mind that now, we’ll look all over the place …’ And Angel walked like a princess in her new dress and a dancer en pointe in her sandals but the real truth was the size five sandals gave her blisters. Rounding a corner they came to a group of art students, at least Angel assumed that was what they were, being lectured in front of a Renoir by a gallery expert who was telling them what it all meant and what was in Renoir’s mind at the time. Angel stopped behind the group and wished she understood what the expert meant, who, in her opinion, was talking a lot of rubbish. For one thing, she didn’t look old enough to know what was in Renoir’s mind at that time. Angel had taken Barnaby’s hand again for a moment but disengaged herself and held her fingers to her lips. Inside her whole body the music and its colours had questions, unsure what to play, unsure what colour to wear in that place. ‘But how do you know what was in his mind?’ Angel interrupted and heads with their mouths open turned to see a child not right in the head. ‘How can anyone know what’s in a person’s mind?’ ‘Who are you? Hush up!’ said the expert. ‘I’ll call security.’ 94

‘I don’t care.’ But Angel moved to Barnaby and took his hand. ‘You have to be quiet here. This is a private class,’ the expert said in a more sympathetic tone. ‘Sorry.’ Angel held her tongue as long as she could. ‘But it’s a vase of flowers, for goodness sake! It’s a beautiful vase of flowers and he wanted to paint it – isn’t that enough? That’d be what was in his mind.’ Debussy was playing in her head then and she knew Debussy was never wrong. A smattering of students smiled and applauded Angel’s simple interpretation of beauty. ‘Please go away – now! This is an enormously valuable painting and on loan!’ said the expert but Barnaby made it all worse by numbering the colours and saying that, in his opinion, there was too much of some and not enough of others and it could have done with a bit more forty-four but on the whole, he quite liked it. The expert waved to a guard and Angel’s friend came at a smart pace, tapping his finger on the side of his head, rolling his eyes and grinning all at the same time. ‘Sorry,’ said Angel. ‘Won’t happen again.’ ‘You must learn not to make a sound in a gallery, child. The gentleman with you should know this,’ said the expert. ‘I’m not a child!’ said Angel through her teeth. ‘And how do you know Renoir painted that vase of flowers? It could have been one of his students.’ ‘O! The cheek – the audacity …’ ‘I’ll take care of it, Miss Benson – you go right along doing what you’re doing.’ And he led Angel and Barnaby Grange to another part of the gallery. The students, almost to the last one, heaved a sigh of disappointment. In another room of the great gallery was a wall of colour 95

and movement, framed in gold. It was like the enormous work that had made Angel cry on her first visit. She thought this painting even more magnificent. Barnaby quickly unfolded double pages of his notebook and Angel’s music and its colours adjusted to the mood of the moment. ‘That’s The Miracle of the Slave,’ said the guard from a discreet distance. He’d been asked to keep an eye on the unusual pair. ‘It’s by a bloke called Tintoretto, Italy, fifteen hundreds. You’ve got your cast of thousands in this one.’ While Angel, for a long time in teary silence, gazed hard enough to bore a hole through the painting and Barnaby used his pencil as though it was on skates, two of the art students from the Renoir lecture came to them. One of them went to Barnaby Grange. ‘We’re intrigued, sir, with your notebook. We wondered if you’d share your thoughts with us?’ Barnaby, Angel thought, did look like a gentleman of creative talents and she was proud when he held open the notebook for them. The pages, of course, were covered in numbers of squares and doubles and triples and calculated equations. ‘O, silly us,’ said a student. ‘We thought you’d sketched a painting.’ ‘I did,’ said Barnaby. In words.

On the way back to the boarding house Barnaby’s hand was not so dependent on Angel’s. He walked in a satisfied and confident way – head up and smiling. ‘Did you like the gallery, Barnaby?’ ‘Yes.’ A word. ‘Do you want to go again?’ 96

‘Yes!’ An emphatic word. ‘How about that Slave picture?’ ‘O!’ A word. ‘I have it all here. I will teach you.’ ‘Okay.’ They walked silently down Duffy Street to the boarding house in a gloom. The street was stony brown and grey, air the colour of hopelessness and a million miles from the smell of oils and watercolours. Almost dead, dry-as-bone hedges supported fences pocked by termites, footpaths needed repair and their kerbs were snapped in part, like sea biscuits. Even the gully seemed to have had its green covered in dust. Everything was still. There was no breeze at all. Nothing. ‘There is no colour here, Barnaby.’ ‘Yes. Different.’ In words. ‘Nine, seventeen and thirtythree … and I will work it out for you … different.’ ‘Okay.’ Angel was fairly sure that some of Barnaby’s numbers meant nothing at all but she was delighted to have found a friend in the terrible house. She couldn’t understand why he stayed there. Barnaby Grange did not seem to be short of money. In the meantime, he could teach her numbers, she could teach him music and they could share colours. ‘I’m hungry, Barnaby. I wonder what’s for dinner tonight.’ ‘Terrible squared, doubled and tripled. Not like Cookie’s.’ Barnaby remembering. ‘That bad?’ ‘Mutton neck and spuds,’ moaned someone as they entered the house. It didn’t matter who. ‘Very Pottsy. Not England.’ Barnaby remembering. ‘Where’ve you two been? And where did you get those clothes and sandals like all get out, Angel Martin? You were supposed to be on the wringer in the laundry before school. What have you been up to? Where did you get those clothes?’ 97

‘A friend gave them to me.’ ‘O, I see, it’s friends now is it? Is that what they call them now?’ ‘I don’t know what you mean, Missus Potts.’ ‘O, yes, you do! What have you been up to with me need­ ing lard and shin and now it’s too late.’ ‘I’ve been learning, Missus Potts, that’s all. Just learning. And so has Mister Grange, and I didn’t steal the clothes. A lady who used to know my mother gave them to me, and I’m sorry, Missus Potts, that I’m late for the chores.’ ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m at the end of my tether, what with Mister Canning in one of the morgue’s ice chests somewhere waiting for someone to claim him and pay and the police won’t wait forever – there’s a limit! And on top of that I do not know what to do with you. Start getting the table set for tea.’ ‘I’ll just change my clothes, Missus Potts. Be back in a jiffy. Have you got any sticking plaster?’ ‘What for?’ ‘I got a blister on my toe from the learning.’ ‘You got a what from what? O, for the sake of the gods, Angel, get on with it. You know where the first aid is.’ ‘Did you happen to see dear Mister Daisyfield today, Missus Potts?’ ‘No.’ ‘I didn’t think so,’ Angel said with her feline grin.

Before the next Sunday, the Bay Sunday, the aunts’ house and tram Sunday, Angel carefully cleaned her ‘going out dress’ and when Missus Potts was doing her mean shopping in the village, she ironed it. She oiled her sandals (this time size five-and-a-half ) and when the great Sunday arrived she was 98

ready – cleaned, scrubbed and dressed for the best day of her week. ‘Well, look at you!’ said the tram driver, sounding like the guard at the gallery. ‘What’s happened to you?’ ‘A friend bought me the clothes. The aunts haven’t seen them yet.’ ‘They’ll be surprised, for sure. You’ll have to get a better purse than that rag bag you carry.’ ‘No. I like it the way it is.’ Angel had decided never to wear lipstick again or flaunt her developments. She had decided she didn’t need to. Age, she supposed. ‘You’re a pretty little thing – one day you’re going to knock them dead,’ said the driver. ‘I’m glad you don’t wear that red goo all over your face anymore – better without it.’ Angel ignored curious glances from others and looked, as she always did, to the right of her seat, hoping to see the heart and the arrow and B and K, but she never saw them again. ‘There used to be a carving on the seat next to one I once sat on – B and K, a heart and an arrow. They loved each other. Does anyone know what happened to them?’ she asked the passengers. But there was silence from some and newspapers rattled in the hands of others and windows were slid up or down. ‘Don’t worry, love. They just don’t understand.’ ‘I just hope they’re not dead.’ ‘No, love, they won’t be dead, B and K. They’ll be going to dances and having a great time.’ ‘That’s no way to talk to a child!’ a woman shouted. She had a stinking cabbage in her bag. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but better than no talk at all.’ Angel was silent for a while. The tram was not. It hurtled like a drum roll and swayed over its rails on the downhill 99

run before the climb through the high eastern suburbs to the sandstone cliffs, the ocean and the Bay. There was an end-ofsummer humidity in the air and the sky was clouded with it. As they neared the top of the cliffs she could see that Mariana, to the right of the tram, looked grey and sluggish with not a ship in sight. And to the left, beyond the park, dinghies and sail boats with not a sail in sight see-sawed up and down on their play waves and pointed east. It was a doldrums Sunday and gulls, without a breeze beneath their wings, hopped like landlubbers from one rubbish tin to another and picked their way through chips and bait. Angel tried to ignore the gloom and hummed whatever was in her head and chuckled to herself. After all, it was Sunday and nothing could spoil that. At the terminus the driver said goodbye to Angel and wished her a happy day with her aunts. ‘I’m glad you’ve made friends, love – mind how you go.’ ‘But I have another friend, too,’ Angel said to the driver but loud enough for anyone else to hear. ‘He’s from England and he’s a genius. He sees everything in numbers. One day I’ll bring him to the aunts’ house. I know they’ll like him – Elsa, anyway.’ ‘Off you go, then.’ And when the last passenger had gone, the driver rolled a cigarette, moved to a front seat and pulled his cap down over his face. Angel was anxious to show the baby shop lady the new Angel who, apart from the sticking plaster over her toes, looked very smart, but another woman told her the lady she’d come to see was in bed with the ’flu and asked if she could help Angel with a purchase. Just the thought of being seen as a potential buyer was almost too much of a pleasure and Angel laughed and clapped her hands. 100

‘I’m sorry my friend is sick,’ she said. ‘Could you tell her Angel Martin called and could you tell her that she looked very nice but had to wear the five-and-a-half sandals on account of the blisters.’ ‘I’ll do that,’ said the woman and watched Angel as she ran from the shop and across the park towards Brooklyn Street. ‘A strange one, that girl.’

Angel smiled at the prospect of surprise when she arrived at the aunts’ house in her new clothes. She’d washed and ironed and polished everything within an inch of her wardrobe’s life. The sandals, five-and-a-half, were more comfortable, if not a little loose. Outside the aunts’ house the gate was closed but not locked. Angel had begun to think of the gate, its locks, latches, openings and closures, as sorts of signals for what she might expect inside. She suspected Aunt Elsa was the gatekeeper. Locked, trouble. Opened a crack, take care. Closed tight on its latch but not locked? Angel had not experienced this one and opened the gate onto the drive with great care. The house, the shrubs and their borders were as still as the humid air that hung like a blanket all over the Bay. There was not a note of music to be heard from ‘up’ and the only sound from ‘down’ was a rattling and frequent cough. Angel guessed that at least Elsa was in the house. She crept through the laundry and tip-toed through the hall, towards the waterfront where she found Elsa cleaning the brass taps over the kitchen sink. ‘What are you doing here again?’ Elsa did not look well. Her lips were cracked and dry and her face had a thin, papery look. ‘Clara’s not here.’ ‘That doesn’t matter.’ 101

‘Then why did you come?’ ‘It’s Sunday.’ ‘I wouldn’t know … one … day from the … next,’ Elsa managed between coughs. ‘You’re wearing new clothes – where did that lot come from?’ ‘A friend gave them to me.’ ‘I don’t want to … know.’ ‘Do you like my new clothes, Elsa?’ ‘Yes … yes, little girl … I like them.’ ‘I’m not little, Elsa. If you lie down and rest I’ll make you some tea.’ ‘I can make it myself.’ ‘I don’t think you’re very well, Aunt Elsa.’ ‘I’m as well as I’ll ever be.’ ‘Where’s Clara?’ ‘Went out … said she couldn’t stand the coughing … but I can’t help it.’ Angel thought it strange for Elsa to be polishing taps over a sink full of dishes to be washed and more dishes than Angel thought necessary for two aunts – unless of course there’d been more people in the house since her last visit. Angel hoped it had not been Jessie or any of her pack hunting for money. ‘It’s piled up … the dishes. I couldn’t get to them.’ ‘I’ll do the dishes, Elsa. I’ll put the kettle on and I’ll do the dishes.’ ‘You’ll get your dress dirty—’ ‘I can wash it.’ And Elsa turned suddenly and almost fell. Angel remem­ bered the terrible time the symphony in her head made her ill. Nobody should have to go through that, Angel whispered to Angel. ‘Do you hear anything in your head, Elsa?’ It was just a thought. 102

‘What are you … talking about?’ After all the Sundays in the aunts’ house, Angel had only gradually become aware of the way Elsa was treated. ‘Married to Clara’s brother dying of the drink but it was the domestic in me that made it worse,’ Elsa had once confided to Angel. The dishes in the sink were at least a last-Sunday old. Squashed peas, gravy stuck like glue, prawn heads, spat-out bones and gristle. The washing up looked a bit like a Missus Potts’s feast and it made Angel laugh. She tied a tea towel around her waist and stood on a butter box to make the job easier. ‘I would like some hot tea, Angel, with honey in it.’ And Elsa, with the weakest smile, submitted to kindness and went to her bed, wheezing through thick breath. Angel’s tea and honey at least eased her cough for a while. ‘Where did Clara go?’ ‘Who knows.’ ‘Was she wearing her moon hat?’ ‘She never goes outside without it.’ ‘I wish I knew why Clara is always so miserable. How can she be with all her music?’ Elsa was quiet for a moment. ‘One day – one day,’ she said, ‘I might take you to the park. You like stories, don’t you?’ ‘O, yes,’ said Angel Martin.

103

Clara

‘She was very beautiful. Clara was beautiful and musical and she could dance – O, how she could dance – so talented. Sometimes I would watch her dance; in secret, you understand. She didn’t like to be watched but I swear her toes never touched the floor.’ It was two Sundays since Elsa had been alone in the aunts’ house with her cough and the piled dishes and the polished taps and tea with honey. Elsa had packed sandwiches in a paper bag and she and Angel sat on a park seat behind a fig tree. She wore her moon hat as Clara did when they were out of doors but because of the very small size of Elsa’s head it flopped down to her brows. The eleven o’clock sun picked its way through the leaves of the giant fig tree and splintered the straw here and there with tiny lights so that Angel thought Elsa looked very nice and she said so. ‘I feel much better, now.’ And she took Angel’s hand and patted it and Angel, who had not been touched in that way 104

since her mother, was forced to dam her tears. She had to. She couldn’t look into Elsa’s eyes. ‘Clara wanted to know why you and I went off together –  she was suspicious.’ ‘What did you tell her, Aunt Elsa?’ ‘I told her I was too weak to walk alone and that you should make yourself useful while you’re here eating us out of house and home!’ And Elsa laughed at having the cheek and the courage to mimic her sister-in-law, down-at-the-mouth and grim everywhere else. ‘I love you, Aunt Elsa.’ Angel laughed too. ‘When you get really old I will look after you.’ ‘Jessie said we’ll have to go into a home when she sells up!’ ‘I won’t let her. Brooklyn Street is your home.’ ‘What could you possibly do? Your grandfather left everything to her and her family. Now he’s dead and what can we do?’ ‘So, I’ll tell you what I think. I think that Jessie killed him, Aunt Elsa. Jessie killed the old man with a stroke and not my mother or my father or the bike club – that’s what I think – that Jessie and her lot! The old cow!’ ‘Angel!’ And Aunt Elsa adjusted her moon hat to an angle that was shadowed and all the tiny lights stopped. ‘You’re a child. You mustn’t say such things.’ ‘I’m not a child and I never have been. And I’ll tell that Jessie if I have to. Aunt Elsa, she slapped you!’ ‘It was an accident.’ ‘It was not – I saw what happened.’ Not far from where they sat, along the beach walk, was a white shed at the end of a jetty with small yachts all around it. Young men in white shirts or no shirts at all fussed with 105

the yachts, the timber, the brass – the sails were rolled and hidden … ‘Look,’ said Elsa, pointing. ‘Your father used to belong to that club. Eighteen-footers – they used to race all the time before the Japanese. That’s where he met your mother. She was sitting on the beach, watching. Your mother told me that he ran to her, drew a heart in the sand with an arrow through it, asked what her name was and then he said he wanted her to be his girlfriend. Romantic, don’t you think, Angel?’ Angel glanced at the boatshed and immediately thought of B and K carved into the tram seat and despite her dreams she knew then that the tram seat’s heart and arrow would not have worked out well, either. She tried not to think of her mother and father and she tried not to think of B and K. ‘You were going to tell me about Clara.’ ‘Yes, I expect it’s getting late.’ She glanced at her wrist but there was no watch. ‘Well, where were we?’ ‘Her dancing.’ ‘Clara was very tall when she was young. She was too tall to join a company, or so they said. She was heartbroken, but after a while she decided she would teach. Clara lived downstairs in those days. She painted a room black – even the floorboards, I don’t know why. Then she had a barre installed – do you know what that is, Angel?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘And she advertised locally for students. Children who wanted to be dancers. After a while Clara had to turn people away. Her ballet school was very popular and that was the start of it all.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘There was a man. He brought his little girl to class and he told Clara his wife had just died of TB and couldn’t she just 106

fit his daughter into the class. I think she was smitten there and then. Clara told me how sorry she was for the girl’s father and she’d fit her in somehow. He brought his daughter every Tuesday and one day he asked Clara if she would go out with him. Well, we were both a lot younger then and I hadn’t been long married but I knew she was head-over-heels with this man. He was good-looking, fair-haired like her father and I don’t think she’d ever been out with a man before. I can’t remember his name. I remember the little girl’s name was Jessica and Clara fussed around her as if the girl was her own. She was about eight, I think.’ ‘Try to remember the man’s name, Elsa. If you can remember Jessica then you must remember her dad’s name. I could listen to stories all day. It’s like being at the pictures.’ ‘David – it was David. There. It was David and he’d told Clara he was going to marry her. He wanted her to move in to a little flat in the city but I think she was too scared to move away from home.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Everything happened! One day at the Bay shops she had Jessica with her and a woman came up to them and said to the girl, “Hello, Jilly” and Clara said she was wrong and her name was Jessica and the woman said, “This is Jilly Barton – they live opposite the lighthouse. I know the Bartons. She’s a bit slow – nice of you to look after her – How are you, Jilly? Not at school today?” And the child said, “Mister Levi takes me to the lady’s place for dancing. I like dancing.” Poor, poor Clara. He broke her heart.’ ‘What did she do?’ ‘She asked the woman if she knew who Mister Levi was. And Jessica – or Jilly or whoever she was – called the man Uncle David. Jessica went to a special school and this Uncle 107

David convinced them to let him borrow the child for a few hours every week for dancing lessons. This David Levi gave a Glebe address and poor Clara, as sick as she was by then, went to the address where she found out David Levi was David Hardy and lived four doors down with his sister, his wife and three children. I thought it was really brave of her to do that. Clara was distraught and she became very ill. She had a sort of breakdown and she got worse because she was afraid to tell her father. I told her she should report that man to the police but by then she’d just locked herself in her room to grieve. All the dancing classes had to be cancelled and things got so bad with Clara that I went to the police myself.’ ‘O, Elsa.’ ‘It turned out that David Levi – Hardy – or whoever he really was, had wives all over the place. The police said he was the worst bigamist in Sydney. Do you know what a bigamist is, Angel?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘It’s someone who’s already married and marries other women. He had a way with him and women fell for him, hook, line and sinker. That’s what happened to Clara. She’s hated men ever since and she’s always hated children – except your father. He was the baby of the family and I think she saw him as the only decent little male alive. Now do you understand, Angel?’ ‘But why does Clara hate me, Aunt Elsa?’ ‘Because you’re a child, I suppose. There’s a reason …’ ‘What? What have I done?’ ‘Nothing – nothing! There’s another reason and – well, I don’t know if I should be telling you …’ ‘Please, Elsa.’ ‘That terrible man, well, Clara was pregnant with his 108

baby … I don’t know why I’m telling a child such things – you won’t understand …’ ‘O, but I do, Elsa. I know about having babies. But where is it?’ ‘She – well, Clara had to be rid of it – before it was born. There! What sort of a person am I, telling such things to a child … How can you possibly understand?’ ‘I think I do. There was a woman in the boarding house, a casual. She had to go to the sanitarium because her baby died inside her … Was it like that?’ ‘Something like that, Angel. So maybe you can understand why Clara doesn’t like children.’ ‘Yes, I think so. O, poor Clara. And poor you, Aunt Elsa.’ ‘I do my best but she’s terribly hard to live with. Well, anyway, there you have it. That’s the story of Clara and you want to watch yourself when you get older.’ ‘I’m experienced, Aunt Elsa, let me tell you. I know how to look after myself.’ Angel was experienced in her way but when the story of Clara was explained she knew there must be a hundred more experiences and lives to understand. Another death. Like all the different deaths she’d known, not one like another as there were lives not one like another. But there was an understanding. Clara as bitter as the hatred and acid in her blood corroding her being in every way possible. And Elsa knowing her place at the ladder’s bottom rung ready to catch others when they fell. Angel was reminded of Clara’s indifference to the drowning man and for a moment wondered if she would have reacted the same way if it had been Mister Canning floating past the rocks in his ballooning cardigan – or Mister Daisyfield waving his long, bony fingers. ‘But Aunt Elsa, you’re all right, aren’t you?’ 109

‘I’m farm-bred, Angel, I’ve got to be all right. But I tell you, I’m getting tired now – old and tired. I’ve been through some bad times. It doesn’t seem that long ago I was getting the eggs in for breakfast and murdering chooks for the pot. I churned butter in a wooden tub and drank milk out of a cow’s teat. You could have grown a crop on me in the rain, I was so country, and then I was out chasing locusts when the sun burned down. I’m a domestic servant who knows her place, Angel, tough as hide. I take the little bit of good with the bad, I have to …’ ‘You’re better than any one of them in Brooklyn Street, Elsa.’ ‘I know Clara needs me but there’s not much more. There’s no love in that house. No wonder the paint’s cracking off.’ ‘I love you, Aunt Elsa.’ Elsa reached for Angel’s hand again and drew closer to her. ‘I know you do. It’s nice to have a friend, even one that’s not right in the head.’ And she laughed. ‘I’m getting better. There’s a man, Barnaby Grange, in the boarding house. He’s from England and he’s going to teach me the numbers of colours and I’m going to teach him all about the music inside me.’ ‘O, Angel! Good God!’ ‘It’s true. We went to the art gallery in town and he sketched a whole painting, as big as a wall, all in numbers. They thought he was mad but I think he’s a genius.’ ‘O, Angel … We’d better get going. You’ll miss your tram. And don’t tell anyone about Clara. All the things I told you have to be our secret.’ ‘I’d do anything for you, Aunt Elsa.’

110

Mariana

As soon as Angel reached the boarding house at the bottom of Duffy Street she ran to her room and changed her clothes. She slid the five-and-a-half sandals under the bed, put on her old dress and hung the good one to air, then carefully folded it. Before she laid it in her small cupboard she pressed it to her face and breathed the smell of the Bay and its park, a fig tree, a salted air, but most of all the smell of Elsa. She put the back of the hand that Elsa had touched to her cheek, and for that moment there was peace. Even the music inside her was quiet – no more than strings and a flute floating to her in a dream. Inside the door of Angel’s cupboard was a collection of family pictures cut from newspapers and magazines. Angel had sketched small portraits of herself and had pasted the sketches in the centre of each family group. The cupboard door was her secret. The families were her secret families. She did not have a picture of Elsa or Clara but made a space for them for 111

the future. In the meantime, a small sketch of Angel Martin was pasted there, ready. When Elsa and Clara were truly her family, Angel would be ready.

‘Angel! Where are you?’ ‘I’m here. I’m in my room,’ Angel shouted from her broom cupboard. ‘You’re late! Get down here and help with the table for tea – and there’s an extra tonight.’ When Angel arrived downstairs she asked, ‘Who’s the extra, Missus Potts?’ Angel turned the table sheet over but found the stains worse on the other side. ‘Is there a clean sheet?’ ‘No, it got wet on the line. Get a chair from the kitchen and get the chops out of the ice chest and one potato each and there’s peas I had to shell myself, you not being here.’ ‘It’s Sunday.’ ‘And aren’t you the lucky one. It’s never a Sunday for me.’ Angel smiled a little and thought of Elsa and poor Clara and for that matter, B and K, carved into the tram seat – she often thought about them. She put pepper and salt shakers over the worst of the egg yolks. ‘Do you want me to get some mint from under the tap? I can make mint sauce.’ ‘O, la-de-da, look who’s talking luxuries. No, we serve what the war allows. People are suffering enough without mint sauce.’ ‘Mint sauce is free if you grow it. Who’s the extra, Missus Potts? You didn’t say.’ ‘Her name’s Winifred Varnham. She’s here from the country while her sister has treatment in the sanitarium. Tall. 112

Early fifties. Wears her hair in a bun on top with a chopstick through it like the Japanese. She sounds like an educated lady so you watch yourself, girl.’ Tea (though Barnaby Grange whispered in words to Angel that his mummy would have called it ‘high tea’) was at six-thirty sharp, and on the table with the technicolour sheet sat the big enamel teapot, cups and saucers – chipped – bread on a board with a saw to cut it, two jars of berry jam short of extra sugar coupons, and an assortment of plates, each with a mutton chop, a devilled kidney, a potato and a small pile of little round pea bullets turned grey. And all of it a sore sight for eyes. Angel could see that the colours were all wrong for the plates and her music sadly adjusted itself to them. The permanents and the casuals wandered in and sat in a boredom that had lost its appetite. Slowly, they chose their usual chairs. ‘My chop’s very small,’ said a brave casual. ‘There’s a war on in case you haven’t noticed. We have to take what we can get. Sacrifices – that’s what it’s all about – sacrifices.’ ‘It’s a lot to pay for a sacrificed chop!’ ‘And mine’s cold!’ declared a late-comer. ‘Late’s not my fault, Mister Joseph!’ said Missus Potts, sweet as a blade. At exactly six forty-five, a tall lady dressed in a purple robe, grey hair in a pagoda bun with a chopstick through it and a red scarf around her shoulders that almost touched the floor, strode into the dining room. She carried two billy cans – one in each hand. Everyone was quiet, even Missus Potts, and silently watched. The woman, who Angel thought must have been the new casual, Winifred Varnham, sat without a word in a vacant chair, 113

scraped the chop, the kidney and its potato and pea bullets onto her bread and butter plate and emptied the contents of the billy cans onto her dinner plate. There was a sort of curry in one can and rice in the other and Missus Potts’s boarders looked on with their mouths gaping in disbelief (except for Mister Joseph, whose lower jaw streamed dribble of Niagara proportions). The casual with the small chop grabbed the woman’s discards. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Miss Varnham? Brought-ins not allowed here!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Black market! And you never know what’s in it.’ ‘Missus Potts,’ the Lady replied, ‘I am not sure how long I will be with you but if you expect me to eat anything resembling what you have served tonight you will have to review your “no brought-ins” rule at the earliest possible time.’ The Lady looked around the table and smiled. ‘Good evening. My name is Winifred Varnham. Miss. How do you do?’ Nods all round and noses twitching. ‘All the better for the smells from those pots,’ said Mister Joseph, still salivating. ‘You wouldn’t be thinking of offering your hand in marriage, no questions asked?’ ‘No! I certainly would not!’ ‘Then tell us what’s in those cans and give me a bit of the sauce for this old chop and I’ll die happy.’ ‘Ungrateful man! And me doing my best in a war.’ Not well said, thought Angel. Missus Potts launched her words like torpedos. ‘O, do be quiet, Missus Potts. I’ll be paying you well. This is a fruit and sausage curry and rice – best I could do at short notice. The bus to the train ran over a chicken so there might have been chicken but it was too late to pluck.’ 114

Angel was fascinated. And so, it seemed, from his expression, was Barnaby Grange. Winifred Varnham was music and colour and numbers all wrapped in purple and red. Around the table was a mouth-watering silence and all eyes – all fourteen of them – moved in a glaze from mutton and spuds to curry and rice as though they were having a dream. And Missus Potts? Seeing the strict order of things disturbed by an aroma – with a foreign smell to it – left the table with a plate piled with leftovers never touched and went to the kitchen where, it was thought, she would pull herself together and remind herself that she was, after all, the owner of the establishment and a cut above them all! What, she wondered, was wrong with the curried sausages she’d made three weeks earlier? It was Winifred Varnham who broke the silence. She spoke to Angel. ‘What are you doing here, child?’ ‘I’m an orphan – and I’m not a child.’ ‘So, Missus Potts is not related? I didn’t think so. There’s no resemblance at all. You’re very thin. Pass your plate.’ ‘O, yes, please.’ And Winifred scraped a little of her curry and rice onto it. There was hope in the eyes of the diners but the billy cans were empty. ‘It’s deeeelicious,’ said Angel. ‘There’s apple and raisins?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And sausage and sauce and something crunchy.’ ‘Nuts,’ said Winifred. ‘What do you do? What is your name?’ ‘Angel.’ For some reason she left the Martin to rest in peace. ‘I go to the local school—’ ‘When she feels like it!’ Missus Potts emerged from the kitchen having regained, she thought, a little authority by not 115

wearing her apron and running a wet comb through her hair. ‘Not a week goes by without the school knocking at the door!’ ‘I don’t learn anything at school. I learn on Sundays when I ride in the trams to the aunts’ house, and some other days in the art gallery, and from my books and there’s always music playing inside me.’ Angel saw Barnaby Grange lift his head for a moment from his notebook and nod. ‘And that man there’s Mister Grange – he teaches me numbers and I teach him my music and we talk about colours and one day I discovered Mariana and—’ ‘What is Mariana?’ ‘The ocean.’ Angel, suddenly wound up like a top, spinning words at great speed. ‘I think the ocean is a nation not like ours and I named it Mariana.’ ‘After the trench?’ ‘So, you know about it, too – you don’t think I’m mad? I’ve read all about it. Mister Grange hasn’t been there yet but he will be able to do the measurements.’ Angel felt comfortable talking to Winifred Varnham. She felt she could tell the woman anything and would not be thought a fool. ‘You can come too, if you want. Do you like trams?’ ‘Excellent transport, trams! I would like to see Mariana very much indeed, Angel, and I would be honoured to have Mister Grange accompany us – excellent! I’m already quite excited by it all. Are you not proud, Missus Potts, to have a budding genius in your house?’ ‘Meaning no disrespect to you, Miss Varnham, she might be a genius to you but she’s mad as a cut snake to me and no end of trouble. I took her in because of her mother, whose name was Martin in case you’re wondering, and that’s the start and end to it. In the same sanitarium, her mother was, and how’s your sister? Is she getting any worse?’ Potts asked hopefully. 116

‘My sister thinks her spine is broken but it is not and she thinks she cannot walk but of course she can, and that is why she is in the sanitarium in the care of excellent people who are trying to convince her otherwise.’ ‘The girl’s mother died in that place. I was there.’ In a hiss of a whisper that Angel heard perfectly well. ‘O, dear, I am so sorry to hear that. Do you think we could have a fresh pot of tea, Missus Potts?’ ‘I’ll see what I’ve got left. Tea doesn’t grow on trees, you know. There’s a war on! It’ll be extra.’ ‘Thank you, Missus Potts,’ said Winifred with a wave of her hand and fingers that held an exhibition of silver rings. ‘And do try not to touch the cold sore on your lip. A scratch will only make it worse.’ ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s a mozzie bite!’ ‘Of course it is, Missus Potts – but the same advice applies.’ On the front of Missus Potts’s dress, a large size on account of her bosoms, was an outline and a patch of cleanliness where the ever-present apron and its bib had been. Angel was not sure if the Potts apron, a gallery of stains old and new, was worse than the eggy sheet on the table but all of a sudden she felt shame as though the whole thing was her fault. The other diners, having picked at their scraps, began to move to their rooms slow as dairy cows – all except Barnaby Grange who’d been asked to stay a while. Winifred Varnham, it seemed, was most intrigued and not once but three times stimulated her scalp under the bun with her chopstick. Barnaby stayed in his place, being somewhat intrigued himself, but said nothing in words and concentrated on the figures in his notebook while Winifred Varnham chatted and Angel listened. 117

‘I was never able to grasp the beauty of numbers, Mister Grange. What you have in your notebook are works of art.’ ‘He’s a genius,’ said Angel. ‘I have tried,’ said Winifred. ‘I do so love the look of numbers and their symbols – mathematics. I tried, and please don’t laugh, Mister Grange, but I once tried to work a triangular Pythagorean triplet in relation to something I was doing at the time – I must have seen it in a book. But beyond enjoying the beautiful scribble of it all the whole thing was a mystery – in the end it meant nothing at all.’ Barnaby Grange, however, did laugh in his way. It was as though Winifred had said she’d found it difficult to add two plus two. ‘O, Miss Varnham, I’m sure you could do anything you liked – you’re so grand. You look like a duchess,’ said Angel. ‘Well, of course I’m nothing of the kind but thank you, dear Angel. Probably the purple – I do rather like to splash up a bit.’ ‘Will you teach me how to “splash up”? I might not be poor forever. We could teach each other all the things we know.’ ‘Well, Angel Martin, that is a most delightful thought but I think it must be time for your bed.’ ‘O, Miss Varnham, I could stay here with you forever.’ ‘No she can’t!’ Missus Potts, appearing at the door with her pinny back on and a worm of cream on her lip. ‘She’s got things to do before she’s off.’ ‘I have to help with the dishes and clearing up,’ said Angel. ‘Sometimes I get something for it.’ ‘I simply wouldn’t know what to pay a genius, Angel, but I imagine Missus Potts is very fair,’ Winifred Varnham said with a smile as narrow as her chopstick. ‘No, it’s not. I mean not enough, really,’ said Angel. 118

‘She gets bed and food for nothing at all, Miss Varnham, and if she gets a bit here and there for extra help it’s enough for what she does. And with respect, Miss Varnham, that’s none of the boarders’ business and if you don’t mind me saying so I don’t need a genius to wash dishes.’ ‘Well, then, I shall go to my room and read and perhaps Mister Grange will retire to his room and create more works of art. I hope to see you in the morning.’ And she swept from the room all purple and red and silver and chopstick, leaving behind her a void drained of everything but the colour of stains.

Later, on the way to the stairs that led to Angel’s room Barnaby Grange beckoned her to his door. He showed her three pages of his notebook crowded to the edges with numbers of all sizes and arrangements. ‘What is that, Mister Grange? What does it all mean?’ ‘That,’ Barnaby said in words, ‘is Winifred Varnham.’ And he looked shyly to one side but proud as Punch. ‘I don’t understand it, Barnaby, but I think you’re just the cleverest person I know.’ And they wished each other goodnight. Angel grinned in her way down the hall to the room she called her broom cupboard. She thought of Elsa and the touch of skin against skin that Angel was sure must be close to love – and she thought of Clara and trams, and how excited Winifred Varnham and Barnaby Grange would be when they met the sea nation, Mariana, and she ran into her room and jumped into bed to dream the whole day all over again.

On a day that was not a Sunday, three curious travellers set off to be introduced to Mariana. 119

‘And what arrangements have you made with your school, Angel?’ asked Winifred Varnham, who wore a full-length gown of smoky green, a purple scarf, a black chopstick in her bun and rings and baubles all over the rest of her. Barnaby Grange, in contrast, was all beige and paper-pale as an Englishman of questionable genetic breeding might be. He had taken with him a larger-than-normal notebook and a pocket of change. Angel, of course, wore her going out dress, which was showing, after so many washes, wear and tear and faded colours. ‘Mister Daisyfield doesn’t care when I take a day. He complains to Missus Potts but he doesn’t say much after what he did.’ ‘What, my dear girl, was that?’ Angel told Winifred – Barnaby already knew. ‘Mister Daisyfield is school headmaster,’ whispered Barnaby, in words. Barnaby seemed to be as comfortable in the company of Winifred Varnham as Angel. Winifred was reminded of her first impression of a certain steeliness behind the beauty of Angel’s eyes, which, in her opinion, were as sharp as weapons. She had seen ‘Take care’ eyes and ‘Damned if you do’ eyes and Mister Daisyfield must not have looked into them in the dull light. She was reluctant to make too much of the incident. ‘O?’ said Winifred. ‘Perhaps when Mister Daisyfield was made headmaster his brains slipped to the wrong end – it’s not uncommon in males. Of course, not for a moment would one think you, Barnaby Grange – a fine genius and gentleman, as I have come to regard you – foolish enough to be employed as a local school headmaster.’ Angel was in love with this brilliant star of a woman – she would have done anything for her. ~ 120

In the tram to the Bay, Angel arranged the seating so that Winifred had the window all to herself. Barnaby began to make notes in his book. As soon as they sat down she was aware that other passengers were trying not to stare. One even put his hat over his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Angel was used to it but was anxious that Winifred and Barnaby might be offended. She was pleased that of all the tram drivers she had travelled with to the Bay, their tram driver was one who knew her. ‘Who have we got here?’ Asking the question by raising his brows while watching the road ahead, ding ding. ‘These are my friends, Miss Varnham and Mister Grange – aren’t they beautiful? I think I have four friends now.’ Angel, thinking of Elsa. ‘Mister Grange is a genius and teaches me and I love Miss Varnham for everything she is.’ ‘Nice to have friends.’ Ding ding. ‘Off to the Bay? Your aunts?’ ‘It’s not Sunday – Sunday is aunts’ day. You should know that by now.’ ‘Sorry.’ ‘We’ll get off at the high stop at the lighthouse. I’m going to show them Mariana.’ ‘What’s Mariana?’ ‘It’s what I’ve called the sea nation, the ocean, and I’m going to explain it to them.’ ‘Take care, girl. Don’t let that mind of yours run too far away from the rest of us.’ Near the lighthouse, the highest point for the trams, the three stepped off the running board and walked across the grass to a seat overlooking the ocean. ‘Well, there’s Mariana. What do you think? It’s got its own climate and everything.’ 121

‘Heavens, Angel! I feel I’m seeing it all for the first time. The Mariana Trench,’ said Winifred Varnham, ‘I believe, is seven miles straight down – it is hard to imagine such a depth. Of course, I have been to this place and seen the ocean and the Bay from the other side, but not in the way I see it now, Angel. You have made it all so magical. O, my goodness, it’s so beautiful here – so high. I can see the ocean as Mariana quite clearly now with its sandstone borders. It is so vast. On and on to the edge of the world. No little housetops and winding lanes out there – no hedges and little churches like that one down there, near the Bay, with its spire like the top of a teapot …’ ‘You can’t see what’s there. It’s all deep down.’ ‘When one thinks about it, Angel, your Mariana could be the stuff of nightmares. I hope it’s a friendly place?’ ‘I dreamed about it one night. It was very dark. It’s hard to see in your mind what’s underneath the water. Like the trench and—’ ‘But what about the islands? Have you considered why they are there? I think there must be many of them.’ ‘Stepping stones, that’s what I think they are. Stepping stones and somewhere for birds to rest and seals and turtles to have their babies.’ Angel pointed, not in the least unsure of herself. ‘See, they’d have to have something for the birds and the turtles. I don’t know how many islands—’ ‘Twenty thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight – ​ approximately seven thousand, nine hundred smaller and uninhabited.’ Barnaby Grange held up a chart he’d dashed off. ‘But there are more.’ He numbered on. ‘Work to be done.’ In words. ‘He’d be right. He knows everything,’ said Angel. ‘And if one were to tour Mariana, Angel, how would one 122

know where everything is? The forests, canyons, the shallows and depths?’ ‘The colour of the water changes – lighter for shallows and reefs, a sort of brown over the kelp forests and dark over canyons. And near the trench it would be black as ink.’ Angel was lost in her imagination and music and colours. ‘Trench seven miles, six thousand, one hundred and sixty fathoms, and …’ Barnaby Grange had not put so many words to his numbers for a very long time. ‘Thank you, Mister Grange. Let us be silent and admire the extraordinary view from this point … O, look, there’s a ship on Mariana. Do ships have to have permission, Angel? Is there a charge?’ ‘That’s a Navy ship. Navy ships don’t have to pay, but one day tourists will have to pay.’ And Angel laughed in her way, so proud that her friends did not treat her as a fool. ‘Everyone will have to pay to go to Mariana – just like other nations but I think the white horse races will be free.’ ‘O, my darling girl,’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘What a beautiful mind you have. You really must write it all down one day. Are we to visit your aunts now? Shall we walk down to the village and have a bite to eat and visit your aunts? Do they know about Mariana?’ ‘No, only you and Mister Grange.’ Barnaby Grange was quietly calculating a portrait of the little church and appeared not to have heard a word. ‘They wouldn’t understand – my aunts think I’m not right in the head.’ ‘Then we must tell them that you are nothing of the kind. We’ll have a bite to eat and visit.’ ‘We can’t.’ ‘Why, Angel?’ ‘It’s not Sunday.’ 123

‘O, I see. Well, then,’ said the duchess from a height. ‘We’ll take off our shoes and simply stroll in the park and along the harbour beach and look for shells and feed the gulls with our crusts. Come along, Barnaby, tuck your book away for a moment.’ Angel felt very grand walking across the park and along the harbourside sand with Barnaby Grange and Winifred Varnham. She enjoyed the attention they were drawing – foxy eyes sliding their way, people standing and stretching their necks for a better view, a battalion of gulls. Even three curious dogs followed them. It was lovely … ‘This is so lovely,’ said Angel. She did not tell them about the baby shop lady or her mother knitting in what was their shopfront home, Bon Ami. Just for that one wonderful day she did not want them to know her painful beginnings, being sick and hungry and very unsure, helping her mother with her pills, her book with its pages stuck together with tears and no one caring or wanting her. No, on that one wonderful day she enjoyed every moment of the stroll along the Bay with a duchess and Barnaby Grange. She wished she had a moon hat and was wearing purple.

124

The aunts' house

The shop on the corner of Brooklyn Street with its old bell over the ruined flyscreen door had begun to sell ice-cream cones and Angel had just enough to buy a small McNiven’s scoop, lime-flavoured and coloured green by a substance unknown to the fruit. She bit off the cone point at the bottom and sucked like a bubby at a bottle. It was a Bay Sunday, fine and warm with a cake-icing sky of blue, streaked with high clouds going the wrong way and she strolled and sucked ice cream in an unusually peaceful mood on her way to the aunts’ house. With one hand on the gate she held her head up to suck the last of the drips and threw the cone into the gutter and only then did Angel realise the gate was locked. The gate had not been locked for a very long time for, according to Barnaby Grange’s calculations, Angel was past her eleventh year and for a very long time she had not had to climb over anything at all. She could hardly remember having to do that or sneak through the laundry door or the bathroom window. It would 125

not have been Elsa who’d locked the gate, or even Aunt Clara, who had recently invited her to look through her ballet books thereby forming a crack of friendship. No, it would have been a stranger going in or coming out not knowing. Angel, wearing a skirt the colour of gully moss she had found in a Red Cross shop, her old yellow top and a moon hat she had made from gully vines, leaves and fern, hesitated to climb the curls and twists of metal rusted now and broken in parts with age. She thought she could hear the faintest music from ‘up’. Someone must be home, Angel whispered to Angel. ‘Man and a woman.’ The voice belonged to the old octopus fisher with his bucket, sneaking up behind her on his bare pads like a cat. ‘Skinny him, with a beak, she telling him what to do, half his size. Carried something heavy under a sheet, loaded it into a truck and took off. Want a leg up?’ Angel tried to be calm. She tried to be ‘right in the head’ for thinking clearly. ‘What was under the sheet?’ ‘Can’t rightly say. Don’t know.’ Angel peeped into the bucket for the thrill and pins and needles the old man’s catch gave her but the bucket was empty. ‘There’s nothing there.’ ‘Bucket’s not empty so stick your nose out of it – there’s star fish and a crab for the cat.’ ‘Where’s the octopus?’ ‘Stuck under a rock – stuck in a rock – how do I know? Couldn’t reach it – can’t get down there anymore.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Hips. Do you want a leg up or not?’ ‘Yes please.’ And over the gate she climbed to the side that touched the stone wall, but with care because of the skirt and her moon hat. On the other side she thanked the old man with his hips 126

and for a moment watched him waddle down Brooklyn Street as though he’d just got off a fat horse. Even from the back of him she could see a man angry and frustrated with his age, his hips and no octopus. No matter what clothes Angel wore on her visits to the Bay it was always bare feet. It was necessary. It was for the memory of that place. That day the pebbles of the driveway from the gate to the house gave a sombre feel to her soles – not quite right. For a reason she could not possibly have explained, she trod carefully. There was an atmosphere around her that was heavy. She felt it, she felt as though she was wrapped in it. There was never a front door to the aunts’ house and Angel had only used the laundry door or, when she was even younger, the ‘down’ bathroom window. But she knew there was another door on the west side and on that strange day she followed an instinct and, with no more weight than a sea mist, crept over pebbles undisturbed by her and found the west door opened a little. The west door led to a passage and to the stairway to ‘up’ and to Elsa’s ‘down’. She pushed the door open further and had no idea why she was suddenly so nervous. ‘Hello … It’s me … It’s Sunday …’ No human voice answered, just the faint strains of music and fainter sobs of someone weeping. Angel very quietly, and with great care, continued down the hall. ‘Hello … It’s Sunday …’ ‘What do you think you’re doing now? Do we have to lock every door and window in the house until we can’t breathe!’ Clara sat on the bottom step of her stairway under a drift of the faintest Chopin from above, dry-eyed, dry, as dry as everything about her, legs sprawled and her arms plaited tight across her grieving breasts, all of it held together by her miserable breath. 127

‘Is that Elsa I can hear crying?’ ‘What would I know! She cries if the washing’s not dry by sunset! She cried when the clothes prop broke! She—’ ‘I can help her, Aunt Clara.’ ‘Don’t call me Aunt!’ ‘Is it all right if I go to her?’ ‘Go! We can’t keep you out, so go! What in heaven’s name is that on your head?’ ‘It’s a moon hat. I made it.’ ‘You look like you’ve just crawled out of a dress-up box – go!’ ‘What’s the matter with Elsa?’ ‘And for that matter, why do you chew your hair – why does your hair always look as though it’s having a fever, all wet and stringy. Go to Elsa if you want – just go! Away from me! Go!’ ‘O, poor Clara. I know why you don’t like me. I know why you don’t like children—’ ‘What?’

Elsa’s bedroom was painted black, floorboards and all. It was a large room, one step down into the kitchen and a long time ago it was where Clara taught her ballet students. Angel had wondered about the black room but after hearing Clara’s story she realised the choice must have had something to do with that. On the black walls hung a framed photograph of Elsa and her husband on their wedding day. Angel had often looked at it, the photograph, all lilies and satin with a long train curled around and him in a good suit. There weren’t many other things to look at in the room and she had paid little attention to the mirror hanging opposite the bed, other than casually 128

observing that it was large and oval in shape with a gold frame – ornate – like mirrors she had seen in some artworks in the gallery, very nice. But Angel rarely looked into mirrors. Elsa sat, sobbing on the side of her bed. ‘It’s me, Elsa. It’s Sunday. Why are you crying?’ ‘O, Angel. There’s no dinner for you … I’m glad you came.’ ‘I don’t care about dinner.’ Though she was so hungry she could have eaten the leg off a chair. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘She’s selling everything. She sold my mirror, Angel. She sold it because she said I didn’t own it because it was in the house before I came here. She took it out of this room and sold it.’ ‘I’m so sorry, Elsa, please don’t cry. Was it Clara?’ ‘No! Jessie, of course, and she sold the old Chinese umbrella stand near the laundry. It was very old. Your grandfather brought it back from the East when he was young.’ ‘O, Elsa, I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to do. You should have stopped her.’ ‘How? She says she owns everything.’ ‘Well, she doesn’t own you. Do you want me to make a pot of tea?’ ‘The mirror was so old. Victorian. I was told it was dated mid-eighteen hundreds. I loved it, Angel. That mirror was the only truly beautiful thing I’ve ever owned.’ Elsa had used an old tea towel on her rough red nose and her tear drops and it was wet enough to be wrung out. ‘Make tea if you want to. Heaven knows what she’ll do next. What’s that you’re holding?’ ‘It’s a moon hat. I made it. I was going to show you but it doesn’t matter now. You own everything else in your room, don’t you?’ ‘That chair and the dressing table and the cut glass set on it 129

are mine! I told her. And the wardrobe. I told her everything else in the room and the sitting room was mine and you know what she said? She said she wouldn’t get ten bob for the lot anyway! That dressing table is silky oak and not just on the outside – it was a wedding present. I could have throttled her! I don’t think Jessie is a very nice person. Where’s Clara?’ ‘Sitting at the bottom of her stairs, miserable. Maybe she got something sold, too – and if you want to know what I think – well, I think that Jessie is an old bitch!’ ‘Angel!’ ‘And next time I see her I’ll say it to her face.’ ‘A child shouldn’t be using words like that.’ ‘I’m not a child, Aunt Elsa, how many times do I have to say it? I have never been a child. I tried to be a child like the others at school but it didn’t work. And you should hear the words in the boarding house – much worse than bitch – every day, much worse than that.’ When Elsa’s tears began to dry Angel went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. There was half a loaf in the bread bin and in the ice chest she found cheese slices and, the gods be praised, some mustard pickle. She called up to the bedroom. ‘Would you like a sandwich, Elsa?’ ‘I couldn’t possibly eat anything at all.’ ‘Can I make one for me?’ ‘Yes. And don’t put milk in my tea – I’ll have it black.’

When Angel took Elsa’s tea and her sandwich back to the bedroom, hardly a sip or a bite was taken before Clara stood at the hall door shaking with anger. ‘What did the girl mean when she said she knew why I don’t like children?’ 130

‘I … I don’t know, Clara. Don’t upset me any more today. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘There’s something fishy about her,’ pointing at Angel, ‘saying that. What have you been telling her, Elsa? As if I haven’t had enough of everything!’ ‘Clara, Angel just asked why you were so unhappy and I told her you’d had a hard life. Now, stop this. I’m worried about the house.’ But Elsa’s cup rattled on its saucer. ‘How dare you!’ Clara made it to the chair and sat in a clutched ball, relaxed as steel wool. ‘How dare you, telling things to strangers!’ Elsa began to cry again and put the wet tea towel to her face. ‘Clara, please don’t do this now. Angel is my friend and whether you like it or not she is not a stranger. She is part of the family.’ ‘She’s not part of mine! Get out of the house, girl!’ But Angel took the spilt tea from Elsa, faced Clara and stood straight up and down in her way. ‘I will not get out, Clara. Elsa told me why you’re so sad because she loves you and wants to help – and I love you, too, even when I know you don’t love me, and now Elsa’s sad because that Jessie woman sold her mirror and the umbrella stand near the laundry, and someone has to stop her from leaving you with nothing at all, and now I’m going to make another pot of tea because you made Elsa spill hers, and Clara, do you still like milk and two sugars?’ ‘Yes,’ said Clara, after an astonished pause, in a daze, her steel wool unravelling slightly at the edges. ‘Two sugars – heaped.’ ~

131

In the kitchen again and after lighting the gas under the kettle, Angel noticed four Golden Syrup tins on the bench to the left of the sink. After making tea and handing a cup to Clara she asked why they were there. ‘Why are there Golden Syrup tins lined up in the kitchen, Elsa?’ ‘None of your business!’ said Clara trying to pull her normal self together. ‘What goes on in this house is none of your business.’ ‘Clara, stop it! I mix the syrup with butter, Angel, and we send it off to London through the Red Cross. We address them to Peggy in London, poor thing. She has nothing at all, she says, and writes how thin and poor she is. She cuts up little scraps of meat with her nail scissors to make it last but we send things through the Red Cross and we hope Peggy gets them but we’re never sure.’ ‘Can you tell me about Peggy? I’d like to know about her.’ ‘Peggy’s a half-sister, you know. She’s the oldest of us all. Your grandfather was Peggy’s father but her mother died before Peggy could barely walk. She had lots of visiting mothers afterwards, but she hated the one he married – she was your grandmother. Her name was Ada. Peggy hated her and would say she always felt like an orphan – and as she grew older she was a nursemaid for the rest of the family – including your father. Peggy was very unhappy. She was very unhappy, wasn’t she, Clara? She couldn’t wait to get away from the Bay.’ There was silence from Clara’s chair, save for a slight rattle of cup and saucer. Elsa continued, pleased, Angel thought, that she had someone to talk about who was possibly worse off than herself. ‘Peggy writes books.’ ‘Is she famous?’ asked Angel. 132

‘They think she’s the cat’s whiskers over there. She’s met an Austrian banker and she says she’s going to marry him, as if he’ll save her, but I don’t think he has two coins to rub together – isn’t that right, Clara?’ Silence. ‘Mind you, I never really knew her but Clara did – didn’t you, Clara? She looked after you.’ Clara very carefully and quietly placed her cup on the saucer and slowly stood from the chair as though she was on a stage. ‘I do not wish to discuss private matters with strangers, even if, as you tell me, they are family members. I have things to do.’ And she walked towards the door leaving a few strands of steel wool on the lace chair protector. ‘But know this! I want you both to know this – no one looked after me. No one even cared about me. Father didn’t care about his own children – he just thought everyone else’s children were the bee’s knees. Make no mistake about it! But I do remember her and I’m glad she escaped – I wish I had escaped and don’t think I won’t one day – I’ll save like Peggy and leave here.’ And she left the room and walked up the squeaking stairs to ‘up’. In a split minute the music for Giselle drifted down to Elsa and Angel. ‘That’s betrayal music. Poor Clara.’ ‘Clara was very pretty when she was young, Angel. She could have had anyone but she had no confidence. It’s been a sad family.’ ‘I know about sad families, Elsa, but I’m glad – I’m glad we love each other.’ ‘Well, you know, I think I am, too, Angel.’ ‘Can I go down and play around the rocks? I’ll try and find something nice for your dinner.’ ‘If you do, Angel, you’ll miss your tram.’ 133

‘Please can I stay the night? I won’t be any trouble.’ ‘Just this once! I’ll make up a bed for you in the sitting room. It’s too windy for the balcony but just this once! Clara will have one of her fits. Now, go down to the rocks before the sun sets.’ O, the joy of it. The sheer joy of belonging – the security, faults and all, like every family she’d ever heard of. Fighting her way to a life better than her own but in the end finding just as bad or worse – but it didn’t matter. It was true family and she’d begun to feel acceptance and a sense of belonging – ​and love? Well, Angel knew by then that love was easily disguised beneath all manner of expressions. She took her moon hat and went out through the kitchen door.

The rocks, a million years old, were pink and grey from the colours of the setting sun. The rocks she loved as she loved the gully were splashed higher by the tide that curled, curious, around the point of the Bay from Mariana, bringing with it a flotsam of strangeries from distant places. Husks of this and that, broken crates that could have come from China, metal turned green with age, a rainbowed oil slick. Every splash on every rock had something floating on its crest, but most were alien to her. Angel tucked her skirt into her pants and was ready to catch anything that was offered but there was nothing on the surface of Mariana’s current suitable for a meal for Elsa and Clara. Its current had sent nothing suitable for humans to eat. I’d have to dive down deep, Angel whispered to Angel. And I don’t mind telling you how scared I’d be – but one day … one day. As the sun began to close its eyes and Mariana splashed higher and chopped the crest of its waves at her feet … One day you’ll let me see what’s underneath. I just want to be your friend, she told 134

the swell around her feet. And she pulled her moon hat down tighter for protection. Around the point came floating a tree top of sorts – small branches draped with weed, paper scraps and twigs waving like the man who’d drowned. There was a wind from somewhere that blew in gusts as though it might rain and a harbour bell rang a muffled warning. There was drama developing in the music inside her – it was Wagner who suddenly bellowed along with the late, greying chop of the sea. She tried to imagine that Mariana was communicating with her in its way. The waves splashed higher around her legs – their tops were sharp and the mood of the sea was disturbing. Angel wondered if it had something to do with the screams of war on Mariana’s surface. Had more ships on fire gone down with their guns exploding? Was burning oil cremating seamen? Were aircraft diving in flames like sea birds on fire? Were there men hanging from giant kelp branches deep, deep down? Angel had read about war on the oceans and imagined how terrible it must be. Was Mariana’s trench collecting its terrible wreckage? Were kelp forests torn away, and currents, peaceful and deep in their canyons, ruined? Would the shock of it all turn the coral white? Angel had wondered about Mariana’s reaction to ocean battles – burning metal and oil and men drowning, calling for their mothers. But whatever it was that late afternoon, there were definitely tempestuous vibrations to the tide at the bottom of Brooklyn Street that perfectly matched Wagner’s music, the wind and the rocks. She wished Mariana could hear her music – it would be a communication of sorts. And Angel had a feeling that the ocean nation, in its present mood, would enjoy the music of Wagner. When she thought about these things she became less afraid of the sea nation and more sorry for the peaceful place not understanding. 135

But there were the tree branches and twigs still bobbing in the swell and Angel imagined, in the privacy of her mind, how satisfying it would be if twigs of the branches were the hands of a woman waving to her, and it was the woman’s black cloak caught on them, billowing and bubbling with a long plait of hair trawling behind with a crab clinging, like a fisher woman and all of it just out of reach of the Bay point at the end of Brooklyn Street. And she’d think, like Clara, that she didn’t tell the woman to jump into the harbour and get caught on a tree and she would not do a damn thing about it. But she would wave to the waving woman. Like her aunts, she would wave back, just to be polite.

‘For heaven’s sake come in before you’re swept away,’ a voice called through the wind from the balcony. ‘And make no mistake, it’s just this once!’ ‘Okay, Elsa. Coming.’ All Angel had to offer when she went back to the aunts’ house were a few pipis and a small yellowtail on its last fins that had suicided in her hand. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Elsa asked. ‘You’re sopping. You look as though you’ve been crying.’ ‘I’m just a bit wet. The tide was high.’ ‘Well, there’s tomato soup, but it’s out of a tin, and toast and cheese.’ ‘Thanks, Elsa. I’m hungry. I hardly caught a thing.’ And she handed the pipis and the yellowtail to Elsa. ‘I came as soon as you called me from the balcony.’ ‘I wasn’t on the balcony. That must have been Clara. She likes sitting out there if there’s a blow coming.’ ‘But she said just this once. How did she know to say that?’ 136

‘I told her you were staying the night. You’d better get those wet clothes off and dried. I’ll get a towel.’ ‘She didn’t mind?’ ‘She didn’t seem to mind too much. She had some tea and went back to her music.’ ‘I wish I knew what she played. I can usually tell Clara’s mood from the music she plays.’ ‘I think it was Sleeping Beauty – I could be wrong, the record had cracks all over the place but I’ve got to know some of them. Anyway, whatever it was wasn’t too much of a misery.’

Elsa’s sitting room couch was small, lumpy and the springs were sharp in places, but to Angel it was a bed of feathers and the old pillow she’d been given a cloud. She was very tired. Elsa gave Angel a worn patchwork quilt as a cover, and its squares were made of all the colours she had known and some she had not. Barnaby would love it. She pressed it to her face. It was a wonderful thing to see and all the better for being old and a little worn – it was family. Her family had used it and she wished Miss Varnham and Barnaby Grange were there to see it. ‘I have two special friends in the boarding house, Elsa. I wish they could see the quilt. Can I bring them to visit one day?’ ‘O, heavens, Angel. Strangers? Clara would have a fit! You know what she’s like.’ ‘They’re nice – Barnaby Grange and Winifred Varnham. You’d like them, Elsa. I’ll ask Clara. My friends are very interesting and very clever. Miss Varnham looks like a duchess.’ ‘I imagine any friends of yours would be “interesting”,’ said Elsa and she smiled and shared a quick look with the ceiling. 137

The quilt had the smell of careful storage – lavender and a whiff of moth balls. The smell reminded Angel of something, but she couldn’t possibly have said what it was. ‘Peggy’s mother made that. It’s very old,’ said Elsa. ‘It hasn’t been used for ages.’ ‘Then it must belong to Peggy?’ ‘I suppose it does.’ ‘Well, that Jessie’s not going to sell this!’ Angel still held it to her face. The smell of lavender was dominant but she wondered, she just wondered how good it would be if every patch had its own smell and its own story to tell. It was a sweetly smelling quilt of comfort and she wrapped herself in it. Angel liked to think that she and Peggy might love each other. She hoped she was safe in London with her dirt-poor Austrian banker. Elsa left the room and closed the door. Angel was very sleepy but she remembered one Bay Sunday when she found a stain on Elsa’s spotless tap and Elsa had told her there was a tin of Bon Ami in the cupboard under the sink and when she opened the tin the not-so-sweet smell reminded her of her mother and the shopfront and before her eyelids closed for the night she murmured, ‘You should have waited, Mummy – everything’s all right now.’

138

The Duchess of Nullabri

A liquidambar tree, very large, grew to the right of the entrance to Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment. Its roots were strong and invasive and seemed to be hell-bent on lifting that side of the house off its foundations and chucking it into the gully. But so far it had only managed to move Winifred Varnham’s side of the porch so that her window jammed when it felt like it, a trellis to a design of its own making, and made the front door difficult to open unless it was raining. Angel loved the liquidambar tree with its explosion of seasonal colours in the way of such trees, but there was one special Saturday when she stood under its boughs, newly dressed in green leaves and buds, and hugged its trunk and crunched the last of the lost leaves of winter under her feet. She said to Winifred Varnham, who was with her, ‘Don’t you just love it?’ Winifred was silent for a moment. She was dressed in one of her long, exotic robes – turquoise with gold braid. Through 139

the bun on her head was a long pencil, sharpened, that Barnaby Grange had given her. She held Angel’s hand. ‘My sister and I used to jump into piles of autumn leaves when I was your age. All the reds and yellows and streaks of browns and green. We used to throw the leaves into the sun and my sister said she wished she had a dancing skirt that swirled in all the colours of the tree in autumn. I remember that.’ ‘Did you live in a palace?’ ‘O, my goodness, Angel – how wonderful that would have been – a palace!’ Winifred laughed and hugged Angel to her, and right there and then Angel would have given her life to Winifred Varnham. ‘Not a palace, Angel, no, I’m afraid not, but as I grew older and dressed in my robes, always in as many colours as I could find, a few local wags used to walk past me with their fingers holding up their nose tips and call me the Duchess of Nullabri.’ ‘I would have been one of them. You look like a duchess.’ ‘Well, then, I wonder if I should tell you that we lived on a small farm in the outback of New South Wales. Would you be very disappointed if I told you that, darling Angel?’ ‘No. Duchesses can live anywhere they like.’ ‘And so they can, but way out in the country in a place near Nullabri? Have you heard of Nullabri? No? Well, it would be an unusual – not impossible, of course – but an unusual place to find a family of aristocrats. But please continue to think of me as you do. I like being your duchess, Angel, and I will be your duchess for as long as you want.’ ‘Is your sister better, now?’ ‘Only a slight improvement, my darling.’ ‘I hope she never gets better. I hope you’ll have to stay here forever.’ 140

‘O, Angel – that was a very strange thing to say. Sad.’ ‘I’m sorry but I meant it. Why is she sick? What made her sick?’ Winifred was silent for a moment and then said, with a smile, ‘There is a story to tell – but I think you like stories, Angel.’ ‘O, yes, please.’ ‘Then shall we stroll into the gully and find a green place?’ And in a green place by the creek sitting on mosscushioned rocks, Winifred Varnham told Angel Martin the story of the Duchess of Nullabri and her family.

‘We were an unusual family in that place, the farm. We didn’t really fit in with the neighbours and the town but everyone was always kind. Father was very religious and prayed a lot – he was not a very good farmer. We had chickens of course and a few Jersey cows. He tried to grow cotton but it was a failure. He told Heather – my younger sister – and me that of course it was God’s will that the cotton didn’t grow and he was to grow medicinal herbs instead. But even though the herbs flourished, Father told us that such a use for God’s soil was not worth the effort, so he put the tools away, went to where the cows were and prayed. Still, the herbs managed to look after themselves and grew like a jungle all over the place. Our father wasn’t really too keen about the work required for farming or indeed anything needing physical effort. ‘Father experimented with medicinal teas. He’d bought a book about herbals from a second-hand shop in town. The herbs grew so well and it was something he could do that did not take too much time from his God. He sold his teas as remedies and cures for all sorts of complaints, but he once 141

made the butcher’s wife very sick. “Too much Echinacea” was all he said, staring at the sky as though it was God’s fault and I remember thinking how strange it all was. We were very poor.’ ‘Did you have a mother, Miss Varnham?’ ‘Poor Mother. Like a caged bird longing to fly, but she managed to look after the livestock and keep our house decent enough and there was always food on the table. Not ordinary country food, Angel. She liked to make curries and spicy vegetables. She had a hundred recipes for cheap mince. She taught herself to make pasta like an Italian. Mother taught me what she knew and allowed me to cook from when I was very young. Heather had little appetite, poor thing, and didn’t care much what she was served and Father tried to strengthen her with herbal tea, but she seemed to be no better after drinking them. Worse, if anything.’ ‘Did your father make teas for you, too?’ ‘Yes, but I did not like the taste at all. Little brown bowls of it that I only pretended to drink. Father was never particularly interested in me anyway and didn’t care – it was always Heather.’ ‘Thank goodness you didn’t drink the stuff, it might have made you sick, too,’ said Angel. ‘Yes, Angel, I think you’re right. Thank goodness indeed. ‘There was a musical society in the town and Mother secretly joined. She confessed to me, but I don’t think my sister knew. Because of the distance our mother and most of the members had to travel the musical society met during the day and I remember Mother making all sorts of excuses to go to town. She would say that Missus So-and-So was ill and needed help or the So-and-So family needed advice or she was learning to make cakes at the Country Women’s Association, 142

but Father discovered the truth and he was furious, Angel, and even more furious when he saw her in the machinery shed in make-up and costume. There was once a terrible scene. Mother had come home from a rehearsal of The Mikado – do you know it? A comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. Have you heard of it?’ ‘No.’ ‘Heather and I had never seen Mother so happy and she sang the songs for us and we danced around but Father said Mother was becoming hysterical and so he made her a Valerian tea to calm her. Whether it was a reaction to the herb, or Father used too much of it, she was dead in her bed by the morning. It was a terrible shock. I know how you must have felt, Angel, when your own mother died – it is a terrible thing to lose a mother. Father grieved in a most violent way. He went to the furthest end of the cow paddock and prayed for a very long time – day and night he prayed. He came to the house only to eat and comfort Heather but my sister’s problems worsened. She said she couldn’t hear very well and she thought she was losing her sight – O, Angel, am I boring you?’ ‘No! No. What happened next?’ Another death. Different. Angel was certainly not bored. ‘Well, you see, Father was not himself at all – praying in the paddock with a circle of Jersey cows around him nudging him for the grain bucket. He could not be moved. I thought he must have been quite mad from the grief. I called a doctor from town and after he had examined Father some men came in a van and put Mother in the back and Father in the front. ‘Father had to go away for a very long time and I was left with the farm and Heather and your poor duchess was not happy and was not quite sure what to do, Angel.’ ‘How old were you, Miss Varnham?’ 143

‘Very much older than you, Angel, but still young at heart, dear.’ ‘You must have been very frightened.’ ‘There was so much to do, darling, I can’t remember how I felt. In the end I was advised to sell the farm and move out and one day, as I searched for anything that might be worth something, I found, tucked right at the back of the old machinery shed, a trunk full to the lid, Angel, full of coloured cloth. The trunk was crammed with cloth, ribbons and wigs and braids trimmed with gold and silver Mother had been given or bought or taken. My poor mother had saved it all. There were yards and yards of cloth of all colours. Treasures. I think she must have saved it all to keep her sane. She must have secretly draped the cloth over her country dresses and pretended the back of the machinery shed was a theatre. Can you imagine her dancing and singing alone behind a shed full of rusted metal? It made me weep for ages but I learned to sew the cloth and as you can see I am still using it – there was so much of it. Can you sew, Angel?’ ‘A little bit. I made a bag for the tram fares.’ ‘I will teach you. However, when I came out of the shed, I looked up at the sky and an enormous flock of galahs flew over as though they were being chased and seemed to be saying goodbye and I saw it as a sign. I packed everything I wanted to keep and an agent sold the farm for a good price to a city family who wanted to raise a few more cows. A good price, Angel. It was more than I could have imagined and I was able to leave the farm with enough to admit Heather to the sanitarium and pay for my own accommodation. And there you have it. Years have passed since Father’s teas – so many years – and here I am close to Heather, who imagines she’s lost the use of a different body part each year. The sanitarium was 144

most intrigued when she was admitted.’ ‘O, that was so sad, Miss Varnham. It was a wonderful story. But why did you come here to Missus Potts’s place when you could afford something better? Is it because it’s close to the sanitarium?’ ‘You know, Angel, I’m not sure. Something drew me to it. It’s reasonably priced. It’s not very nice here but somehow I feel comfortable. In a way it reminds me of the farmhouse. However, there are some very strange people in this place, aren’t there?’ She adjusted the pencil in her bun. ‘For example, I’m very fond of Barnaby Grange but he is a little strange, don’t you think?’ ‘O, yes, I do, but I wouldn’t want anyone here to be any different. I think the world is full of people not right in the head and so far, I love them all. I always knew I wasn’t the only one.’ ‘Not Missus Potts, surely?’ ‘Well, maybe not her.’ ‘Angel Martin!’ screamed Missus Potts so loud the gully birds knew it was time to clean themselves, make their nests neat and tidy with hospital corners and cover their nestlings with their wings. ‘Where are you, girl? There are things to do!’

145

Summer

It was not unusual for small fires to start in the gully when the days were very hot. It was not unusual to see tiny columns of smoke curling as though someone was secretly smoking behind a rock. Missus Potts had a printed fire drill stuck to the back of the plate cupboard. The notices should, by law, have been stuck behind the doors of the boarders’ broom cupboards but there was only the one. It ordered residents to pack a bag with essentials and to have plenty of wet sacking and buckets ready in case a fire did break out and came close to houses, but the fire-drill notice behind the plate cupboard was hard to read through egg and gravy stains. ‘Those spot fires can turn ugly,’ said Missus Potts, who knew ugly and could spell it backwards. ‘So what you do if you see one is you go down with wet sacks and buckets of water before it gets bad. I saw smoke this morning. Three of the casuals are already down there.’ ‘Then we too must act, now!’ said Winifred Varnham. 146

Winifred, Barnaby and Angel each took a bucket and sack from the fence behind the laundry. Music, Colour and Numbers (with sketchpad and pencil) stood in a line ready for orders and one might say they were just a little excited. Although Angel had taken part in fire drills at her school, which also backed onto the gully, and Winifred Varnham had seen fires, but not on their farm, which was, in the worst of the summer heat, flat and bare and dry as a Sao biscuit. ‘No disrespect, Miss Varnham, but you can’t go trailing around spot fires in the gully like the Queen of Sheba in those clothes.’ ‘I’ll look after her, Missus Potts. It’s probably dead bracken burning. I know where to go – it’s not very far.’ ‘Six hundred,’ said Barnaby Grange. ‘Approximately …?’ said Winifred. ‘I think he means yards,’ said Angel. ‘O, for God’s sake, just go then! Look out for bits of glass – ​ anything that might start a fire. Why aren’t you at school, Angel?’ ‘It’s Saturday.’ ‘What about yesterday! It wasn’t Saturday yesterday.’ ‘I’m thinking of giving it up – school, I mean.’ ‘You’re not right, girl, not right at all. You have to go to school. You’ll be scarred for life!’ ‘I think, Missus Potts,’ said Miss Varnham, ‘that Angel is an extremely clever – even brilliant – girl and you should not be worried about her at all.’ Barnaby Grange nodded seven times. Exactly. ‘Worried! You think I’m worried, Miss Varnham, about headmasters and truant officers at the door and probably the police next and a know-it-all brat not right in the head with her music and not paying board and the doctor not paid and 147

nothing done on time and a tub full of sheets not wrung? Worried? No disrespect to you, Miss Varnham, but this is a respected house with a name! And—’ ‘O, do be still, Missus Potts. We will go with our buckets to the gully and fill them at the creek and douse the fire that threatens your grand establishment and we won’t ask a penny for our efforts.’ And the three, in single file, grandly, Angel with her nose in the air because she could not resist doing so, marched down into the gully towards the creek and the curl of smoke that was by then no more than a thread that seemed to be putting itself out.

Angel Martin had always thought of the gully as her own – exclusively, her own domain. Silly of course. Even at her age she thought it was silly and very quickly was delighted to be strolling through the trees and along the creek bed with the Duchess of Nullabri. At first, Barnaby Grange had not been so keen. Missus Potts had warned of snakes and spiders and he was not used to that kind of thing, but there were occasions after Angel had described the beauty of it all that he thought he should visit the green place. So on that day, he plucked up the courage to accompany his friends, with care, with trouser legs taped firmly at the bottoms, wearing thick socks and shoes, and of course carrying his pad and pencil and helped them search for spot fires. Winifred Varnham wore bright yellow with gold trim because she thought the colours would be easily seen – if the worst came to the worst – even through smoke. Angel led the way to the place where the bracken and the berry bushes grew, south of the creek. A slight breeze moved through the trees, resplendent in their summer greens, and the 148

birds, knowing their places in the order of things, perched and preened and chatted and were unworried and content. ‘I can smell tobacco,’ Winifred Varnham said suddenly. ‘Can you smell tobacco, Angel?’ ‘I can smell something.’ ‘Mother used to smoke. She used to roll her own and smoke while Father was praying. I never liked the smell of it.’ Barnaby Grange said not a word and busily sketched a gum tree, in his way. There were fractions and an attractive equation at the top that made it look like a Christmas tree with a star. Near the source of the smoky smell – not far from the south end of the creek – a man, a tramp, lay asleep with his arms crossed over his scrawny chest, his legs stretched out and crossed and his head on a swag against the trunk of a blue gum. He was dressed in a rag of a shirt and was wearing trousers held up by a thin rope. There was a hole cut from the side of his left shoe to let a bunion breathe. An eye snapped open when the Duchess of Nullabri stood over him, all yellow and gold and disapproving but somehow so glorious. The second eye followed. ‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘What on earth do you mean, you stupid man?’ ‘Having a dream, me darling.’ ‘How dare you. Was that you smoking and causing people to suspect infernos? How dare you!’ ‘I put the butt under a rock. You can’t be too careful. You think I don’t know about gully fires? And who are you?’ Not moving an inch but with his eyes on Angel. ‘And who’s that bloke with his head buried in paper – O, never mind him. Bit off, is he?’ ‘I am Angel Martin and my friends are Miss Varnham and Barnaby Grange. What’s your name?’ 149

‘Harry Potts.’ The tramp, so thin he looked like a child’s stick drawing, eased himself up to a sitting position. ‘And Harry Potts be very pleased to meet you all. You wouldn’t happen to have a chunk of bread and dripping on you or anything else? A bit peckish, not too fussy,’ the tramp said with a grin of tobacco-dyed teeth. ‘No! We certainly do not. Who in their right mind would carry bread and dripping in this heat, you silly man?’ ‘There’s someone with your name who owns a boarding house up there,’ Angel pointed. ‘If you stand over here you can just see the fence …’ ‘I know what that fence looks like, girlie. I built it.’ ‘Funny, having the same name, Mister Potts. There’s honeysuckle growing over the fence now.’ The Duchess of Nullabri, silently glowing yellow and gold and looking regal despite the damp patches under her arms that had formed themselves into maps of small islands, stared down at Harry Potts and Harry Potts, not sure what was to come, stared back. ‘Are you and Missus Potts related in some way?’ ‘Suppose you could say that and if you did say that you be closer than you think.’ ‘You have a great many buttons missing, Mister Potts – I would have thought a man related to Missus Potts could afford buttons. Have you by any chance been away for some time?’ ‘I be in Queensland for a time, you might say, Missus—’ ‘Miss!’ ‘Sorry, love. Sugar cane, bananas, timber mill, whatever be enough for a feed.’ ‘So – and forgive me if I intrude, Mister Potts – but you haven’t been logging in Brazil? Making a great deal of money floating tree trunks down the Amazon?’ 150

‘Is that what she tells you? The answer be no. How is the old bagger, anyways?’ ‘I imagine she is much the same as when you disappeared,’ said Winifred. She had so many questions she would have liked to ask but was hesitant to do so. She would have liked to ask, for example, how he had become a worthless tramp and why he’d decided to return from Queensland to the bottom of Duffy Street and sit under a tree in a gully near the house where his wife resided, but on first and second thoughts the intrusion into his life would be too rude. Of course it would. ‘How is it, Mister Potts, that you appear to have struck rock bottom and come back from Queensland to the bottom of Duffy Street and lie like a tramp under a blue gum when your wife and a house are no more than thirty minutes away?’ There! ‘I be plucking up the courage to see her again.’ ‘Surely, Mister Potts, you’re not afraid of your wife?’ ‘Got the scars to prove it – stitches.’ And Mister Potts pointed a skinny finger to an area behind his left ear. ‘I’ll look after you, Mister Potts. I’m not scared of anything,’ said Angel, despite her opinion of Mister Potts’s skinny finger. ‘I’ll be right here a day or two, girlie. I be liking it down here in the gully but if you can bring me a bite to eat I be grateful.’ ‘But how on earth did you become a penniless tra— wanderer, Mister Potts?’ ‘It’s the horses, Miss. Queensland horses – lame and crippled from the teeth down. They only ran them for me. There be odds and evens but for me – mostly odds.’ ‘That’s disgraceful, Mister Potts! No wonder your wife assaulted you,’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘Speaking of odds, 151

where on earth is Mister Grange? Angel, where is Mister Grange?’ ‘He’s wandered off somewhere, Miss Varnham. He’ll be all right.’ ‘I hope so. He is a little strange.’

‘Where on earth have you lot been? No disrespect to you, Miss Varnham, but in those clothes I thought you might have tripped.’ ‘It wasn’t a fire, Missus Potts. It was a man having a smoke under a tree,’ said Angel. ‘Has Mister Grange come back?’ ‘He’s in his room. What man?’ ‘A tramp, Missus Potts. He wanted some bread and dripping.’ Angel glanced at Winifred Varnham, whose finger tapped lips that were bowed in a ssshhh position. ‘I’ll give him bread and dripping! No-gooders wandering around, never done a day’s work and eating other people’s rations! I’d give him bread and dripping and a clip over the ear with it. Haven’t seen a tramp for a while because I never give them anything. Crooks, most of them, creeping around waiting for the lights to go out. They come up from the city, most. Hope you ticked him off for smoking in the gully in the middle of summer. What yarn did this one spin? I hope you didn’t give him anything. What sob story did this one tell you?’ ‘He mentioned Brazil,’ Winifred’s ssshhh’d lips couldn’t stand it another minute. The words exploded out of control. ‘Said his name was Harry Potts.’ Angel thought it was unusual for her duchess to let the cat out of the bag like that. All of a sudden. Unexpected. ‘But he’s been in Queensland for a long time,’ said Angel. ‘Can I take him something to eat, Missus Potts?’ 152

There was no reply for Missus Potts, who’d turned very pale around the gills, had plonked herself heavily, legs all over the place, onto the nearest chair, and with a terrible groan sat with her apron pulled up over her head.

153

A Mariana picnic

It was Sunday, the Bay and trams. ‘Thank goodness for Sundays, Angel. I imagine that’s what you’re thinking? Are you going to the aunts’ house?’ Winifred Varnham had dressed herself in a gown the colour of Jersey cream and a long scarf of pale yellow with poppies all over it. The gown and the scarf did not quite touch the floor. If it hadn’t been for the poppy-red chopstick through her bun, she would have looked as though she might have been about to conduct a wedding ceremony in a chapel. ‘You look beautiful, Miss Varnham,’ said Angel. ‘And so do you, dearest girl. Aren’t you proud to be wear­ ing a blouse and skirt you made all by yourself from collar to hem? We must learn to make a new bag to go with everything.’ The blouse and skirt were pale green cotton, V neckline with tiny pearl buttons. ‘You taught me how to sew, Miss Varnham, and I love my clothes and I’m grateful, but—’ 154

‘What?’ ‘Well, see, it’s Sunday trams and I like my old rag bag. It’s for tram fares and things and they know it’s me. The drivers won’t know who I am if I have a new bag and proper clothes. I like being ordinary – I want to be me for the trams.’ In her head she felt the faintest click. It didn’t last. ‘I’m taking a maidenhair fern for my aunts to grow but I don’t know if it will like the salt wind and I don’t want anything else new, thanks.’ ‘Well, darling, never mind. I haven’t the slightest idea how to make bags anyway so just as well. Would you mind terribly if I came with you, Angel? There’s a rumour that huge naval ships will be coming out of the Heads and onto Mariana. I would love to watch them. I heard it on the radio.’ ‘I’d love it! Can we ask Mister Grange if he’d like to come too?’ ‘I expect he’d be hurt if we didn’t. You like Barnaby very much, don’t you?’ ‘I love you both. We’re like a family.’ ‘Duchess Colour, Miss Music and Mister Numbers. The great arts,’ said Winifred. ‘I suppose we are a sort of family.’ ‘How is your sister today?’ ‘She says everything twice and her eyelid keeps dropping. The sanitarium thinks she should stay a little longer.’ ‘Good!’

When they boarded the tram in George Street the driver, who had known Angel for a very long time, adjusted his cap in salute, ran his fingers over the lever and ding ding dinged without looking – like a blind man knowing exactly where he was going. The tram was crowded even for a 155

Sunday and Angel was disappointed that her usual seats had been taken. Everything seemed different. The three friends had to sit up the back with every head turned towards them but this time the eyes were for the Duchess of Nullabri. Winifred Varnham in her gown and a scarf, which looked as though they had something to do with prayers, led the way. She left a trail of whispers all the way up the aisle. She knew it and held her head up and smiled like an old bride gliding between packed pews. Barnaby Grange, pale as sand, bowed his head and held his sketchbook painfully close to his chest. ‘Ssshhh and don’t point, it’s rude,’ a passenger whispered. ‘She could be a druid in that get up.’ ‘What about him?’ ‘Dry as a parson’s nose – At least their kid looks normal.’ ‘Ssshhh.’ Everything was different. Angel noticed that as she grew older everything had become different and she was not sure if that was what she wanted. The driver said to her, ‘You look very nice, today – a proper young lady, like something out of a window.’ ‘I’m just the same! I don’t care if you want to laugh at me like you always did.’ She held the old drawstring bag of rags to her chest to remind him. ‘I’m leaving the job next month,’ said the driver. ‘Retiring.’ ‘I don’t want you to. You’re Sundays.’ ‘Nothing stays the same, Angel. You’re growing up. I’m growing old. Nothing stays the same.’ And Angel was not sure if the mist in the tram driver’s eyes was making her own eyes misty. ‘Ask him if he can let us off near the lighthouse,’ Winifred Varnham called to her. ‘The view will be good from there.’ 156

‘Me, too – me, too …’ From the hoi polloi. All over the tram they were wanting to see the Navy parading on Mariana, Winifred imagined. When the old tram dinged and slid along its familiar rails, a boy cried ‘Hooray!’ and while shillings and pennies were fished out of purses and offered to the conductor, someone in the Sunday tram congregation began to sing hymn number one – Row row row your boat gently down the stream … and others joined in. In the end, Angel felt lighter and didn’t mind being something nice out of a window and she sang along with the rest of the Sunday worshippers with the driver humming under his cap and the conductor who didn’t know the words and for a short time the dramatic symphony that had begun to pound inside her was silent. It was a happy Sunday chapel that slid its way towards the sandstone cliffs, the end of the line, the Bay and the great sea nation, Mariana.

Mariana, under the blue, white-gulled sky was perfectly wellmannered, the wind just right for sleek grey vessels with bows sharp as knife points, with the sun glinting on gun barrels and men in white. She shivered with anticipation and in celebration of what might be coming. Excited fish would dance on their tails. Further out, towards Mariana’s horizon, were ocean swells in a stronger wind, high and curling and tickling the backs of Mariana’s white horses, their foaming heads in the air like the sea paintings in the gallery. ‘What a glorious sight,’ said Winifred Varnham, her long scarf flying behind her. ‘If we hurry we’ll get that seat near the fence.’ ‘I like the grass,’ said Barnaby in words. ‘Mother liked grass 157

for regattas.’ And he tucked his sketchpad under his arm and simply watched a sea nation as big as Asia. ‘I wish I had a camera,’ said Angel. ‘And I wish I could paint. I don’t think I’d be afraid to go on a Navy ship – they look so in charge, but respectful – I don’t think I would be so scared of Mariana.’ ‘I can’t imagine you being scared of anything, darling.’ Winifred had been too late for the seat and chose a decent patch of grass big enough for three. ‘We were going to sit there!’ a tram woman with two big boys and a small man shouted and when Winifred said they had a perfectly good patch of grass where they were, the woman held up a shoe with a messy sole. ‘A dog’s been!’ ‘Well,’ said Winifred, ‘we won’t be here for very long and when we go you can have this patch.’ It was very crowded near the lighthouse, which looked out over Mariana from the highest point of the sandstone cliffs. ‘Quite soon we’re off to visit the aunts.’ There were no ships after all but still the view of Mariana was a wondrous thing and the picnicking crowds seemed not to be in the least disappointed. ‘You simply cannot rely on information about the movement of shipping anymore. Let’s be off to see the aunts.’ ‘O!’ Angel, suddenly disturbed and anxious, felt her brain click. ‘I’d have to warn them. There isn’t time today. I think Elsa might not mind but I don’t think Aunt Clara will like that, Miss Varnham.’ Angel was very nervous. ‘Wouldn’t you like to stay here and watch Mariana while I go to the aunts’ house?’ ‘Certainly not. It’s about time we met your aunts – don’t you agree, Barnaby?’ 158

‘Yes.’ In words. ‘Mother would have been afraid for the Navy.’ ‘I’ll buy something nice for your aunts, Angel. What do you think they’d like?’ ‘Everything’s closed. It’s Sunday.’ ‘I know there’s a cafe down there, near the baths. It’s bound to be open. You seem very anxious, darling.’ ‘Elsa and Clara are not used to people all of a sudden, that’s all. And I already have something for them. There’s the maidenhair fern, remember?’ But like the gully wildflowers on another occasion the fern was fighting death from thirst and travel. There was a time when Angel couldn’t wait for the aunts to meet her new friends but now she was not so sure. She felt strange, different, things were different – like the tram crowds and the singing, and nobody telling her she was not right in the head, and the driver leaving to retire to be ordinary, and Angel not wanting to be very nice like something out of a window in her green top. She imagined each disturbing change a crumbling slab of sandstone cliff falling, big as the front of a building, into Mariana. ‘If you have to buy something they like tomatoes and onions and bread, then!’ In a fit she tore a handful of damp grass out by its roots and rubbed the dirt into her face and arms and crumbs of earth fell onto her new clothes. ‘What on earth did you do that for, Angel? Why on earth would you do such a thing?’ ‘I want to be me again,’ said Angel, chewing a strand of salty hair. A requiem crammed inside her head, orchestra, choir and all, and played loud enough for the whole dying world to hear. ‘Angel, you’re acting very strangely. That was not a normal thing to do.’ ‘Good! I’ve got a headache, that’s all.’ Click. 159

‘You’ve been through a lot, darling. Memories have a habit of popping out when you don’t want them to.’ ‘If it’s memories, they don’t pop out, they stay in. That’s the trouble. There’s no more room in my head. My brain never sleeps, Miss Varnham. Never!’ ‘I think we’d better go. Barnaby – close your sketchbook. We’ll have a cup of tea – and, Angel, there will be a tap somewhere for you to wash yourself.’ ‘I don’t want to wash myself. I’ll stay like this. It’s too hard to be normal – I don’t want to be ordinary.’ ‘O, Angel.’ ‘You should know that, Miss Varnham.’ ‘O, Angel,’ Winifred said, thinking of her mother – and herself. A fresh wind made her long scarf flap and when it strengthened the poppies on it could have flown to China. When Winifred Varnham stood, her gown was stained by the grass but nobody said.

160

The aunts' house

The three visitors strolled to the park and the few small shops around its edges. It was quite a long walk from the lighthouse, down a very steep hill to the main road. Barnaby trailed along behind, head down and counting cracks. ‘I think I’ll take my shoes off, Angel. My feet hurt.’ ‘They’ll burn on the path.’ ‘Best not, then. You used to live near here, Angel? When you were tiny? I’m sure you told me that – or it could have been someone else who told me.’ ‘It might have been Missus Potts.’ Angel hoped she had not gone into too much detail. ‘Anyway, where we lived has all gone now – pulled down to make way for flats so I can’t show you. Our house was very old and it was a beautiful house – you would have loved it. There was a huge front window and roses,’ Angel said without a flicker of an eyelid – even though at that moment they stood directly outside what used to be a shopfront named Bon Ami and old memories, blurred and far away, forced 161

themselves into her head. Angel remembered her pretending book, the Book of the Bay, with its leaves all stuck together from crying. She was relieved to see the door of the baby shop closed with Back in an hour hanging from the doorknob. She would have been devastated if her friends met the lady and the truth was revealed. Angel still wore the sandals she’d been given and had made no effort to reimburse the baby shop lady. ‘O, look, Angel,’ said Winifred, her nose pressed to the window like a child. ‘Look at all these lovely baby clothes. And a carousel – look, a carousel to wind up and a little hot air balloon—’ ‘Yes, lovely.’ Angel was anxious to move away. ‘I’ll take my shoes off in the park, Angel. That should be safe enough.’ ‘Much better on the grass, Miss Varnham. Just two more shops and ’round the corner.’ ‘I know where the park is, Angel.’ ‘I’m sorry I yelled up at the lighthouse.’ ‘It’s all right. Good to let off steam. Come along, Barnaby, step up. I need a cup of tea.’ ‘Yes, Mother,’ said Barnaby in a fog of counting, calculating and measuring, and not being entirely sure where he was. ‘O, for goodness sake, Barnaby, do look up at the world – you’re missing everything.’ And Winifred Varnham led them directly to a cafe called ‘The Baths Kiosk’, close to the beach and the eighteen-footer club. They sat outside at a picnic table and on ancient benches under an old and tattered canvas umbrella. A girl carrying a notepad and a number on a stick, as if she needed it, took their order. Winifred Varnham asked for ‘Tea, please. Milk and sugar and sandwiches and cupcakes if you have any.’ 162

‘In a tick,’ said the girl. ‘And I reckon you could use a wet towel, poor thing.’ To Angel. ‘Did you have a fall?’ ‘No.’ ‘Yes! Thank you, a towel would be helpful. You’re very kind – and I have another favour to ask.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Can you sell me three tomatoes? I’ll pay anything you ask.’ ‘This isn’t a green grocer.’ ‘And an onion and some bread?’ ‘I don’t know – I’ll have to ask Missus Mitchell.’ ‘Then, do please ask her. They are for very special friends.’ ‘I’ll ask. Can’t promise. Three teas, sandwiches and cakes. In a tick.’ And she left having written nothing at all on her pad that had never had anything written on it and left the number with gravy stains like Missus Potts’s table sheet on its stick, upside down. ‘I wish you hadn’t,’ said Angel. ‘I can’t meet your aunts empty-handed, darling, I would feel uncomfortable.’ And Angel was thinking, while she wiped herself with the warm, wet towel that was provided in a tick, just before everything else arrived in a tick and the wrong number was removed, I don’t want you to buy my aunts things I can’t. I give them little things. The aunts’ house is mine! But she was able, after a moment, to recognise kindness and managed to keep her mouth shut. The Baths Kiosk girl served tea, sandwiches and cake and a paper bag containing two wrinkled tomatoes, a brown onion with green sprouting out the top, and half a loaf of yesterday’s bread. ‘Missus Mitchell said you’re welcome to the produce as a favour but it’ll cost, being Sunday.’ And she gave Winifred 163

a Sunday bill for everything, which raised the Duchess of Nullabri’s eyebrows. ‘Thank Missus Mitchell for me, dear girl, and tell her we think she is a very good business woman – hats off!’ Winifred laughed and for that moment, still thinking she was his mother, Barnaby laughed too and Angel grinned and the waitress said, knowing, ‘Well, she’s got to make a living.’

Brooklyn Street was used to strangers, especially on Sundays, and on that Sunday there were a few strolling along the hot, white path. The corner shop was open for the afternoon and old, quaint fishermen’s cottages draped with nets and drying kelp clung to one side of Brooklyn Street. On the other side was the harbour and, at the top, a small park not far from the aunts’ house that guarded the entrance to Mariana and where picnic baskets had a choice of rocks or grass and a view of moored, naked yachts not doing anything at all, as ordered. Sunday anglers in good clothes with proper tackle were feeding fish with bait on fancy hooks until the fish were full as googs and sank. Harbour swells splashed rocks until everything got wet and on that clear, breezy day, Brooklyn Street was a nice place to be. ‘Which is your aunts’ house, Angel?’ ‘The old wooden one at the top – with the stone wall.’ Angel hoped the gate would be locked. She hoped they had gone out and she nervously walked with the others until they were outside the house. ‘I can hear music,’ Winifred said. ‘How lovely.’ ‘That’s Aunt Clara’s music. She lives upstairs. She plays ballet music and she hates to be disturbed.’ 164

‘Is she a dancer?’ ‘She was. She’s old now.’ ‘We certainly won’t stay long, but how lovely to hear Swan Lake in a street, out of the blue. Mother used to play records of dances and we had a lovely time while Father prayed with the cows.’ The gate was not only unlocked, but slightly open. Angel led Miss Varnham and Barnaby Grange around to the laun­ dry door. She hoped Elsa might be close by but there was no sound, even after she quietly knocked. ‘Aunt Elsa lives downstairs. She’s probably in the kitchen. I’ll go in and have a look. You stay here – I won’t be long.’ ‘Take your time, dear girl. We’ll look at the garden won’t we, Barnaby?’ ‘All gone to seed, the garden,’ said Elsa, suddenly appearing at the door. ‘Angel – who are these people?’ ‘These are my friends, Miss Varnham and Mister Grange. I told you about them. I wanted them to meet you. They brought tomatoes for you and onion and—’ ‘How do you do? I’m not used to visitors.’ Elsa patted her practically non-existent hair. Angel thought she looked very serious. ‘We won’t disturb your busy day – we’ve heard so much about you.’ Winifred took Elsa’s hand in hers and pressed it warmly. She gave her the bag. ‘Just a few poor things for the pot.’ And Elsa, not used to gifts of any kind, glanced inside the bag, smiled and pressed it to her breast. It could have been diamonds. ‘Jessie’s here, Angel. Clara won’t come down.’ Angel explained in her way. ‘Jessie owns this house. She teaches at the – university and she’s a real witch!’ 165

‘Angel! Stop it!’ said Elsa sternly. ‘O, my goodness! Come in, all of you and I’ll make a cup of tea.’ ‘We’ve just had lunch but I’d love to meet Jessie and see the old house – and so close to the harbour. I hope the other aunt joins us.’ Winifred swept into the house behind Elsa as though she owned the place. ‘Come along, Barnaby.’ Winifred lowered her voice close to Elsa’s ear. ‘Maths genius.’

In Elsa’s sitting room sat Jessie – spine straight as steel – clothes on the black side of black, with her long plait sitting still and stiff and not a hair out of place. ‘O, how absolutely gorgeous! I’ve always wanted very long hair but not to be, not to be. All I have is the bun with a stick through it. How do you do?’ Jessie turned, still sitting, and with eyes the colour of her spine regarded Winifred Varnham with a look that could well have been fatal. ‘Who is this woman?’ ‘Miss Varnham and Mister Grange are friends of Angel’s,’ Elsa said in a voice that quavered a little. ‘And they have come for tea.’ ‘Tea?’ ‘Yes,’ said Angel. ‘And we brought presents for Elsa and Clara and nothing for you and I brought a maidenhair fern from the gully in my bag and—’ Jessie snatched the bag from her and looked inside. ‘It’s dead.’ ‘Such a shame,’ said Winifred. ‘Perhaps it just needs water.’ ‘You don’t tell me when a plant is dead or not. There’s not a plant in this country I cannot identify and I know when it’s dead! I am highly regarded—’ 166

‘Miss Frost at school, Mother.’ Suddenly, in words. And Barnaby shared a smile with the floorboards. Jessie glared at him disbelievingly. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Elsa had almost made it to the kitchen when Clara appeared at the door. ‘What on earth’s going on here?’ ‘Intrusions! How dare you and Elsa allow this child to invite strange people to tea!’ Even though Jessie stood away from the chair, the highly disciplined plait did not move an inch from her spine. ‘People from cheap boarding houses with no purpose in life – girls! Girls with nothing to do but break their nails and paint their faces like clowns. University full of them!’ Words bitter as green berries, straying off the matter at hand. Winifred was astonished. ‘Are you always so angry?’ ‘How dare you!’ ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Elsa, so grateful for the diversion. From upstairs Stravinsky thumped through the floorboards. ‘That’s The Rite of Spring,’ said Angel. ‘I bet you didn’t know that, Jessie.’ ‘Twenty.’ In words. ‘Aunt Clara used to teach ballet here. There was a barre and a mirror.’ ‘How lovely, Angel,’ said Winifred. ‘I was only just a moment ago telling the others that Mother used to dance while Father prayed. Do you dance or pray, Jessie?’ ‘How dare you!’ ‘Just curious – not the slightest offence intended. But I have to say that you remind me more of my father than my mother.’ ‘Tell them why you’re here, Jessie,’ Clara asked unexpectedly. 167

‘Naturally to keep an eye on my property.’ ‘And collect the rent?’ ‘It’s time – and a perfectly normal thing for a property owner to do.’ ‘You know they haven’t got it,’ said Angel with her fists clenched and standing straight up and down. ‘England.’ In words. Jessie flapped like a crow on heat. ‘Mad people – mad! – all of you. Get out of my house!’ ‘I cannot imagine why you are so angry, Madam, but it is very deep and very bad for your health,’ said Winifred. ‘I think your university has left the dust of ages and its stone walls and stuffy halls in a brain that craves fresh air. It is possible that it has been too long since you’ve studied a plant in a gully or a field and felt happy to be doing so—’ ‘Stop! Who on earth do you think you are!’ ‘She is the Duchess of Nullabri,’ said Angel. ‘And the grandest lady in this room.’ ‘England – England.’ In words again, shaking his head and laughing at distant memories. Before Jessie could respond, Elsa came in with a tray of tea and biscuits she had made and a small jug of milk. She was about to put the tray onto the small table by the window when Jessie cried, ‘Take that away! Take it all away!’ Jessie flapped onto the chair. ‘I’ll not have insanity brought into my house, uninvited, to use our rations.’ And Elsa got such a fright she dropped everything onto the floor and there was tea and milk and biscuits all over the place and she rushed to the kitchen and back, in tears, crying ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry’ as Stravinsky came to a dramatic end. Clara chuckled for the first time in a very long time and nobody noticed. ‘Have you told her yet?’ Clara said to Elsa while Elsa was 168

doing what she was trained to do, kneeling at the feet of her betters with a towel and a brush pan. Though, to be fair, Angel helped. ‘What?’ ‘Have you told Angel the news?’ ‘O, I’m sorry, Clara, I forgot all about it.’ ‘We have some news for you, Angel.’ Clara passed another tea towel down to Elsa. ‘What news?’ ‘We’ve had a letter from your Uncle George – your mother’s brother.’ ‘I didn’t know I had an Uncle George. I can’t remember my mother telling me.’ ‘Well, he’s coming up from Melbourne and he wants to meet you.’ ‘O?’ ‘He’s coming here to this house next Sunday to meet you, Angel.’ Elsa was at last off her hands and knees, all of which were red and tough as indeed they’d been trained to be. ‘You’re always here on Sundays so we thought it would be easier.’ ‘And when was I to be informed of this arrangement? When was my permission to be sought for such a meeting between a stranger from Melbourne and a scrap of a girl with half a brain?’ ‘O, do stop spoiling things, woman.’ Winifred Varnham was annoyed and alarmed by Jessie’s attitude. ‘And just in case the meeting is unacceptable, Mister Grange and I will come too. And if you don’t want the meeting to take place in your house, we will simply go outside. Of course, we will generously donate food and beverage if it is required, but if the sun is shining a picnic outside would be very nice.’ ‘What a good idea,’ said Elsa. 169

‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Clara. ‘I think the record’s stuck.’ Jessie was speechless.

Angel was very thoughtful. An uncle? She had never imagined an uncle of her own. She wondered if there were others – brothers and sisters. Angel’s mother never talked about her home in Melbourne. She wondered if Uncle George would look like her mother. Was he older or younger? Did he have a wife and Angel a family of cousins? Was he a nice man? She wondered what it would be like touching an uncle who was a stranger to her. She wondered about his hands – ​his fingers. ‘I’ll make fresh tea,’ said Elsa, who had pulled herself together remarkably. Training. ‘Why don’t you take your friends down the front to the rocks and show them the harbour and I’ll call you when the tea’s ready?’ ‘Okay.’ And Angel opened the door that led to the fence and the rocks. She stood aside for the others to pass. ‘Angel – you have a stain on the back of your skirt …’ ‘We sat on the grass, Elsa, and watched the ocean for a while. The grass was damp.’ ‘I don’t think it’s grass, Miss Varnham.’ ‘O, o, yes, I see …’ ‘What is it?’ cried Angel. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Come with me. Angel. Come to the bathroom …’ And Elsa turned off the kettle, took some clean rags from a drawer, held Angel’s hand and led her away through the sitting room. ‘Now, what’s happening behind my back and nobody saying a word?’ Jessie, from the chair, and under a weak ray of sunlight. ‘O, do shut up!’ said Winifred and felt better for saying it. 170

She and Barnaby strolled through the kitchen door and down to the rocks and the harbour. ‘Is Angel sick?’ In words. ‘No, Barnaby – not at all. Fit as a fiddle. She’ll be with us shortly. We’ll sit here for a while and enjoy the view. I wonder how Missus Potts is getting on with the husband from Brazil?’ And Barnaby laughed. He could laugh and frequently did so. He needed no numbers for his laugh. It was uncalculated and always pleasing to the ear.

171

The man from Brazil

That evening in the boarding house, the dining table’s war-effort food was consumed quietly and without complaint, since the diners, all eyes and ears, were more interested in the unusual events of the day, the atmosphere of the room and the mood of its proprietor. Angel Martin missed it all since she had to go to her broom cupboard with a belly ache after coming to one of life’s stumbling blocks for females, as Elsa explained along with the facts of life, telling her that she should lie down and think about it. So, in Angel’s absence it was Harry Potts who helped to clear away after the evening meal. Poor thing, poor Harry, thin as a stick, plates stacked, teetering in one hand and the other holding up his pants. Even his hair seemed to have lost weight. It had been his first day back at Persia Potts’s Bushland Boarding Establishment – Reasonable Rates and, after more than a year’s absence, on that occasion it seemed to those who witnessed and listened, the ‘Welcome home, Harry Potts’ had 172

not been going terribly well. It had all begun at three o’clock that afternoon. ‘You wouldn’t have a crust, would you, Missus?’ Creeping up behind her and frightening the daylights out of her at the clothesline with pegs in her mouth and bloomers tucked under her armpit. ‘And maybe a bit of a cuddle for your old Harry? I be coming home.’ ‘I’ll give you coming home!’ Spitting out pegs and facing him. ‘Where the hell have you been all this time with me here working like a carthorse with not a minute to myself looking after mad people in this place and a man dead, still in one of the coppers’ ice chests with no one going anywhere near him and you – and you! Lying under a tree in the gully pretending to be a bushfire – I’ll give you coming home!’ ‘That’s my girl! I be glad to be back.’ ‘You shamed me, Harry Potts. What do you think I’m going to tell them now?’ Nodding her head towards the house. ‘They’ll all know what you are – a tramp, Harry Potts, nothing but a bludger and here’s me telling them you’re a timber man in Brazil. You bloody shamed me, Harry Potts.’ ‘Brazil was thirty years ago, darlin’. Tell them I got brain damage from the mozzies. Tell them I lost my memory and didn’t know who I was. Tell them I was taken by the enemy and questioned – you’re good at stories.’ But Persia Potts had become very red in the face and her pupils had become small and she, without warning, hit Harry Potts’s left earlobe, which nearly knocked him off his feet but Harry just smiled and regarded her with affection. ‘Well, here I be, Persia, wanting a feed and some warmth and ready to work around the house and the grounds just like old times.’ ‘And how long will that last, may I ask?’ 173

‘Who can tell? I be getting too old for the swag, love. I just might stay and give you a hand.’ ‘I’ll watch for the pigs flying,’ she said. But when he pecked her on the cheek – ​finding a spot between the copper burns – ​ she didn’t flinch. ‘Then you’d better help with tea. There’s potatoes to peel and beans and the table to be set and … and well, you’ll have to clean up first. Get some of your old clothes out of my room, if they haven’t rotted away. I won’t have you seen the way you are. There’s a reputation to keep. The girl, Angel, helps for her keep but she had to go to bed – ​nice for some!’ ‘I remember her. Down in the gully, nice girl – with a woman, tall, long dress, and a bloke, head down, sketching all over the place.’ ‘All mad, that lot, but except for the girl don’t give much trouble. Go and find some clothes and keep yourself to your­ self. I’ll see you in the kitchen after you’ve washed, Harry Potts, you stink to high heaven. Wash and start peeling.’ ‘And then?’ He winked. ‘Tea!’ ‘And then?’ ‘There’s things to do and you don’t look at me like that, Harry Potts. Those days are long gone and look at you skin and bone and all of you shrunk to half the size …’ ‘Not all of me be shrunk, Persia Potts.’

After the kitchen chores had been attended to, Missus Potts took off her pinny, wiped through her hair with a wet comb, and brought Harry to another broom cupboard at the front of the boarding house that served as a drawing room for guests. In the drawing room, there were two chairs close enough to 174

strangle a two-seater lounge, and a standard lamp and four guests, one of whom sat so far under the mean light of the lamp the lampshade could have been his hat. He was a casual and absorbed in a book entitled Small Finds Without Provenance: A beginner’s guide and didn’t look up when Missus Potts, carrying a spare chair, crammed her husband into the room. Harry’s old clothes hung long and loose on his scarecrow frame. He wore a tie that didn’t go with anything at all and carried the overwhelming smell of mothballs. The others, including Winifred Varnham, had polite but distinctive question marks in their eyes. ‘Well, as you’ve already seen,’ said Missus Potts, ‘my Harry’s come back to me safe and sound, praise be.’ ‘Where’s he been?’ someone asked with little interest. ‘Lost! Lost in the wild jungle of Brazil …’ Harry Potts sat still and quiet with head lowered as he’d been told to ‘… alone with nothing but logs of wood, wild animals and snakes as long as tram lines and all the time trying to get back to Duffy Street—’ ‘Via Queensland?’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘No food, bitten from head to toe, malaria more than likely, dysentery, too. He would have been out of his mind and probably was most of the time.’ Aiming a glance at Winifred Varnham that could have been a near-death experience. ‘Out of his mind and then, down the river on logs, a boat rescued him that was just about to sail to Queensland, Miss Varnham, Queensland, where they let him off to fend for himself and him nearly dying at that stage—’ ‘You should write plays,’ said a woman with a newspaper. Even Harry had to wipe his eyes. ‘But still getting any work he could to survive – anything for a crust to keep him going but it all got the better of him 175

and he lost his memory in Queensland, Miss Varnham – ​ lost his memory of Duffy Street and me and the house but he just walked and walked to the south until he found the gully …’ Pointing behind her with her thumb. ‘And here he is! Praise be!’ ‘What a story!’ said the woman with the newspaper. ‘Yes, indeed,’ added Winifred. Harry raised his head at that point and quietly checked with his wife if it was all right to go out back and finish his beer. The guests were silent in the broom cupboard and Missus Potts sat on the chair vacated by Harry. ‘There!’ she said at last. Then to Winifred, ‘How is your sister, Miss Varnham?’ ‘There has been some progress, Missus Potts.’ ‘Good! I hope she gets better very, very soon.’ And Missus Potts sucked in her lips until they were as thin as paper cuts. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea, Missus Potts?’ asked the man with the book and the lampshade, who hadn’t listened to a word of the drama. ‘Tea’s off. There’s none left. You’re too late. I’m out of tea. It doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’ And she picked up the chair and stamped out of the room.

In the morning – and what a morning it was – the high northside air, fresh from the bush, was so pure it almost hurt to breathe. At eight o’clock birds were still waking in their nests and currawongs sang their particular morning song – ​so beautiful the trees would have clapped their leaves if they’d been able to. The salt air of Sydney’s east, the salt air from the Bay. And Mariana was nice, too, different, but Angel had begun to find 176

it cloying and irritating though she still sucked a strand of hair when no one was looking. Beyond that she thought it best to take salt in small doses. Sundays were enough. Sundays were no longer the same anyway. Her music still played, forever beautiful in its way but the colours of her music and the world were different. Angel’s duchess held her hand as they strolled down to the gully. Angel had begun to think of her as her protector. A mother, almost. ‘You remind me of Joan of Arc. When I’m rich, I’ll buy you a horse.’ ‘No school today?’ Winifred had laughed. ‘I’m sick today.’ ‘No, darling, you’re not sick. Elsa told me what happened and she told me she explained it all to you. What a nice woman she is.’ ‘I didn’t know what was happening to me.’ ‘Had you not heard of the dreaded “monthlies”? Too young, I expect. In my memory, I was a little older but I thought I was bleeding to death because Father disapproved of me. But it can happen at an early age. It’s not uncommon. You are well and beautifully developed, Angel.’ ‘There was one girl in my class at school. I remember. Poor Valerie – she was terrified. I sat with her at lunchtime but she smelled like dead fish – I had to move.’ ‘So, now you are a woman. Don’t let a man know this.’ ‘Have you ever loved a man, Miss Varnham? Did you ever get married?’ ‘No, Angel. I have never been interested in men. I have had other interests. I will explain it all to you one day.’ They walked along the creek shore, drank a little of its pure water and sat for a moment on moss cushions. 177

‘This reminds me of Swan Lake except the swans are yabbies,’ said Angel. ‘I think Aunt Clara would like it.’ ‘What a strange house it is at the Bay,’ said Winifred, as though she and the others were not already living in a strange house. ‘I found that Jessie woman very difficult to understand.’ ‘The trouble is, Jessie owns the house. My grandfather left everything to her. My aunts have been in that house almost all of their lives and Jessie charges rent they can’t afford and expects them to mend things and do the garden but they can’t and she wants to sell it.’ ‘And she, an academic. She should know better. Jessie gives the impression she thinks she’s above us all, Angel – your aunts especially. But it is my opinion that academics know little of the real world beyond the stone walls of their universities. Jessies have lessons to be learned, Angel, and it’s up to us to teach them, what say you?’ ‘O, yes, Miss Varnham. You could do it.’ The two friends strolled hand-in-hand through the lush gully and came to a tramp leaning against the trunk of a blue gum tree. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Mister Potts?’ ‘Well, Miss Varnham, where else would I be, under the present circumstances, in the predicament I be finding myself? Not a halfpenny to scratch my bum with—’ ‘Mister Potts! You are no longer homeless, or hungry. You’re back in the bosom of your family – your wife – and you have a roof over your head.’ ‘This be better. Tree and a sky and a gully …’ ‘Why?’ asked Angel, although she was inclined to agree. ‘Well, if you be wanting to know the truth, I like being a tramp – I prefer it. Shocked are you? No work to do, to speak of. I like the hand out for tucker, and let me tell you a starving 178

tramp at the back door gets more than he can eat if there’s a tear in his eye! And I can cry poor with the best of them. I be sleeping out if I want to – a bed if I need one. Beds all over the place if something comes up of a sudden, wink wink. And now, here I be and there’s you-know-who, not changed a bit – same nag, same crook food, same stains, same pinny over that stomach of hers but when I be turning up stony broke there’s a way ’round it. I’m handy with the saw and hammer and she throws me a bob or two but later – later, when the light’s out and the moon comes through leaves at the window, I be closing my eyes and she could be a girl from a dance hall and in her bed she tickles my feet and rubs my belly like the kid she never had and I’m back up there again.’ ‘I don’t think we want to know the details. You, Harry, have abandoned your responsibilities as a householder and a breadwinner. How on earth did you think Missus Potts was going to manage when you left her?’ ‘I didn’t fret. I knew she be okay. The toughest old bird on the run, she be. She’s the Amazon in the stories she be telling – not me. I be the barnacle on the rock of her and that’s that. I like it that way and I think she likes it too – coddling she calls it. She likes to coddle.’ ‘How very sad,’ said Winifred. ‘Don’t you have other relatives, Mister Potts?’ asked Angel. ‘Not that I be knowing about.’ ‘I do wish you’d stop speaking like a lost pirate, Mister Potts.’ ‘England. Way back. Always be talking like this. Can’t help it.’ ‘You must have a leftover relative somewhere,’ said Angel. ‘I’ve got an uncle. He’s coming up from Melbourne to meet me. So that will be three – two aunts and an uncle.’ 179

‘You want to look out for uncles, girlie. Has he got any money?’ ‘I won’t know until I meet him. His name is George and he’s my mother’s brother and I’ll meet him next Sunday at the aunts’ house. Miss Varnham and Mister Grange are coming too.’ ‘Well then, girlie, that will be something. A bit nervous, are you?’ ‘Not really – he’ll be mine – he’s family!’ ‘And I’ll be with her every step of the way,’ said Winifred. ‘And by the way, we were very sad to see the liquidambar tree cut down, Mister Potts, and so low. It was a beautiful tree.’ ‘Two axes and a saw. She’s selling the wood for fires. I be leaving the stump nice and even for you to sit on and—’ ‘You do realise that it will sprout again in spring, Mister Potts, if the stump is left? But it was kind of you to make it flat – then you’ll have to do it all over again.’ ‘A tree will do what a tree needs to do, Miss Varnham. I’ll not be getting in the way of the tree world.’ ‘You’ll just have to come back again,’ said Angel. ‘And again and again, Mister Potts, for the liquidambar – when it grows again. That was a good idea. Is that what you planned?’ ‘You’ve got your head screwed on, girlie. I reckon that uncle of yours is going to have to look out for you.’

180

Uncle George

How many Sundays had there been? Angel wondered about that. She knew that if she could work out the months of Sundays and sit down with Barnaby Grange, he would have the answer in a flash. Sundays were literally sunny days for Angel – even the ones that rained and were cold or the ones when the sky over Mariana was heavy and black with storm clouds that coloured the water a very dark green. Angel considered that if the clocks of the world were only set to Sundays, the world would be a better place. How she would always love the Sunday trams and their drivers, who were her friends. How she never tired of the Sunday change in the air when the trams snaked along their rails to the east of Sydney and the Bay and the ocean and the breeze that brought a little salt with it and the breath of it excited her because it was Sunday and trams and Mariana and the aunts’ house. Summer Sundays were popular with visitors dying to gaze at the ocean from the high cliffs near the tram stop, ready 181

with picnic baskets for lunch by the lighthouse or below it in the park where there were swings and see-saws and squadrons of gulls with a taste for anything, but preferring chips, and Sunday visitors sleepy after lunch, ready to lie sunburnt and skin-peeled on the drying kelped and grubby sand of the Bay. Children with their clothes tucked into their bloomers splashed, paddling along the shallows, frightening their mothers with corpses of bluebottles. On Summer Sundays the trams were packed like tins of fish, with everyone sitting up straight and with everything they needed on their laps. Angel sat with Winifred. The Duchess of Nullabri wore flowing red. It was the colour of power, she explained, in case that academic was in the house. Angel wore a dress she’d had for ages, the pale yellow one with flowers that looked like spring on a rag. Despite Miss Varnham’s disapproval she’d put on a swipe of lipstick and had rubbed some of it onto her cheeks for rouge, because, as she explained, the tram driver was new and she needed him to like her and she needed Uncle George to see she was older and experienced. Winifred had thought it best not to argue. Barnaby had found a seat next to a woman with a baby who cried all the way, simply because it felt like it, and her older boy who travelled with his fingers in his ears and a dripping nose. Angel glanced at Barnaby from time to time and remarked to Winifred that he had not once raised his eyes from his sketchbook. ‘I don’t think we’ll have time to get off at the lighthouse stop, Miss Varnham. I don’t want to be late. I think Elsa’s making lunch.’ ‘Don’t be nervous, darling. Barnaby and I will be with you all the time. And Elsa will like the basket of produce I bought for her this time.’ 182

‘She’ll love it – but I don’t know about the rabbits … Their heads are off and there’s blood.’ ‘Angel, I tried, but they kept staring over the edge of the basket and I didn’t know what else to do. Harry Potts caught them for me.’ ‘It’s all very nice of you, Miss Varnham. All of it. I think you’re a beautiful lady.’ ‘Come along, Barnaby,’ Winifred called when the tram stopped at the wooden cross. ‘Coming.’ In a word. But he revealed later, briefly as was his way, that he’d had an interesting time calculating the measurements of the backs of heads in the tram. At the fence by the cliff top they paid their respects to Mariana. On her was a very large naval vessel, cutting through the water cool as a skater on ice. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, Miss Varnham? That ship’s not a bit scared. So in charge. See the bow waves curling? Mariana doesn’t mind that ship – and I wouldn’t mind being on it.’ ‘O, darling. You are going to be such a beauty. I suspect there’ll be yachts and boats and ships of all kinds lining up for the touch of your feet.’ ‘Ha! Lovely to think that might happen. What do you think, Barnaby?’ Silence. ‘O, never mind. Dreams are dreams.’ Mariana was hard to leave on that summer day, with her deep sea all glassy as far as the horizon, and white seahorses, all thrashing manes and tails and bored with a sea smooth as a rink, raged at the cliff’s bottom and climbed, one at a time, all seven of them, onto the rocks where fishermen were not allowed. They walked to Brooklyn Street via the picnicking park. The Sunday park was very noisy – mothers shouting to their 183

little darlings to ‘Get down off that!’ and fathers with their faces under sleeping hats growling, ‘Don’t nag, Mother’ and grandmothers wanting to go to the toilet, and patches of dusty grass protected by rugs like battlefields under giant fig trees. There were spilt ice creams and tears, a burst balloon and howls, and through it all were gulls fighting among themselves for the sake of a chip. Angel and her friends stepped carefully through it all. ‘No more than an hour or two from the gully and the creek, Angel, and we could be in another country,’ said Winifred. ‘I don’t know which I prefer because I have to say I love them both.’ ‘I wonder what Uncle George will be like.’ ‘I imagine Uncle George will be on his very best behav­ iour, as will be all of us,’ said Winifred, very tall and grand in her robe of red. ‘Don’t be nervous, darling girl.’ ‘O, I’m not – not one bit,’ Angel lied.

Brooklyn Street was a red-hot summer carpet with a stream of Sunday bests strolling back and forth and some stepping into the gutter to make room for others to pass. Barnaby had taken his jacket off but had it perfectly draped across an arm as his mother would have wanted. Angel glanced at the green gate where the old man with the bucket lived but it looked vacant. No nets were drying on the fence and there wasn’t a sniff of kelp drying. Angel wondered if he’d died with his bad hips and octopus and she hoped that one or the other had not got the better of him. She never did know his name. She was sorry about that. The gate to the aunts’ house had been left unlocked and through it Angel could see that Elsa – and it could only have 184

been Elsa – had somehow spared the time to weed the gravel drive. There was a nervous neatness to the entrance – shrubs had had their twigs cut and trimmed and the buds of a pussy willow that grew behind the letterbox stood up like antennas, ready for anything. Winifred brushed a speck of a leaf from Angel’s cheek with her handkerchief and smoothed her hair with her hands. ‘I can remember my mother doing that but she always used spit on a hanky,’ said Angel. She was perspiring a little and some lipstick had greased into the corner of her mouth. ‘I wish you’d let me wipe some of that off, darling. Uncle George will not think less of you.’ ‘Just a little bit, then.’ And while Winifred dabbed with the hem of her red robe she asked Barnaby to put his jacket back on. ‘I know it’s warm, Barnaby, but your shirt is a little worn.’ ‘I think I’d like to go up here to Elsa’s door, Miss Varnham, and knock and be proper Sunday visitors.’ Angel led the way. ‘Poor Aunt Elsa must be exhausted.’ And Sunday visitors they were, strolling up the polished drive, noses in the air and whispering in their Sunday visitor voices. From downstairs the aromas of the baked leg of something with onions and good suet and roasting tomatoes streamed through the air and under their noses, like the spirits of the ghosts of ovens. From upstairs came the music of dance – something Spanish – with a passion that Angel had not heard before. She hoped the library of sounds inside her would file it away for later. Winifred Varnham turned on the path and clicked her heels to the rhythm and Barnaby laughed. ‘I think your aunts have gone to a lot of trouble for your Uncle George.’ And she took the headless rabbits from her basket of offerings and buried them in leaves behind a flame 185

tree on the harbourfront. ‘There! Perhaps it was not a good idea.’ Angel knocked on the door and almost immediately there were quick steps along Elsa’s polished-daily lino. When the door opened it was Winifred Varnham who bellowed, ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’ ‘How dare you ask! I am, as you see, in my own property and have taken the trouble, and I may say the risk, of skating along this wretched floor to let you in – and believe me when I say I can let you all out just as quickly!’ Jessie, sharp as a pencil in her black cloak, black stockinged feet in sensible shoes that had never been anywhere, a face that could have come from a dig of ruins, and her long, grey plait, was, to the three visitors, a disturbing beginning to Angel’s introduction to Uncle George. Barnaby Grange, who rarely had ordinary, human, unmathematical ideas, salvaged the rabbits from their resting place and gave them to Jessie. ‘What on earth are these for, you stupid man? Are you mad?’ ‘Yes.’ In a word. ‘Well, take the wretched things down to the rocks. Throw them into the harbour.’ ‘They were to be a gift from Miss Varnham,’ said Angel. ‘It’s rude not to say thank you.’ She took a couple of steps back and stood behind Winifred, just in case. ‘How dare you!’ ‘I’m here – I’m here,’ Elsa called from the kitchen end of the hall in a high, anxious voice. ‘I’m here. Everything is all right. I’m cooking your favourites. Everything is going to be lovely …’ ‘You look very tired, Elsa,’ said Winifred. ‘I think you do too much. I brought a basket of vegetables and two rabbits 186

but Jessie objected to the rabbits – and I must say that on this occasion I agreed. I think they were not suitable for this household. Mister Grange has thrown them in the harbour. They’ll be feeding the fishes by now, I imagine.’ ‘But I love rabbit, Jessie. I would have liked them.’ Elsa rubbed her rough, red hands on her apron. ‘If you don’t like rabbits, Jessie, you needn’t have come. They weren’t for you.’ Angel thought that was very brave of her. ‘We don’t get a lot of rabbits in the Bay, Miss Varnham. Fish or vegies weekdays and a baked dinner on Sundays. Everyone knows you can’t have what you want now and I would have loved the rabbits.’ Angel thought Elsa was too close to Jessie for safety and stood straight up and down in front of her aunt with her fists ready but Barnaby appeared, laughing, with seaweed in his hair and the darkening cloud lifted. ‘Where is Aunt Clara?’ Angel asked, avoiding the obvious question. ‘It’s flamenco today,’ said Jessie. ‘The floorboards – my Lord – the floorboards! But not a crack to be heard. She’ll be down for lunch. He’s in the sitting room.’ ‘Then we’d better join him, Angel.’ ‘Okay, Elsa.’ Angel was nervous. ‘I observed no family resemblance at all,’ said Jessie, who Elsa thought had been searching for something to say to make things as uncomfortable as possible. ‘Except for the teeth. Small, like the girl’s. Spaced and sharp … Why is your mouth red, child? O, never mind – I can imagine. Your mother always looked like a raspberry tart.’ ‘Don’t you talk about my mother – you – you – Jessie!’ ‘If Uncle George has teeth at all,’ said Winifred Varnham grandly, ‘it can only mean good health so that is indeed good news.’ 187

‘You are a fool,’ said Jessie. ‘And you, my poor, dear, dried-up weed of a woman, need your roots watered and fed, your stem stroked and your stamen loved by bees not right in their heads!’ ‘Everything’s all right,’ Elsa bleated like a frightened lamb. ‘Everything’s all right. Lunch will be ready in half an hour. You really must come and meet your Uncle George, now.’ ‘Not all of us – not yet,’ Angel said quietly. ‘I want to sneak up and have a look at him first. Do you mind?’ ‘He’ll see you,’ said Elsa. ‘Don’t do anything silly, Angel.’ ‘He won’t see me. I know where to hide – please?’ ‘Just for a minute, darling. And be nice about it. You don’t want to frighten the poor man.’ Winifred Varnham, in her power red robe, stood close to Jessie, ssshhh’d and put a finger to her lips.

Uncle George stood so straight in the sitting room he could have been something bronzed in a town square. He stood with his hat in his hands and gazed out of the small window at nothing at all. Angel had tip-toed to the room’s side door, held the handle so it wouldn’t move, and peeped through the crack. She hardly breathed. The spotless glass allowed a shaft of dusted light from the sun to shine upon him like a spotlight on an opera singer waiting for him to sing. He was all bones and angles with very short grey hair – he looked strangely alien in the dark room, like a man dreaming of the sea. Uncle George was not at all the uncle Angel had expected. In her books about families, particularly those written by Charles Dickens, uncles were usually elderly, fairly short, well-fed, whisky-and-watered men, with bellies and watch chains and round, good-humoured heads with cheeks the 188

colour of claret and veins. This Uncle George, grey-suited in a corner of Elsa’s dark sitting room, was not like that at all. Skinny as a stick, tall as a wardrobe, waistcoat with buttons that shone when the light touched them that Angel thought could have been pearl, but no watch chain that she could see. His shoes, even in the gloom, Angel could see were polished within an inch of their lives and he held his hat across his trousers as though he didn’t want anyone to see his other buttons. His face was, as far as his niece could see, unblemished and kindly and gave no clue to his age. She couldn’t see his hands very well and could not have said what his fingers were like. A most unusual uncle, Angel thought. She considered greeting him before the others came – she considered it but knew Elsa and Winifred would disapprove. She could hear footsteps on the lino and knew she mustn’t – it would be wrong – the others would be disappointed – she mustn’t, she mustn’t – it would be cheating … ‘How do you do?’ Not helping herself. ‘How do you do?’ From the threshold of the door, ignoring considerations and disapproval and greeting Uncle George in her experienced voice. ‘I’m Angel.’ And Uncle George, as though he had been wound up like a toy and frightened out of his dreams, spun towards her voice, dropped his hat, lost his balance and fell into the chair next to Elsa’s sewing basket. ‘Well, well – O, my, O, my!’ exclaimed the uncle. ‘Of course you are. Angel. Of course you are. Unexpectedly and out of nowhere … How do you do? Well, well, there you are … Here we are … and my next trick is …’ And he laughed, stood up, and threw his hat in the air and caught it, and spun full circle on his toes. ‘But I like surprises – gets the blood moving. So, how do you do, Angel Martin?’ 189

‘Okay, thank you. Sorry I frightened you but it was funny. You’re funny. I bet you can do card tricks.’ ‘No – no card tricks but I can swallow small potatoes whole. You can watch them going down past the Adam’s apple – a bit like sword swallowing, I suppose. And you didn’t frighten me. I was delightfully surprised,’ said Uncle George with an old-fashioned bow. Angel was delighted, too. Uncle George seemed to be just as jolly as a Charles Dickens uncle despite the fact that he was tall and skinny enough to be a bean stake in a garden. Then suddenly the sitting room was full of women. Barnaby Grange stood behind them. Aunt Clara, worn out after her performance with Gypsies somewhere in Andalucía, joined the others because, after all, it was an historic occasion. ‘I wish Peggy was here,’ Clara said and she turned to Jessie. ‘I wish she was here to see the old house used as it was before certain people moved it to misery.’ ‘It’s a roof over your head, Clara, and don’t forget it!’ Jessie hissed low as an asp but the group seemed undisturbed by the exchange. ‘So!’ declared the duchess, widely smiling. ‘I see we are too late for an introduction.’ Angel had rehearsed in her mind a hundred ways of greeting an uncle she had no idea existed, but after creeping up the hall for a sneak viewing, not one of the hundred ways did she use. Then on cue, after Uncle George’s one-man show, everyone was in the sitting room laughing as though it was the beginning of a play. Even Clara. Even Barnaby. Uncle George, with his mouth so widely open, laughed out loud and clearly revealed teeth that did, according to Jessie, run in the family – upper and lower small, sharp and neatly spaced. ‘There!’ she said, pointing. Jessie had not laughed with the .

190

others in the true sense of laughter but had made a cracked lip bleed in the brief moment she’d stretched it. ‘I can smell something burning,’ she said to frighten Elsa and put herself in a familiar realm of authority. Uncle George was introduced to Winifred and Barnaby. He seemed to be most impressed by the Duchess of Nullabri. He bowed low and swept his hat in his old-fashioned way. ‘I must say, Madam, that you look positively regal.’ ‘Of course,’ the duchess said with a nod and a smile. ‘And thank you.’ Jessie stabbed Winifred with a glance. ‘Lunch won’t be long,’ said an unusually relaxed Elsa, as though she’d been nipping the cooking sherry. ‘I’ll help you, Elsa, dear. It smells delicious,’ said Winifred. ‘We’ll have to eat it picnic-style, outside on the grass. I baked a leg of saltbush hogget – two-tooth, so it should be tasty. There’s a treat! The butcher and I get along … so, anyway … it’s a nice day and there’s the harbour and the gulls and the odd ferry from Circular Quay. It’s nice at the Bay on Sundays, Mister Wolf.’ ‘Wolf? Uncle George Wolf?’ said Angel. ‘I never heard my mother tell me a name. Maybe I don’t remember. Was that my mother’s name?’ ‘Yes, Angel.’ ‘He’s a Jew!’ Jessie said in a voice she would use to describe a man with three balls hanging outside his shop door. ‘We have a lot to talk about, Angel. It’s been too long – you must have wondered – and look at you – there’s a niece to be proud of.’ ‘Are you really my mother’s brother?’ ‘Yes, of course. I’m afraid your mother lost touch with the family when she moved to Sydney. One of those things that 191

happen to families, but here I am, Angel, all the way from Melbourne in the train, just to see you.’ ‘You could have written my mother a letter. Didn’t you know where we were?’ ‘We had an idea, but not for a long while after she left Melbourne.’ ‘Then, if you had an idea, where were you when my mother was sick? There were trains, then.’ Click. Angel was suddenly angry and her brain moved a notch from the entertainer from Melbourne to the reality of betrayal. ‘Where were you when she was dying in the sanitarium?’ ‘Later, Angel – please, later …’ Winifred whispered in her ear. ‘We didn’t know she was sick, Angel,’ said Uncle George. ‘No one told us.’ ‘You could have found out!’ Click. Winifred Varnham glanced at Angel and was concerned. ‘Well, now, everyone. We must help Elsa with the plates.’ Winifred broke the awkward silence as only she could – taking charge with flowing robe, smiles and grand gestures. ‘Barnaby, the bowl of potatoes please and Clara, you could dance to the front grass most beautifully with the serviettes and cutlery. Jessie, could you manage the tomatoes? Yes, of course you could and I will help Elsa with the rest.’ Jessie did what she was asked to do. It was an astonishment to Elsa but of course what Elsa could not have known was Jessie’s determination to stand firm and mark her territory until the invasion was over. ‘She wasn’t invited, you know,’ whispered Elsa. ‘Never mind.’ ‘And what can I do?’ asked Uncle George. ‘Escort your beautiful niece, of course,’ said Winifred Varnham. 192

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe

During one of Angel’s ‘lost’ school day visits to the art gallery she’d lain on her side on the floor in front of a painting of a picnic. People sprawled like ancient Romans at a feast and one woman was naked. It was such a beautiful thing to see. Angel had propped herself up on an elbow and imagined she was somewhere within the frame. Even the music inside her became pastoral and gentle. It had been one of her memorable gallery experiences until the security guard who was her friend walked quickly to her side. ‘Get up! Get yourself up! You’ll trip someone lying there like that.’ ‘But I love it. Tell me about it.’ ‘Dashed if I know how you get away with nicking out of school like this. I don’t want to be mixed up in it.’ ‘It’s easy. It’s a secret about Mister Daisyfield at the school. I’ll tell you what happened one day.’ ‘Needn’t bother. I don’t think I want to hear about it. 193

Mister Daisyfield – what sort of a name is that?’ ‘Then, tell me!’ Angel had stood and pointed. ‘Tell me! Tell me!’ ‘It’s French – painted by a bloke called Manet and it’s called – well, I can’t say it in French but it sort of means the Luncheon on the Grass.’ On the harbourfront grass at the aunts’ house, Angel was strongly reminded of the painting even though here the grass was knee-high and weeds, looking for something to hang on to, groped through the jungle. ‘Shoddy.’ In word. Angel didn’t know what Barnaby meant, exactly, but imagined it was something his mother would say. The trees and shrubs were different in the painting and the water was not the water in the painting but a harbour, and there was no naked lady – but apart from all that, to Angel it was an Australian version of Manet’s painting. She thought she might begin another Book of the Bay but the next one would be illustrated. A shaded patch of ground where nothing grew served as a table for the picnic rug. Everyone was sprawled on their sides or on their backs or, like Uncle George, propped against the trunk of the flame tree. Uncle George and Barnaby Grange had taken their jackets off and had hung them on a branch. The baked hogget had been eaten and Elsa’s lemonade, sipped from glasses not used since the wedding, had been remarked upon and the group, full as googs, chatted with traces of meat and gravy and squashed peas on their lips. Jessie relaxed in her way by balancing uncomfortably on the head of a stone lion that was once a highlight of the garden. The lion, strangled by a creeper and hidden in its own patch of jungle, looked particularly miserable, Angel thought, with Jessie perched on his head like a very large crow. 194

‘Pity to see an old property go like this one,’ said Uncle George. ‘But of course, I can see it is too much for Elsa and you, Clara, to manage. If you have a mower I could do what I can with the grass.’ ‘We pay rent for this – it used to be ours but not anymore.’ Clara threw a dart in Jessie’s direction with her eyes. ‘Then your landlord should surely help to care for his property. Who owns the house?’ ‘That one, there!’ Angel pointed to Jessie like a witness in a courtroom. ‘And she wouldn’t lift a finger to help if her life depended on it!’ said Clara. ‘How dare you!’ said the crow. ‘O, well, there’s obviously much that is not my business – but I don’t think it would cost a great deal to clear the ground here.’ Uncle George, realising he was treading on family eggshells, smiled. ‘And whether the grass is high or low, it is beautiful here.’ ‘I’ll take you down to the rocks later, Uncle George. Clara has named them and she’s named the tides that splash in from Mariana. I’ll show you. She’s so clever.’ ‘What’s Mariana, Angel?’ ‘It’s the sea nation you can see from the top of the cliffs where the tram stops and where the lighthouse is. I think it’s another country but with water instead of land. Different. I found out all about it. I can tell you about it later if you like.’ ‘Okay. You can tell me about it later.’ ‘I used to be scared of it, but not anymore.’ ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Uncle George. ‘I’ve never been afraid of the ocean.’ ‘Do you live near the sea?’ Winifred asked. Angel was amazed that her friend had remained so unmarked, stainless 195

and ‘in place’ – even though she sprawled on the ground, cool as a cucumber. But then she would, wouldn’t she … ‘I do indeed, Miss Varnham. Our house is in St Kilda, right by the sea, and I will tell you, Miss Varnham, that the sea is my element when I’m not working. I like to fish and I have a small boat.’ ‘Then, what do you do, when you’re not in your element?’ asked the crow and the lion cringed. ‘I have a manufacturing company – a family business begun by my father. We make furniture. Bespoke, you might say, for clients of very fine taste. Very fine furniture, Madam, from prized timber from all over the world.’ ‘Any of it from Brazil?’ Angel asked, laughing. ‘Yes, there has been – but not at the moment. The war has put an end to mahogany from Brazil.’ ‘Then, I imagine you must be fairly well off?’ said Winifred. A sleepy remark she was barely aware of. ‘We’re not doing too badly – but the war, you know. It has affected us all. It has broken the backs of many businesses like ours.’ ‘Do you have a family, Mister Wolf?’ ‘My wife died eight years ago, but our two sons are comfortable in their homes – well, flats, really.’ ‘You really don’t look old enough to have sons in homes, Mister Wolf.’ ‘I’ll be sixty in half a year, dear lady.’ ‘Good heavens …’ And then it was obvious that Miss Varnham was about to close her eyes. ‘Do your sons live in flats by the sea?’ asked Angel. ‘Yes, and not far from the shore. Your mother was the youngest of a large family, did you know that?’ ‘No. My mother – your sister,’ snapped Angel in a sudden 196

mood swing, ‘lived by the sea too but we lived in a shopfront!’ Click. ‘Not now, darling,’ said Winifred, who was truly only vaguely aware of the after-lunch world in the Sunday Bay. Small, winged creatures had begun to form a halo around her head. ‘I’m sorry, Angel. We didn’t know. I hope you’ll forgive us one day.’ Clara stood, took her glass and a plate of leftovers for the gulls and said she was being eaten alive by grass ticks and if anyone wanted her she’d be upstairs. And a few minutes later the tranquil air of the Bay was pierced by the music of Stravinsky. ‘I’ll start cleaning up,’ said Elsa. Elsa had probably been saying ‘I’ll start cleaning up’ since the wedding glasses she’d used for the lemonade. Dependable, organised Elsa might well have said ‘I’ll start cleaning up’ the minute after she was born. She was able to carry four plates at a time and Angel was impressed. ‘I’ll help, Aunt Elsa.’ ‘No, Angel. You must stay with your Uncle George. Take him down to the harbour and show him your favourite rocks.’ Winifred Varnham had slipped into an elegant daydream and Jessie had become aware of Barnaby Grange. She was aware that he seemed to observe her for a longer time than she thought necessary for the notes, or whatever he was doing in a sketchpad every minute. A portrait? Yes, a portrait. What else would it be? Jessie did not say a word and did not distract Barnaby and pretended to be interested in the flame tree because, to tell the truth, she had not had such attention since the grandfather, her lover before he died, had made her a posy of kelp. 197

Jessie was not to know that Barnaby, in his calculations, found the angles and points, as well as the precise geometry of her sharp, black being, worthy of a mathematical portrait – differential geometry perhaps? though there were no curves to speak of – and then which numbers would he multiply for the woman’s particular colour black? ‘You can watch the tides from the rocks, too. Clara has named them all. She is very clever. It’s the music. Music and colours make you clever, did you know that? Do you want to come down to the rocks?’ ‘Yes, I’d like that. Lead the way.’ Then Uncle George stood and Angel laughed. ‘There’s stains and prickles and stuff all over your clothes. You look as though you’ve been picking blackberries in the gully.’ ‘I know about the boarding house and the gully, Angel. Elsa told me. You live in two worlds, don’t you? Do you love the gully as much as the rocks and the harbour?’ ‘I don’t know – there’s green moss and a creek in the gully and I love everything but I still suck the salt in my hair – did you know that? Some people chew their fingernails but I chew my hair. Do you think that’s mad?’ ‘No. A bit unusual but not mad.’

The house and the rocks viewed the world to the north-west. It was the best place to be to see the Bay, Angel thought, and like a tourist guide she pointed to the ferry wharf, the fish and chips shop next to the pub where Uncle George was staying, and the entrance to the park she had run through so many times on her way to Brooklyn Street. In the distance, families strolled along the beach walk – small as dolls – and dinghies 198

as old as the Ark pulled up on the strip of sand, and gulls, hundreds of them, argued in flocks knowing it was leftovers time. The afternoon sun at its peak above the Bay made light harbour swells drape here and there with the colours of shot taffeta, and a breeze from Mariana had moored water craft all over the place turning their noses in a certain direction. There were posh boats dressed in white, like virgins, next to battered old fishing boats dressed like tramps, and gulls pissing on one and not the others. ‘I think we’re sitting on Humperdink. It’s my favourite rock. Do you like it here, Uncle George?’ ‘Yes, shells are a bit hard on the old back but it’s a wonderful view. This place will be worth a fortune one day.’ ‘You sound like Jessie. That’s what she would say.’ ‘Sorry about that, but it’s true. And it’s a sorry thing to say, but part of the estate would be yours if the others died but that’s the way things are. Shame Jessie’s put a spanner in the works. But I’d like to see your boarding house and the gully, Angel. I’m catching the Thursday train back to Melbourne. Plenty of time. What do you think?’ ‘That’d be terrific. I’d love it. You make people laugh and you’ll think they’re all weird in the boarding house – they’re all a bit off their heads but there’s always a room kept for a casual if you wanted to stay the night.’ ‘That’ll do. I’ll go back there with you and Miss Varnham and Barnaby, stay the night and then, maybe tomorrow or Tuesday I could come back here and do a bit of fishing. I’d like to catch one for Elsa.’ ‘I don’t like fish, Uncle George. I just don’t like the taste. Did your wife like fish?’ ‘Yes, loved it.’ ‘What is her name?’ 199

‘Alma. But she’s dead, Angel. I did say. She had cancer.’ Aunty Alma. That would have been another aunt. ‘I’m sorry she’s dead.’ Angel wondered if she might have been more like Elsa or Clara, but that didn’t matter; the fact was, she seemed to be collecting aunts and uncles from all over the place. She practically now had a whole family of her own and it was an unusual feeling. Angel felt warmth just thinking about it. Somehow she would get a photograph of them all and add it to the collection behind the cupboard door – with Angel Martin of course. There was an Angel somewhere in the pictures but she had to sketch them herself. ‘Do you have a photo of Aunty Alma and everyone?’ ‘No.’ ‘You must miss her a lot.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did Aunty Alma like music?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘I thought Jews liked music all the time.’ ‘That is a strange thing to say.’ ‘What was her favourite colour?’ ‘Yellow, I think. Yes, it was yellow.’ ‘I love yellow, too. What did she do?’ ‘She worked part-time in a primary school.’ ‘And where was the cancer that killed her – was it inside her?’ ‘O, for God’s sake, Angel, must we talk about that now?’ The tide had changed its mind and splashed over the rock for the fun of it, wetting the bottom of Uncle George’s trousers. Uncle George said he was uncomfortable. He’d taken off his shoes and socks on the way down to the rocks – neat, shiny shoes and silky socks tucked into them – and held them out of harm’s way. Neat feet for his age with long toes that looked 200

as though they’d never done a day’s work in their lives and, for a reason she could not have possibly explained, Angel was irritated. Click. Like the tidal waves, Angel’s mood changed in a split second. She looked closely at Uncle George. She’d been trying to think who he reminded her of and she suddenly remembered a ballroom dancing teacher in one of her family photo collections behind the cupboard door in her room in the boarding house. ‘I just need to know where the cancer was, that’s all!’ ‘It was in her brain, Angel. It’s painful for me to remember these things.’ ‘Did she look pretty when she died?’ ‘No.’ ‘My mother looked pretty as though there was nothing wrong with her. You should have been there to see her instead of Missus Potts!’ ‘I’m sorry, Angel. I’m so sorry about it all. We’d better get back to the house. My trousers are wet.’ ‘Okay.’

The kitchen was all songs and suds. Elsa and Winifred Varn­ ham sang old songs while they washed and wiped. Barnaby Grange was on safari in the long grass at the harbourfront, counting the number of blades in the tufts. Clara had put herself away upstairs nice and tidy like an end-of-day toy and played something miserable on a cracked record. Angel had never seen Elsa so happy. ‘Jessie’s gone,’ she said with a smile spread all over her like a blush. ‘Jessie’s gone and Winifred and I are having the most fun. Did you enjoy the rocks, Uncle George?’ ‘He’s coming up to the boarding house with us and staying 201

the night,’ Angel said in a gush, ‘and I’ll show him the gully in the morning. Isn’t that something!’ ‘Goodness, Angel. A treasure to show the boarding house. A trophy at the altar of stains. You’d better warn him.’ Winifred laughed, as did Uncle George. ‘Angel wants to show me her green place and I’m looking forward to it but I’ll be back. The train’s on Thursday. I want to catch a nice fish for you, Elsa. Where do you think I could catch a nice fish?’ ‘Isn’t that too good of you, Mister Wolf. Isn’t that good of him?’ To anyone interested and she sang, ‘There’s a little fishy on a little dishy when the boats come in’. Angel thought how good it was to see the servant laughing, singing and happier than the mistress – she wished Jessie hadn’t gone. ‘Well, there’s nothing much to catch from our rocks, not for someone who knows about fishing but there is some place the locals go to …’ ‘We could sail a boat out to Mariana,’ said Angel. ‘You know we’re not allowed to do that while the war’s on, Angel, but it would have been nice. We could all have gone – such fun. I have only sailed in my dreams.’ Winifred Varnham laid a sopping wet tea towel over the top of the oven. ‘I wasn’t thinking of a party, Winifred.’ Uncle George laughed and said, ‘Another time perhaps. This time I just want to catch a fish for Elsa and I like to fish alone.’ ‘And what are you going to use for tackle, Mister Fisherman?’ ‘I’ll hire it.’ ‘Clara has all her father’s tackle in a chest upstairs. She just might let you look through it. She once used the chest for dance clothes, but now it’s full of lines and hooks. I’ll ask her. And this place the locals use – and let me tell you they don’t like outsiders to know – is a point near the ocean end of the 202

Bay, near the heads. You have to climb on rocks to get to it, there’s no path. You start from the small park with the big fig trees. There’s an old barge tied up and they fish off the barge. That’s where your grandfather caught his fish, Angel.’ ‘And that’s where the old man down the road catches his octopus, I bet. I can show you where to go, Uncle George. I’ve been there but nobody saw me.’ ‘Not this time, Angel. I’ll find it – and I like to fish alone and in silence. Sorry.’ Uncle George smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Next time, Angel. Next time. I’ll just nip upstairs and see what Clara has and if she’ll allow me to use it.’ ‘O, my goodness, don’t—’ But Uncle George had ‘nipped’ before Elsa could say another word to him. ‘O, my goodness, Angel, there hasn’t been a man up there since, well, since a very long time.’ ‘Don’t worry. He’s nice.’ ‘I just hope he doesn’t take too long. It’s almost time to leave,’ said Winifred and she stood at the bottom of the stairs and called to Uncle George, ‘don’t be long.’ ‘Coming – coming,’ called Uncle George. ‘And it’s all arranged – everything’s arranged.’ And he ‘nipped’ back again after spending more time with Clara than was thought necessary, smiling and slightly breathless. ‘Clara said I can choose my weapons when I come back from the gully and the Deep North. Good woman, that.’ ‘O, yes. Clara’s lovely when she wants to be.’ Elsa was still smiling in the unfamiliar territory of joy the day had given to her. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you …’ was all she could say for she was emotional and well knew that tears of joy and sadness were closely bonded. Winifred hugged the little woman and kissed her cheek and was about to display her own 203

party manners when Barnaby Grange stood at the kitchen door, sun-burned, bitten and covered in dust and grass seeds. ‘Three hundred and nine million, by three parts.’ ‘Thank you, Barnaby,’ Winifred said to be polite. ‘We were wondering.’ But the fact was that Barnaby had almost been absent-mindedly left behind like a bag on a train.

204

The northern casual

‘This is my Uncle George,’ Angel Martin will say to the tram driver if he happens to be one of her friends. She might hold Uncle George’s hand to make it convincing and say, ‘I want you to meet my Uncle George.’ Angel had rehearsed introductions in the privacy of her mind all the way from Brooklyn Street to the tram stop – ‘This is my Uncle George and he’s going to stay the night and then he’s coming back to do some fishing’ – all the way across the park and over the road and up the steps to the high cliffs and the crossed ant-eaten wooden sleepers that marked the end of the tram line. ‘Meet Uncle George who came all the way from Melbourne to see me.’ And then Angel realised that the introductory dress rehearsals would have to be repeated on opening night at the boarding house. ‘You’re awfully quiet,’ said Winifred Varnham in her robe of power red that had done its job and that she longed to change. ‘Why are you so quiet, Angel?’ 205

‘I’m not quiet – there’s a lot of noise in my head. It’s so loud it’s a wonder you can’t hear it.’ ‘The view from the top, O my,’ said Uncle George, and Angel was sure she saw his eyes change their colour to the colour of Mariana. ‘You can see to the end of the Pacific from here. Is that the way you see it?’ ‘Do you see the different colours of the water, Uncle George? The colours of deeps and shallows and reefs? And do you see how white the horses are down on the rocks?’ ‘What a mind full of pictures you have, Angel – you should have a camera. I’ll have to get you a camera.’ ‘I don’t want a camera – I don’t need one.’ ‘Barnaby has sketched endless calculations of the ocean’s width and length and depth, as well as the islands,’ said Winifred. ‘Wasn’t it clever of your niece to think of it as another nation and call it Mariana?’ ‘I have to say, Madam, that such inventiveness and curiosity at her age is astonishing.’ ‘She’s self-taught, you know – hardly ever goes to school.’ ‘Well, I don’t know if that’s a good thing, Angel. Schooling is an education of facts – sadly not as picturesque as you see the world, but important.’ ‘What’s the good of learning about the Kings of England or the sort of dog Hitler has, or the bloke who went over some alps with elephants, or the Crusade – that’s one of Mister Daisyfield’s favourites. What’s that got to do with anything? I learn more in the gully and the Bay and the libraries and galleries.’ ‘Angel, truancy is illegal. You do know that, don’t you?’ ‘I don’t care. I’ll put my age up and get a job and buy books and maybe a painting. I’ll learn things Mister Daisyfield’s never heard of in a million years.’ 206

‘You’re a rebel, Angel Martin.’ But Uncle George Wolf couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I don’t care about that either.’ ‘Well, there we have it. I think we should get a seat in the tram before it leaves us behind,’ said Winifred. ‘Come along, Barnaby, we must be off to the Great North.’ And in the midst of an after-picnic crowd burping their beer and cheese and mustard pickles, and soggy bottomed babies howling and grandmothers nodding off like rag dolls and boys picking their noses and a small girl clutching herself while her mother shouted, ‘You should have gone before we left!’ the four exotics managed to seat themselves close to each other. Angel had never seen the tram driver before and thought he looked too young and a bit silly in his cap and that his uniform was too big and she was not able to use any of the introductions she’d rehearsed. She was irritated by this. Different. Click. Everything was different. Everything was changing too much and too quickly and for a moment she longed for the peace of the art gallery where the beauty of the past never changed its colours and where the works of masters brushed the shades of her body as a favour. Angel was transported for that moment and briefly her mood was broken and she blew a kiss to Mariana. ‘Bugger the war!’ ‘Angel! Be careful what you say, darling. You must remember to take thoughtful aim before you fire your words.’ ‘Sorry, Miss Varnham.’ ‘Come on, now, don’t be sad to be leaving the Bay. I have a whole new planet to explore.’ And Uncle George laughed and his Adam’s apple stuck out above his collar like something stuck. ‘How say you, Mister Grange?’ 207

‘Six.’ In a word that meant nothing at all. ‘And I agree!’ said Uncle George, who’d cheered everyone up.

Winifred Varnham had tried to call Missus Potts with the news of an uncle and the need for a room, but Missus Potts’s heavily guarded black Bakelite telephone, locked in a tiny broom cupboard of its own, rang itself breathless before it could be answered and Winifred Varnham warned the others about taking a chance. When they were off the train and at the shopping strip before the slide down Duffy Street, Winifred said she would buy some food ‘just in case’. Uncle George, of course, insisted on paying for everything. On a corner as one turned right from the train station was a very small store that was open on Sundays. It was Maeve Rich’s store but the local wags had called it Maeve’s Convenience for a very long time. ‘Do you like rice, Mister Wolf?’ ‘I do, indeed.’ ‘Could you make a curry, Miss Varnham? Please! Please!’ ‘We’ll see what’s available, Angel. Do you like curry, Mister Wolf?’ ‘My mouth waters just thinking about it, Miss Varnham.’ ‘Then we shall forage.’ And after Winifred Varnham had picked and sniffed and chosen all over the store, the three travellers carried parcels of pumpkin, onions, raisins, apples, two cans of Spam, rice and a tin of curry powder. ‘A lot there for the four of us,’ remarked Uncle George. ‘I thought I might give the inmates a treat. I’ll need the use of the stove but it would be rude to dine separately, don’t 208

you think, Mister Wolf?’ ‘But you don’t know how many there will be, Miss Varnham.’ ‘My dear Angel, I will teach you about rice – rice and potatoes. There will be potatoes in the kitchen I imagine. There are always potatoes. Rice and potatoes added to a curry can, unlike a famous fish, feed a multitude. And I mean no disrespect to those of Godly beliefs, Mister Wolf.’

It was late afternoon, cool and fresh and crisp as a salad. Uncle George took deep breaths of the clean air with every step as though he was smoking a cigarette. ‘It’s another planet here. Only an hour away from the sea and we could be floating in space.’ ‘Wait ’til you see the gully. There’s a creek with water you can see through right to the bottom and there are tadpoles and yabbies and tiny green frogs.’ Angel was happy for the moment. ‘But you’ve got to see it early in the morning.’ ‘Why are you limping, Angel?’ Winifred paused for a moment. ‘My sandal strap broke.’ Uncle George took Angel’s parcel and danced a little skip at the top of Duffy Street. ‘I’ll buy new sandals, Angel, and anything else you’d like – in fact we’ll go shopping. I’d like that. Would you like to go shopping, Angel?’ ‘Yes. Okay. But I don’t want fancy stuff. The bootmaker can mend the strap – or maybe even you can.’ ‘They look pretty worn out, Angel, but I’ll give it a try.’ Angel limped in silence for a moment. She felt her mood changing ever so slightly. ‘Most people are scared of Duffy Street, Uncle George. 209

They’re scared of slipping going down and then having to walk up again. The milkman’s horse won’t go down at all.’ ‘That doesn’t surprise me, but I can see the trees at the bottom from here. Is that the gully?’ ‘That’s only a little bit of it. I’ll show you properly tomorrow before you go.’ ‘I really look forward to it, Angel. The gully must be full of beautiful timber.’ ‘You mean trees.’ ‘Of course. Sorry. Will you walk with us tomorrow, Miss Varnham?’ ‘Winifred. Please call me Winifred. I must visit my sister tomorrow. Heather is in the sanitarium not far from here.’ ‘I’m sorry. Nothing serious, I hope.’ ‘She thinks she can’t walk but she can,’ said Angel. ‘She sees things in her mind that aren’t real. That happens to me sometimes – like dreams.’ ‘Poor Heather – poor you!’ The door to Missus Potts’s boarding house was opened without a sound – Angel knew Mister Potts had oiled the hinges on Thursday. Still, a voice immediately shouted, ‘You’re late, girl – there’s things to do!’ as though the hinges had learned to talk. Angel remembered escaping to the pictures on a no-school day and she’d watched a Walt Disney film where everything on the screen talked – birds, animals, cups, teapots, even a tree, and everything had something human about it – handles, trunks, spouts, bird chirps and baby deers – everything. She inspected Missus Potts’s door in case she’d missed some image in an apron, frowning and pointing to her. ‘That was Missus Potts. Won’t she get a surprise when she sees you, Uncle George.’ 210

And she did. ‘There you are!’ And then in a different voice altogether, ‘And who is this?’ ‘This gentleman, Missus Potts, is Angel’s uncle,’ said Winifred Varnham from a height. ‘He is from Melbourne and would like to stay the night. I did try to telephone you but there was no answer. Is there a room available?’ Knowing full well there was always a vacant broom cupboard somewhere in the warren. ‘I’ll have to check the book.’ ‘Of course,’ said Winifred. ‘But before you do would you be kind enough to tell me what food you are serving tonight?’ ‘Shanks.’ ‘From what animal, Missus Potts?’ ‘Cows! And let me tell you they’re nothing to turn your nose up to.’ But the teeth of every inmate within hearing distance cringed. ‘I was thinking of making a curry, Missus Potts. There will be enough for the table and I won’t charge you a penny. I will, of course, be delighted if you and Mister Potts would join us.’ ‘Boarders in the kitchen’s not allowed.’ ‘I do understand, Missus Potts, but this is something of a special occasion.’ ‘All very well but what about the shanks already cooked? What am I supposed to do with them? I went to a lot of trouble (ho! ho!) to get those. Shanks don’t grow on trees, you know – there’s a war on!’ Angel laughed this time and made Missus Potts angry. ‘If you will allow me the use of the kitchen for a short time I will be grateful,’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘Leave the shanks on a back burner to cook a little longer. They will be all the better for it tomorrow. Tonight is a special one for Angel. 211

She had not met her uncle before today and he fancied a curry. I presume you have potatoes?’ ‘Of course there’s spuds but they’re not peeled. That’s her job.’ Pointing a stubby, red finger at Angel. ‘And that’ll be extra.’ ‘Missus Potts, with respect, you cannot charge at all for a few potatoes to add to the curry I am going to cook for all of your guests. Where is Mister Potts?’ ‘Well out of the way of things needing to be done, Miss Varnham. Follow the smell of gin and tobacco and you might catch him.’ Poor Missus Potts looked in that moment tired and rough and as defeated as the milk horse hoping to be put down. Sad. ‘And for that matter, Angel, where is your uncle?’ asked Winifred from the kitchen. ‘He’s in Barnaby’s room. He’s helping to get the prickles off Barnaby’s clothes.’ ‘Well, my Angel, if peeling spuds is your job, you’d better get on with it, darling, while I start the rest of it. I think I will need six. Large.’ ‘This is all so fantastic! I can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces.’ ‘I’m rather looking forward to it, too, darling.’ Winifred flowed around the kitchen in her power red that she’d had no time to change and the kitchen was delighted. It sniffed and blew and radiated unfamiliar aromas and could not have been more pleased. ‘I remember a Mister Joseph offering his hand in marriage, sight unseen, no questions asked when I first came here and brought a curry with me in a billy can. It was very funny.’ ‘I remember that. I thought it was very romantic in a way. Do you want me to get the plates down?’ 212

‘Yes, please, and put them close to the stove to warm up. I think we’ll need twelve.’ ‘It’s also my job to set the table, Miss Varnham.’ ‘Try to find a clean sheet, darling.’

The whole of Missus Potts’s boarding house, from its woodwormed top, down to its rising damp, was so dense with exotic aromas unfamiliar to the bottom of Duffy Street that it brought Mister Potts out of his lair with his ‘baccy’ tin and an empty bottle and a loud knock on the door from the local blacksmith who lived across the road wanting to know if Missus Potts was harbouring foreigners and who said he would call the police but for a bowl of whatever she was cooking he might forget about it. Angel had found a clean sheet, slightly damp and, like a seasoned servant, shook it across the table – Elsa would have been proud of her. Angel had learned a great deal about domestic service from Elsa and she hoped one day to become as good at it as her aunt. Just imagine, she thought – a music and colour and art gallery expert with the domestic skills of Elsa. Miss Varnham could teach her to cook and she might, Angel thought, one day be good enough to open a cafe … Wouldn’t that be something? said Angel to herself. Somewhere in her private concert hall a fanfare played and she whispered, not for the first time, Come out and see this, Mother – it’s all right now. The boarding house inmates, as Winifred Varnham thought of them, came to their table spots like a flock, earlier than usual, twitching their noses, chatting to each other and not one dragging feet in the usual mournful apprehension. There was, in the aromatic air, an atmosphere of celebration, of sorts. 213

Mister Joseph, still head-over-heels, prepared and ready, had ripped a curtain ring from the drape over his window, given it a quick rinse and polish with his towel, put it in a cotton-wooled matchbox and had it on hand for another proposal to the Duchess of Nullabri. Mister Potts and Missus Potts brought butter boxes to sit on, there being no chairs left. Mister Potts’s breath could have lit a lamp but he had slicked oil through his hair in honour of the occasion and Missus Potts had run a wet comb through hers and taken off her apron. She sat straight, sour-faced and somewhat put-out by the abnormality of it all. ‘Come on, Pottsy,’ said Mister Joseph. ‘You look like a two-hour sermon – somebody get her a beer.’ ‘All this food – there’s a war on in case you haven’t noticed and don’t think for a minute you’re getting this foreign stuff every night. There’s nothing wrong with mine and who’s going to clean this lot up afterwards and—’ ‘O, do be quiet,’ said a casual. ‘Decent is what we pay for here and decent is rarely on the table, Missus Potts, so do be quiet.’ Another casual – a thin lady, grey all over, who had been to India – kept dabbing at the dribbling corners of her mouth with what served as paper napkins. Barnaby Grange came in his own time and sat in the chair that was always Barnaby Grange’s, he being a permanent and paying more than the others. ‘It’s going to be all lights and party – like a Charles Dickens Christmas,’ said Angel. ‘I have never seen them so happy.’ ‘There is certainly a different air to the room. The table looks very nice, darling.’ Angel had decorated the clean sheet (still damp) with young bracken fern right down the centre of the table. 214

Winifred had found mint growing under the tap near the laundry and had thrown a bunch of it with a little sugar into the tea urn and then, when Winifred asked her to, Angel brought her uncle from his spare, front broom cupboard (that’ll be extra!) and introduced him to everyone. ‘This is my Uncle George,’ she said, holding his hand. ‘He’s come all the way from Melbourne in the train to see me and maybe I can’t remember all your names but here he is and Miss Varnham is cooking a curry to celebrate and isn’t this the night!’ ‘How do you do,’ said Uncle George. ‘Delighted to be here.’ Winifred had arranged to be near him at dinner. ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Mister Joseph. ‘I can’t be calling you Uncle George.’ ‘My name is George Wolf.’ ‘Ho, ho,’ remarked a casual. ‘Then pork’s off tonight, eh?’ The tea table that evening could have been a painting Angel had seen a long time ago in a library book, a book much too big to borrow. In fact, the print of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper was so beautiful that Angel, in addition to all the other fine arts she’d determined to accomplish, wished, and not for the first time, that she could paint. The Last Supper in the book and its story intrigued her. The painting’s table could be as long as Missus Potts’s table and was covered with what looked like a white sheet but there were no signs of stains. Angel thought that the table that evening could be Australia’s version of The Last Supper, with people, heads together, chatting, some serious and some laughing, and drinking mint tea instead of wine. There was bracken fern all over the place and butter boxes, hair oil, a whiff of gin and sweat, and a huge bowl of help-yourself curry, rice and potatoes at the centre under a halo of blowflies. 215

‘I saw a painting in an art book once called The Last Supper,’ Angel remarked to anyone interested. ‘And this table looks just like it in a way but I think Barnaby Grange should be the Christ figure because of the shine of his hair when the light’s on it.’ ‘Number twelve,’ said Barnaby Grange. ‘That used to be Mister Canning’s place but he’s still in the morgue costing a fortune.’ Missus Potts’s finger pointed in a haphazard way. Her face flashed on and off like a beacon because of the curry powder. Mister Potts had nodded off with food still on his plate and someone asked if she could have it. ‘Well, come on, Barnaby – come down and sit here and be Christ.’ Mister Joseph had the others move their places and not once did he take his eyes off the Duchess of Nullabri who had changed, at the last minute, into a robe of virginal white. He’d put the matchbox with its curtain ring in a pocket so that it could be produced in a split second at the right time. ‘There’s a Brownie in my room and when Angel says we’re all settled right I could take a photograph.’ ‘But who’ll be Judas?’ asked the grey woman who’d been to India. Everyone glanced at a new boarder who was staying a week. He had a very thin moustache as though he’d used a pencil and a certain look in his eyes that moved quick as a ferret’s. ‘You’ll do,’ said Mister Joseph, frightening the man. ‘What about me?’ asked George Wolf. ‘Where would you like me to sit?’ ‘Well, Mister Wolf – anywhere you like. The Last Supper is not really your kind of thing, if you know what I mean – no disrespect …’ ‘O, utter rubbish!’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘Jewish people have great respect for Jesus Christ. Good heavens, just think 216

of Christmas and Easter and birthdays. They manufacture everything we buy—’ ‘Well said!’ Uncle George laughed. ‘What about Mary Magdalene – was she there?’ asked a man whose only reading matter was about horse racing. ‘No,’ said Mister Joseph who’d suddenly become breathless. ‘But if Mary was there it’d have to be the Duchess.’ And he rushed to her chair, knelt on one knee in the small space available, whipped out the matchbox, opened it upside down so that the curtain ring rolled all over the floor, handed her the matchbox anyway and proposed. ‘O, go away, you silly man.’ The blowflies were fearfully disturbed when she stood. ‘It is not men I like – but women! I prefer my own kind, Mister Joseph.’ Winifred glanced at Angel. ‘I’ll explain it all later, darling,’ and again focused on Mister Joseph. ‘I’d have thought you, Mister Joseph, intelligent enough to realise this by now.’ Ears were suddenly burning from one end of the table to the other. ‘I don’t care. I’ll keep myself tucked away. All you’ll have to do is a bit of cooking and I’ll bring women by the trolley full – anything you want. I’ll even get a job.’ ‘Poor Mister Joseph,’ said Angel, not quite understanding. There were anxious glances, nervous, exchanged looks from the diners but when Angel laughed everyone laughed, even Mister Joseph, who absolutely denied the meaning of defeat, chuckled and said, ‘I’ll just wait ’til she gets sick of them. Everyone gets sick of women.’ ‘Too bloody right they do,’ Mister Potts shouted louder than necessary, having recently recovered quietly from his doze, and Missus Potts clipped him over the ear. Several guests yawned. One asked if there was any tea left and Winifred Varnham told the Potts they could go to 217

their broom cupboard and have the night off and she, Angel, Barnaby and Uncle George would clear everything away. ‘That’s more like it – come on, girl.’ Harry Potts burped curry and gin fumes on his way to the stairs. ‘We be up and over the moon and back by tomorrow, eh? Never thought to see the day them be paying here do the washing up – strewth almighty!’ Persia Potts was flushed. She was guiltily silent for the private ill feelings, and sometimes the right-out-in-the open feelings, she had for the Duchess of Nullabri. All she could think to say was, ‘Out of the blue, that came, I have to tell you – and I have to thank you, Miss Varnham – and well, I’m sorry.’ ‘O, now then, off you go – go!’ Miss Varnham said in the tone of a manor-born giving the servants a few hours off to catch their breath. Missus Potts had, for that moment, to hide her usual ill feelings. It was Angel who took charge of the deserted room. She had her duchess help clear the table, Uncle George up to his elbows at the sink and Barnaby Grange wiping and stacking. Like a trained domestic she passed on advice Elsa had shared with her: ‘Concentrate on one job at a time and do it well.’ ‘Don’t count anything, Mister Grange, just wipe and stack.’ ‘Yes, Cookie.’ In words, perhaps thinking of another kitchen where he’d been allowed to play. ‘Well done!’ declared Uncle George. ‘All that’s left are stains on the tablecloth ready for breakfast.’ Winifred had not one spot on her white robe and yawned politely behind her hand. Barnaby Grange looked particularly pleased with himself. He wished his friends a ‘good night’ in words and went to his room. ‘You go to bed now, darling,’ said Winifred Varnham to 218

Angel. ‘It’s school tomorrow.’ ‘Didn’t I tell you? I’m not going to school. I’m showing Uncle George the gully.’ ‘Early, Angel – before school.’ ‘I’ve arranged it all with Mister Daisyfield,’ she lied. ‘Then, if I may, I will escort my niece to her room.’ Uncle George frowned a little but offered his hand. Charles Dickens would have said that and Angel smiled. Uncle George should have been holding a candle for the stairs, she thought. ‘Kind of you, George.’ And Winifred Varnham swept out of the servants’ quarters. ‘I thought that was all good fun!’ ‘You won’t like the room, Uncle George. It’s upstairs and right at the back. It’s just a broom cupboard like the rest but I don’t mind because I can see the gully from the window.’ ‘I’d like to look at it, Angel. I might be able to get you a better room overlooking the gully.’ ‘I don’t want another room!’ Feeling a sudden mood change, click click. ‘Well, all right but you don’t mind an escort, Angel, do you? We have so little time left to get to know each other.’ ‘Okay.’

Angel Martin’s broom cupboard was not particularly tidy and had not been dusted for a very long time. ‘I don’t mind dust, do you?’ ‘No, not really,’ said Uncle George looking around. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’ ‘I have. It’s my dust. I think it’s part of me – it’s part of everyone in their dusty rooms and I think it’s unlucky to wipe it away.’ 219

‘That’s an interesting thought. I’ll remember that. It’s a very small window you have, Angel.’ ‘I like it. I can see the honeysuckle on the fence and down to the gully and a possum comes at night and taps the glass. It’s too dark to see now but you’re going to love it tomorrow, Uncle George. We’ll have to get up early – I’ll pack us a picnic breakfast if you like.’ ‘Angel, I really don’t like you staying away from school.’ ‘No one cares, especially Mister Daisyfield, and I don’t learn anything there anyway.’ Uncle George Wolf made no comment. He looked around the room that was barely larger than the broom cupboard Angel had described. It was, however, decorated in a very special way. ‘What’s this?’ Taking a shell from a shelf. ‘That’s the first shell I brought here from the Bay. It’s an orphan. It was on a rock all by itself.’ ‘And this?’ ‘A king parrot’s feather – I found it near the creek.’ ‘And this?’ ‘That’s my cupboard. It’s for my clothes. It’s private. I don’t want you to … go in there!’ But Uncle George had already opened it. ‘I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t think to ask. Sorry.’ ‘No one touches my things!’ Click. Her fists were by her side, stiff as starch. ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘You’ve caught me out.’ He shook his hand as though it’d been caught in the biscuit tin and smiled. ‘You wanted an uncle with brains and you landed a stunned mullet. Your mother used to say I was the stupid one. Sorry again. Forgive me?’ He did a little dance, turned his back and shut the cupboard door behind him. He did not remark upon 220

what he’d seen inside of the cupboard door and his niece made no mention of it. ‘All right.’ Angel laughed. Uncle George made her laugh. He laughed, too, and her mood and its music conducted themselves back to normal. ‘Now, to get back to the secret cupboard – a bigger one is what you need, Angel. I could buy a nice cupboard and—’ ‘No thanks.’ ‘A good pine cupboard to match the gully?’ ‘No.’ ‘And some pretty clothes to put into the good pine cupboard to match the gully?’ ‘No.’ With difficulty, Angel suppressed a giggle. ‘New sandals, at least. I want to go shopping.’ ‘All right. I need sandals but I can sew. Miss Varnham is teaching me.’ ‘O, yes – your duchess. I imagine she could teach anyone anything at all – but would you be offended if I gave you a few pounds before I go back to Melbourne just in case you see something you need – or like?’ ‘No. Okay.’ Uncle George Wolf had not been aware at the time of the slick of a tear in his eyes. When he’d opened the small cupboard, he saw, pasted on the inside of the door, a collage of families cut with care from newspapers and magazines. Somewhere near the centre of each family picture was an amateur’s sketch of what George Wolf thought was some likeness of his niece, Angel Martin, and he assumed she must have been collecting and adopting families for a very long time. It was a sadly beautiful sight. Then he was aware of the slick of tears that had briefly blurred his vision. ‘Sorry again, Angel,’ he said, she knowing what he meant. 221

‘I told you it’s private,’ said Angel. ‘Some things are private!’ ‘I’m sorry. I think it’s all beautiful, your artwork, but if you say so not a soul will hear about the cupboard door from me. You’re very clever, Angel. Smart. Smarter than most. Now it is really time for bed. I’ll see you in the morning, around eight?’ ‘Seven. Use the back door.’ ‘Aye, aye. Good night, Angel.’ And Uncle George left the broom cupboard as quietly as he was able to do so.

At five in the morning Angel crept into the kitchen on that beautiful, clear Monday and hard-boiled two eggs. She wrapped them in a tea towel with two slices of bread slicked with dripping taken from a bowl in Missus Potts’s ice chest. A poor man’s breakfast, she thought, for a man of means from Melbourne, but she was sure there’d be berries to pick and maybe a yabby or two in the creek so she added to her picnic towel a flat metal dish and a box of matches. She went very quietly about her work and not even the cockroach in the sink praying for a dropped scrap was disturbed. She was, in her way, happy that the closeness of the night before with her Uncle George had been for the most part entertaining, revealing and totally in her control. She thought she might have frightened him a little but was not sorry. And she grinned in her way when she remembered his offer to leave her a few pounds for whatever she liked – no questions asked. She was still embarrassed, however, that he had seen her family collection on the cupboard door. No one was allowed to see that but she sometimes wondered if Missus Potts poked about in her room when she was out riding the trams. ~

222

At seven that morning she met Uncle George outside the back door with her cloth tied like a pudding full of eggs, bread and utensils hung on a stick and over her shoulder like something in a Charles Dickens illustration she’d seen. ‘Angel – very quaint I’ve got to say. Did you sleep well?’ ‘Hardly – not at all. I was excited about today.’ ‘Well, you lead the way – I’m looking forward to spending time with you.’ ‘When do you have to leave today?’ ‘Haven’t decided. I might buy you those sandals before I go.’ ‘Okay.’ There was an early-morning birdsong from the gully that was so beautiful Angel found it difficult to describe it to a human. It came from a currawong, waking and telling the sky world it was time to fly. It was a seasonal sound and always like the tolling of the sweetest bell ever heard. Angel very often woke herself at the crack of dawn to stand at her window and listen and sometimes wish she was part of the flock. ‘Ssshhh – isn’t it beautiful?’ ‘The bird?’ ‘Even the music in my head stops for the morning currawong.’ Angel led Uncle George almost on tip-toe down the track she had worn from the house to the gully. ‘I’ll show you the creek rocks first where there’s moss thick as cushions. We can have our breakfast then I’ll take you for a walk.’ ‘It is nice down here.’ ‘Nice?’ ‘Sorry – nice not the right word? – and this is certainly the right time for the gully – early.’ They sat on the creek rocks sopping wet from the dew and ate eggs and bread like dirt-poors. Pure water from the 223

creek was all they had to drink but Uncle George seemed pleased. Two yabbies passed them and waved as they swam down current. ‘Dash it,’ said Uncle George. ‘I wasn’t ready.’ ‘They were too small anyway – they were only babies.’ ‘You really love this place, don’t you? Which do you prefer, the gully or the Bay? Think carefully – where would you rather be?’ Silence while she thought. Silent she was as dew dripped from the gum trees with a touch of aromatic oil at the tips of leaves. Silent while a morning breeze, clean and fresh, wound like a ribbon through the bush and around the trees, tossing late birds out of their nests to forage. Uncle George waited. ‘I love them both,’ said Angel. ‘But I love the Bay a little bit more. It’s where my memories began. It’s where I remember Mother …’ ‘O God, forgive me, Angel!’ ‘And it’s near Mariana and the aunts’ house and I love them and I don’t love Missus Potts. So, I have to say, I like the Bay just a little bit more than the gully. What do you like best, Uncle George?’ ‘I’m a fisherman, Angel.’ ‘You’ll come back and visit again, won’t you?’ ‘Of course I will.’ ‘I wish Miss Varnham was here with us. You like her don’t you?’ ‘I think she is a remarkable woman, Angel. She’s visiting her sister in the sanitarium today, isn’t she?’ ‘Yes. Her name is Heather.’ ‘What’s wrong with Heather?’ ‘Everything!’

224

Monday

In the gully Uncle George tripped over a log and hurt his leg. It was not a bad injury – just a graze – but it made him irritable and at first he bled all over his shoes. ‘You know, Angel, I’m old enough to be your grandfather! I’m not up to this hiking through scrubby bush.’ ‘Your blood’s a nice colour.’ ‘What?’ ‘Your blood’s a nice colour. Blood’s a nice red when it’s fresh. I forget the number for that sort of red but Barnaby will know.’ ‘For God’s sake, Angel, try and think straight for a moment. Look how far we’ve come – we’ve got to get back and it’s getting late and to tell the truth I am very bloody tired.’ Uncle George’s expression had changed. Probably the blood, Angel thought. ‘You don’t really have to go back today, do you?’ ‘I don’t like to be far from the sea, Angel.’ 225

‘Okay. If you don’t like it here we’ll go back.’ Click click. ‘The creek’s not far. We’ll follow it up back to the house.’ ‘Where does this creek end?’ Sensing the change in her voice. ‘It runs to a river. There’s a river called Lazy Cove and it’s miles from here but this creek goes all that way to the river. There’s a park there where families have picnics and they can hire little boats and have fun.’ ‘Have you been there?’ ‘No. I read about things and look at photos. How could I go to a place like that!’ Click. ‘Come on then!’ But walking back against the current of the creek there were berries to pick and fresh water to drink, with the yabbies and tadpoles fat as butter balls, and almost-frogs. Angel searched under the fronds of ferns for small things hidden and Uncle George sat on a familiar ball of moss-covered rock and waited with little patience. ‘My leg is hurting, Angel. I think there’s a splinter – and I have to clean my shoes and trousers.’ ‘Come on, then. I told you.’ But by the time they returned to the boarding house – he, limping and she, like a wild thing bred in the scrub they’d left – it was a quarter to two. Angel observed the colour of Uncle George’s blood. It had changed from fresh red to darker as it dried. She would ask Barnaby what the numbers were later. ‘There’s a first aid box in the downstairs bathroom. Miss Varnham should be back soon and she’ll know what to do.’ ‘Don’t be angry, Angel. I thought the gully was beautiful. I’m just too old for trekking – and look at you – thin as a stick and nothing on your feet. Aren’t you afraid of snakes?’ ‘No.’ 226

‘Well, I did like the blue gums. They’re the tallest I’ve seen.’ ‘I don’t think you liked any of it one bit.’ Click. ‘I think you just want to get back to the Bay and Brooklyn Street and my rocks. But remember they’re my rocks and my aunts, not yours!’ ‘O, Angel Martin, for God’s sake!’ And in the kitchen, after cleaning up the pudding bag of a picnic that had been no fun at all, Angel stamped up the stairs to her broom cupboard like Aunt Clara climbing her stairs when she was angry. But she didn’t have to put a cracked record on a player like Aunt Clara – there was always music playing. Angel picked twigs, leaves and grass from her stack of hair and put them all in a scrap of rag. She tied the rag at the top and put it in the back of her cupboard to remind her of a day not right in its head, then stood at her tiny window, stared at the gully and wished she was someone else.

Uncle George, scratched, scraped and sore, his trousers and shoes cleaned as well as he could manage, sighed with relief when he stood at the front door and watched the Duchess of Nullabri flow down Duffy Street in a sashed robe, sombre as a priest about to give the last rites. She carried a shopping bag. He moved forward to meet her and took the bag. ‘Not a good hill, up or down, Miss Varnham,’ said George Wolf. ‘I’ll ask Missus Potts to make you a cup of tea. I hope your sister is feeling better.’ ‘You’re limping, Mister Wolf. Why are you limping?’ ‘A trip in the gully. Angel took me for a long bushwalk. I’m simply not up to it. I’m very pleased to see you, Miss Varnham.’ 227

‘Shouldn’t you be catching fish, Mister Wolf? You’ve left it all very late. By the time you get to the Bay they’ll have all gone to bed. And why are you so pleased to see me?’ ‘I’m afraid I’ve upset my niece.’ ‘O, Angel is easily upset. She’ll have changed her mood by now. How did you upset her?’ ‘Simply liking the sea more than the gully. She made a special picnic and I’m afraid I spoiled it for her.’ ‘Angel is Angel, Mister Wolf, and if you could arrange a cup of tea I would be most grateful. I have had a most disturbing day.’ And Winifred, without another word, took the shopping bag from George Wolf and swept into her broom cupboard. Uncle George found Missus and Mister Potts in the laundry, not stirring a copper of boiling sheets or wringing wet washing but otherwise occupied. ‘Excuse me, Missus Potts’, he said, startling them both. ‘Miss Varnham has just come from visiting her sister and would like a cup of tea …’ ‘Tell her to get it herself.’ ‘And I wonder if I could extend my stay for one more night? It really is too late to travel back to the Bay.’ ‘I’ll have to check the book but it’ll be—’ ‘Extra?’ ‘Yes, extra, Mister Wolf and why not? I don’t run a charity here and speaking of charity you might tell that niece of yours it’s time to get the shanks heating up and the spuds peeled and Mister Potts, get those pegs out of your mouth. You look like a walrus.’ George Wolf decided to make the tea himself and when he went to the kitchen he found Angel had already begun her chores. He didn’t make a fuss. ‘Miss Varnham wants a cup of tea, Angel. Do you mind if 228

I make it while you work?’ ‘No.’ ‘And I have decided to stay the night. It’s far too late for the Bay. Plenty of time tomorrow.’ ‘Okay. Sorry, Uncle George,’ was all she said and it was enough. ‘O, and by the way, Missus Potts said it was time to heat up the shanks.’ And they both pretended to retch. It made them laugh and that was enough. ‘Missus Potts, where is my tea?’ ‘Missus Potts is in the laundry with Mister Potts and I have just finished making the tea for you.’ Uncle George was still chuckling. ‘And I’ve got the shanks heating up and the spuds peeled,’ said Angel, grinning her little sharp-toothed smile. Miss Varnham uncovered the shank pot and threw in a bunch of greenery she had wrapped in newspaper. ‘Some wild rosemary, mint and – and something else – have no idea what, sorrel I think, but herbs in the pot can’t possibly do the shanks any harm.’ Then she left with her tea and they hadn’t realised she was not smiling.

Earlier, there had been three departures from the boarding house. Casuals. ‘Casuals used to slip in and out of this place on the quiet, ghosts they were in the early hours with borrowed names like crooks on the run.’ Missus Potts explained to Winifred Varnham that she had been caught short in the early days of the boarding house business. ‘But didn’t take me long to work that one out. It’s been pay in advance with extra for the booking ever since. There’s just eight for tea tonight.’ 229

‘A comfortable number, Missus Potts.’ In the kitchen Winifred Varnham rinsed out her tea cup. ‘And I must say, Missus Potts, the shanks smell quite nice.’ ‘Beats me what it is. Something the cows ate I suppose. There’ll be a few left after tea.’ ‘Then, Missus Potts, we can expect shanks for the rest of the week?’ ‘You can muck around with the leftovers if you like, Miss Varnham. You’re a good cook.’ The small gesture of kindness made Winifred Varnham smile. ‘And how’s that sister of yours?’ ‘Remarkably changed, Missus Potts, but I think I will relax for a while and chat later. I have had a most tiring day.’

At the table there was only one stranger, a casual with hay fever and as deaf as a door post. Angel, as usual, had done her best with setting the table by adding a few wildflowers and a sprig of maidenhair fern. Mister Joseph, keen as ever, had washed his shirt and scrubbed the collar with a toothbrush. Winifred had changed from her ‘last rites’ robe and wore an ordinary one the colour of mustard, no jewellery, and a black chopstick through her bun. Uncle George seemed a little pale and worse for wear and Barnaby Grange was rustic as the English countryside in his clothes that matched the grass seeds still stuck in his hair. The shanks, however, served in bowls with potatoes and juice from the pot, were very nice. ‘Where is Mister Potts?’ Angel felt very strongly that the atmosphere in the room was not right. ‘Mister Potts, as if anyone gives two hoots, is possibly out on the septic tank cover with a bottle and if he misses out on tea I don’t care.’ 230

‘Now, tell us – how is your sister, Miss Varnham?’ George Wolf had asked for a stool in order to raise his leg under the table. The leg had a distinct smell of tea tree oil. ‘You’ve obviously had a long and trying day.’ ‘My sister?’ Winifred Varnham suddenly sat very straight in her chair and closed her eyes. She looked as though she was about to be very bravely shot. ‘My sister, Mister Wolf, has been deceiving me! Deceiving us all! My sister, Mister Wolf, has made a fool of me and those who have been kind enough, at great cost I might say, to care for her and the sanitarium has demanded her removal at my earliest possible convenience and …’ Angel moved to her duchess and hugged her. She could see that Winifred was struggling to hide her tears. ‘… and I was going to ask you later, Missus Potts, if you could accommodate Heather in addition until I can find a flat or a small house to rent.’ ‘God Almighty – what’s she done?’ ‘Heather, Missus Potts, has been seen roaming the sanit­ arium in the dead of night on two perfectly good legs wearing a nurse’s uniform and disguised in a wig and glasses. Heather, Missus Potts, has been seen squatting in the bucket room at night with every part of her body healthy as a day’s dawn, enjoying tea and a pile of sandwiches given to her by the kitchen staff. In short, Missus Potts, by day she has played the part of a slowly dying waif-like creature, waited on hand and foot by caring nurses, again at great expense if I may say so, only to deceive us all by coming perfectly alive and well quite suddenly in the early hours as though she’d bumped into Jesus Christ in a bazaar! The kitchen staff, who thought it all a great joke, have been severely reprimanded and the sanitarium has asked me to remove her.’ 231

‘I don’t run a hospital. I couldn’t cope with that, Miss Varnham. I mean, your sister could be all over this place in the middle of the night and I need my sleep.’ ‘I would do what I could to help but I must leave tomorrow,’ said George Wolf. ‘But I’ll help,’ cried Angel and she hugged her duchess again. ‘I’m sure we’d all like to help,’ said one of the boarders. ‘And I presume you’ve considered the benefit of the extras, Missus Potts.’ Mister Joseph, who could hear an opportunity knocking loud enough to stun him, said, ‘And I, dear lady, will give all of my time to help with your poor sister.’ Mister Joseph smiled widely but the string of shank caught between his front teeth spoiled the effect. ‘O, well, if it’s only for a short stay I suppose it’s all right.’ ‘Thank you. I don’t suppose there’d be room for a bed next to mine?’ ‘Couldn’t get a chamber pot in there let alone a bed.’ Mister Potts had come in and was drinking the meat juice from plates ready to be cleared. ‘She could have old Canning’s room.’ ‘There’s a ghost in there,’ said Angel, quite seriously even though everyone laughed. ‘It’d be a bloody cold one,’ slurped Mister Potts. ‘Is he still in the morgue?’ ‘You shouldn’t believe in ghosts, Angel,’ said Uncle George. ‘O? But I do – I’ve seen one.’ ‘Then it’s time I took you up to your bed, Angel. I have to get up early tomorrow. I’m sure everything will work well for your sister, Miss Varnham.’ Barnaby Grace had not said a word or a number. He had been sketching but looked up when Angel’s Uncle George 232

took her hand and led her away from the table. ‘Good night, Mister Wolf.’ ‘You don’t have to do this.’ Angel could see that Uncle George still limped on the stairs. ‘I can go to bed by myself – I’m not a child.’ ‘But you are still a child to me, Angel. You’re very clever but you are still a child and there is something I want to talk to you about.’ ‘What?’ ‘When we’re in your room, Angel,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want others listening.’ Angel opened her broom cupboard door and Uncle George closed it. ‘Do you want me to put a bandage on your leg for the night? I know what to do.’ ‘Yes, Angel. I would like that but let me talk to you first.’ ‘I don’t want to buy anything and I fixed my sandal with a tack.’ She searched through her mess of a cupboard for the roll of bandage she knew was there. ‘Angel – can you keep still for a moment and listen to me – here, sit next to me on the bed and be still.’ ‘I have to find the bandage. What’s the matter, Uncle George?’ ‘Nothing – nothing is the matter. I spoke to your Aunt Clara yesterday, not just about your grandfather’s fishing tackle. I spoke to her about you moving from this place. It’s not good for you here. She said she’d speak to your Aunt Elsa about you moving from here and living in Brooklyn Street—’ ‘What!’ ‘Of course, it’s up to you, Angel, but Clara said she wouldn’t mind if you had the room at the back of the aunts’ house, near the street. Your grandfather used it for his office.’ 233

‘What are you telling me? Are you tricking?’ Angel held her fists hard against her cheeks. ‘No, Angel. I would pay for your keep, of course, and that would help your aunts and you’d be a great help to Elsa. I thought it was only fair when I considered what you have been through all this time – and your poor mother of course. Keep and any expenses, Angel, seems only fair to me, but it’s up to you.’ Angel Martin’s thoughts were in chaos. Colours flashed and her music tried to keep pace with it all. She clawed through the cupboard. ‘I know it’s here – I know – I don’t believe it!’ Then, not really knowing it was there, she held the roll of bandage tight in her hand. ‘Angel – stop it! You’ll have a fit. Would you like to live in the aunts’ house or stay here?’ ‘O, the aunts’ house! Of course, the aunts’ house. Is it really true?’ ‘Yes. Now calm yourself – you’ve gone all red and brown. You look like a mud pie.’ ‘O, thank you – thank you. But what about Miss Varnham and Barnaby?’ ‘You can’t all move into a room that used to be an office, Angel. They will have to visit you. Is that a bandage in your hand?’ And Uncle George pulled up his trouser leg. ‘Be gentle, Angel. You’re in such a state.’ Angel knelt on the floor and wound the bandage around the scrape on Uncle George’s leg and was very good at it. She tried very hard to be steady and gentle but Uncle George saw Angel’s tremble of excitement while he watched a small, quivering breast inside a blouse that had lost its buttons. ‘I feel better already,’ said Uncle George as he slid his hand 234

beneath her clothing and held the breast and stroked. ‘You are a beautiful girl, Angel.’ He slid his hand over the other breast and stroked that one. ‘You don’t mind this, do you? Do you mind?’ ‘No,’ said Angel. ‘I’m experienced!’ Click click. She strapped her uncle’s leg tight and stood up, silent in front of him still sitting on the bed. ‘Would you like to sit on my lap?’ ‘No, thank you.’ Polite. ‘I have my monthly and I’m bleeding.’ Good excuse at any time but Angel made it sound like a threat. ‘Then just let me kiss those little rosebuds of yours. It’s been such a long time for me – can you understand? And it’s not every day an uncle has a pretty niece to play with.’ And he slipped her blouse away from her breasts and kissed each one like a baby suckling. Angel stood perfectly still and thought of the baby shop lady and the gully creek and the birds and wondered if the possum was looking in and listened to her music and watched its colours and tried not to be sick until it was all over. ‘We’ll keep this a secret, Angel, won’t we?’ Like Mister Daisyfield and old Canning. Men with fingers must have enough secrets to fill their graves. Here lies Mister Daisyfield and his secrets! ‘Yes – why?’ Click. ‘It wasn’t wrong what I did, was it? It was love, Angel. Some people might see it another way, but it was love. I don’t think anyone here would believe I’d do anything to hurt you, but best keep it to ourselves. There’s so much for you to look forward to, Angel.’ ‘O, yes, lots and lots.’ Covering her body as best she could. Play me a plan, Wagner. Something powerful with strong colours! ‘Lots and lots and lots, Uncle George.’ She grinned in her 235

special way. She looked at his hands and the ten disgusting sins of their fingers. ‘There, that’s brought a smile to your face. Next time you visit your aunts you might move in with them. I’ll tell them tomorrow. Elsa will be very happy. I think you’ll be a great comfort to Elsa.’ ‘What about Jessie?’ ‘I’ll sort it all out, Angel. Don’t worry about Jessie. Are you excited?’ ‘O, yes! I can’t wait, Uncle George. But I won’t go to school tomorrow, I’ll come down to the Bay with you and you can teach me fishing – or I can just watch.’ ‘No Angel. I like to be alone and quiet when I fish and you must go to school.’ ‘I’m too excited for school. I’m coming with you. I know the way to the fishing barge – you’d never get around to the point without me – it’s slippery – a bit dangerous with your leg and you know what? I won’t make a sound – I’ll sit on the barge or the rocks and I won’t move an inch, I’ll just watch.’ ‘No, Angel. School!’ ‘No! And no school for one special day,’ Angel said, sweetly. ‘Don’t spoil this for me, Uncle George.’ ‘O, for God’s sake, Angel. You’re impossible.’ And he stood from the bed and adjusted the bump in his trousers, brushed himself down and opened the door. Before he left he put a finger to his lips, ssshhh’d and winked. ‘I’ve left an envelope in the cupboard, Angel. Watch it carefully until you use it. I suggest you bank it.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘I’m leaving after breakfast. I would really like you to go to school tomorrow, Angel. I have to talk to your aunts. Apart from the fishing there are things to be discussed, your 236

future to be arranged – you do understand that, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, okay.’ ‘Then, you’ll stay here?’ ‘No. I’ll wait down on the beach if you don’t want me in the house.’ ‘No arguments, Angel.’ ‘You’ll never get around the point with a sore leg.’ ‘Yes, I will!’ ‘Okay.’ And she grinned her little, sharp-toothed grin but it was only with her teeth. Her eyes, when she looked at Uncle George, were dark and sharp as flints and if Uncle George had seen them at that moment he would have known he was being stabbed to death. ‘Then, Angel, I’ll see you in the morning before I go. There’s a lot to talk about. Aunt Clara or Elsa will contact you and tell you what to do. Off to bed now and have a good sleep, Angel. I love you.’ Uncle George had a limp in his voice. Angel observed that Uncle George’s leg pain had changed the colour of his skin – again she’d have to ask Barnaby the numbers – but the colour had changed from a certain grey to a certain grey. Angel hoped his pain was great. She hoped his pain was so great it would use all the numbers of every colour in the universe. She hoped Barnaby would not be able to find as many numbers as would be needed to describe her uncle’s pain. ‘There’s Aspro in the cupboard in the bathroom down,’ she said, sweet as shards. And Uncle George sneaked from the room in the very special silence of guilt. ~

237

Angel took Uncle George’s envelope from her cupboard, opened it and found fifty pounds. A fortune. A windfall of perfect apples. Angel had never seen so much money. She put it and the envelope in her rag bag. It would be safe there because her rag bag would not, in anyone’s imagination, contain fifty pounds. She briefly wondered how she would spend or save it. One thing she knew she would ignore was what Uncle George had written on the back of the envelope – Use some of the money for a dentist! Angel had already mended the broken sandal strap with a tack, its point turned back to front with a hammer, and she had no desire for new clothes. She was disturbed and tired and thought no more about the money but she was intrigued by the protruding lump behind Uncle George’s trousers – the lower part of the trousers where he’d have to open to pee. One day, behind the toilet block at school, she had watched a sixth grader, whose name was Allen, who had his trousers down around his ankles and was rubbing that part of him and she’d stayed out of his sight and watched until a milky liquid spurted out and when he’d discovered he’d been seen he called Angel a slut and he said he’d kill her if she said anything, but Angel simply took it as part of her development and experience and just grinned. She wondered if Uncle George might have had to go out the back and do the same thing and if he did she would not hide and watch – the sight of it would make her sick. Angel yawned. The music inside her was confusing and its colours flashed shards too bright and startling. She stood at her window and watched the darkening sky fill with fruit bats on their way to the north orchards. Hundreds of them – click – maybe thousands and she watched the dark gully until the day went to sleep and only then did she lie on her bed – click. Angel closed her eyes and tried to sleep but there 238

was too much in her head – a musical whirlpool of dismay and anger. A nightmare with its eyes wide open. She lay sleepless with the skin of her breasts crawling from the touch of Uncle George’s fingers and his tongue like a serpent born wrong. Click – click – click. Angel scrubbed her breasts with the sole of a sandal that had been treading dirt – she scratched through her hair until there was blood on her nails. She lay as still as a corpse and watched the dark but she did not cry – there was too much to think about. Even when she thought of her mother she did not cry. Betrayal! Clara would play Giselle. Don’t come back yet, Mummy – it isn’t all right – it isn’t finished.

239

Tuesday

The dining room was the dining room. Table sheeted and stained as usual but missing the gully ferns and wild things that Angel laid out. Tea urn, cups and saucers, a stack of plates and cutlery were set in a haphazard fashion around bowls of oatmeal, jam jars (without their labels so as not to spoil the surprise of their innards) and a pile of untoasted bread. It all looked terrible. Oliver Twist would not have asked for anything at all. ‘Ahhh! Here she is.’ Dear Uncle George beamed as though he’d arranged sunrise. Angel barely acknowledged him. ‘Where the hell have you been, Angel Martin?’ Missus Potts flew from the kitchen. ‘There’s no eggs cooked – no toast – no table set! I banged on your door early …’ ‘I must have been asleep,’ she lied. ‘It’s not your job to be asleep, my girl, when there are things to be done!’ ‘I think you should leave her alone, Missus Potts. She doesn’t look as though she’s been asleep,’ said Mister Joseph. 240

‘Do you agree, Miss Varnham, that she should be left alone because she doesn’t look as though she’s been asleep?’ ‘Angel, what’s the matter? You do look tired.’ Miss Varnham was idly drinking a cup of tea with a slice of bread and looking through the ‘To Let’ advertisements in the morning paper. She had arranged to move her sister, Heather, from the sanitarium on Thursday. ‘Well, tired’s no good to me. Angel Martin is here to earn her keep and there’s plenty more where she came from. You don’t think I don’t get tired? Getting up at the crack of dawn day after day to get this lot done. Breakfasts don’t grow on trees!’ ‘Where is Mister Potts?’ ‘What’s that got to do with it, Miss Varnham? He’s down the gully. It’s her job to get things started, not his.’ Pointing at Angel. ‘And if she’s going to sleep in like a Madam God Almighty, she’s no use to me.’ ‘I will not have you speak to my niece like that, Missus Potts. And get me something decent to eat and my bill and I want a receipt! And I beg your pardon, Barnaby, good morning.’ ‘Good morning, Daddy.’ In words and not a smile in sight. ‘He does that sometimes,’ Mister Joseph whispered to a puzzled casual. ‘Gets mixed up with here and England and memories he can’t express. He’s a mathematics genius.’ ‘O, a strange man. Could you pass the jam?’ Angel had been silent for that moment in the dining room. Then she topped up the tea urn, boiled a pot of eggs and toasted some bread. All through the unbearable noise of breakfast she had quietly worked in and out of the kitchen. She was sickened by the night before and when she finally settled at the table she was unable to eat. 241

‘What is the matter with you?’ ‘Nothing, Missus Potts.’ ‘There is nothing wrong with Angel,’ said Uncle George. ‘She simply has a lot to think about.’ ‘O?’ ‘And what would that be, Mister Wolf?’ Winifred Varnham was curious and raised her eyes from her newspaper. She observed Angel’s flints of eyes and hyperactive movements, as though she’d eaten peppers. ‘I hope it’s something pleasing – do I detect something pleasing, Mister Wolf?’ ‘O, yes.’ Angel in a flood of words, ‘I’m going with Uncle George to the Bay and I’m going to watch him catch fish from the barge on the point near Mariana and then we’re going to the aunts’ house to work things out and I’m going to move in and—’ ‘She’s doing no such thing.’ Uncle George limped to his feet. ‘She is going to school!’ ‘What are you saying, darling? Are you really moving into the aunts’ house?’ ‘That’s not at all decided, Miss Varnham.’ ‘O, sorry, Uncle George. Was that supposed to be a secret, too?’ ‘What’s all this about? Was it you I heard in her room after tea last night? What’s going on? What other secrets are there?’ ‘We had family matters to talk about, Missus Potts – and Angel’s future.’ ‘And he gave me some money and I put a bandage on his sore leg and I am going with Uncle George this morning to the Bay because I’ll show him the way ’round the point to the fishing barge and I want to know everything and how to catch fish and I’m not going to say a word or move or 242

anything because he likes it quiet.’ Click click. Angel could barely hear her voice. A tired voice that drifted away. ‘O, dear God,’ said Uncle George. ‘Angel, I’m leaving in a few minutes and look at you – no shoes, dirty old dress and your hair not brushed. I can’t take you out like that, you look like a scruff dug up.’ ‘I won’t be a minute, then.’ And before Uncle George Wolf could draw breath she’d disappeared up the stairs. While she was away, Missus Potts saw the bandage lying limp around his ankle. ‘It’s come loose,’ she said. ‘Here, stick your leg up here and I’ll tie it up tight.’ ‘Thank you.’ And when it was done Barnaby said, ‘Do you feel better now, Daddy?’ In words, without expression of any kind. Angel had, in a split minute, even considering her confused and exhausted state, changed her dress into the one with the buttons done up and splashed water on her face and hair. She kept nothing on her feet except the tough skin she was used to and hoped one day to have all over her body – on her belly, her arms and her breasts, her breasts, still crawling as though tiny ants had found something sweet for their queen. ‘O, for God’s sake come along then, Angel. I will not waste this day.’ The mismatched pair moved to the door, leaving a puzzled and angry Missus Potts to clear away and a wondering at the table. Winifred Varnham rose from her chair and kissed Angel’s cheek. ‘Take care, darling,’ she said. A sudden, passing thought. The climb up Duffy Street was an agony of snail paces because of Uncle George’s leg and Angel, although she never wanted to touch him again, took his arm – his arm, not his 243

hand – and helped. They only just made it in time for the tram. Not a word was spoken.

The tram might well have been a hearse on its way to Mariana and the Bay, half-empty and quiet as a grave hole. Angel didn’t know the driver, who was a man of values, she thought, dedicated to the hearse he drove with a lever hardly moving and sitting so straight on his seat with his cap steady as a pie top, and his head never moving from the road ahead. Not even the sound of a tram’s ding broke the silence of the empty seats. She watched as Uncle George Wolf tried to open the window. ‘I can show you how to do that.’ ‘No thank you, Angel, I can open it myself. Melbourne is full of trams.’ ‘Did you love my mother?’ ‘Do we have to bring up all that stuff again?’ In a voice that had altered, like an actor. ‘Yes, I probably loved her or at least liked her anyway. She was funny. She made us laugh, your mother, but she was a floosie, Angel Martin – a bit like you.’ ‘I don’t know what that means.’ ‘You will, one day.’ Silence. Silence, while Uncle George Wolf looked out and caught the first of the sea breezes. He wore yesterday’s clothes and the trousers were crushed and stained. Angel wondered how he’d catch a fish dressed like that. ‘Maybe Elsa can fix your trousers while you fish.’ ‘I have spares in my suitcase in the pub.’ Silence. ‘You loved your wife, didn’t you – Alma, wasn’t it? Did she love you, too?’ 244

‘Yes! We did love each other for a while – Angel, I do not want to talk about this anymore!’ ‘But what did you mean for a while?’ ‘We were not together when she died. We had separated two years before she died. Now, will you please mind your own business! Why you’re asking me these questions and making things difficult when you probably have a new life ahead of you is beyond me.’ ‘I was only thinking of B and K. They met on a tram and carved a heart with their initials into the seat next to me and I’m trying to make up a life for them but I don’t think I’ll give them yours.’ ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. You’re being a pest, Angel. All this trouble I’m going to to get you out of that boarding house. You should be with your aunts – ​I just think family should be together.’ ‘You must feel really guilty about my mother.’ ‘That’s enough! It’s enough!’ When the tram had stopped precisely six inches away from the cross-beamed terminus, the driver sat perfectly still and did not look at Mariana on his right or the Bay on the left. His cap stayed straight up and down as though it had been glued on. He did not relax for a moment, not like the Sunday drivers, and Angel thought he looked like a doll. She wanted to see if his eyes were made of glass. She went to the driver’s cabin and tapped him gently on the shoulder. ‘Are you getting off or going back to the city?’ asked the driver doll without turning his head and Angel asked him, ‘Are you real?’ ‘I hope so, Miss, or you wouldn’t be here.’ ‘Angel! For God’s sake.’ And Uncle George and Angel were the last to step down from the running board. 245

Angel smiled up to her uncle in her certain way. He tried to take her hand but she pulled away. ‘I had to come with you today.’ ‘What for? I didn’t want you to come. What for?’ ‘You’ll see. There are things I want to show you.’ ‘There won’t be time.’ ‘It’s early. There’ll be time.’ George Wolf was not to know that the tram terminus was seventeen sandstone steps above her old home, Bon Ami. ‘I want you to see this first, Uncle George.’ And once on the footpath she nudged him along with her fisted hand in his back. ‘It will only take a minute.’ ‘Don’t push me like that, Angel. What’s the matter with you?’ ‘See that shop, there? The hat shop?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘That was our home. It was an empty shop then and we pasted Bon Ami all over the window so no one could see in. The grandfather put us there because he was angry. We were there for a long time. We slept on the floor. A shopfront, Uncle George! That’s where your sister lived with me and no one else to love.’ ‘Angel … I don’t know what to—’ ‘And see that shop over the road that sells baby clothes?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘My mother used to knit for them. She was very brave …’ ‘O, God, Angel.’ ‘And the lady who owns that shop felt sorry for me and bought me my sandals and a dress and I never did pay her back.’ ‘I’ll pay her – of course, is that what you want? I’ll pay her.’ 246

‘Now?’ ‘If you like – now.’

The baby shop lady was arranging a shelf full of toys. When she turned she beamed a very special smile. ‘Angel! What a wonderful surprise. But it’s not Sunday. Is this visit something special? Your aunts are well, I hope. How do you do?’ she said to Uncle George Wolf. He nodded and smiled. ‘This is my Uncle George. George Wolf. He is my mother’s brother and he’s from Melbourne but he’s going to do some fishing before he goes home and he wants to pay you for all the nice things you bought me.’ ‘O, Angel – no! My goodness – I couldn’t. After all this time …’ ‘It would be my great pleasure,’ said Uncle George Wolf. ‘I’m told you were very kind to my sister and Angel.’ ‘I notice a slight limp, Mister Wolf. Would you like a chair?’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘I really can’t take anything for the few small things I bought. It gave me pleasure to help. Your sister was a wonderful knitter, Mister Wolf, but you would have known that. And even when she was so unwell she still supplied the shop with beautiful jackets. I’m sorry I missed you, Mister Wolf, while Missus Martin was here. I don’t remember her mentioning you.’ Angel slid one of her special glances to her uncle and her uncle looked decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Angel has told me a lot about you and it would give me great pleasure to reimburse you if you would allow it.’ 247

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the baby shop lady. ‘I keep a collection box of donations for very sick babies. A little contribution would be most gratefully accepted, Mister Wolf.’ And Uncle George Wolf took his wallet and unfolded enough notes for a dozen pairs of sandals five and five-and-ahalf, and a rack of dresses and pushed them into the box and not another word was said. It was enough. And Angel had the feeling that the baby shop lady somehow knew all was not well.

They walked across the park towards the pub where Uncle George said he intended to change his clothes. ‘I don’t want Elsa or Clara to see you, Angel. There’s a lot to talk about. You do understand, don’t you?’ ‘What about Jessie? Will she be there?’ ‘No, I’ll talk to her later. Don’t you worry about Jessie. I’ll sort things out.’ ‘And then you’ll go fishing?’ ‘Then I’ll climb around the point to the barge and fish.’ ‘You’ll never find the way.’ ‘Angel!’ ‘I won’t go near the aunts’ house. I’ll just wait ’til you come out and take you ’round the point then I’ll go to the park or the beach.’ ‘And how do you think you’re going to know when I leave your aunts’ house?’ ‘I’ll hide in Brooklyn Street and watch. No one will see me.’ ‘Angel! You’re beginning to make me angry. I think people might be right when they say you’re not right in the head!’ 248

George Wolf immediately regretted what he said, but it was too late to apologise. Click.

Uncle George had changed into an old shirt and a pair of shorts that only just covered his knobby knees. He was very skinny. He was very ugly. The bandage around his leg was dirty. Everything about George Wolf wanted to make her vomit. Her skin still crawled. Angel remembered her duchess saying she loved women more than men and wondered if the same thing had happened to her. ‘You know that secret we had last night? Well, I didn’t like it – not one bit. It was worse than old Canning and Mister Daisyfield. I didn’t like them but you are my mother’s brother and I thought you’d be nice. My mother would have hated you for it. What you did made me sick.’ ‘O, my God, Angel. I feel very bad about it, now. It just all happened – I can’t tell you why. I’m sorry. It will never happen again.’ And he put his hand into one of his cornucopia pockets. ‘Here – go and buy lunch.’ ‘I haven’t told anyone about our secret yet, not Miss Varn­ ham or Barnaby or my aunts, but if I did I think they’d kill you.’ She grinned in her special way. Uncle George gave her more money. ‘Here – go off and buy things. I’ve had enough. Girls like to shop, don’t they?’ ‘I’ve got my own money, Uncle George. I’ll buy fish and chips and see you later.’ ‘Angel, I don’t know what to say to you but I’ll tell you one thing – I couldn’t live anymore with my guilt for your mother and wanted only something better for you to 249

somehow make up for it, but Angel Martin, the way you behave sometimes makes my feeling for you wear very, very thin. Very thin indeed.’ And he limped off along the beach walk and towards the aunts’ house. ‘I bet you’re guilty about your wife, too,’ she called after him and by the sudden change in the movement of his body she knew that spines had ears.

Angel waited. She knew the Bay so well she could count the steps from where they stood to the aunts’ house in Brooklyn Street. When she had counted for long enough, taking into account Uncle George’s leg, she went to the fisherman’s house with the green gate in Brooklyn Street and knocked on his door. She wasn’t sure if the old man and his hips would be able to answer. But he did. ‘O, it’s you, girlie – look at you growing up by the minute. Something you want? You down to see your aunts? It’s usually Sunday you come.’ ‘I just felt like it and I thought I’d say hello.’ ‘Well?’ ‘Look, there is something. I was on my way to the aunts’ house and I thought I saw a strange man going in the aunts’ gate. Do you mind if I watch and see if he comes out?’ ‘Why don’t you go up there and find out for yourself?’ ‘It might be a private visit and it’s not Sunday. I don’t want to give them a fright. I saw him outside the pub and I heard him tell someone that he was going to do some fishing off the barge on the point.’ ‘That’s my barge! Who the hell is he?’ ‘I don’t know. Do you mind if I watch for him behind your nets on the gate? I don’t want him to see me.’ 250

‘You go ahead, girlie. How’s he going to get ’round the point? How’d he know about it? Strangers go to hell ’round there but there’s one thing for sure – he won’t catch an occo. Haven’t caught one for a week or two.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Want a cuppa while you’re watching?’ ‘O, yes please.’ And there Angel waited, behind the fishing nets draped over the green gate and drinking a mug of tea that tasted like fish. She waited there for a long time.

Clara and Elsa had chosen one of Jessie’s university days to discuss Angel’s future without interference from Jessie, but Elsa was nervous and said, ‘You just never know when she’s going to pop up – like a Jack in the Box.’ Clara simply wanted to get on with it and tapped her shoe to the rhythm of silent music, somewhere in the ether. George Wolf sat nervously with the aunts in Elsa’s sitting room and was mysteriously silent for a while. Angel’s uncle had planned to tell the aunts how important it would be for a very nice and very bright developing child to be with her family and away from the bad influences of the boarding house. He’d planned to reassure the aunts about Jessie’s reaction and he’d planned to measure the grandfather’s room that used to be an office in order to furnish it with the necessary bed, wardrobe and anything else that was required. He’d planned to use the time to discuss the allowance needed for her keep and had hoped everything would be satisfactory to all involved. That is what he’d planned for his beautiful niece. He’d planned nothing but an expression of love for his niece. But the best-laid plans— 251

‘She’s an absolute brat, you know! And she’s a liar,’ was what he said. ‘Mister Wolf!’ Elsa was horrified. ‘We love Angel.’ ‘You might, Elsa, but if she’s a child who can’t be trusted – well, you must know how I feel.’ ‘Clara! Stop it. What has Angel done to upset you like this?’ ‘Sorry, Elsa, maybe I was a bit harsh, but I’ve found Angel hard to manage. Over the last two days uncontrollable at times. She hardly ever goes to school, not even today.’ ‘You should have seen her when she was eight, Mister Wolf. Like firecrackers going off when we wouldn’t let her in! Eight years old and angry that we didn’t look after her murderous mother,’ said Clara. ‘O, Clara. After all this time – and to say such a thing to Mister Wolf.’ George Wolf moved the bones of his bottom uneasily in the chair. ‘What do you mean – you wouldn’t let her in?’ ‘Dad was alive and angry, then,’ said Clara. ‘We were all angry and grieving, Mister Wolf. Angel and her mother came to the Bay but we were too angry. Angel, even then, eight years old and she’d scream outside the gate with her hands in fists and … well, it was a terrible time when I think of it.’ ‘A child? Eight-year-old child? Indeed terrible, Clara. Terrible.’ George Wolf ’s guilt and memories caused him to wipe something from the corners of his eye with a handkerchief. Clara asked, or rather ordered, Elsa to make tea. ‘No, I will not,’ said Elsa for the first time since her graduation with honours from the domestic college. ‘I will not! I love Angel and she’s going to be a great comfort to 252

me – and you love her too, Clara and don’t pretend anything else. It took a while for you to love her but love her you do!’ ‘Now, then, there’s the problem of Jessie. What are we going to tell Jessie?’ asked Clara. ‘Just tell Jessie that her lover’s – I presume they were not legally married? – Just tell her that her lover’s granddaughter is moving into the back room that used to be an office, all expenses paid, to help care for her aunts. That should shut her up.’ ‘That will be my great pleasure,’ said Clara. ‘Well, then, if the financial arrangements are satisfactory? Are they? Yes? I will happily pay for any extras. A dentist for one. She refuses to go to a dentist.’ ‘How would you know she needs a dentist, Mister Wolf?’ Clara had a curl of a frown between her brows. ‘She’s never complained of toothache here.’ ‘Smell!’ George Wolf said in a slit of a voice. ‘O?’ said Clara while the beginning of a thought uncurled and became an exclamation mark. ‘Smell? You must have been very close to her. Well, maybe she is better out of that boarding house, and we couldn’t say no to a bit of help.’ ‘I’m excited. She’ll need a bed and bedding of course and a wardrobe and perhaps a chest of drawers. Things can be moved around. It’s a big room, a bit crowded, but a lot of stuff can go.’ Elsa said she’d make the tea, anyway. ‘You’d better get on with that fishing, it’s getting late. Go up and get what you want out of the box. I’ll stay here. It’s been a long time since that tackle has been used, my father’s tackle – I don’t really want to see it.’ ‘I understand, Clara. It’s kind of you to lend it to me.’ And up the stairs went George Wolf, as fast as his limp would take him. 253

Among the tangle of lines, hooks, sinkers and netting, all of it smelling of decomposed sea creatures, bait and stagnant water, he rummaged until he found three long shank hooks, a net, a knife and, in his estimation, a fifteen-pound line, for Mister George Wolf wanted to catch a fish of a decent size. Inside the gate of the aunts’ house was a bucket of mixed bait in water fresh as daisies. Elsa had given him directions. ‘But don’t tell a soul it was me,’ she said. ‘From here keep right and walk along the beach ’til you come to the little park with the fig trees. When you get to the water’s edge turn right again. There’ll be a few rocks to scramble over so I hope you can manage with your leg. Then keep going along the rocks until you come to the point and an old fishing barge tied up to a rock. That’s the secret place, Mister Wolf, but if anyone sees you please don’t say it was me who told you.’ ‘Do you have a bag or a sack? Bit of a giveaway seeing me carrying lines and nets and pockets of hooks.’ ‘There’s an old sack in the laundry. There won’t be many on the sand being Tuesday but of course you’re right. Just keep us out of it.’ ‘Of course I will, Elsa. Do you like leatherjacket?’ ‘Love it – we both do, don’t we, Clara? Delicious fish.’ ‘Do you like trevally?’ ‘We love it. We’d love anything you caught, Mister Wolf.’ ‘I’ll see what I can come up with, then,’ and George Wolf was off, limping to the beach with his bucket, a sack full of secrets, and a smile wide as the Bay sun.

The cottage door opened a crack and the old man and his hips asked, ‘Seen the bugger come out yet?’ 254

‘No – wait a minute, yes, he’s out of the house and on his way to the point.’ ‘How would he know about the point? It’s a secret, that barge.’ ‘I don’t know,’ she lied. ‘Someone must have told him. He’s from Melbourne and he likes to fish.’ ‘How did you know that?’ ‘Outside the pub – I heard him telling someone outside the pub.’ Quick as a flash. Lies. Angel couldn’t believe how easy they were. ‘And that someone told him about my barge? We’ll see about that!’ ‘I think I’ll follow him.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He might be my aunts’ friend and he might get hurt.’ Angel left the old man with his hips muttering unkind words as he picked up an empty bucket near the gate.

255

Through the trees dancing

There were other ways to the fishing point. Three, in fact. Almost everyone in the Bay knew. The point, with its old barge and platform, was not really a secret. The old fishermen liked to think it was, but most people knew, especially after schoolboys with their lines and worms sneaked around, not telling their mothers because of the danger. The common way to the fishing point was a scramble over rocks from the ocean end of the beach, but it could also be accessed by going through the little park with the figs and then climbing through steep bush towards the water where there was a jut of rock pointing like the bow of a ship. The height of the rock made it possible to look down onto the barge without being seen. Years before, schoolies had discovered it when it was rumoured that two ladies sun-baked on the platform with no clothes on. That path to the end of the Bay and the beginning of Mariana was even more of a secret than a fisherman’s direct route. It was an isolated hiding place, a place for lovers 256

like B and K, a place for crooks’ meetings, drinking on the sly, crying, and for rough, dirty boys too poor to be anywhere else. It was the way Angel chose. She would be able to watch Uncle George. She tried to plan a surprise for him. At that time, Angel was entirely alone. Above and around her was a gentle light shining through leaves that gave the tough scrub the fragility of lace. It was a place she’d only explored twice, but she’d climbed through it easily on her strong, bare feet and with the help of low-hanging branches, not caring at all about the dirt on her clothing. She climbed and watched the sky through a lacework of leaves and she hardly breathed. She was in a place somewhere between the green gully in the north and sea scrub burnt by the sun and she felt perfectly at one with the earth. This place was for lovers, she thought. B and K would have come to this place, for sure, and climbed to the top. They might have kissed in this place and held hands. Gentle. Truthful love. Angel was reminded of a painting she’d loved at the gallery. It was a Renoir called Promenade but instead of showing a stroll through a park or along a lakeside, it was a painting of a young man helping his lady to climb through a lacework of leaves. She remembered that. The lady wore a long and floating dress of something white with blue ribbons. Beautiful. Angel was very quiet and pretended she was the lady and held her hand out in the way she had seen in Clara’s ballet books. Graceful. Elegant. The man who helped her was very gentle, too. Renoir told stories for dreams with his brushes but Angel had never wanted to know Renoir in case he was not as nice as his paintings. Angel put herself into the painting’s frame and danced her arms and legs through the scrub to the music inside her. The music should have been Giselle, the dance of betrayal, but her 257

orchestra played something else entirely. Angel didn’t want to reach the top of the climb because during it she felt like the spirit of grace. She would have liked her duchess to see her. She felt free. She felt as lovely as the lady with her gentleman in his straw hat. She felt pure. Virginal in her white. She could have been a nun. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing. There was nothing wrong about her intentions. After all, she was only going to look down from the rock, not make a sound, and watch Uncle George catch a fish. Angel wished Mister Daisyfield and old Mister Canning were fishing with Uncle George and the surprise she planned might work but she had doubts. There was little room in Angel’s head for such things. At the top of the climb behind the little park with the fig trees she said goodbye to Renoir’s lovers and stepped out of the gold frame and was dropped back, dirty, torn and scratched, into the dry, windblown scrub of the Bay and her brain moved a little – click. She was bleeding and had not realised she’d stubbed her toe on a large, sharp stone. She picked up the stone because it had her blood on it. She almost stepped on a sleeping lizard and when she kicked it out of the way, there was more blood. This was not Renoir country. Even the ground was hidden by sharp grasses, lolly wrappers and some things she could not identify. Angel knew she was close to the jut of rock and the fishing barge on the point where the harbour met the sea because the waves were loud and more savage but she still stepped as quietly as she could. There was a stiff breeze coming from Mariana and she wondered if the barge would buck with the swell and toss Uncle George into the water. Maybe Mariana read her thoughts. Maybe Mariana is the solution, Angel said 258

to Angel and she wouldn’t have to do a thing. The thought excited her and made her squat and urinate – something the Renoir lady would never have done! ‘That’s something I don’t see every day,’ said the old man with the hips. Angel pulled up her pants and put her finger to her lips – ssshhh! ‘He won’t hear us up here with that swell slashing around the barge.’ ‘How did you get up here with just your walking sticks?’ ‘I went ’round the long way and up the old steps.’ The old man with the hips grinned. ‘I didn’t think I could do it either. You must have forgotten the old steps.’ ‘Maybe I was too young to know about them.’ ‘Girlie,’ he said, ‘I reckon you’ve never been too young to know anything. Let’s go and see what the bugger from Melbourne is doing.’ And he gently took her hand and led her to the rock – not quite the man in the straw hat and she was not quite the virgin in white but it was enough.

Angel crawled along the rock like the lizard she’d seen earlier, but the old man with the hips had to stand. ‘What are you dragging that rock around for, girlie? Must weigh a tonne.’ ‘It’s got my blood on it – I’ll put it down somewhere. I don’t want my blood on the trees.’ ‘O, well, whatever you want. The rock’s nothing. You’ve got enough blood over you to make a donation.’ ‘Ssshhh. He’ll hear you.’ ‘What’s he doing? There’ll be no octopus – that I know – and if he gets that kingfish I’ve been after, I’ll kill him.’ 259

Angel’s head was as close as it could be to the bow of the rock without being seen. ‘I think he might have got something. He’s having trouble balancing on the barge with his bad leg …’ ‘What’s the matter with his leg? You know him, don’t you, girlie?’ ‘No.’ ‘Who is he, girlie?’ ‘Okay. He’s my uncle and I don’t like him.’ ‘What’s he done?’ said the old man with the hips and more or less knowing. ‘There’s always uncles.’ ‘Never mind about it. Now, look! I think he’s caught something.’ ‘What! What’s he caught? Here, move, let me have a look.’ And the old man with the hips moved to the point of the rock above the barge platform, which was bucking in the swell like a horse at a rodeo, and watched Uncle George Wolf haul in a yellow leatherjacket. ‘That’s a three-pounder, that one. I’ll kill him.’ George Wolf cried, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ with delight, with his legs wide apart for balance and the bandage around his ankle, while the old man with the hips stepped over Angel and looked down. He was very angry. He looked as though he’d been robbed. ‘That’s my barge, you bastard!’ But although George Wolf was aware of sound above him he didn’t dare look up in case he lost his balance. The swell was high and Angel was delighted to see that Mariana had soaked Uncle George to the skin. She laughed in her way, very quietly, with her hand over her mouth. The big fish flopped in a bucket almost too small for it. The old man leaned on his sticks and sulked as Uncle George Wolf got on his hands and knees and tried to 260

retrieve a snagged line by feeling under the bucking platform and almost drowning in Mariana’s waves with a prize fish almost out of its bucket. Angel laughed out loud and dropped the rock with her blood on it onto the barge platform and when Uncle George Wolf turned suddenly to see what had fallen, he lost his balance, grabbed a pile of netting as though it would save him, and fell into the sea. ‘It was an accident! The stone slipped! I didn’t do anything – it was the waves. It wasn’t my plan …’ ‘Of course it wasn’t, girlie – of course it wasn’t. What plan? I was here and I seen it.’ ‘Where is he? Can he get back onto the barge?’ ‘He’ll be right as rain. Man knows the sea. He’ll be on the rocks.’ ‘I can’t see him.’ The old man with his hips took a careful look down to the barge. ‘Well, now you come to say it, girlie, I can’t see him either. You’d better run for help. Could you do that, girlie?’ ‘Yes! Yes!’ ‘But go the back way down the steps. It’ll be quicker with you running,’ he shouted to her back. ‘And if you see someone, tell them to send help.’ ‘Okay.’ But she didn’t run the back way to the steps. She slipped and scrambled down through the trees and scrub the way she’d come and through the little park with the fig trees where she’d begun her climb. A council worker in the park, fixing a broken seat, asked what was wrong but she didn’t tell him anything at all. She was in too much of a hurry to get to the aunts’ house and the rocks below it where flotsam and strange floating objects sailing on a Mariana current usually passed 261

by – like the man who waved before he died. Angel wanted to be at least within waving distance for Uncle George. Angel ran past the laundry side of the house, down through the long grass and onto her favourite rock where she sat, without a sound, clothes torn, legs scratched and bloody, arms tight across her chest against the sudden chill of the wind and she waited – she waited for Uncle George Wolf to sail by. And she wondered if he’d wave as he floated past with the sea under his shirt like a balloon and crabs nibbling at the bandage on his leg. Her turmoil of a brain could only hope that Mariana hadn’t taken him to the trench to be drowned on the bottom of the world and she’d never see him again. Angel was unaware that the place she sat upon was the real world. She gave no thought to the old man and his hips and anything else that might be happening near the ledge of rock hanging over the barge. She remembered the rock with her blood on it. It slipped. She didn’t throw it. The stone was heavy. She had no idea that Clara and Elsa had come out onto the balcony with their moon hats and a pot of tea to catch the breeze. It was Clara who saw someone on the rock. ‘Who is it down there?’ Silence, for the wind carried away her words. And then Elsa recognised a green top under a mass of tangled hair. ‘Angel! Angel, is that you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Angel, is that you? I can’t hear.’ ‘Yes!’ ‘What on earth are you doing? It’s not Sunday … O, never mind. I’m coming down.’ Elsa spilled her tea and broke the cup and hurried from the balcony with Clara saying, ‘Leave 262

her – leave her – she’s not normal …’ and Elsa, in a panic, taking the stairs as quickly as she could, chanting, ‘What’s happened – what’s happened – something’s happened’ and then through the tall grass and tripping weeds until she reached the rock and pulled Angel to her and held her tightly. ‘What’s happened, Angel? What are you doing here? It’s not Sunday. What are you doing here?’ Angel relaxed a little against Elsa’s warmth but was still as stiff as a board. Elsa was frightened. She shook Angel. ‘Tell me what’s happened? Tell me!’ Angel, sopping wet against the dry love of Elsa, slowly floated back to earth. ‘I’m just waiting for Uncle George, that’s all.’ ‘He’s fishing, darling. He didn’t tell us you were coming. He’ll be back soon, Angel. You’ll see him soon.’ ‘No, I won’t. Mariana’s just floating other things on the tide – see?’ A tangled bundle of kelp floated past them, then a broken wooden crate with onions clinging to it. Magnolia leaves from the Orient dipped on the swell, twigs from pruned harbour trees floated smooth as the hands of dancers, a green bottle without a note … ‘Mariana’s taking too long,’ said Angel, soaking wet then as was Elsa. Angel’s brain was in a state of tangled lines, full of music madness and its river of colours running into each other like a flood. ‘He should be here by now.’ ‘Why are you watching the water, darling? Who should be here by now?’ ‘Like the man who waved. It was an accident, Elsa. I didn’t tell Uncle George to jump off the barge. The stone slipped. I didn’t throw it. It was an accident—’ ‘O, my God! Angel, what happened?’ 263

‘I was just watching him fish off the barge and the stone slipped out of my hand and he fell in.’ ‘O, dear God, Angel! Clara! Clara!’ Clara answered from the balcony. ‘What’s happened now? What’s she done now? Why is she here? For heaven’s sake come up and dry off, you’ll both catch your death down there.’ ‘I think we already have.’ Elsa was crying and knew Clara would not have heard her.

The old man with the hips brought two policemen with him to the aunts’ house. Angel remembered something, a blur of a memory, of another time long ago when two policemen came to the door of another place to report another death. ‘It’s bad news, love,’ said Constable One, ‘but I’m afraid your uncle has drowned under a barge trying to dislodge snagged lines. Hit his head on the barge. It got pretty rough out there.’ ‘We’re very sorry,’ said Constable Two. ‘Is there anything we can do? Anyone to contact?’ He carried a bucket with a yellow leatherjacket in it. Clear eyed, five spines, fresh as a daisy. ‘Why didn’t you take the back steps like I said?’ asked the old man. ‘There could have been help earlier.’ ‘I don’t know,’ Angel lied. ‘I took the short cut. I was frightened.’ A lie! A click. She bit her lip hard to stop it all. ‘You poor little tyke. Your aunts tell me he was from Melbourne. His family will have to be notified.’ ‘I have his address – nothing more,’ said Elsa. ‘His wife’s dead – her name was Alma and she died of cancer in her brain. Uncle George wasn’t with her because they weren’t living together and he felt really guilty about 264

that and … and other things.’ Angel’s bottom lip still bled from her bite; she felt as though she bled all over – inside and out. She did notice how the colour of her blood changed from fresh to stale and where the sea had splashed her legs. ‘Angel, you didn’t tell us about his wife,’ said Elsa. ‘I wish I could tell her what happened. She’d be pleased.’ ‘Angel!’ ‘She’s mad,’ said Clara. ‘She’s in shock, Clara.’ ‘I take it the girl didn’t know him too well,’ said Constable One. ‘Would that be right, love? You didn’t know your uncle that well?’ ‘No. He was my mother’s brother.’ ‘But you loved him,’ said Elsa. ‘You loved having an uncle.’ ‘Well, maybe I did but I don’t love him now.’ ‘If you like we’ll look after things for a while ’til you get sorted. Terrible to lose an uncle like that, like him or not. We’ll get it sorted. We’re used to dragging them in from ’round the point. There were crabs all over him.’ Constable Two bowed his head. ‘I don’t think a grieving child needs to know that, Constable,’ said One. The threat of a grin made Angel bite her lips until they bled again. ‘She’s had a pretty rough life, this girlie.’ The old man with the hips leaned on his sticks and patted Angel’s back. ‘I remember her from way back and she had a pretty tough time. Mother sick. Lived in a shopfront in the village because this lot wouldn’t take them in.’ He gently pulled Angel aside and whispered to her. ‘Are you sure he was your uncle, girlie?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did he maybe do something you didn’t like?’ 265

‘Yes.’ ‘Good riddance, then.’ And then loud enough for all to hear, ‘The shopfront’s a hat shop now but this poor kid and her mum had to live in it with Bon Ami pasted over the window for a bit of privacy – I seen it.’ ‘There’s more to it than that,’ said Clara. ‘And mind your own business, old man.’ ‘O, Angel – we’re so ashamed.’ Elsa held her hand over her mouth. ‘Can we drive you somewhere? Where do you live now? Where’s your family?’ ‘Dead,’ said Angel. ‘Not all dead, and this will be her home,’ said Elsa. ‘We are her aunts and this will be her home.’ ‘Well, now, Elsa, wait and think. Should we really take a child as off her head as Angel?’ ‘Clara,’ Elsa said with emphasis, ‘Angel is not, and never has been, any more disturbed than the rest of this family. I love her and I will care for her and she will care for us and if that doesn’t suit you, Clara, so be it.’ ‘Jessie doesn’t know all this, yet.’ ‘Well, Clara. It’s rent day tomorrow and tomorrow she will know. I will tell her. George Wolf left a great deal of money to fit out your father’s office and anything else that might be needed. He also left a copy of a letter to his solicitor instructing a regular payment until Angel is old enough to work so we shall tell Jessie she can have her rent and mind her own business from then on!’ Elsa said all this in a voice she had no idea existed. She felt an unfamiliar strength. ‘Well,’ said Constable One. ‘It looks as though we can leave this poor little thing in your good hands. Of course, there’ll have to be a PM – that’s post mortem – and there’ll 266

be questions and papers for the court, but we’ll all get you through that fast as we can, no trouble. I reckon you’ve had enough today.’ He turned to leave and his associate picked up the bucket with the yellow leatherjacket slowly taking its last breath through its little mouth and its little sharp teeth but Elsa took it from him. ‘That’s mine, I’ll keep it,’ she told him. ‘George Wolf said he wanted to catch one for me.’ ‘Sorry. I thought maybe you didn’t want it what with one thing and another – waste not want not is what I was thinking. Is there anything else you want to tell me, love?’ ‘O, yes,’ lied Angel. ‘Uncle George is a Jew and he told me when he died he would like to be buried in the deepest part of the ocean.’ ‘You never once told us that, darling. I didn’t think Jewish people could be buried in water.’ ‘If it’s special circumstances they can. I read about it.’ ‘I thought it was against their law but if it’s okay with his family we’ve got to go along with their wishes,’ said the Constable, making notes. ‘Well,’ said Angel, ‘Uncle George was a Jew and Jews have to be buried very soon after they die so you’d better ask them quickly.’ ‘We are familiar with that procedure but I thank you, love, for reminding us,’ said the Constable. He was a kind man and comforted Angel in his own way. Not out of a text book. ‘We’ll sort it out for you.’ ‘He has two sons, by the way. They live in flats in St Kilda near the sea.’ ‘I thank you for that information, love, but it seems none of you knew Mister George Wolf very well.’ The Constable scribbled and Angel suddenly missed Barnaby and her duchess, 267

especially her duchess. ‘More to this than meets the eye, eh?’ ‘It’s family business and no business of yours,’ said Clara. ‘Sorry. We’ll be off, then. I’ll let you know what’s happening in a couple of days—’ ‘Tomorrow,’ said Angel. ‘We’ll do our best.’ ‘I’m so sorry you’ve had to attend to something so unpleasant,’ said Elsa. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’ ‘Very kind, but best keep it formal for the moment. Maybe next time?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘I wouldn’t say no,’ said the old man with the hips. ‘It’s been a long day.’ ‘Yes – tea. And thank you for looking after Angel for us.’ ‘I seen days, Missus, but today I seen the strangest of ’em all. Two sugars.’ ‘Can I go back down to the rocks, Elsa?’ Angel, not thinking clearly, still hoped to see a man with a bandaged leg float around the point – Uncle George, sent by Mariana. Her mind at that time was tangled and she was certainly not right in her head. ‘Of course, Angel, but I’m sure Uncle George won’t be floating by. You must understand that.’ The old man finished his tea, leaned on his sticks and hobbled down Brooklyn Street muttering to anyone interested, ‘I never seen so many crabs. Have to get someone to clean out the barge bottom.’ ‘Come inside now, Angel. I’ll get you dry and something to eat. You’ll have to stay here tonight – it’s too late to go back to the boarding house alone.’ And she locked the gate. ‘I’m really hungry, Elsa. What’s for dinner?’ And she grinned in her way while Clara watched her. 268

‘Be careful, Elsa.’ ‘She’s only a child, Clara.’ ‘O, well then, Angel, we’ll keep a lookout from the balcony, just in case,’ said Clara, already in her moon hat and chuckling. It had all been theatre – wonderful, creative theatre and she could not, for the life of her, think of a ballet to play that would suit it.

269

The grandfather's room

‘She’s here,’ Clara called from her upstairs lookout. ‘Black all over as usual, in her black hearse with a taxi sign stuck on the top.’ ‘Already?’ Jessie made Elsa very nervous whenever she came, even though on that day she and Clara had this week’s rent and last week’s and the feeling that they might have the upper hand. At ten o’clock in the morning she was thinking of putting the kettle on but changed her mind. Angel, draped in an old nightgown of Elsa’s while her clothes were cleaned and dried, stood at the sink and washed the breakfast dishes. Jessie flapped into the house, uninvited as usual, and settled herself into the nest of Elsa’s sitting room chair. Her long plait hung stiff as metal and Elsa, not for the first time, wondered if it was real. ‘Well?’ asked Jessie in a voice sweet as blades. ‘How is everything in my Brooklyn Street house? I see the grass has grown higher and—’ 270

‘It will be mown on Friday, Jessie. I have arranged for the grass to be mown on Friday. Apart from the rent is there anything else you want here?’ ‘I’m not sure I like the tone of your voice today, Elsa.’ ‘I can’t imagine why, Jessie.’ ‘Is that Jessie’s voice?’ came Angel’s voice from the kitchen sink. ‘Is she here?’ ‘Yes,’ said Clara, suddenly at the door. ‘And you stay right where you are, Angel, and don’t say a word! You hear me?’ ‘O, okay, but—’ ‘Angel!’ ‘Why is she here? Why is that child not at school? I hope she doesn’t thinks it’s Sunday.’ ‘Angel spent the day with her uncle. Yesterday her uncle went fishing and Angel watched him. It was too late for her to go to the boarding house alone so she stayed the night, here, with us.’ ‘Rubbish! I’ve never heard such rubbish!’ ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Jessie, it’s none of your business,’ Elsa said, with her arms folded hard against her. ‘One or two other things to mention, Jessie, while Elsa fetches the rent. The light switch in the laundry is broken and the sash on my window needs replacing. Both, I am told, are the responsibility of the owner.’ ‘Fix them! Fix them yourselves! I’m too busy to be troubled with switches and sashes.’ ‘If a window crashed down and broke my hand, Jessie, you would have to be troubled by such things.’ Elsa wasn’t sure, but as she walked back into the room she thought she saw Jessie’s plait twitch. ‘You’re both acting very strangely. What on earth’s been going on? Where is Mister Wolf. Where is the Jew?’ 271

‘Dead,’ said Clara. ‘What?’ ‘Mister Wolf drowned when he was fishing and his lines tangled under the barge. He fell from the barge platform. His body is in the morgue waiting for instructions from his Melbourne family. The police have been very helpful.’ ‘Police?’ ‘Angel is in shock, of course …’ ‘I doubt it.’ ‘Angel is going to live here and help Clara and me. Her uncle thought the boarding house was not a suitable environment for a child.’ Elsa handed an envelope to Jessie. ‘Mister Wolf is paying for her keep and in other ways. He left us some money to go on with so, Jessie, here is this week’s rent and last week’s, and if there’s nothing else I’ll say good morning.’ ‘I won’t have that child living in my house. She doesn’t belong! I won’t have it!’ ‘Angel is the granddaughter of your old lover. She is part of this family whether you like it or not, Jessie. She is his grandchild. We have already made arrangements for her to move into Clara’s father’s room that used to be his office so if there is anything particularly close to your  –  your heart  –  you’d better gather it now.’ ‘How dare you! The Jew dead and police and heaven knows what else and all behind my back! I’ll have you all evicted! I can, you know.’ ‘Mister Wolf said he’d pay for a solicitor if we needed one, Jessie.’ ‘And I’ll speak to my brother, John! He has a claim, too.’ Jessie slumped a little in the chair. She was obviously in unfamiliar territory and not a little shocked by the strangeness of it all. ‘How can you even think of renting that room to that 272

child? That room is very dear to me – it’s where he kept his fish tanks.’ ‘The only thing that’s dear to you is how much it might be worth,’ Clara said. ‘O! How dare you – how dare you all. I feel faint. Ill. I feel ill. I will have my tea now!’ ‘I’m not making tea this morning, Jessie, and if there is nothing more you want from us we will say goodbye. We have a great deal to do. We must clean the old room that smells of old fish and you and the grandfather loving ’til all hours. And there’s furniture coming this afternoon.’ ‘We’ll see about this! You will suffer for this, I promise you.’ And the bad fairy flapped to the door looking like anger in a black box. Clara chose Sleeping Beauty for the music of the moment. Sleeping Beauty – the bad fairy – perfect. All Jessie needed was a poisoned bodkin. Clara wondered if they’d all sleep for a hundred years as she climbed the stairs. The taxi Jessie had ordered was not black but bright yellow and she sat heavily in the back like a witch in a pumpkin. She muttered over and over, ‘We’ll see about this! Furious! We’ll see about all of you!’ and she told the frightened driver where to go.

‘Can I come out now?’ Angel asked from the kitchen sink. ‘Yes, darling. Come out now and we’ll start cleaning your room. Are you feeling better?’ ‘O, yes, I think so.’ ‘It’s been a bad time for you, darling. A bad, bad time but you will feel better soon.’ ‘I feel better now.’ ~ 273

Missus Potts was busy in the boarding house kitchen with a bowl of spuds when Miss Varnham rushed in to tell her that her phone might have been ringing. Winifred’s sister Heather followed her, but slowly, still in her nightdress at half-past four in the afternoon with an arm hanging, suddenly paralysed by her side – caused, Winifred Varnham had no doubt, by Missus Potts’s suggestion that she might like to help peeling. Heather’s tiny feet had hardly touched the earth since she’d been removed from the sanitarium – a day early if you don’t mind, Miss Varnham, we need the bed. Heather liked to veil herself with damaged mosquito netting and Mister Joseph said she reminded him of Miss Haversham in one of Angel’s Charles Dickens books. ‘I didn’t hear the phone ringing, Miss Varnham.’ ‘No one hears your phone ringing, Missus Potts. No one can answer your phone, Missus Potts, because it is locked in a cupboard, probably with a blanket over it. Angel’s Aunt Elsa has tried to call you three times from the phone box, and in the end a policeman came.’ ‘A policeman! Here? What did he want? Something to do with Angel – I always knew …’ ‘Missus Potts! The policeman came to tell us that Angel’s Uncle George drowned while fishing off some point at the Bay.’ ‘O. Well … drowned?’ ‘And if you would be kind and keep an eye on Heather tomorrow I would like to go to her – and I think Barnaby Grange will want to come with me.’ ‘I’ll do it but all care and no responsibility for your sister and it’ll be extra.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘I never liked that man – there! There was something about him.’ 274

‘I’m inclined to agree, Missus Potts, but I think we might keep that to ourselves. Angel might be moving into the aunts’ house but we’ll bring her back with us tomorrow and we will know more.’ ‘And what am I supposed to do with no help?’ ‘How can you think of yourself at this time? The girl’s in shock and needs care.’ ‘Well, maybe I said that wrong. To tell the truth, I really didn’t mind the girl from time to time.’ ‘We know you did, Missus Potts, but you treated her very badly. Perhaps you can persuade Heather – very gently – to help you with a few easy chores.’ ‘I’ll watch for pigs flying over the gully, Miss Varnham, no disrespect.’

The room that used to be the grandfather’s office was thoroughly cleaned on Thursday. Excited, Elsa and Barnaby scrubbed shelves that had held fish tanks with, of all things, Bon Ami, and the duchess swept the floor with her robe but left dust as Angel wished. The life and memories of a house lived in its dust. Winifred Varnham remembered Angel saying that a long time ago and had not forgotten it. She thought it was a beautiful thing for a child to say. On that Thursday there was no sign of Jessie, and Clara, after her own contributions, excused herself, climbed her stairs and played Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring very loudly. No one noticed the grieving child wondering what she would do with a room three times the size of a broom cupboard and three – not one, but three – windows overlooking an alien garden, a stone wall and not a gully in sight. ‘Will a currawong sing in the morning?’ 275

‘There aren’t many bush birds, darling, but you’ll certainly hear the gulls squawking for scraps down the front – isn’t it all lovely?’ ‘O, yes,’ Angel said despondently. And Winifred Varnham, somehow knowing, ran to her and held her tight.

‘We’ll come on Sundays to visit. Is that all right with you, Elsa? We can come on Sundays and I’ll bring a basket of goodies for a picnic by the harbour and you will always have your friends.’ ‘O, yes please.’ Angel, on tip-toe, whispered to her duchess, ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’ ‘I know, Angel. I think I understand.’ ‘I love you. You’re my best friend.’ And she kissed her cheek. ‘Elsa, would you like me to make tea for everyone?’ ‘That would be lovely, Angel.’ But Elsa had witnessed the bond of friendship and felt just a little put-out by it. ‘I hope you’re my friend, too?’ ‘O, Elsa, of course you are.’ ‘You can move in on Sunday – how exciting is that? But come on Saturday if you can, when your things are delivered.’

It was a light, showery Saturday when the last of the furniture was delivered. The men did their best to keep it all dry. There was a very nice bed with polished posts, a comfortable mattress and pillows, a wardrobe with side drawers and shelves, and a very nice mirror. There was a small desk of Queensland maple moved under a window that had a view of a bottlebrush shrub. It was all very nice. Too nice. Angel 276

had asked Missus Potts if she could have the tiny, old, rickety cupboard from her room at the boarding house and was surprised when Missus Potts gave it to her without saying ‘That’ll be extra’. And she had not disturbed the collage of families and had taped the door tight with sticking plaster. ‘It’s got worms,’ she’d said. ‘You’re welcome to it.’ Barnaby Grange had brought it in the tram tucked under his arm like a parcel. Elsa brought a huge package into the room. She asked Angel to close her eyes and, after the rattle of paper and the obvious snip of scissors, Elsa clapped her hands. ‘Da, da! You can open them now.’ From the huge parcel poured soft sheets and pillow cases with butterflies on them and a quilt covered in birds and flowers. ‘There! Isn’t it all lovely?’ ‘O, yes – O, thank you, Elsa,’ said Angel, smiling. She hated it all. She hated the furniture. She hated the smell of the new wood and the shine on it, smooth as something dead. And the bed linen with its prissy butterflies and flowers that smelled nothing like the gully. She put the old cupboard as close to her bed as possible. ‘What colour curtains would you like, darling?’ ‘I don’t want curtains at all, Elsa – I like to watch the night.’ ‘But you don’t want people looking in.’ ‘They won’t see over the wall, don’t worry. Can I still have Peggy’s old quilt? It means a lot to me, Elsa.’ ‘Of course you can. I’ll clean it for you.’ ‘I don’t want it clean. I want it the way it’s always been. I love it the way it is.’ Elsa was silent for a moment. ‘Are you really going to be happy here, darling?’ ‘Of course.’ ~ 277

The grass on the harbourfront side had been mown on Friday, as arranged, and after Elsa had made the grandfather’s room that used to be his office neat and tucked and laid the way she would have been taught, she made tea and biscuits for a party on the lawn. Clara played something soothing to lift the spirits. ‘There’s really no need for you to leave today, Angel,’ said Elsa. ‘It’s all ready for you, darling. Why don’t you move in tonight?’ Angel glanced at her duchess briefly and her duchess nodded ‘yes’ discreetly but with a sad smile. Barnaby Grange gazed at the harbour and counted gulls. Clara, knowing, smiled and invited Angel to play her ballet records when she wanted to. There was suddenly a tension in the air thick enough to cut, but Barnaby turned and said, in words, ‘Two thousand still counting’ and they all laughed. ‘Okay,’ said Angel. ‘And don’t forget there’s always Sundays.’ Winifred Varnham dabbed at something invisible in her eyes but Angel’s were dry as deserts. Elsa was too happy to be anything else at all. ‘Would you like baked tomatoes for dinner, darling?’ was all she said.

When late darkness came to the Bay, Angel finally went to the grandfather’s room that used to be his office, closed the door and stood at a window to watch the night. Elsa and Clara had left her in the sitting room without comment and went to their own beds. Angel thought it was kind of them. From the bottlebrush window, the night was made darker by a moon hidden behind a shaggy pile of cloud. She shivered, 278

though the atmosphere of her strange, new home was dense as a cloak. Click! All the ghosts were there in the grandfather’s room. The music inside her had no chance to be heard above the cacophony of their noise – her mother, howling; her father without his leg; tram drivers ding ding ding; the conductor who lost his brains; men at war screaming into Mariana’s trench; the grandfather – Go away, we don’t want you here! – and dead Uncle George. The skin of her breasts still crawling. Wanting him to be like the drowning man waving to the aunts on the balcony. Even the duchess’s robes became shrouds, and the man with his numbers and numbers and numbers became madness, all madness. The ghosts were all there and there wasn’t room in her mind. She was afraid. Angel Martin pulled the terrible new sheets from the bed and scattered the flowers and released the butterflies from the pillows and lay, curled like a newborn, on the plain ticking with Peggy’s old cover for warmth and protection. The music inside her was too faint – she couldn’t hear it and all its colours were black, flowing into black. The ghosts and their terrible noise would not leave her. I don’t know how to make them stop – Mummy, don’t come now, I’ll come to you. One day. Angel held her head tight with her hands and then, into the sound of the sea, she fell into a troubled sleep.

On Sunday morning it was not a gully currawong’s song that woke Angel but the gentle call of a harbour gull, not a raucous squawk as Elsa had warned. Angel ran down to the front and the gull sat on the fence and waited. She showed the gull her empty hands but it stayed and when she was close to it, 279

it looked closely into her eyes and with its head on one side in the way of gulls, it winked, and from the bottom of its throat murmured there, there. The gull did not move when Angel stroked its feathers. When she turned she saw Clara watching her from the balcony of the aunts’ house. She was smiling – and it was enough.

280

Acknowledgements

As always, my sincere thanks to and admiration of Madonna Duffy and the University of Queensland Press for supporting the works of mature writers. To my editing team, Vanessa Pellatt and Christina Pagliaro, I thank you for your patience, and Sonja Heijn for her attentive proofread. To my agent, Margaret Connolly, and poet Jamie Grant, whose wisdom has been invaluable. To my first reader, Victoria Jay, I thank for all that she does for me; and Michael and Vivian Brooker for the advice about fishing tackle. Last but not in the least, my friends and neighbours who have helped and encouraged me – I thank them from my heart. I live in a good street in a good neighbourhood of hard workers and I love them all.

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