Author: Jon Rose
Date: 1960-12-31T14:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction - Young Adult; Coming-of-age; LGBT; Queer; WWII
Description: '"But you’ll love Sydney, and Sydney will be mad about you". Thus opens the first Australian novel to deal with homosexual life, Jon Rose’s At the Cross, published in 1961. It tells the story of Jon, a sixteen year old (who looks fourteen), who defies the wartime ban on interstate travel and sets off for the bright lights of 1940s Sydney. 'His adventures there – as he is rapidly absorbed into the thriving camp community centred on King’s Cross – make for a rollicking good yarn. There’s a sly-grog joint accessed through a wardrobe door; male gypsies wearing tangerine satin, Jon naively deliveri
Publisher: A. Deutsch

AT THE CROSS

By the Same Author

PEPPERCORN DAYS

FIRST PUBLISHED 1961 BY

ANDRE DEUTSCH LIMITED

105 GREAT RUSSELL STREET

LONDON WCI

COPYRIGHT © 1961 BY JON ROSE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
CLARKE DOBLE AND BRENDON LTD

PLYMOUTH

The lines from These Foolish Things are quoted by kind permission
of the publisher, Messrs. Boosey & Hawkes, Music Publishers Limited.

A TNT ebook

2025

‘But you’ll love Sydney, and Sydney will be mad about you,’ Eris said for the fourth time. She then asked Barry again if it were not so. He, to his credit, replied just as brightly, ‘Yes, she’s right, Jon.’ I looked back at the reflection of the room, and myself in the mirror of the wardrobe. We were sitting drinking dubious war-time scotch in Eris’s bedroom, in a well-known temperance hotel in Melbourne. I had another look at myself in the mirror, and tried to see myself surrounded by all that I imagined Sydney to look like, before saying, ‘I’d love to come.’ Eris said, ‘Well, that’s that. We’ll go on Friday, and drive up over the weekend.’

Two drinks later, I left the hotel and walked up Swanson Street. As I neared Princes Bridge I passed a group of Salvation Army people, lustily bashing drums and belting out ‘At the Cross, at the Cross, where I first saw the light, boom, boom.’ And I thought ‘How funny, I’m going to a Cross—King’s Cross in Sydney. They say it’s the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere, I wonder what will happen—?’ A few minutes later, I reached my so-called flat. In the room I sat and took stock. Here I was, sixteen years of age, but looking nearer fourteen. I had finally run away from all that was ‘home’—a hoard of ‘do-gooders’ and a few things like the odd animal or flower I was fond of. Now I was the rather uncertain possessor of two suitcases, a pair of supposedly old silver cuff-links, three suits, a little cut-glass box, and a lot of nervous hope. I had a job during the day working a switchboard. By night I trained as a radio announcer at a school, where they told me so often that I was so good that I had become rather suspicious. Since I had won the course, and didn’t pay them for the tuition, I could never think why I felt uneasy. I looked around my bogus Spanish room and thought ‘Yes, I’m off, I’ve had enough of Melbourne, city of few delights for me, so far.’ And that was ever since I’d been born. I went to the phone on the landing, rang John, and told him of my plan. As I expected, he blew up, then calmed down. I said I’d come to his flat.

After we’d had a nice meal, John persisted in decrying the whole project. I knew he would, and I didn’t blame him. But how could he know? Apart from being my closest grown-up friend, he was thirty-five, successful, and more glamorous still, divorced, usually living in sin with a show-girl, or someone equally exotic. We called a truce, during which I explained that since Sydney had more radio stations than Melbourne, there must be more jobs going there. John asked me what money I had. I told him seven pounds.

‘… and you’re going on seven pounds?’

‘Yes, why?’ I answered, rather surprised.

‘But for God’s sake, Sydney’s a savage city, full of bastards, and five hundred miles away.’

I told him that Eris and Barry were taking me free, in their car. This needled John, because I had met them through him only a few weeks ago. He went into a long saga about their faults, each listed a little more clearly than the last. At the end of his recital and the evening I sat unmoved, and even more determined to go. Friday found me almost too excited to eat. Eris and Barry called for me in the car, and off we went on our way up north. The north I had dreamed of for years.

Once we were on the road it was fun. Eris drove like a woman shopper heading for a bargain, as Barry, she and I sang mad words to popular songs. Then came the first night on the road. We decided we would sleep out. We bought a lot of food, made a campfire, and had a tasty feast. After our meal, I sat entranced while Eris and Barry told me of their travels to the islands and the east, before the war. Then they told me stories of Sydney and all about ‘the Cross’. I sat, eagerly soaking up all these snippets of what I hoped would be my future life, and world.

We were sitting around our fire in a nondescript bit of country, not many miles from Melbourne, and not near enough to Albury for my comfort. Albury was the border town between Victoria and New South Wales. And apart from the fact that border-hopping was illegal at that period unless a person had one of about six rather feeble official excuses for crossing into New South Wales, there could be trouble. The sort of trouble that worried me had nothing to do with border-hopping. It was the fact that I was a minor that threw me into fits of trembling fear. I had told Eris and Barry that I was eighteen, and they seemed to believe it. It was not till some time after telling them, that I realized that if I were eighteen, as I’d said, they should wonder why I wasn’t in the army. The sooner we crossed the border, and left the state of Victoria, the better all round for me. We made up our beds, and snuggled down for the night. As I lay there, I was so excited; here I was at last, actually on my way to Sydney. I could almost see that tall city, with its New York-like formation. The harbour and the bridge, the hundreds of beautiful white yachts, practically sailed through the back of my eyes as I went to sleep.

We woke up early, all of us stiff with cramp, and feeling rather bad-tempered. Eris rallied herself and got some breakfast. As soon as we had finished, we started off, Eris in a two-piece midriff costume and Paulette Goddard hair-do driving the Pontiac. Barry and I sat talking in the back seat, as the miles of country sped by the windows. Suddenly we fell to talking about the war: at the back of our minds was the constant dread and worry about the Japanese. Australia lay large and inviting at the end of their progress via Singapore. We had about one man per square mile of the coastline to defend us. Unless someone, England or America, acted soon, the Japanese would simply pour their millions of troops into the Australia they had wanted for so many years. The irony of the situation was that most of our young highly-trained troops, the fathers of any future generations, were fifteen thousand miles away, and for the second time in twenty years fighting and dying for England. This position caused a curious state of mind all through Australia, and even I, as I sat in the car, roaring my way up to my longed for north, was stricken with the thought that Sydney was five hundred miles nearer the Japanese.

This train of thought was broken into by Eris suddenly singing ‘I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill-’ Barry turned, and said to me ‘What are you going to do in Sydney?’ I sat, a bit shaken, I hadn’t thought of that yet. After all, he and Eris had practically talked me into going. I said ‘I don’t know, I can always get some sort of job, I know a bit about broadcasting, and I can sing.’ Eris said ‘Don’t worry, darling, your Sydney mother will look after you.’ I warmed.

We stopped for lunch at a steak-house, which was next to a pub. Eris led the way into the pub. I had hardly ever been in a pub before; I had had liquor, but drinking was all still a rather grown-up game. When we got in, the man behind the bar looked at Eris, then, nodding towards me, said, ‘Is he eighteen?’ Before I could reply, Eris said ‘Yes, my son’s over eighteen, doesn’t look it though, does he?’ The man reluctantly said ‘No.’ I quaked, Eris had been so quick. She started fondly patting my hair into place, the barman turned away. Eris muttered to me, ‘If we’re going to get anywhere with this act, we’ve got to rehearse.’ This thrilled me: Eris had done everything, she knew everyone, but above all, she was on the stage, the thing I most wanted in life.

We sat in the hot, plain wooden bar, talking away, or rather Eris and I did. Barry would talk at times, but when he did, everything he said seemed to contain some curious half hint. I didn’t know what it was, but I could feel it, strongly. I had hardly ever drunk at midday before, and began to feel unhappily strange. Eris with her hair piled up, her long legs tilting a chair, the green eye shadow plastered on her eyelids above the thickly mascaraed eyelashes, looked wonderful one minute, and frightening the next. Barry just sat looking at me, smiling, but his eyes bored through to the back of mine.

After half an hour of beers and talk, flushed and feeling dreadful, I found the lavatory just in time. Some time later Barry came out and helped me wash: when I had cleaned myself up, he turned and said to me, ‘I hope you are not kidding yourself, you’re an attractive kid, but by Christ, you’ll pay for it, get me?’ In a strange way I did, but only well enough to say that I didn’t. He laughed and said, ‘You will, I can tell you now, you will.’ Then we started to walk. I found it difficult because I was shaking, and still feeling very sick. Barry turned and propped me up against the wall, smoothed my hair back, then with a quick movement, kissed the top of my head. He must have carried me back to the car, because I woke up much later, lying in the back seat. As I woke, Eris said ‘We’re nearly in Albury.’

I grew frightened, this was the big jump. If I was caught crossing I would either be sent back to Melbourne, or kept here till ‘they’ arrived. Who ‘they’ might turn out to be, I didn’t know. But one thing I did know from bitter experience, was, that if ever there was something I wanted either from instinct or the bottom of my heart to do, someone would arrive. Then, armed with indisputable authority, they would say ‘Stop!’ Nothing more, just ‘Stop!’ When the echoes of that battle had died down, or even before, it would start all over again. I sat in the car, Eris drove on, and we arrived. So great was my terror of ‘them’ that I didn’t really know just what was happening, but I could hear Eris’s voice saying ‘Entertainments, passes, radio Sydney, dying brothers in hospitals,’ and the next thing I was conscious of knowing was that we had passed a sign saying ‘New South Wales’. Bells rang, my mind floated, I laughed, leant forward and clutched Eris and Barry, at the same time loudly singing ‘We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.’ Barry and Eris joined in, the three of us singing at the tops of our voices. Our next night was spent at a drive-in sort of hotel; the people, the furniture and advertisements were all hideous. But for me they had a powerful attraction: they had glamour, spelled with a twenty carat gold capital ‘G’.

Quite late that night I went to bed, slightly drunk, not just with beer and exhaustion from the night before, but with the knowledge that tomorrow we would be in Eris’s flat up at King’s Cross, high above Sydney and the harbour. But best of all for me, it was the fabulous Cross where the actresses, painters, dancers, film stars and radio people all lived, a small city of tall flats, night-clubs, cafés in tree-lined streets, and constant adventure for all.

Our entry to Sydney was slightly marred by a row between Eris and Barry: what they had actually had the quarrel over, I didn’t know, but it took a lot of effort not to let my half-realized idea of why they had quarrelled register in my eyes, and perhaps start another small row. This fear passed during lunch. Shortly after we started into Sydney proper, I sat looking at everything as closely as if I had suddenly been transported to Siam. The most ordinary building, house or person, caught my attention. Then to my surprise, I found myself saying to Eris ‘Look at all those coat-hangers’—an expression Melbourne people use for people from Sydney, because their fabulous bridge is shaped something like a coat-hanger, but for me right then they were diamond-studded coat-hangers. Driving through the city itself, the streets were just as I expected, tall, dark and narrow. Everyone seemed to move more quickly than in Melbourne, also their clothes were different. Eris and Barry were flat out, saying ‘There’s “the hotel”, that’s “the best café”, now this is King Street’. Our car started up a long, wide, tram-busy street, and I knew we were nearly at King’s Cross.

We pulled round the tramlines, and into Darlinghurst Road. As we drove slowly along it, it seemed to me to consist of nothing but plane trees, continental food shops, coffee houses, milk bars and chemist’s shops. Eris turned into Macleay Street, then stopped at a tall, exciting looking block of flats. She and I got out and collected the luggage, Barry said he would take the car on to the garage. Eris rang for the lift; as we went up in the lift, my excitement was so great that I could barely think. Here I was at last, about to go into a Sydney flat, and one belonging to a glamorous woman at that. We arrived at the eighth floor; the porter helped us in with the luggage.

The flat was large, badly furnished, and very comfortable. It also reeked of what seemed to me to be glamour. I walked past the big radiogram, and stepped out through the french windows on to the closed-in balcony. From there, the view was breathtaking, the harbour was as lovely as I had heard it was, but the exciting thing about it was, that it wasn’t just a lump of water. Even from where I stood I could see hundreds of little harbours, each one a different shape, running one into another, surrounded by houses with red, blue and green roofs and big blocks of flats towering straight up out of palm filled gardens. Yachts and small boats scuttled around the harbour, and in between the ferry boats going to and fro across it. I could only see the grey tip of the bridge, but I could see the huge camouflaged ocean liners and warships berthed everywhere, even, it seemed, under the flat’s balcony.

I stood looking with happy eyes and a bursting heart; ‘Sydney, you’re wonderful! ’ I thought. Just then a street noise from below made me look down. I had never lived in a building so tall before and as I looked down I thought how awful it would be to fall all that way.

To my horror, at that very second I started falling over, not downwards, but backwards. As I tried to steady myself, my hands went behind me and touched something hard, yet soft. The next second I fell on my back. Just as I was sorting out the shock, I became conscious of Eris’s face a few inches from mine; we were both on a sort of day-bed, she kissed me, then kissed me hard again; her weight was surprisingly heavy. Her green eyes looked at me as she said ‘Welcome to Sydney, Jono, and to your new mother’s.’ I didn’t know what to say just then either to please her, or to hide my fear of her. I liked her very much, I really did, but I didn’t like the touch of her body. Her green eyes grew nearer again, she was saying Treasure, you stick with me, and you’ll get everything you want.’ Just then a door closed. Eris stood up, said something and quickly moved into the living-room.

Behind the bed was a small window; I turned to look through it and met Barry’s eyes. They were blazing, not just with annoyance but with something else I couldn’t place. Eris made some tea, and some sort of gaiety returned. After a while, she said ‘Look, pet, why don’t you go out and look at the Cross, then meet us at the Arabian Coffee Lounge?’ It sounded fine. I Washed, put on a clean shirt and a nice tie, rechecked with Eris, and walked out into the streets.

The shops were exciting; even clothes I had seen before looked better here. Also, the milk bottles were a different shape from Melbourne’s. I felt so happy—here I was, the furthest I had ever been away from home, in a new country in fact. I walked for miles, letting nothing escape my eager eyes. Also, for the first time in my life, I noticed people looking at me, and in a nice way. I was so thrilled with myself and everything I saw, that when I came to a lavish flower shop, I went in and heard my first Sydney accent. I bought six beautiful but strange-looking flowers for Eris, and a small cactus in a pot for Barry, then headed back towards the Arabian Coffee Lounge.

As I walked along the streets carrying my presents, I thought ‘I’m someone, I’m going to meet my own friends at an artistic coffee shop in King’s Cross.’ I found the Arabian and went in. Inside, it was so dark I could barely see, I could only discern all sorts of people sitting at tables. I found a table and put myself and my flowers down. A little, elderly lady in a strange dress came up and said ‘Mocca, French or African?’ I gaped at her. She had a good look at me and said ‘Tea and sandwiches?’ I agreed with a gulp. She disappeared. By now I could see through the dim lighting and had a look round. The place seemed to be full of old ladies with moth-eaten furs and low hats, young men in tweeds with yellow ties, or young ladies with short hair-dos. The woman came back with my order and placed it before me; as she finished arranging it, she gave my arm a little pat. Suddenly, I felt an enormous surge of gratitude to her. She was old but she was part of Sydney and she had touched me. I started to drink my tea. The sandwiches were very nice, and so thin, that when I peeped inside one there was nothing in it to see, but it tasted nice, so I ate the lot.

I waited, growing a little nervous; then I realized I had been there an hour, so I ordered a second pot of tea. I was also worried about money. I had spent quite a bit on the trip up. As I sat worrying about how much I had, there was a new noise at the door and a big woman came in. She was large in every way, her clothes were an exotic misfire of bits and pieces, but her round face was pretty. It was as if someone had put a doll’s head on her big body. She had a beautiful smile and filled the air with warmth and love. As soon as she had entered, at least half the people in the café had leapt up, saying ‘Beryl, Beryl darling, Beryl love!’ and kissing and hugging her. She joined some people at a table, sitting on two stools put together. Immediately they all started laughing and talking, I longed to know her. As I was watching her, she looked up, and yelled ‘Where’s my bloody bushels? If it’s not here in two minutes, up you go, Florrie Johnson!’ I nearly fell off my chair. The old lady rushed in and said to Beryl ‘If you think that all I’ve got to do all day is to sit over a hot teapot waiting for you Ada, you’re mistaken! ’ She then kissed Beryl, who was now apologizing for the dreadful behaviour of an imaginary little dog. She scolded it, picked it up, kissed it, plunked it down on the floor, and told it to go back home.

I watched—everyone watched. We could almost see the little dog leaving, his tail between his legs, head and pleading eyes looking back at us. Just as he neared the door, Beryl said ‘Oh, I’m soft!’ to everyone in the café, then added ‘Shall I call the little stinker back?’ In a flash, we all said ‘Oh, yes please.’ In another, the little dog was back beside her at the table, and everyone started talking again. I had to look hard to reassure myself that there wasn’t a little dog there.

I looked at the time, I’d been there two hours—I was frightened, I paid for my tea and sandwiches. As I picked up my flowers, and turned to leave, I hesitated, then, blushing like mad, said to Big Beryl ‘I’m glad you didn’t send your little dog home, he’s nice.’ She looked up with a look of mock horror, saying ‘My dear, if you knew what your poor old mother’s been put through with that child today! ’ She looked down at the dog, ‘Look at you, just look at you. What? Don’t you dare answer me back! Take a look at that frock, the state it’s in!’ Then back to me, ‘You’d never think I’d spent good money having her christened. What’s your name?’ I told her. She said ‘How do you do Jon? Welcome to the Cross. I’m nearly always here for tea, and if I’m not, I live in that dump over there.’ She pointed across the road, ‘Pop in when you pass. You’re from Melbourne, aren’t you?’ I said ‘Yes.’ She said ‘I knew it by your voice, much more cultured than this Sydney slang.’ Thrilled with the attention I said good-bye, and left the café.

I got to the flats, took the lift up, rang Eris’s bell and waited. After a while I rang again. Finally she opened it. I said ‘Hello’ and held out my flowers. ‘Jesus! Oh—er—thanks, pet, er—you’d better come in.’ I followed her in, feeling rather frightened. Barry stood completely undressed with a large drink in his hand near the french windows, staring at me in that curious way he had. Eris had a housecoat on, and looked harassed. I stood in the middle of the room, first on one foot, then the other.

Finally, I said ‘I waited for you at that coffee place, it was very nice… .’ My voice trailed away.

Eris said ‘Er—oh yeah, pet—er—we—er—meant to make it.’ Then she said ‘Hungry?’

I said, no, I’d eaten. Had they?

No, they were not hungry. I was longing to ask them if we could go and see the lights and the harbour, when Eris said ‘Pour yourself a drink.’ and pointed to the kitchen. I went in, knowing as I closed the door behind me that I would hear something, and I did. Eris was saying something soft and urgent. There was a pause, I waited, glass in hand in the kitchen.

Then Barry said quite calmly, ‘No, it won’t work, I’ve told you all along, it can’t. He’s either all yours or all mine, we don’t share.’

I put the glass down, nearly crying, and stood in the kitchen, feeling like a small cheap bargain in a shop window. Somehow, I opened the door, walked out, and looked at them.

Eris moved a little, saying ‘Pet, I’m sorry, you can’t stay here after all, there’s been—er—ah—a mistake, it’s all my fault, but you sit down and I’ll ring some friends.’ She went into the bedroom. As she went, I looked past Barry to the balcony, where only a few hours before, Sydney had lain at my feet. I Just sat, staring at it; even this flat had already taken on the feeling of somewhere I belonged to.

Eris’s voice could be heard coming from the bedroom, ‘Don’t know about that, honey, but you’ll love him, he’s cute.’ I sat feeling a sordid little fool. If I had come over by myself, I would have been prepared for anything, but I had believed so much in all our plans. I could hear John’s voice way back in Melbourne, lecturing me.

Eris came out of the bedroom with a piece of paper in her hand, ‘Look, pet, this is the address, it’s only round the corner, near Elizabeth Bay. Go and see them. I know you’ll like Cliff. You can leave your big case here. I’ll ring you in a few days, or you ring me if you need anything. Okay?’

I took up her flowers, which she had put on my small suitcase, and gave them to her. She and Barry stood staring at me, I looked at them both, and tried to say something. I couldn’t, so I tried again. This time, a strange squeak came out from somewhere. I turned, walked out, and rang for the lift. When I reached the ground floor I went into the street, put my suitcase down, and sat on it. It sagged slightly, so I put more weight on my feet. I sat and tried to think of something nice, anything nice, food, flowers, even a song. Suddenly the face of a cat that I had once loved focused itself in front of my eyes, then I had a nice little bawl on my suitcase. I came to about three minutes later, and found myself being stared at by a few people. I stared back at them, and picked up my suitcase.

I finally found the house. It was a large Victorian house, sprawled across the side of a hill. All its windows were ablaze with light, and it seemed to have a lot of wrought iron around it. I hesitated outside the garden fence, then opened the iron gate which squeaked protestingly as I closed it. A face appeared at one of the many lighted windows as I walked up the long garden and knocked at the door. It was opened in a matter of seconds by a small fair young man. He looked me up and down and said ‘Hello,’ then yelling upstairs over his shoulder said ‘Cliff, there’s a pet to see you,’ adding ‘come in.’ I picked up my suitcase and followed him into what seemed to me a mad house. Voices were singing and yelling everywhere, music played from many radios, and everything that I could see seemed either to be broken, or incomplete. And either way, it was painted white.

I followed the young man up the stairs: they too were white, and broken. One lot of hall lights were whole and didn’t work, the other lot were broken and did. We passed them and walked into a big landing with many doors all around it and all of them open. We didn’t go through any of these, but through an archway that I hadn’t seen, and into a very big room in the middle of which stood a young man in a pair of underpants, a towel in one hand and a pot of flowers in the other. He put the flowers down on the table, saying ‘Hello, my name is Cliff.’ We shook hands, then he introduced me to the boy who had let me in. The boy’s name was Dennis.

‘Eris tells me that you have just come over from Melbourne,’ Cliff said.

‘Yes, I have just arrived with her.’

He asked me to sit down, saying ‘Would you like a glass of drain?’ I said I didn’t know what drain was.

Cliff looked at me. ‘My you are fresh on the market aren’t you?’ I must have looked a bit bewildered, because he then said ‘Don’t look hurt, drain means wine, or any sort of drink.’

I said yes I would have one.

He handed me a tiny glass of red wine. ‘Here’s good luck to you in Sydney.’ I took a mouthful of the wine. It burnt like hell, I gasped for breath. Cliff laughed. ‘It’s real fire water nelly.’ I looked again.

Dennis laughed, saying ‘Nelly’s another name for wine.’

‘Lord,’ I thought, ‘does anything go by its real name here?’ As I finished off the glass, Cliff poured another drink, and I had a good look at him and Dennis.

Cliff was tall with dark wavy hair and a slightly crooked mouth, but he had a nice smile and big grey eyes. Dennis was small, fair, and very clean looking.

Cliff said ‘We are going to a party, would you like to come with us?’

I surged with excitement. A party in Sydney, on my very first night. ‘Yes, I’d love to.’

I put my suitcase in the bedroom. I liked the flat and I liked Dennis and Cliff, so I started to feel a little happier.

Four ‘nellys’ later, we walked up to the Cross itself, Dennis and Cliff pointing out places of interest as we walked. Sydney had real glamour. Its lights, the towering flats, the houses and their beautiful gardens, the people everywhere had a swift and dramatic difference from anything I had ever known. Suddenly we turned into Macleay Street. It seemed as if everything revolved around Macleay Street. Just as we were passing Eris’s flat, Cliff said ‘All this is Potts Point.’ I felt grateful to him. We walked down the broad street with plane trees either side, and its strange mixture of tall streamlined flats, modern houses and its large Victorian houses set well back behind their heavy wrought iron fences and sad dark gardens.

Shortly we turned off it and into a small street, the street itself being practically hidden by the flats all round it. In this street the racket was deafening. Elmer’s Tune, loudly played and sung, bashed its way past the parked cars and hit us in the face. The noise was coming from a small rather pretty house, set at an angle at the end of the street. Dennis said ‘Ever been to a camp party?’ I thought swiftly. I had never been camping, let alone to a party like that, but that didn’t seem to add up, so I said ‘No, what do you mean?’ With that they both put their arms around me, saying ‘You’ll find out.’

Cliff rang the door bell. When it opened a girl in blue and pink stood there.

‘Darlings,’ she shouted above our heads and into the night, ‘Come, oh do, do, do come in, dears.’

Both Dennis and Cliff cried ‘Lana, love.’ They kissed her and then said ‘Jon, meet Lana.’

Lana hesitated a second, then with a lunge forward, grabbed me. My stunned eyes saw eyelashes three inches long, make-up by the ton, jewels and a huge head of blonde hair. After a minute Lana put me down. ‘Well dears, where did you get that?’ said Lana pointing at me.

Cliff said ‘ntbh’.               [ed: ‘not to be had’ ]

Lana rolled her eyes. ‘Not if I have my way dears! Come on, Her Majesty is waiting. It’s royal night you know.’

By this time we were in a room with kegs of beer, wine bottles and an archway, through which I thought I saw Queen Victoria. She was sitting unmoving on a dais above an incredible mixture of people who were dancing and doing ‘swing’ in the huge room.

As we moved forward, Cliff muttered ‘Bow and don’t laugh.’ We forced our way through the dancers and up to the throne. Cliff went first. ‘Good evening Your Majesty.’ Her Majesty’s eyes moved just slightly. Dennis followed saying the same, then they both said ‘May we present Jon.’ As they did a large arm shot out, the arm ended in a big heavily jewelled hand. I realized that I was supposed to kiss it, as I had seen people do on the films. As my lips and my eyes neared the big rings, I got the shock of my life, and only a slight pressure from Cliff stopped me either from fainting, laughing or vomiting. The orb held in the left hand was a cabbage with a jewelled cross stuck in the top. The rubies and other jewels around the neck were made of radishes and small onions. The sceptre kept in the crook of the outstretched arm was a long tropical fruit called ‘donkey’s doodle’. But what really stunned me was the ‘hair’ and the ‘crown’. The ‘wig’ was made out of dozens of plaited, uncooked, tiny sausages, the crown was a pie of some kind, decorated with everything from radishes and spring onions to ‘real’ false jewels. I stepped down. The old man’s face underneath the crown just looked at me, the eyes watching me with detached intent. By now I had taken Cliff’s arm for support and not knowing what to feel or do, found myself in the middle of the dancing crowd, dancing with a man. I would have been grateful to have had a tiger to dance with just then.

The night wore on with an ever increasing tempo. Elmer’s Tune had long since given way to In the Mood and Tuxedo Junction. Cliff patiently answered a thousand questions.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Oh, she’s an up and coming actress,’ ‘He’s the best window dresser in Sydney,’ ‘She’s a lesbian painter,’ ‘He’s a sailor, “square” and “bi”.’

My mind spun, then out of sheer necessity widened, along with my eyes, at the life all around me. We were sitting talking with a pretty girl called Milly, who it appeared was ‘on’ with another girl, but the way Milly looked at me didn’t quite match Cliff’s information. We sat laughing and talking until suddenly Milly said ‘It’s one o’clock.’ By then anything up to a hundred people were swaying and dancing, crying, making love in dark corners, or just plain saying ‘Come to bed with me.’ I didn’t care who said or did what, I loved the gilded lot. Victoria had vanished from her throne at midnight.

I was dancing with Milly when Cliff came up and said ‘Arnold wants to meet you.’ We left the floor and walked across to a fat man with bright eyes and a pink face. He said ‘Welcome to Sydney,’ then held out his hand to take mine. As I shook his hand, I knew the eyes I spoke to, and the hand I shook, were Victoria’s. It was his house. He then clapped his hands and shouted above the din, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the buffet is now open.’ Instantly, a collection of ladies, girls, real and false, together with equally mixed gentleman-type ladies, and lady-type gentlemen, hit the archway, and went into the other room, which now had mountains of candle-lit food in it. Milly, Cliff and I followed in. The food was being served by Lana, and two other girls like her. As we approached Lana gave me a big wink, saying ‘And what can I do you for baby?’ I looked at her and her fellow workers with new eyes, smiled and said ‘Food please.’ Everyone was eating away, when suddenly voices cried ‘Zoe!’ Cliff said ‘Oh, lord.’ I looked around; there, standing in the archway was an enormous negress. Satin shone on her, feathers of many hues swayed or stood on and around her head. Silver fox furs dripped from her glittering arms, her shoe heels sparkled with stones. She uttered a low ‘Hello, dears.’ Arnold, looking pinker, had moved forward, ‘Zoe darling,’ he rasped. She inclined a cheek towards him, and murmured something.

Cliff, Milly and I moved our plates of food past Zoe and Arnold, who were engaged in some sort of taut talk. We went into the dance room which was still swaying beneath the weight of the dancers. Milly said ‘Well at last the mountain has come to Mahomet.’ I asked her what she meant. Then she explained that Zoe, having escaped the Japanese at Singapore had arrived in Sydney with nothing but what she wore, and a brown paper parcel. When the parcel was opened, it was found to contain only some paste diamonds, a few dress designs, a feathered head-dress and a list of names and addresses. These, she had kept despite Japanese dive bombers, seas covered in burning oil, and days of exposure in a life boat. Arriving in Sydney, she had gone down her list of names and addresses, amongst which was Arnold’s, contacted him and met him. For some reason he had misunderstood this bedraggled exotic creature and they had had a row which developed into a feud. Then by a series of ironic twists Zoe, as the result of her feud with Arnold, had found herself the owner of a night-club-cum-discreet-brothel. Hearing all this I longed to meet Zoe on the spot. We finished our meal, then Milly said ‘I livee in a shack, will you come back for some plonk?’ Cliff said ‘It’s very late but I’d like Jon to see it.’ We looked for Dennis, but he had disappeared so we went without him.

Milly did indeed live in a shack, but it was a very nice shack at the bottom of a lovely garden. The house above it belonged to her family. They had allowed her to live her own life for years, and had given her the garden shack to live it in; I loved it. It was simply and prettily furnished. She had a radiogram, a lot of records and a large cat as well. She also had the most beautiful view I had ever seen. It drew me to her windows. Outside, only a few feet away, the harbour lapped gently at the garden wall, its lights twinkling around the curved distance. Below the window and gently moving in the moonlight, were the soft shapes of small boats and yachts. They looked almost as if they were sleeping as they floated on their watery bed under the stars. I stood watching, the smells of the sea mingled at the window, with those of the garden. Then I said ‘I’d love to have a swim.’ Cliff looked up and said ‘Swim? you wouldn’t last five minutes.’ ‘Why?’ I asked. He said. ‘The sharks, that water out there is full of them.’

I looked back at the water, filled with disappointment. Silly of me to forget, the one thing or word any Australian dreads—‘sharks’. The gentle water now looked too smooth and dark, sinister, in fact. Milly broke into my thoughts by saying ‘Have you heard the new swoon crooner, Frank Sinatra? I love him.’ I said ‘Yes I have, I think he’s very good.’ She put a record on, Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra played. Then the soft, almost passive voice of Sinatra sang Fable of a Rose. We had coffee and some more records, until four o’clock, during which time I’d learnt that Milly wanted to be an actress, but she was at present painting in an advertising agency’s studio. Cliff was a window dresser at a big department store, Dennis made wreaths.

At last Cliff and I left. He suggested that we walk around the harbour. He took me along the complicated little roads which ran around the water’s edge, and were overlooked by the flats and houses with their gardens full of hibiscus and other semi-tropical flowers in bloom. The warm night air of Sydney seemed to blend with this city perfectly, and wrap it in a flower-scented cloak, which counterbalanced the sharp stabbing silhouettes of its buildings. We arrived back at Cliff’s house, both terribly tired, but quite good friends. Dennis wasn’t home. Cliff then made me a bed on a sofa which was outside on the balcony. I thanked him for the night and all his kindness, and fell into bed.

When I woke up, the sun was pouring all over the bed and me; I couldn’t think where I was. Slowly the memory of Eris and Barry came back, followed by that of the party. I got out of bed and went into the big room. There was no one around. Just as I was wondering what to do, I saw a note propped up. It was from Cliff. He had gone to work very late, but would be back at six. Meanwhile I was to make myself some coffee, and at home. I sat down with the coffee, thinking ‘Here I am, on my very first day in Sydney, the first day of a brand new life.’ This thought rather frightened me and made me feel very lonely. After I had washed, I thought, ‘Well anyway, there’s not much I can do today except maybe ring Eris. I’ll wait till Cliff comes home, as he knows everything.’

Late in the afternoon I went out, and finding myself at the Cross, popped into the Arabian and had a short coffee, but big Beryl didn’t come in. I went back to Cliff’s flat but only as I walked up through the garden did I realize I bad locked myself out. I decided to go for another longer walk. The more I walked the more fascinated I became by the variety of the architecture that was Sydney. It was either tall and streamlined, pseudo-Spanish with tiled roofs, Tudor style, or heavy Victorian. After a while I found myself in Woolloomooloo. This area, a stone’s throw from any of the smart flats up in Macleay Street, was quite different. It was old, sad and dirty, with big ships pulled right up almost to the road, behind tall iron fences. There were long terraces of houses that looked as if they were in a British film. I walked up the hill past the houses, some were decaying or filthy, quite a lot of them looked slightly sinister, but they could have looked lovely. I stood mentally painting them and thought ‘Yes, you could be quite beautiful, (with that wrought iron, those balconies and ornaments freshly painted.’ Suddenly I found myself back at the Cross, so walked on down to Cliff’s. As I reached the house, he waved to me from a window. I was glad he was home. After we talked about the day he made a meal, which Dennis arrived home just in time to eat with us.

Later in the evening Dennis suggested we go out for coffee. Actually the coffee never quite happened because so many other things did. We called in on friends of Cliff’s and Dennis’s, every one of whom had something about them that I admired, either their faces or their voices. Or maybe, just their flats. Later on in the evening we wound up in a flat on the top floor of a building near Eris’s. It was a large flat full of rare china, period furniture and a very haughty Persian Lady cat. She, along with the possessions, seemed to own the owner of the flat, a florid man called Mervyn who wore cream silk shirts and check suits, with a nervous niceness. I loathed him and the perfume that surrounded him, on sight, and sat feeling annoyed all the time. I wanted to ask Cliff so much, where to live, what sort of jobs there were. I was frightened by the future and wanted to confront it as soon as possible.

To make matters worse Mervyn kept on popping in and out of the room in which we sat, or alternatively going to pour out a drink and hurriedly putting down one bottle he had taken from the many on a large table, then pouring from another. Eventually he excused himself for five minutes, and left the room. I looked testily at Cliff and Dennis as Mervyn left. Dennis said ‘I’m sorry to bring you here when Mervyn’s working.’ ‘What do you mean by working?’ I asked. Cliff said ‘He’s got the girls in.’ I looked at them not knowing what they meant. Dennis said ‘Of course he doesn’t know what we mean, let’s show him.’

They took me out of the room and walked me down a passage. Half way down Cliff whispered, ‘It’s a sly grog.’ I still didn’t understand. By this time we had reached a small bedroom and went into it. As I automatically went to look for a light switch, Dennis grabbed my hand and softly said ‘Don’t touch anything.’ From the light coming in the doorway I could see a wardrobe in front of us. Cliff walked up to it and opened the door, and a square of light lit the room. He said ‘Look.’ I went into the wardrobe and up to the square. Through it my amazed eyes saw a large smoke-filled room. Sitting at tables were American soldiers and girls. A sailor and a girl sat on a seat right near the square, and he was showing her a photograph. On another settee a girl was kissing a little soldier and winking at another soldier behind them. Mervyn was in the centre pouring out drinks, smiling, and talking to two sailors in white uniforms. I looked away from the square, excited and saddened by what I had seen. Dennis said ‘Mervyn makes a fortune. Whips any hooch in under another label. The girls are grateful for it, and it puts their prices up.’

We went back up the passage and into the first room. Its China, pictures, and furniture were almost like fresh air after the other room. Cliff said ‘Everyone knows but they don’t say anything, and if they did Lily would ask for more money.’ I gave him another non-understanding look. He sighed. ‘All right, lily Law, the Police.’ I almost admired Mervyn for playing such a dangerous game, and just then he came back in. The boys told him that they had shown me his secret. Mervyn sat and clasped his hands across his chest, looked at me and said ‘It’s murder, but I used to let two of the girls who are on the game use the other flat. Now it’s nearly a night-club. Still, it pays well—it’s got to. With a pair of senile parents to keep, and two young sons to educate, I wouldn’t care if black mass were going on in there, so long as it payed. On the other hand it’s pretty heartbreaking to watch other people always getting off.’

We had a last drink, then the three of us walked home. By now we were too tired to talk properly but we agreed that I ought to stay for a few more days. Cliff gave me a few more tips about Sydney and the Cross, and I arranged to meet him for lunch the next day, after I had looked for a job.

I found a job washing dishes in the hot grubby kitchen of a café that rejoiced in the name of ‘Super Speed Snacks’. Judging by the amount of leftover food that came back on each plate, the only speed I could see was that of the customers paying up and getting out. For this I got four pounds a week plus extras. The extras, as the Greek owner later explained, consisted of keeping up a supply of coffee for the poker school which ran day and night in a room at the back. The Greek owner was a little wary of telling me this at first, but I didn’t care what anyone did as dong as I had something to do which was different, and taught me more about people and life.

In time I got used to the smoky room, full of rather frightening faces, and its atmosphere of controlled menace. I learnt to pop around with the coffees, and never by so much as a flicker of an eyelash to show what cards I had seen clutched in the big hands. I knew by instinct that if I did, someone would try to start some sort of telepathic code with me, and then I’d be in trouble. And being the minor I was, the mere thought of any kind of trouble filled me with sickening shakes and fears. Besides, for my money, I’d had more than my share of asked and unasked for trouble.

I worked so hard at the ‘Super Speed Snacks’ that all I could do after my eight hours there was to go back to my sofa-bed each night and die. I saw no one, and went nowhere, at least not physically. But mentally each day as I scraped more muck off the plates, I thought ‘I’m going to be a famous singer and have a flat high up on Potts Point with a cat and monkey. I’ll give big parties, and have an affair with someone very glamorous.’ But in reality, I coped with two filthy old men who cooked and a wretched woman cook who threw fits. Along with these went a mess of waitresses who looked like the dregs from the bottom of the same barrel that had already poured out Betty Grable, Veronica Lake and Dorothy Lamour. My favourite waitress was one called Alice, who was a mutation of the whole lot much to her private and public inconvenience, till the day Down Argentine Way opened. Alice promptly dyed her hair black, and from that moment on, served food, walked and talked in an over-bright Carmen Miranda fashion—she’d found herself.

The Greek owner went mad at times, but I rather liked him. He was one of those people who were born liars, but even as he looked me in the face, midway between his fibs his eyes said ‘If you’re believing this, that’s your bad luck.’ I didn’t, so knowing that, he told me more and more strange stories. There we’d sit as he gabbed on, me watching all those gold fillings filtering out the current fancies, and also getting out of some work at the same time.

I left the café early one evening and decided I’d walk home a different way. Suddenly I found myself in a street which seemed to have nothing in it but garbage cans from the cafés in front, and sinister looking men sitting in black American cars taking bets. As I started to hurry a little, a man’s voice said ‘Hey kid, want to earn a few quid?’ I looked at him and his car: they both frightened me, so I quickened my pace. Then to my horror I realized that the car was following, it passed me then halted ahead. The car’s radio was on, and I could see the man in it looking back; he might have been handsome once, and wore very loud clothes. As he looked at me, I found myself mentally checking to see if I had all my clothes on. He leant out of the car saying ‘Come on, don’t be snooty, I only want to talk to you.’ He started smiling at me. An unfamiliar panic overwhelmed me. I could almost feel that palm tree shirt, and the black car’s radio pulling me in. ’Come on kiddo, come here.’ I started saying ‘No I’m going—’ Immediately he said ‘Where? get in and I’ll drive you, come on, I could be good to a kid like you—’ I was trembling so much that I could see the turn-ups of my pants moving, but in having seen them I had my eyes away from his, so felt free. I turned to look at a notice in a window. It said ‘Room to let. Aussies only.’ I didn’t like the look of the window very much but I banged the door knocker hard. The man in the car said ‘Okay kiddo, but I’ll see you again, and don’t forget, I saw you first.’

As I banged again, he drove off, and a voice yelled ‘Stop that bloody racket, the door’s open.’ I pushed it and stepped into a rather drab hallway. A radio blared behind an open door. The voice said ‘Who do you want?’ I said ‘I don’t know, I’ve come about the room.’ ‘In here,’ the voice continued. I walked in. The room was so full of things that I couldn’t see it. To the left of a brass, doll strewn bed, and in between a palm tree and a table full of bottles, sat a plump blonde woman in a housecoat, nursing a little black dog. I said ‘Good evening, I’ve just seen your notice in the window.’ The woman ran a pair of large brown eyes over me for half a minute before she said ‘How long have you been out of the nest?’ I knew what she meant, but during the last few days I’d begun to resent this constant reference to my youth. It seemed to deny me the feeling of ‘being’. Even at the café in a small argument with any of the misfits I worked with, any one of them had only to turn around and say ‘How do you know? You’re too young to know,’ and whether I was right or wrong, that was it. I was just getting ready to say a lie when the woman said ‘You on the game?’ I stood stupidly looking at her then she said more softly ‘Are you one of the boys?’ I just kept gaping. She continued ‘The room’s fifteen bob a week, two weeks in advance, and you provide your own linen. You can drag back, but no sailors or negroes. Come on, I’ll show you the room.’

She got up put the dog down, then we went down the passage and out of the back of the house. The room stood outside by itself. It was small, rather ugly, and to me, smelt of failure. But it had a large window and a little kitchenette. I looked around, there must have been forty cigarette burns in sight, the bed looked downright hostile, and the rest of the furniture looked very unhappy, but I found myself saying ‘Yes, I’ll take it.’ The woman said ‘Okey-doke.’

We walked back into the house, then as if it was an afterthought she added ‘There’s a bathroom and two lavatories.’ We went back into her room and I paid her the money. She wrote on a ticket-like piece of paper ‘I have received—’ Whatever it was she had received, along with her signature, was unreadable. She said ‘When will you move in?’ I said I thought tomorrow, but I didn’t know for sure. Then I asked for a front door key, she laughed and said ‘Listen Baby, in Bella’s house we don’t have keys.’ ‘How will I get in?’ I asked. She said ‘Oh simple, the lock works, but it’s filed. Anything, a threepenny piece or a nail file will do. I’m Mrs Newbolt, call me Bella.’ I left the house glad to see the man in the car wasn’t there.

As I reached the end of the street I became terribly depressed, the room and the house were in the ugliest part of the Cross. There didn’t seem to be any air, just smells, and there wasn’t a single nice thing to look at. As I turned into the Cross proper I cheered up, after all it was only a few minutes from the centre, and it was a room of my own, my very own room in Sydney. Back home, I told the boys about it. They were pleased I’d found somewhere so near the Cross and said they’d keep an eye out for a better room in a nicer part. I had saved a few pounds so I said that I wanted to take them out for a farewell dinner, they liked the idea, and I left the choice of restaurant to Cliff. I was glad to be taking them out and excited to be going somewhere nice because I’d hardly been anywhere since I’d been in Sydney.

We set out, the Cross sparkled. People were sitting outside their doors, in open-air cafés, and at their windows. The shops blazed with lights and the air vibrated with all the things that for me, life should vibrate with. As we walked along we suddenly noticed groups of Americans everywhere. Sailors were always around, but these were soldiers and they seemed to be liking the Cross. It also seemed to be liking them. We went to the restaurant, it was pleasant looking and full of animated people. As we sat at our table Cliff and Dennis pointed out various famous radio stars, who up to then for me had just been familiar voices. I was thrilled, then came the ordering. I’d never had Italian food before, so once again I relied on Cliff. I also relied on him to order the wine.

When it arrived we drank a little toast, I started to try to thank these two boys who had taken me, unannounced and uninvited into their flat and their lives, and who had been so wonderful to me. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t fit the words together, so I just sat blushing, feeling stupid, and nearly spilling my wine. Also I was sad at the thought of leaving them, and the now familiar flat. They sat staring expectantly back at me, all three of us locked in some sort of trance. Suddenly a melodic slow voice said ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Jon Rose?’ I nearly dropped my glass. Thoughts of ‘them’ churned in my frightened stomach. Who knew me here? I looked up, a man of about forty stood smiling down at me. He had well shaped thin wavy hair, big eyes, an impeccable dark suit, a very white shirt and a grey and white check tie. Not one of ‘them’ again, I thought. I looked at him saying ‘Yes, that’s my name.’ He smiled and said ‘I met you in Melbourne with—’ My mind stampeded, was it one of ‘them’? He said ‘I met you at Jean and John’s.’ Oh the relief. Waves of it swept through me, he’d met me with my own friends, in my chosen new life. I stood up, he said ‘My name’s Bill Vero Reed, you’ve forgotten, but we had dinner together when you were staying with Jean and. John only some months ago.’ Memory relieved my mind, as I introduced him to Cliff and Dennis and asked him if he could join us. He couldn’t, he was there with friends. I looked to where he nodded, he was with Beryl. I was thrilled to know there was somebody I knew here, and that it should be she, so I waved. Bill arranged to meet us later and left the table. I sat down pleased that I knew someone nice who knew me, in King’s Cross.

The meal sped pleasantly by in a warm haze of wine. What the food was like I didn’t know, all I did know was that I had a room of my own in King’s Cross, a little money, and that I knew three people in Sydney. As people came and went, many of them seemed to know Cliff, Later on a curiously attractive girl came in and said hullo to Cliff. I said ‘Who is she?’ He said ‘Kitty Bluett.’ Just as I was getting over that bit of excitement, a thin young man with a high-cheekboned face and the most beautiful, slightly haunted eyes I had ever seen in a man came in. There was something familiar about him, he turned, said ‘Good evening’ to Cliff, then went over to join Bill Vero Reed and Beryl. I watched him as he walked across the floor. Dennis whispered to me ‘That’s Peter Finch, he’s brilliant.’ Of course, I’d seen his face a thousand times in photographs. We stayed on for another hour and then decided to go. Cliff said we were to meet Bill at Arthur’s. I didn’t know who Arthur was, but once again left it to Cliff. Then proudly paid the bill.

As soon as we were out in the street, I began to feel rather drunk, and Dennis said ‘Let’s go round the Bay.’ We walked down the hill towards Rushcutters Bay. Lights high up in the flats sent shafts of light into the night, windows in houses sparkled with lights and the noise of people. And just every so often a soft tree branch would muffle the most wonderful sounds, and flicker the lights gleaming through it from some party happy house. We started running, laughing and talking at the same time, my heart bursting with joy at being here in this electric city. We ran giggling across the park, and down to the water’s edge, where we started to chase one another. Dennis jumped on to a yacht deck, I followed, we hopped from boat to boat, bouncing tipping and swaying them as we went. In the middle of this I caught Dennis by his waist. At that second Cliff caught me, then we all fell in a heap on the deck of a ship, yelling, gasping and kicking up a dreadful noise. Suddenly Dennis said ‘Look Jon.’ I looked up. Above, the buildings glittered with their myriads of lights, their shapes silhouetted against the blue night sky. I lay on the swaying little ship looking up at their beauty, then Dennis tugged at my arm and said ‘Look, no, not up, down there.’ I looked at the water a few feet below, just as the big triangular fin stirred the phosphorus. My head prickled, I shivered in horror, and was sick all over where the shark had been, and went on being sick till I was exhausted.

Afterwards, I could barely crawl an inch at a time off the ship, and on to the park’s concrete edge. We found a drinking tap where I washed and started to feel a little better, but I still shook too much to move with comfort. Dennis was upset and kept on trying to soothe me. Five minutes later the whole panic left me as quickly as it had come, so we went back up to the Cross and had some black coffee at the California Coffee House. After half an hour of its streamlined chrome and black fittings, and the boogie-woogie pianist, we left and started for Arthur’s. On the way Cliff explained to me that it was a sly grog joint, in other words a cheerful speakeasy.

Arthur’s, when we arrived, was ablaze with light, a juke-box blared out the Andrews Sisters to about twenty people eating. We went in, as soon as we did Cliff said ‘Good evening Arthur,’ to a large dark man who didn’t reply but looked at me, saying ‘He all right?’ after which Cliff introduced me. Then the man said ‘Do you want to use the lavatory?’ I was just about to say ‘No’ when Cliff said ‘Yes’ and started pushing me towards a doorway. Dennis went ahead and put the light on in the washroom. Once in the room, Cliff closed the door and pulled the lavatory chain. During its noise he opened another door through which we stepped into a tiny hallway. Cliff flicked the light switch twice, and opened a door in front of us. Once outside, we stepped into a high-walled courtyard full of people sitting at tables. A little man said ‘Welcome to Palm Court’ as he led us to a table which we picked up, and put next to Bill’s. I looked and was disappointed to see that Bill was with a blonde woman, and not big Beryl. We settled ourselves down. As soon as we had the little man danced back to us and placed three dreadful looking plates of poached eggs and chips in front of us. They were cold and covered in dust, then he put a box under the table, someone said ‘Whisky, beer or gin?’ I looked around at Palm Court. Its walls ran up some five storeys high and were painted white and pink to the height of twenty feet. I tipped my head back and looked up, all I could see were the stars winking in a square of hot Sydney night way above, it was completely enclosed. To my left, standing in a pot was a tired old palm tree, its trunk disappearing into a mound of cigarette butts; I felt sorry for that palm tree.

The atmosphere was different from anything I had ever known. Here were roughly thirty people laughing and talking at the tops of their voices, and smoking and drinking with a sort of defiant gaiety. I loved it. Bill was with a girl called Velda, a Tivoli showgirl, who was very pretty and had a typical long legged, Sydney girl’s figure. She endeared herself to me for all time by calling the little man over and saying to him, ‘Look Clancy, I know we’ve got to have these bloody awful eggs in front of us in case Lily finally lumbers the joint. But couldn’t you just go mad for once, and cover them up with something? I’ve looked at this pair for the last three nights and they’re beginning to stare back at me.’ Clancy produced a bottle of tomato sauce, then with an air of great daring, covered the two eggs with the sauce. Just as he was doing this Arthur came out and said ‘Ladies and gentlemen, to make sure your cups are full to overflowing I have got a surprise.’ He then beckoned two gipsy characters into the courtyard.

The male gipsy had long sideboards and lots of tangerine satin on. The lady gipsy blazed with peacock blue and green. They stood shuffling for half a second, smiled, then the man gipsy started to play a high pitched quavery rendering of Love’s last word is spoken, chérie. Everyone in the courtyard sat stunned, waiting for the comedy. It never came. As soon as he had finished playing, the fat lady gipsy said ‘And now I vould like to zing you Tales from ze Vienna Voods.’ The man started playing away. She took a breath so big that the acres of satin around her stretched to breaking point, then she let out a full, high and hideous note. Instantly four people got up, tables scraped on the concrete, people talked and someone broke a glass. A big man in a pair of blue pants and a red shirt squeezed his way through the upheaval, went up to the door behind the gipsies and started pressing a bell. As he pressed, he had a close look at the violin, and an even closer look at the woman’s mouth as she screamed her remembered joys in waltz time into the night. Still ringing the bell, he had another look at the woman, then suddenly put his hand over her mouth. The male gipsy stopped playing and stood, bow in air, gaping. The silence was so wonderful that everyone clapped. The woman reeled back gasping and trying with her eyes to gather sympathetic support from people. Then the door opened, and the gipsies whipped out a little box, and went around trying to collect. They got to us first. Velda picked up one of her eggs and put it in. Nothing daunted she went on still trying to blackmail her way around. In the middle of this the man who had stopped the unnerving performance could be heard saying to Arthur, ‘Well Jesus Arthur, I don’t doubt that you thought they were grouse, but did you ever cop them? They are not just jax, they are drak-jax.’ He was still protesting as the gipsies fled past him, and the buzz of living began again.

Shortly afterwards Arthur came out, stood looking a little embarrassed and said ‘Well yer lousy bastards, just as well I love you all, or else I’d have thrown them at you.’ He stood amidst the laughter that followed, looking quite genuinely sad. The night wore on: it was warm and so were the people. We sat sipping our dishonest drinks under the square of star pricked blue above, until Cliff, Dennis and I left.

We walked home talking in gaps. Once inside the flat everything seemed to get out of focus; Cliff said ‘I’ll make some tea and toast,’ then four minutes later Dennis said he would make some tea and toast, and didn’t. We played records, or sat fidgeting as we talked about stupid things, in the middle of which Cliff would suddenly say ‘Isn’t that brush yours?’ It was. We then had a look around and found little bits of me spread all over the place like some fungus. Finally we had our tea and toast. It was very late, too late in fact to be up, but still we sat and talked. I went to go to make up my sofa bed, but couldn’t find the sheets. Dennis thought he had seen them somewhere, Cliff also had a look in vain. We started undressing in their bedroom. I sat on a chair talking while Cliff and Dennis pushed the two single beds together, took the sheets off and made up one big bed. Then I went out and looked at the view from my balcony. Cliff’s pots of flowers that he loved so much were just gently stirring in the early morning breeze. Watching them I became more and more sad at leaving this flat. I liked it and it liked me, but I had to go and stretch my own wings. I went back into the bedroom. Dennis was sitting in a little heap on the pillow, Cliff stood looking at an invisible spot in his underpants. I gave them a halfhearted smile, looked at the light switch, and said ‘Can I sleep on the outside?’

I moved the next day in my lunch hour, during which I rang Eris for my other suitcase. ‘Heart, where have you been, we have both been worried about you, are you all right?’ I said I was and that I had been staying with the boys. She then explained that she was just on her way out, but she would leave my case downstairs in the hall. This suited me, for though I was glad to hear her voice in some ways, I was terribly hurt by the sound. I went round, collected the case, bought some sheets and soap, left them in the room and went back to work, spending the rest of the afternoon longing to finish and get back home and unpack.

I arrived home that evening very excited. The house was full of light. As I opened the front door, Bella called out to me to come in. I went into her room. She was dressed up to the nines in pink and bows. Her dog also had a bow on. She said ‘Like a drink?’ I accepted a beer and as I did she said ‘Sit down. Tell me, are you a happy cat?’

I said yes I thought I was, and that I would be an even happier one here. This pleased her.

She continued, ‘Look kiddo, don’t let anyone bash you about. If they try to, you come to Bella. You haven’t been away from home long, have you?’

I looked at her and said ‘No.’

She said ‘Well you do what you want to, but keep your nose clean. If you are in doubt, ask me, O.K.?’ I was glad, for though I hoped I would never have to, I knew I could and that she meant what she said. Her room was bright with lights, the radio was playing and it looked as though she was expecting people. As she poured another beer for me and a gin for herself, I could sense that she wanted to talk, then suddenly she said ‘Jon’ in such a curious way that I looked harder at her.

‘How much do you know?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well I’ll be honest with you love, this is a tough berg, real bloody tough, I know, because I’ve been on it for years. I let you have that room because you are fresh and I like you. I could have let one of the girls have it, but I decided to give it to you instead. I’ve got three girls on the game upstairs,’ she looked at the ceiling, ‘they’re good kids, you’ll like them. Do you know what the game is?’ I nodded almost proudly. I’d learnt that days ago. She continued, ‘I’m on the game too. Have been all my life. Don’t look too bad, do I?’ She really didn’t now that she was all dressed up. She sighed.

‘When I think of the mugs I’ve known! ’ I asked her what she meant by mugs.

‘The customer love,’ she replied, ‘there are some due any minute.’

I sat feeling very odd. I had never been near anything like this.

‘Oh, they’re nice mugs, quality trade, regulars,’ she said. ‘I have had them for years. That’s the way to do it. Have a nice place and you get nice trade and keep the bludgers out.’

Glad about this as I was, I was itching to get into my room, clean it, unpack, then go out into whatever was left of the night.

‘Have one more booze before you go,’ she said, and handed it to me before adding, ‘Know something? I’ve got a son. You wouldn’t think that would you?’ I nodded in agreement. ‘He’s at a good school too. I’ve got a nice little house miles away from here.’ Bella looked at me and seemed a little embarrassed at having blurted it out.

‘Have you got a picture?’ I asked.

She went to a drawer and took out a book full of pictures. Her son was now fourteen and quite good-looking, in a slightly haunted way.

‘I’ve given him the best of everything’, she said, ‘he thinks I’m his Auntie Bella, but one day when I’m off the game and he’s older, I’ll tell him.’ She stood staring at the picture. ‘He’ll marry a decent girl and have a real wedding with lots of flowers and a nice party afterwards.’ She put the picture down saying, ‘Why the bloody hell am I telling you all this? Perhaps it’s because of him. Oh well, you had better go now, the trade will be here soon.’

I thanked her for the drinks and started to walk down the passage.

When I was half way down she called out, ‘Don’t think I’m dishing out drain every night, this was only a treat. Your room’s been cleaned out for you, and if the gas box doesn’t work properly, give it a good old bash. Oh, and don’t bloody fiddle it.’

I walked down the passage and Bella came out the door and said ‘I forgot, do you like artistic things?’ I nodded. ‘Well I’ve given you some of my pretties, look after them won’t you?’ I stepped out into the small yard, and started towards my room.

Once outside the air was full of radios, voices, and the screech of the trams as they finished their long pull up William Street, and turned the slow S turn into and through the Cross itself. A woman’s voice made me look up at a back window. Her shadow was saying something to the shadow of a man, the game was being played. I opened the door of my room and went in. The room smelt cleaner and was in patches. I could tell that from the edge the clean bits made near the grubby parts still untouched. Then I saw Bella’s artistic gifts, two hideous purple and gold vases, both covered with improbable flowers, standing one each end of the chest of drawers. Bang in the middle of them stood a statue of a pompadoured lady in a crinoline, a fan in her hand coyly raised in front of her face. She had been painted over with blue and pink paint, and as I looked closer at the stupid face, I could see that she had been broken at least eight times. I stared at the gifts for a few minutes, opened the bottom drawer of the chest, put them all in it, closed it, and went out into the Cross.

Life with Bella went on in a series of nerve-straining fits and starts. I began every morning by taking the two vases and the lady, whom I had now christened Myrtle, out of the chest and putting them back up on top. Some nights I would come and say ‘Hello Bella,’ only to be told to ‘go back to the bloody bush’. Other nights I would find food and drink that cost more than a fortnight’s rent arrayed in my room, or, agony of agonies, more treasures.

As the weeks went by I slowly started to meet her regulars. Some nights as I arrived home, I would be hauled into her room, which would be full of bottles, presents, and laughter. Some of her regulars were charming men, and we would sit drinking and talking, while Bella, in powder blue, pink or mauve, would glow and guide the whole evening. Her dog would do its tricks. Three or four gentlemen and some of the girls from upstairs would often be in. The men would show off like big schoolboys, anxious, but so pleased with themselves. Yet even on a good regular night I’d see Alma or Judy from upstairs stuffing the pound notes into their shoes. Sometimes Bella, while pouring drinks out, would without interrupting the stream of talk and jokes, slip something into my pocket. Later on I would make an excuse to leave the room and go out to my own room and count it. It was seldom under twenty pounds and often fifty. I’d give it back to her in the morning or leave it behind the gas meter for her.

Those were the good, laugh filled nights. Other nights there would be no laughter. Her door would be shut and all I could hear above the bath taps running would be a hostile male voice. Those were the nights I would lock my door, get right under the sheets, and pretend I was on a ship going to somewhere beautiful. In the morning Bella and her dog would be in bed, both of them tired out and testy. I’d cut up a cold melon for Bella and give it to her with a glass of orange juice. She’d lie there looking at the ceiling and say ‘You stupid bastard Jono, you’re soft,’ after a while I found myself saying to her ‘Eat up, shut up and be glad you’ve got it.’

Slowly but surely I learnt all about ‘the Cross’ as everyone called it. I now knew that the reason some of the old men sat reminiscing outside doorways wasn’t always just the heat. As they chattered away, their eyes were checking the never ending stream of cars and people, both for the police and for the comfort of their clients playing cards or other games upstairs. I learnt how to see all and say very little. I learnt which shop was ‘the’ shop, which café was ‘the’ café. Darlinghurst Road had many of these places, and many moods. If one really wanted to walk to the trams, say, from Macleay Street, one walked down the right hand side, and that was still pretty interesting. But the left hand side going down to the trams held three times as much mystery per step. People of all sizes, ages, and nationalities shopped, led dogs, went to coffee, talked and met one another or tried to meet one another. The street would have many taxis cruising up and down it, often with a very smartly made up young lady in the front seat, she was known as a ‘jockey’, her trade and availability was instantly obvious the moment an American got into the cab. Certain people went to certain shops and coffee houses, never anywhere else, except maybe on two occasions, the first being Saturday morning.

As soon as Saturday was born the Cross did herself proud. Everyone was out shopping like mad, the bars were full, and to walk down the street empty-handed seemed almost indecent. Saturdays always worked themselves up into an enormous climax of parties, Saturday night was party night. No matter how little or how much money anyone had, they were either going to or giving a party. Only the lonely or the non-Crossites were abroad Saturday night. That is till at least 2 a.m. when the other Cross rule came into force. It was to buy one’s Sunday papers from one of the two little men who sold than down near its Film House. These one bought from 2 a.m. onwards, and it seemed to me that one bought the papers in two ways only. Either you arrived ‘high’ and with people, from a party, or you drifted up through the heat of the night in your pyjamas. If you lived too far away to walk in pyjamaed comfort, and therefore were not a real Crossite, you tried to look as if you had come from a party.

This procedure was nearly sacred, the hot pie man, the old women with the hot dogs, and the newspaper men seemed almost to enforce it. And often a crazy and sometimes sad scene it was. People fighting after a party, couples saying long intense good-byes. Or someone having to leave a group which had within it the person they desired, but for various reasons couldn’t have. They would be hauled off by the triumphant and unwanted person, whom they were officially with for the night. There were people who bought hot dogs and their papers, but who, having missed their ration of Saturday night magic, would stand, eyes alight with longing, watching and hoping, as laughing groups arrived, often in wrecked fancy dress clothes.

I learnt also that on the whole, the Crossites were the sharpest, maddest, cruellest and warmest people in the world. They had to be. This city standing on its hill outside of a city was full of people who had come from all ends of the earth, and for as many reasons as love knows, made this place their own. To live in the Cross you had to be swift of thought and tongue. You had to be prepared to change your outlook and your opinions with your clothes. Your survival demanded that of you. Yet heaven help you if you didn’t have opinions, or a strict private code of honour that your friends could rely on. Also you needed wonderful ears, ears that could hear the words ‘Lily’ ‘love’ or ‘trouble’ whispered half a block away, and yet not hear the bedlam that was the Cross. You had to grow used to, understand and not hear car doors banging all through the night, and forty thousand radios which were never off. Of maybe a tart railing through her tears for her long forgotten, dear old mum, whom the plonk and a bad night’s just suddenly recalled for her. Then there were the fire-engines and the hooting of ships in the harbour. Or Americans yelling ‘Cab’ all night, plus the screeching of the trams with their ding-dong bells, and nasal, bogus American cowboys singing folksey songs either over the radio, or in the streets. Or for a change, spectacular domestic rows, echoing up and down the light wells of flats. But in some way all this worked. Over a quarter of a million people all somehow lived together, and got on with one another, in one half square mile of tall flats, houses of every shape and size, dumps and hotels.

I could feel myself growing in every way, practically by the hour.

I learnt something or met someone new every day, and confirmed some half suspected truth every night. If I had no money I didn’t care, out into the night I’d go. Someone I knew would be bound to be passing under the plane trees, and there we would sit talking about the future, slap in the middle of a fantastic present.

Over the months since I had first arrived in my now beloved Cross, I had noticed daily the ever increasing number of Americans from all services. The Cross, suddenly it seemed, all on one morning, burst out in a rash of flower shops and cafés, all new, and all sporting American names. ‘The café Manhattan’, ‘Florida Steak House’, ‘The Texas Flower Shop’, etc. At the same time, the laws being what they were, dozens of brand new sly grog dumps opened. The Cross shook herself, adjusted herself to all this and went on as usual. Bella, sensing the change, went on a diet, lost a stone and a bit, and with it ten years in age, and then went to town. She had the house done up, and now her dog always wore a bow.

One gala night, which was what they all were nowadays, as she poured drinks she turned to me, and using her favourite name for me said ‘Louse, and they say you can’t mix business with pleasure?’ I looked across the room at the two lean Texan pilots sitting playing cards with Alma and said ‘Yes, I think I know what you mean.’ All of Bella’s friends went very splendid, Alma and Judy wore orchids so big that sometimes the Americans with them could barely hand their flower loaded lovelies out of the cabs. I lived in three worlds, Bella’s, the café and mine. I saw Milly and Cliff as often as I could, but by now, a new face meant a new flat, a new outlook on and knowledge of life. Also I was growing steadily fed up with the café and the stinking heat and grease. The card-room worried me as well. Recently a lot of Americans had been playing, and on the whole they tended to be bad players, over-excited winners and difficult losers. I wanted to change. I told Bella. ‘Well what do you want to do ?’ she asked. ‘Sing,’ I said. Then she remembered that she knew a German cum Viennese gentleman who taught singing above a dentist’s nearby.

I went to see him. He was fat, bald, and for the first fifteen minutes, rude. After I had endured yet another half hour of remembered continental joys, I started to get angry. I didn’t care who people were, or where they were from. But if it was all ‘zo vundervool’ why did they let it get in such a mess that they had to leave it? I was just about to tell him this, and also to stick his tuition, memories and all, up his jumper when he said:

‘Zo you zink.’

I fought back the urge to say ‘No, I’m here to empty the bloody gas meter,’ and said ‘Yes.’

He sat down at the piano and started to strum, saying ‘Vot do you know?’ as he inclined his head towards a pile of dog-eared music. I shook him rigid by saying ‘That’, the tune he was playing, so he said ‘Right, ve start.’ I tried to, but he went on playing at eighty miles an hour so I gave up and stood waiting for him to slow down. After a while he did. I sang and sang very well, every note was true, and loaded with feeling. He then said ‘Sink me some scales.’ At last we stopped, by which time I was nearly breathless. He swivelled round on his seat and sat looking at me with a gleam in his eyes that I didn’t like. Finally he spoke.

‘Ah! zat was goot, if we work hard, after about fifty lessons I would have you sinkink like Richard Tauber !’

That hit a sore point in me, because one way or another I’d been singing my own way practically ever since I had left the womb, also I had never liked falsettoish singers who faked notes.

’I don’t want to sing like Richard Tauber, I just want to know how to make the most of myself.’

He looked at me a trifle shocked. ‘Vot is wrong with Richard Tauber?’

I longed to say ‘For my money, everything’ but I didn’t dare, so I started to pick myself up and go when he stopped me:

‘Joost a minute, I would like to giff you lessons, you have a very nice voice.’

I gave him a swift look, after which we had a short haggle that ended in me arranging to have two lessons per week, and then I left. Once out in the streets I felt rather excited. Here I was under a singing teacher who might make me famous. After all, some of what he’d said he’d done must have been true?

Bella was pleased when she heard this and asked:

‘How much are the lessons?’

‘Seven and six each.’ She looked thoughtful for a while.

‘Well unless you play the nags with luck, on what you don’t earn, you won’t have much to live on, will you?’ I hadn’t thought of my lessons in terms of money and this rather shook me. ‘It’ll soon be Christmas,’ Bella continued. ‘Suppose I hand out for the lessons as a present for you. You take the rent and give it to him, how’s that? For the first time since I had known her, I kissed her, and was surprised as I did to find that her skin was as soft as the unseen lining of a tie.

I was cooking in my room when Bella came in.

‘Louse, I feel like a bit of a dilp tonight, let me take you to a clip-joint and we’ll eat something real grouse. O.K.?’ She’d barely said it, than I had finished shovelling the beans back into the tin and started dressing like mad. Bella hardly ever went out and I had never been out with her before.

I went into her room and we had a drink. She had dressed up and was also quite excited. Then she gave me ten pounds saying *You pay out, and see you do it, like a real nice young mug.’ We started out in high spirits both talking away, but as we reached the Cross, I began to feel a little embarrassed at being seen with her. She was dressed nicely but though I couldn’t think why, I found myself hoping that we wouldn’t run into any of the theatre or radio crowd that I knew, and so longed to know better. Bella looked at me in the middle of one of these small moods.

‘Are you all right?’ I felt simply dreadful and quickly said ‘Yes, I’m very happy.’

As we walked down the Cross itself, I saw half recalled memories flit across quite a few men’s faces. Bella then suggested that we go to a hotel for a drink first.

‘We’re not staying there, and we’re not travellers,’ I said.

‘Aren’t we now? Well, we’ll see.’

We walked into a big hotel—it was full of glamorous people. As we paused for a moment a man came forward in a dress suit.

‘Good evening, are you travellers?’ As he said it he looked at Bella and she looked back at him saying in a soft voice:

‘What are you putting on all the side for, Jimmy?’

The man swayed just a little, his eyes brightening as he said ‘Would you be kind enough to sign the book please?’

He led us to a desk, picked up a pen and handed it to Bella who then wrote in large, rather old-fashioned handwriting ‘Sir and Lady Camp travelling from Melbourne to Brisbane.’ She put the pen down without batting an eyelid. The man led us to a table, and as he pushed the seat beneath Bella said, very softly, ‘Very nice to see you again.’

We ordered two enormous drinks, then looked around the large lounge. Top flight uniforms of all nations plus a lot of Americans were everywhere, and so were women. I felt I had never seen so many women all at once. Bella sat in a way I had never noticed her sit before, well back but upright in her chair, relaxed yet glowing and missing nothing. Every now and then she would look at some woman or other, who would be chatting away to an officer, saying ‘Gawd, who’d have thought old Joyce is still on the game. Didn’t know she was still working.’ One by one, their pasts, and presents, were revealed to me, and often I felt the ladies themselves, as they suddenly noticed Bella, give me the once over, then send a small message with their eyes to Bella. Up to the time we left not one of them spoke with their mouths to Bella, or even actually smiled, but the interplay between the eyes amused both Bella and myself.

Finally we left. When we were outside the hotel Bella looked a little sad and sagged for a second.

‘Well it was nice to see all the girls again; I didn’t know half of them were still working.’ She was just about to add ‘at their age’ but she didn’t. She brightened up, and taking my arm, walked to the particular clip-joint that she had set her heart on going to.

I knew it well by sight. It was one of the first to appear after the Americans really arrived. Clip type glamour poured out of its every window. Its lamp shades, their bases surrounded by flowers, glowed on their expensive white tables. Luxury carpets caught the eye of people passing near the canopy over the door, but the only people one ever seemed to see coming or going from it were high ranking American officers, and their girl friends. No one that I knew in the Cross had ever been inside it.

As Bella and I walked up to the canopy I began to feel very nervous, but we walked right on and into its red glow. Once inside Bella spotted the bar first. Somehow she ‘looked’ two people into moving up and giving us a seat. Then she ordered two martinis with enormous charm. The sly-looking waiter looking slightly taken aback, took the order then disappeared. As Bella looked at me with huge eyes, I tried not to let her see that I hated the place, the people who worked in it, and everything about it. Suddenly I knew what the feeling was that I felt. It was like a scene from a Joan Crawford film that I had seen in which she had had to drink with Nazis. Only in this case there were no Nazis, just beautiful’ women and their American escorts. It was the people who ran the place who were, I felt, the Nazis. Even now the black and white suited staff watched us with spiteful eyes and sly smiles. Bella saw me watching them and turned to me.

‘Look pet, stuff the lot of them, our money is as good as theirs. And let me tell you something louse, people can sermonize till their balls drop off, but as you grow older, you’ll learn that no one will ever ask you where, or how, you got the money you’re putting into the collection plate.’ She touched my slightly shaking hand. I looked at her, longing to try to explain what it was that I really felt about the place, but I didn’t want to spoil the night.

Just then the waiter returned with the drinks, placing them before us with a sneer. I took some money out and asked ‘How much?’ He said ‘fifteen shillings,’ and as an afterthought ‘Sir’. I nearly fainted. My rent! I gave him a pound and he went for the change. As he did Bella hissed, ‘only take two shillings back’ but when the waiter returned I looked at him and said ‘Keep it.’ My stomach was heaving and I suddenly knew I was too young to cope with all this. Also I was extremely upset after Bella’s speech. Somehow I knew then that Bella understood how I felt, for suddenly she took over and asked the waiter for a table for two, At that moment another and more fancy sly one swayed up.

‘Good evening Sir and Mdom, can I help?’

Bella said ‘Yes, I’d like a table for two.’

The man looked pleased and asked in honeyed tones ‘Are you reserved?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m afraid we haven’t any tables and in point of fact since you are not eating here, you should not have been served with liquor.’

He almost licked his lips with pleasure. To make matters worse, by now people were watching us, and the waiters almost radiated their hate at us, a couple of Aussies, daring to eat here.

Bella asked for the manager’s name.

The waiter hesitated. ‘I assure you Modom, that we are completely reserved, and I doubt very much whether he could be of any—’

Bella cut him short ‘I didn’t say I wanted anything other than his name, what is it?’

The waiter was a little shaken. ‘He is Mr Cortez.’

‘Ask Mr Cortez to come here would you, I would like to see him.’ I don’t think I know where he is—er—’

Bella replied swiftly ‘He’s near, he’d have to be in a place like this, you know what I mean, get him.’

The waiter walked tightly away, as if he had been kicked in the seat.

Bella picked up her drink, which owing to the scene was untouched and raised it in front of her now, defiant eyes.

‘Here’s to us love, don’t worry.’

I put my glass to my lips, but I was so sick with anger and disgust that I could barely taste it. I wanted to take Bella out. I felt dreadful sitting there having to let Bella fight it out, and with nothing to offer but a pocket full of her money. I wanted to go and before I did, I wanted to tell every American in the place that he was being cheated, overcharged and treated like a high class pig by a bunch of mid-European scum who’d arrived along with the rats out of some ship just before war broke out, and who dared to call themselves Aussies.

In the middle of my anger the manager, a tall weak-eyed man, arrived. He bowed slightly to us, ‘My headwaiter has just told me that you wish to eat, but unfortunately you haven’t reserved—’

Bella smiled at him. ‘This place is part of the William Group isn’t it?’

The manager smiled and nodded. I looked at Bella and felt rather than saw her stiffen. She paused for a brief second, fingered a ring, then said ‘Would Mr Goodcliff happen to be here by any chance?’ The manager’s eyes widened with surprise, as he hesitated, looking at Bella, her bows and me, then said ‘Yes.’

Bella’s eyes moved only a fraction, her body leant forward just a little. ‘Well then Mr Cortez, would you be good enough to tell Mr Goodcliff that Mrs Newbolt and her son are here.’ The manager, after nearly curtsying, went.

Bella and I looked at one another so deeply, and with such intensity that we seemed to pass into each other. We looked until there was nothing left to look at, then slowly we started to smile at one another and I could feel both of us lighten. Everything seemed different. It was as if Bella and I were in a glass lift, which was slowly rising up from the Bargain basement of an all glass department store, and on to the private penthouse above.

Another waiter came and said ‘Would you like the same again?’

‘Yes we would.’

The manager returned and said with curious eyes that a table had been arranged for us. A little later Bella and I walked into the beautiful room that I had so often seen from the outside.

A small orchestra surrounded by flowers sat in a curved alcove, playing with a wonderful rhythm all the latest tunes. People were dancing and the air was full of knowing excitement. Bella and I ate and drank our heads off, we had everything we wanted. She was in the middle of telling me about two of the women we had seen earlier at the hotel, when I noticed her face change. It was tighter in some way. Her eyes, though looking at me, had a full yet far away look about them, then it swiftly passed. Even so, from then on Bella behaved differently in little ways. The way she used her hands altered, the movement of her eyes, or the manner in which she used her lips was different. I seemed to have seen another person slipping in behind her eyes, but it was so quick, that I allowed myself to forget. We had a marvellous time. Many Americans spoke to us, one asked Bella to dance. He was tall, young and handsome, but she refused. I was surprised, yet somehow not surprised. I knew, Bella wanted to dance, even with me, but if she did it meant that she would pass the orchestra. And I knew that that was at the end of the room where whoever or whatever it was which caused her to softly change from the Bella I knew into a woman who behaved more like a remembered Bella of sometime past, sat.

Many half hearted jokes later, we decided to ask for the bill. As I was about to fiddle for the money, the manager came up to the table, took the bill from me and saying ‘With Mr Goodcliff’s compliments’ handed a glass box with three gardenias in it to Bella, and a red carnation to me. As I looked at Bella in surprise, I could see her hand shaking so much that she nearly dropped the box and the bottle of perfume tied on its top. She recovered and said ‘Would you please thank Mr Goodcliff very much.’

We stood up and started to leave. As we got near the door, I saw Bella looking at the far end of the room. She had the same sort of look that she had given to various women in the hotel earlier. I followed her eyes. Sitting at the far end of the room with several women and men was a tall man with a nearly bald head. He was looking at us with the same sort of look that Bella had in her eyes, her hand touched me, and trembled as it turned me slightly by the shoulder towards the man. I looked at him, he leant forward, looking at me with a pulling sort of look. Suddenly Bella’s hand and voice said ‘Quick louse, let’s go.’

We walked out, with the staff all nicely saying goodnight as we went. We had only walked a little way when Bella said ‘Look, pet, I’d like to do some dilping on my own? Do you mind? Go on, you pop off and have a nice cruise.’ I kissed her goodnight and walked away.

After I had gone a few yards I thought I would go and see if Milly was in. As I did, I noticed the carnation in my hand, then, still walking I put it into my lapel. Just as I finished and was heading full pelt towards Milly’s, I thought of the man in the restaurant, and the way he had looked at me with such longing. Then with a feeling like a rubber band snapping inside my head, I realized that the man’s face was the same as Bella’s son’s. I suddenly felt drunk and very sad in a strange way. At that second I saw a low fence and sat down on it. As I was sitting, a half-familiar voice said ‘You all right?’ I looked up, saying yes, but I couldn’t really see properly. The voice said ‘I live just here. Would you like some coffee?’

I started my lessons with the singing teacher and though I didn’t really like or agree with him, it gave me a good feeling to have them. After a few weeks of our twice weekly battle he said to me, ‘Vell young man, vood you like to zing in a club?’

‘Would I!’ On the spot I saw visions of glamorous night-clubs, large orchestras, and women by the dozen swooning around me as I stood in the spotlight.

He continued ‘Vell if you like I vill take you to a friend of mine, who is very good coach and pianist.’

Sometime later I met her, her name was Miss Mert. She was a well-meaning, plain little woman, who lived in an old fashioned house in Victoria Street. Everything about it and her was nervously clean. A table would have a cover over it and then a cloth over the cover, and runners to protect the cloth. Chairs were likewise over-covered Underneath all these things there might just as well have been butter boxes. I often felt when we had a cup of tea that if she could have served it with the good cup inside another, she would have.

Miss Mert and I then set about working out what we thought would be a good act; it was to begin with These Foolish Things and two songs later finish, after a slight row between us, Don’t Fence Me In. When I told Bella about my forthcoming night-club engagement she was tickled pink, and swore blind that she was going to round up every girl and their mugs that night, and bring the lot. The thought of singing to that assortment sent me into a cold sweat, and I became so wary about the whole thing, that it took me days even to ring Milly and tell her. However, Miss Mert and I worked on, three evenings a week.

As time went by I grew to admire her and in her funny way, she taught me many things. I never liked her very much, but I did appreciate her, and after a while I looked forward to my nights in her house. In there, over-fussed at is was, there reigned some sort of stability and order.

Outside, and all around the Cross life seemed to be going mad. The war news was bad. Handfuls of Australian soldiers were fighting, under the most appalling and unbelievable conditions, thousands of fanatic Japanese in New Guinea, little men whose greatest longing was just to die, both for their ancestors and the glory of the Nippon. And if in dying they killed a few hundred of the hated Aussies so much the better, and so the much nearer to Australia, its beaches and its cities, its fabulous fruit-filled north which was full of the elegant Chinese, who though revered by the Australians, trembled as they moved around their market gardens and pineapple groves. They knew who would die first if the little men got nearer, and Australia knew who would die last, its beautiful tall girls. So Australia started to scorch earth in the north in preparation.

It was as if the flames seared the earth up there, but their heat hit Sydney. The Cross was now mad. Rooms, which were a pound a week, shot up to four pounds, or even further. More and more cafés and flower shops opened, with their American names and shifty owners. The speakeasys flourished to such an extent, that Arthur’s became quite respectable, an old established favourite with overtones of respectability like that of the Melbourne Club. Daily, little kiosks barely three feet wide opened, selling cigarettes, chewing gum and such things. Usually a continental was behind the counter, working twelve or fifteen hours a day. He had, it always seemed, just escaped the Nazis after watching all his family shot down. But somehow these people had floated to Australia with a few trinkets in a finger stall hidden in their persons. They would work like slaves and one would just get to know and admire one of them, when one day either the kiosk had grown to a full-sized shop, or there, behind the newest American style café, he would be, relief from nearly being murdered and gratitude to Australia gone from his heart and eyes, as he rolled the dough in. The old continental Crossites loathed them, the Aussies despised them, and the Americans used them. They seemed to hate everyone, including themselves.

The Cross became a glittering battle ground, on and through which people fought in a hundred hysterical ways. It all began with the Americans, they had everything from wonderful luggage to superbly organized centres. Everything about them had glamour, even to the way they walked, in their soft beautifully cut uniforms. Uniforms, which made even the dullest pockmarked clot who’d never been beyond Pappy’s pigbins, a ‘catch’ at any party. Also, they were the first real touch Australia had experienced with America, a country with which we had much in common. We had British based laws, and an English, rather resented past. But we ate, dressed, thought, and lived more like Americans. What’s more, America, like Australia, had a British past. Not the sad, convict slave labour past that we had, but one near enough to us to create a common feeling. Finally, the Americans had two powerful things: the utterly disarming charm of their familiar, Hollywood sounding voices, and also their money. Money, such as no Aussie could hope to compete with, and money that half the Yanks themselves had never had back home. So the battle began.

It started in the shops, with their upped prices, and continued via the speakeasys and the cafés, right on down to the ‘mug lairs’. The mug lairs were the dread of the Cross. Outside the Cross they were known as the ‘Cornel Wilde Boys’. They were youths who wore huge, piled up hair-dos, with a mop of forced or natural tangled curls dangling down their foreheads, These hair-dos, which strangely enough matched the women’s hairstyles, were worn with zoot suits borrowed from the loose limbed negroes of Harlem. They consisted of very tight trousers, and a coat that reached to the back of the knees, making the behind appear to be half way up the back. Large rings, heavy wrist bracelets and long watch or key chains, completed the ensemble. They roared into the Cross by night on motorbikes and headed for the milk bars. Their aims were to get all the free trade they could from the ‘girls’, wreck a few dances, blackmail a few more queers just to keep their standard of living up; and last thing at night, nothing could be finer that to pick on a few helplessly drunk Americans. Then in the name of Australia and of all the troops fighting overseas, they beat them, until the blood pouring out of the still bodies near the juke box looked enough. Their night’s work over, back to the motorbikes, and roar off into the night.

They got away with it for three simple reasons. One, the police were flat out with hundreds of thousands of things that had started when as many troops poured into an Australia which had a bare seven or eight million people spread all over it. Around the Cross, the second, and not inconsiderable reason, was their sheer physical power and beauty. Nine out of ten of them somehow managed either to have a job in the sun, or to spend their days on the beaches. They were over-muscled, bronzed, thick necked gods. No matter what the crime, very few were the ‘girls’, or for that matter other people, who would let them down by giving evidence or making out and out accusations. And thirdly they had their rule partly because of Australia’s lunatic liquor laws. The Americans, who were used to drinking when and where they liked, suddenly found themselves in a giant city where, after the pubs had closed with their usual pigswill of frantic boozing, at 5 to 6 p.m., there was nothing for it but to use a set of bewildering, near dishonest, or downright dishonest, tricks in order to drink.

You started off with the choice of a dainty dinner-type bum’s rush, where, if you ate, you could drink till 9 p.m., or the other places, where, if you had ordered before 5 p.m. you could drink with food till twelve. Of course, everyone knew that they would just want or have to entertain that evening, So no matter how big the business deal, that afternoon, they conscientiously rang up and ordered before five. Higher on the list of other farces were the nightclubs, many of them quite famous and well-run, in which under other rules you could drink at corkage prices all night. The value of corks was shattering, beer two shillings each, whisky or gin up to fifteen shillings or a pound a cork. But people paid these prices because at least they could drink, that is unless those who ran people’s morals for them took it into their heads to decide that the club in question hadn’t given quite enough to certain charities.

A well-decorated, good club would be full of people all trying to live their now rather uncertain lives as they wished. When suddenly a bell would shatter their nerves. Everyone knew just what it meant. The band would start playing extra loud, people would swallow half a bottle of scotch all at one gulp and get up from the table. The women would grab furs and handbags, and everyone would start dancing. The authorities would burst in, saying rather late This is a raid—’.

Then the game really began. The raiders would stand, the band playing madly, while dozens of ordinary citizens danced and danced, occasionally looking at the deserted liquor-laden tables. The trap was this: you could have liquor in the club, but if, as the raiders stood waiting for more money to cross palms and people’s futures, you went near the table with your small fortune of bottled gaiety on it, you were nabbed on the spot. So people danced and danced. One night, Bella, some friends and myself left after a half hour marathon; the raiders had wanted more money, and had stayed. And stayed it appeared, until the club emptied. They then left, taking with them many pounds’ worth of real liquor, and leaving behind them a group of first-class musicians playing away to nothing but dozens of empty glasses, vases of flowers, waiters and ruined mounds of uneaten food. So the Americans, along with Aussies, flocked to the sly grogs where in an atmosphere often of sly menace, they paid pounds for bottles of hooch with names like ‘Bonny Queen Charlie’. Later, fainting in the streets, they would be rolled by thugs if they had not already been done in the sly grogs, bashed by mug lairs, and finally scooped up by their own police.

In the middle of all this and more, I spent my evenings with Miss Mert going over and over the songs, then whooping out into the hot bedlam of the Cross. I’d meet many sorts of people. Often Milly, Cliff and I would sit in the coffee shops, drinking black coffee by the gallon, and getting to know fellow customers, waitresses, or local characters, often to our repeated regret. On other nights we would go to the milkbars, and listen to the juke box.

A few nights before my big opening night with Miss Mert, Milly and I were sitting in a milkbar waiting for Dennis. The place was full of people, with the noise of the whipping machines and mixers fighting that of the shouted orders and the juke box. We had run into two people we half knew, and were sitting discussing Frank Sinatra. The papers were full of his swoon-crooning and the stories of mass breakdowns at his appearances. For Milly and me, this was just fine—we didn’t care what he did, and if he did cause chaos, the more the better. One of the people we were talking to said that, for a joke, a friend of hers had told someone that Sinatra was in Sydney, having flown in with the forces. Word flew round. Hundreds of girls rushed everywhere, causing chaos and confusion, as hundreds more people joined them at the place where he was currently supposed to be. Milly and I were sorry it was only a joke, as we sat with a shilling’s worth of threepenny pieces, waiting to play our favourite records by Sinatra. There had been enormous rows over Sinatra, letters to the press complaining about this decadent singer, the ‘Give us a man like Crosby, he was good enough for my father, and that’s good enough for me,’ type of letter. Some papers ran near-bitchy articles on Sinatra almost daily. But we didn’t care, we loved him, and the entirely new type of recording approach that surrounded him. When all those lush, sexy strings started, we just sat back in a trance.

This night a crowd of mug lairs had moved in and surrounded the juke box. They knew that all any of us wanted were the. top three records, so they stood there playing other records. Finally, I went up to the bar to order; I caught the eye of one of the mug lairs, and said ‘That’s a nice record,’ meaning the dreary one that they were playing. He looked at me for one snake-like minute, changed his mind, and we began talking. After a while as I stood, the two milkshakes in my hands, I said to him ‘Could I play some records now, for me and my girl?’ The lair said ‘Yeah,’ so I put the drinks down and swiftly slammed in the money for two Sinatra records, and after, Ella Fitzgerald singing Gravel-voice Gertie and Don’t Fence Me In, then fled back to Milly and our friends.

We were leaning back and lapping up the rich introduction of the first Sinatra record, when a big voice said ‘Move over, lairs.’ Instantly we all sat up, the voice forced us to. There, pushing the stunned mob of lairs, was a giant man in a pair of underpants and a singlet, carrying an axe. He bashed his way through to the juke box, and saying ‘I’ll send this poofta up the river,’ swung the axe right through the coloured lights, the cover of the juke box, and our Frankie in the middle of a song. Then, knocking a few mug lairs flying for good measure, walked out and disappeared into the passing crowds, leaving a juke box with sparks flying out of it, waitresses standing with their hands on the still whirring malted milk mixers, shattered lairs, and a whole café full of people, all of whom started to yell their heads off when the juke box exploded and all the lights went out.

I was on my way to work one day when I ran into Alice, tripping along the street like Carmen Miranda. She yelled ‘Don’t go, don’t go.’

I crossed over to her, ‘What do you mean, don’t go?’

‘The law’s moved in and closed the café, they’re all in the boob! Come up to my joint.’ So we went up to her flat.

After she had hidden about fourteen pairs of stockings, and half heartedly cleaned the flat out a bit she produced some coffee. I sat, depressed: I didn’t like my job very much, but on the other hand, I’d grown used to it, the money, and the never-ending stream of new things happening. Alice asked me what I was going to do. I replied that I didn’t know, then I asked her what she intended doing. Quick as a flipped egg, she said ‘On the bash !’

I went back home to find Bella in a filthy temper, trying to clean the place up, and exclaiming that she needed her bloody bonk examined for knowing the people she did. We then had a row which got out of hand and developed into a slanging match. After she had said something particularly cutting to me, I called her a worn out prostitute. She picked up the dust broom, and yelling ‘Substitute! ’ threw it at me.

Later, after a lot of door bangings, she came out to my room and told me that I was an ungrateful little bastard. I got up off the bed, and told her I was, but I’d always been glad of everything she had done. She stood gaping at me, then said ‘Jesus, louse, I’m dead sorry, honest, I didn’t know. You always spoke so nicely.’ That started off another blazing row, which ended because the girls upstairs complained of not being able to sleep. We made it up over a big lunch of all the things Bella and I liked most, during which I told her what had happened.

‘Is that all! I thought you had the dead needle on me. Look, love, don’t ever get crooked on Bella, when it’s yourself that’s crook. Tell me, and we’ll talk about it. Just because you’ve been living at the Cross now for some time, you’re not grown up yet you know. No louse, hot by a long chalk.’

The following week found me still out of work, but loving the freedom. Also, my large pie in the sky was the fact that I opened at the club next week. I worked with Miss Mert three times that week, and twice with the teacher. He liked my act, and was to take us to his friend, a Mr Winegarden, who ran the club. I’d seen the club before, and had lately taken many a crafty peep at it from the outside, but could gather no indication of what the club would be like inside. It was called ‘The Continental Club’. One afternoon we went up to it, and into the main part which was on the second floor. Once there, it was plain tatty. Notices in Italian that I couldn’t read mixed with others which were covered in free French signs, hung on the walls. There were announcements of the Polish refugees’ ‘Bach evening with tea’ or even more depressing to me, were the black-edged, notices of such forthcoming delights as ‘An evening of Mr Smith singing Lieder’ and ‘harp and piano duets.’ My ‘Foolish Things’ seemed at that moment more suited to Arthur’s Palm Court or any of half a dozen other places that I knew, than here.

Miss Mert went straight to the piano, and half played it. My teacher came back with Mr Winegarden. He bid me a lavish and rather old-fashioned welcome in a slightly foreign accent. Then I joined Miss Mert at the piano on the dais. My teacher and Winegarden sat in a pool of the late afternoon sun that splurged through the tall, grubby windows. Outside, the trams screeched and groaned: inside, the curtains, frayed, long red things, fell down to the floor, dickering with the odd cigarette butt as they moved in the breeze. I was about to ask Mr Winegarden if he would mind closing the windows, when to my horror I saw his sideboards and recognized him as the gipsy from the disaster at Arthur’s. Flushed with guilt, I messed up our little beginning: Miss Mert coughed, I apologized, and we started again. I stood singing my head off to the two elderly men who sat, either scratching their noses, gazing into space, or rearranging themselves. At the end they got up, and saying ‘Just a minute—’ left the room at top speed. Then for twenty agonizing minutes Miss Mert and I just stared one another out across the top of the cigarette scarred, upright piano.

At last they returned. After a bit of fancy coughing and a small hesitation waltz across the floor, my teacher asked ‘Vud you do a night zis week?’ I looked at them and back at Miss Mert: her sole form of communication was her foggy glasses. I looked back at the men and said ‘Yes.’ Winegarden said ‘Good, that is it. Come tomorrow night, it is general night.’

A few words later found me out on the pavement, saying to Miss Mert that I would see her at 6 p.m. tomorrow night. We parted, and I went to the Arabian, where I had arranged to meet Bill Vero Reed, Beryl and a recently met love of mine, Jean Bullen. I went in and Beryl asked ‘You ready for a cup of scald?’ I was. As we sat talking, I longed to tell them that tomorrow night I was taking my first big step, but I was so nervous about the whole thing that I couldn’t. I finally wound up telling Bella and her dog at 1 a.m. She still wanted to get half the Cross in, but I begged her not to.

The next day flew by on wings of lead. By 7 p.m. Bella was pouring nerve tonics and pep-up stuff into me by the half cup. Finally, I put my good suit on with a clean white shirt and tie, and walked up to the club. It was almost busy, but everyone there seemed only half alive. After I had sat looking at ladies with crimped grey hair, glasses and long skirts carrying endless little pots of tea into the club part, I became so depressed that I fled down to Arthur’s, had a few drinks, felt better, then walked back to the club. As I approached it, I listened outside the hallway to see if I could hear anything, any sort of gaiety at all, but all my sinking heart imagined it could hear was a piano playing something that sounded like Oh for the Wings of a Dove. I started climbing the stairs. As I reached the landing, a cockroach ran across my shoes and under the door into a room. ‘At least you’re some sort of life.’ I thought as the black legs disappeared under the door. Just then, Mr Winegarden appeared saying ‘Ah young man! Good evening, come on in.’ I said I preferred not to until I’d been on and done the act. He explained that would be a little while as yet, because it was general night. Then he asked me to come into another room in which I could relax, have a drink and see all the things going on. That sounded quite a good idea, so I popped into a small room with him.

Once inside it, I could hear the noise of quite a lot of people, which pleased and frightened me at the same time. Mr Winegarden asked me which I would prefer, tea or coffee. I chose coffee, and he left to get it. As I sat, I felt slightly sick, and wanted desperately to go home, or anywhere else. To get over this, I thought I would check through all the words of the songs. I started to, and found that I had forgotten the lot. I immediately got into a wild panic, which was only broken by Winegarden arriving with my coffee. I drank it, then started over the words again. This time I got them right, so I felt a little better, and sat, only shaking with nerves. Then I thought I’d have a look around at the audience. The room I was in was tiny and square: its only occupants were a pile of chairs, stacked up on one another, and an old hat sitting on top of a furled flag in the corner. To the left of my chairs there were curtains, drawn across an archway. I got up, peeped through them and looked at the club.

The club was quite full, but as I looked around it, my heart sank, and hit my heaving stomach. Every person, there looked as if he had just got straight off the last refugee boat. People in drab clothes, clutching bundles of papers or teapots sat at every table. There wasn’t a glass of drink or a bright eye in the whole place. Now I wished that I had brought Bella and anyone else who was around. I went back and sat on my seat.

As I looked at the chairs, I thought ‘Oh I’ll just get out, I’ll sneak down the stairs.’ At that second the cockroach reappeared: I watched him darting around, glad to see him. Even he, with his quick movements, swaying feelers and shiny black body, had some sort of living glamour. I’d just made up my mind to go, when someone banged loudly on a table, making me jump. Then a voice said ‘Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to our twentieth gathering.’ I thought ‘Oh, my God, I’m trapped !’ The voice went on, ‘As we know, it is the aim of the club to foster the culture of many countries, and in this war-torn world to spread a little serenity—’ That line so fascinated me, that I immediately went into a fantasy. One in which I could see all these drab people going around with a little pot in one hand, stopping people in the street, and saying as they did, ‘Let me spread a little serenity over you,’ then dipping a spoon into the pot, they’d smear something like Marmite all over the person’s clothes, and pass contentedly on their way.

I was so wrapped up in this dream that I only came out of it when a voice said ‘And now, Miss McDougall, who will give a talk on “astral bodies”.’ There was a round of applause which was followed by a very ugly woman’s voice saying ‘Good evening, one and all. Ah, yes—astral bodies—are they us, I mean, are they our real selves?’ ‘Oh, Lord,’ I thought, ‘How much longer?’ I hadn’t heard of astral bodies, ever, but mine right now was a shaking mass of nerves. I looked for my cockroach friend. He’d disappeared, lucky him. Miss Astral went on and on. Every now and then someone would say ‘I agree, how true,’ or a voice I recognized as Mr Winegarden’s would say ‘Yes, there is comfort for us in that.’ Comfort! Right now I was in a state of discomfort the like of which I’ve never known before in my life, added to which I wanted to go to the lavatory. In the middle of this agony, I saw the curtains move, and Miss Mert’s glasses saying ‘After this.’ She was seated at the piano, which was to the right, just outside the curtains. I stood up, felt to see if my fly buttons were all done up, patted my hair into place, and started to pray like mad, just who to I didn’t know, but I was flat out until I heard the woman’s voice finish, and the round of applause for her begin. Then I froze.

We had arranged for Mr Winegarden to say a few words about me, under which Miss Mert would start playing the intro to Foolish Things twice, I’d appear, bow and then go straight into the chorus using the verse in the middle.

I heard a bump on the dais as Mr Winegarden got up on it, then his voice came through the curtains. ‘As you all know, it is usually our custom to end the club’s meeting with a little entertainment of the lighter kind. Well, tonight we have a surprise guest, a young man all the way from Melbourne.’ At that everyone clapped as if I had just come in from New York. ‘I want you to give a big welcome to our guest, may I present Jon Rose in songs.’ The clapping started but for one lunatic second, I thought ‘How does he mean, in songs? He might just as well have said Jon Rose in clothes.’

The next thing I knew I was stepping through the curtains, a fixed nervous smile on my face, and bowing. As I came up from the bow, my eye caught sight of the music on the piano in front of Miss Mert, it was all in the wrong running order. A wave of sheer bowel-searing terror swept over me as I stared at the audience below; too late, she was into the introduction proper. Full of dread I had to start.

A cigarette that bears the lipstick’s traces,

An airline ticket to romantic places,

And still my heart has wings,

These foolish things remind me—

At that moment my worst fears were confirmed. Miss Mert was playing, but all I was getting in my right ear, was a desperate ding-dong with the left hand, whilst she frantically tried to sort out the music with her right. I tried to carry on and did for another line, during which all I could hear was a series of soft ‘Oh dear! oh dear me! tut tut, oh dear!’ I stopped, the audience could see the confusion going on at the piano better than I could and just sat staring. Mr Winegarden had half risen from his seat. I turned to help Miss Mert who by now was sending music flying in all directions in her desperate attempt to sort it out. She stood up and began rearranging it into running order on top of the piano, while I stood feeling a helpless bloody fool. She seemed to fiddle for hours, her flushed face looking intently at the music. Then just as she had got all the sheets into order and was giving them an extra last shuffle, she knocked the whole lot over the edge of the turned back piano lid, where they fell right down the back of the piano. She turned and stood staring at me like a doll, her eyes bright and unseeing behind her glasses. Apart from feeling dreadful, I had to fight back the urge to cram her down the back of the piano after the music.

During this nightmare Mr Winegarden had come up on the dais and was saying to the audience ‘Don’t let’s worry, it’s all—er—part of the—er—game, ha ha! ’ No one moved in the audience. I’d have been grateful for even a murmur, or at the very least a titter, from someone. He then tried to reach down the back of the piano but found he couldn’t. He kept saying to me and the audience ‘Too short, ha! ha! not to worry, we will take the back off the piano.’ He fiddled, bashed and messed around for what seemed like another hour, all to no avail. Suddenly I found myself moving sideways. At the same time I heard, rather than felt, my voice saying a very thin ‘Good night.’ I was through the curtains, down the stairs and half way home, before it hit me. My big night, my first appearance in Sydney not just a failure, but a lousy rotten mess up and worse still, now I’d never even know how it would have gone. I really felt so awful that when I saw a car’s running board I sat down on it and had a good old weep; that over I went home.

As I walked in Bella blew out of her room yelling, ‘You’re home! Come on in quick, how did it go louse?’ as she dragged me into her room. A regular was with her, a rather nice family man whom I knew quite well, and was glad to see. Bella sloshed me out a drink and was putting it into my hand, as she kept up her running ‘How did you go? How did you go? Did you click?’ Then she saw my face and half said ‘Oh! ’ I told her it hadn’t gone because Miss Mert had dropped all the music. The man and Bella both looked, saying ‘Oh! bad luck.’ Bella then said ‘What did you say?’ I repeated ‘It didn’t go, Miss Mert dropped the—’ Bella looked me in the face and started to laugh her head off, at the same time saying ‘Miss Mert, Jesus what a moniker ! Miss Mert, wouldn’t that rotate yer, ha ! ha !—’ by this time we were all starting to laugh our heads off.

At last we stopped and I felt so much better that I told them all in detail and could see the funny side of it. We sat talking for some time and then Bella said ‘Go on, forget it for tonight, go out and have a good old cruise.’ I did, but as I looked in all the places for anyone I knew, I gradually grew sadder and sadder.

I woke up still feeling sad the next morning, and lay in bed looking at the wall, wondering whether I should paint it, and as I wondered, wondering also what on earth I would do. I had no job, and last night’s hideous failure still burned in my cheeks as I thought of it. On top of which I didn’t have much money. I was just about to get myself worked up into a nice black state of mind when Bella banged on the door and popped her head in. ‘Come on, louse, don’t lay there playing with yourself. Get up, I want to talk to you; come to my cell.’

I put my pyjamas on and walked in, hoping like mad that she wasn’t going to start getting at me. She didn’t, she had breakfast all laid out, the bed made, and all the dolls stacked up on the pillows. We had just started eating, when she leant over and poured a little brandy and port into a glass, mixed it, and then to my surprise tipped it into the palm tree’s pot. She saw my look of surprise and said ‘Oh! she loves it, honest, I’ve had her nearly twenty years, and once a week she likes a little booze.’ She looked, at the tree with fondness for a while, then said ‘The things that tree’s seen. Just as well she can’t talk.’

We had a nice cozy breakfast. After we had cleared it all away, Bella poured herself a long gin, saying, ‘Well it’s almost matinee time anyway.’ She looked at me. ‘How much dough have you got?’

‘I think ten pounds.’ We both agreed it was not very much.

‘Got another job?’ she asked.

‘No,’

‘Look love, I’ve been doing a little thinking, only thinking, mind you, and I thought this:  for twenty-five years or more now I’ve been on the game. Mind you I have got a bit tucked away, a house and a decent son I never see, but I’ve never had any fun, not really. All the people I have really been fond of couldn’t be seen dead with me, and I never go anywhere because the people I could go out with are all crooked. Now you’re different, you speak nicely and you know how to behave—’ Her dog suddenly made a noise, she yelled ‘Dry up,’ then the door bell went.

Bella hopped up. ‘Christ, early trade I’d forgotten,’ then pointing to the dog said ‘She’s never wrong you know, got a dead on nose for it. See you later louse.’

I went back to my room, washed, dressed, and passed Bella’s closed door on my way out. As I reached the tram lines I changed my mind and decided I’d go down and see Cliff at his store.

I found him behind a window backing, fitting a ‘Midnight magic’ midriff frock on a model whose face and head had been changed to Maria Montez’s, though a label on her bare back, between the shoulder blades still said ‘Anne Sheridan’. Cliff didn’t see me coming so I crept up behind him, saying in a false voice ‘Where’s my Barbara Stanwyck bra window?’ The girl cleaning up the window laughed too, so I felt quite good. Cliff put a sheet over Maria Montez and we went out to lunch. I told him all about last night’s hideous result, only this time I was laughing as well. He had to have a quick lunch but asked me if I could meet him and Milly for tea at the Marguerite at 4 p.m. This arrangement pleased me very much because the thought suddenly struck me that I had hardly ever left the Cross, and had seen very little of the city itself. We walked for a while, then parted.

I wandered around the busy tall streets, and eventually found myself turning off St Martin’s Place when in front of me a big and rather glamorous chemist shop appeared. It had a notice in the window ‘The only headache bar in the world’. I was fascinated and found myself wondering did they actually sell headaches in this mad city?

A few steps on I saw the Marguerite, but as I did, I saw the Hotel Australia opposite. I had never been in before so I went in. It all looked very glamorous. The show cases full of glittering jewellery in the foyer, the people sitting in big chairs or standing and waiting looked very smart and famous. Just then a loud burst of sound which seemed to echo at the same time came from a door on my left. As I looked I saw it was a bar and started towards it feeling a little nervous, which seemed stupid because I went to Arthur’s and much worse places anytime I wanted to.

I opened the bar door and gaped. A huge room all made of marble stretched for hundreds of feet in front of me. It had bars running down each side, behind which stood glamorous barmaids, posted it seemed, one every twenty-five feet. I turned to my right and headed towards the nearest part of the bar. A woman with a hair-do that looked about two foot high stood behind the bar watching me as I got nearer, as I did I could see her huge blue eyes loaded with eye shadow and mascara. She had three beauty spots, while her lips seemed to be actually moulded out of lipstick. She looked like an enormous Alice Faye. She watched me advance, lowered her eyelids and playing with an orchid on her shoulder, leant forward, looked at me and said ‘Milk?’ Then she went into a great white-toothed roar of laughter, which the Americans drinking with her joined in. I was hurt and tried not to show it.

She looked at me, saying ‘Don’t be like that sweety, it’s wartime you know, come on, why don’t you have one of my specials?’

I asked her what it was.

‘It’s a beauty.’ She made the drink and said ‘There, “Rita’s Special”. You’ll love*it.’

I did. Two ‘Rita’s Specials’ later, I knew that I would have to go. As I started to, she said ‘Good-bye baby, and remember that when you drop in from now on it’s Rita who’s your girl for drinking with.’

I agreed and teetered out into a side street, my face burning like mad.

I felt quite drunk but very happy as I walked along until I came to the Theatre Royal. Currently running was a big musical comedy with a cast of seventy stars, or so the posters said. I looked and looked at all the pictures, checking every face and every scene. I was thrilled, here was the real theatre, a world I felt I would know as soon as I saw it, and how I longed to. While I was gazing at the pictures, I noticed that there was a lane running down the side of the theatre. The lane passed a whole lot of rubbish bins and went on through to a pair of enormous tall doors, beyond which I could see huge painted things, lights, and people in costumes moving around. As I looked I felt as if a magnet was pulling me towards the doors. I started walking in a trance towards the dustbins. Just as I reached them, another door to my right flew open, and out rushed a crowd of laughing people. They were dressed in costumes and had make-up on which turned orange in front of my eyes as the shafts of sunlight hit them in the face. I stood watching breathless with excitement. Also from beyond the big doors I could hear an orchestra playing.

The laughing crowd had disappeared down a few stairs and into another doorway on my right. I was standing near the garbage cans, lost in the music, watching people moving scenery around and humming the tunes, when there was a sharp click which was followed by a voice saying harshly ‘Eh mate, do you want someone?’ I looked, my dream gone. There to my right a hard faced man watched me from a little window which was below the sign saying Stage Door. He put his head forward and said ‘Eh you there mate, I asked, you, did you want someone?’ I looked at him and as I did I wanted to say yes, everyone, the music and all the painted things, but I didn’t. Instead I said ‘I’m just looking—’ He said ‘Well don’t. You’re not allowed here. This is private property, get out now. He was so sharp, but he was so in the right. I turned, filled with anti-climax, and started to walk back up the lane; a few steps later I passed the door all the actors had rushed into. A little sign said ‘Mockbells’. I looked at it as if it had said ‘Heaven’.

At the top of the lane I looked back at my painted things being moved around through the tall doors, and walked away. A few seconds later I found myself staring at a big sign saying ‘Mockbells Restaurant’. It was public, I could go in. I rushed down the stairs, through a small room into a big long low room. I was surprised at the room. I didn’t know what I expected, but whatever it was, this wasn’t like it. The whole room was lined with leather seats all round it, and dozens of marble topped tables standing in front of them. Sitting at the tables were many old men eating, talking and smoking, and nearly all of them playing dominoes. In fact the clicking of the dominoes was almost louder than the general talk or the noise of the steam coffee machines at the end of the room. Sitting near the machines were all the actors and actresses. As soon as I saw them I walked on into the restaurant towards them, feeling stupid but determined to get as near to them as I could. I found a table only two tables away, ordered a steam pudding with a coffee, and sat watching and listening to every little thing they said or did.

I sat with such attention that the waitress twice told me that my pudding was cold, but I didn’t care, I was too busy hearing all about ‘Earl getting all those bits downstage and not deserving them’. I also learnt that since Jean ‘couldn’t sing at all, it was a bloody outrage that she should get the understudy’. As I sipped my cold coffee, a girl called Margy told a story about a contract and a man called E.J. Every time she said E.J. everyone either winced in agreement, or started laughing. I longed to talk with them or even touch them. One or two looked at me but when they did, I thought of Miss Mert and seeing them there in their real stage make-ups and clothes, I felt terrible and looked down at the table. Just then a few more actors and actresses rushed down the little staircase. They were in different costumes and sat at another group of tables to my right. So I sat in between the two groups, the hiss of the coffee machines with the clacking of the dominoes on the marble tops forming a background for these exotic people, and me bug eyes in the corner. Just as a boy was about to tell a story, a man came down the small stairs and shrieked ‘Slaves, Auntie Haze wants you all in the fun factory now, and I mean now, dears.’ Instantly they all started paying bills and running up and out the little stairs. A few minutes later they had all gone, so I decided to go. As I did I longed to go up and out the same stairs, but then I thought of the man at the stage door.

When I reached Castlereagh Street again I saw a tram with the word ‘Quay’ on it so I climbed aboard. It jerked and rattled its way down the streets until we reached the harbour and the ferries. Once out of the tram the noise became deafening. I looked up and into the immense grey curve of the bridge, nearly getting knocked down by cars as I stared at it.

I walked across to the pier, bought my ticket, passed through the turnstiles on to the ferry, found myself a nice seat, and sat staring at the monster coat hanger. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. A vast grey arc of roaring rumbling sounds, that dropped down between its elaborate girders, fanned out from its sky scraper pylons, and down onto the ferry boat and me. As the ferry moved off into the harbour, the bridge with its lines of trams, trains and cars seemed to bend over towards us. And looking like dolls moving under the giant arc, I could just see people walking across it. Later when I looked up, it was receding into a murmuring half moon of grey blue steel. The ferry went on its way, I lay down on the seat enjoying the rhythm of the engines, the smell of the ferry and the harbour—then I went to sleep for a few moments.

When I woke up the bridge looked just like a photograph of itself against the sky. To my left, the city of Sydney stood in the distance as if rising up out of the water, against a background of pure blue sky. The only other things to be seen were a few clouds floating above it, which looked just like enormous dollops of mashed potatoes suspended in the sky. Looking at the panorama I thought ‘I really love you, Sydney.’

At last the ferry reached Manly. I looked at its pine-treed beach and fairground, and wanted to walk around it, but I knew I didn’t have the time if I was to be at the Marguerite by four, so I stayed on board, sitting this time around the other side of the ferry, looking at the Cross towering up above and apart from the city. The ferry forced its way back towards the increasingly noisy bridge: as we neared it a woman said to me ‘Marvellous aren’t they, these ferries. They came all the way from Scotland under their own steam you know.’ I was really tickled by this piece of information and was about to discuss it with the woman, when a warning bell rang in my head. I had another look into her eyes and realized that she’d love to come under her own steam, into and across my life, so I quickly said ‘Yeah marvellous,’ and then sat knowing I had hurt her and myself, till the ferry reached its berth.

I arrived at the Marguerite late. My little jaunt across the harbour had taken much longer than I thought it would, so I hurried in. The first person I saw was Beryl, sitting with a woman friend. I said hello to her, starting at the same time to feel uncertain. Uncertain of what I didn’t know, but the feeling always drove me into despair. I knew what I wanted to do and say, and how to say it, but every now and then I would get so confused and frightened that I would bungle even people I loved, as I was doing right now. Then to my relief I saw Cliff and Milly with some people, so I said good-bye to Beryl and moved gratefully towards them. They were with a boy and girl called Alan and Thelma. According to Cliff they had only recently got married, and, he added to their faces, were also quite crazy. We sat talking.

I looked around. I liked this café with its carpets, cane furniture and an atmosphere of calm living. We were talking away when Dennis arrived and we realized that it was nearly six o’clock. I was terribly happy to be with them, and with my day in general, after last night’s sordid collapse. They asked me what I had done all day so I told them all about it and Mockbells.

I was just in the middle of describing the glamorous actors and actresses when Thelma said ‘Is that who you mean?’ I didn’t understand what she meant, so she went on ‘Was the café next to the theatre?’

When I said yes I thought Thelma would blow up.

‘That bloody mob, God Almighty! Nothing but revivals, I can’t stand them.’

I was rather shattered at her outburst and slightly hurt by the force of it. I’d loved everything I had seen and heard during my brief trip to the magic world of theatre, so I said ‘But I liked them, they were so happy and nice to look at.’

Thelma cut to, ‘Listen flower, for years Australia’s had nothing but imported plays and second rate operas, all stuffed with worn out old foreign stars who can no longer get a job in their own country. Go on, tell me what they have done for Aussie theatre? “Where’s the real Aussie theatre, go on, tell me?’ I just sat feeling embarrassed, I didn’t know even what she meant. Dennis said ‘Come on soft pedal it a little, will you? We all know how you feel.’

Thelma leant back and rearranged a piece of clothing, and Dennis explained to me that not only was Thelma an actress and a very good one at that, but she was also the secretary and co-producer of a small but up and coming theatre club. Having calmed down, Thelma started to talk of other things. I liked her but I felt sad that my wonderful day had been spoiled. I got over this feeling as we all sat talking. Suddenly Thelma said ‘It’s Reppins time.’ Within two minutes, she had us all on our way round to Reppins Coffee House, explaining that she had promised to meet someone there.

As soon as we entered I knew it was different; it was full of actors’ noisy talk, smoke and the smell of coffee. I had never been anywhere quite like it. Thelma led the way through the crowded tables and up a small flight of stairs. When we reached the top she suddenly yelled ‘Up you all for the rent, if there’s no room.’ People squeezed and moved up into various corners and we jammed ourselves into one of the already overcrowded loges. A dumpy waitress with a tortured face came up and said ‘Suppose it’s the usual?’ Thelma looked her straight in the face. ‘Well cop you, what did you expect, Spanish fly all round?’ The waitress heaved a sigh and left muttering about ‘Theatricals’ and ‘side’. I was sitting next to Dennis. He tried to talk to me, but in order to do so, he had to yell in my ear, so loud was the din all around us, with odd voices saying ‘Doris, Oscar Wilde, and Stanislavsky.’ As they spoke Dennis gave me the low-down on all of them.

It appeared that practically everyone was either writing, acting, painting, or working in little theatre clubs, and all were budding geniuses. I was just happily watching and listening when Thelma’s voice said ‘What do you mean, you don’t agree with the Mercury’s aims? Orson Welles is the Jesus Christ of the Theatre! And do we need him here, go on, tell me who have we got here, just tell me?’ Immediately everyone started yelling and hurling names at each other. I saw the waitress arrive and thought she’d complain, but she didn’t, she just ducked cups of coffee under people’s waving arms, over their heads, or with expert split-second timing, round behind their backs. Then she slammed lots of little pots of cream down on the table and walked off. The row was growing steadily. Thelma had the whole joint involved by now and people at the other end of the café would yell ‘All right, why don’t you go to bloody Russia?’ or ‘What about Doris Fitton?’ Thelma took charge of the café, then, pulling a book out of her bag, started to read Hamlet in a loud voice.

As she was reading, a little girl I had hardly noticed leant across and said ‘Want some?’ I looked, she had a bottle of whisky; she poured some into my cup of coffee. Milly then said ‘Excuse me,’ and practically crawling over our knees, went out.

By this time Thelma had got up from the table, and was standing reading aloud to the whole café. She would read a little, then say ‘Now this viewed from Stanislavsky’s point of view, should go like this. “To be or not to be?” ’ A long pause during which she turned and looking at all of us with a tortured face almost yelled ‘ “That is the question” You see he knows, he feels.’

Just then a boy got up from a nearby table, walked over to Thelma and said with a very red face ‘That’s a load of balls and you know it.’

She turned on him. ‘I am a lady and this is a public place; watch your language Brian.’

The boy looked at her. ‘Since when did you care and when were you a lady?’

Thelma heaved a deep sigh. ‘Brian, as a dancer I’ve always respected your opinions in connection with the dance, but as far as the spoken word goes, for my money, you haven’t got an opinion to offer.’ She gazed in triumph at Brian.

He looked at her and said softly ‘But darling, you’ve forgotten one thing, as usual it is only you who are doing the speaking, I happen to be discussing the written word, the writer. Ever thought of him?’

At that second, much to everyone’s annoyance, the waitress walked into the arena saying ‘The manager says that he doesn’t mind the din, but are you all eating?’ Thelma took one look round the room and said ‘Twenty scrambled eggs on toast.’ The waitress went to a hole in the wall and said something. From the hole a voice said ‘Oh gawd, not again. They must be eggbound—’ Milly came back in with a small parcel and sat down at the table. She unwrapped the parcel saying ‘I just remembered I had this at the studio,’ and produced a small bottle of scotch which she passed around. This on top of the other girl’s liquor started to make everyone behave a little oddly, drinking coffee yet talking quickly with the sudden flashes of just realized truths and half-expressed ideas that only liquor brings. Thelma was just winding up a further agreement cum disagreement with someone when Dennis said ‘Let’s go and see Reap the Wild Wind.’ Cliff said ‘Let’s all go up to the Cross.’ Milly said she didn’t care what we did and neither did I, for it seemed to me that no matter where I went in this city of winding streets and cafés, I had only just to sit and life itself would turn on such scenes and situations for me to look at that it made going to films unnecessary.

During this discussion Thelma had been away from the table. She came back with a book and a list in her hand, saying ‘Well at least those jokers are paid up.’ Milly said ‘We think we are going to the flicks.’ ‘What did you say? Going to the pictures, putting more money into the Hollywood cesspots while the living theatre dies for lack of support. Now there’s a pair of two act plays on at—’ Milly interrupted Thelma: ‘Darling, I simply said we are going to the pictures. I don’t care who made them or where they came from. I’d sooner be there than sitting in some bug house looking at badly acted lost causes.’ For one second Thelma was taken aback. Then for want of something better to do she looked at her husband, who not having said one word since we arrived, was sitting quietly guzzling scotch in the corner, and busy mentally having the girl who had passed it to him.

Thelma shot him a beady eye. ‘Can’t you get your mind off it even for a moment? What do you want to do tonight?’

Alan looked up with sad blue eyes, which promptly turned sheepish as he said ‘Anything you want to do love.’

Thelma picked up her bag. ‘Look, I’ll clobber the daylights out of you if I get much more of this. I asked you what you wanted to do.’ Luckily for him at that moment the waitress appeared and started plonking scrambled eggs down, pushing purses, gloves, cigarette packets and all sorts of personal debris aside as she did.

We had all eaten and started drinking more hooch-laden coffee, when Dennis said ‘I know, let’s all go and see Madam Mystico.’ Everybody laughingly thought that would be a very good idea. I asked Dennis who she was. He said ‘She’s a bloody old crook, but she’s quite funny. She sells sly grog and gives seances.’ After a loud haggle over the bill we left the coffee lounge and made our rather noisy way down to Young Street, where there was a small row as to which was the house. Finally we found it. As Thelma rang the bell at the side of the big black door, everyone got a fit of the giggles. Just then the door was opened by a small woman who beckoned us into a large black hallway, through which we moved to a huge room in which everything was black. The walls, ceiling and floor were black. So was the heavy, exotically carved furniture. Once again a wave of the giggles swept over us. We were still laughing our heads off when a tall, pale faced, young, yet old looking man walked in. He was dressed in black and looked sick as he drifted towards us, ‘You rang?’ Thelma said ’No, I tolled.’ We all started to laugh again. ‘Please, please, ladies and gentlemen,’ implored the young old man, ‘Madam has had a lot today.’ Dennis said ‘Lucky thing,’ and we became helpless again. Thelma snapped ‘Quiet! ’ then turning to the man said ‘I’m sorry about this—’ and laughed like a hyena straight into his face. He didn’t even blink as he waited until she stopped. Then he said ‘Perhaps you would like some refreshments?’ We all agreed, so he led us into another room which was black and purple, and covered with signs of the occult. Masks and symbols glowed metallically all around us as we settled ourselves down. The young man said ‘Excuse me,’ and went off through some bead curtains. Milly got her bottle out and passed it around. By this time we were really laughing, only it was a different sort of laugh. There was something about the place which was sinister, not the occult part, but its plain unhealthly feeling, like the young old man. We were just thinking of going, when he and the little woman who had let us in came back with glasses and three bottles of wine on a tray. As he put the tray down he said ‘I’ve spoken with Madam, and since you are somewhat larger in numbers than is usual, she has agreed to give you a collective consultation.’ He looked at us, and the whisky bottle still sitting in Milly’s lap, and continued ‘So accordingly Madame has readjusted her fees. With refreshments included, the fee will be seven and six per person which is payable to me now.’ We began fishing out money and after swopping odd coins, handed up the right amount which the young old man took, and then left the room. Thelma started sloshing out the wine, as she did she smelt it and said ‘Strewth dreg nelly.’ We started drinking it and becoming stranger than ever. Just as we were really getting worked up and telling one another dirty stories, the lights in the room glowed a little more brightly, then dipped, after which there was a rattle of bead curtains and standing there was Madam Mystico.

She stood for a few seconds framed by the clanking beads. What she looked like was impossible to tell, because of the miles of veiling falling from some sort of head-dress, out of which came a tortured voice that said ‘You wish for my guidance?’ Dennis started laughing like a kookaburra. Then we all started. Madam raised a sparkling hand and said in a louder voice ‘Does the possibility of the unknown and the future, frighten you?’ Thelma said ‘No it doesn’t, but what I see now does. Look, let’s just drink our drain and then we’ll go away, O.K.? ’ Madam came forward. ‘Do not be overcertain my young friend, there are more things on heaven and earth—’ Thelma said ‘Oh! we know our Shakespeare, don’t we?’ Madam fingered a ring and played with her veiling for a second then turned, saying ‘Tristan, would you bring me my cards and the small Indian table.’ I looked around. Milly was pouring herself and everybody else wine. Cliff and Dennis were both choking with laughter, Thelma’s husband was sound asleep. I was feeling too drunk to stay awake or to go to sleep. The young old man brought the table and the cards in, Madam sat on a low sofa, and he placed them before her. We moved our chairs into a circle around her. As I put my chair into position I had a good look at what I could see underneath the veiling. There seemed to be nothing but beady eyes and pouches. At last some sort of order prevailed.

Madam raised her hand, saying at the same time ‘Let us become as one with the vast cosmos, let our thoughts be as one thought, and allow the rhythm of the infinite to reveal its—’ There was a sudden heaving noise followed by Thelma’s voice saying ‘Oh! for pete’s sake Alan, we’ve paid seven and six, can’t you even try to get into the spirit of the thing?’ Alan couldn’t. He was in the middle of being sick. Everyone started moving, and Madam yelled ‘Ethel, Ethel, bring a bowl quick!’ Ethel rushed in so quickly with the bowl that I felt she must have been watching and waiting with it in her hands. She went to put it under Alan’s face, but Alan had got up, and started running around making terrible sounds, crying and being sick all at once, with Ethel dodging around him with the bowl, and Thelma trying to help him in vain as he crashed through the carved furniture. Madam, who had stood up and taken off her veiling, seemed to be trying to cure him with looks and odd words. Thelma got Alan in her arms and was trying to help him when he turned, and in between being sick and sobbing, hit Thelma. She fell with a crash onto the table, at which Madam started yelling her head off, but she could barely be heard because Alan was yelling louder at Thelma, telling her that she was a stupid bully and that she could stick her ideas, methods, theatre and all, up herself and her bitch of a mother. Then he started bitterly crying.

Madam by this time was running round hitting all of us with her head-dress and screaming ‘Get out yer rotten little tramps. Go on, get out yer bastards! Get out, get out! ’ She needn’t have bothered, we were leaving. I had started to leave as soon as the row began. By now Ethel and the young man were saying ‘Madam, tis but earthly trouble, leave it Madam,’ and Cliff and Dennis were holding Alan. Thelma had picked herself up and was coming round when Madam burst out afresh, shouting ‘Be off, be off, the powers of the occult will punish you for this—’ Then Thelma pushed her right in the puss. Madam, silenced and stunned, swayed, then stood looking as the young man pushed forward, Thelma let him have it. He collapsed like a puppet with severed strings, she picked up a vase full of flowers and tipped it over him. Little Ethel had dropped on to her knees in front of the bowl and was loudly praying to the ‘white fathers’. As we left carrying Alan, Madam stood in some sort of trance. The young old man lay covered with flowers on the floor. On reaching the door Thelma looked back into the room and said ‘Now get the spirits to come in and do a bit of bloody housework.’ Once outside we all started to laugh again, and were still laughing when we found a coffee shop and went in supporting a trembling Alan between us.

It was a beautiful day, cloudless and hot. Every now and then a small breeze would stir the willow trees and the hibiscus that surrounded the blue tiled swimming pool. A radiogram was playing music somewhere, and I felt wonderful. I had just had a swim and was talking to a blonde woman called Meg when Deanna Durbin said ‘You will come to my party tonight won’t you?’ ‘Of course Deanna,’ I replied, ‘as one singer to another we must see each other more.’ Then to my slight annoyance Meg cut in ‘Jon, have you met Betty Grable?’ I said no and stood up to shake her hand, at the same time wondering whether I dared ask her if she really did use that soap. Betty smiled and said ‘Hello, nice to meet you.’ We settled ourselves down on the cane furniture. Then she said ‘How long have you known the Powers?’ I was just about to reply when someone I couldn’t see, said ‘Hey, come on, come on, louse, wake up. It’s a lovely day, louse, we’re going to Bondi.’ I woke up and stared at Bella. ‘How would you like to go to Bondi for the day? You haven’t been have you?’ I said ‘No I haven’t.’ Then she added, ‘There’s a letter for you.’ She handed it to me with a cup of coffee.

I started drinking the coffee as I opened my letter. ‘Dear Jon,’ it read, ‘I am so sorry to have made such a mistake, as I did the other night I never have before in twenty years of accompanying, and even now I don’t know what possessed me not to check the music. It’s a pity you didn’t stay, because Mr Winegarden got the back off the piano and we could have gone on with our little act. He sends his best wishes to you and wants to see you, as he is starting an orchestra. Hope to see you soon. Yours faithfully, Miss April Mert.’

I handed the letter to Bella who read it and said ‘Oh! well nix on that for now, I’ve been up for ages, come on, let’s go to Bondi.’ Bella was aglow. I had never seen her in such a gala mood. I tidied up my room, showered and dressed then stepped out into a hot, beautiful day. I really felt excited at going to Bondi. I went into Bella’s room, where to my surprise she had a wicker hamper full of food and drink already packed. As I was looking at it she said ‘Yes love, I really shook the Cross. I was up buying the grub at nine o’clock.’ I looked around the room. Bella had a grip full of things also packed and ready on her bed. To judge from the preparations I half expected to see a swimming costume for the dog already packed in a little bag.

The dog didn’t look terribly happy about going out, in fact it looked so downright miserable that Bella turned to it and said ‘It’s no use looking like that at me, you’re going out with us and that’s that. The dog started to look really hurt. Then Bella tried to put its lead on. At that it ran into the kitchen. When Bella followed the dog shot out and back under the bed. Bella and I both crawled under the bed and tried to drag it out. Finally Bella got it, picked it up, and as she cuddled it, said ‘Look you’ll love it, and you can have a swim and run around, won’t that be nice?’ Then as she slipped the lead on, she added ‘Just think of all the lovely things you’ll see and smell and all the beautiful trade you’ll get.’ The dog didn’t care, it just stiffened its legs and stared with a hurt look.

Finally we started out, Bella in a huge picture hat, cork soled shoes, handbag and leading the dog. I lumbered along with the hamper which weighed a ton, and my bag. After waiting a while we got on a tram, settled ourselves down, and off the tram went at about fifty miles an hour. We roared and lurched our way along streets like a mad bull on the rampage, bells jangling and wheels grinding. I had heard the expression Sydney people use for any sort of bum’s rush, or swift exit which was ‘Going through like a Bondi tram’ and now I knew why. The seats were made of a smooth perforated cane-like material, and were very hard and slippery to sit on. There were no other people on board and it seemed to me as I slithered here and there, that the tram was glad of this, because it did all but kick its heels up. Faster and faster it roared, swerving around bends, then plunging down steep hills and inside we slipped and slid up and down the seats that ran its length. Actually by this time I was starting to get worried. The dog had slithered into a nervous whimpering heap, while Bella, holding on to her hat, was yelling everything she could think of at the conductor. He didn’t hear her or me, he just stood outside on the running board, singing the Boogie Woogie Washer-Woman at the top of his voice. At last the tram stopped, but it stopped so quickly that Bella, the hamper, the dog and I slipped the full length of the seat and all wound up in a heap on the floor. We were just trying painfully to pick ourselves up from the floor when Bella’s portable radio started playing One Night of Love from inside the bag. A smell of gin and beer filled the air. The bottles had broken inside the hamper.

We sorted ourselves out, grabbed things and got off the tram. Bella went ahead and before I knew it I heard her saying to the tram driver ‘Listen mug, if I was a man I’d come up there and knock the bloody daylights out of you, what do you think you’re driving—a cattle truck?’ The driver pushed his hat back on his head and said ‘What’s the matter, something biting you?’ Bella blazed ‘Oh funny pants are we? Well listen, bum face, I’m going to report you good and proper, just you try and take a rise out of me and I’ll come up there and bash you black and blue. You bastard, you ought to be flying zeros for the Japanese, not driving trams.’

By this time I’d put this hamper down and was holding the dog. I looked at Bella and nearly laughed out aloud. The wire in her hat had become all bent, so that the hat looked more like a big pastry pie cover. Her dress was all disarrayed, and hanging from it was a tram ticket which had stuck to a piece of chewing gum, and waggled every time she spoke. By this time Bella was writing the tram’s number in lipstick on the side of the case and saying ‘O.K. so don’t give me your name, but it doesn’t matter now, because I’ve got your number. But let me tell you something, you’d better start driving properly from now on, and you’d better be nice to everyone you meet, ’cos you’ll need them all when I’ve finished with you.’ She then moved over to me. She was furious and I could see that she was also shaken. I felt very sorry for her. As I pulled the chewing gum off her frock, she tried to straighten her hat out. We rearranged ourselves in general, then opened the hamper. All the food was soaked in beer and gin, and everything had pieces of glass in it. I carried the dripping wreckage across to a rubbish bin and tipped everything in except the cutlery and one or two unbroken plates. Bella said, ‘Jon I need a drink.’ I could tell by her face that she did. Come to that, I wanted one too.

We went into a bar and sat down. Just after we had ordered a man came up and said I was under age and would have to leave the bar.

Bella looked at him. ‘My son’s eighteen today and that’s why we’re here to celebrate.’

The man had another look at us, the shivering dog and the liquor stinking hamper. ‘Been to a party?’

‘No,’ said Bella, ‘the bloody Bondi smashed everything,’ she pointed to the hamper: ‘That’s why it stinks.’

I could already see several bruises appearing on Bella’s arms. The man asked Bella whether she was shaken. Bella confessed she was.

He said ‘Look, give me the basket and I’ll wash it outside in the gulley trap, and there’s a nice powder room over there.’

Bella went off. I sat looking at myself and found several sore places on my body, but the dog seemed to be all right. Bella came back and had a large gin. I felt upset about her having gone to all that effort and thought to surprise me, only to have it ruined. I told her so and she agreed and was particularly angry about the liquor. Then she brightened, ‘Ah well love, we made it, we’re here, and anyway it’s my fault, I should have got a cab, but I’d forgotten about the Bondi. Shows how long I’ve not been around.’ We stayed on for quite a few drinks, in fact we swayed our way out, rather than walked, leaving the hamper at the bar with the dog since the man told us that it wasn’t allowed on the beach.

We walked down to the beach huts and separated. I changed into my swimming togs and waited for Bella, feeling rather embarrassed. Everyone here in Sydney wore tiny bright shorts for swimming, and I only had my old costume from school which was full length with shoulder straps. The more I looked at it, the more like a woman’s costume it looked. Finally Bella appeared, carrying a beach umbrella. I took it from her and we walked down to the beach itself. It thrilled me, even though it was not as pretty as I had imagined. But the curved sweep of sand made up for any disappointment, as it ended with cliffs at one end and rocks at the other, framing thousands of golden bodies all sunbathing, eating and playing around in front of the moving backdrop of blue-green water. I stood watching as a wave would roar in towards the sand, reaching a height of six or eight feet, rear up into a vast wall of water like the walls of an aquarium, pause, lean over to the point where it would crash in a glittering sparkle of foam on to the sand, then quickly withdraw as the next wave used it to launch itself. Often poised on the waves would be a golden figure astride its surfboard as it shot forward towards us like a flying statue.

We put up the umbrella and settled ourselves down. I was surprised at Bella in her beach clothes. She had lovely young legs and arms, and looked even smaller than before. As we lay talking she became quite gay again. In the middle of telling me how to surf, she suddenly said ‘I’ll tell you a secret louse, with a little bit of luck, I’m going to have quite a lot of money shortly, enough to buy a nice house on the north shore and have my son with me. Would you like to live in a house on the north shore?’ I said that I didn’t know and besides I loved the Cross so much. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘don’t tell anybody, but years ago I set a customer up in business and he’s never forgotten. Well, the other night he dropped in and told me that under the agreement his lawyer and I worked out, I should have about ten thousand quid! Cripes louse, just think, ten thousand bloody quid!’ We both were thrilled to the core and lay thinking of all the things that could happen on ten thousand pounds. Then I decided to have a swim. Bella warned me about the undertow but I was quite a good swimmer so I wasn’t too worried.

I hired a blue rubber surf board and walked towards the giant walls of water rolling in. As I got close and stood watching them, I became a little frightened and would have gone back to Bella if I had not felt too much of a fool. The noise and the surf really scared me, but then I reminded myself that hundreds of people were already in, and looking happy about it, so in I walked. The heaving mass of water lifted me up, but clutching my surfboard I managed to swim through and breast a few waves, and started quite happily to head towards the deeper calmer water, beyond the breaking surf waves. Suddenly a wave picked me up, and pushed me and the surf board under. In a second I was being squeezed and pounded by the sheer weight of water. Down and down I went gasping and kicking and fighting for my life. I hit the bottom, and even amidst the roaring noise of the water felt the sand and shells cut me as I rolled around the bottom. The next thing I knew the wave had passed and I was in only two feet of water and could stand up, and the surfboard was bobbing about a few feet away from me. As I went to get it, another roaring wall of water fell on me, rolling me over and over till I found myself lying on the sand at the water’s edge, crushed and gasping for breath. Just then another wave hit me and something hard knocked me flying. It was my surfboard. I picked it up and went back in. After a few more bashings and near drownings, I found myself knowing which wave to breast and which to turn around and go with.

Then the magic moment arrived. I was now out far enough into the water to be able to see and judge the waves before they actually became waves, and to tell which one was the one to ride in. I chose it, lay on the surfboard and felt the glorious feeling of being lifted high on a swift silent wall of water, then soaring at an incredible speed towards the beach like a bird on top of the wave. Only this time there was no gasping fight for breath in the shallows, I just shot up and on to the warm sand. I stayed fighting for the next good rides for an hour before I joined Bella for lunch.

During lunch I discovered that I was bruised and covered in thousands of tiny cuts from the shells but I didn’t care, I’d surfed. Bella knew, she just said ‘It’s got you hasn’t it?’ It had, and I couldn’t wait to get back into the great waves.

After lunch we were sitting talking away about Winegarden’s orchestra when out of the corner of my eye I saw Eris and Barry approaching. I hadn’t seen either of them since that night which now seemed so long ago. But as I watched them get nearer the feeling of it came sweeping back over me, like some half recalled nightmare. I felt dreadful and didn’t know what to do.

‘What’s come on you?’ Bella asked.

‘Eris and Barry are coming.’

‘Who are they?’

I reminded her. She said ‘What are you going to do?’

I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I picked up a piece of newspaper and started looking at it intently.

Bella said ‘Look love, let me give you a quick talk to. Say “Hello”. You’ve done nothing wrong to them, never try to get out of anything by ignoring it. Once you start that caper, it’s like lying, you have to keep it up. Anyway, it’s a bloody waste of time. I’ll tell you love, it’s harder to ignore someone than to be ignored. When you ignore anyone, you’re ignoring yourself, now go on, stand up and meet them.’ I did, but felt myself back in the kitchen all over again.

Eris saw me first. ‘Hello pet, how are you? Do you know, we’ve so often thought about you, haven’t we Barry? If I’ve meant to ring you once, I’ve meant to ring you a thousand times. We worry about you Jon, are you taking care of yourself kid?’ Finally she stopped.

All I could feel at that moment was blazing hot sand on my feet and a sadness at her needless lies in my head. Barry said ‘Well, he looks well on it.’ ‘You haven’t met my friend have you?’ I asked. They had their twentieth look at Bella underneath the umbrella, and I introduced them. Eris looked as though she would like to wipe the suntan lotion off Bella to get a better look at her. Bella said ‘Hello, I’m interested to meet you, Jon has told me so much about you and your trip up together.’ Eris moved just a little, clearly puzzled by Bella. She was flat out wondering just how much Bella knew, and how well she knew me. Barry said ‘Well we must be off. See you soon Jon.’ Eris kissed me, saying ‘Yes pet, do let’s meet soon,’ then looking Bella straight in the face, but still talking to me, added ‘Take care of yourself darling, you’ve still got a lot of tricks to learn haven’t you?’ and off they went.

I sat down fuming and started to say almost aloud to myself ‘We worry about you, take care of yourself. You bastards, I could have been dead in the gutter for all you knew. You hurt me.’ I was still angrily muttering when Bella cut in ‘Listen louse, if you ask me you had a lucky escape and you couldn’t be better off. If you’d a stayed with them you’d a got hell. True, I know the type. After they’d taken everything they wanted from you and made you into a nervous wreck, they’d have blamed you for the lot, including their own guilty consciences. No, you’re well out of it all.’ As I sat staring at the sand I knew that she was right, but they had started it, and that was the thing that really enraged me. I’d never originated any of our joint plans, or asked them for anything.

Bella turned on the radio and we started to talk about the ten thousand pounds again, and everything she would do with it. By the time we’d finished, Bella was living in a house, with a swimming pool, not on the north shore, but in Rose Bay. Her son was with her and going to a top school. After we’d decided on two cars, Bella set her heart on white fox furs, but since they dirty so easily we agreed that she would need two sets of those, one to wear while the other was at the cleaners. Later on came twenty new dresses and a special little house in Bella’s garden near the sea for me. This was followed by a cook and two servants. Then came a luxury flat in the Cross for business, a persian cat, a monkey, and two berths booked on the first luxury cruise after the war to Bali. Bella thought a grand piano would add tone, though neither of us could play. I was all for a yacht instead. Just as Bella was wondering if diamonds would really suit her, I thought I’d go for a swim and asked her if she would come in too. ‘No love, I’d fall to pieces in there, the only water I like is in my bath or with my drinks.’ So I picked up my surfboard and ran down to the water, feeling as I ran in that this time I knew the ropes.

I skimmed along troughs, crested and caught waves and was having a marvellous time. There were not too many people in, so I was singing at the top of my voice as happy as a duck when I became aware of people waving from the beach. I looked around but couldn’t see who they were waving to and thought ‘That’s odd, I don’t know them—’ then more people began waving and yelling something I couldn’t hear. As they were joined by a man waving a flag and blowing a whistle, one word came across, ‘Sharks’. Fear shrunk my actions. I started to try to paddle the surfboard with a desperate terror and say to myself They don’t come into the shallows they—’ Then to my horror I realized that I was much further out than I thought and I was going out to sea fast. The undertow had caught me. I fell off the surfboard and swam with all my might feeling the unseen undertow pushing against me and pulling me under. Also I was waiting with dread for the first bite from those awful jaws. In front of me the people on the shore were yelling louder and jumping up and down. Then I remembered that I had heard that if you yelled and thrashed about sharks go away. That was no help because I was already doing both. I was yelling, sobbing and gasping, while I thrashed away for my life, and screaming at the top of my voice ‘Oh God save me!’ as I’d get near the beach one second, and then the next I’d be drawn out and under. Then I’d find I’d touched the sand. Just as I would try to run through the sucking, dragging water a wall of water would boom down on me and there I’d be eight foot up in the air swimming on the top of the water, with enough room for ten sharks to get me from underneath. I was just thinking this when I saw something dark near me, I screamed at the top of my voice and fought till I seemed to be running on the surface of the water itself, then a wave picked me up, hurled me into the air and threw me out on to the sand where people grabbed me.

As they did a woman said ‘Look!’ I turned my head and saw a wave coming in like a glass wall and in its middle, the long dark shape of a shark. I turned over, trying not to faint as a man started pressing me up and down. Gallons of water seemed to be coming out of me. A few minutes later he carried me up the beach and put me down somewhere. I couldn’t see or hear properly for the noises going on inside my head.

Drowsily I heard Bella’s voice saying ‘You all right now? Gawd you scared me love, you didn’t look at the flags.’ They gave me something strong and strange to drink, and I slept for a while. Then I got up and went back to Bella, feeling worn out, sick and embarrassed, as I passed people who looked at me. That was close, kid,’ someone said. I felt a stupid fool. Fancy coming to Bondi and thinking I could do what I liked, or for that matter, fancy the nerve of approaching Sydney with that attitude. I sat down with Bella. ‘It’s the hard way all the time louse, here in Sydney,’ she said. I looked at her and nodded, but when I looked back to the rollers and sea beyond, I was surprised to find that my breathless gratitude at just being alive had already given way to a feeling of deep regret. I knew that I would never happily swim in the open sea again, anywhere in the world.

The orchestra finished playing Deep Purple in foxtrot tempo, Mr Winegarden put down his violin, clapped his hands, gave everyone a break, then called me over. I walked over to him wondering ‘what now you old stinker?’ As I reached him he pointed dramatically to a hand-painted sign saying ‘Do you like it?’ I looked, there in discreet but ugly colours, the bill read ‘The King’s Cross Orchestre, available Socials, Receptions and Balls’. Way down underneath in small letters, it said ‘Vocalist Jon Rose’. Winegarden said ‘It’s the new permanent sign. Do you like it?’ I said yes. Looking at it now was quite a thrill, which was more than the last few weeks had been.

After I had borrowed right left and centre from Bella, for an evening suit, music, shirts and shoes amongst other things, we opened, not quite successfully on our first night. It was at an Irish ‘Shamrock Ball’, at which some of the dancers thought we were not playing enough ‘swing’. This preceded a series of weddings that began swathed in white tulled restraint, and ended up more like small battles in some bargain basement. These were followed in turn by smoke-nights and, horror of horrors, dances which were interrupted in the middle, by well advertised ‘Amateur Talent Competitions’. As if this wasn’t experience enough, none of us so far had had a penny. Even Miss Mert who played the piano was softly starting to mutter ‘Well I ask you, where’s it all going to? I mean it’s bad enough without having to work with him,’ looking at Wilf, the drummer. Wilf was always half drunk, which was the reason why Winegarden got him so cheaply. But nevertheless he was the only decent thing in the entire orchestra, and I had quite a fondness for him. He’d drummed his drunken way out of a dozen orchestras before us, but he never felt sad about it, or excused or explained himself with self-pitying laments. He’d just say to me ‘Well it’s as simple as this. When the booze gets me I lose all cares, and most of the things I’ve ever loved.’ ‘Never drink kiddo,’ he’d say, ‘drink’s like some damn slut of a woman who doesn’t care for you, but allows you to go on having her, just so she knows you’re too tired to have anyone else.’

One day I was sitting talking to Wilf during a break in rehearsal, when Mr Winegarden said ‘Now tonight’s booking is a dinner dance on the north shore.’ I felt slightly fed up. Everywhere we went was miles away, and even though I knew I was improving each night, and could at last dare to ask someone from the radio world to come and see me, we were always so far away that I didn’t like to. Later we broke for three hours which included lunch, so I decided I’d go up to the Arabian. I was eating away when a man’s voice said ‘Could I share with you?’ I nodded, moving the music to one side, and he sat down. I had a good look at him. He was small and birdlike, with a swift smile, grey hair and very bright dancing eyes. I felt that I’d seen him somewhere before. As I went on eating he said ‘My name’s Tim O’Reilly, what’s yours?’ I told him, and then he said ‘How do you do, Jon’ in such a way that I knew that he wanted to talk, so I gave up any idea of having a private lunch-time think, and talked to him.

After a little while he asked me what I did. I told him with rather uncertain pride, that I sang with the King’s Cross Orchestre. He seemed immediately excited and said ‘Where, on the radio, or the Roosevelt Club?’ ‘No,’ I confessed, ‘we play all over the place.’ I then described the orchestra including the musicians personally, and the type of work we did, and he told me about himself. He’d done everything from working in Singapore and Hong Kong to selling health foods all through America in the depression. He’d had a business in New York, two in Chicago, and obviously loved America deeply. So much so that every time he mentioned it he grew terribly excited in a strange way. It was almost as if a sadness born from a thousand American memories threatened to burst out of his body. I sat fascinated by this little birdman. He’d known Hollywood when Mary Pickford was Hollywood; he had told fortunes at fairgrounds in England, and lived high amongst the roof tops in Paris. We became firm friends as I watched him change into some sort of exotic international butterfly in front of my eyes. Lunch over, he suggested that we go to his office which was nearby. Just for the hell of it I agreed, and went not knowing what to expect.

After we had wound our way around lanes and the backs of buildings, we came to a door on which was a notice—‘Chicago Health Foods Company Inc’ A short journey through a passage brought us to a room stacked almost to the ceiling with packets of every shape and size, and barrels of herbs that had an overpowering smell. Off it was another room that had nothing in it but a typewriter, a stack of phone books, a bed, hundreds of envelopes and a telephone. Tim offered me a drink but I said I couldn’t drink when I was working, and anyway I didn’t really like it till the evening, when the sun was down. I settled for a glass of milk, and drank it while he explained his business to me. It appeared that when he was living in Singapore, he had known a Chinese woman who had given him various herbal secrets, secrets that her family had for a thousand years kept to themselves. By the time he had finished talking she sounded so wonderful that I asked him to tell me more about her. He looked so hurt that I promptly asked him something else. As he was about to reply the phone rang. Tim answered ‘Chicago Health Foods?’ Someone was ordering. I looked at the clock—it was time I started back to bandcall. Tim then asked me if I’d drop off a few packets of herbs on the way. I said ‘Of course.’ He went to a cupboard, took out some envelopes and put them into a box. After wrapping it he gave it to me along with his phone number, and the address I was to take the packets to. With that I left.

As it happened the woman who wanted the herbs lived on my way back to rehearsal. I found the flats, went up to her door and rang the bell. After I had waited a while the door opened and from a dark passage, a man’s voice said ‘Come in.’ As I entered, the door shut behind me. I was just thinking ‘What a curious flat—I when the man put his arm around me, saying ‘You’re new aren’t you? Come in here.’ It was only then that I noticed him. He was at least six foot tall and stark naked. Also he trembled a lot. As I rather hesitatingly went into the room with him, a woman in a housecoat came towards us, saying ‘You’ve got it?’ and looking at the packet. When I handed it to her I noticed that she too was shaking, so much so that she nearly dropped it. Then she looked at me in a sad way and said ‘Would you like to stay?’ Before I could say no the man said ‘Yeah, let’s all have a good time.’ I said I had to go. For one sinister second I thought they’d never let me. Just as I got to the door the woman came up and said ‘Here kid, this is for you,’ and handed me a ten shilling note. I was stunned. ‘Fancy,’ I thought, ‘ten shillings for just delivering a little packet of herbs.’

We rehearsed all the remainder of the afternoon, then at six o’clock started out in fine fettle for the dinner dance. It was a great success. Some hundred and fifty people danced away to us, Miss Mert played her head off and Wilf was wonderful. I did my big spot during which I sang a song called Slap that Bass which I particularly enjoyed singing. The only accompaniment consisted of Freddie on the bass with Wilf in the background on the wire brushes. Tonight its rhythm got everyone, so we had to repeat it. In fact everything we all did that night could have been repeated. I arrived home at two-thirty exhausted but beginning to feel like a real performer. Even Miss Mert and Mr Winegarden told me I was on the way home.

When I reached the house it looked rather dead. I knew Bella had a regular, but hoped that she might just be up. Once in the passage I could see a little light coming out of her open door, and the dog came up to me. I said ‘You there Bella?’ There was no reply so I peeped into the room. Bella was lying on the bed. She moved just a little. ‘Are you awake lovey?’ I asked. When she half raised herself, I could see that she had been crying.

She looked at me for a second. ‘Hello louse, I’ve had a proper bastard of a day, come and sit with me.’ I went over, sat on the bed, and lit a cigarette for her. With the extra light from the match I could see that she really looked awful so I asked if I should make a cup of tea. She agreed.

As I went towards the kitchen she said ‘Let’s have a drink instead and I’ll tell you.’ While I was pouring some brandy out Bella began ‘You know all that money I told you about?’ I nodded. ‘Well it’s not bloody well there.’

I looked at her, feeling absolutely dreadful.

‘The cheap phoney,’ she continued, ‘I’d started to grow a little worried when it didn’t come through, so I went to see a lawyer and he told me yesterday that my contract’s not worth the paper it’s written on, it’s not even made out in his real name. There’s nothing I can do louse, I’m stonkered.’ Bella began to cry.

I tried to comfort her. I’d never seen a woman weep before and it upset me terribly. The more I tried to comfort her, the more clumsy I seemed to get. After a while she stopped and decided we ought to have some black coffee with the brandy. I went out to the kitchen to make it, and tried to think of ways of making money—lots of it.

We sat talking for along time and Bella grew brighter. Then I told her all about the night and how it had gone, but somehow we got back on the subject of money mid her disaster. Three coffees and brandies later we were tiredly laughing when Bella said ‘Let’s all go to bed.’ We put the dolls at the bottom of the bed, then she and I got in with the dog sitting in the middle, and sat drinking and talking very softly, like kids who know they shouldn’t be awake, and who are frightened that their parents might find out. Finally Bella said ‘Oh well that’s that. But you know I was rather fond of him. I’ve known the hound for years and years, and I’ve always given him the best. Still it’s my fault, I’ve always known a standing cock has no conscience.’ I knew what she meant and tried through my tiredness to tell her before I fell asleep.

The next day I had lunch with Tim again, during which he asked me if I’d like to work with him. I could please myself what days I worked, but he’d give me a pound for every day I did. I explained that often I never got home before 3 a.m. and so wouldn’t feel like working the following day, all of which he understood so completely that I accepted his proposition.

That night and the next we were working at a Town Hall not terribly far from the Cross. This was very nice not only because it was near the Cross, but also because it meant that we could leave the instruments and music there, and come home without spending hours packing.

The next morning I rang Tim and went to his office-cum-flat. We spent all the morning packing herbs up into little boxes and pasting labels on them. This particular lot were for ‘General health, well being, and regularity’. ‘Just place half a teaspoon on the tongue and wash down with water’ read the instructions. From then on the little herbs went to work giving one a lighter step, brighter eyes and an air of near ecstasy, plus, amongst other things, ridding the system of all toxic poisons. I left late in the afternoon clutching a large box of herbs for Bella and me, gave them to Bella, changed, and got a tram to the Hall.

As I arrived there was quite a crowd outside. I was terribly excited to see so many people buying tickets, but as I got nearer I could see that that wasn’t what they were doing, and I also saw about twenty policemen. I walked round to the back entrance. Once in, all seemed to be confusion. People were running everywhere, and sitting on a chair was Miss Mert saying ‘Oh dear, oh dear, dear, dear!’ in a tone of voice that sent remembered thrills of horror up my spine. As I went to ask her what was wrong I heard Mr Winegarden’s voice saying ‘Well er no, well er, no it wasn’t actually a Stradivarius but it was made by a pupil of his and was considered to be as good—’ Another voice then said ‘Well, was it insured for three thousand pounds?’ Mr Winegarden replied ‘Oh! a ahem, I’m not quite sure what the actual sum is, but I can tell you it is quite a considerable amount.’ I asked Miss Mert what was wrong. She turned a pair of agonized glasses up towards me ‘Everything, everything, they’ve stolen and smashed everything, all the music, my lovely blue frock and Mr Winegarden’s violin. Isn’t it dreadful? And to think he’s played that violin before Royalty over five continents, after it had been created by the master himself.’ I almost laughed in her face. I’d hated that violin ever since it first seared its throbbing way into my life at Arthur’s, and I couldn’t bear the way he played it. The orchestra wasn’t bad until he started playing in his winging, phoney gipsy way. I walked over and on to the stage itself.

Then I saw the whole awful mess. The floor was covered with torn pieces of music, the piano was wrecked and soaked with water. Wilf’s drums were slashed open and bashed in, with his broken sticks lying on the floor beside them. Everything was utterly ruined, even the music stands were bent and twisted. It looked as if a tornado of hammers and knives had come and gone, and with it, the King’s Cross Orchestre. I searched around hoping I’d find some of my music. I picked my way through a heap and just as I found a piece of These Foolish Things I smelt the stench. Someone had used it as lavatory paper on stage. I dropped it with a surging feeling of anger and nausea. Later on, we all went back to the Club and sat around talking in an over bright manner about the new orchestra, which made me terribly sad, because at the back of my head I knew, even if no one else in the room did, that there would never be another King’s Cross Orchestre. I was lucky, I’d only lost my music and had worn my dress suit home, so I still had it. But the others had lost the instruments that were almost part of them, things which they loved. An hour later I went home.

As I walked in Bella came out with an evening paper, and holding it out towards me said ‘Oh gawd I am sorry louse, really I am.’ I took the paper from her and looked at the stop press. It simply said ‘Vandals wreck Town Hall, breaking open bars, causing extensive damage to fitting and electrical equipment.’ Then as an afterthought it added ‘also destroying some of the King’s Cross Orchestre instruments’. It ended by saying that the dance that was to be held tonight had been cancelled. I thought of the pathetic, and putrid-smelling wreckage all over the stage, poor drunken Wilf’s beloved drums lying gashed and flooded with muck, and felt as if I’d cry. Bella said ‘Come on now, you’re growing up you know. Too big for tears now. Have some coffee and some brandy instead.’ We sat drinking and talking until some clients arrived.

I rang Milly and went out into the night to meet her, trying as I went to feel better about it, and telling myself that at least I had my nights free and I did have a job with Tim by day. But even though Milly understood, and the night was warm and interesting, I was glad to crawl back home to bed.

The next day as I worked with Tim, he was in very high spirits and full of the joys of living. The orders were pouring in, also he had a new idea that he wanted to start off. It was called the ‘Know Yourself Course.’ He explained that it was to be a home course for busy people and families to do at night. During lunch he told me all about the course. It appeared that when he was in America he had met and become involved with some very rare people in the South, who amongst other things, knew all the secrets of the pyramids. These tombs apparently contained the secret of life and how to live it, but before anyone could learn these secrets, they had to do a course, the one he was currently drawing up, and learn about themselves. I was ablaze with desire to know the lot, pyramids and all, right then and there. But, Tim assured me, it would take even me a few days to cover some of the mysteries. So we went back to work. Tim was very happy I knew, because whenever he was, he would start singing ‘Beans, beans the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot.’ Over and over, and yet over again he’d sing it. At first it drove me mad but then I got used to it.

I told Bella about the course and she said ‘How much is it?’ I said I didn’t know and she said ‘Well when you do, tell me, and I’ll tell you how good it is.’

Tim and I worked away for some weeks during which he’d say in a very casual way ‘Does chalk scratching on a board put your teeth on edge?’ I’d give it a think and then say yes, or another time he’d ask me ‘Do heights make you dizzy?’ or ‘if you think of fleas do you itch?’ Yes of course I did, like mad. This reply seemed to please him and he’d nod in an ‘I thought so’ way.

The Chicago Health Food Inc. went from strength to strength, and I used all of mine as every night I staggered to the Post Office with loads of packets. Also during the day I quite often made five to eight trips with special orders to people’s flats. I got bored with these trips because the customers were nearly always either downright rude, full of the shakes, or very often rather frightening. In fact I got so fed up that I told Tim so one day. He stopped humming the beans song, and said ‘Do they tip you?’ I told him that they did, and sometimes even tried to give me a whole handbag full of money. He gave me a deep piercing look and smiled as he said ‘Well as one fly to another, if the lump of sugar you’re sitting on now is sweet, grab all you can and complain after it’s gone, okay?’ He then went on to explain that as from today we were to concentrate on the ‘Know Yourself Course’. Then we spent hours folding the pamphlets in a certain way for putting into people’s letter boxes. I was to go out and deliver them. Just as I was leaving, Tim had the snap idea that for every six I put into the letter boxes, I should try the personal touch and call on people with the seventh. This idea filled me with dread. However, out I went.

After I’d bunged about fifty pamphlets in letter boxes, read a film magazine and had five cups of coffee I tried my first personal touch. Walking into a block of fairly sympathetic looking flats, I saw the name of Mrs Stonk near a bell and I rang it, and stood wondering what the hell I’d say, while I waited for the door to open. Then I started to get the giggles. Suddenly a woman opened the door. I leant forward and was about to say ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Stonk—?’ but I didn’t. Instead, I just stood laughing in her face, trying in sheer desperation to control myself, but I couldn’t. I snorted and ha ha’d until even Mrs Stonk herself started to laugh. We both stood laughing at one another for fully a minute, after which I plonked a copy into her hand and fled down the stairs.

One evening as I was heating some food in a hurry, Bella came into my room and said ‘How would you like to live in Potts Point?’ Of course I couldn’t wait to, but how and where? She saw my look then said ‘Put that muck away and we’ll pop down to Arthur’s.’ Arthur’s that night was wonderful, mainly because it had been jealously guarded by the regulars, and was one of the few places not full of drunken Americans with newly initiated tarts. Arthur nowadays even served fairly good food. Bella and I ate away, and she explained that some Japanese midget submarines had one night crept into Sydney Harbour and fired a few shells. The result was that the very next morning flats were being deserted by the dozen. If a couple of midget subs could get in, the thought of what a really big one could do at such close range was frightening. So Bella, along with a few other brave souls, went and bought flats for a few pounds that a week earlier would have cost ten pounds a week. Bella explained that the flat she had bought and let was now empty, and that she felt she would like to live in it herself. Would I like to live there with her?

I was excited at the thought of living in Macleay Street, but living so close together in a flat instead of a house was different. I had privacy of a kind in my room outside, so I hesitated. Bella must have read my thoughts because she said ‘I’m not trying to box you up louse, there’s a sort of little flat beside it that you could have and it’s got its own entrance as well.’ I was thrilled and agreed to come.

The next day we walked up to the flats. They were large, pleasant and old-fashioned, and sure enough there was a room off the staircase with its own entrance, a tiny shower and lavatory as well. I looked at it and thought that with a few coats of Kalsomine, I’d have my own little flat. Bella had quite a large place, and could even keep a private bedroom, which she was already starting to call her ‘Island of Peace’. We both went quite mad, and began running around the flat, planning this and that. There was a small haggle as to just where the palm tree would go, then a great decision about the dolls sitting around the widow sill. On and on we went in a seventh heaven of planning till I had to go back to the ‘Know Yourself Course’ and herbs. Late that afternoon I had to take a delivery to a house. I found it, walked up through the tangled garden, rang the door bell, and stood waiting for the usual misfit to open it. But I was surprised to find that it was opened by a pleasant-faced fat woman in an apron. After I’d explained who I was from, she asked me to come in and follow her.

We walked through quite a large house, out into the garden behind, and up to a studio building at the back. When we reached it the fat woman knocked on the door and ushered me into a big, wide room. There, sitting beneath some carvings, were two women and a large coloured man playing cards. I asked his name and when he told me, I gave him the packet. As I was leaving he said ‘Just a minute kid,’ and fished around in his pocket for change. Whilst he was doing this, I noticed one of the women watching me with sharp blue eyes that peered up at me through a thick head of red hair. She said in a low liquid voice ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ I looked at her, I didn’t know if she had, and I couldn’t think what to say if she had. She cut in ‘Yeah I remember now, didn’t you sing with the King’s Cross Orchestre?’ I nodded and even felt a little thrill of pride as I did. The head of red hair turned to the coloured man. ‘You remember Claude, that “do” we dropped in on, you know the night Stan didn’t get through.’ Claude had a good look at me and then said ‘Yes, now I do.’ The woman looked at me, nodding her head towards Claude as she said ‘He runs the Bamboo Club. You could do with a real singer Claude, why don’t you give him a try?’ I immediately felt excited and worried all at once. I knew all about the Bamboo Club, in fact there was hardly anyone who didn’t. If legend was right, it was a blind for many things, including the quick-let apartments upstairs above it. It was also a well-known battleground for brawls between molls, part-time ‘girls’, and white and coloured troops, amongst other things, but at least to me it was a club with a proper orchestra and waiters. Claude looked me up and down, thought for one tense moment and then said ‘Okay, come along Thursday night and do a turn. If the customers like you, you’ll be in—’ For a second he studied a shirt button, then added ‘I’ll give you fifteen bob a night for three songs, and five and six for every encore, how’s that?’ That was fine by me, in fact it was almost Hollywood. I had turned to go when Claude said ‘Call my pianist up on Thursday and rehearse with him at three.’ I thanked the fat woman as she let me out, and went on my way home with my mind full of happy fantasies and slight fears.

Bella paused in the middle of painting a toenail when I told her about the Bamboo, but finally agreed that at the very least, it was nearly a professional engagement.

For the next few days neither Bella or I quite knew what we were doing. After I’d packed the herbs I kept on stuffing more pamphlets into letter boxes during the day. Then in the evenings I helped her to sort out and crate the extraordinary collection of rather sad and useless things for the move. We’d be working away, just having really decided what to do with something, when she’d spy and drag out an old box full of old letters and photographs. This meant that two hours and five gins later we would decide that it ‘would have to go’. The things that hovered near doorways prior to going and then were later secretly put back were so numerous that we had rows. I couldn’t see the point of it all, the amount of effort that went into moving things that were ‘to go’ only to move them all back, seemed to be downright stupid. We might just as well have decided to take everything from the photographs right down to the dog, who sensing the change went into a state of decline obviously remembering her last and only trip out in years.

The next thing I knew it was Thursday and I found myself standing in the Bamboo Club trying to talk to the pianist. He looked all right but either he couldn’t or wouldn’t, talk. After I’d explained myself at some length, all he said was ‘My name’s Nedge, how many numbers, and how do you want them?’ I went through them with him. Afterwards, without saying a word, he marked the music, got up from the piano, said ‘See you at ten o’clock’ and left, leaving me sitting among the cigarette butts on the bandstand. A little while later I walked out of the club feeling utterly bewildered. If only he’d shown a little warmth I’d have been his slave for ever. I got into such a state over his off-handedness that I found myself longing even for Miss Mert on the way home.

As the evening wore on I got to the stage of shaking violently every time I even tried to imagine walking on to the stage of the Bamboo. Bella was busy, so I couldn’t even talk to her. The next thing I knew I was ringing Milly, Cliff, anyone to talk to. But either they were out, or had friends there and couldn’t talk. At 9 p.m. I was physically sick and lay on my bed covered in a cold sweat, praying that I’d die and be found in the morning. Then everyone would be sorry, including those who weren’t home, or couldn’t talk to me when I rang them.

I started to get myself dressed, longing to be going off with the King’s Cross Orchestre, and all the familiar things I knew that went with it. I walked to a milk bar and had whipped eggs, but I was upset as I drank them, because a Frank Sinatra record was playing. And that depressed me because he had all that success, and a dirty great orchestra to back him up as well.

Then I had an idea, and made up my mind firmly to stick to it. What I’d do would be to walk down to the bay, marking time as I looked at it, then march back at the same tempo when it was Bamboo time. Then, still moving I’d stomp straight into the Club, and mark time again until I went on to the stage. Once there I’d sing the songs and march straight out, without having stopped moving once.

I was working it all out as I walked down the street, when I ran slap bang into big Beryl. As we kissed one another, she said ‘What’s the matter with you love? You look sick.’ I told her, she smiled sympathetically and laughed as she said ‘Come into my joint.’ Once in she turned to me. ‘Now sit down. No sit, I didn’t bloody well say perch, I said sit. Right. Come on, undo your tie, now off with the shoes. Come on, we haven’t got that much time, now start deep breathing. No, not like that, really heave away. Now drink this down in two gulps. Come on, get it down.’ When I had swallowed it, she took my hand. ‘Now listen to your dear old Bushels Bursting Mother, I’ve been in the business all my life and I know a performer when I see one. I tell you love, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Just go out there, smile, and give your heart to them, they’ll take it; everybody wants love, or confirmation of what they believe in. Now just you get up there and give it to them, forget everything else, nothing else matters, not even if the roof falls in or your pants blow up. The only thing that’s real is the fact that you’re up there and no matter in what way you do it, tell them that you’re glad to be there with them. Will you do that, promise?’ I did, we had another drink and I left, having promised Beryl beforehand that I’d meet her for coffee in the morning and tell all. ‘And I mean All, every dirty little bit love, okay?’

I arrived at the club, it was ablaze with lights and racket. I squeezed my way through two drunken American soldiers who were in the middle of a slight disagreement about value of the two girls they were to spend the evening with, and found Claude sitting with the red-headed woman in the bar. They seemed rather pleased to see me and obviously wanted to talk, but I screamed with nerves to such a degree that it was impossible for me to hold a conversation. After I’d rather clumsily explained this, Claude, who seemed to understand, took me into and through the club. I didn’t dare look around at anyone in case the slightest thing threw me. We found the band room and went in, and to my annoyance I found that even it had people in it. Claude then said ‘You’ll be on at ten fifteen after Nedge. You ran through with him this afternoon, didn’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, thinking at the same time, ‘should I tell him that that was about all we did do?’ But Claude was already leaving the room.

I sat feeling nervous and vaguely frightened. What did Claude mean by ‘after Nedge’? Just as I was trying to work it all out, one of the people in the room, an American sailor, said ‘Hey there kid, wanna drink?’ I flinched. Apart from the drunken invitation the voice had intimations in it that alarmed me. I looked hard at him as I said rather overbrightly ‘No thank you,’ and saw that he and his two companions, a girl and a soldier, were very drunk. He said ‘Whad d’ya mean, no thank you, everyone likes a drink. Why ya here then?’ I tried to look uncaring as I replied ‘I’m singing, and I don’t drink before I sing, I don’t dare to.’ With that he leapt up. ‘So ya sing do ya kid, well that’s, great. Look, I come from Hollywood, ever heard of that place? Well it’s full of singers, I know them all, Dick Powell, Bing Crosby, them all.’

I was in a panic, even if I’d never seen a sailor before I would have known his type. Already he’d swayed his way over to me and had begun trying to touch me, half falling as he did. I kept on smiling and said as I pretended to steady him, ‘My name’s Jon, what’s yours?’ But he didn’t hear, he just kept repeating ‘Come on, have a small ‘un, go on, don’t be a crabapple, have a small ‘un. Come over here.’

Meanwhile I was flat out appealing for help with my eyes to the soldier and the woman, but they just sat watching with smiling lips and unseeing eyes. There was nothing I could do, the sailor stood some six foot tall, so I said as loudly as I could ‘Okay just a small one, all right?’ But it was too late, by this time he’d half dragged me over to the table and put the bottle of whisky to my lips spilling it all over me as he clamped my shoulders in a vice-like grip. Then he lurched back and sat down on the chair, grabbing my arm, and lolled murmuring about Hollywood. I sat, trying not to annoy him or appear unfriendly as I tried to withdraw my arm.

The next thing I knew I heard a voice saying ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ this was followed by an uproar of cheers and applause, over which I heard ‘and now for your enjoyment your old friend Nedge.’ There was another burst of noise, and Nedge started to sing in a flat nasal voice. I really became terrified and tried to talk to the girl and the soldier, but they were so drunk that they could only look back at me with eyes like poached eggs, as the sailor kept on holding me tighter and talking about Hollywood. I grew more angry and upset, my hair was all ruffled, a button had come off my jacket, I was drenched in whisky and at any moment now I had to go on. I could hear Nedge, he was singing almost dirty words to popular songs. At the end of each confidently put over song, there would be a roar of applause, during which my agonized mind knew that I had to follow all that, and here I was drink sodden and held by a drunken sailor. I started to get really desperate and tried to pull myself clear of the sailor; everytime I did, he’d mutter something like ‘No Momma no’ and clutch me more tightly. I kept saying ‘Help me, please help me’ to the soldier and the woman, touching them with my free hand, but nothing stirred them. Finally I yelled at all of them and kicked the table into the air as I did so.

I’d just got free and was starting to adjust myself when the sailor jumped up and yelled ‘Trying to roll me you bastard.’ Then he lunged at me. As I saw him I went to pieces and ran out of the room calling ‘Claude!’ at the top of my voice. I saw Claude sitting with some people and ran up to him trying to tell him what was wrong. Something hit me spinning me round with its impact, and in turning I saw the sailor. He was just about to hit me again, as he bellowed ‘That little tramp’s rolled me,’ when Claude said ‘How come, when your wallet’s still in your pocket?’ The sailor paused, fist in the air and looked. There was the little wallet sticking out of his top pocket. He at once became sheepish. ‘Geeze, I’m kinda confused. I’m fuzzy, sorry kid—’

Claude rushed me up the passage, and back into the room. He was helping me to straighten myself a little, when after a wave of applause had died down we stared at one another, as we heard Nedge say ‘Thank you folks, thank you all very much. And now it gives me great pleasure to bring you a star new to the Bamboo. I present Jonny Rose.’ The band played something quick and urgent. Though I’d not heard it before I knew it was for me. In one second, forgetting everything except my pounding heart, I walked down the stairs and into a big burst of applause. Nedge was playing and I felt rather than heard myself singing the beginning of These Foolish Things to a hundred half-lit faces. As soon as I started all the faces turned to one another and started talking. Glasses clinked, bottles appeared, and powder puffs flicked. Black faces above white sailors’ uniforms leant forward kissing the pink ears of redheads. The dull gleam of countless identity bracelets shone as they curved around and up into many hair-dos of different colours. People squirmed, laughed together, or just fused into one lump. I finished the song in a state of agony: immediately I had everybody went mad as one person: they cheered and stamped for more. I stood stunned for a second, then started the next number: it was followed by the same thing: the third number produced an enormous racket. I bowed and went off, came back and said ‘Thank you,’ then left again.

As I stood in the band room, I thanked God the drunks had gone. Also I felt I could bawl. They were still yelling for more. Nedge was also calling me. I walked towards the doorway, but the band had already started up. I sat down, feeling exhausted and heartbroken. They hadn’t even listened, let alone cared. I could have stood there singing Rescue the Perishing in Zulu for all they had heard or known.

A minute or so later Claude came in, looked at me for a moment, then held out his hand. In it he had a glass. ‘Drink it, you’ve earned it,’ he said. The glass was full of brandy which burned, but I was glad of the shock it gave my throat and my stomach. Claude continued ‘If you still want to work here, you can. I’d like you to do a fortnight, lay off for two weeks, then do another two weeks, how’s that?’ I looked up at the big coloured man, he was smiling, but otherwise nothing else came through to me. He said ‘Look, let me know tomorrow, O.K.?’

I said yes and was about to say something else when a voice said ‘Where are you louse?’ I simply yelled ‘Here, in here Bella!’ Never in all my life had I been so glad to hear a voice, yet at the same time I dreaded facing her. The whole evening still swayed in front of me, and hurt me at the back of my eyes. I felt such a failure, and now I realized with horror that she had been out there all the time.

Bella came in, saying ‘Well done, louse, well done louse!’ As I looked at her, I felt terribly moved. I knew it hadn’t been well done, but here she was, all dressed up and warm. Bella said ‘I’ve turned on a spread. Come on love.’ As we started to go she said ‘Oh, meet Chris.’ A tall American air force man said ‘Great, Jon, just great,’ as I shook hands with him. Claude left the room as Bella squeezed the back of my neck, saying ‘Good louse, you’re my boy.’ Then I pretended to look for something in the room, and tried to believe at least something of what they had said. Either I couldn’t, and would spend the night back in my room in tears, or I would believe them, and live it up to the hilt.

As we reached Bella’s table, which was right at the back of the club, my heart leapt up and sank at the same time. There, sitting at the table, were Milly, Cliff and Alma, who was with an American that I had not met. I was touched at their being there, yet I knew that they had seen the awful mess up, so once again I had to decide to live it up. We sat down and the night started. Cliff, Bella, Milly and I yelled at one another in a very publicly private manner. Later we all left, and went to Chris’s flat. Everyone started telling stories, and Milly made some food. I felt rather drunk, but was having a wonderful time until I fell fast asleep on a couch. Later, after being carried out of a taxi, I could just remember saying to Bella and Chris as they put me to bed, ‘I was all right, though, wasn’t I?’ Their soothing replies were muffled by the sheets being pulled up around my ears.

I didn’t work the next day with Tim, but at five o’clock I went up to the Bamboo and ran through the songs with Nedge again. He said nothing at all during the rehearsal, but just as I was leaving, he said ‘Listen, kid, spare your feelings, just throw it at them, remember this joint’s just a booze-up dump, so cut out the artistic feeling stuff, O.K.?’ That night, as I was standing waiting to go on, Claude came in saying ‘I’m sorry about the Yanks last night, but I didn’t think they would be a trial. Anyway you can see there’s no one in the room tonight.’ I thanked him. Nedge was half way through his act, which was going just as it had last night. Claude turned to leave the room, hesitated, coughed a little, then said ‘Er—Jon, could you er, do me a small favour? When you’re on, would you just keep an eye on some of the girls for me?’ I looked at him, not understanding. ’What I mean is, some of them don’t play the game, they just duck upstairs and don’t tell me, and so the whole club loses money; I’d be grateful if you’d just keep an eye on those nearest the stairs.’ I gaped at him, not knowing if I should laugh or walk out. Before I could do either, Nedge’s voice announced me, and I was on.

A few days later, Bella and I moved into the flat. The funny thing was that from the very moment we did, we and our lives both changed. Even things we had never thought of wanting or wishing for came true. The dog sat all day looking out of the windows, her ears stiff with excitement. Bella looked and felt better, and I was tickled pink with my flatlet.

By now I had grown to know the Bamboo and in some ways I had become quite fond of it, and of a few of the customers and girls. The nights were very curious. After the usual soul-destroying bedlam of my fifteen shillings’ so-called appearance, I would often go back in and sit with some of the girls and their friends. After that, I would sometimes wind up the evening wondering why I bothered to live.

There would be people around me who were grown up, ugly, plain or interesting, and each fighting the nightly battle of starting, forgetting, or finishing. There they would sit in pairs, the girl often sad because she had to charge the man she was with, who was nearly always an American. Sometimes after I’d watched a particular scene, I used desperately to wonder what else there could be to living.

Often, the American would pull out and display pictures of his wife and children back home, loudly telling the club how much he loved them, as if they were some sort of talisman for his soul’s safety. Then he would proceed to create all hell for anyone with or near him. Often a beautiful girl would have a man half demented about her and some night that they had shared, not so long past. He would do everything he could think of, including asking me to sing her favourite song, to contact her, but she would sit smiling and using the same tricks she had used with him on someone new. Sad as I felt for and about them both, they were the types that I learned within a few nights never to talk to. I finished my first week at the Bamboo having earned my fee and five and sixpence extra for one encore, only because Alice had turned up one night and clapped for so long that everyone else in the joint started up again. Claude looked just a little put out as he handed me the five and sixpence separately.

That night, when I got home, there was an urgent message to ring Tim. I did, but there was no answer. Just as I put down the receiver, the telephone rang, and a woman’s voice said ‘—and where the hell have you been, may I ask?’

Half way through this gentle inquiry, I realized that it was Thelma. I asked her how Alan was.

‘In control for the present. Are you going to this drag ball on Saturday night?’

‘Not to my knowledge, and anyway, whose is it?’

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter, it’s just a dirty big “drag do”.’

‘Well, how do I get invited?’ I asked.

‘Leave that to me, I’ll soon fix it. You must come, I’m going as Captain Hook.’

After we had finished talking, I sat down and thought about it. I’d been to many parties of all kinds, but never to a proper big drag ball and I wanted to go very much. In a city which adored parties, there was one sort of party that everyone tried to get into despite religion or their current moral beliefs. And very often the uninvited public as well, usually via the press. And last of all, but not least, the police. ‘Better than Berlin prewar, my dear,’ was a mild description of the last one, I’d often been told. It appeared that this time, to avoid the usual chaos, it was to be exclusive, tickets and all. After I’d told Bella about it, we sat laughing as she told me of others she had been to years ago.

That night, as I lay in bed, my mind wandered its intrigued way around the Cross and visited various flats that I knew. I knew that from tomorrow on, many of the flats that I would pop into would be busy with the noise of sewing machines. Wigs of every shape and colour would be being carefully dressed, to say nothing of the yards of satin and taffeta that would softly swish and suddenly disappear from under many a department store counter, along with the pieces of costume jewellery that would evaporate from around models’ necks in many a shop window. Yes, I just had to go to this one.

The following morning, Tim woke me up by telephone. He apologized for ringing me at seven o’clock in the morning, then added that he had to go to Brisbane urgently on business; so I said ‘That’s all right, I’ll look after the place, and answer the phone.’ Immediately he said ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t go near it, I’ll contact you, goodbye.’ Then he hung up. I put the phone down, knowing in my heart what had happened, but not being able to put it into the right words for my mind to reason out. At the same time, I started telling myself to find a new job and sat down tweaking the palm tree, feeling depressed. Every job I got seemed to fold up in some curious mess. I still had the next week at the Bamboo, but what could I do after that? I was no nearer to being on the radio than I had been in Melbourne. If anything, I was further away.

A few days later, I looked around for a job, and found two. The first was cleaning up and making up beds in a so-called private hotel. As I was starting on niy first room I took one look at the state of the bed, grabbed a bottle of perfume, poured it over the bed and walked out. My second job was pressing clothes in a garment manufacturer’s. It was stinking hot and I had never done it before, but I knew I could learn fast, so I started. I liked the incredible collection of girls who sewed away, also I liked the management: they, it appeared, liked me too, until late in the afternoon of the first day when, busy as a bee, I went to swing the twenty-five pound steam iron over the board, and on to the coat, and I missed. They picked me up from the floor, then the smashed iron, wrecked ironing board, and ruined coat. After that even I agreed with the management, that I just didn’t have the strength to be a presser.

I collected my fifteen shillings and went down to Usher’s Hotel for a cool beer and stayed on till the 5 p.m. swill started, wondering as I sat why everything I did always wound up being worth fifteen shillings. Also, I was getting sick and tired of always lying about my age; socially, it was good for me to be eighteen, but as for work, I was in a mess. I was now well over seventeen, which I didn’t dare admit, because no one wanted a boy about to go into the army. So I had to stay sixteen for work and go on pretending that I had always lived in Sydney. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the nearer I approached eighteen, the greater my dread became of having to go into the army. Both my heart and soul told me that although I would be no good to them, they would be even worse for me. Not that I didn’t want to do my bit, but it depended what the bit was. In fact, I would do almost anything for anyone except become just another uniformed number.

As I had guessed, the news of the big party soon spread, and became the centre of many a conversation. Milly insisted that I should go as Peter Pan, she intended going as Georges Sand—we would make up a party. True to Thelma’s word, my invitation arrived. I read it out to Bella. ‘You are invited to a Gala Drag and Drain party. Only those in drag and with invitations allowed in.’ The price of admission was twelve and sixpence, which included food and drink, cabaret, a show-girl parade, and also a real orchestra. It was to be held in a hall quite near the Cross.

Everybody started to think like mad of what they could make and wear. Preferably something that would wreck and put to shame every other person’s costume. And sure enough, as I suspected, everywhere I went people were working away like beavers. Arnold put it around that, after a lot of research, he had discovered that the Queen of Sheba was in fact rather old when at the height of her powers, so beware any other Shebas. Zoe, as she nightly moved around her darkened club, kept up an ominous quiet, but rumour had it that she had something up her sleeve which would rock everyone. As the excitement mounted, rumours ran riot. If Frank Sinatra wasn’t actually going to sing, he was at least going to be there. The worlds of the theatre and society were flat out trying to get invitations. Also, an added promised joy was the possibility of Australia’s greatest professional female impersonator—Lea Sonia himself, was coming in nothing more than a diamond headdress and four pekingese on leads.

Meanwhile, I did my nightly ignored stint at the Bamboo. One night, after I had finished and was sitting talking to Claude, a little man came up and said ‘Excuse me, I’m from Radio Station 2GB.’ I looked at him—I had heard that song before. He said ‘Would you like to sing on the radio?’ Of course I would, so we talked about it for some time. He gave me his phone number and I gave him mine.

Then I picked up the material for my Peter Pan costume and left, making my way to a friend’s flat, where Milly was waiting for me and the material to finish my costume. The further we got on with the costume, the stranger it looked; it was Peter Pan, but it was so brief and so tight that I began to wonder. Everyone else said it was marvellous, so I stood being jabbed with pins and stitched up. Just as I was getting used to the idea of the costume, a boy who was a hairdresser drifted in with his girl, took one look at me and said ‘Ash blond, that’s it, ash.’ But I felt that this was going too far. Milly said ‘Why not? Leon can dye it in the morning, and dye it back the following day.’ I didn’t agree. Rich mouse I was, and I felt I had better stay that way. During the next few days I thought I had better find another job. ,

I finally found one’ which after promising to love, serve and obey the firm, its ideals and directors for ever, seemed as if it might do. The job was selling high-class groceries in a large shop. I felt slightly caged after my other jobs. Whacky as they had been, they had at least been different. It seemed strange turning up and clocking in, having to put on a white uniform and with it take off any personality I had. The rest of the staff were nice, but seemed only half alive after Tim or the café. During the coffee breaks, they would sit, telling one another coy, slightly dirty stories which made me squirm, because though the stories were never actually dirty, they were crammed so full of repressed desires that they seemed to me to be even more indecent.. I used to sit, half awake, hearing all about their small worlds of store intrigue, Saturday night hops, and hopes of getting married. When anyone asked me where I lived, I would reply ‘Up at the Cross,’ and immediately notice their, eyes either widen, or often, harden, as they said something like ‘Well, of course, I’ve heard about what goes on up there, I have a cousin who went there a few times… .’

The selling part of the job was easy, even though I used to turn up to work so tired I could barely see the labels. All the work was just a matter of routine and common sense, but that didn’t seem to be enough for the management. To further confusion and sales, every other afternoon we had to go up to the lecture hall, where a bogus posh lady stood waiting to teach us the art of salesmanship. For my money, after watching half a dozen of these so-called demonstrations, if I had been the customer, I would have thrown the goods back. But it didn’t worry me, because I hardly saw much of anything. After the first five minutes, during which I realized that nothing new was coming my way, my head would seem to become full of warm winds on which floated beautiful voices that talked to me from far away. I would grow incredibly drowsy, then as the winds and the voices grew louder, my head, feeling as if it was made of warm lead, would slowly tip, nod and sway its way towards the table and a total blackout. I would be hauled up amidst laughter at the beginning, but after they had tried everything, from opening windows to turning up or down the air conditioning, the mood turned to one of annoyance, and hurt dignity on the part of the lady lecturer. The strange thing was, that when I had come to, she would ask me what she had said, I’d tell her, get up, sell a packet of Goo with great charm, then go straight back to the desk and sleep. This happened every day, and caused such chaos that they even got a doctor to see me. He looked at me, I looked at him, but neither of us found anything wrong with me, so I went on sleeping, no one having had the idea of just leaving me below selling away.

The first few days there, and my last nights at the Bamboo, were as different a combination of sensations as, say, the ice-cold cream on top of a boiling hot cup of Viennese coffee is. The change from the organized and fostered feeling of security of the store to the savage individuality or the club excited me.

At last it was Saturday. Nervously I went to Leon’s to have my hair dyed. By this time it seemed that I would have been a raving misfit not to have it dyed. I sat bewildered, and rather frightened as layer after layer of frothing stuff fizzed all over my head and in my ears. In the middle of the dyeing Thelma arrived with a suitcase and Alan in tow. We had arranged to meet and then go down to Milly’s where we would work out the final arrangements. Finally, after several rinses, Leon said ‘There.’ Thelma took one look at me and yelled ‘Hamlet!’ I looked into the mirror and got the shock of my life—the image that looked back at me was me, and yet it wasn’t. It was as if I had suddenly been slipped into another body, and I didn’t like it. Yet even as we sat drinking coffee and I constantly looked at myself in the mirror, I started to get used to it. After I had made Leon swear to re-dye it Sunday afternoon, we left. When we called at my flat on the way down to Milly’s, Bella took one long look, and said ‘Well, I like it louse, but for God’s sake, watch yourself—you know what I mean.’ The day wore on, full of double takes and people making pseudo-sexy sounds as we walked up to the pub at lunchtime. By the time I had arrived at the Bamboo I just didn’t care. Claude looked and said nothing, and whether it was my new hair or just Saturday night, I don’t know, but my songs reduced the place to a stamping, yelling uproar. As I left I felt rather sad saying good-bye to Nedge and Claude, but glad that I would see them in a fortnight’s time. Meanwhile I would rehearse a new act with Nedge in the early evenings.

The new ash blond me sped through the Cross and down to Milly’s, where all was chaos. Thelma, dressed as Captain Hook, had already knocked over a bottle of wine with the hook, and then caught it in the radiogram. Alan, a very reluctant and ineffectual looking little pirate, was flirting to the point of no return with Leon’s friend, a plump girl dressed as Dorothy Lamour. Milly was a rather drunk, top-hatted Georges Sand, complete with a large false book made of of wood and a riding crop. Leon was covered in mirrors and paint, and was supposed to be something from a Salvador Dali painting. Milly add Leon started covering me in gold paint; as soon as it dried I dressed, then Leon combed my hair into a pixie-like shape, and swamped it with lacquer so that it set and felt like cardboard. After a few more drinks and one or two near rows, we set out on our way to the first port of call, which was Arnold’s.

Walking along Macleay Street, we passed several clusters of people all going to other places before the party. Outside a café we saw two men with two Amazon sized glittering showgirls, one of whom was trying to explain to a rather stunned taxi-driver that they wanted the such-and-such hall. As we drew level with them, the other befeathered girl said ‘Hullo pet, see you?’ I looked at the six foot of copper-coloured, diamond flashing body, and recognized the voice of Freddy, who worked in a local chemist’s shop. Ringing Arnold’s bell, I found myself wondering how the Queen of Sheba would look made out of food, fruit and vegetables. She wasn’t, she was covered in gold lame, veils, and moonstones, the only fruit being a surprising and rather beautiful head-dress made of pomegranates and vine leaves. Cliff and Dennis were dressed as Greek soldiers. Also in the house were ten other people, including two Carmen Mirandas, one of whom was frantically trying to turn herself into Dolores del Rio.

Some drinks later we set off in a small fleet of taxis. As we approached the hall, we could see a crowd of at least two hundred gazing with stunned eyes, as group after group of the most exotic and fantastic people passed up the stairs, and in through the main doors. Arnold’s Sheba drew an enormous half cheer, after which he turned, and quite loudly thanked them for being such happy peasants. Once inside the hall, the heat, noise and crush was fantastic. It was only midnight, but the ball was well away. A drink and a dance later, I began to sort out friends hidden in or behind lavish costumes. A somewhat surprised but happy orchestra played away below the stage, which was and would be till cabaret and showgirl parade time, curtained.

Meanwhile, all was gorgeous bedlam: half the theatre and radio world seemed to be there, as well as quite a few people who, one would have thought from listening to their usual comments on life and people, would sooner have been found dead in the nearest gutter than be seen at such a degenerate ‘do’. Amongst other games was trying to use the lavatories: if I went to the gents’ what seemed like a host of hair-arranging girls shrieked all as one, ‘try the ladies’,’ and a lot of gentlemen yelled—wonderful chaos. The ball bashed on: some two hundred dressed up souls danced, fainted, talked and drank away, all waiting for the big moment when the cabaret began and after it, the prize winning showgirl parade. I was sitting on the floor, listening to Thelma’s ideas on theatre, when a sudden strange silence almost descended. Some people stood swaying on the spot instead of dancing, others, glasses half way up to their mouths, froze and stood looking towards the main door. Thelma and I couldn’t see anything, so we stood up on a windowsill in order to see what was going on.

Once up, we saw the enormous white figure standing in the entrance, its head-dress swaying and glittering. By this time, the crowd had parted, and I recognized Zoe. Then I looked up near the bandstand: Sheba was sitting on a big chair, being fanned by Carmen Miranda, and the now Dolores del Rio. I looked back at Zoe—three little boys painted black stood around her, each one holding a piece of her vast white feathered cloak, which had floating panels falling away from it. Zoe, now sure of her audience, paused, then pulled a satin cord. As the cloak fell off, a gasp went up. Even the orchestra nearly stopped playing. She walked forward, her tall white head-dress swaying above her glittering, silvered eyelids and white lips. She had long, white feathered pants on, which ran up to her thighs and then stood out at the back like a bird’s tail. The rest of her torso was naked and painted white from her loins to the cups of her breasts, the upper parts of which, along with her neck, were her natural glistening black skin. As she turned slightly, I could see loops of pearls and roses beginning at the tops of her legs and running down into a tail-piece. She raised one white-fingernailed hand in acknowledgement to the thundering roar of applause that went up. The orchestra played with renewed vigour, the evening slipped back into gear. The black and white goddess moved forward, accepted a drink, raised it as she tilted her head-dress towards Sheba, and then drank.

Thelma and I danced, but we had so much trouble with the hook that after she had almost unknowingly hooked at least three people’s wigs off, she left to find Alan to unstrap it. I found Milly, who was busy trying to find somewhere to put her giant book that she was sick of carrying. She didn’t mind the whip, but the book was much too bulky. We dumped it down the back of a seat, and stood watching the dancers. I had never seen such a crowd. A person dressed as Pola Negri danced past us with someone who had come as a candle and was covered in wax. Milly and I counted at least eight Carmen Mirandas, most of whom glared at one another. Only one didn’t seem to care and danced round gayly throwing fruit and beads at people, utterly enjoying his or herself. There was a fanfare, and the curtains swung open on the stage, then a microphoned voice said ‘Ladies and —er—Gentlemen, it’s cabaret time, so could you kindly, and please comfortably, seat yourselves.’ There was a loud buzz as people found places to sit either on the floor, or on one another. Slowly, as the bedlam subsided, an expectant hush gradually forced its way over the hall, the compère walked into view, microphone in hand and stood smiling from the stage.

‘Good evening, I hope you are all comfortably settled?’

There were lots of shouts of ‘No’ after which there were odd complaints like ‘How can a birdcage sit down?’ or a quite genuinely desperate utterance of ‘What can I do with this bustle?’

The compère stood professionally smiling and waiting till everyone was settled. ‘As you know, no expense has been spared on tonight’s fabulous show, so I won’t waste any of your time by going into the lavish account, I’ll just present to you our opening number. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Triss Troupe!’ With that the orchestra struck up, and on to the stage bounced eight very big-limbed, and over made-up ‘lovelies’, to the tune of The Fleet’s In. Four minutes later they kicked their way off with a last raucous ‘Hey There Mister, you’d better watch your sister—’ to a great roar of applause.

The compère came back on. ‘Thank you, thank you, now for the first glamorous act tonight it gives me great pleasure to present none other than the fabulous Miss Lana Turner.’ There was a round of applause and Lana swished onto the stage nearly bursting out of her white gown, dripping in jewels, and flailing an enormous feather fan. She walked downstage, looked the audience full in the face, then began singing Please don’t Talk about Me When I’ve Gone, and doing things with the fan that made sure people would never stop talking about her, or for ever after look a fan in the face with the same calm as before. She finished and swayed off to an enormous hand.

As the uproar died down, the compère came back on stage, paused for a minute, took on a look of mock respect and announced in a rather awestricken tone of voice that there had been a change in the programme. A change, he hurriedly assured us, which was nothing short of the miraculous. It appeared, that though the lovely ‘Dildol Sisters’ couldn’t be with us, thanks to some smart celestial shuffling the next act we were about to be privileged to witness was none other than Dame Nellie Melba, who would sing some of her favourite arias for us. She would be accompanied at the piano by ‘Miss Tilly Trade.’ This brought another big hand. During the applause a little old woman walked on to the stage, stood in the centre, curtsied, put a pair of glasses on and sat down at the piano. She then took off eight rings, dropping each one with a bigger clang than the last, and to a bigger laugh. Then she put on another two pairs of glasses, one on top of the other, had another look at the piano keyboard, paused, took out a false breast and began wiping the keyboard and the rest of the piano down with it. When she was satisfied that they were clean enough she stuck it back in behind the beaded bodice, gave us a toothless grin and started to play Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark.

As she played, a noise which sounded like a cross between a very old soprano’s top note and a banshee, shot out from the wings, and was followed by an enormous Nellie Melba. Nellie, when she finally hove into view, wore an old-fashioned dress with an eight foot train, a frighteningly red wig, and a giant tiara. She also carried an enormous lorgnette, which she used to look the audience over with, or to bop the lady at the piano. When clouted Miss Trade started to cry loud and bitterly and refused to play. Melba did her best to coax her into playing again, but she wouldn’t. After Melba had offered her her ear rings and finally practically everything she wore, she threatened to get her pearl handled whip out—at which Miss Trade threw her hands in the air, uttered an ecstatic little cry, and played like mad.

Melba finished the song with the crowd practically cheering: during the applause she fished a bottle of gin out of her vast bosom took a swig, then walked over to the piano and poured some over Miss Trade’s hair, which immediately stood right up on end. Tilly got up from the piano and taking her wig off, sloshed Melba with it, wrung it out and put it back on. Melba, who’d looked a bit stunned during this, started fishing around in her bosom again. Finally she pulled out a whip and said ‘Back to the keys!’ Miss Trade flew back to the piano. Melba adjusted her tiara, saying ‘I’ll correct this -wayward slip of a thing, later… !’ then with a sideways glance to the pianist, said ‘I will now sing the Jewel Song.’ Tilly started playing and Melba began singing. After we had nearly been blasted off the floor with a series of Wagnerian shrieks, we suddenly noticed that as Melba sang, her already mountainous breasts started to grow bigger and bigger. The further on she went through the song, the larger they grew. Hundreds of eyes popped, waiting for the bang.

It came. not from Melba up on the stage, but from the back of the audience somewhere near the front entrance. At the same time voices-yelled out. The tall windows down either side of the hall opened, and in through them hurtled and dropped what seemed like dozens of policemen. As soon as they hit the floor, bedlam tried to break out and nearly succeeded. Then the main entrance doors opened, and police fanned through them irito the hall, making lots of chaos-causing, sounds as they did. Some people panicked, but most were too paralysed with shock to utter or move. Melba, who’d nearly strangled on a high note, stood dead centre of the stage, glaring. The leading cop walked down the middle of the hall saying, as he either walked over people, or knocked them flying ‘Come on down, you poffta’. Melba put her hand on her hip and said ‘Just supposing you come up and get me you big bull.’ The copper was furious and started yelling ‘I told you to get down off there, you great bastard, I’ll bash you black and blue when you do.’ Melba wagged her lorgnette saying ‘Oh you great big impetuous dream boy, why don’t you come up to Momma?’ The cop glared and bellowed ‘You’re no Momma, you’ll never even be a Poppa.’ Melba flashed back ‘Really darling, I know you’re upset, but that’s no way to speak to a dame—’ The copper, still trying to get over bodies, almost shrieked ‘Dame! dame? You’re no dame you, you big pervert.’ Melba yelled back ‘And you’re no gent, and I’ll bet you’re bloody lousy in bed as well.’ And that second a tremendous gale of screams rent the air, as twenty-five show girls, getting dressed backstage, started to get an inkling of what was happening in front.

Before the screams had died .down, everything in the hall went mad: cops started grabbing people, pulling off wigs, having a look, then slamming a wig back on, and hauling the wig’s occupant towards the main doors. Then everyone yelled at everyone else, and the leading cop kept trying to climb up onto the stage, which was difficult for him, because he first had to climb over the stunned orchestra who sat not knowing whether to play, drop dead on the spot, or bash him and his helpers with their instruments. Some eight feet up, the stage also seethed with activity. Melba and her little friend let the cops have the lot, everything they could lay their hands on. The head cop and Melba, fought it out, he trying to climb up, she bashing him down with her lorgnette. The little pianist threw music, her shoes, her wig, and something that, frightened out of my wits as I was, surprised me when I saw it fly overhead. Coming from nowhere, it was a water melon. It hit a Betty Grable, knocking her out on the spot. Just then Melba, with a triumphant yell, crowned the cop with a pot of flowers. Milly and I sat holding one another, terrified yet excited, trying to see through the general mêlée if we could spot Thelma and Alan, or see where Cliff and Dennis were. As we looked, two cops grabbed us. One felt me and pulled at my lacquered hair till I yelled. He stopped pulling, looked at me, then at Milly, dropped me and started on two other people nearby.

By this time I was really frightened. What had been a looked forward to gala night, had turned into a savage mess of screaming human beings, wrecked lives, hurriedly arranged blackmail, and a dance floor knee deep in the remains of beautiful costumes. I just sat clutching Milly’s arm, and saying to myself ‘I’m nearly eighteen, I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m nearly eighteen.’ As I was flat out doing this, I looked up and saw Zoe. She was standing looking towards the main entrance. There, on her way out, was a strangely quiet and dignified Sheba, slowly moving her lamé across the floor, leaving in her own way and time, despite the hysterical cops trying to push and shove her. I thought it looked sad, and so did some of the cops and many of the guests. There was a lull in the racket, then a voice said ‘All right, boys, that’s it,’ and all the police left. Milly and I picked ourselves up and found Thelma and Cliff, but not Dennis or Alan. We began looking for them amongst people who moved around trying to find their bits and pieces in a curious stunned way, rather like people searching for friends and things loved amongst the. wreckage of a city after an earthquake. We couldn’t find Alan or Dennis and were just about to leave, when three policemen crashed back in. They reached the now deserted orchestra pit, picked up the cop who had fought Melba and carried him out. They passed me quite closely. I peeped at the face of the cop; it looked as if he was quietly sleeping with a slight smile around his lips, but as they went by, I found myself thinking a swift little prayer for Melba’s safety.

Outside the hall a large mixed crowd stood watching the black marias drive away. As the door slammed on the last one, it left a piece of orange net hanging out. I thought, as I said at almost the same time, T wonder who’s on the other end of that piece of net?’ We started to walk back to the Cross, sometimes passing other slightly battered groups of people in fancy dress. Once at the Cross proper, the atmosphere was electric. Everybody, from the tramps to the café cleaners seemed to know what had happened to the ‘Gala Drag and Drain Ball’. People stood buying papers and eating hot dogs or pies as they checked each band of survivors when they passed through, either in cars, or on weary, feet. For one minute I almost laughed as I looked around at the battered ballerinas, historical figures and Carmen Mirandas eating hot pies and talking in outraged voices, to themselves and to anyone who cared to listen, about the bedlam they had been through. Lights started up in many flat windows. People no one even knew came up saying, ‘It’s a stinking disgrace, why don’t they leave the boys alone, and get after the black market gangsters and molls?’ Thelma kept muttering between bursts of laughing, ‘Just wait, if they haven’t carted that bastard of mine off, he’ll wish they had after I’ve finished with him.’ None of us mentioned Dennis. Somehow we all knew that as usual, he’d struck while the iron was hot, and most likely was blissfully unaware of the night’s chaos, as he told a new pair of eyes how beautiful they were, maybe only a few yards away.

A young couple who had joined our crowd asked us back to their flat, which was just nearby in Darlinghurst Road. There, everyone began speculating as to who would be phoning for bail either now or Sunday. For one moment I really panicked. ‘Suppose Leon had the misfortune to be put in the cooler for the weekend leaving me with a head of ash blond hair, stiff as cardboard with lacquer?’ After I had aired this doubt someone said they had seen him leaving on foot with his girl friend. The more we talked about the night the clearer it and Melba’s last stand became. Later, just as everyone was nearly sick with laughing there was a sharp ring on the doorbell, followed by a voice. Instantly we all froze. The man and woman whose flat we were in stood up as the bell went again—this time followed by bangings. The man went to the door and opened it. As he did, he was nearly knocked flat by what looked like a demented shop window dummy come to life. It flew into the room, spun around, then collapsed into a heap on the floor. We all looked with stunned eyes. Then it spoke, ‘For God’s sake loves, hand me a drink.’ The shock over, we looked again and recognized Lana. His wig hung in lumps and strands. The one shoe still on was smashed, bits of stocking fluttered from his legs like fern fronds, the remains of a corset and dress were covered in blood, as were his face and body. After he had had a quick drink, Lana started to tell us what had happened backstage.

It turned out that no one there had really quite known what was going on in front they were so busy dressing and making up for the big parade, until Melba flew through yelling her head off. Then the awful truth dawned, at which they all lost their heads and started trying to get out before the uniformed ones found their way back-stage. The obvious choice of exit for most, including Melba, was the windows. Unfortunately, in the blind rush, there were two things no one realized. The first was that the hall was on the side of a hill and the back windows were in some cases two storeys up; the second, that a dog breeder’s kennels was below them. With Melba leading, everyone started dropping out of windows, landing with bone-jarring crashes in the middle of a wire compound and eight rather shattered alsatian dogs. After the ‘girls’ and the dogs recovered from the shock, the battle between fangs and the heels of shoes really began in earnest. As wigs and costumes started to fly in all directions, someone, Lana thought it was Melba, smashed through the wire gate and started the retreat. Everyone left, dogs and all, via the only escape route that could be seen which was up a pathway stiff with standard roses, and through the nearest doors, which happened to be french windows. They were only open at that moment because the lady of the dog breeder’s house was entertaining some friends. She and her startled guests were treated to the sight of an incredible mixture of battered show girls and snarling dogs, screaming and hurtling right through them, the dining-room, the lounge, and out through the front door, from where they all noisily disappeared into what was left of the ‘gala’ Saturday night.

Late Sunday morning Leon came around to the flat to re-dye my hair. There was a desperate half hour when my hair went green. An hour later I was fairly near rich mouse, so we left it. Just as we were finishing the re-dyeing, Thelma and Milly came up in a state. It appeared that Alan had been found by the police outside the hall, drunk, stark naked, and telling an old lady he was John the Baptist, He didn’t know where his clothes were, so the police just took him to the cooler as he was. After Bella had made us all lunch, we decided to go to Redleaf Pool. This pleased me because it was only a short tram ride from the Cross, and I was tired and had a headache. Also it was sharkproof.

When we arrived it seemed as if half the Cross and the people from the party had come as well. The few people there who didn’t live at the Cross, or hadn’t been to the party, were looking puzzled enough as they sat surrounded by outraged talkers, when suddenly a voice issued from the middle of the body-strewn sand, saying ‘Come here Florrie Johnson, how dare you pinch all my best drag and go to parties while I scrub floors? Haven’t I already had enough trouble with you? What? Don’t you answer your mother back, I should have left you locked in the lavatory.’ I hadn’t noticed Beryl, but by now the whole beach had. She and her imaginary little dog gave one another hell. It wouldn’t do anything she told it to, and by the time it had, even the uninitiated could almost see the little puffs of sand kicked up by the dog’s paws as it raced amongst them. One woman put her hand out to protect her beach snack the moment Beryl decided Florrie Johnson was near her, and was hungry. We stayed lolling and talking at the pool, until the sinking rays of the sun made the miniature waves glint in our eyes, and the semi-circle of white woodwork surrounding the pool began to dissolve into the evening blue sky.

Monday morning found Bella on the phone to the store, saying I was terribly sick with such conviction that I felt I ought to start feeling sick. I was reading the papers. The party was quite well covered, in fact one way and another they had done us proud. The official reason it had been raided was that they were looking for some army deserters. The papers described the party as being ‘arty’ and ‘sordid’, amongst other things. I also learnt that those who had been hauled off from the hall were due to appear this morning in such and such a court. As I was reading this Milly rang to say that she and Thelma were at Cliff’s. All of them were sick, and was I coming to Court with them to give Thelma moral support? I met them, and we made our way to the Court. The cases were due to start at eleven. After walking around the depressing building that echoed with the sounds of other busily lost souls, we found the right Court, and in it half the party. Everyone was sick. When we saw them, we started to giggle until we couldn’t control ourselves. Thelma got so out of hand that a man came twice to tell us to shut up.

*     *     *

The Court is quite small. The Judge, a funny looking little man, sits high up on a dais, while below and around him various people sit at desks writing. As we find our seats a very deaf little man is trying to convince the Judge that he hadn’t meant not to pay his tram fare, and that it was pure coincidence that the forty-odd other trips he had confessed to were all the results of unhappy-making things. Such as his wife putting his deaf aid down the lavatory, or filling his bed with broken biscuits.

The Judge, sitting like a little ivory carving high up against a wall of wood, makes a small sound, looks into space for a split second, then says ‘Fined ten pounds.’

The little man can’t hear and says ‘I don’t get yer, Yer Worship. She put old food in my bed.’

‘Ten pounds,’ yells the Judge.

A policeman standing near the little man’s cupped ear says ‘Ten pounds.’ Still the little man doesn’t hear. Whilst the Judge looks heavenwards, the copper’s receding voice can be heard yelling ‘Ten pounds’ as they go to the distant place where the little man will pay the ten pounds. The little man, his deafness and the broken biscuits send us into more hysterics, particularly me. I don’t think I had paid my fare more than twice in a thousand journeys from the city to King’s Cross, and I didn’t know many others who had paid theirs. As far as I could gather the game everyone played was to spot at which end of the tram the conductor was standing, and then get on the other. With a little luck, and an ‘I’ve paid my fare’ sort of look you arrived home before the conductor had even crawled along the outside running boards to where you were. I laugh so much this time that the Order-in-the-Court-keeper threatens to throw me out lock, stock and barrel if I don’t shut up.

As I calm down; a policeman stands up in answer to something said, and starts to reel off a list of names, some familiar, of people who, it appears amongst other things have ‘not worked gainfully,’ are ‘Army deserters, vagrants, window dressers and dope pedlars.’ The list goes on and on. At the end of it voices yell loud things and the first of the haul staggers into the box. There is a suppressed wave of laughter as the audience sees them. The Order-in-the-Court-keeper nearly has a fit in the effort of deciding whom to threaten first. There, standing in the box, are four incredible looking sights, two with battered wigs, the other two with their ordinary men’s hair-dos clashing with the remains of corsets, dead flower sprays, and bits of costume.

The little man of the trams may have been deaf, but for one second I think His Honour must be blind, for after he’s looked at them and rechecked the notes in front of him on the desk, he looks up and says ‘But surely there must be some mistake? I have a list of men down here, not young ladies.’ At this, the Court really explodes, the keeper-quieter, stunned by so much sudden choice, just stands still. A policeman starts explaining ‘but they are men Your Honour—’ then he goes into a long deep-voiced recital which passes unheard and lost in the laughter from the audience and the racket as the ‘young ladies’ in the box start waving and yelling to various just recognized friends in the Court below them. I see one of them throwing the remains of a corsage to a friend below, saying as ‘she’ does, ‘I feel just like Mrs Pankhurst.’

After the bedlam has subsided, His Honour leans forward to have a better look. ‘Well now, just what is the meaning of all this—’ Before he can get any further, one of the ‘lovelies’ in the box yells ‘I wish to make a charge against him,’ pointing to a policeman. ‘He put the hard word on me Yer Honour.’

There is a sharp loud silence.

His Honour looks at the stricken cop, then back to the ‘lovely’.

‘If I’m correct it is you who are charged right now.’

At that everyone in the box begins yelling things like ‘I was bashed in the baths.’

‘Ask that one, him there go on, you ask him, he took all my lovely jewellery for his wife, then did me wrong, look at ’im, he knows what he did.’

A deep voice says woodenly ‘I was trying to stop them stuffing their corsets down the lavatory, Yer Honour.’

‘Oh! you rotten stinking liar, you were whipping them because they were imported French.’

Wooden voice: ‘It took me the better part of half an hour to get the wig out of the cistern, tangled in the ballcock it was, Yer Honour.’

‘Oh yeah! What did you do with my feather boa?’

‘They caused great upheaval and chaos Yer Honour.’

‘Oh! get that! you dirty stinker I’ll remember your face, I’ve got the dead needle on you.

‘They wanted to pose for the newspapers, Yer Worship.’

‘What’s needling you, did you want me to pay you as well?’

‘He cut my beautiful drag up Yer Honour.’

‘Ooh, the wicked lies! we never knew a moment’s peace, our cell was worse than Wynyard Bog.’

After nearly having a stroke, His Honour bangs away with his gavel like a demented drummer, as a near brawl rages between the lovelies and the cops around the box, above the loudly hysterical Court. It takes a lot of official-sounding noises before the bedlam in the box and the Court subsides. The Judge finishes his tattoo and puts the near splintered gavel down, beside him on the desk. There’s a deathly hush, then His Honour really starts ticking the lovelies off. They are not only a disgrace to the human race, living scandals and freaks but they are every Contempt of Court rolled into four. After he’s given them a very stiff fine, the lovelies leave the box and can be heard still giving the cops hell as they pass out of earshot.

They are followed by two more people, not even lovelies. The Judge, when he’s heard all the charges, says to one of them ‘well what have you got to say?’

It hesitates, then says ‘I only went as Glad Rag Doll for fun.’

‘Oh! did you?’ says the Judge, ‘and who was your friend here?’

His Honour points to the other who immediately says ‘I was Grace Moore in One Night of Love, my friend and I want to go on the stage and entertain the troops.’

‘Oh! do you now. How old are you?’ asks the Judge.

‘Seventeen years,’ they reply in unison.

His Honour says ‘Well, it’s not that long before you will be in the army, is it? Meanwhile, I am going to bind you over to be of good behaviour for a year and you will be fined three guineas each.’ They both nearly curtsey and go out. We sit waiting for Alan to be called but he isn’t. Another name is, and is followed by the entrance of a wreck of a Carmen Miranda. She stands in the box, still trying to glow, despite two days growth of beard sticking out of her remnants of make-up, and one lone piece of fruit dangling from what’s left of her turban.

His Honour, who by now is getting into the spirit of things, sits quietly looking at Miranda. He starts to speak but before he can Miranda puts one hand on the edge of the box and yells ‘It’s my mother’s fault, it’s all her fault.’ Then she bursts into tears.

His Honour, a little taken aback, says quietly ‘What do you mean, it’s all your mother’s fault?’

Miranda turns an agonized face towards him. ‘She always dressed me as a girl, she didn’t want me in the first place and she used to lock me in the cupboard as well. Anyway I only wanted to write a book—’

Her big scene is cut short by a policeman passing a note to a clerk who in turn hands it up to the Judge. He reads it, puts it down, then says to Miranda, ‘What’s your name—er—young man?’

‘Miranda,’ says Leo Smith.

The Judge looks down at the paper, then says ‘Well Leo, according to this note that I have just been handed, someone seems to think that your name is Jim Kettle and that you’re an army deserter, is this so?’

The lone bit of fruit wobbles as Miranda visibly crumples in the box. ‘Yes,’ she says weakly, and the Judge sends Miranda out of the Court, and on her way to a waiting Military Police van.

The next name to be announced is Alan’s. We all stiffen as he walks into the box looking stupid and wearing a most peculiar collection of clothes.

Just as he reaches the box a voice from the Court yells ‘That’s ‘im, the filthy thing, that’s ’im, God’s Honour he tried to rape my Grandma.’

The Judge calls for order and a little fat woman sits down nodding self-righteously to people at her right and left. Alan is looking around the Court trying to see us. Thelma, who is as white as a ghost, tries to wave to him. A policeman reads out the charge, to which the Judge listens with an ‘at least this is different’ sort of look on his face.

He turns to Alan, ‘Well young man, what have you got to say for yourself?’

Alan swallows. ‘I don’t know, nothing I think.’

The Judge tells him that he has been found naked and trying to talk to a very shocked elderly lady, after which surely he must have something to say?

Alan gulps again and says ‘I—er—don’t know.’

Thelma by this time is biting four fingers.

The Judge says ‘Well what do you know? how, for instance, did you come to be stark naked?’

Alan looks at him for a while. ‘I don’t know Your Honour, I’d had a lot to drink, l—’

‘Well if you don’t know anything, how is it you know you’d had a lot to drink?’

Alan stands looking shaken, and is obviously about to say ‘I don’t know—’ when the Judge says ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-three.’

The Judge heaves a sigh of relief. ‘Well at least we know that, don’t we? Why aren’t you in the army?’

Alan brightens a little. ‘I’ve got flat chests and weak feets Your Grace.’

The laughter in the Court covers the Judge’s reply, but towards the end Alan can be heard apologizing and rephrasing his reply. The Judge says ‘Are you married or single?’

‘Married,’ replies Alan, ‘my wife’s here in Court.’

With that Thelma jumps up and bellows ‘That’s right and I’m pregnant.’ so loudly that everyone nearly falls out of their seats.

The Judge half smiles and thanks her, then does a little humming and hawing before he turns to Alan, saying ‘This should be a stricter lesson to you, but in view of what I’ve just heard, I feel disposed to be lenient. I am fining you twelve pounds, and am binding you over to be of good behaviour for eighteen months.’

As Alan turns to leave the box the little fat woman jumps up. ‘But he tried to rape our Grannie, he’s a dirty monster, he should be put away, or in the army.’

Thelma starts to shake and look a little white. Then she says she feels faint and we follow her out of the Court and into the main lobby, where she pulls herself together and says ‘Righto, let’s collect my misfit.’ We have barely moved a few yards when she starts to giggle, and then to our mutual disappointment says ‘I’m not up the duff, one Alan’s enough for this world.’

Life the next week or so seamed: dull after all the excitement of the party and the morning at Court, and also I missed the Bamboo much more than I’d ever have guessed I would. I used to find myself selling flour and other groceries and at the same time mentally singing at the Bamboo. One day, after I had decided to sing I Cover the Waterfront I was making up an order for a woman, when from nowhere a voice yelled ‘Here am I patiently waiting… ’ Everybody from the cashier to the woman I was serving got a shock, but no one more so than myself, as I realized that it was I who had yelled. No one mentioned this outburst of song, which I was glad to remember was in key, but as soon as I had finished the order I went out to the lavatories, lit a cigarette and sat trying to work that one out. I had had two rehearsals with Nedge and was to go for my third that evening.

As I stood in the tram on my way up to the Cross I couldn’t understand why my feet ached so much. After all, they were made to stand on. I was lost in this thought, when a voice said ‘Hello, remember me?’ I looked around and most certainly did. It was the man from 2GB. We talked in a very pleasant fashion until we reached the Cross, and in the course of the conversation arranged a definite audition for me.

I left him and went to the Bamboo. It almost smelt like home. Crossing the bar I saw Claude and went over to say hello to him. Half way across the room a little voice inside my head said ‘Something’s wrong,’ and it was. After Claude had explained that he had been trying to get me all day, he then went on to ask me could I come back in a month, instead of two weeks, as he was making new arrangements. I felt so disappointed that I must have shown it, because he quickly said that he definitely wanted me, but meanwhile he had to make other arrangements and even, he said with a sort of sigh, decorate the place a little. I was very depressed and worried. I knew that if I didn’t sing for such a long break I would start to get nervous all over again, and when I finally did sing, it would be as if I had never sung before. Also, I wanted desperately to leave the store and all its soul-killing nothingness.

I started to walk home feeling flat and a failure. As I walked even the Cross didn’t seem to be itself. It began to pour with rain, so I ducked under an awning. I noticed that the people I stood amongst were buying lottery Jackets. I couldn’t really afford to buy one, but I thought I would. As I was about to hand my money over a small woman jumped in in front of me and nearly sent me flying with a bump and a bash of such force that I thought she must be made of lead. She grabbed the ticket I was going to take, then rushed off into the rain. I mentally bashed her back, then bought mine, and stood watching the rain, dreaming of what I’d do with the money if I won.

First on my list of fantasies was to buy a whole lot of new clothes, turn up at the store in them, and ask for all the best lines. Then as I was looking them over, if anyone said ‘What are you doing over there, why aren’t you here on this side?’ I’d loudly say ‘Well really! I didn’t know that the staff they employ here are as cheap as what they sell,’ and walk out. That dream didn’t quite satisfy me, so I went into one much nearer to my heart. I was going to open a dream night-club. It was to be built on a vast raft which would float in the harbour and was to be very smart. No one over thirty could come, unless they were a famous film star. My floating club would be painted pink, white, silver and gold, and was to have slim silken pennants streaming from the top of its floodlit white and silver sails. To get to it, people would have to take small pink boats at Elizabeth Bay Jetty and be rowed out. I was staring into the rain, which by now had become a midnight blue area of water, with pale pink oars flicking sparkling drops of water as they brought their loads of dressed up men and glamorous girls nearer, when someone said ‘Good evening.’ Startled, the glamorous scene dropping to pieces in front of my eyes, I turned to see a very wet Bill Vero Reed standing near me, clutching a bottle of sherry. We stood talking till the rain stopped. Then he suggested that we go back to his place, where he had some avocado pears and salad. This really pleased me, for amongst his other talents, Bill really knew how to serve an avocado pear. Also, he knew some of the most beautiful and witty people in Sydney, some of whom were bound to drop in in the course of the evening, and even if they didn’t, I knew I was in for an amusing night.

Bill poured us a third sherry and I asked him yet again to tell me all about London or Paris and the people he knew in both cities. Apart from a droll wit, Bill possessed one of the most wickedly accurate and observant minds of any person I had ever known. He also had the most unusual eyes, large and slightly liquid. At times they were like a movie screen: no matter what the soft dry voice and the knowing lips were saying, I could almost see the scenes he was describing. Whether it was a story about the red-headed girl he had loved in Paris, and for whom he had to buy a new pair of shoes a day, or some summer, nights party at the Ritz in London, there, reflected in his eyes, I could see it all. We would sit for hours, as the level of his sherry bottle went down and my goals and imagination soared up. I loved hearing about the world, its people and their ideas. Another thing I liked about Bill was his gift of liking everyone. If he didn’t, I at least never knew, because I never once heard him say anything nasty about anyone. The nearest he’d get to it would be just to mention that so and so couldn’t, for some reason or other, manage to be happy near or with him. ‘The only thing,’ Bill would say, ‘that is unforgivable in this world, is a person who is deliberately stupid, or who is knowingly dull, and rejoices in that kind of existence, using it as some sort of shield against life, or a battering ram against the hopes of other people.’ Yet another reason why I liked Bill and one that was for me one of the most important after knowledge was, that he’d always treated me as a person, an adult, with the result that I felt and behaved more like my future self with him. I saw him often, but when I thought about it, it dawned on me that I knew hardly anything about him, except the fact that he was always knowing, warm, and amusing, and that he loved people, avocado pears, and sherry. Often I had the urge to ask him about himself, but whenever I tried to, it was as if a ray of some sort left his mind, and knocked the thought out of mine. The nearest I ever got to asking him anything was one warm night at a party. After a lot of the evening had flowed its way by, I happened to meet him and said, ‘Bill, I’ve often wondered how old you are.’ For a split second the grey eyes looked at me, then filled with a smiling light as he said ‘So have I.’

I left Bill’s late and feeling terribly happy with the knowledge that though I might not be anything right now, Bill had shown me a little of the great world and its peoples outside Australia. A big orb of life which, when the war was over, would be there for me and everyone else who was left to enjoy and really make the most of. As I walked home this simple thought expanded and grew, until I seemed to be filled with a strange happiness that almost made a noise as it started rising in me, and grew until it filled my whole body and my mind. ‘Yes,’ I kept saying to myself, ‘I can do anything and go anywhere when this tired generation have grown weary of slaughter and their mistakes, why not? Anything I even think of doing, I can, we all can. After all, that’s what living and the world’s for, isn’t it? It’s not just here for killing and over-eating. It’s here to be lived and loved in, not levelled by bombs.’ At that an almost electrical wave of serenity swept over me, together with the feeling that there was nothing to worry about except myself, and that I had never minded doing. In fact I had always fought to be allowed to make my own mistakes and my own discoveries and to be allowed to use the knowledge from them now, and not have to save them, or myself, for some future world. What really mattered right now, was now. Not the future, the war or other people’s pasts, only now.

As I breezed into the flat, still swimming in my near heavenly mood, I noticed that Bella’s door was open so I went in. She and Chris, the American pilot, were sitting playing cards. I was glad of this, because I wanted them to like one another and they seemed to. We started to play a new game of cards. Bella was happy. Chris was his usual good-natured self, and I sat bursting with my discoveries. After I’d won two games Bella said she’d make some sandwiches, then went to the kitchen and started frying bacon while Chris and I played a new two handed game of cards. As we began to play something made me look at the dog. It wasn’t doing anything, except just sitting on its window sill, but I kept on having to have a look at it. Then I forgot it and sat involved in the game. As we were playing I thought I heard Bella say ‘Oh! No.’ Then I saw the dog crawling slowly on its stomach towards the kitchen. Chris saw me and looked at her too. The dog made another small, almost human little sound at which Bella dropped the pan in the kitchen, ran out and fell on her knees. The dog crawled into her lap, and raising her head, made a small soft noise that sounded like a moth’s wings brushing against the lamp, then went limp and still. Chris and I sat with our cards in our hands. I could feel the hair prickling on the back of my hands as I looked. Bella went very white and said ‘She’s fainted, hasn’t she?’

I tried to say ‘Yes,’ but I couldn’t. Bella started cuddling the dog very tightly. It looked as if she thought she could squeeze life back into it by sheer force. Chris put his cards down and got up, saying ‘Let me have a look at her.’ He tried to touch the dog, but Bella wouldn’t let it go. I didn’t know what to do or say. I’d always been fond of the dog, but we had never been great friends. We spoke to one another when we wanted to, and that was all. Yet now as I looked, I couldn’t believe I’d never see her again, dressed up in her bows on good nights. I found myself kneeling on the floor beside Bella not knowing how I had got there, and the only thing I could think of to say was ‘I’ve never really known, what was her name?’ Bella stopped silently crying and said ‘Joan.’ Chris sat on the floor beside us for some time before he said ‘Shall I phone a dog’s doctor and have her taken away?’ Then Bella broke down completely. I put my arm around her as if she was a child, but it seemed such a clumsy intrusion that I withdrew it. Suddenly Bella looked up and said ‘No, let’s put her somewhere nice. Come on, let’s get all her things together.’

The three of us moved round the flat picking up her playthings. Bella got her lead and all her bows, then I found a box which had been used for the move. Bella got a sheet to put the dog in, hesitated, then went back to her bedroom and came out with a housecoat. When I saw it my head hurt for a split second. It was the one that she had been wearing long ago, the first evening I knocked at her door, and found her sitting with the dog beneath the palm tree. Bella tied the bows around the dog’s neck before we wrapped her in the housecoat and put it in, the box. Then we went round the flat and took every flower we could find and arranged them all around the dog. We tied the box up, left the flat and started walking down to Elizabeth Bay, trying as we walked to find somewhere nice to bury her, but we couldn’t. At last we came to a likely looking garden around a block of flats. Then we realized that we had nothing to dig with, so I said I’d go off and try and find something.

As I was looking a voice said ‘What are you doing there, do you live here?’ Before I even spoke to him something told me that the questioner was a policeman in plain clothes.

I said ‘We are, trying to bury a dog—’ then I pointed across to Chris and Bella sitting with the box on her knees.

‘What’s in the box?’

I told him.

‘Well do you mind if I just take a look?’

We started walking, he just near enough to grab me if I bolted. As we walked across to the garden wall, I noticed that three other men had got out of a car and were walking towards us. When they stood around us Chris tried to ask them not to open the box but this seemed only to make them more curious. Bella opened the box and started softly crying while everyone looked at the pathetic flower-strewn contents. The copper who had walked me over said ‘Let me have a look.’ Then to my horror I saw him feeling around for something in the box. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I was about to say ‘Leave her alone’ when he withdrew his hand saying:

‘Well you can’t bury it just like that in anyone’s garden, you must take it to a vet.’

‘But I don’t want to,’ Bella said, ‘I want her to stay here where she lived,’

‘Sorry lady, you’ll have to, we can’t have people trespassing, and burying anything anywhere they like.’ At that the other policemen moved back to the car and I started to re-tie the box.

The copper moved away a little, before turning back. ‘You’re not allowed to dump things in the harbour either,’ then he softly added ‘But if you are quick and quiet about it, who’ll know?’ He walked back to the car, and we watched until it drove up the hill.

As soon as it had gone, we walked down to the little lamp-lit jetty, which had a small flight of stairs running down to the waters. Bella said ‘We’d better get some stones so’s she’ll sink right down.’ I walked around grabbing anything heavy I could find. When I had an armful I went back and started putting them in the box. ‘No,’ Bella said, ‘put them at her feet, so’s she’ll have her head up.’ I nearly said ‘Why?’ but I didn’t. Then in a slight little voice Bella added, ‘If she goes down feet first, she can always look back up at the Cross, can’t she?’

After Bella had kissed the dog I tied the box up and was about to lower it into the water, when I found myself hesitating. Bella took the box off me, and saying ‘I hope you have a real good time love,’ let it slip into the shining dark water. There was a little plop, then we stood watching it by the light of the overhead lamp until it zigzagged way down out of sight.

I arrived at Station 2GB in a fine state of nerves. I already knew the now dark and silent auditorium quite well. Beryl had given me tickets for quite a few glamorous shows, like Calling the Stars, but as I sat looking at it now without the big orchestra on stage and the excited audience in front, I found myself reversing the emptyness until I could see the remembered images of the shows and people in them. People like George Black-Shaw coming out on the glittering stage, dressed as a tall, rather battered Shirley Temple, and making thousands laugh. Or Beryl, all fourteen stone crammed into an outrageous costume, singing I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle. How easily happy and beautiful it had all looked, bathed in the warmth of the footlights. But now at this minute, the place looked like a cross between a day off in a torture chamber, and a vast cave. There were quite a few other people auditioning as well, so I sat watching them as they came in, each one either nervous, or overconfident. The people who ran the radio station were quiet, businesslike, and charming. I wished that they were nasty: then maybe I wouldn’t care too much and do well, if only from sheer dislike of them. When at last all we future stars were assembled, a young man came around with a list, checking names and telling us in which order we would be up. The pianist arrived and started running those of us who needed him through our songs. He too was charming and played with a quick and expert touch. At last they announced that the auditions had begun. Whom the young man told it to I didn’t know, because the only people! could see were the engineers in the control room, behind a glass panel.

The young man then introduced the first person to audition, a lady of uncertain age in a floral dress. She sang My Hero so loudly that when she got to the high bits at the end, I could see the engineer wincing between his headphones as he twisted a knob. She was followed by a comic, a tall, thin, unhappy-looking man. He told a lot of funny jokes. I knew they were funny because Bella and I had laughed our heads off when Jack Davy had told them over this very radio station months before. He was followed by three girls who sang just like the Andrews Sisters. After them, there was a short silence during which a very earnest looking little pianist shuffled into the studio pianist’s place, spread out some music that seemed to be about eight feet long, looked at the keyboard, then nodded. The young man who announced the auditions went to the microphone and said ‘Audition 2gb No. 4 William William.’ At that, a small and very tough-looking man walked up to the microphone, coughed, and then stood waiting through the elaborate introduction. I watched him count time with his foot, take a deep breath, then I was listening to a voice that filled me with a curious mixture of shock and distaste. He was half way through an elaborate German song before I realized that he was a male alto. I thanked whomever I should that I didn’t have a voice like that. It upset me so much, that I couldn’t even bear to look at him after he had finished singing. The announcer stepped forward and announced ‘Myrtle Mayne, Impressionist.’

Myrtle walked up to the microphone, paused, then trembling like mad, said ‘Good evening, I have just come back from Hollywood and I would like to take you all to a Hollywood party. Why, hello— there’s Ida Lupino talking to Zazu Pitts, how nice to—’ At that Myrtle burst into tears and rushed off. This threw everybody, including me, who was next. Already the man was saying my name. Caught off guard, I tried to keep calm and imagine I was back at the Bamboo, as I walked up to the microphone. The pianist started the intro. I looked at the empty cave in front of me and began. How far I got I didn’t know, the only thing I did know was that I didn’t know anything, not even who or where I was. I couldn’t remember one note or word of a song that I had sung dozens of times. So complete was my confusion that I might just as well have been suddenly suspended in space, up near some undiscovered planet or other. I stood for a second, then turned to look at the pianist. A voice over a speaker said ‘Don’t worry Jon, start again.’ I did, and even though I went right through, it wasn’t good and I knew it. Every little thing I had always done with the song misfired: I finished in a surge of bitter disappointment at the mess up.

As I started to walk over to the piano to collect my music, a voice said ‘Could you sing us another song? Have you got another one with you?’ I had. Grateful for the second chance, A fished it out of my case and quickly ran through I Cover the Waterfront with the pianist, went back to the microphone and sang it rather well. But I knew my performance hadn’t been nearly as good as it was almost any night at the Bamboo, ignored there as I was. The voice then thanked me and asked me to come into a box which was through another door. The young announcer led me through, and ushered me into another room where to my surprise some four or five people were sitting, drinking cups of coffee and writing on pieces of paper. After a man had introduced himself, I heard the young man’s voice announce another person. The man I was talking to said ‘Let’s step outside.’

We walked a little way down a passage, then he said ‘Well as far as I can see Jon, you’re good and you have excellent possibilities, but you do need more experience. Could you come back in say, six months’ time, and see us again?’ He was so nice about it that I nodded in eager agreement, but even as I nodded, a million fearful doubts filled my head. Six months—I might not have much more than six months to live. In six months’ time I might well be just another dead soldier floating in some swamp in New Guinea. Barring a miracle, that was the only future I could imagine, at the time. I longed to be able to explain to the man that I did have experience and hard-won experience at that, from Miss Mert to Nedge, but I couldn’t. And right then I was flat out wondering where the hell it had all fled to as I’d walked up to that microphone. I thanked the man for thanking me and left, feeling, as I walked along the carpeted corridors, like the world’s biggest dunce.

On leaving the radio station I wandered around for some ten embarrassed minutes until I found a little café. I ordered coffee and then sat over it in a stew of desperation, trying to work out what had gone wrong, and why. I’d been nervous before, or almost terror stricken, but even then I had never forgotten the words of a song, in fact if anything the reverse. I’d clung to them with a grim desperation in order to get through the song. As for coming back in six months, I should have loved to, by then I thought I might be a really well seasoned good singer, and, who knows, even an actor. But also I would be well and truly over eighteen. I sat steeped in the irony of a situation I’d long dreaded, which was now nearly upon me, and vividly in front of my mind, because of what the radio man had said to me.

For years past the mere thought of being eighteen had been almost as dear to me as life itself. I had fought, begged and battled all my knowing years to be myself, think my own thoughts, and lead my own life. I had already done a lot, not always in the way I wanted to, but at least I had made a start towards my goals in life. The golden dawn of my eighteenth birthday was to bring freedom, a legal release from a crowd of well meaners and people I couldn’t get on with because they couldn’t get on with themselves. And last but certainly not least, release from State Welfare Officers and people like them, who could at any moment burst unasked-for into my life and capriciously alter it by a single sentence, uttered or written. In fact my eighteenth birthday was to bring freedom from the thousand and one little agonies, that only someone born in similar, vague and stupidly never discussed circumstances, could understand. Now, sitting in the coffee shop, I thought of what really awaited me on that day. Nothing but the stiff material of some unwanted uniform, other voices once again directing my life and bending my will. Then I was supposed to fight a war that I knew nothing about, except what I had been told.

One thing that genuinely puzzled me was a question that had first formed in my mind years before. It was simply this: ‘If all the powers that make wars know so much, and are so nearly divinely right, apart from having God on their side, why the hell did they, or God, let it all start in the first place? And then force me, who though unable to vote or really make myself heard, Who still went into a breathless spin at the thought of love, of real sex and living, be the one who had to go out and clean up this adult mess?’ Well I wasn’t going to. As far as I was concerned, they could bang drums, fill the churches with indirect prayers for the slaughter of others, or send their bundles to anywhere they liked, and roll themselves up in them as well. I was going to get out of it hook or by crook.

I sat looking at the wall of the café, seething with anger at the thought of my future and at many things past. I had grown up surrounded by the dim but cherished echoes of what was almost lovingly called ‘The Great War’. I had stood many times in school yards and rooms as the annually enforced morbid memory of the tragic mistakes of others was dinned into me, making me feel almost guilty about being alive. The more I thought about it the more determined I became that when that call came for me, they might just as, well blow it on a bugle full of plaster of paris. I was not going to proudly sign my soul away to a uniform and a piece of paper as I promised to serve my King and country; And anyway it wasn’t a real promise, I didn’t have any choice. I’d only be signing out of force and fear, like many others. I suppose that’s why they wouldn’t give anyone a choice. To hell with their stinking uniforms, stuff the bloody lot. If there were no uniforms no one would know whom they were supposed to kill: ‘Excuse me, but I don’t recognize the cut of your pants, have I got to kill you, or do we have a chat?’

I left the café in a blazing rage. Not just at the audition, but at the farce of my whole life. Half an hour later I threw stones into the harbour nearly yelling ‘World, I’m sick of being lonely and bashed about. You only let me be born to be made sad and bullied.’ Then I found a nice tree and stayed under it in a fury of near tears until my stomach told me ‘It’s late! and anyway, it’s a new night, you never know…’

I didn’t go to work much the following week, mainly because of the dreams I had; the same two, three nights running. In the first dream, in answer to an almost unheard call, I would walk through space towards an archway with big gleaming doors. To its left was a palm tree, a tinkling fountain and a chair, nothing more. I’d sit down on the chair, get myself comfortable and wait. After a little while voices would start talking to me. I could never see them, arid I never knew if they were male or female, but they were voices of great knowingness and warmth. ‘Boy,’ they would say, ‘what do you consider to be so and so?’ or ‘based on these facts, what is your opinion on such and such?’ Sometimes I’d panic after they had asked a question which frightened me and there would be a silence broken only by the slight sighing of a breeze in the palm tree, or the soft tinkling of the fountain. But the voices would wait while I thought out the answer. Usually I thought of the answer straight off, and gave it with a quick warm surge of knowledge and happiness. Often I would sit sorting out my answers for some time, when quite suddenly the voices would say ‘Thank you young man, that’s just fine for now,’ and I would walk off, usually straight into the other dream:

I was on a baking hot parade ground wearing a uniform that didn’t belong to any Service. Sweat would be stinging its way down my back, which was raw with friction from the uniform, my eyes stung with sweat from my forehead. As I marched along I carried an enormous rifle bigger than myself. Up and down, around, then down and up, I’d march, never stopping. Hour after hour I’d march to the frightening banging of a lone drum, and someone yelling the orders. Then just as I thought that I couldn’t bear any more, I’d look down at my feet and discover to my horror that they had gone. They were worn away up to the lower calf, and my boots with them. Feeling revolted by my deformity, I would try to run towards the man who was yelling the commands. He’d watch me lumbering towards him, dragging my rifle on the ground, then as I got near him he’d yell ‘Shouder arms.’ I’d try to but I never could, the rifle was too big. So I would sag and hold myself up on the rifle for support as I said ‘I’ve lost my feet, can’t you…’ Then over his shoulder I’d see an archway. I knew it was the archway from the garden of the voices because I could see the top of the palm tree swaying overhead. I’d look and think ‘Oh, I know, I’ll just run over there and knock the doors.’ Then the man would say, ‘I know what you are thinking, but let me give you the good oil, sport. You try to run over there, and the glass and spikes in the concrete will cut what’s left of your legs off. You be a good boy and go back to the parade ground where it’s been smoothed out for you.’ I would wake up from these dreams covered in sweat, full of unexplainable terror, and so exhausted that I couldn’t even move the sheets. Bella became alarmed, and sent me to a doctor. He looked me over, making various noises as he did, some of which sounded as if he had just spotted a third arm growing out of me. Then, after he had handed me a box of iron tablets and told me to lay off the women, he said ‘How old are you?’ I told him. He said ‘Ah! well, me boy, there’s nothing wrong with you that the army won’t soon be able to put right.’

Just before one lunch hour, as I was serving in the store, Thelma arrived saying that she wanted to talk to me, could we have lunch together? As soon as lunchtime came, I shot out, met her at the main doors, and off we went to Reppins. It was so jammed that as we waded our way through the full high tide of lunch hour eaters, I thought it would be impossible to get a table anywhere. But a clutch of typists dawdling over their coffees soon finished after a few looks from Thelma, and we sat down. Thelma was in this part of the world because she was recording a play for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. According to her the play was lousy and the two stars were even worse. At last we grabbed a waitress and ordered.

Thelma was in rip-roaring fettle. In order to give me some idea of what the play was like, she got her script out of her handbag and started there and then to give impersonations of the stars, a well-known husband and wife team. Her impersonations were brutally true, and very good. As I was laughing fit to burst I looked up: there across the aisle was the woman Thelma was sending up. I tried kicking Thelma and sending thought rays. I nearly went cross-eyed in my attempts to shut her up, but no, on she went. The star sat listening and watching with the sort of expression on her face that I imagined a panther would have as it sat high in the branches of a tree knowing that whenever it liked it could just drop on that silly little deer carrying on underneath it. After what seemed to me at least seven hours of agony, Thelma stopped and stared at me; then noting where my eyes, which by this time were practically on sticks, were looking, she just calmly waved to the star. The star didn’t wave back, instead she got up and walked very slowly towards us.

After she had smiled at me, she turned to Thelma, ‘I didn’t know you’d left us for Commecial Radio?’

‘I haven’t!’

The star hesitated for a moment, then said with a slight smile ‘Well dear, if I were you, and had your gift for impersonations, I’d be down at 2GB this very afternoon, not wasting my time with us. Which is a pity, because I was counting on you to play in my next series.’

After her eyes had finished sawing through what was left of an unflinching Thelma, she had turned to go, when Thelma said ‘Isn’t that a coincidence, I was hoping you’d do two Ibsen plays and my very own production of The Letter down at the Theatre.’

The star jumped so visibly, that I did too, and then she turned back. Thelma was trying to carry on explaining that that’s why she and I were here now, but she might as well have been eating a sandwich for all her words meant. The star slid into the seat alongside of Thelma, bearing down on her, hugging and squeezing her right up into the corner as she kept saying Thelma, Thelma how did you know? How could you possibly guess? I was born to play that part, no one and I mean no one, could touch me in it.’ On and on went the star. Finally she apologized to me for taking up the whole lunch hour and left, after she had arranged to discuss it with Thelma at tea, leaving me still sitting spell-bound.

The star went back to her friends and obviously told them the good news: as they picked up their checks and started walking out of the café, all of them waved to Thelma and me like mad. As Thelma watched them leaving she said ‘Gawd she’s a trial, but I do want her, she’s dead right. Now where were you and I?’ After I had told her and we had munched something on toast, Thelma got down to brass tacks and asked me if I’d like to come down to the Theatre Club, learn stage management, amongst all sorts of other things, and eventually get small parts. ‘Like to! I would love to.’ I would sell tickets out front, then rush round and paint the scenery behind, after having conducted the audience into their seats. A sudden wave of despair overwhelmed me, Thelma asked me what was wrong. I told her about my dread of going into the Army. I was in the middle of my soul-searing saga when I realized that I was late for work, and that I had better fly straight back. I arranged to meet Thelma after work at this same coffee house, kissed her good-bye and fled back to the groceries.

The afternoon sped by in a happy haze. I sold food to people and dreams to myself. Dreams in which I was acting like mad and with such great feeling, that the great director could barely direct me for the tears streaming down his famous face. I could see and hear Thelma come into the dressing room, and as she clung to the doorway for support, saying ‘Jon I… I never dreamt, I just don’t know what to say—’ Then someone would ask for a pound of butter and most likely leave wondering why they had been handed it as if they were Garbo, and it was the Crown of England.

I had just given someone an order, and Bella was saying to the press ‘No, I’m very sorry to say that Jon’s not my son. But mind you, I’ve known him for years, well, ever since—well, I can’t really remember now, his mother and I used to—’ when a voice said, ‘You’re wanted upstairs.’ I thought ‘that’s funny, there’s no lecture today, and anyway, it’s almost closing time.’ Then I asked the man, ‘Who wants me?’ He mentioned a name I didn’t know, and started to take me up the stairs. I talked away as we climbed. He knocked on a door and ushered me into a big room with doors leading off it. The man who was sitting behind the desk barely looked up as I walked in, then the man who’d brought me up left and closed the door behind me. I stood waiting rather impatiently. I couldn’t stay too long because I had to total up my lists and do various other things before I could get out and meet Thelma. After a few minutes I said ‘Good evening.’ The man at the desk went on writing for fully another minute, then half mumbled something. I said ‘I was told that you wanted to see me?’ Without looking up from the desk he muttered ‘That’s right,’ and went on writing, I started to feel angry at his rudeness, also I could hear the rest of the staff running up and down the concrete stairs, and talking to one another in their bright ‘clocking out’ voices.

Just as I was thinking I’ll go, the man looked up, smiled, then said ‘Sorry to keep you. Will you sit down, I won’t be long.’ I walked across and sat down on a chair, and began looking around the office and its furnishings. After I had sat for quite a while I began to notice that the noise of people leaving was growing less and less, so I leant across the desk and said ‘Excuse me, but I have to meet a friend, and it’s way past closing time now.’ The man shuffled some papers as he said to me, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but I was just in the middle of something rather important. I’d be grateful if you could spare me just a few minutes more, I’m waiting for a telephone call. Here, look at this magazine.’ As I took the proffered magazine, a small twinge of something stirred in my stomach. At that second the sharp ring of the phone on his desk pierced the room. The man answered it and then said ‘Oh, righto, very good—’ hung up and looked at me. The second he did my stomach flip came back again.

The man leant forward, looking at me with blank eyes as he said ‘I’ve kept you here because I wanted the store to be empty before we talked.’

My twinge grew into a fear of some kind as I looked at him.

He leant back in the chair and tapped his finger nails with a pen. ‘We’ve had a complaint about you, Jon.’

‘A complaint?’ I asked in reply.

‘Yes, a serious one, Jon.’ He sat tapping the pencil, looking at me for a few seconds before he said ‘You have been reported as a thief, Jon,’

I gaped at him. Apart from eating the odd biscuit on the sly, I’d never taken anything, though heaven knows I knew the wholesale looting that went on among some of the staff.

The blank eyes looked at me. ‘Are you honest, Jon?’

I sat gaping at him, I couldn’t believe my ears.

He leant forward: ‘Are you a dishonest person?’ I still gaped at him. At that moment I didn’t for the life of me know if I was or not, I’d never thought about it. Finally I gulped and said ‘I don’t know.’

Quickly the man said ‘What do you mean you don’t know. You must know. Either you are or you’re not.’

Then I said that I thought I was.

He looked at me during the silence which I broke by asking him who it was who said I was dishonest, and what had I done? This seemed to please him.

He just nodded and said ‘I’ll ask the questions here.’ This made me angry. I saw him noticing my anger with satisfaction.

There was another small silence, he put the pen down, then looking straight into my eyes, said ‘A lady we know has informed us that you didn’t give her the right change.’

‘A lady? Well who was she and why didn’t she tell me at the time? I don’t remember any lady who didn’t get her change, and besides, I always hand back the money the cashier gives me.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes I’ve never taken any of the change, how could I?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if the customer is there in front of me, how can I not give him back his change ? ’

The man nodded in appreciation at this point. ‘Have you ever given any of the food away free?’

This question slightly jerked me, and for a second I wondered if he was trying to pump me for information. I knew that quite a few people who worked in the store fiddled food. Someone they knew, or perhaps a member of their family would come in and pretend to be a customer. After I’d worked there for a while, I either knew them, or else something about them told me who they were, so I’d never ask if I could serve them. They’d wait for whoever it was they knew in the store to ask them what they wanted, just as if they were ordinary customers, then after their pretending not to know each other, the customer would leave with a parcel of food which would have all manner of surprising things in it that were not on the docket. But I had no family, so I’d never done it. I looked at the man and said ‘No, I’ve never given anyone anything.’ The man looked relieved.

Then I noticed the clock. We’d been there almost an hour. I grew a little worried. Thelma was always late, but maybe she’d be wondering right now where I was, and perhaps change her mind about giving me the job. I wanted to go and I showed it.

‘Very well, Jon,’ the man said, ‘I’ll believe you.’

I waited for him to say I could go, and just as he seemed as if he was about to, he said ‘Have you got any money on you?’

I looked at him and nodded.

‘How much?’

Surprised, I said ‘Twelve and sixpence—I think,’ and automatically thought of checking it. Perhaps he even needed some—?

‘Could I see it?’

I looked at him, thinking ‘What a curious thing to ask me.’ As I fished the money out and put it on the desk between us I said  ‘Yes.’

He looked at it for a while. ‘Is that the lot, could you just have another look?’ I did, but I had no more. Then to my surprise he got out a magnifying glass and started looking at my money, picking each coin up separately. Seconds later he looked up and said ‘Come around here.’ I got up and walked around to the desk. He handed me the glass, saying as he held up a coin ‘What’s that?’

I looked through the glass ‘A two shilling piece.’

‘Do you see anything unusual about it?’ I couldn’t and said so, and he gave me two other coins, neither of which had anything unusual about them that I could see. Then he put two small coins on the desk separately from the rest and told me to look at them closely.

I found myself saying ‘How funny, these have a small star on them, I’ve never noticed it before. Look, there it is, hidden away in the writing on the back—’ Even before the man had finished saying that they had been marked, the noise inside of my head grew into an enormous roar of sounds, and I started to feel sick. I slumped against the desk. The man got up and helped me around to the seat. I sat hearing the voices of people who worked in the store telling me that such things were done, but I had barely believed them at the time. Why me, and how had they done it? I sagged in the seat, trying not to vomit.

‘Put your head between your! legs,’ the man said, ‘you’ll feel better.’

I did, but I didn’t.

‘Well our woman was right.’ There was a small silence as he smiled, then he leant across the desk softly saying ‘Come on boy, I want to help you, why don’t you tell me? Come on, tell me it all and I’ll see what I can do for you, how about that?’

I knew I was staring at him but I couldn’t really see him as I tried to say ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

The man seemed to look a little sad, as he almost whispered, ‘Now come on, surely you can remember. Why did you do it? It’s only a small amount, go on try, I want to help you.’

But I couldn’t try to do anything, all I could do was to sit opposite him staring at nothing and saying ‘But I didn’t. I don’t know.’

We must have sat for some minutes before he said ‘Now come on boy, let me help you, why did you do it? You can tell me. There’s something wrong at home perhaps? Come on be a good boy, tell me.’

I didn’t know what to tell, I couldn’t even understand how the marked money came to be in my pocket. There was something frightening about the whole thing, it terrified me. I felt as exposed as something under a magnifying glass and powerless to stop some evil form of magic that had been interfering with me at long range, changing the contents of my pockets as I worked away. I tried to explain this feeling to him.

He listened for a while, then his face hardened and his Voice became slightly menacing as he said ‘Perhaps if I say it might have been a packet, would that help you?’

He had barely finished speaking, when I found myself almost fainting with the sheer force of memory pictures, as they sped in front of my head, like a film running mad. At the same time I jumped up and almost yelled ‘You’re right, you’re right, I remember that woman now; I knew there was something evil about her. She’s a bitch, a rotten stinking bitch.’

He stood up, yelling ‘Shut up and sit down. You keep your filthy comments to yourself, you little bastard.’

I sank slowly back into the seat, my stunned mind realizing the meaning of what I’d said, and to whom I’d said it. I sat with the thousand and one thoughts of things that had happened that afternoon spinning through my mind. I remembered with tragic clarity one of the many little rules that I had made for my own comfort and peace of mind. How could I have fallen for it, how could I have broken my golden rule?

Since I had been working in the store I’d learnt a lot each day, and one of the main things I’d learnt was that I had to be absolutely ruthless with most women who came into the store. I found this hard at first, because I liked everyone, but once I was behind a counter I discovered that strange things happen to people on the other side, women in particular. They all had in them something of the lioness on the prowl when they shopped. When they came into the store, no matter what their age or standing in life, or almost least of all their looks, I found they would do everything they could, short of stroking my arm, for just a few extra biscuits. Often I’d seen a plain face across the other side of the counter flat out, promising me countless delights. Joys, that I was sure in most cases the face never even knew existed, let alone had known. All of these were mine, if only I’d give them just a little more of this or that. Sometimes a woman so beautiful, or just so charming that she didn’t have to try, would come in and every one of us would give the scales a semi-blind look. But on the whole, I and the old hands kept the ladies very much on the other side of the counter as we served, and ignored the rays of militant professional helplessness that poured over us.

The more I thought of the one who had trapped me the more I fumed. We’d been terribly busy but I had been happily working away, my head full of Thelma and the theatre. The afternoon had been hot and most of the customers’ tempers matched it. They had fought one another and the staff. I’d just finished serving a row of fussy, moaning stinkers, when, because no one else would have them, I was saddled with a man and a woman who couldn’t or wouldn’t remember anything they wanted, or make up their minds about any of the dozens of brands that I had shown them. I had spotted this woman amongst the crowd waiting to be attended to, why I had I didn’t know, but I remembered her face and clothes and her air of ‘it’s all right, I’ll wait my turn.’ I’d been grateful for that at the time, so I’d kept looking at her. She had an unhappy, sharp-eyed face and her clothes were almost too ordinary. But what had finally made up my mind to break my rule was the fact that I thought she looked as if she was shortly due to have a baby.

As the pressure from others built up and my pair went on not making up their minds, I had finally asked her if I could help her.

She looked hopefully at me. ‘Yes I would be obliged—’

Even as she said it I thought to myself, ‘That’s not the sort of voice I thought you’d have, you sound a bit like a nasty schoolmistress.’

Swift as the thought was the woman cut in half way through it, and smiling warmly had said ‘I’d like a packet of that,’ pointing to a pile on the counter. I’d taken it and was about to wrap it.

‘Oh don’t bother, I’ll just take it as it is.’

Busy as we were I hadn’t been able to explain that the packet, like everything else, must be wrapped up, that was store orders, otherwise anyone could just walk in and take things out, so I’d said to her ‘Oh, it’s no bother.’ Then she had asked for two brands of something else.

I’d taken them out and put them on the counter, when she said ‘Which do you think is the best?’

I didn’t have an earthly idea and had been about to say so, when my original couple, having decided on eight different things, interrupted, and loudly. I had moved back to them, cursing them because I would have to alter the entire docket and get it signed by a supervisor before going back to the cash desk.

Another man had said ‘Excuse me—’ I’d replied ‘Just a minute sir,’ then, ‘I’m serving,’ to another woman.

My pregnant woman had said something. I’d looked at her, she’d repeated ‘I’ve taken my packet,’ and half smiled.

‘But what about your bag?’

She had held up a bag, saying ‘You gave it to me before.’

‘Oh! of course.’ I’d forgotten that.

Then she leant forward, and saying ‘That’s yours, I won’t wait for the receipt,’ put something into my hand.

‘A tip,’ I had thought, ‘how nice.’ Only fhe older staff ever got tips, and that was only because they had known some of the customers for years. Then Maisie at the cash desk had yelled something and my tiresome pair had made noises which brought me back to reality and work.

The man behind the desk had sat entranced as I explained it all to him. In fact I had practically acted it for him, I went even further and explained that if ever I did pinch anything I’d take the lot. I’d take every single thing from the store and give it all to the people I knew. I’d build my floating pink night-club and even he could come and see Betty Grable do her act there. The man then offered me a cigarette as he asked me about other things I wanted to do, or believed in. I told him about my singing at clubs, about Thelma and the theatre.

As I was telling him about the radio star at lunch, the phone shrilled its way into my story. He picked it up. I heard a tinny-sounding voice say something to which he replied ‘Right-o,’ and then went very white. He put the phone down very slowly, saying ‘The cid are on their way.’ We looked at one another till I couldn’t look for the agonizing pains in my eyes. Then he leant over and took the cigarette that was burning my fingers, murmuring something that sounded like ‘I’m a family man myself, but I’ve got a job to do.’

We went on staring back and forth at one another for minutes, both of us sitting in the middle of a thick, loud silence. It wasn’t just the silence of the room, it was the silence of the big building, sagging after a day during which thousands had poured through and over it. I felt myself growing stronger and calmer. Then a voice I hardly recognized as my own said rather weakly ‘Can’t you say I’m a secret gangster, and that you have found out that I have stolen thousands of pounds and that my gang locked you up and I escaped?’ The man jerked in his seat. I said ‘Well couldn’t you say to them when they arrive, that it’s all a mistake and that I was really a detective put there to catch the other detectives?’

The man nearly yelled ‘Stop it, stop it’ but I couldn’t stop.

I ran around the desk to him and took his limp hands in mine as I said in desperation ‘Look, please couldn’t I run up to the roof and jump off, then they’d never know?’

‘No, no, no, please stop it!’ he begged, but I couldn’t.

I almost yelled into,his facec‘But you don’t understand, when “they” hear, I’ll be in worse trouble, they’ll take me to a State Home and put me away. They always said they would if I ever got into trouble.’

The man said ‘You’ve been in trouble before?’

I looked at him and tried to explain with that look how the fact of my even bong born, let alone alive, was trouble to, and for, some people. How even my slightest breath, roared like a gale through certain people’s regret-ridden memories.

‘Have you, have you?’ he said as he stood up, and I slid onto the floor.

‘No I haven’t been in trouble, but I seem to have caused a lot of trouble for people.’ At that I thought he was going to hit me.

I jumped up and started running around the desk. He began chasing me saying ‘Stop, yon fool!’ I ran to a door, snatched it open and fled into a room of silent covered typewriters, yelling as I ran ‘Go away, go away.’

He ran after me panting, and saying ‘Oh for God’s sake please don’t, please.’

I paused on top of a desk and said ‘Can I ring someone?’

‘When you get to the station,’ he gasped.

I ran on, hopping over desks, having to be careful to miss little pots of nail varnish, or maybe a tiny vase of flowers that I could have crushed with my feet. For a couple of seconds I almost laughed in mid-air as I sent a pile of, knitting flying. Then I saw another door.

As I ran towards it I found myself wondering ‘Oh God, does it open in or outwards?’ Just as I reached it I heard a crash, I looked around and saw that man had fallen over something and was lying with a packet of biscuits crushed around his shoulders. While I looked at him a little voice in my head said ‘Go on run, run, you bloody fool.’

I did, I pulled the door open and found that I had run into a long sort of cupboard.

Before I could recover from the horror of being trapped, and turn around to get out, I heard him say ‘Boy, I’ve got you. You’re locked up, you’re locked up.’ I grabbed a piece of something sticking out of the door and hung on for grim death while he pulled from the other side. Then I pulled back from my side, sobbing as I pulled. We went on pulling and pulling for a minute. Then all of a sudden the door gave way and I reeled out of the cupboard, straight into his arms.

The next thing I knew we were both -sitting on the floor gasping for breath while he held on to my arm, saying ‘Think of my wife and kids, please think of my wife and kids.’ We walked back to the office. As I sat back in the chair, he walked round the other side of the desk, lit two cigarettes and gave me one. I thought ‘Is he too frightened even to let me touch the matches?’ I started to try to smoke it, but it soon became too wet to smoke, so I put it down and just sat, as the man kept saying ‘Please, oh for God’s sake, please don’t cry.’ Then the telephone rang. He walked round the desk before he answered and grabbed my arm saying ‘Please for the wife’s sake, don’t look too het up, they’re here.’ I tried to sit up and compose myself as he picked up the phone; After he had said ‘Hello’ a voice said something, then the man said ‘Yes he’s ready, send them up. Oh! you’d better tell them he’s in a bit of a state.’ He put the phone down and stood looking at it till there was a knock on the door.

The first detective got into the car and I numbly followed. When the other had got in the car started off. We’d barely gone a few yards when we passed the coffee house where I was to have met Thelma, almost three hours before. I only half saw it, but it was enough to make me look at my knees for the rest of the journey, until we drove into a strange hollow-sounding building. When we stopped the two enormous detectives gently ladled me out of the car, and into an oddly lit big room. They told me to sit on a stool. Every now and then a voice whose owner I didn’t quite see, asked me for some particular or other about myself. Then a doctor arrived and after looking at me, said ‘Drink this, you’ll feel better.’ I drank it and didn’t. I asked the policeman if I could ring someone.

‘Well I’d leave it for now lad,’ he said, ‘do it in the morning, they might be in bed.’

‘But I want to speak to someone.’ I’d almost said anyone, but as I checked it, it dawned on me that I couldn’t ring Bella, the person I most wanted to talk to. I must not for the simple reason, that although Bella could face anything or anyone, the one thing she really dreaded was the police who would book her for vagrancy, so I didn’t dare give our phone number. As I realized I couldn’t ring her, a wave of terrible loneliness swept over me. I’d never felt so lonely before in my life. Then the policeman asked ‘Are you with legal guardians over here?’ Oh, no, I wasn’t and with that the last little bit of my soul and independence was taken from me.

I sat on my stool listening to them get through to the Melbourne cid on the telephone. I could almost feel the words going through the wires and myself, like hot lead. I could see the words flying from phone to phone in Melbourne, like so many nightmare birds.

Suddenly it didn’t matter. After a falling sensation I found myself floating and talking to someone miles away and very high up. I was tired but very happy, and as we talked little silver bells seemed to be ringing in the distance, and strange music started playing. A voice spiralled up on a breeze, then disappeared, only to come back again and this time more loudly; it persisted and persisted in calling me to the entrance of a tubelike place. Once there I found myself being swiftly drawn up the tube. As I was reaching the end of it, I heard another voice saying ‘He said he was in a state.’ I opened my eyes and found myself looking straight into a face. Slowly I recognized it as being the doctor’s. His eyes studied me for a while, then his mouth said ‘Well now, what have we got here? Come on, I think you’re due for bed, do you think you can walk?’ ! got up, and walked with him and a policeman to an alcove from which the policeman took some blankets and gave them to me. Then we walked into a row of cells.

The policeman with the keys stopped at a door and unlocked it. A voice started singing ‘Oh God bless you and keep you—’

‘Shut up,’ yelled the policeman, ‘I’ve had enough of you tonight and I don’t want any more out of you.’ The voice stopped singing, and was mumbling as the policeman opened the door. ‘Sorry kid’ he, said, ‘you’ll have to stay in here for tonight, we’ve got a lot of guests.’ He motioned me into a large cell. One light burned in the cell, about six drunks were lying on boards, and a very white seatless lavatory stood in the corner. The policeman pointed to an empty board and said ‘There you are, that’s yours.’ I looked at it for some time before I could bring myself to spread the blankets on it. The copper touched me on the shoulder, went out and locked the heavy door. With the door’s banging noise I started feeling terror at being locked up and I had to fight myself not to scream out. After; I had arranged the blankets I lay down on the board, pulled them over myself, and tried not to let the drunks see that I could see them watching me as they mumbled away to themselves. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something nice.

I wondered what Bella was doing right then and tried to guess who she might be with. I wondered how long it would be before she missed me. Then I started to think about Thelma and could hear her cursing me for not turning up. She was just saying something like ‘That’s him all over, can’t rely—’ when I heard a soft noise which was followed by another. I raised my head off the plank, and saw that the drunk who had been singing was bending over me. I thought he was going to say something because he had opened his mouth to speak, he started to, and then the next thing I knew he was vomiting all over me. I tried to push the blankets off and jump up, but he went on vomiting.

I began yelling and knocked him flying as I ran to the door and started beating on it and screaming. There was a sound of running feet, then of the door being opened. When it did, all I could think of to say to the two policemen as they stood there was ‘Can’t I go home and come back in the morning?’ They looked horrified and then one went into the cell and started hitting the drunk who was now crying and trying to pee into the lavatory bowl. I didn’t want him to hit the drunk, all I wanted was a shower.

They walked me down to the showers and turned them on, while I stood under them fully dressed. After I had got some of the muck out of my hair and off my clothes, I took the clothes off and had a proper shower. One of the policemen took the clothes away then came back with a funny pair of pants and a shirt. “We went back up to the office where they gave me a cup of cocoa and helped me to make up a bed on the office floor. I crawled into it and lay there with no feelings at all. I looked at the patterns on the ceiling, then at those in the material of the plain clothes detectives’ suits as they came and went, reporting all sorts of things through the night. Also to my slight amusement each one would say as he came in ‘What’s that down there?’ Their sounds of surprise were echoing in my ears as I slowly fell asleep.

The little boy walked into the room and said ‘You’re not going to make me do it, are you?’

I hardly looked at him as I said ‘No, I’m not’ and decided to work that one out later.

He put his small package down on the other bed and said ‘What are you in for?’

For a second I hesitated. ‘Robbing a bank.’

The little boy’s eyes shone with admiration at my lie. During the last five days I had grown weary at the very sound of one and threepence. It had been repeated endlessly ever since the morning a hand had shaken me back into my stiff body, and the dreadful slow dawning shock of knowing that I was in jail. A cup of cocoa and a wash later, I had been taken into a room full of austere middle-aged people, and stood in front of them while someone had explained why and for what, I was there. This had been followed by a lot of surprised sounding confusion on the part of the middle-aged people sitting on a dais. No sooner had it subsided than I had been hastily bundled out of the room and taken to a Boy’s Remand, cum Detention Home.

After I had got over the shock of seeing the boys, most of whom looked like old men, and gone through a night of soul-sickening efforts in the dormitory, to keep even my mind to myself, I had been put into a room. I had still not been allowed to phone Milly, but I had been allowed to write Bella on a mean little piece of ruled paper, but somehow I didn’t care. A strange numbness had overtaken me. I hardly ever spoke to anyone. I seldom touched the food, for which a number of monkey-like little boys around me were very grateful. I sat with a numbed mind and glassy eyes as I listened to well-meant lectures on everything from .handicrafts to God. Also, I now knew the whispered and almost farcically sad history of nearly every person in the place, including the rather lost but earnest staff who ran this light-weight prison, and who, it seemed to me, were the real prisoners. There were boys who were in for the sixth time, for persistently bashing the devoted little mother who still came twice a week to renew the bonds of hatred, and pass over gifts that were never wanted except for barter. There was one little clutch of gnome-like toughs who’d never known anywhere else in their twelve years of life. The staff, because they had known them for so long, seemed in a curious way to love the boys, although every single one of them fought, outwitted and cheated the staff, with the loving care of a small boy showing his first efforts at making something to his father.

Amongst the characters in the Home was a cook who used to get blind drunk and scream obscenities about the prison and the police to the world at large through his kitchen window; a boy who loved eating flies; and three brothers who, at the average age of ten, had successfully bumped their mother off. Another had a special place in everyone’s heart, because he could go without needing the lavatory for five days in a row.

I used to just be able to get through the days, and their half-hearted lectures and the evenings with the ‘get togethers’ because as soon as they were over I could go back to my cellroom and be by myself. Once there and alone, I had two treats in store. The first was my window. The Home being on a hill meant I could look out of my window over quite a large part of Sydney, and up to the Cross.

I had worked out the shape of every lit building. I could outline the very building where Beryl lived, then I would count up the distant squares of window lights and pretend to go in through them. Then, if my mind travelled down from her lighted squares and moved just a little to the left, and popped over a chemist’s shop, I could almost see Bella sitting as she waited for clients to arrive, reading Thorne Smith, one of her favourite authors. My flying mind’s eye used to batter on our windows like some moth almost yelling as I stood watching from my square of window ‘It’s me, it’s me, what are you doing, what’s that you’re eating? Open the window, it’s me.’ Sometimes I used to get quite desperate with exhaustion, as I mentally battered on so many windows around the Cross, longing to see just one familiar face. I used to do this till the lights went out, then in bed my real game began.

It was very simple. I’d be home in my bedroom, then I’d decide to go out. Where would I go, whom would I visit? there was no end to this game. I would carefully wash and dress, then say good-bye to Bella, and out into the Cross I’d pop. Sometimes I might just want to look in the shop windows and check to see what I thought of the current display. Often, as I was looking, someone like Beryl would happen to pass and say ‘Hello love, I’m just going down to Jean and Ronnie’s. Will you come with me, we need a fourth for cards?’ And the next thing I knew I’d find myself humming and hawing, as I pretended to have better cards in my hand than I had, as I sat in some flat secure with my friends.

At first I rather resented the little boy who had been put into my room, he was such a funny little creature, all bones and big eyes.

‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘Frank, but they always call me “Matchbox” here.’

‘Always?’ I thought, so I asked him if he had been here before.

He finished rolling his socks down as he said ‘Yep, eight bloody times.’

I looked at him for a while. ‘What for?’

He examined a toenail. ‘I burn things.’

‘What do you burn?’

‘Oh! heck, I don’t know, anything I want to; houses, cars and things.’

For one second I lay glued to the bed as I thought ‘What if you burn this joint down, and we are all locked up?’ then I thought ‘Oh well, it’s all stone and metal so I don’t suppose it will burn.’

Matchbox went on talking. He told me he was twelve and three quarters, and that the big fat matron who smelt was here when he first arrived at the age of four. He gave me the history of many other boys, and a lot of the staff. He told me that everyone knew that one very small little boy was the son of a doctor and a nurse who worked in the hospital across the yard. He told me on God’s honour, that they put some sort of stuff into the food to make the boys be good, and want to go to school and to church on Sundays. I lay listening to the small voice talking away until I finally fell asleep.

We had finished a lunch of very smelly sausages on Saturday, and then stood while someone gabbled some un-understandable prayer of thanks, and I was walking to the reading room when a nurse, as they were called, said ‘You have two visitors, your aunt and uncle.’ As I stared, she told me to come with her. I followed the, tall, grey haired woman along the echoing passages and up into the visitors’ room. It was a hideous room, but its lone vase of drooping flowers standing in front of a faded picture, which hung on the brown tiled wall, gave it a glamour that my eyes were grateful for. I sat down on a stiff-backed chair and waited, not knowing what or whom to expect as the nurse disappeared through another door.

A few seconds later the sound of Bella’s voice echoed into my heart, to be followed by the sight of her pink glove. I sat desperately trying to keep my composure as the glove was followed by her pink bow-trimmed dress. Then she came in, loaded with parcels. To my surprise she was followed by an actor called Ross Buchanan whom I didn’t know very well. Bella crossed the doorway, and the nurse took the parcels from her. I knew that she would check them. Then the nurse indicated me with her head, saying in a rather hostessish manner ‘There he is, that’s him.’ At the same time Bella half turned from the nurse and was in the middle of miming to me ‘Your Auntie Bella and Uncle Ross, get me?’ and Ross put his arm around Bella, saying in a loud, old fashioned voice to the nurse ‘Thank you madam, but I think we know the dear boy.’ I moved quickly over to Bella and hugged her, saying ‘Auntie Bella, I am so glad to see you; Hello Uncle Ross.’

We moved to a table and sat down, Bella still holding on to my hand. As we looked at one another, none of us seemed to know what to say. To make matters worse, I noticed my stained clothes and felt sordid. Bella kept squeezing my hand.

Just as the silence became unbearable Ross said ‘I’m playing Captain Hook in Peter Pan at the Minerva.’

I looked at Ross, with his pale, lined face, his large knotted tie and black suit, and couldn’t imagine him, or his very cultivated English voice ever being used for anything but radio plays, or in his greatest stage triumph as Oscar Wilde. ‘Oh that’s wonderful Ross,’ I said.

Bella gripped me hard again. I looked down at the table and just sat squeezing her hand, and smelling her familiar perfume.

Then Ross said ‘Oh but you’ll love this Peter Pan, it’s going to be quite different. You see I’ve done a lot of research on Hook, and I’ve discovered that he was an old Etonian dandy, so I’m going to do the lot. All the pirates will be in period drag, and I’m going to wear a page boy bob; cover myself in smart velvets and jewellery. I’m even going to have rings on my hook.’

We all laughed for quite some time till Bella said ‘Oh Jesus louse I’m so sorry, I got so worried.’ She paused. ‘Chris has given us a present, two kittens called Mr and Mrs Sunday. Would you like a cat?’

I asked her what colour they were.

‘Everything, the lot. Oh it’s no use love, I wasn’t going to talk like this, but I’ve got to. The rotten stinking swines, how dare they?’

‘The whole of the Cross are furious,’ Ross said, ‘no one can believe it. What is actually happening?’

I felt dreadful but I tried to explain to them that as far as I knew, they were keeping me here till they had heard from Melbourne and from anyone legally connected with me.

‘But what about the charge? What about a lawyer, have you seen anyone?’

No I hadn’t, and that was the frightening part of it. I’d simply been lured from behind a counter, plucked out of my life, and put in here. I had seen no one and been told nothing.

As we talked about it I grew more and more sad. The calm which I had somehow created vanished, and I felt all the old shock and horror sweeping back over me, to the point where I felt that I was in a nightmare. Here I was talking to two people I knew, about things I knew, and in a language we all understood. But soon they would go and take my world with them, leaving me behind in a world of half grown people, iron doors, and the smells of boiled cabbage and stew, where crime was as much a part of the lives of the boys and the staff as salt in their jail food. I started to weep bitterly for one minute, then it went. I didn’t care. I asked Bella how the palm tree was, and the trees in the street. Then she brightened. Ross said he would give me a party as soon as I came out. Bella told me that Milly, Thelma and Cliff were trying to get permission to come and see me. She gave me messages from a whole string of people who had phoned in a rage.

I was touched to think that all these people at the Cross missed me. I was part of the Cross and I was glad of it. Bella said ‘I brought you quite a lot of prezzies.’ She cocked a wary eye towards the nurse at the far end of the room, who, having been through my parcel, was busy pretending not to be there. Bella then said ‘One’s a surprise prezzy,’ and winked at me.

Just then a whole crowd of careworn looking people, dressed in very ordinary clothes, came in. They were the mothers and fathers of the others in the Home. The nurse came up to us, said she was sorry, but we had had our hour.

Bella, Ross and I looked wildly at one another. For one mad second I thought Bella would say ‘Let’s run for it.’ but she didn’t. She started quickly saying ‘I’ll come next Wednesday.’ I jerked, next Wednesday seemed so far off, was I ever going to get out? Then the nurse said ‘I’m sorry.’ The three of us hugged one another and they both started backing away towards the door, while I stood saying ‘Good-bye Auntie Bella, Uncle Ross.’ Bella half turned to walk out. ‘Don’t you worry louse,’ she said, ‘the Cross is all for you, see you soon my darling. Now don’t let us down, we’re all waiting for you.’ As soon as they had gone the nurse gave me my undone parcel, escorted me back to the iron door, and knocked on it. As she knocked, she turned to me, and muttered ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to have that pair as relatives,’ she paused, ‘but I’d love to have them as friends.’

I just kept on looking at my parcel.

I lay on my bed in a state of agony, wishing that Bella and Ross hadn’t come, bringing memories and glimpses of my now forbidden world. Tonight I couldn’t bear to look out of my window. It was Saturday night, party night, but I just lay feeling a hideous mixture of things. My body felt young but my mind felt old and worthless. I could hear Matchbox breathing and thought of waking him up, then decided against it. I kept on trying to either forget or remember little things that Bella and Ross had said, not so much in words, but with their eyes. I had looked at all the things Bella had given me, but I couldn’t understand why she had brought me such things as biscuits (she knew I hardly ever ate them), let alone a large bottle of bay rum hair dressing. She knew that I hardly ever used anything on my hair but water, and maybe a little wipe over with soap if it wouldn’t lie down. I was grateful for the nice soap, but I still couldn’t think what she had meant by a surprise present. I’d turned every little piece of wrapping inside out looking for something which I hadn’t found, after which I had given a boy half the packet of biscuits for a filthy book which was all about a Popeye, Wimpy, and an Olive Oil, whom I had never known before. I found it rather funny and gave it to Matchbox. He was going to use it to get some chewing gum.

I kept on tossing and turning on my bed. The evening had been a soul-destroying horror for my money. After the usual pigswill that was eaten so early in the evening that it seemed like a late lunch, we had been marched into the big drill-cum-social hall. Once we had been herded into our proper positions and the trap had been sprung, we had been forcibly entertained by some of the most upsetting people I had ever seen, or heard of. A very cheery little woman sang Road to the Isles while playing the tuneless piano. She was followed by a big hearty man who, the boys fiercely whispered, was almost half copper—he told sturdy stories to about one hundred and fifty boys who pretended to listen as they smiled to conceal their hatred, and passed one another forbidden goods in secret. Then we had another lady who spoke about the beautiful things in life. They included loving one’s station in life, one’s parents, self-denial, one’s betters, solid unthinking toil, God, and the King. But never, never oneself. After she had finished, her husband, who was a minister, spoke for a while. Then everyone sang God Save the King and tried not to rush to the Saturday night treat of cakes and sandwiches, which tasted and smelt to me as if they had been made up out of the leftover stew.

I had only just managed to sit through the Social evening without screaming my head off, and desperately wanted to get back to my room. But no, Saturday night was Gala Night even here, so I had to stay up and be Gala. Also, the minister spotted me like a hawk, then headed straight towards me, flashed a professional smile, and half a minute later followed it up by asking me whether I had thought about God. I paused for a second as I tried to conceal my anger at his intrusion. I looked at him, swiftly making up my mind whether I should say ‘Thought about God, Sir? how could I have not? I’ve had both him and that son of his pushed down my throat, and into my mind, as regularly as any meal even before I could think properly. And since you’ve asked me, I find it odd that though I’m always being told that he needs me, strangely enough, I’ve never needed him.’ As I stared at the minister over my sandwich before replying, it dawned on me that this man with the round piece of white collar might, at this very moment, have some say over my life.

I gave him the answer he wanted and stood listening to the well-meant and worn words, rather like, an animal which knows that if it brings back the ball, or does its tricks sitting on its hind legs, it makes its owner feel good, so pat pat pat and then food.

I lay turning the whole evening over in my mind, and had just decided to wake Matchbox, when he said ‘I don’t feel well.’ I asked him what was wrong, and he said he had a headache. Then I remembered the bay rum.

‘Hold on, and I’ll put some hair stuff on you, it will cool you.’ I got up and groped around the top of my locker, found it and then went over to his bed and started putting it on his forehead. I noticed he was very hot, and perspiring.

Suddenly he said ‘What are yer putting booze on me for?’

‘I’m not, it’s bay… .’ I smelt it—he was right, it was whisky. I couldn’t think how Bella had got it all sealed up, until I remembered our favourite chemist near our flat.

Matchbox said ‘Give us a drink.’ When I asked him if he drank he said ‘Yeah always have. Dad’s got a lot around.’ I got a cup, poured some scotch out, then put some water in it from the jug, took a swig and gave Matchbox the cup. He drank the lot.

‘Steady on,’ I protested. I poured another lot then drank most of it. Matchbox downed the rest in one gulp, so I poured again. This time I only let him have sips as we sat whispering.

He told me all about his home life, which sounded a nightmare round of either sleeping in a tub with blankets, while Dad got drunker and drunker with the boys as they played poker, or arriving home late after a night of mischief, finding Dad with a new woman and having to sleep in the back of the first car that he could find open. I felt sorry for him. I poured another drink and we began giggling and talking about people in the Home. Then to my horror Matchbox started to sing. ‘Shut up,’ I hissed. But he didn’t, he got louder. In desperation I put my hand over his mouth, still hissing ‘For God’s sake don’t, for God’s sake shut up. You’ll get us into terrible trouble, shut up.’ As I kept my hand over his mouth I could feel him laughing and shaking. I felt rather bad and frightened about the whole thing. It was my fault that he was drunk.

I stood holding the back of his head with one hand, as I kept the other tightly clamped over his mouth, listening with frightened ears for the sound of any of the night attendants. Then I realized that the top of the hand I held over his mouth was wet. I took it away. He was crying and sobbing ‘I want my mother.’

I picked him up like a baby and sat cuddling him as I said ‘Well she’ll come and see you, won’t she?’

‘No she won’t ever. Mrs Magoon told me.’

‘Who’s Mrs Magoon?*

Matchbox shook a little. ‘She’s an old plonkie, she lives next door and she saw it all.’

‘What did she see?’

‘She told me that my mother had me in a pram and was running around with her hair all on fire when Smith’s petrol pump blew up.’ Then he went very quiet. I went on nursing him like a doll.

Some time later I said ‘Are you asleep, Matchbox?’

‘Don’t call me stinking Matchbox, I don’t like it.’ He started crying again.

I hugged him a little more, then said ‘All right I’ll call you Frank.’

‘I hate that name too.’

‘Well, what can I call you?’

He stopped sobbing for a while, and said ‘Dunno, you better just call me Matchbox ’cos I’m just a dirty little firelighter.’

‘I know what, I’ll call you Firefly.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, er, it’s a fly with a light in its bum.’ We both started softly laughing. ‘You’re kidding,’ he said, ‘you just made it up.’

‘No I’m not, they live in trees and you can see them at night, hundreds of them. They fly around like a lot of little stars with wings.’

‘Oh, I like that, but they’ll make fun of me if you call me that.’

‘O.K. I’ll call you Firefly here in the room and Matchbox outside, how’s that?’

Matchbox thought that was just grouse and told me so before he went to sleep.

The next few days as I waited for news about myself, and Bella’s next visit were the worst I had ever known. I’d lost my feeling of numb independence and calm. Ross and Bella’s visit had half destroyed that, and Matchbox with his company and quaint ways had taken the rest of my independence. I found that I couldn’t imagine things at night as I used to before he came, and during the day I was utterly alone. Matchbox, being so young, had to go to school each day. So I was left wandering about the library reading anything readable I could lay my hands on, which wasn’t much. Nearly all of the books in the library were of the kind which, apart from their appalling general appearance, I imagined could only have been salvaged from some Victorian missionary’s boat as it sank during a typhoon, half way up the Zambesi. So I would sit as I waited for news of my future, thumbing my unseeing way through The Stand at Steadfast Rock or Reflections for a Summer Afternoon complete with large and sometimes funnily defaced pictures.

Wednesday morning I decided to fill the hours until Bella’s visit by trying to interest myself in A History of Lakes and Their Attendant Water Life. Just as I was ploughing through ‘water-weeds and their uses’, one of the attendants came up and said ‘You’re lucky today, you have been allowed a special extra non-blood relative visitor, Lady Hardwick.’ I looked at him. I didn’t know any Lady Hardwick, but I didn’t say so. Even Frankenstein would have been a welcome release from the books. I got up and we started off towards the visiting room. On our way the attendant said in slightly awestruck tones ‘She’s the President of the Youth League.’ I still didn’t utter. We reached the iron doors and he fiddled around with the keys and opened them. Then we walked into the visiting room. I saw her Ladyship and nearly bolted back to the books. The attendant noticed this, but so great was his excitement at having a titled do-gooder on the premises, that he almost dragged me towards the ginger fur coat, and the black hat, which crowned the crimped grey hair and rimless glasses shining beneath. About three yards from her Ladyship he said ‘Here he is, your Mrs Ladyship.’ I started to laugh and so did her Ladyship. I made one tremendous effort not to laugh outright and yell ‘Thelma!’ as I spotted the familiar irregular tooth.

The attendant left and Thelma whispered ‘Well love, what’s the point of being one of Australia’s best actresses, if I can’t get in to see my friends?’ I was touched at seeing her and at the trouble she had gone to, and told her so. She explained that they hadn’t let her in when she first tried so she had thought up the idea of the Youth League, and then everybody had been only too pleased to allow her to see me. We chattered away for a long time. It was one of the strangest conversations I had ever had. Her clothes, and the make-up she had used were so real, that sometimes only the sound of her voice, or the expression in her eyes told me that I was talking to her, and not this faded, professional understander in front of me. I felt so cheered by her certainty and all her news, that even as she handed me a book of American plays and began her character walk out of the door, none of the waves of terrible loneliness came over me. I went back to the recreation room and sat in a far off world of adult thought and laughter as I devoured every line of The Man Who Came to Dinner.

From the first ‘Hello louse,’ I knew Bella was in fine form. She looked very well and was full of news and plans. She asked me if Lady Hardwick had been to see me. I told her all about it, or as much as I dared softly whisper. ‘Look love,’ she said, ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking, and please don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to rock the boat, but I’ve got in touch with a lawyer.’ I looked at her for a second, then she continued ‘This whole thing’s a bloody fishy scandal and though you may be quite right, I think it’s about time someone started doing something.’

Suddenly I was glad and I agreed with her. I’d recovered from the shock and felt was about time that I had some sort of assistance.

Then she said ‘Did you use the hair oil?’ I nodded. ‘Well there’s a bottle of after-shave this time, I’ve had old Clem up half the night sealing it.’ We went on talking for a very happy hour or more. Then she said, ‘I’ll come on Sunday, if Ernie hasn’t sprung you in the meantime,’ we kissed good-bye, and I watched her familiar white court shoes disappearing down the end of the passage. Then I went back to my book, and the world of Broadway. I waited for Matchbox to turn up after school, dying to tell him all my news. But he still hadn’t appeared when it was time for our evening meal. Finally I asked one of his schoolmates where he was was.

‘Oh! he’s crook,’ he said, ‘he’s up in the sickery. They took him up there this arvo—’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked.

‘He thought it was a head fever or something like that.’

That night was the loneliest I had ever known. I couldn’t even get any pleasure from looking out of the window, and I couldn’t pretend in bed, so I opened the after-shave and drank myself into a sad stupor.

In the middle of the next day, I went to see the matron and asked if I could see Matchbox. After a lot of deep breathing and rumbling calculations it appeared that I couldn’t, but I could send a message.

I tried to write something nice and funny, then gave it to her. She didn’t even wait for me to leave, but added to her already unfortunate reputation by reading it in front of me, which annoyed me very much. Putting the message on the desk, she started to talk. Every word was so professionally kind and so devoid of any feeling that she might just as well have sat saying ‘Burlonk, blank, clink donka danka.’ She must have sensed this because she stopped and caught my eye as I was looking at a bunch of white daisy-like flowers on her desk. Then she said ‘Oh! so we like flowers do we?’ I wanted to throw them at her as I nearly said ‘Oh! yes we do, we do like flowers, we eat them.’ But I just said ‘Yes Matron.’ Then to my surprise she pulled one out of the vase and gave it to me, saying There we are, a little surprise gift for us.’ I left her room carrying my daisy, and once back in mine, I put it in a cup and sat looking at its white petals and its yellow button of a centre.

I spent the next three days looking at it, nearly begging it not to wither and die and leave me. Its bright round face had become my friend. Each morning I used to check every petal and give it fresh water. Also, I discovered something curious about it. I found that no matter where I put it in the room, it bent over and pointed its head to wherever it thought the sun was. Even when the late afternoon sun shone on the other side of the building, the head pointed towards it. And when the sun it couldn’t see set, it folded its petals over its face for the night. This haunted and moved me. It gave me the curious feeling that the flower and I were almost alike. Here in our room both of us still followed the sun and the former lives we had been cut off from, the flower with its petals, and I with my mind’s eye. I spent much time wondering what sort of tiny flower mind it had, that still thought and behaved as if the flower were really alive. I used to get quite befuddled as I tried to work out the reason for the flower’s behaviour. Was it only behaving from habit, or did it have a mind of it’s own? Or was I only behaving from habit. No of course I wasn’t, I had a mind of my own. Well in that case something must have been telling the flower what to do, if only to keep up a habit. I looked at its hollow stem—no, there couldn’t be any little mind there. I peered into its yellow button and tried to see something there, ‘No, perhaps it’s in the fat part at the back of the flower’s face where it joins on to the stem? Well, I’ll have a look there when it dies.’ But I didn’t like the idea, it seemed indecent, rather like cutting open a dead person’s head and yelling into it ‘Where have you gone?’ So on Sunday morning I put it into the lavatory bowl, and, dead as it was, I envied it a little as I watched it spin its way down, and out of the prison.

By the time Bella’s visit was due I was back in nearly as bad a state as the one I’d been in when I first arrived. Bella brought Ross with her again. Both of them tried to give me enough hope to survive an execution, but I couldn’t rally. I tried desperately to keep some sense of proportion and calm but the two weeks of suspense and imprisonment were too heavy to throw off. After they’d gone I walked along and joined the queue as it passed me, and marched into the cabbage-smelling dining-room, full of the din of enamel plates and resigned tough voices. After the clanking of the aluminium cups of good night cocoa that came with two inch-thick slices of bread had long since passed down the silent prison, I stood at my window and tried not to cry as I tried to think out some quick way to cut my throat while I looked up at the Cross.

The noises grew nearer and nearer, then suddenly I woke up. It was a bright sunny morning outside. I levered myself up out of my cramped position below the window and flew around hiding things. Then I made the bed look as if it had just been re-made after being slept in, and stood waiting to be let out of the cell. But the footsteps of the man who unlocked the doors passed by and disappeared into the distance. I waited, but he didn’t come back for me. I could hear his voice saying the familiar ‘O.K. lads, it’s a new day,’ and ‘righto me beauties, up, out, and start shining,’ until the tramping of the feet drowned it, and the noise dissolved into a hollow silence. It was all so unusual that it frightened me. I stood looking at the door, trembling and not knowing what to think or feel as the sensation of being doubly locked in grew. Not being let out in the usual way made me feel as if I had only just been locked up, only this time in a tomb. Just as I was about to yell out, I heard noises. I stood staring towards the door and listening. The noises grew nearer and nearer, then stopped outside my door, which slowly opened. The little man who opened it said ‘Thought I’d forgotten yer, didn’t yer?’ I nodded. ‘Well I haven’t. I left yer because they’re gonna see yer, this morning, and yer’ve got to wash and change special. Come on kid.’

The waiting room’s clock ticked loudly, as its hands sloughed through time. I sat in my crumpled stained clothes watching it rather than the other boys in the room, or their anxious-faced parents through a glass panel in a room beyond. Set in an archway to my left were two lots of doors, through which parents and boys would pass in answer to their names. After we’d all sat for what seemed like hours, straining desperately to hear something, a voice would cry out ‘I won’t do it ever again, I promise, I promise.’ Or a woman’s voice would say ‘But he’s a good boy, I’m his mother I know, he’s a good, good boy,’ then a breathy silence would hang over everybody in the two rooms outside. They’d start to move a little, only to be halted by a soft mumbling sound, which would be followed by the doors opening. Sometimes a woman would come through them weeping so bitterly that it was, unbearable to see and agony to hear. Or a man, a woman and a boy would all come out together, holding each other’s hands so tightly that their knuckles would show white. They’d pause, look at all of us with eyes that glowed like moonstones, raise their hands in a mixture of a good-bye wave and a blessing, then walk out, followed by dozens of eyes hazy with hope and envy.

I had mentally rehearsed a thousand times over, just how I’d look and what I’d say when I walked in. I knew to the last gesture the act I’d use as I explained the incident to an entranced court. I was determined to appear almost as if I were at the Bamboo. As I sat, I started once more to run through my dialogue, ‘Your Honour, a great deal has already been said, and said very well. But could I now explain just what happened and how it did? Thank you. It was a very hot afternoon and I had just returned from luncheon with the well-known actress—’. ‘What did you say?’ the man poked me again and said that they wanted me. I got up and tried quickly to arrange my mess of clothes, and to ignore the feeling that my bowels and my thumping heart were about to drop out of my shaking body. My head spun in one direction while I followed the man in another, towards the door.

I don’t know what I expected to see, but what I did frightened the wits out of me. What we stepped into wasn’t a court full of noisy people with a judge, it was just a large green-tiled room with a row of plain-looking elderly people sitting along a raised platform. There was some sort of announcement and I was told to stand on a little patch of floor. Then a woman started talking about me in a flat voice. As it quacked on, the rest of the people up on the dais just sat staring right through me. I felt myself growing smaller and smaller and smaller until I couldn’t look up. Then there was a hush, broken only by the sounds of papers being passed back and forth, together with odd comments like ‘How long?’ ‘Oh! do we have that power?’ ‘Well, well, duck click clack, personally suck, blow, I feel—’ I thought I would die. The minutes dragged on and on, and my head felt so odd that I couldn’t even hear properly. It was like being under water. Sometimes I’d come up and hear ‘Due care and attention—’ then a loud nothing. Up again, I’d hear ‘Well I should have thought that the State with this type of child—, I mean after all, his birth—’. ‘No, there was a different decision on that, now let me think, legal guardians in this type of case—’. ‘Ah! yes, but you have forgotten that on the last ruling—’.

The voice sounded like quite a nice one as it said ‘Well young man, this is quite a complicated problem you have presented us with, what are your views, hmmmm?’ I looked, trying to see which of the blank faces was speaking to me, as I thought ‘This is my chance to really tell all.’ But as I couldn’t see the face that I should talk to, I said nothing. ‘Come on, now young man, tell us.’ I wanted to desperately, but try as I might I couldn’t move my tongue, and after what seemed like hours I said ‘I’m sorry, I’m—’ I could vaguely see the heads turning towards each other. There was a loud mumbling of voices for a while, then the nice voice said ‘Very well, thank you. You can go.’

I stood staring at the selection of male and female feet underneath the tables until the attendant took me by my shoulder, steered me out of the room, back into the other, and told me to sit. Then he went away. I sat feeling utterly heartbroken, and stunned. I hadn’t uttered one useful word that might have helped me to get out.

I was still sitting when the man came back with a parcel, saying ‘Come over here and sign.’ He pointed to a desk and I trailed over and wrote my name on several pieces of paper, after which I stood waiting to go back to my room. Then the man looked at me, saying ‘Well don’t you want to leave us, you’ve got all your gear?’ I looked at the parcel, then looked back up at him and said ‘You mean I can go home?’ ‘Yeah, shoot through before they change their minds.’

I couldn’t believe it, it was so frighteningly simple. The nice voice just said something and it was all over, just as if it had never happened. Then I thought I’d ring Bella and tell her. I walked to the phone, nervously dialled the familiar number, and waited. She answered in her business voice, ‘Hello, Bella speaking.’ I tried to think of something funny to say, maybe to pretend that I was a customer, but I couldn’t. All I could say was ‘It’s me here, I’m coming home.’

‘Louse! Oh Jesus or Gawd love, got any money for a cab, no don’t worry I’ll come over and get you,’

‘No it’s all right. I’ve got enough for a cab.’

‘Well for Pete’s sake shake a leg, come on, I’ll get the kettle on quick.’

I put the phone down and turned to go. Then I thought of Matchbox, so I asked the man if I could go back up to the hospital and say good-bye to him. No, I couldn’t. Then he said ‘I’ll tell you what sport. I’ll ring up and tell them, and maybe you could wave to him.’ I tried to walk out of the main entrance with some sort of dignity, but as I walked, I felt like a very lonely fly. Once out and down the stairs, I looked around and up to the tall part of the building where the hospital was, and stood waiting, trying to find the right window. At last I saw a hand wave. I shadowed my eyes and looked harder. Yes, it was Matchbox—I waved and waved. I noticed that his head was bandaged and I felt even sadder at having to leave him. As I stood waving a cab came along. I flagged it, told the driver where to go, then turned and waved a last good-bye to Matchbox and got in. As we moved off; I peered up through the back window to look at the dreary building; the little hand was still waving, but I could see Matchbox’s other hand wiping his eyes. Then I discovered that I was wiping mine.

As the cab swayed its way up towards the Cross, the driver tried to talk, but I felt too sad to and just sat watching everything with a growing excitement that was almost like the feeling I had had when I arrived with Barry and Eris. The nearer we got to the Cross the stranger I felt. Nothing was quite the same as I remembered it. The shop with the pink front wasn’t quite as glamorous or as big as I’d thought. Neither were other things, for instance a favourite café or a tree. They were the same yet different. We turned into Macleay Street and stopped. I paid and walked into the flats. I had barely set foot on the stairs than Bella was all over me. ‘Welcome home, louse, welcome home.’ We stood for quite some time clutching one another and laughing before we went into the flat.

Just as we walked in through the door, two red and blue things shot across the floor and into the kitchen. ‘What on earth was that?’ I asked Bella. She didn’t reply, but went into the kitchen, bent down and started fishing around underneath the fridge. As she groped all sorts of noises came out from underneath it. At last she pulled something out and handed it to me, saying ‘Mr Sunday, he’s yours.’ It was one of the most ordinary ginger cats I had ever seen. The remains of a blue bow, hung in shreds from his neck, near his almost crossed eyes, but to me it was the sweetest cat ever born. As I held on to him, Bella produced another ginger kitten and held it up saying ‘Mrs Sunday.’ It too had the remains of a pink bow dangling round its neck.

Bella said ‘I told them their father was coming home and prettied them up. Now look at them, dead ugly, aren’t they?’

‘No, I think they’re a bit plain, but maybe when they grow up—’

‘Oh no,’ breathed Bella, ‘they’re worse than a houseful of drunks even now.’ She kissed Mrs Sunday and put her down. As I replaced Mr Sunday underneath the fridge, I asked her how they got their names. Bella explained that they were born on a Sunday and were about to be drowned on a Sunday a few weeks ago, when Chris had given his hall porter’s kid five shillings for them. Then Bella suggested coffee and a natter. So we sat talking and laughing and talking.

I woke up early and anxiously bright on Thursday morning. Today was to be my big day. As I had my breakfast and played with the kittens, I kept going over and over the list I’d made of things to do that day. First of all I was to see Claude at his house, then have lunch with Ross and an antique dealer who might give me a job. When I thought of meeting Ross a slight flicker of fear stirred in me.

It wasn’t that I was actually nervous, but ever since I had left the prison on Monday, I’d found myself never quite believing in, or relying on anything. Even in the middle of the slap-up dinner party that Bella had given me on Monday night at the Oriana, sitting surrounded by all the people I loved, I had terrible attacks of fear. Silly fears that someone might just walk up and say ‘Could you come see the manager?’ and I’d go to the back of the café where he’d discover a gold fork in my pocket. Even the simplest thing, like arranging to meet someone, would have me almost audibly adding ‘That’s if I’m not taken in the meantime.’

Bella had been wonderful: she would sense these fears and just say ‘Hey louse, where are you? Come on, you’re out, it’s in the past.’

What Bella didn’t know, was that every night I dreamt that I was back in the home, waiting in an agony of suspense. Also I would have fantastic periods during the day when everything would suddenly seem doubly real. As I sat in a café, a pepper-pot would become, like something in a dream, very clear and unreally real. Many a time I found myself pretending to the person I was with either that I admired the shape of the pepper-pot, or that I needed more pepper, just in order to pick it up and surreptitiously squeeze it to make sure it was solid.

I took Bella some coffee and then set, out for the day. After a pleasant walk I arrived at Claude’s house. The fat woman took me through and into his den, where he was in the middle of eating his breakfast. He got up and warmly shook my hand. I accepted some coffee and we sat talking about all manner of things, till suddenly he said ‘I was sorry to hear about your trouble Jon, I was real upset when Bella rang to explain, I really was.’ I was touched by this and was about to say something when he added ‘I don’t care if you did do it, they had no right to do that to you.’ This angered me a little and I felt disappointed in him. He of all people, always just half a toenail inside of the law, had joined the small army of people who, either in the streets or on the phone, said ‘I don’t care if you did—’ It never seemed to dawn on them that I might not have done it, at least not knowingly. But it did seem that they had to express their enormous understanding and forgiveness before they drowned me in gallons of sympathy. All I wanted was a chat and a quick return to my former unquestioned life.

As Claude ate some more toast, I sat looking at his long chocolate-coloured fingers, with their pale pink finger nails and their purple half moons, putting bits of marmalade on toast. He had just cut a small piece of toast, put a lump of butter on it, balanced a blob of marmalade on the butter, and I was waiting to watch it go up and into his mouth, when the toast hovered in mid-air like a humming bird. I heard his voice say ‘But you see kid, now that they are on to you, I think perhaps it would be better if you didn’t come back for a while. Not long, let’s say four or five months, when it’s all cooled down. You know what it’s like, don’t you? I mean I don’t—’ I did, indeed I did, but all I could do at that moment as I fought my bitter disappointment, was to stop that piece of toast which was still in midair from going up.

I gazed at it, it moved up a little, then down a little. I nearly jumped on it mentally like a heavy fly. In a little while it went down, and the pale finger nails left it on the plate as Claude’s voice said ‘Look, you can always come up to the Club as often as you like, the girls and the customers all like you, and you can rehearse with Nedge and you can—’

I tried to say ‘Well if I can be there so often why can’t I sing there, what’s the difference?’ but I didn’t and I knew I couldn’t. Instead I heard myself saying ‘O.K. Claude, I’ll come up and see you all soon. I’d better go now, I’ve got to meet someone about a job—’

‘I’m glad about that. Well, I’ll see you soon, won’t I?’

I nodded.

‘Well good luck kid, and don’t forget, just pop up whenever you feel like it, just any old time you like—’. I shook his hand, walked out of the house, and back up to the Cross.

I still had a little time before I was to meet Ross at the Australia, so I went into the Arabian. My coffee arrived, and with it a feeling of ice cold anger which pushed out the heart-break I had felt since leaving Claude’s. Even though I had been bitterly disappointed by what Claude had said, the thing that upset me almost more than losing my job, was the fact that Claude could be so easily scared, he of all people. I was so surprised, his behaviour had been rather like that of a mongrel dog which, on noticing that you may kick it, doesn’t move an inch, but just stands there flinching and waiting for the kick with such cringing expectancy, that you do kick it. That’s what I couldn’t understand. Why? How had I managed to stop that piece of toast on its way up to destruction if I’d been so wrong? I sat fingering my cup, wrapped in an anger which grew and grew. I thought of the man in the store who chased me round the office. No I couldn’t hate him, I understood him almost to the point of sad admiration. Then I thought of the woman detective, and her calculating face zoomed in front of my eyes like an oncoming car.

I could see the face with such clarity that a hatred I could barely control almost pushed me up and off the chair. Then I thought ‘Yes that’s what I’ll do, I’ll go down there and quietly look for her.’

I knew that I’d find her standing there with a slight smile of ‘It’s all right, I can wait’ on her pregnant face. I’d walk up and stand slightly behind her as I took her arm, saying ‘Hello bitch.’ She’d turn around and say ‘I beg your pardon, I—’ then as I watched the recognition dawn in her eyes I’d say ‘So you shall bitch, you’ll beg and beg for it, but you’ll never get it.’ Then I’d start slowly pulling her away in a grip of steel. She’d yield for a little, before saying ‘Excuse me, but are you mad? I’ll scream for help in a minute.’ ‘Well do,’ I’d say as my fingers cut deeper into her, ‘You can scream your guts out, but I’ve got you as tightly as I’d hold a snake, and I’d never let you go. Come on, bitchy Then I’d drag her all over the store.

She’d scream and yell as we passed groups of shocked people, who would stand like hurriedly converted statues, as I’d drag her past them yelling ‘Look at her, take a good look at her. Remember that face, she broke my heart! Don’t forget that face, tell everyone she catches people for a living. Look, a human spider, look.’ The woman would by this time be gasping ‘Think of my family, please think of my children. I’ve got a husband in the Army overseas, two sons to educate, and my daughter—’ ‘Oh! have you?’ I’d say, ‘I wonder how many bullets your husband fired as I lay in the cooler?’ Then she’d say ‘But you don’t understands my boys need schooling.’ ‘And how much education did my arrest pay for, for them? Go on, tell me, how many lessons and shirts did I buy your sons?’

By this time we’d be in the groceries. The staff would drop the tea and sugar as I dragged her in. Maisie would hit the cash register so hard that the drawer would fly out of the machine, and burst in a cloud of coins on top of the cold meats and the carpet. Then I’d pick one up and say to someone ‘Here, have a look at this, notice anything unusual about that coin?’ The person would look and say ‘No, it’s just a two bob piece.’ I’d make everyone look at the coins but no one would see anything. ‘Right,’ I’d say, ‘look at these.’ Then I’d smash her bag to the floor and out would roll dozens of coins. ‘Look at those,’ I’d yell. ‘Go on, anyone with glasses take a close look at those.’ People would start picking them up, a man with thick glasses would say ‘How funny, there’s a little star on the back, why they’re all marked!’

At that all the people would drop the coins and stare at the woman who’d be urgently whispering to me ‘You’re ruining me, you’re wrecking my job. I have to count all those coins every day so they can keep check on the money. I’ll be finished as a detective after this, they all know my face now, for God’s sake think of my children.’ Then someone would say ‘Oh! poor thing, she’s’ only doing a job, and she’s going to have a baby.’ I’d say ‘Oh! is she now? ’ And turning to her say ‘Your husband’s overseas, you-say?’ ‘Yes, yes he is.’ ‘How long has he been there?’ ‘A year.’ ‘Tell me bitch, are you honest?’ ‘I er—I don’t—’ ‘Make up your mind, bitch. Come on.’  ‘I—yes I am.’ ‘Right,’ I’d say, and as I did I’d pull her dress.

There would be a horrified gasp from the onlookers as I tugged at it till it ripped open, and out would fall a lot of padding. By this time the woman would be screaming ‘Oh God, think of my children, the war, my husband, you’ve ruined my career. You’ve ruined all my chances, I was just going to take over a big position in charge of all the others. Oh! please, can’t you pretend that you’ve only done this as a sort of floor show to raise money for the war effort? and then I’ll go to another store.’ I would look at her and very quietly say ‘No, my bitch, I can’t and I won’t, I’m not a family man myself, but I can tell you just what I’ve in mind for you to do—’. ‘Can I sit ’ere choom?’ I looked up, startled out of my reverie of revenge and nodded to the little English sailor; he sat down.

A few minutes later he rather nervously pulled out some English cigarettes and offered me one. I thanked him and took it. This seemed to please him for he said ‘Funny thing, but most folks ’ere only like American fags.’ I nodded, and felt sorry for him as I did. Most folks hereabouts only liked Americans. Now that the English had finally started to arrive, no one seemed to know what to do with them. Australians on the whole had nothing in common with them, and the gap had only widened into a gulf between the two nations. The only real hold England had had on Australia for years was a combination of political pressures, and a mother country mystique. Even I very seldom saw England as a country in my mind’s eye. Her image, to me, was always that of a large lady dressed as Britannia, lolling in the sea just off Europe. Her second name was ‘Home’, and running all about her like baby spiders on their mother were either people who wore cloth caps, had bad teeth and spoke in cockney, or people who wore crowns and yelled at one another from under them in loud nasal Oxford voices.

The sailor and I tried to talk, but the more we tried, the less we could. I did discover, however, that he came from a long line of engine drivers and by a twist of fate had wound up as a stoker on a warship which was now in Australia. He was such an unhappy little soul that after a while my private worries deserted me. Compared to him, I seemed to have so much. Just occasionally in his bursts of conversation he would let something drop that showed he had had unfortunate dealings not only with the girls in Australia, but with most other people as well. I tried to buck him up, I knew what went on. The English, when they arrived, were not only too late, but were almost unwelcome to many people for a number of reasons. The Americans had been here long before; but the main reason for most of the feelings against England was the deep and almost unknown resentment of the fact that twice in twenty years, England had found herself at war, and whether they liked it or not, Australians had had to travel fifteen thousand miles to fight them for her. Now we had a Pacific war of our own, fought by the few Australian soldiers who weren’t in Europe, and by the American Marines, who had joined them in the desperate struggle down under.

One of the causes mainly responsible for the stunned and angry feelings of many Australians, towards the English, was the fact that after they had received regular doses of England’s pomp, power and might for years, from the schoolroom upwards, England had lost Singapore just as easily as someone might have mislaid a suitcase, or walked out of a house leaving the french windows open with a horde of savage thieves in the back garden. In losing Singapore England lost the last of her Imperial commanded respect. If old Mother Britannia’s helmet hadn’t been exactly knocked off, there was a large dent in it, as it hung sideways, and there was a large dent in Australia’s security as well. The sailor went on talking but I realised I had to leave and meet Ross. Just as I started to say good-bye to him he asked me where he could find a bit of fun, but try as I might I couldn’t think of anywhere. Both the Cross and Sydney itself had altered a great deal even in the short time that I had been in prison, and anyway he seemed to have little money. I told him of a few places where I thought he might be happy. He asked me if I came here often, and I told him that I did. So we arranged to meet in a sort of pot luck fashion and I left.

Sitting in the tram I fell to thinking about the sailor. I’d heard many reports about the English Navy, the one wash bowl to five hundred men sort of story, and also of the class system that practically held the ship itself together. Every little thing that happened on any ship in the harbour was quickly reported even in wartime, in this city that knew so much about ships. I tried to think of something that I could maybe do for him, but I couldn’t think of anything. I thought I would take him home and introduce him to Bella, but then I remembered she wasn’t mad about the English. She had nothing against them, but she always said that they depressed her in and out of bed. Then I remembered something curious, which was that at all the parties I had ever been to, the only English people had been officers. But for some reason, maybe it was the films, any ordinary French sailor, and more particularly any sort of gob from the U.S. Navy was always welcome. Ordinary Aussies or Limeys were very rare. Most Sydney people knew sailors well and high on the list of reasons for having officers only were the facts that they had different and better tailored uniforms, and that ordinary sailors, English or Australian, had always spelt trouble. They seemed to stand for brawls, and broken-hearted hosts or hostesses left standing in the middle of wrecked flats or bodies amongst other things. No, I couldn’t think of any way to help the sailor and the more I tried the more unfair it seemed. I was quite depressed as the tram lurched its way down King Street and I got out and walked up to the Hotel Australia.

I arrived at the Australia, sauntered up the marble stairs and into the busy foyer with all its glamour. It had a magic for me that had never faded from the very first time I saw it. Often I would go in and just sit watching, looking at everything—the showcases full of jewels winking at me from their velvet lined worlds, the flowers, and the staff scurrying around. Often a small page-boy would be walking around looking like some sort of bird as he yelled in a clear, sexless voice, ‘paging Mr so and so,’ whilst; looking the guests over with eyes that were full of premature knowledge. There were always beautiful women waiting with decreasing patience, usually for some man in a splendid uniform of one of the many nations surging around. Then there was the sort of person who seemed to me to do nothing more in life than meet people in glamorous places for exotic meals. Having perhaps just left the grill, these people would thank one another and kiss good-bye, re-arrange their furs, swerve inside the curve of the commissionaire’s outstretched arm, and step straight into a waiting car. Then with their heads lolling back in front of the rear window, they would disappear to wherever fox-furred exotic eaters go.

After I had had my usual look at the foyer, I walked into the vast busy bar. Ross waved from half way down on the left. As I joined him Ross said ‘Ah! there you are, you’re late, what have you got to say for yourself?’ I said I fell amongst thieves.’ I was glad Ross laughed before saying ‘I want you to meet Antony Troy.’ I shook hands with the man and we ordered one drink before lunch. After it arrived, Ross went on to finish a story that I had arrived in the middle of. While he was telling it I had a good look at Antony Troy.

I had been hearing about him ever since I had been in Sydney. It seemed that he had a finger in every worthwhile pie, and as I looked at everything about him from his well brushed hair to his beautifully cut suit, I could believe it. He spoke with a very English and slightly bored voice, but as I looked and listened, I suspected that like his clothes, his voice was a form of protection against the world and a past life.

Later, as we sat in the busy grill, and after we had ordered our food, Ross started talking-about his plans for Peter Pan. The more I looked at my glass of wine and the flowers on the white table-cloth, the more fantastic it seemed to me that I had first heard about it in prison, across a dreary table in a brown-tiled room. Then Troy asked me what I knew about antiques. I had to admit that I knew nothing, although I was fond of them. Also, that I had a curious knack of being at home with them, and was able to identify a work without any real knowledge. Troy asked me to explain, but I couldn’t. It was just a feeling I had about certain things, almost like some very old memory. He took out a pocket watch and said ‘What period is that?’ I looked at it and its exquisite casing. I’d never seen anything quite like it. Its dial was a beautiful little painting, its winder had a polished jewel in it, and when I instinctively pressed it, the watch chimed. I hesitated, then said ‘I think it’s a Victorian case, but the chime sounds French and the dial picture looks Italian,’ and held my breath. Troy looked at Ross for a second as he took a ring off his hand. ‘What is that?’ I took it and without even thinking said ‘It’s a carved emerald and it’s sixteenth century, I think it’s a religious ring of some sort. I’ve never seen one like it before, not even in a book.’ Troy said ‘No you haven’t, and you’re quite right about both the watch and the ring. When could you start work, next Monday?’ Yes I could, then the food arrived and with it the lunch got under way and became more pleasant each minute. I wound up liking Troy very much, particularly as little shafts of what I suspected was the real him broke through more and more towards the end. We stayed till very late, and as I left I, tried to thank Ross for all his help, but he wouldn’t hear of it; He just said ‘Dear boy, if we humans don’t help one another, who will? Hardly the animals dear boy, hardly.’

Weeks later I was still grateful to Ross, and was just thinking of him, when Bella came in to say that he was on the phone. I picked it up. ‘Jon dear boy, are you going to Melinda’s party?’ I said that I was just about to start getting ready to go to it. ‘Oh good, dear boy, well why don’t you call at the Minerva for me and we’ll go together?’ I arranged to meet him and then started to talk to Chris and Bella, They were playing cards like a well-married couple. Bella told me to have a drink, so I poured one and sat watching them semi-cheating one another for a while. Then Chris asked me to tell him all about my new job. I said that I didn’t have much time just then but I would later if they were still up; Then Bella said ‘Oh! go on love, read him one of your little plays,’ but I couldn’t, I had to rush to meet Ross. I went back and started” dressing, feeling rather sorry that I hadn’t had the time to read it.

Ever since my first day at the shop, I had been so bewitched by the set-up that I used to invent the future histories of things we sold, and write them down to read to Bella. For my first few days at the shop I had been rather nervous, but I had not had much more to do than arrive at the main shop at 9 a.m., dust a few things, arrange some flowers and learn the code prices. Then after a long coffee, the day would really begin. Usually from 11.30 a.m. onwards I would be flat out, keeping middle-aged ladies happily looking at things till one of the senior people took them over. They would usually talk the woman out of the thing she wanted, and into something twice as expensive. Then if possible, which was surprisingly often, chat them into having the whole room or house redecorated to show off the new piece. I watched with wry amusement as many a deal was arranged. Within the first few days, as I tumbled to many tricks of the antique trade, it filled me with a sense of irony to discover that in its own way, despite the beautiful and classy façade of the shop and the well-spoken dealings going on behind it, this antique world was just as, if not more shifty than Tim’s or the Greek café owner’s.

I worked at the main shop, but it had a sister shop which traded under another name in an almost shabby area, and the sign above the door just said ‘Second-Hand Furniture’. Between that and the main shop was a mad house called ‘the studio’. The three places worked together in a highly efficient way. What happened was that a small army of part and full time buyers went out each day scouring the suburbs and the private houses, especially now that so many husbands were away from home and in the army. These buyers bought everything that they could lay their hands on and then took it to the second-hand shop. There the things were graded into good, adaptable, useful, or just plain rubbish.

Then the process started. Everything which belonged in the first three categories was taken to pieces and sent to the studio. Quite often I would have an inquiry for a particular piece of furniture. I’d excuse myself from the customer, go through to the back and ring the studio to see if they had it. Every time I rang, the studio sounded like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. In between the bangings, screams and yellings, the voice at the other end would say in reply to my query ‘Oh! what the hell does that old bag want with another period pine table? Tell her we may have one in a month. Honestly I tell you I’m absolutely sick of this run on pine tables. Can’t they push something else? You ought to see my hands, I’ve done five in a month. Stall her for me, will you dear.’ So I would return and promise the anxious overdressed lady something like ‘maybe after Australia has been searched all over, we just may have a table. Perhaps in about two months, we can’t promise. But nevertheless we shall do our best, as you are such a friend of the shop, and to all things of beauty—’.

I never saw much of Troy himself. I spent most of my time with the head buyer, a crafty old man called Edmund who’d lived abroad, wore check suits, and talked like a minister. And the secretary-cum-manageress, who was called Melinda. Melinda wore severe clothes, never smiled or wore make-up, and spent the whole of her life, when she wasn’t reading or cooking, waiting for the next Joan Crawford or Katherine Hepburn picture to arrive. Sometimes Melinda, Edmund, or Troy himself would ask me to go to the studio and collect something. I used to enjoy the break, and the studio’s lunatic goings-on. Often as I sat with a coffee, watching someone prettying up a Victorian chair with painted flowers, I’d hear a load of new things come in, accompanied by their purchaser. Then nearly always the same sort of conversation would start.

‘Hullo darls, you’re back. Get any pretties?’

‘You did? Let’s see—’

‘Well really dear, are you out of your tiny mind? Fifteen shillings for that, it’s not even good tat.’

There’d be a small hurt silence, followed by ‘Hmm, though of course we could take those unfortunate legs off, and put a— Oh! my dearest darls, I’ve got it.’

‘Trevor,’ there’d be a pause, ‘Trevor I ’ another pause, ‘Oh really! T-r-e-v-o-r.’

After another wait, Trevor would yell back ‘Oh what do you want, I’m in the middle of all this beading, hundreds of them all to be stuck on by tonight.’

‘Sorry dear, but have we still got that old piano?’

‘What piano?’

‘Oh you know, the one we bought for nine and six at that Salvation Army place, do you remember? It had all those old cloche hats stuck down the back of it.’.

Trevor, distantly: ‘Oh you mean that one that I took all those candlesticks off. It’s in with the Italian paintings.’

‘Oh goody, thanks darls, now let me see, if we take the panels off and use some of that gorgeous brass we found, we can… .’

Maybe some weeks and a lot of studio work later would find me staring quite unflinchingly into the same customer’s eyes as I languidly said ‘Oh, of course you’re so right, Regency is quite ‘the’ period.. Definitely the most elegant. Yes, this particular piece is perfect, and it’s obviously been well cared for. Oh, how right you are, it’s just the thing for a phone or a casual table desk.’ After the woman had signed the cheque for a large number of guineas I’d watch her leaving the shop thrilled to bits with her buy, and so pleased that after all they ‘had a really good piece in the home’. In fact this happened so often that I began to get curious as to where all the things went to. I used to try to imagine the house they went to, and the scene they’d cause as they arrived, so I wrote little sketches which I would do for Bella as a sort of one man show.

They usually began with the husband arriving home. He’s had a hell of a day for many reasons, one of the most important being two letters he’s received that morning from married friends. They have had the luck to make the army, and get away from their wives. As he read the letters he had seen them, in his mind’s eye, roaming around the big wide world, and just dropping him a few casual lines before killing off a few Germans and meeting a lovely foreign girl.

Half way up the garden path, the husband checks to see that his friends’ letters are all safely hidden in his inside pocket. He opens the door, walks in and kisses his waiting loved one.

The wife, pretending to be busy, says, ‘Oh, hello dear, had a good day?’

Husband: No dear, I bloody well haven’t, it’s all been lousy.

Wife: Oh, poor dear heart, what a pity. Oh well, cheer up and have a drink.

Husband: (who’s been propping- up the bar ever since the five p.m. swill started) Er—yes, that’s an idea, I—er—could do with a— strike me bloody pink! What the bloody hell’s that? And where’s my chair gone?

Wife: Isn’t it lovely, it’s antique.

Husband: I don’t care if it’s Spanish. Where’s my chair, and what’s that for?

Wife: Well darling, you use it for putting snuff boxes and pretties in, and you can also use it for phone books and the telephone.

Husband: (looking at the squat brass-footed little thing that I sold her some days before) Gawd stone the crows, since when did you take snuff? Now what was the matter with the built-up armchair? We could get all the books and the telephone on that, As well as some booze.

Wife: (walking over to the cabinet) But darling, this is a thing of beauty, a collector’s piece to be proud of.

Husband: Like bloody hell, how much was it?

Wife: (stands her ground) What’s price in these things? (Running her hands lovingly over the bits of old piano). This is a thing of beauty, a craftsman’s job. (Then she plays her trump card): It’s something to leave the children when we go.

Husband: O.K.! O.K.! but where can we leave it till then?

Wife: Come on darling, don’t be a sore-headed bearsy. After all, antiques can’t lose their value, can they?

I was walking along Darlinghurst Road, thinking nothing much more than ‘I’ll be glad when it’s spring again,’ when the woman said ‘Hello love, not speaking to your old friends?’ I looked at the woman, who had stopped, and after a few seconds realized that this glamorous creature was Alice from the Superspeed Snacks. She was dressed like a movie star, and was now very blonde. Gone was the Miranda aura, We kissed, then she said ‘Come up to my joint and have a coffee. I live just around the corner near Springfield.’ We talked our way to her flat. Her new place was rather nice, sunny and fresh, very different from the dump I had been to in William Street. She made the coffee, kicked her shoes off and we got down to the serious business of interrupting each other with the latest news.

Alice, it turned out had gone on the bash, but she fell in love with the third customer, and was now married to him. Even as she spoke I could see that the rise out of a dump restaurant, together with the shock of sudden respectable security, hadn’t quite left her. Her husband was a fairly old and high ranking American officer, also she thought she was pregnant. Then she asked me all about me. I tried to tell her but it wasn’t till long after I had left her place and was alone, that I realized just how much my life had altered since I had started in the antique world. I had grown to be very fond of it in some ways, but in many others, ‘No.’

At first there were so many new things to experience and learn about, and so many new people to learn from. Troy, oddly enough, had turned out to be very much the sort of person I had suspected he was. As time went on I began to understand why he had to run his business the way he did. In fact his shop was very much like Australia herself: we had everything and nothing. As he explained, there weren’t enough antiques in all Australia to keep him going, let alone the hundreds of other shops, even the customers half knew that. But as Troy said, tell them something was as good as an antique and only cost half the price, and they wouldn’t touch it, no, it had to have the label they wanted. Australia hadn’t had the time to produce antiques, furniture or designs of her own. In fact the more evenings I spent listening to Troy, Melinda and their friends talking, the more I wondered just what we had produced that was Australian, outside of a few boomerangs, and they were aboriginal anyway.

Everybody seemed to be waiting for the war to end, not only for the return of peace and security, but because they felt that everything from furniture making to music and painting would jump ahead by itself, owing nothing to any other country. We would really and finally cease to be just that large island that had started off by being a dumping ground for other people’s embarrassing and tragic mistakes. I enjoyed listening to all the ideas and plans that floated around the shop and the studio, but one curious fact struck me. It was that, despite their great plans for Australia and its future, all the people I knew in those days were only waiting for the war and American occupation to end and off they’d be. It didn’t seem to matter where they were going to, London or Kentucky, anywhere as long as they could get out. Yet, night and day, plans for Australia’s future were thrown from lip to lip. Often, even during these discussions, I used to get quietly depressed, wondering just where I would fit into all this new world. I couldn’t paint, build furniture or do any of the artistic things they all did, I was only a little misfit who could sing and I wasn’t even doing that right then.

One night as I was sitting on the floor at a typical party of Melinda’s, I looked around and saw everything and everyone through fresh eyes. Since I had started at the shop I had been ‘taken up’ as Troy would say. At first it was fun having so many new experiences and ideas given to me. I had started to wear suede shoes and cutaway collars with genuine pleasure, because they were nicer, and different. I had sat through dozens of evenings in which Dorothy Parker and T. S. Eliot’s work and names were used like verbal battering rams on other people’s egos. Also, I had grown used to the sort of people who used the fact that they had read Virginia Woolf and the Sitwell family in lieu of some sort of identification badge. I had accepted them all because in some half realized way, I knew how they felt, and what they were trying to be to themselves, and communicate to others. Like the people who had forty Mozart records, and could reel off every opus number, together with the number of the record itself, before they put it on and then talked loudly all the way through it.

But now, as I sat and looked at all the men and their large knotted ties, and the girls in their clothes that were so cleverly copied from ‘Vogue, dear,’ and heard them yelling at one another in their copied English voices, above the inevitable blaring classical music, I thought ‘Well I don’t know, I’ve never been “home” or anywhere abroad, and I haven’t eaten at any of the fabulous continental restaurants—’ though heaven knows, if any of the weird and lovingly remembered dishes that I had been given to eat during the last months were the real thing, then I prayed that I never would. No, I couldn’t begin every sentence with, ‘When I was having dinner at Maxim’s’ or ‘The last time I saw “Gilda” was in Berlin—we had just been to the opera, of course that was real opera over there, not like here—’ No, I couldn’t say any of that. But if ever I did get to Berlin or London I doubted whether I would come back to say it. It would have taken too much effort and too long to get there, only to return, a shark in a goldfish bowl.

A fat little man sat down beside me and said in a patronizing voice, ‘Im so glad that you are mixing with “the right people” now.’

I looked at him before saying ‘What do you mean, the right people?’

‘Well, people of culture and travel, such as are here. I mean, they are so many cuts above your Cross crowd.’ There was nothing in his expression except a smug insolence in his sharp eyes.

At a glance I knew him and his type. He’d have lots of money, a small, but Chinese Art-filled smart flat, no soul or friends, and was a born invalidator. Since I had been at Troy’s I’d met many such types, both male and female. In fact some days I wondered whether it was me, and not the furniture that was up for display and sale. The man waited for me to take the bait. I said ‘You mean their clothes are cut differently?’ as I looked straight at his well-copied English suit.

‘Now don’t get angry, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long while, but you were always with such dreadful common people. You won’t get on that way—’ I moved a little away from his cologne-scented body as he continued ‘Now look, I believe in coming to the point, I could do a lot for you. I think you have great possibilities, you need someone like me behind you. I know people …’ he gave a little artificial laugh, then said, ‘I might even make you into a gentleman—’.

I didn’t hit him, but I knew that it looked as if I might as I said ‘You can shut up and go to hell.’

He looked almost pleased as he muttered ‘That’s it, that’s what I like, spirit, don’t ever lose that, boy.’ He patted my knee and held it before I could even move or get over his audacity.

Just then Melinda came over and said ‘Oh there you both are. I’m glad you are getting on. Have you met one another properly?’ She pointed to me as she looked at the man, saying ‘This is the little sweetie I mentioned, Tony and I have such hopes for him. Pretty, don’t you think?’

I still sat on the floor, half paralysed with anger. The man said ‘Yes, but you and Tony always have had such good taste. Mind you, I don’t think he could ever be another “Lance”, he hasn’t the same quality, but—’.

Melinda cut in with ‘No, but he does have a certain eager freshness.’ She smiled, stooped and kissed my hair as she said ‘Jon, meet Geoffrey.’

He held out his hand. I didn’t take it, but nodded to him, saying as brightly as I could to Melinda, ‘He’s just told me how common I am.’

She laughed. ‘Well, darling, what’s the matter with that? Besides it’s not quite true, you’re learning fast.’

Geoffrey said ‘Yes, I can see he’s quick.’ I got up off the floor and walked into the kitchen.

As soon as I had, the same feeling I’d felt back in Eris and Barry’s flat started to grow on me. I’d just turned to leave when. Melinda came in and closing the door behind her, said ‘Look darling, do be nice to Geoffrey.’

I burst out ‘But I was, he was nasty to me. He spoke to me as if I was some little slave boy in a market.’

‘Oh! I know he can be a little unfortunate in his manner, but he means so much to Tony. And you see Tony practically only gave this party so as he could meet you, do try …’

‘No I bloody well won’t,’ I nearly yelled.

‘Please darling, he practically owns Tony and he’ll be awfully good to you in every way. He’s really quite kind and he’s stinking rich, and honestly what can you lose? The war won’t last for ever …’ I didn’t really hear the rest as I tried to get past her outstretched arms in a rage at the sheer blatancy of it all.

For months now I had almost forced myself to grow used to the same routine. Starting with the ‘right people’ kind of crowd, the same loud voices and classical music. And then finishing with the usual scene, one in which I would somehow find myself being the last person left after a party, and having to listen to someone saying ‘You know you ought to make more of yourself. Don’t think that the Cross crowd’s everything, the war will be over one day you know, get in with the right people. Now I could take you to Paris and London—’. On and on the Voices would drone while I stood, furious at having been told the wrong time, or deliberately misinformed over the last ferry. I’d stand looking out over the harbour and up at the Cross in the distance, and dreading the inevitable scene. The thing that I could never explain, even to myself, till much later, if then, was their sheer gift of being able to create a situation which they knew I would not accept. Then when I didn’t, they’d retire with their hurt, behind their older minds and bodies, leaving me alone and feeling that I had done a great wrong. It was as if they were repaying me for old hurts. Then, to add to my agony of mind, I would find myself feeling sorry for them. I’d understand their feelings to the point of giving myself a sadness, as if I were in their shoes. But not this time, not this night. I was leaving before that last tram did, and before I did, I was going to tell a few people a few things.

Melinda and I practically wrestled in the kitchen as I tried to get out. Just then the door opened and Geoffrey walked in.

I glared at him and said ‘I believe you want to be good to me, and the war won’t last for ever—’

‘Oh! bless you,’ he said. ‘I was sure that you would both come to some arrangement out here together. You see I’m not as bad as I look…’

I stared, stunned by his complete and ruthless lack of sensitivity, and was just about to say something when Troy came gaily in saying ‘Oh! so this is where all the best people are?’

Geoffrey looked at me and said ‘Yes, the very best.’

For one second I nearly swore at and struck the lot of them, but the next found me saying ‘I’m going now—’.

‘Oh! but you can’t go, come on, after all you’re the guest of honour—’.

I cut Troy short. ‘Honour, what honour? The honour of being the newest piece of meat on the market? I hate you bastards, I hate you as much as you hate yourselves—’ I didn’t continue because I thought I might bawl, and that I was not going to do in front of them, anyway.

As I started to leave I heard Troy say firmly ‘Jon, I don’t want you to go, I want you to stay. Couldn’t you, just for me?’

Before I could reply Melinda said ‘Oh! let him go, I told you it wouldn’t work. Just because he tries to be nice to everyone. He’s young and has the choice. He’ll only do anything or go with anyone if he really wants to. Come on, lucky boy I’ll walk down with you.’ We walked out of the flat. And, as I knew, my job.

Once below, we sat on a garden fence with the noise of the party dropping down on us in waves. I sat next to Melinda in a stew of upset and anger, not knowing what to say or think. She handed me a cigarette, saying as she lit it ‘Don’t be too sad love, we’ve all been through this, one way and another.’

‘But he was so fat and rude. I like everybody I know, I don’t care what they are, I like them, except when I meet people like him—’.

Melinda looked me straight in the face as she said ‘Do try to understand me sweetie, but you see that’s just the trouble. I think I understand you, and them. But they misunderstand you. I know that you like everybody but strangely enough that’s going to give you a lot of trouble—’.

‘Why should it give me trouble?’ I demanded. ‘What’s wrong with liking people? I’ll do anything for or with anyone I really like—’.

‘But that’s just the trouble love. Look, please don’t misunderstand me, please, but that gives people wrong ideas, you’re always so well —ready looking, and sunny. Older people readily misunderstand that.

‘Don’t worry, as you get older you’ll learn how to talk and warn people in other ways. Words are very nice but they’re usually spoken when it’s too late. By the time an explanation is due, it’s become an apology or a row, do you know what I mean?’

I said, as I fought the feeling of being a small boy again, ‘Yes I think I do, but I didn’t start it off. I wasn’t rude to him until he made me feel cheap.’

Melinda laughed softly. ‘Never worry about that type of rudeness. Geoffrey’s pathetically nervous and lonely, and he knows why, all he’s got in life is money.’

1 was rather glad to hear that what I’d thought about him was right and told her so. But then I became depressed, ‘Why didn’t I just stick to my beliefs. I’d summed him up, why did I let the smell of his cologne, or the sound of his voice, stampede me into a thoughtless mess of anger?’

Melinda laughed again as she said ‘That’s growing up, I told you, we all go through it. One day I’ll tell you what I did to a certain lady, who’s now one of my oldest friends. Look, I’m sorry, I must go back in, are you going to come to work?’

‘No I don’t think so, I don’t see how I can, not now.’

‘Well, maybe you’re right dear, but you will keep in touch with me, won’t you?’ I kissed her and promised, then walked down to the tram.

As I waited for it to come I wondered if I would ever grow up and learn to be able to handle these or any other scenes. Or when I did grow up would I be any different? Would I go on for ever still meaning well and losing jobs, still yearning for love and self knowledge but never reaching that full stop from where I could turn around and say ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ ‘I’m me,’ ‘that’s that,’ ‘accept me, or leave me,’ ‘that’s me,’ ‘I know what and who I am.’ By the time the tram had lurched its way up into the Cross I had turned my thoughts into some sort of chant: ‘Say yes or no, that’s that, because I’m me—’.

The conductor startled the wits out of me by touching me on the shoulder and saying ‘I don’t know where you are now mate, but this is where you said you wanted to go.’

Bella poured some more coffee before she said ‘Well louse, at least it’s all been an experience, and anyway they are the losers.’ I tried to agree with her, but I missed the job very much. It seemed such a waste of everything I’d learnt.

‘Now don’t get down about it all young man,’ she said, ‘you’re just not the type. Don’t think I haven’t seen the change in you.’

‘Change, what sort of change?’

Bella put on her mother-type face. ‘Look love, it was all very nice but don’t go regretting it. I’m not blind. You were learning and learning fast. Gawd! some days I used to think that if I heard bloody Mozart, Salvador Dali or Evelyn Waugh mentioned again, I’d yell. But as I told you, you were catching on about a lot of things the wrong way. I don’t think you really needed them for those reasons, get me? You would never have fitted into that world. They’d have half made you one of them, and then gone around saying “Of course he’s not really one of us, never knew a thing till he started at the shop,” But you see love, you did learn, and better still, you could bow out and leave them, but they can’t ever leave their ideas of culture or their little cliques, do you realize that? Look, why don’t you get out and have a really good hard try at getting a job on the stage? Go on, have a big try.’

I agreed and said that I would ring Thelma first of all, then we sat half talking for quite some time, I hadn’t really seen much of her for some time past, it was nice to just sit and use the silences that came and went between us, to say so much.

I was playing with Mrs Sunday when Bella said ‘I don’t like doing it love, but I think we must have them both done by the vet.’

I hesitated. ‘Shall I take them down to that lady doctor in Elizabeth Bay this morning?’

‘Yes maybe it would be- better to do it right now,’ Bella said, ‘anyway they are at the right age for it.’

I stopped playing with Mrs Sunday because I couldn’t remember what age they were. I asked Bella. ‘Well let’s think now,’ she said, ‘it must be nearly, no—yes I’m quite right—five months I think. What’s the date today?’ She fished around and picked up the paper, ‘Why it’s October 17th—’. Bella paused, and slowly put down the paper saying ‘It’s nearly spring, it’s—’. She didn’t go on, instead she just gaped at me and I gaped back at her—it was just four weeks to my eighteenth birthday, and the army.

‘Well I must say it’s nice to know that we don’t look as if we’ve got the clap. The way we didn’t see you started me wondering—’. Thelma tossed the frying pan, nearly dropping the chops, then yelled for Alan to get ready for lunch. We ate the meal and talked like magpies in between mouthfuls. I told them all about my short life in the world of culture, classical music and fine furniture. Thelma and Alan dutifully fell about with laughter, and then we got down to the real talking. I was hoping that Thelma would be able to give me some sort of job at the theatre, but as things turned out, she couldn’t just then.

She and I were talking away when Alan, who was reading the paper, said ‘Wait on, listen to this. Mrs Dorothy King of Young Street was fined a total of fifty pounds before the Petty Sessions yesterday on three charges of selling intoxicating liquor without a licence. At the trial Mrs King claimed that she only sold the liquor at the requests of the ‘spirit beings’ who said that people needed it, as well as her comfort and guidance. Also she gave the proceeds to charity.’ Poor old Madam Mystico, even as We laughed our heads off, each of us felt some twinge of compassion for her, and regret at what we had done to her. A few minutes later we decided to send her a bottle of wine from ‘the spirits’.

As soon as I picked up the phone Ross said ‘I’m sorry about all that unfortunate business. I must say I am a little surprised that Tony handled it like that. It’s not him. After all, I’ve known him for twenty years now. Oh! That dates me. Oh well, never mind dear boy, it’s all most unfortunate I know, but what are you going to do?’

‘Join the bloody army I suppose, what else is there to do?’

‘Well you never know, they may find out that you have two weak hearts, or something really fabulous like that. I must go now, I’m nearly on, they’re calling me. Will you come up to the theatre and see me either tonight or tomorrow?’

After I’d replied, I put the phone down, went to the kitchen and turned up the coffee. Just then Bella came in.

‘Coffee? ’ I yelled.

She put a box down, at the same time saying ‘Gallons.’ ‘Are they all right?’ I asked.

She opened the lid and the cats’ faces appeared. ‘Yeah they’re all right, it’s me that’s crook, Couldn’t get a cab, so I had to carry the stinkers all the way from the cattery. She charged seven and six for Mr and twelve and six for Mrs.’ We looked at the cats for a minute, then I went and poured them some milk.

‘The cat doctor said, we mustn’t pick them up. Specially Mrs, for the next few days,’ Bella yelled from the bedroom. Then the coffee overboiled.

Bella came back and decided on a fried egg sandwich; I felt like toast. After a short battle in the kitchen, we both sat down to fried eggs and tomatoes on toast. When we had eaten and were sitting smoking, she gave me one of her ‘louse, I’ve been thinking’ looks, then said ‘Love, I think we both need a douche.’ We stared at one another for half a second, trying not to giggle, before she added ‘Well I don’t know what to call it. But what I mean is, we both need a general clear out. I think we ought to go on a diet for a few days, have a turkish bath, then give a dirty big party. How about it?’

‘Well maybe we do need a diet, I don’t know, but I can’t go halves in giving the party, I haven’t got any money at all,’ I replied.

‘It’s my idea, do you think I’m going to ask you to pay for my ideas?’

‘No, but if I’m going to give a party with you and I haven’t got any money I can hardly give it, can I?’

‘Look stinker, if I suggest we give a party, we give it and I pay, and remember that the deed’s the thought, no that’s wrong, the thought’s the deed. Oh! cripes, I don’t know, but I read something like that and it seems to add up. Let’s make a list out of all the people we’ll invite.’ I plonked Mr Sunday down, found some paper and pencils, then we started.

After an hour of stub chewing, cries of ‘Oh! no, not her,’ and snorts of laughter, we had a list of roughly a hundred and twenty-five people.

‘Gawd, that’s not a party, that’s an army. I didn’t know there were so many bums in Christendom,’ exclaimed Bella. When we had looked at the list for a while, I suggested that we divide it into people whom we didn’t want to come, people we wanted to come, and those we knew we’d have to have. Plus a fourth list of folk who were well-known for tipping off the floating pool of professional Cross gate-crashers. So we started.

After a lot of time, thought, and tut-tutting, we discovered that the list was only about twenty down, so we did it again. It was fantastic, no matter how we manipulated them, all we seemed to be doing was moving the same mob around from list to list. With one more effort behind us, we decided that we’d have a break and a drink. Some gins and two hours later, we were still lumbered with eighty guests, the potential gate crashers, and headaches, so we gave up and went out to eat.

As we were sitting in the café, three people who were still on the lists came in, and for some current private reason cut us, and without knowing it, themselves off the list. By the time we had left Atrhur’s much later and were dawdling home through the Cross, we became almost hysterical as we thought of the night and our tactics of practically forcing people to be rude to us, so that we could strike them from the list. In a last tired effort before we went to bed, we settled for fifty-five people. A clever mixture of mutual friends, quality clients, and my friends. We also allowed for approximately ten gate-crashers. Then Bella suggested a meat sandwich with a glass of cold milk, ‘On account that we start the diet tomorrow.’ We spent the last few moments before going to bed watching one another, and before either of us could open our mouths to even suggest a person suddenly recalled with love and longing, the other would say ‘No, fifty-five and no more—’.

‘And you can go to hell too, I’ve never known such base ingratitude and balls—’.

‘Well there’s something you’re mighty qualified to talk about,’ I yelled back at Bella, I think you’re just plain narky over Chris getting posted.’

Bella sat down on a chair and went very tired. We were in the middle of our fifth row and the third day of the diet.

Bella looked up and said ‘Oh! blast love, I don’t think I can stand another minute of it, let’s have a dirty great feed up.’

At that we both fled to the kitchen and started frantically cutting bread and butter, stuffing it into our mouths, at the same time grabbing and cooking anything we could lay our hands on, including the steak bought for tomorrow. Bella had read this diet up somewhere and put us on it. For the first day you had nothing but liquids, any liquids you liked but no solids. After promising each other not to break it, we had started.

On the second day of the diet we were to eat nothing but strained tomatoes, fruit, and yoghourt. We’d got half way through the day when I couldn’t stand it any longer. Using some excuse, I headed for Theo’s delicatessen where I ate three big cold new potatoes with butter, pepper and salt on them, and nearly a quarter of a pound of salami. Unfortunately, when I got home Bella spotted some of the grease around my mouth and blew up, and began calling me dreadful things which got worse when I tried to explain that as I was still growing I needed the odd solid. This she took to mean that I thought that she was old. Just as she was about to start again, I noticed that some bread had been cut, and wheeled round suggesting to her face that while she wasn’t old, surely she was mature enough to have a little more control, so we battled it out till the third day which was liquid again, and so were our nerves.

‘Cripes,’ said Bella as she stuffed the food into her mouth. ‘I think a nutcase must have thought that bloody diet up, it’s not a diet, it’s a liquid death. I’m not kidding. I didn’t have the strength to work.’

‘Well, it must have done Something in us good,’ I replied through a mouthful of food, ‘or else they wouldn’t have printed it in your magazine.’

Bella rammed another slab of meat in her mouth as she tried to say ‘Dunno, I think Mandrake thought it up. I tell you louse, it was sheer murder giving the Sundays the mince last night. I nearly got down on the floor with them, no joking.’

After we had eaten all the food and cleaned out a box of chocolates, we were just heading for bed when the phone rang.

Bella whispered’‘Answer it will you, if it’s work I’m out.’

I picked the phone up, the voice said ‘Clancy ’ere, ’ose that?’ I told him and he said ‘Oh! well Jon, I’m afraid that I ’ave some very bad news, Arthur’s dead,’

‘Dead?’ I woodenly repeated, ‘but we saw him only a few nights ago—’.

‘Yeah I know,’ Clancy continued, ‘He wrapped himself around a telegraph pole last night—’.

‘What do you mean, he wrapped himself?’

Clancy paused, I thought I could hear him crying, then he said ‘Well that’s what the cops told me. He was in the car coming back home from Wollongong. He’s being cremated on Thursday at half past ten. Would you and Bella come to the Service?’ I told him that we would, said good-bye and hung up. Bella was standing in the doorway with a look of worried expectancy on her face. After I told her we were both terribly sad.

In his own way Arthur had done more than just run a Sly grog. The Cross would lose a bit of herself. His place had become rather like a heart through which ran the streams of many lives. People who wanted something more than just sly drinking met there for many reasons. Maybe they went to borrow money, or get advice along with love and warmth. But in the main it was just to be able to sit with other people swopping past or new ideas, ambitions and telephone numbers, under that square of starlit sky. Illegal as that square was, it was the place they wanted to be. Now it was gone, all of us except the palm tree had been tossed out of our little concrete garden of Eden.

Bella said ‘When’s the funeral?’

‘He’s being cremated on Thursday morning.’

She turned to go into her room. ‘Oh! what a pity, we’ll be flat out, that’s the morning of the party.’

I had forgotten that, we would be very busy with a hundred and one arrangements.

Then Bella said ‘I’ll ring up my old Edna. I was going to ask her to help us out anyway. She can hold the fort while we go.’

Sadly I turned to go to my bedroom, then fell flat on my face. I hadn’t noticed the cats playing at my feet.

‘Oh! come on Bella, we’ll be late, the service is at half past ten, you know that. What time did you say Edna would be here?’

‘Ten. If she got stinko last night she’ll be late.’

‘Well she is now. Did you feed the Sundays!’

‘Yes, I did, and they’d already, pinched some before,’ Bella shouted from the bathroom. I turned and told the four anxious orbs gazing up at me ‘No more,’ but nothing daunted they moved to the kitchen just as if I had said ‘Lots more.’ I decided to ignore them and concentrate on the party arrangements. ‘Now let me see. All the food’s in, Edna will have to start cooking some of if, I’ve got most of the liquor, hmm, we’d better get back smartly and move the furniture. Oo, and I’d better ring Milly about those records now, but just before I do I’ll—.’ The doorbell rang. I went over and opened the door.

The little woman outside said ’Ullo love, ’ow are yer? Struth it’s a drak day.’ I asked her in. She looked around, saying ‘Very nice too, real tasteful. Where’s ’er ladyship?’

‘Bella’s in the bath,’ I replied.

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘had a hard night?’

I explained that we had a busy and a late one.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ No I didn’t. She continued ‘Well I met you when you first came to the house, only I had to go away for a while then. I used to do odd things for ’er ladyship. Which is the bathroom?’ I pointed, she went up to the door and yelled ’Ow are yer Bel? It’s Edna, ’ow are yer love?’

‘I’ll be out in a jiff, how are you love?’ Bella yelled through the door.

Edna gave herself a good old scratch before saying ‘Well I’m okey-doke now, but the last stretch was no joke. That old bastard. I think ’e’d ’ad a bad breakfast. Nine months for receiving goods is a bit much at my age and I told the old coot so too, I did in front of the ’ole joint. I said “I never receive, I only take”.’

Bella came out of the bathroom and kissed her. I made some coffee while Bella started to dress and tell Edna what quick news she could.

After a short pause Edna said ‘Bel, could you do me a favour, could you loan me a couple of quid?’

‘Yes of course,’ Bella replied, 1 was going to give you that for helping anyway.

Edna looked really hurt. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t ’ear of that, that’s friendly, only you see Dad came out yesterday—’.

‘Oh! that’s marvellous, I’m glad to hear that, it’s nice to have your family around you,’ replied Bella.

Edna looked a bit vague. ‘Well you see ’e’s back in again, it all started last night. My Dulce and her boy met ’im and we all went to the Nellie Bar for a few plonks, just to get the night started. You remember Lorraine? Well, she came in with a couple of types and they’d all been on the metho and they started a rumpus—’.

Bella came out half dressed, and said with horror ‘Lorraine on the metho? Oh! lord, I knew she was having a hard time.’

Edna clucked in sympathetic agreement. ‘Well she got mixed up with these couple of sports and the next thing we knew, the bulls came in and booked the bloody lot of us! Dad said “But I’ve only just come out,” and they said “Well isn’t that funny cos we’re crystal gazers, and we’ve just seen you going back in.” I tell you there’s no justice, just cops, and courts. So you see Bel, if I could just have a few quid now I could send Dulce down and collect ’im. He should be up by eleven.’

Bella gave her the two pounds and we started explaining everything to her. Edna took her coat off, put on some old gloves and said ‘You’ll come back to a new pin.’ I asked her once again to ring Milly and remind her to bring the records for the party, and we left.

Once we were settled in the cab and on our way I said to Bella ‘Is it all right to leave her? I mean supposing she cleaned the joint out—’.

Bella said ‘You could trust her with your life, I’ve known her for years.’

Just then the cabby said something. I answered him and we sat silently as we drove on.

‘Funny I should say that—’.

‘Say what?’ I asked her.

‘ “You could trust her with your life.” I had to once. When she first came to me, she asked me whether I would trust her and when I asked her why, she said “Well I feel it’s only fair to tell you that I was born in jail and I’ve been there on and off all me life.” So I said “Well let’s see how we get on, will we?” I had only just moved into the house and was new on the game, when I had to have an operation.

I didn’t tell Edna and I went and had a cheap one. Then it turned septic. As soon as old Edna knew she moved into the house and ran it, cooked for me and looked after me for two months, night and day. We didn’t dare get a doctor but Edna went to the library, checked up on all the details in a medical book and nursed me.’

I was rather touched by Edna’s story, and was sitting thinking about it when Bella started laughing. ‘Honestly louse, I should write a book, when I think of all the things I’ve done. I remember one day I was lying in agony and near to death. I’d just come out of a state of unconsciousness and was covered in sweat when I looked up and there was Edna, with the medical book in her hands. She explained that she’d pinched it, because she’d got tired of going to the library every second day. She used to sit there, saying “Bel, it says ’ere that a condition is caused by, oo I can’t read it, but I think its what you’ve got.” She’d hold the book close to me, so as I could have a look and pronounce whatever word it was. Edna would think for a while and then say, “Well, I think if I used a nice disinfectant it would work just the same wouldn’t it? Righto, Bel, have some more milk and we’ll start.” She got me through louse, she did.’ Just then the cabby said ‘Here we are,’ and we swung into the crematorium.

After we had paid the driver, we realized that we were over ten minutes late and started to look hurriedly for the chapel. Just as we reached the door, Bella said ‘Cripes I don’t know Arthur’s name!’ Come to think of it, neither of us knew his name, he’d always been just Arthur. We stood for a minute furiously thinking. Then I remembered it was Millward so off we went into the foyer. A gentleman in a black coat and striped pants advanced out of the doorway and said to us in a voice as soft as the organ music in the background ‘Can I help you, who’s service are you for?’ I told him, ‘Oh! this way, it’s the “rest ever” chapel.’ We followed in the wake of his shiny black shoes, on and up the marble corridor, passing other little churches on the way. He stopped at one and opened its door. Inside it was so dark that I nearly fell over another black coated gentleman’s foot as he ushered us into a pew at the back. A preacher was reading from the Bible to the accompaniment of organ music. After a minute or so, as my eyes became accustomed to the contrived religious gloom, I could make out other people sitting around. I sensed Bella looking too. Suddenly she whispered ‘The dirty stinkers, there’s not one of the crowd here.’ I nodded in agreement, I’d just been thinking the very same thing. There was only a handful of very ordinary people and a little old woman silently weeping up near the coffin, ‘Poor thing, she must be his mother.’

By this time I was depressed, it seemed such a pathetic waste of time and of a past friendship to be sitting here. The preacher had put the Bible down and was now saying a few words about the deceased, ‘He was the kindest of men. Surely in this man, the flame of real warmth and love for people burned in all its radiant beauty.’ I was quite touched, because it was true of Arthur. Then the preacher said ‘In his departure; mankind has lost one of its best servants …’ I looked at Bella as she looked at me. ‘His gracious guidance and love have helped countless people, during a lifetime of work and charity …’ I thought ‘Well it’s true in a way, but I think it’s going a bit far.’ Just then I caught Bella’s eye and we started softly giggling. Then the organ started to play a new tune as the preacher went on to say that ‘I am sure that in the house of God, the reverend Millward …’ I never heard the rest because of Bella’s snort of laughter. It shot out like a drunken hyena’s, and blasted its way around the chapel. She stuck her handkerchief in her mouth as I put a protecting arm around her and we headed towards the doors, and she tried to look as if she were overcome with crying. Half way down the corridor we almost got out of control. We reached a cab, fell into it, and sat laughing like a pair of lunatics. Bella, in between bursts of uncontrollable laughter, kept saying ‘I tell you louse, it could only happen to us. Ha ha snott ha ha, put on all this slap and drag and wind up at the wrong do.’ I agreed, but I couldn’t think how I could have made such a wild guess at a name, and then find a person of the same name being cremated. It was mildly frightening, ‘Think of any name, and bingo, someone’s being bowed out—’.

Edna came to the kitchen with a load of empty glasses, saying ‘Five more have just arrived.’ After she’d swayed a little, she looked at me. ‘I better go down to the sly grog, hadn’t I?’

I shot another look at the pile of empty bottles. ‘Yes perhaps you better had.’ I headed back into the party with a tray of drinks, passed them out, and moved towards the new arrivals. Just then the phone went for the fortieth time, and as I picked it up I hoped it would be Milly. It was.

‘Where the hell are you?’ I  asked, ‘we’ve been waiting for ages.’ Milly said in a slightly drunken voice ‘I’m on my way—’. I heard a vague noise. ‘Jon, I’m engaged.’

‘I don’t care if you’re married with five children, just get here with the bloody records; we only got ten with the machine we borrowed.’ Milly made a few sounds from which I gathered she was hurt. ‘Oh well, if that’s how you feel on my engagement night, I think—’.

‘Oh balls to that lark, look love,’ I said, when someone danced by, knocking the phone out of my hands and onto the floor, from where, despite the din, I could hear Milly’s voice metallically saying ‘Can I bring him, I’m in love, can you hear me lovvy, can I bring him?’

Ducking a tray of tasties, I knelt on the floor and bellowed into the phone ‘Yes, bring Mo, the tomcat and all, but for God’s sake bring the records as well, O.K.?’ Then I hung up. A woman said ‘Isn’t the back of your head sexy?’ I said I didn’t know I’d never seen it and went back to the kitchen.

As I was searching for the real scotch, Bella came in with some glasses saying ‘Gawd, I’m nearly knocked up.’

I gave her a peck on the cheek and said ‘How do you think it’s going?’

‘like stink, and so is all the food and drink. There must be at least eighty people, and all the gate-crashers here. Any of the good scotch left?’

I fished around and found it under the sink. We had barely finished a large slug of scotch and a sausage roll, when a woman neither of us knew lurched into the kitchen saying ‘I julst walnt tho thay that itchs a marvelloos plarty. My name’s Glorila—’. Then she fell flat on her face. At the very moment she fell the phone and the doorbell went. I left Bella looking after Gloria, and as I saw Edna answering the door, I answered the phone.

‘Jon, could I bring a friend?’ I didn’t know who it was but I said yes and hung up. Then I saw that Edna was letting in Ross and Melinda, together with half the cast of Peter Pan. I was about to say hello when the phone went again.

‘Milly here love, I’m on my way with, oh … er … just a sec, what did you say your name was? Norman, my fiance.’ There was a clattering hanging up sound so I hung up too and moved towards Ross.

‘Ah dear boy—’.

‘Hello Melinda, let me get you a drink—’. Then the doorbell rang. I excused myself and opened it. The caretaker was outside. After an uncertain, but rather militant shuffle on the doorstep he said ‘Good evening, sir. I don’t like complaining during a party, but one of your guests has made a filthy mess in the foyer—’.

Full of concern I went down with him. One look at the entrance carpet and I knew that he was right. Someone had tipped all the sand out of the cigarette trays, smoothed it over the carpet, and written two very unsavoury four letter words in the sand. Then just for luck they’d also decorated it with flowers made out of cigarette butts.

I took a good look at the artistic effort before saying ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who—

He cut in, ‘Go on, don’t worry, you and Mrs Newbolt have got a big party on your hands, I’ll clean up.’

Being rather touched by his understanding I asked him if he would like a drink. Yes, he would. I popped back upstairs, poured him a large one and took it down to his little flat near the stairs. For the next few moments I enjoyed the luxury of being able to talk to people, and to get the feel of the night.

It seemed to be going very well, actors talked with clients, gatecrashers murmured compliments to friends. I was standing watching the people laughing and talking, when I spotted a woman I didn’t know sitting with Mr Sunday on her lap. I couldn’t see what she was doing, so I had a closer look. I discovered that she was busily making him up with her lipstick. He had large red eyebrows and a mouth bigger than Dorothy Lamour’s. I hesitated, then decided to say nothing and looked in at the people dancing in the bedroom. By now the din was so dense that I was really quite surprised that I could hear the doorbell when it went again. As Edna opened it Thelma and Alan walked in. After we’d all kissed one another and I’d given them a drink, Thelma started busily explaining that they were late because they’d arranged to meet Milly but she hadn’t turned up. At that second the phone and the doorbell went again. I picked up the phone ‘Jon? Bill here, could I bring Mavis and her sister?’

‘Oh Lord Bill, we’re full up already.’

‘I’ll bring two bottles of scotch’.

I hung up. As I did I saw Milly heading towards me with a plump red-haired boy.

‘Jon love, I’m so sorry, you see it’s been quite a—’.

The phone rang at my elbow, I half knowingly picked it up and, saying ‘just a minute,’ to Milly, said ‘Hello?’

‘You little turd,’ the voice said.

I said ‘What? I beg your pardon, who’s that?’

‘Doesn’t matter who I am, let’s just say I’m a friend of Cliff’s. When I think of all he did for you, you little bastard!’

‘What do you mean?’

The voice then got quite angry and yelled ‘You haven’t even bothered to go near him when he needed you’.

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, I haven’t seen or heard from him for some time, but he’s coming here to a party tonight. What do you mean he needed me?’

The voice made a sound before saying ‘No matter friend you’ll find out, and I hope it gives you hell—’. The phone was slammed down. I hung up feeling a little frightened. The doorbell rang again and I answered it.

The caretaker stood hovering on the stairs again. ‘Sorry sir, but there’s some of your friends in my bed, and I can’t get them out—’.

Bella appeared, saying ‘Oh no? Well I will, you stay up here and have a drink.’

The caretaker headed towards the kitchen with such eagerness that I wondered as I watched him, if he’d put the people in his bed on purpose.

Thelma loomed into my view. I grabbed her and told her of the phone call, while checking to see if Cliff or Dennis were here yet.  Thelma was as puzzled as I was, but we couldn’t ring Cliff as his phone was out of order.

I’d barely opened the door once more when a voice said ‘Up you all go, the rent’s sky high.’ Beryl came in, followed by a little man carrying a large wooden case. ‘Meet George, he’s brought his portable miniature piano, would you like him to play?’

‘Marvellous,’ I replied as I grabbed some drinks off Edna’s tray.

At that moment Mr Lovelace, a client, came up with Milly, saying ‘I didn’t-know you knew my niece, I must say I’m very glad to know that she’s got such good friends.’

I took a swift look at the near blotto Milly and Mr Lovelace and giggled.

Milly said ‘He’s my favourite uncle, aren’t you Uncle Christopher?’ With that she sagged straight into her uncle’s arms and wound up at his feet before either of us could grab her. When Uncle Christopher and I lugged her into my bedroom, I found that I had to move two people making love, a pile of handbags and coats, and the sleeping Gloria, in order to get Milly on the bed. When we’d put her alongside Gloria, Uncle Christopher said ‘Have a drink,’ and pushed a hip flask under my nose. I took a swig, then almost joined Gloria and Milly as the brandy nearly blew the top of my head off. Uncle Christopher took four large gulps, then as he put the flask away he fixed me with a pair of rimless glasses, saying ‘Fine girl, a very fine girl—’

I looked at Milly, nodded yes.

‘No, I mean Bella,’ he said, ‘Bella, Bella that’s what I say. Bella with the skin I love to touch, I tell you boy, she’s a peach, she’s a—’.

I gently disentangled his arm from mine, then checking the snoozing bodies on the bed said ‘Sorry, I must go and help her,’ and fled.

Back in the main room I found George playing a tiny piano while Beryl sang Nobody Loves a Fairy when She’s Forty. I crept towards the kitchen, opened the door and stepped in. As I tripped, and nearly fell flat on my face Edna’s voice said ‘Aw sorry luv, just ’aving a parley with Bill.’ The caretaker and Edna were sitting on the floor with bottles of beer and an ashtray full of ice cubes. Ignoring them I fiddled around under the sink for the scotch. It had all gone, so I poured myself a beer and went back into the party. Melinda grabbed me from the floor, and I sat down beside her and we tried to talk.

‘What are you doing at present, work I mean—?’ I tried to yell back but gave up. We decided to leave the din and wormed our way out through the people, into the passage.

As soon as we’d settled ourselves on the stairs Melinda said ‘Have you got a job yet?’

‘No I haven’t, Bella’s keeping me. I’ve only a few weeks to go until I’m eighteen and then I’ll have to join the army.’

‘Do you want to?’

*No I don’t, I dread the very thought. And anyway, no one will give me a job just now, I can’t even get a small singing job. I’m lost and so depressed Melinda, depressed about me and my whole life.’ She looked a bit sad, so I hastily said ‘Look it’s party night, don’t let us talk and get down—’.

*No it’s not that,’ she replied, ‘it’s just that I can see the whole situation, what a hell of a time to be your age.’ She took her shoe off, and as she held it in mid-air looking at it, said ‘I’ve just thought, I know a man who does army shows. Oh I don’t mean in the army, he runs civilian show troupes. I think-they’re called units, and they go out doing shows. Would you like me to contact him for you tomorrow?’

‘Oh yes Melinda, I’d be so pleased. Oh that doesn’t sound much,’ I added, ‘but I would be so glad and grateful.’

As she put the shoe back on, she said ‘What’s that window at the end there look out on?’

‘That one at the end of the passage? It looks down on the harbour.’ We walked down the passage towards it then sat on the window ledge. Melinda looked out over the gardens of other flats below and said in a strangely sad voice, ‘It is a beautiful city this, you know. Just every now and then I find myself realizing it the same as I used to when I first arrived.’

I looked at her fine-boned face, and her smart clothes. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘A dreadful outback dump hundreds of miles away.’ She paused. ‘Do you know it’s funny, but from the very day I was born I must have hated it. Even as a tiny child I couldn’t have felt more strange if I’d have been a person from another world who’d just been plonked down in a mining town. I couldn’t help it, I just did. So one day when I was fourteen, I put my two very best treasures in my white Sunday School purse and started walking towards Sydney.’

‘You didn’t walk all the way did you?’ I gasped.

Melinda looked at me for a second before she said ‘No.’

‘But what about your family, how did you get on for money and food?’

‘I didn’t, at first I stole things to eat, and slept in hedges, or tried to in lorry drivers’ cabins. Then I met a family coming back to Sydney in a car. They took me into their car and their lives.’

‘But didn’t your family miss you?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t know and I didn’t care. They lived like pigs and reduced everyone else they met Jo that grade.’ Melinda gazed out on the gardens. ‘Do you know why I really left home? Well no, that’s not quite true, what I mean is, do you know what the thing was that really set me walking from home? I left because my father made me watch while he beat my brother with a buckled belt until he bled, because he couldn’t learn a page from his Sunday school book. I mentally left that very day, my feet followed two days later.’ She paused. ‘The family who took me in and taught me nice things were Troy’s people.’

As we were sitting looking at one another, the flat door flew open with a blast of racket and light. Thelma looked down the passage and yelled to me to come quickly.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘It’s Milly. I don’t know whether it’s just ’cos she’s rotten drunk or what, but she wants to see you urgently, she won’t tell anyone why.’

I went into my bedroom where Milly sat sobbing on the edge of the bed, while her fiance looked stupidly on.

‘What’s wrong love?’ I asked as I knelt down in front or her, ‘helma told me—.’

Milly flung her arms around me, saying ‘It’s Cliff, it’s Cliff!’

A quick anticipation of a new fear prickled around my forehead as I said ‘What about him?’

‘He’s dying, he’s … he’s … all alone and dying. …’ Milly sobbed.

‘Are you just putting on a turn?’ Thelma asked.

‘No, no I’m not. Dennis is up north, and I’ve been down with Cliff all afternoon, before I…’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked in puzzled anger. ‘Where is he, Which hospital ? ’

‘He’s at the flat with a nurse, I didn’t want to spoil the party, I didn’t, I didn’t, he wanted to see you… .’

As Milly sat crying her eyes out, I didn’t know what to do or think.

‘Would you like me to duck down with you? Would only take a few seconds,’ Thelma asked.

‘I’d better tell Bella,’ I thought as I nodded to Thelma, but when I looked into the main room someone was doing an act, so we quietly left.

Once out in the street we put our arms around each other and started to walk faster and faster. I found that I was pretty drunk and once or twice nearly fell.

Thelma said ‘Now don’t get too upset, Milly may be putting it on.’

Then I remembered the hostile phone call and turning with a surge of fright, said to Thelma ‘No she isn’t, remember that phone call I told you about, let’s hurry.’ We started to run down the hill holding hands and half talking at the same time. I pushed the garden gate open and we ran up to the front door and stumbled up the stairs. The door was open. After climbing the staircase inside, we ran across the landing and in through the archway.

At that moment a nurse in white dropped a book as she shot up out of a chair saying ‘For God’s sake what are you doing bursting in here at this hour, I’ve got someone dying in here, now get out.’

I managed to get enough breath to say ‘But that’s why we’ve come, we didn’t know, he’s our friend—’.

‘Get out I say, how dare you! Scram out of here or I’ll call the police—’ the nurse nearly yelled.

‘But I wanted to see him, he asked for me,’ I tried to say.

‘Just you get out, I’m in charge of this case. You have no right to come barging in here. Now just you get out, he’s my—’.

Thelma walked up close to her and said in a low voice ‘He’s what?’

The nurse suddenly looked nervous. ‘He’s my patient. I’m in charge …’ she faltered, and then stopped talking as she followed Thelma’s eyes to the bottle and glass of drink by the chair, ‘Well, if you’d been sitting here all night, every night, with someone who’s taking as long to go as he—.’

‘Oh no, oh God, oh Lord—’ I yelled as I saw Thelma’s fist in midair. ‘Thelma please don’t—’.

Thelma didn’t take her eyes off the nurse as she hissed ‘No I haven’t, but I can and, I will. Listen sister, I could bloody well knock you flat, so you sit down and enjoy yourself.’ The nurse lowered herself back in her seat as Thelma said ‘Go on, you talk to Cliff while I take care of this bag.’ I started running through the flat softly calling ‘Cliff, Cliff’. He wasn’t in the bedroom, so I ran to the balcony.

I paused on the step. The light of the night filtered through the flowers, and threw strange patterns on his face. Then I said ‘Hello Cliff, I’ve been selling antiques, I didn’t know you were—’. A breeze stirred the patterns and let the light shine on his eyes. I tip-toed nearer to him and looked more closely as I said ‘Cliff, it’s me, Jon, can you hear me?’ The eyes didn’t move, but they did seem to glow a little more. I said ‘The plants are pretty now, they’ll soon flower won’t they? Everyone wanted to come and see you, we all missed you, didn’t you know that? ’ As I sat down on the edge of the sofa, another breeze moved the patterns and his hair. I tried desperately to think of how to say what I wanted to say, while I looked into the large grey eyes. ‘I’m glad to see you Cliff, I’m—’. ‘Do you want a drink of water, or a sandwich?’  ‘No?’ ‘Would you like me to hold your head up so that you can see the flowers?’ His eyes glowed a little, so I walked around to the curved head of the sofa and slowly lifted his head, then tilting it towards the flowers said ‘There, you see, the family’s fine aren’t they?’

After I’d lowered his head I went back and sat on the side of the sofa. Then I felt that his eyes were pulling me, so I leant over close to his face. ‘Do you want something? If you can’t talk “glow” if you do.’ The eyes glowed, so I said ‘Are you hungry? No? Do you want some medicine? Shall I tell you a story?’ At that minute a burst of music rent the air as someone opened his windows on the hill opposite. I found that I was sweating as I said ‘Shall I pick your head up again? Yes? you’d like that?’ I leant forward and cradled his hot head in my hands, saying through the strong smell of antiseptic ‘Oh go on, you’re all right. I tell you what, I’ll give you a cuddle and then we’ll have a cup of tea, would you like that?’ I was frightened as I kissed him: I felt as if I were falling into and through the big eyes. As I looked at them, his head grew heavier and heavier. I mentally said ‘Cliff, Cliff—’ but I knew as I chased the fleeting shadows into the back of the eyes, that I might just as well have stood in the valley of the Kings, and called to Cheops. I sat looking at the grey seas of his eyes and their black moons with a feeling of overwhelming loneliness for some time, before I said to them, ‘I’ll always think of you with a smile. I’m glad I knew you—’ and lowered his head onto the pillow.

I could still hear the words echoing in my mind’s emptiness as Thelma and I walked back up to the Cross. Then I said to Thelma ‘I think I’ll just go for a walk down to the jetty—’. We stopped walking.

Thelma straightened my tie as she said ‘Do you like me enough to do me a great favour?’

‘Of course—’.

‘Well, would you come straight back to your party with me?’

‘But I—’.

I looked at her for a while not quite sure of what she was getting at, then nodded. We put our arms around each other and started to walk. A hundred yards away from the flat, we could hear a wonderfully healthy racket coming out of the windows.

Half way in the entrance Thelma stopped us, and I discovered that I was shaking quite violently as she took my hand, saying ‘Love, I just want you to say that I saw it all. You won’t let it haunt you, will you? I never knew Cliff very well but I liked him. Could you think of all you did with him with happiness, and then try putting that feeling into entertaining your guests?’

I looked at Thelma for a minute before I could understand what she meant. ‘I’ll have a good try.’

The awful prodding went on all over my body. I woke up, half turned in the bed to say something and found myself looking straight into Mr Sunday’s face. He gave me a fond butt, so I cuddled him, and said ‘I don’t mind you on the bed, but I wish you wouldn’t walk all over me in hobnailed boots. Do you understand, do you? Oh no you don’t, you stupid-faced thing. Just look at you. Fancy having a face full of nothing but fur and whiskers—! What’s the time? I’ll have to get up and fly around.’ I plunked him down on the other side of the bed, and jumped out of it.

Just as I was pouring myself some coffee, Bella’s voice issued out from her bedroom. ‘Gawd I’m half dead, feel as if I’ve been on the streets half the night, and not in bed. Don’t bring me any coffee in, I’ll be out for it.’

‘I didn’t think you were awake,’ I replied.

‘Well I am—’.

There was a large crash followed by her cursing: ‘That’s the second damn time I’ve hit that. What the hell are we going to do with that box full of crap.’

‘What crap? ’

‘You know, all that stuff from the party.’

‘Lord I don’t,know,’ I said. ‘I’ve asked everyone I could, but no one seems to have lost anything.’

Bella came out of her bedroom looking tired. As she sat down I poured her some coffee. ‘Well, I think we’ll just have to toss it out. After all we’ve had it for ages now, what beats me is how no one’s phoned.’ I agreed from the bottom of my heart. On the morning after the party, and for days after, we’d gone on finding a curious collection of things scattered around the flat, some of which I thought people must want.

Things like a pair of false teeth, one shoe, a clutch of handbags, and a pair of glasses to say nothing of gloves and odd earrings, plus our favourite leftover, a Bible in which someone had carefully underlined the sexy bits, then added comments on them in the margin.

‘Did you try the neighbours?’

I told Bella that I had, at least everyone that I knew who had got fed up with the din and joined in with us, or been invaded by our mob.

‘Oh well, we’ll just have to stick them all under somewhere. Today’s your big day isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Melinda fixed it all up for this afternoon.’

‘Funny thing you know, but I like her,’ said Bella. ‘I don’t usually like them. Can’t understand it in women, I can in men, but not women. What are you doing first today? Ooops, nearly fell off this bloody chair again. We must get a carpenter in. Everything in the joint’s broken since the binge. Now let me see, where was I?’

‘You were asking me what I’m doing. Well first I have a final run through with Nedge, then I meet Thelma and go over a bit of the play, then we meet Melinda for—’. The phone suddenly rang.

Bella said ‘I’ll answer it, I think it’s Edna.’

She picked the phone up and I heard a man’s voice say ‘Bella? It’s Ernie here. Good news love, I’ve got four and a half—’.

Bella looked at me excitedly for a second, before saying ‘Oh Ernie. Oh how bloody wonderful, thank you, thank you—yes, I’ll come down and see you this afternoon.’

She slowly put the phone down, then turning to me with an almost sad expression hesitated for a second. ‘Remember that hound I loaned that dough to? You know, the one who buzzed off when I thought I had ten thousand? Well, I didn’t tell you, but I went to another lawyer and put the heat on. I’ve got four and a half thousand.’

I was very glad for her. We started laughing and kissing one another.

When we had caught our breath I said ‘Well, will you buy another house now?’

She was silent for a minute. ‘No love, I’ll send the kid’s people some, and sit on the rest. I’m happy here. I can afford to be now.’ Bella traced her fingernail across the newspaper. ‘I’ll even marry Chris if he asks me again—’.

‘I thought he had,’ I said knowingly, ‘why didn’t you?’

‘Well, he wanted me to live in America after the war. Oh I’d like to see it, but I must have enough to leave and come back to the Cross if I don’t like it. I’ve—’.

The doorbell rang and was followed by ‘Yooheehoo—’.

‘Oh God, it’s Mrs Foster,’ I said. ‘Please tell her you’re busy and I’m not here,’ I begged Bella, as she started towards the door, and I shot into her bedroom.

I dreaded Mrs Foster despite the fact that she’d tried so hard to be nice. She lived two flats down the hall, but by some instinct Bella and I had both avoided her, that is until the night of the party. Arnold had arrived dressed up as Edith Sitwell, and had collided with Mrs Foster in the entrance hall. Mrs Foster, who had had quite a lot to drink that night took one look and thought that he really was Edith Sitwell. Since she had a book of Miss Sitwell’s poems, a large flat full of drink, a husband in the army, and nothing else to do, she threw her flat open to our overflow and to Arnold, who gave a reading of the poems. The success of Arnold’s performance and the bedlam were so great that the people next door to her gave up and followed suit. The result was that pretty soon the whole block of flats was one big typical Cross party, with half the Cross, including those we’d not asked doing the ‘Conga’, and going mad all over the place. Then out of all the bedlam to choose from, Mrs Foster after taking one look at me, decided that I was ‘sensitive’, having been practically created in some heavenly factory of sensitivity, just for her. Bella said aloud and fairly convincingly, good-bye, closed the door and came in with a gift of flowers saying ‘I suppose she means well, poor lonely old thing.’ I went to the bathroom and washed while she boiled some eggs and made some more coffee.

As I was washing away, I heard the phone ring and Bella’s voice saying ‘Yes Milly, I’ll tell him to ring you as soon as he’s out.’

I grabbed a towel and walked out. ‘I wasn’t in the bath.’

‘Oh, oh well that was Milly. She said it’s something important and she wants you to ring her urgently. She’s at work.’

I stood holding the towel, feeling a little frightened as the memory of waking up on the morning after the party came back. I’d only half woken up when I discovered that Milly was in bed with me. She’d opened her eyes and was looking at me in some sort of state. As I looked at her I realized that I was in one too, then Cliff’s memory flooded the eyes of both of us. It was only later on, when a voice from amongst the other bodies on the floor complained bitterly about not being able to sleep, that I was—’

Bella prodded me out of my thoughts with the bread knife as she said ‘No love, I’ll take an even bet it’s not that. She’s not the type to go up the duff. Go on, ring her.’

‘But how did you guess?’ I asked.

She laughed and said ‘How did I know? Simple, I just know you louse, remember I’m the one who’s brought you up. Go on, ring.’

I dialled rather nervously. ‘Milly? Bella said it was urgent—’.

‘Oh love, I didn’t mean to rush you. I just wanted to get you before you left. Listen, you see old O’Brien today don’t you?

‘Yes.’

‘Well I found out by accident that you’re practically in.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, a long story short he uses the Bamboo to rehearse in, and he was there on your opening night and saw the sailor go for you. Anyway, he told Melinda that if you could get through that, you were tough enough to work for his fit-ups. Isn’t that good?’

I couldn’t thank Milly enough, and was still trying to, when she said she had to go.

Bella said ‘What was it, come on, what was it?’ As soon as I told her she said ‘I knew it! I knew it the minute Ernie rang. It’s a good omen for you. Everything’s going to go our way, louse. We can’t miss, you’ll get in, just you watch.’

First I opened the brown envelope, then slowly unfolded the letter. The cats made a noise, causing me to jump as I looked at the paper, then my nervous eyes caught and held the magic words ‘Exemption from Military Service is granted—’. Even though I knew she would not be home till six o’clock, I nearly turned and yelled to Bella ‘It’s through, it’s through, I’ve got it.’ I felt I’d been cut in half, and as if I should cry as the strain of waiting left me. Ever since Major O’Brien had said yes and assured me it would be all right, I’d never for one moment relaxed. I had died a thousand little deaths as I lived in an agony of suspense. Now here it was. I started to shake and laugh as I said to the cats ‘Oh if only Bella was here, no one else I know will be home yet.’Then my eyes saw the St Kilda postmark on the other envelope.

The more I stared at the once familiar name, the more it looked like that of another country and not another state just a few hundred miles south. After I’d hacked the envelope open I read, ‘Dear Jon, How are you? It’s so long since I last heard from you, you never seem to write.’

‘To hell with you,’ I thought, ‘I used to send you all the news.’

‘We were talking about you the other night, that’s really what made me write you now.’

‘That’s big of you,’ I thought.

Further down, I read ‘Melbourne’s still the same. Though I’m so fond of it, I do wish it wouldn’t rain so much, still I suppose it’s doing someone’s garden good, and it does make the trees in the road look nice. Jean came over the other night. We might re-marry, how about that! Anyway, she started a small argument as to how old you were now. You were only a kid when you left. What is the Cross like, is it as fabulous as I’ve always heard? What have you been doing? I must go now, do write soon. We think of you often. Jean sends her love.’

I put the letter down on the table. ‘What’s the Cross like? What have you done?’ I sat looking at the plane trees opposite, thinking of John’s letter with all its questions, and the memories of the past two years they conjured up, my two years with Bella at the Cross. Twenty-four crowded months in which I’d done so many of the things that I’d always dreamt of doing, and sometimes things I had hated doing, but had gone through with because it seemed that I had to, that it had already been arranged somewhere that I should.

Then I thought ‘I’m thinking as if it’s all over, when it’s only just begun. I’m not leaving really, I’ll be away with the unit, but I’ll have my leaves or work the camps near Sydney, and be able to live at home sometimes.’ I looked at the plane trees again, and as I looked they seemed to alter their shapes and dissolve into other trees. ‘Why of course, they’re like St Kilda Road.’ I suddenly had an intense longing to see Melbourne again. In my mind I walked up St Kilda Road, at the same time looking down on it, with its avenues of traffic and the trees running far into the distance. I thought how I’d love to stand on Princes Bridge watching the little pleasure ships coming and going on their trips up and down the Yarra. Then, strongest of all, came the sight of Collins Street, full of people shopping and meeting under its trees and shop awnings, and the trams travelling up it in the early morning sunshine. Even as I visualized it, the daytime scene changed to night. The street lights glowed under the trees and through the slight river mist that seemed to envelope the street whenever I walked up to see the squirrels in the gardens at the top.

I was mentally looking across to East Melbourne, when I heard the key turn in the lock and Bella’s voice: ‘You in? Any news? I’ve just run into another two people I didn’t know, who thanked me for the party.’ She put a pile of parcels down then took her hat off. ‘When I think of all the trouble we went to over those bloody lists. We might just as well have stuck an electric sign out of the window saying “Free booze and trade.” Now I’ll just kick my shoes off—ooh that’s lovely, now I can talk. You didn’t get it then?’

‘Yes,’ I told her, ‘Look, here it is, it’s through.’

‘Oh Gawd I am glad love, I really and truly am. I only kept on talking because you looked as if you hadn’t got it, and I wanted to think of something helpful to say. What’s the matter? You don’t look good.’

‘Nothing Bella, I’m fine.’

‘Come on, you’re not with me, what are you thinking of?’

‘Oh, I see what you mean, nothing really, I was only thinking of Melbourne. I had a letter from some friends as well this afternoon, that’s all. Just a bit homesick I suppose. No, it can’t be, I haven’t got one. “City sick” I’d call it.’

‘Oh louse, I like that, that’s nice. “City sick”, hmmm, let’s have a drink.’

‘Another one?’ I asked Bella. ‘Yes love. I’d like to do something nice tonight. What are you doing?’

‘Well I don’t know, I was in such a stew waiting for the letter, I never thought—’.

‘Well, look, why don’t we just go out by ourselves and have a good old—oh, blast! ’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Just thought, Old Tom comes at about eight thirty and he’s always been such a good touch I can’t let him down. You get on with him don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I like him and all his stories about the East.’

‘Well he can take us both out. Oh I forgot, here’s a present for you.’ Bella handed me a box.

‘But you gave me my presents,’ I said.

‘Well, there’s another.’

‘Shall I open it now?’

‘Of course, if you want to. Go on, while you do I’ll just give the palm a bit of booze.’

I opened the box. Inside were two silk shirts and an envelope. I opened it and read the card: ‘For louse, with many thank yous for the past two happy years, and my best wishes for your future, love Bella.’ Then I saw another piece of paper in the envelope. It opened as I pulled it out. I gaped at it for a second or so, before I really realized that it was a cheque for a hundred pounds. ‘But Bella, I don’t know what ta say—’

‘Well keep your trap shut then.’

‘Oh no, you know what I mean. I’m—’.

‘Course I do love, but you don’t have to say anything. Just give us a kiss and we’ll have another drink. Come to think of it I’ve a good mind to give Tom the bum’s steer tonight. Why don’t we ring up old Arnold and go mad with him? He knows all the joints. Oh, look up there, two flies are having a bash on the picture frame. Never really noticed them before, wonder if she’s on the fly game. Do you know something louse, this money’s made me a bit potty, I think I need a break. Yes a holiday, that’s it. Bella all spread out somewhere nice and warm, ha ha. Suppose I might just as well stay in bed. What the hell was that noise? Did you hear it? What are those buggers up to, in the kitchen. Hey louse, where are you? I’m talking to you. Oh that’s a bloody lie too, I’m just gassing to the air. Listen love, you could do with a holiday, why don’t you have a break before you start with the unit?’

‘That would be an idea,’ I said, ‘why don’t we both pop off to the Blue Mountains?’

‘Not on your life,’ said Bella, ‘I went there once and never again.’

‘But they’re supposed to be lovely.’

‘Lovely? Gawd it was torture, full of families, the stink of nappies, and bawling kids. I tell you there are more blow flies there than anywhere else in the world; they used to pick on my soup to die in. Then there’s nut cases yelling all day and night at the echo—no, dunno why but I just fall to pieces when I leave the Cross. Anyway, when you get there they’re not blue.’

‘Well couldn’t we go somewhere else, what about—’.

‘Look, why don’t you go to Melbourne for a few days? Go on, it would be nice for you. Lord knows how long the war will last, and you’ll always be working near Sydney or in the north. Go down and have a few days in Melbourne. Have a think about it.’

The more I thought about it the more I agreed with Bella. It would be nice to go back, for a few days, especially now that I was over eighteen and had a stage job, so I said ‘Yes I will, I’ll ring and see when I can get a booking on the train.’ To our surprise I found that I could have one on the following night, so I took it.

Bella said ‘That’s that, we’re going to go out on the burg. I’ll ring old Tom at his home, I never have in twenty years so I’m sure he won’t mind. I’ll say I’m crook. You go and get spruced up while I do.’

‘I’d better book a call to Melbourne first and see if I can stay with John.’

After a lot of jiggery pokery I found I could get straight through. ‘It’s a good omen,’ mumbled Bella as I sat waiting for the connection. I could hear the various noises as censors opened the line in readiness, and was surprised at their being so obvious. After all, what was the point if everyone knew that they checked each call?

John’s distant voice disappeared. I put the phone down, at the same time watching Bella mix something.

‘All O.K.?’ she said.

‘Yes, I can stay at his flat. If he’s not in, he’ll leave the keys in the milk box for me.’

‘Goodo, now take your shirt off, we’re going to have a face pack.’

‘What? I don’t want a face pack, I—’.

‘It’s not a case of what you want, it’s a case of what you’re going to bloody well get, come on.’

‘But I don’t, what’s it made of?’

‘Olive oil and egg yolk. It whips out all the blackheads and pimples in a jiffy.’

‘But I haven’t got any blackheads and pimples.’

‘No, neither have I, but it gives you a wonderful tickle up, come on, stop making a stink, After this we’re going out and we’re going to have a really good evening. Now while this sets I’ll ring old Tom up and then get onto a place I used to know near Rose Bay. Then you can do me.’

I took my shirt off and Bella started to smear the muck all over my face and neck. As soon as she finished, she told me that I was to sit and not speak or move for ten minutes. ‘If you laugh or talk you’ll crack it and ruin the whole joy.’ I sat watching the cats as they watched me, at the same time feeling the pack getting tighter and tighter. In fact it began to feel slightly sinister, rather as if two invisible hands were slowly squeezing me.

Bella spoke to old Tom, and told him in her best business voice that something urgent had happened. I could tell by her conversation that old Tom was a little nervous. I tried to picture him sitting in his house, probably surrounded by his wife and family, as he pretended to talk to a business friend. By the time she booked the table, the face pack was so tight that I thought it would lift me off the seat. When she had finished telephoning, Bella tapped my face and said ‘You can wash it off now, but use luke warm water and no soap.’ As I tried to say O.K. I could feel it cracking all over. Later, as I looked in the bathroom mirror at the millions of fine lines, I thought, ‘This is what you’ll look like at a hundred.’ As soon as it was off I went back and smeared it over Bella. When I’d finished I stood laughing at her as she sat like a statue made out of uncooked omelette. I tried everything I could think of to make her laugh and crack it. Then I saw the look in her eyes as they talked to me through the yellow mask, and I knew all hell would break through when it had done its work, so I skipped out and dressed.

‘Are you ready?’ Bella called, I went in. To my surprise she was wearing a smart plain frock with a simple new hat and shoes, ‘Like them?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘very much. They’re quite, well, they’re different from most things you have.’

‘You’re dead right, it’s taken me twenty years to get out of frills and fripperies. Oh well, as they say, it’s never too late. Give us a look at you. Hmmm, always liked that dark suit on you, you look nice. I like that new shirt on you too.’ As I went to do something she looked back at me and said ‘Yes real nice, but your bum sticks out a bit, put it in—’.

‘How the hell can I?’

‘Well don’t get carried away, I suppose it’s just you.’

‘Well I’m dead sure it isn’t you.’

‘Oh wasn’t that lovely? Do you know I love to go somewhere nice to eat. I don’t know why, must be because I’ve spent so much time cooped up. You were going to say something?’

I twiddled the glass of drink. ‘I’ve forgotten, it must have been a lie. But I do like this place very much, come on, let’s have a dance.’ We got up from the table and forced our way onto the tiny polished floor. Then the agony began. I had never really learned to dance, and Bella had hardly danced for years. After a brief panic as to who held whom, and in what way, we settled for a close shuffle which looked roughly the same as the other shuffles around us.

‘You happy here?’

‘Yes, very, it’s as good as I heard it was. I like the little band.’

‘It’s a bit strange for me, I haven’t been here for years. We used to come here when I was new on the game, it used to be called “The Black Rose” in those days.’

We left the floor and returned to our table. Bella settled herself down. ‘Come oh louse, look happy.’

‘I am.’

‘No you’re not, you’ve been off all night, I can tell.’

‘But I am,’ I protested as I moved the bowl of flowers to one side.

Bella sat twisting her glass of drink. ‘No love, you’re bothered about going back to Melbourne, aren’t you?’

‘Me? Of course I’m—’ I, half replied before saying, as I looked at the pattern on the tablecloth, ‘Yes I am. I can’t think why, when I want to see it again so much.’

After she had ordered some more drinks Bella looked at me. ‘Look lovey, this is the reason I suggested us coming out tonight. I knew you had the vapours and I did want to talk to you. You know, you don’t have to go to Melbourne.’

That’s the silly part—I know I don’t have to.’

‘Yes, but you’re behaving as if you had to. Look louse, you’re over eighteen how, you’re getting to be someone. You can go back and look the whole lot in the face, you’ve done more in two years than they’ll do in ten.’ Bella took a good gulp of her drink. ‘I don’t know how to say this, but I mean it. You mustn’t let anything anyone said, or anything that was done to you, stay on now. It’s all in the past— anyone who fights, or clings in other ways, to the past is as stupid as someone who wastes the present by trying to foretell the future— honestly.’

‘Well I’m not,’ I said, ‘at least not that I know of. It’s just that I feel that I’ll be sixteen again, it’s—oh, I can’t explain it.’

‘Here, have another drink. This is probably the wrong thing to say louse, but you know, you let people get at you too easily. You do love, I’ve watched, they can bash you anytime.’

‘But they don’t, no one’s bashed me.’

‘Oh I don’t mean that way love, I mean they get at your doubts. No, what I mean is, that they get at your mind. Love, I’ve learned one thing in life and that is, that you’ve got to look after your nut, true. It doesn’t really matter what anyone does to your old bod, it’s up there what matters.’

Bella looked a bit upset, I looked back at her trying vainly to express myself through my eyes before saying ‘I know, but you see you’ve got more knowledge than me. I mean you’re er—’,

‘Yes of course I’m older, that’s why I wanted us to have a talk.’

‘I know you’re upset about Cliff dying like that in the way he did. It’s made you nervous: would anyone; but what you’re worried about right now, is going back and seeing a lot of people who hurt you. But do you know they can’t really touch you louse, I haven’t been on the game all my life without learning a bit about it. You see you must keep your own mind to yourself, you must. That’s why you call it your own. When I think of all the clients I’ve had who were only too glad to come for a drink and a good old chat. It wasn’t the old bash they wanted. They were just unhappy in themselves, they had no mind of their own, and they wanted to talk to someone who they thought didn’t know all their faults. It’s funny, I can always spot the mugs who think they are full of faults. Some of them think that because they come and see me, they get rid of their private fears. Do you know something? Nine tenths of them haven’t got any faults. No truly, they pretend to have them so they can get away from their wives.’

Bella sat looking at the overflowing ashtray for quite some time. ‘I know people think the game’s all grind and bash, bash. But I’ll tell you something, it’s not. Well, not for me. Oh I’ve known plenty of girls who don’t know how to swing things, and get worn out, but I don’t look too bad, do I?’ I didn’t reply, there was no need to.

She broke the look between us, saying ‘Oooops I think I’m a little woozy. Oh let’s face it, I’m just drunk. Well at least I’m just drunk enough to say what I mean. I’ll bet that half the housewives of my age who only have to bash twice a month, no true that’s all, twice a month, look and feel worse than I do. I’ll tell you why love, they don’t use their brains. Oh they use them enough in a dishonest sort of way, to get married in a church with all the nice and right things. Then when the hick they’ve lumbered up the aisle slams the ring on their finger, boom! from that moment on, they spend the rest of their life loading the earth with their dissatisfaction and kids, out of spite. Well, maybe that’s going a bit far I know, but it goes for a lot of them. I ought to know, I know their husbands, ha! ha! Oops, I’ve seen them sneer at me, but do you really know why? I’ve got something they’ve never had. I’ve got my own world. Oh I know that sounds a bit crackpot, but bugbrained or not, I have, otherwise I couldn’t be on the game. I don’t mean the palm tree, and the house, or our flat. You could call it pride? no,—self honesty?—no, that’s not quite it. I don’t know what to call it. I can make my own mistakes, think in my own way, order to my own set of values—anyway I’ve got it, and they haven’t. Most of them hope kids or the furniture will give it back to them.’

Bella had to touch my hand in order to bring me out of my trance, as she said ‘Sorry louse. I’m just taking stock at your expense and spoiling our night out.’

I said as I lit a cigarette for her. ‘No, honestly, you’re not. I like hearing you talk, truly. We haven’t really had a talk before. I feel I know you a bit better now.’

Bella stroked her arm and played with her watch for a second, before she laughed and said ‘I’m glad lovey, I’ve wanted to say so many things to you ever since you arrived—when I think of you standing there, I was a bit soused, and so was the dog, and there you were, all hair and eager eyes, asking for a room. Do you know I thought “Oh Gawd, what the hell have I got here?’’ We looked at one another for a few seconds, then we giggled.

‘I never have said much to you love,’ Bella said, ‘because I don’t believe in interfering with anyone. Way down deep, they know what’s what; it’s only how to do it that’s got them—’.

‘No, you never have haggled me. I’ve liked you for that, and that’s why it’s been nice living with you. Whenever I go wrong you just shove me back on the right road and don’t lecture me—’.

‘Well louse, to be honest, if you really want to help someone, that’s the best way I can think of doing it. Sorry to laugh, but that’s all I’ve ever done for half my regulars, I’d have been overworking to do much more.

‘Oh dear, it’s surprising what you learn about life and people when you’re on the game. I can tell as soon as they arrive, what they really want, or what’s wrong with them. It’s ironic but in a roundabout way I must have saved dozens of marriages. Read them like walking books—’. A waiter came and brought us some sweets. As he placed them in the centre of the table, his arm broke our contact like a person’s body does when they pass the magic ray opener of a restaurant door. As soon as it disappeared we both started to giggle as we reconnected.

‘Gawd louse, imagine, half a lifetime spent looking up into eyes. Honestly, if there’s anything in this reincarnation lark, the next time around, I’m coming back as a male. I don’t care whether it’s a cockroach or a tomcat, I’m going to bloody well look down into eyes—’.

‘But a tomcat looks at the back of a lady cat’s head,’ I said.

‘Oh! does he now? Well, this one will roll ’em over. Ha ha, I’m hot, let’s have a dance. Oh now they’ve stopped, next one then. Let’s have another drink. Where the hell were we?’

‘Talking about tomcats and things—’.

Bella stifled a snort of laugher, ‘Do you know, we’re two of a kind all right. And it’s always going to be the hard way for both of us. But stinko as I am, I say here and now, we’ve got it, so don’t you worry, that’s all. I mean, you look after all your dreams.’

‘What do you mean, dreams?’

‘Dreams? The things you want, you’ve just had one come true. But I’ll tell you something, while you’re working towards a new one, you must make up a few more. Never run short of plans love, you can’t have too many. Today’s dreams are the stuff that makes you what you are tomorrow. Well, I often think they are the us of tomorrow, no they must be the—Oh Gawd I’ve messed all this up. I’m under the weather but you know what I mean. Early tonight you looked like a kid who thinks his dreams depend on his past or his dad, well they don’t depend on anyone and they never have. Only cruel bastards do that to their kids, and you’re not a kid, and you never will be again, but dad or no dad you must learn how to protect your imagination and keep your own world. There’s always some lout who wants to alter it.’ Bella leant forward and whispered, ‘There’s a bit of trade over there who wants to alter me. Well, I’m not working tonight, not even for the King of England. I’ve only gone on like this because you’re the type who’ll always have someone being mad about you, because you are what you are. Then when they’ve got you, they’ll begin trying to undo you. Don’t you ever let them. No love, if anyone tries to put you in doubt as to what your dreams are, instead of trying to help you improve whatever it is that makes you tick, you can bet your life that they are in a mess themselves and they’re not your friend. Always look for people who improve the things they touch. The others try to make you a mess, and call it love. Oh balls, I’m a sozzled old mess. I’m stinko with me, and booze. Amen.’

Bella said it so loudly that she startled the people nearby as well as herself, and me. I sat for a while not knowing what to say, simply because I didn’t know how to compute what I knew she meant back into words of acknowledgement to her. Just then the orchestra started playing one of Bella’s favourite songs. As soon as she heard It Had To Be You, she said ‘Alright, stinko or not we’ll dance, O.K.?’ And as we were dancing, she said ‘Do you know this money has made me feel almost respectable. Now isn’t that stupid, what’s money got to do with it?’ Before I could reply she said ‘I know, how about if after this, we go back and do the Cross over, and then go on to a gambling joint I know?’

‘But can we get in ?’ ‘

‘Tell me somewhere where we can’t,’ Bella said before she started softly singing I Wandered Around …

‘Thank you, this’ll do fine.’

‘But you said St Kilda Road,’ the driver protested.

‘I know, but I’ve changed my mind, I’d like to get out here instead.’

‘Talk about women changing their minds—’ the driver muttered while I thought ‘that’s it, that’s good. You didn’t sound nervous.’

I paid him, picked up my grip, stepped out into the bright Melbourne sunshine, and decided to go for a little walk around. I knew John was at work so really there was no hurry for me to go to the flat. Yes, it was all just the same. I stood looking at the milling crowd for a few minutes before walking up Swanson Street, to Rumplemeyers for coffee. The nearer I got to Collins Street the stranger I felt about being back. It was all so familiar, and yet so strange.

I found myself remembering a time when I was a tiny kid, and someone had cut the whiskers off a cat. I’d stood upset but fascinated, as I watched the cat crawl around unable to walk properly because of its lack of whiskers. I wasn’t falling or lurching around, but I’d lost my Melbourne whiskers. The thought so amused me, that I actually did knock someone. Before I could see who it was, a hostile voice said ‘Why don’t ya watch where yer goin’?’

Startled, I said ‘I’m Sorry, I—’.

‘Should be in the bloody army, yer lounge lizard.’ The elderly man glared, then went on his way.

‘Pity you’re not in the army, you sad fat thing,’ I thought as I watched him walk away, still looking back and glaring. ‘All that fuss! Oh well, I don’t care, I’m on holiday from Sydney.’ I started looking at all the shops, and the pushing crowds of passing people. The more I looked, the more I noticed the difference between here and Sydney. Yet stare as I might I couldn’t think what the difference was. ‘Is it their movements, their clothes, or their skins?’ Then I smelt, before I saw, the waffle bar.

After I’d been drawn in, and had finished enjoying the enormous waffle with its syrup and oozing butter the little voice said ‘Ooh, that was a bit rich, you could easily be sick. Go and get something to settle your stomach,’ so I decided there and then to walk across to an old fashioned hotel opposite. The ginger-haired bar lady passed me over the scotch with lots of soda, and I sat looking at the big, crowded room. As I sat the little voice said ‘Isn’t this funny, before you’d gone to Sydney: you would never have thought of doing this by yourself. Oh Lord, the drink’s gone. Well, you’re on holiday get another—’. As I walked away from the bar with it the lunch time regulars were coming in. Nearly all of them were business men. I kept looking at them in wonderment—their complete uniformity in spite of differences of age or size horrified me as they came in and headed towards the old fashioned oyster bar. ‘Oysters? Oh you love them, oh go on, you’re on holiday, go up and get some.’ I mentally thanked the small voice, popped up to the bar and in a state of excitement ordered a plate of large oysters.

The woman gave me the thin brown bread and butter, along with the little pot of sauce, a piece of lemon and a small fork. After I’d placed them on my table I went back to the bar and stood drooling as I impatiently watched the old man opening the oysters. Despite all his flourishes he earned my deep annoyance as he craftily fished around in my oysters for any pearls. I was so put out over this that I almost yelled out ‘Hey, you old coot, that’s not fair. If I buy the oysters I buy the pearls.’ Halfway through the first plate I remembered hearing something about not eating oysters and drinking whisky at the same time, so, draining a shell, I popped back to the bar and got a glass of white wine. I’d finished the plate before I noticed the half drunk glass of white wine, and I thought ‘Well that’s a waste.’ The little voice said ‘Well of course it is, waste half a glass of French wine? Go and get another plate of oysters to go with it.’ I picked up the plate and headed back to the bar. Halfway there I went back and grabbed the half full glass of white wine. As I ordered the new lot of oysters, I polished off the remainder of the wine and ordered a new one.

An hour later I felt so good that I thought I must go and see Collins Street. Picking up my grip I started off, only to reach a movie house, where, as I stared at Anna Neagle’s face the little voice said ‘Do you know something, you really are a bit pickled.’  ‘Oh no I’m not, I’m perfectly—I’m perfectly me. And what’s more I’m going to go over to that little hotel over there and I’m going to have as many drinks as I want.’

Collins Street was as beautiful as I remembered it. The trim plane trees dipped their pale green leaves in the early afternoon sun, outside the awnings of the lovely shops and cafés. The beautifully polished window of one smart shop, caught and held within its glowing copper frame the reflection of another, and of the people as they passed by. I stood for a while looking at the beautiful and real antiques in its window, before devoting my attention to the trams running up to the top and turning to the left. ‘Different from Williams Street,’ I thought, ‘they don’t turn into the Cross. I wonder why that building isn’t an opera house?’ As I stood looking at it straddle the top of the street, I spent some time imagining hansom cabs clipping up to and away from the vast flights of stairs, up which the people who’d left them were walking towards the arches, dressed in their opera capes and hats. Then, seeing the road was clear, I walked across and into the little hotel.

I sat with my drink, after checking that my grip was where I could keep an eye on it, watching two men and two women talking. All of them were well dressed and gay. But what fascinated me about them was that all they seemed to say to each other was ‘Well, not really.’  ‘Well, if you ask me—’.  ‘Oh it’s folly dear, sheer and utter folly.’ ‘Well I must say—Well I mean, we hope there’s such a thing as good taste.’ I sat utterly absorbed with them, longing to get up and say ‘Well, it may be sheer folly and it may not be utterly good taste but folly well, you see, if I may—’. What fascinated me was, that though they kept on saying the same things, obviously whatever they tried to get across came across. ‘Perhaps it’s something to do with the lip movements?’ I thought, so I decided to go to the bar and have a look. As I was watching their lips, the barmaid asked me what I wanted. ‘Another double oyster please.’ She held my glass in mid-air and said ‘What?’ A bit put out, I repeated ‘Another double er—er … oh—er —er whisky please.’ She kept the glass in mid-air. ‘Honey, I would suggest a beer and I should make it the last if I were you.’ I was a bit hurt by this but nevertheless said brightly ‘Oh, I’m on holiday from double Sydney. I’m about to—’. I left the half glass of beer and the hotel, thinking that the walk would do me good, as I headed towards Flinders Street and down to Princes Bridge.

After I’d looked at the boats bobbing up and down below on the Yarra it dawned on me that I was really feeling awful. ‘Go and lay down in the gardens in the sun for a while. That’ll make you feel better,’ said the little voice. As soon as I lay on the grass the little voice said ‘Oh dear!’ I couldn’t think of or say anything, for to my private horror I found that I could feel the whole of the earth spinning on its axis underneath me. Round and round it and I went. The sun made it agony to keep my eyes open, but if I closed them it was even worse. The world not only spun around but it tipped as well. After about five minutes I noticed my upper lip was beginning to get cold, as the little voice said ‘Quick, get a cab and get to the flat. Once you’re there you can strip off, well I mean you can do anything, doesn’t matter if you are sick.’ The cab driver looked at me in the mirror saying ‘You sure you’re all right kid?’  ‘Yes thank you,’ I lied in exhausted desperation.

As I walked towards John’s flat I found myself thinking my way to the door before I got there myself. I groped around in the milkbox, but to my horror the keys weren’t there, so I had another desperate feel, the little voice saying as I did ‘Oh my God he’s forgotten, what on earth will you do?’

Just then the door opened and John stood there. ‘Well there you are at last! I’ve been waiting for hours for you, where the hell have you been?’

I focussed in the direction of his voice. ‘Hello, I’ve been an oyster— er, er, that’s a nice suit. You look well. I went—er, oh I’m afraid I don’t feel very well—’ ‘You don’t look it—’ I was aware of lurching into the flat, looking blindly at the same time for the bathroom, as I tried to remember the exact door. Then with sweat streaming down my forehead, and a hand raised in prayerful hope ahead of me, I turned the doorknob and just made it.

‘Well for God’s sake—’ John’s voice said as I looked at the label on the pan, ‘Well for God’s sake, it’s a bit much turning up here like this. I’ve been waiting all morning, you don’t seem to think people care.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I ‘heard myself trying to say, ‘I’ll clean up. Honest I didn’t mean to, it was—’.

‘Well really, it just isn’t good enough—’.

‘Oh honestly I’m sorry, please leave me alone. I’ll be—’.

‘To think that I took the day off just to be here.’

‘Oh leave me alone. I’ll be all right. Please stop talking and leave me alone.’

‘It’s only for your—.’

‘Shut up, go away and shut up.’

‘Oh I see, well there’s no need to be rude on top of all this—’. I was dimly aware of a foot tapping on the tiled floor, before his voice said ‘I’d heard that you had cheapened but I must say that I didn’t expect this.’

Quite suddenly the heaving stopped, I could perceive my hand pressing the handle, before the other one turned the tap on, and I stuck my head under the cold water. After its ice cold shock had registered I looked up and saw John’s angry face, and confirmed my hurt. ‘What do you mean, you’d heard I’d cheapened?’ I asked as I groped around for a towel. ‘I didn’t mean to get drunk just to mess you up. I didn’t even know you’d be home, what do you mean?’

John sat quite still on the edge of the bath, half smiling. ‘Well it’s common knowledge that you’ve been with a very coarse set. And that you lived with a whore. Oh, I’ve heard, don’t worry, we’ve all heard plenty.’

I looked at him through the drips of water coming off my hair, he sat speaking like a righteous woman. It angered and puzzled me. ‘I know a lot of people in Sydney and I am fond of them all, particularly Bella, she’s a wonderful—’.

‘Bella! Bella, oh dear that’s really refined; Bella.’

‘You know her?’ I said as I wiped some water away. ‘You don’t, so how dare you make fun of her. She’s a marvellous person, she was marvellous to me when I was in pris—’.

‘I’m sure she is; and I’ll bet she’s kept you well too, tatty old bow bedraggled whore, she must have worked hard.’

I tried to put the towel down, and not let the effect of being sick and my anger shake it too much, as I said ‘You leave Bella alone, you don’t even know her, so don’t you say such things. Besides, she’s got a new plain dress now, and she gave me the money to come here. Who the hell do you think you are? I’m not a kid any more.’

‘Oh aren’t you? We’ll see—’

‘No I’m not. Why did you write to me or tell me I could stay?’

‘Because I was curious that’s all, I wanted to see for myself if all that I’d heard—’.

‘What do you mean “All that you’ve heard”? Who’s said things?’

‘Oh never mind, that’s my business. I just know that Jean and I are, well I mean, we’re all just a bit—shall we say surprised?’

As he finished speaking I looked at him and really saw him for the first time. In some way it helped me to get my breath back. ‘You’re talking like some frustrated woman, you’re behaving like some stupid jealous woman who’s been festering—’.

I thought he was going to hit me as he stepped forward, took my shoulder, and started to shake me like a dog shakes a rag as he said ‘Don’t you ever call me a woman, ever, ever. It’s you who’s mixed with perverts and prostitutes, you disgust me. I’ve always been fond of you, and because you had nobody else, I looked after you. I felt a sense of responsibility towards you.’ He started to shake me more violently. ‘And now look at you! Look at you, a drunken little degenerate at eighteen. When I think of all I’ve done for you, you ungrateful—why you haven’t even got the guts to go into the army like a man.’

Even as my hand struck his face I regretted hitting him, but I hit him again and I would have a third time if he hadn’t grabbed my hand, twisting it as he muttered ‘You can get out, you little tramp, you can go right now. Eris was right, I didn’t believe her letters at first, but she—’.

He didn’t have time to finish as he tried to stop himself falling after my enraged shove. ‘So it was Eris was it? Well let me tell you something—you didn’t want me to go to Sydney in the first place, you were just like all the rest here. You were bloody marvellous at telling me what not to do, but none of you ever told me what I could do. But you were right about Eris, she was a bitch, she was a no-good bitch. She told me I could do something, she made plans with me, she built me up, and then she threw me out on the first night, and if it hadn’t been for Cliff—no I won’t tell you, you see, I just won’t tell you one single interesting thing I’ve learnt, you can go to blazes, I’m not going to tell you anything, I’m just going to go, now.’

I tinned, fiddling for my comb. John stood looking at me in the mirror as I began to comb out my sodden hair. He tried to smile as he said ‘Look, let’s not be too hasty, I know it was wrong, I shouldn’t have spoken to you when you were sick. I should have waited, I—’.

I glared back at him, surprised at the reflected anger in my own eyes. ‘There you go again. What the hell do you mean, “you should have waited”—for what? What right have you got to utter anyway? Go on, tell me?’

He half stepped forward. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, don’t let’s be too hasty, let’s have something to eat and talk it over?’

‘No I won’t, I won’t. You’re just like Melbourne always has been for me. You, you reduce me, yes that’s it, you treat me like a child. You always take what certainty I’ve got away from me and give me nothing back but your ideas. No, I hate you right now, I should never have come back.’

He tried to hold me, saying ‘Oh please don’t make me feel too bad.’

‘Bad!  I’m sick of bastards telling me not to make them “feel bad” after they’ve hurt me.’

‘Please, I’ve got people coming tonight, I’m giving you a party— please stay.’

For a minute I dickered with the thought but then the little voice said ‘No, roll out of this place like a steamroller.’ With a deep sense of loss, I picked up my grip, then looking at John I said ‘No Mr Goody, you can stick your sermons, the party and yourself.’

Once I had left the flat, I walked under the trees until I found a seat and sat feeling angry and near to tears. I watched a bird taking bits of nest-making things up into the fork of a tree. I couldn’t think what to do. I doubted whether I’d get a room in an hotel. Maybe I’d been silly to leave John’s. I was stupid to have come in the first place. ‘Oh well, you’re here, do something about it,’ said the little voice. ‘Well what can I do?’ I said back to it. ‘Even if I go straight back to the station I know I won’t get on a train tonight’ Then I watched the white tyres of a car go up the road and spent the next few minutes wondering why the white discs should look familiar. Suddenly I recalled the white discard the lifebelts that hung on the wedding cake pier near my grandmother’s. ‘Yes I thought, I would only have to walk up this black piece of tar, then turn off somewhere to the right and there I’d be underneath the peppercorn trees. But I don’t even know if she’s there. Still, it would be nice to see her again.’

As I looked at the passing cars I tried to picture myself eleven years back, a little gnome sitting breathless with excitement between two befeathered old women, in the high-backed seat of a horse-drawn gig. I tried to imagine it passing by the seat I sat on now. ‘Yes,’ said the little voice, ‘you could walk around the back of the hotel, pick a few dates off the palm trees and have a look at the doll’s house— that’s if Polly didn’t yell her head off.’  ‘How nice,’ I thought as I sat, ‘you’re over eighteen now, you don’t have to ask anyone if you can go back and sit in that happy house. ’Course you’d have to buy her a lot of flowers, she’s a lot older now so you’d better get her strong-smelling sweet ones.’ I’d sit in the wooden kitchen and talk to her. Then as she laid out the white china and the yellow-handled knives and forks, she’d say ‘It’ll be fine tonight and the sea will be warm, would you like to go for a walk to Luna Park?’ I’d idly spin a knife on the old ship’s table before saying, ‘Yes, and the sky is full of fine-weather clouds, but this time I’ll take you in a car, perhaps we could take Molly as well, then afterwards we’ll sit in a nice café with music and have ice creams. Do you know, I was thinking about the doll’s house. I think it would be rather nice if I went to the markets tomorrow, and bought you some beautiful singing birds. I’m sure they would be very happy in the house. Would you like some birds that sang nicely?’

I was looking at the combed streaks of silver hair up the back of her neck, when a bit of nest-making material fluttered down past my eyes. Then the bird twittered loudly above me in the tree. I sat looking at it working away. ‘No dear memory, I can’t go and see you now, you must stay back there. I don’t know what I’ll see, I’ve done too much, and it’s been too long, No, I’ll just have to go and find an hotel, any hotel, to stay in until I can get a train back.’ Just then I heard a voice saying ‘Five roast ducks,’ quite clearly. For a second I sat thinking ‘Am I going nuts? Five roast ducks ? Why of course, that was Manny’s voice, I could ring her.’ I sat for a while thinking how much I’d love to see the country. The little voice said ‘Oooooh careful, for God’s sake be careful, it’s right amongst “them”. Careful.’ Then I thought ‘Oh they can go to blazes, they might own all the joint but they’ve no legal control over me now I’m eighteen oh, to hell with them. I picked up my grip and headed towards a phone box.

As the once familiar stations slipped by, with their signs blurred through the stained windows of the carriage, I got into a small panic. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of Manny’s married name. I could remember everything about the whole broken down roadhouse, from the tall lilies that grew in the shade behind the green-trellised dining-and dancing-room, to the enormous vats of clotted cream on the woodburning kitchen stove. I could even remember the name of the malted milk mixer that I had used so often for free, as a reward for waiting on the tables in the holiday rush. Then, worse still, it dawned on me that I couldn’t remember her husband’s Christian name. I was sitting in a stew of uncertainty when I heard a dream-like voice calling out a familiar station name. As soon as it registered, I grabbed my grip and the box with the two presents in it, stepped out of the train, and down on to the yellow gravel. The late evening sunshine lit the picket fences and the climbing flowers that covered them, and the little ticket office, as I scrunched up the gravel towards it and the porter.

Once out of the station, with the sweet smell of the air and the sound of the birds twittering sleepily in the trees, as they settled for the night, I found myself beginning to wonder why I’d ever left. I stood lost in the freshness of the sounds, the smells of flowers, and the rhythm of country life which seemed to reach out from the distant hills and fold me into itself. After moments had passed I thought ‘Well I must get on my way, Manny and David must have heard the train come in. Oh thank heavens, David, how on earth could I forget?’ Picking up my grip I started across the fields towards the back entrance of the roadhouse, getting more excited with each step that I took towards the distant iron roof, and the pine-tree shadowed cowshed.

‘Well, well, well, here we all are again,’ said Manny. ‘We wondered so often how you were, didn’t we, David?’ Manny flushed a little as she toyed with a ring. ‘We sometimes thought you’d forgotten us.’ Then she really blushed.

‘No, I hadn’t Manny, truly I hadn’t. It’s just that I became so involved, I fell out of touch with so many people. I missed you, more than you’ll ever know,’ I replied, hoping that they did know, and hoping that I’d never be forced to explain to them, the countless hot nights in which I’d almost wept myself to sleep as I thought of them, and their calm life.

‘Well I don’t know,’ David said, ‘I’m not much on this really but I think you look a bit thin. Have some more apple pie and cream, Manny made it just for you.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, patting my stomach. ‘I’m nearly bursting already, truly, look. I think I’ll have to go and walk it down.’

‘Good, will you take Betty for a walk with you? She’d like that. Then when you come back you can tell us more about Sydney.’ David tapped his pipe bowl out on the tray and looked as if he really depended upon any story I could tell. Still looking at him, I got up from the table, kissed Manny, and called to the dog.

Betty ran across the empty dining-room, wagged her tail in excitement, and stood with one paw against the flywire doors waiting for me to open them. As soon as I did, she shot out, then paused somewhere in the shadows waiting for me to catch up. We both started up the hill and into the blue night. The trees in the shadows sighed and made whispering sounds as we walked up the path, which I couldn’t see, but remembered by feeling. Halfway up I paused to light a cigarette. The light of the match showed me the stump where once, years before, I’d found a large stupefied owl sitting, which I had, taken to Manny’s. We called him Fats Waller, and had just grown fond of our fat feathered friend, when some customers pinched him. As the match died down I found myself wondering where he was now. I sat on the top of the hill and looked at the pink glow of Melbourne’s lights, as they tinged the outlines of the hills, and the sky above them, from forty miles away. Then I looked at lights in the near distance, trying to recall who lived with them, and I thought of John and the row. A feeling of never having been away stole over me. Sydney, with all its urgency and its quicker life, seemed as much a dream, and as far away a city, as New York. I had to keep telling myself that I lived there.

Melbourne today had seemed no different than when I went away. The war seemed to be something going on in England, even people’s talk in the hotels suggested that. Here in the country, apart from a couple of war slogan banners flapping half-heartedly at the station, there was no feeling of being nearly in the war, as there was in Sydney. Betty came up and sat beside me. I said to her, as I patted her head, ‘If you knew the things I’ve seen and done since I last touched you and all the things I’m going to do—’. Before I could tell her, she was off after some soft sound. I stayed thinking of many things until I grew quite cold. Then, calling Betty, I headed down towards Manny’s lighted windows, feeling nicely tired, and only wanting a warm milk shake, and bed.

Just as I’d stumbled over a root and reached to open the door, it opened and Manny appeared motioning me to stay outside. Then, closing the door behind her, she said very softly, ‘Sssh, follow me.’ Intrigued, I did, around to the back and into the bungalow where I was staying.

‘Don’t put the light on,’ she whispered. ‘Jon, are you in any trouble?’

‘No,’ I replied.

Manny hesitated for a second, ‘You’re sure? I won’t mind in the least if you are, but tell me the truth.’

‘Of course I’m sure, I’m not in any bother’

She relaxed. ‘Oh good, I just wanted to know. You see, just after you left a policeman came for you. He’s in there now waiting to speak to you. Come on, I want to skim the cream off, and make the beds, so while I do, you go and talk to him.’ We walked into the back entrance and from there into the large wooden room, where three little calves stood eating while David churned the butter.

The policeman was sitting in the corner. As he saw me, he stood up, and said ‘Good evening, are you Jon Rose?’

‘Yes.’

Then he looked to the left of my head, before saying ‘Err, could I have a word with you?’

‘Of course, we’ll move—’.

Manny chipped, in: ‘Jon, take him into the small back room, it’s more comfortable.’

Once in the tobacco scented room, the policeman, after quite visibly twitching, said ‘Err I’ve been sent here to ask why you are avoiding the call-up.’

As I looked at him the little voice said ‘Careful, he’s prepared you know, they’ve got to be, it’s the uniform.’ Then I thought ‘That’s odd, surely they don’t go around asking everyone they meet—’.  I said ‘But I’m not.’

‘Why didn’t you report locally?’

‘But I haven’t been here for two and a half years or more, I only arrived a few hours ago from Sydney.’

‘Did you enroll there?’

‘No, I have an exemption. I’ve come here for a holiday before I join an entertainment unit.’

‘Could I see your papers?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I replied. Then I got up to get them. More by instinct than sight, I noticed him half move as if to grab me and make sure of not losing me. I went out and got my wallet, took the letter out of it, and saying ‘There It is,’ waited for him to read it.

He read it and kept on reading it for what seemed like two hours. When he finished be looked up at me, and with a curiously guilty expression in his eyes said ‘Yes, well I see, hmm yes, you see the point is, this document only applies to the State of New South Wales. I’m very much afraid that you’ll have to join up.’

I sat down filled with horror, shock and a roaring fury. Manny came in and said ‘But surely there must be some mistake, I mean he’s here on holiday, I’ve seen his papers.’

The policeman went scarlet. ‘I’m afraid that I have to inform you that you have to join up now, tonight.’

‘Tonight! but there’s something wrong, I have an exemption, it’s not fair, it’s wrong. I’m in a job, there’s a unit waiting. I’ve got a cat in Sydney, I share a flat—there’s been a dreadful mistake—’.

The policeman shook with a vaguely familiar embarrassment as he said ‘No with all—no, I’m afraid there’s been no mistake. You see you have to join one of the forces tonight, or spend the night at the station before joining tomorrow. There’s a car waiting now to take you to the Centre, you see it’s all been arranged. You can’t leave the state, you’ve got to go.’ As he turned a face full of pre-prepared agony towards me, I thought if you say ‘think of my wife and kids, I’ll sock you,’ but he just quietly said ‘I have to see to it—’.

Manny stood twisting her apron for quite some time before she said ‘Oh Jon, oh God Jon, I’m sorry. I only told them for fun after you phoned. You know what they are, they’re just a bunch of Bible-bashing bullies. But I was so glad that you were coming back.’ Manny sat down on a seat still screwing her apron as she said ‘I know they have a lot of sway, but I always thought of that as being silly—I’ve never thought, well I didn’t know they were so spiteful, I didn’t think they would have harmed anyone. I mean I know they hated you working here, but you’re grown up now. Oh dear I don’t know what to say.’

I stopped Manny twisting her apron. ‘Please don’t be so upset. I was always so happy here, and they would hate that. It’s all my fault, I should never have come back. I’ll tell you something, I think I knew those small bastards would try to do something like this. No, true, it  seems that everyone who made it his duty to look after me took it out on me. I’m a pathetic fool never to have checked those documents properly.’ Then I said to the backroom walls, and the three blank faces ‘Could I make a phone call?’ ‘Yes of course,’ they replied. I booked the call to Bella, then we all sat waiting in a room full of loud embarrassment. The only noise was made by the crickets from outside, and the sound of the air as David sucked his pipe. When at last, the phone rang, everyone jumped.

I picked up the phone. ‘Bella?’ Bella it’s—’ then I nearly broke down for a second as I heard her say ‘What’s wrong louse, are you drunk?’

‘No, I’ve got to join the forces I’ve—’.

‘You are drunk, where are you?’

‘I’m in the country—’.

‘But you were staying with John.’

‘I couldn’t, I can’t go into that now, but I came up here, I’m a fool. They’ve found out that the exemption is only good for New South Wales.’

There was a pause. ‘Jesus, God Allbloody Mighty, what a bunch of narrow-minded dirty stinking rats, the bas—’.

There was a sharp click followed by a woman’s voice: ‘This is a wartime emergency line, you are not allowed—’.

‘Oh go and swap your Tampax sister,’ Bella said. ‘Well can’t you come back straight away to Sydney?’

‘No I can’t. I’m in a small country town and there’s a policeman here now to escort me—’. Bella’s distant voice said ‘But I can’t believe it.’

For one lunatic second I almost said to the policeman ‘Will you say hello to prove it?’

‘It’s the most poxed up thing I’ve ever heard of, tell the bastards to—’.

There was another click before the tinny voice came back on saying ‘I shall be forced to disconnect this call if the—’.

‘Stuff yourself sister,’ said Bella.

‘Please don’t disconnect us,’ I pleaded with the voice, ‘my life’s being altered. Bella, Bella, you there?’

‘I’ll say I am.’

‘Bella, there’s nothing I can do, it’s all a nightmare, you see I was a fool, they control everything. They know I can’t get out of the state tonight.’

‘Look louse, don’t worry, I’ve just thought of something. Don’t worry, regardless of what they say or do. As soon as I hang up I’ll get on to everyone including Major O’Brian. We’ll quickly get you out, how’s that?’ The voice said again ‘Your time limit is one minute from now.’

‘Bella, I don’t know what to say, I’m very fond of you Bella, and if I don’t see you again I—’.

‘Oh you will, louse, you will. Keep your chin up darling, I’ll always be here, this is your home now, you’re part of the Cross, don’t ever forget that. I’ll look after the cats, they’ll be all right, and your room’s yours always, and I will look after the cats, I promise louse I do lovey, I—’.

The time pip went as I yelled ‘Good-bye Bella, good-bye—’. I stood fingering and looking at the black mouthpiece for some time, as I tried to collect my thoughts, and turn them into one that was at least workable. I tried desperately at the same time to keep the colours of Sydney, the lights of the Cross, and Bella in her new dress, in the picture screen of my mind as I put the phone down. Then turning, I said as brightly as I could, ‘Manny, which uniform do you think I’d look the nicest in?’

Table of Contents

- At the Cross

- You started off with the choice of a dainty dinner

- I tried to look uncaring as I replied Tin singing,

- ‘Could I see it?'

- A fat little man sat down beside me and said in a

- As I walked towards John’s flat I found myself thi