After we sprinkled Stanley on his rose bush, Evelyn held down the fort at Sans Souci for another fifteen years. She had the pleasure of watching her grandchildren grow, and her youngest son do whatever it was he was doing. She never quite understood what I was up to, and until her dying day she still wondered when I’d get a proper job. (Still working on that one, Eve.) She made it to a new century, and in the end she went quietly. I recall as an infant walking down Botany Road and reaching up to hold my mother’s hand; on the other side my brother did the same. On a clear sunny day in 2003, Evelyn was resting peacefully, her two grandsons playing nearby. It had been eighty-one years since she’d breathed her first breath, and here she breathed her last with one hand clutching the hand of her eldest son and the other squeezing the hand of her youngest. I don’t think a Mascot girl can ask for more than that.
Later that day I took a walk down Botany Road past the old shop. It looked even smaller than I remembered it to be. It was now a warehouse outlet for women’s shoes. All that was left of the once bustling barber shop was a white cube full of shoeboxes. Feeling a little self-conscious after being caught staring by the bored sales attendant, I entered the store. Now doubly embarrassed, I pretended to look through assorted women’s shoes as I took furtive glances around the cube, searching for any hint of the past. For some reason I felt like a giant. I looked to the corner where the tobacconist booth had stood, then to the closet under the now non-existent staircase where Jack Lonsdale had hidden, to the wooden bench where I’d watched my grandfather die and failed to recall his dying words, to where Squizzy Taylor and a thousand other larrikins and ratbags had trod. A million stories shared. How could such a small space hold so many stories? I smiled at the attendant, who frowned at me. I put down the mock-leopardskin pump I’d been fondling and picked up a larger sized beige peep toe. I swear I could smell hair burning. I would have liked to linger but I was running out of shoes. I thanked the woman sitting among a sea of new soles and said a quiet goodbye to all the old souls.
As I walked the rest of Botany Road past unfamiliar shops it struck me how ordinary Mascot had become, until I realised it had always been ordinary. The little shop wasn’t a Tardis. The Tardis is my own head. I crossed the road and wandered into the bar of the Tennyson Hotel. I nodded towards the barman and said, ‘It’s my Wally Grout so get your Onkaparingas around a monkey’s arse, pour me an Amos and Andy and I’ll be Adrian Quist as a fairy dart in no Harry Lime.’*
He had no idea what I was talking about.
*Translation: It’s my shout so get your fingers around a glass, pour me a shandy and I’ll be pissed as a fart in no time.