8

e n o w i said. wide. woops. there goes monday. open. cell. whats this made of. bumwool. in my. like a flick. a gen lick. peepers. orgen. molten. before. weaver. after. stardust. or before. nema. when theres no. no little people. and the fulness thereof. sitting in the. blank. it was over me. was in it. as if. them. in them. shiners. get wriggling. i said. no use hiding under there. blank. mother. come on chicken stop rucking under there and get up. time to get up. get up. there she is. theres my baby doll. youre getting too old for this. ooplah. now hurry on. have my hands awfully full today without you playing peekaboo. go on get in there. got to spend it. hear her behind me, lift it, whoop, crack, make it again. no going back now. not for ages. not till its time again. golden.

golden. and there was dad at table already with his cup and his plate half emptied and the newspaper held up by its own starch and two well placed fingers. he bent it down. good morning my girl. it was prickly it looked so smooth from a distance. mother comes bustling up from behind. has the milk come in the dumb waiter. yes my dear and the ice. his hand over his mouth. what was that, mite. what did you say.

i love milk.

my little movie star. we will have to introduce you to the neighbours. check it, dear. so much is contaminated.

i thought id go over to plunkett street later see if i can get something fresh for lunch.

fine. we are so well connected here.

you do like it. and its so modern. they have escapes in the well like ours only in manhattan.

yes it is a new home. i feel at home. it is very close to the office. too large but we will have more family.

it needs filling out.

there will be a big family.

we sold too much from the old place. it was hard to imagine that it would be this big, even after seeing it. it is very fine. the tradesmen have to enter wearing suits. did you know that. they get changed in the basement. mr jones told me and now i see them, calling at the door in baroda street wearing suits.

and you are not afraid.

of what, love.

perhaps these razor gangs. of what do they call it, the dirty half mile. i mean of the people. it has seen better days. such grand houses. they say it was built as an affront and as an example. i suppose that is all behind us now.

and we live in the tallest most modern building and there is music all the time and celebrities and i hear theres a little cinema under the roof, did you hear that, a real little private cinema, and trams direct into town and just look out the window. im sure i dont know what razor gangs want with people like us. thats newspapers for you. why the streets are full of children. dont you like it here, chick.

she is a vedette. she likes the attention. everybody up and down the stairs asking for my mite. ah but you take the lift like a little queen. we are discreet.

and he puts his knuckle under my chin and i look into his pale blue eyes and i see myself.

mother is back with the milk and toast that will be warm and soft in the middle. soon we will have to start looking for proper help.

and yet i like you in this apron. you look as you did when i first met you. you do not regret your old home at all. i mean the first one.

dont you miss one.

i am a hothouse plant. i was born in a bank.

that wasnt you it was your sister.

its true i had a soft landing. somebody had to keep his brains. i was being figurative.

cmon chick hurry up and get that down.

i am going to wear something. something. blue ribbon. if you call out in the bathroom there is echo. spit in the sink. a little more water. it is because we are so bare. one part water to two parts scrubbing is mothers way. cold. dad abhorred it. called it the dip but let her do it because he misunderstood and admired all her domestic contrivances. wash my knees. light bulbs. nice little shoes. lovely with straps. so long, dad in his hat and one of those fine tailored jackets rare these days. smell of what do you call it now, aftershave.

in the foyer coming out of the lift we were often caught up by mr george. well met mesdames. what a fortunate surprise. i was just stepping out for some of that hungarian coffee if it isnt too early. ill walk with you as far as the grocers. yes it is a charming frock. what have you been up to this morning. i have just read the most interesting news. you know a man in america has been given a license to make radio with pictures. like they do for the newspapers, i mean the other way around, to send pictures, but moving. truly. what do you think of that. imagine. you could see let alone hear the g.p.o. clock every morning. ha ha ha. and the miniature orchestra. ha. how miniature do you think they are. do you think they are miniature enough to see on the radio. ha ha. he swept off his hat and pushed the door open for us into the blinding light. her golden dress. the sun dazzled in the green trees across the street. i am the dame of acacias, the alley of camellias. i am mixed up. confused, no, what do you say, i am embarrassed. it is so beautiful here i forget myself. what were we discussing.

all manner of souls shuffling over the bright pavement. the tram clanged away down william street. i think. pigeons fluttering out of the coloured awnings of shops. ah yes, radio licenses. well it is a relief you will be able to buy them now free range. listen in on what you want, no need for licenses. thanks to that droll englishman and his comic opera. we are all in the good ship el publico nest pas. and the really fantastic thing is you can choose to listen to the channel with advertisements, which i find highly anglo saxon and gratifying. very informative and often amusing. well i leave you here and wish you a good day. do not stay out too long it is going to be frightfully hot. i think perhaps later i will take a plunge in the dom. see the ships. they come from all over the world now. they are laden with things for you my little one. have you ever seen them dock with all their tiny flags flying, the swollen rusty hulls and the ropes pulling them in. many are your own, you know. and the longest digital wharf in the world. if you dont mind you are making your mark, i say truly you are. do you remember when they made their first annual haul. it was not so long ago they went out packed with wheat and wool and came back from the factories full of wind up gramophones and edison records. cest un vrai conte. if only you were on garden island madame the day they sailed to fight the boers. in flammam iugulant pecudes. belle fin fait. pas des hommes. hats in the air, your upright faces on either side, such, how to say, bully. do you know how many changed their name to king on the first fleet. indeed it is the century of the new nations. you were there. well. at that time, i did not have the pleasure.

you dont believe it is really dangerous down this way do you mr george.

ah no, not for the likes of you. it is the reputation makes problems. they should have renamed the place twenty three years ago when they had the chance. in your herald it said, the old name, with its multitudinous vowels, has become synonymous with evil repute, and the modern resident craves for the final effacement of both with one pass of the sponge across the slate. but that is the past. thanks to god there is more than one newspaper, and that they did not call it palmersham! o woolloomoolethal no longer! o woolloomoolewd never more! when i give up the ghost, all the heavenly host i shall lead to your beautiful shore. on the woolloomoolittoral, fanned by the woolloomoolibertine breeze (bringing landlords who languish surcease from their anguish) well drink to the woolloomoolees; well be the woolloomoolucrative lodgers in woolloomooluxury vast, an eternitys stories shall tell of your glories to the infinite woolloomoolast! that was the bulletin. disgusting really, what you call funnies.

but we could not exactly say we were in woollamoola could we.

you wont get any letters addressed to queens cross. the post dont know it yet. better say you are in potts point.

but today, mr george, would you say it is safe. you understand my asking. five bullets in the back in darlinghurst. if you believe me the runners around here, they are just the showoffs.

i hope you arent speaking from too close an acquaintance, i mean for your own sake.

ah it is what one knows in general. it is what counts. i say the worst will blow over sooner or later.

we bought the vegetables at lo blancos so that we could get our hands on them first and make sure that they were good. crammed into those little shops with the windows under the awnings you could get flour from a barrel and sugar from a vat and bon ami with the chicken that said it hasnt scratched yet and old dutch cleanser with a scuttling woman with no face on the label and cod liver oil and castor oil and heenzo for coughs and colds and dr morses indian root pills and woods peppermint compound and treacle and stove polish and knife powder and oatmeal and kerosene. we did not go down to the water for fish that day. there were nets strung over the balconies of the town houses and men and women mending them in their shirtsleeves, calling out to one another.

where do they come from.

they have run away from mussolini.

when we get back to kingsclere owen has the doors open and is polishing the door handles. all of it is new then, the wide rooms, the soft smell of the place, the sound of our things dull on the new carpets, the days passing through the bay windows. that bygone parade of tilting furniture. it gets old, it settles. down we go. first thing i did on arrival was eat a watermelon. lovely insipid fruit. i spat the pips into dads rusty palm. he had been at the prow all morning with his hands on the railing. because he was nervous he put them in his pocket though we were standing at the edge of the wharf where the water lapped the trash around the pylons. the crowd and the gulls swarmed above. dad gripped me by the blouse. mother held him by his waist. the sun streamed down on us. we all sway in the flat. why is the ground so stiff i think i asked. dad said because you are still rocking with the boat. so am I. our things arrive. odd coming out of boxes into the light of the flat. dads old paintings, a chair put back together with copper wire, porcelain stuffed with newspapers. highland cattle. i want to move them myself, feel something familiar, but mother takes charge of handling the furniture. she arranges it as best she can though afterwards she will look at the room and say something is not right. so she lays things out reluctantly at first. dad fills the place faster than she does. he buys an upright piano and they play for his friends, sing paddlin madelin home and no, no nanette. mother makes friends with the girl opposite and they sit and chat in the olive chairs until dad rises in the elevator in the evening. on friday mother roasts a bird and people are invited to eat. afterwards miss fox plays the piano and dad sings. because i cant drink the liquor he gives me a shilling from his pocket. i ask him what has he done with the watermelon seeds. thats what they were, your watermelon seeds! why i threw them out the window. happily he slaps the piano lid and there is laughter round the living room. when my light goes out i count the unfamiliar cars that roll below the window. interruptions in the luminous bar beneath the door intrude upon the gloom and slip away. from your dust. there is music playing on another floor, a record going round, tinkle of sherry glasses. a stifled what. i press my face to the cold dark glass and it gives back my face and the city lights. soft toys are consoling, i can keep a cats tail in my crack till dawn.

and then i have been to the saturday matinee at the rialto or one of them. it would get so stinking warm. all those boys hollering in the dark, and if the reel snapped, why the uproar it was enough to burst your. then the stamping and all of them counting together, one big rising pack chanting and stamping till it got spliced and whoosh there was the pretty girl again wrapped up on the tracks. sucking acid drops after interval. some blew up paper bags and burst them and the worst threw bungers. we had buttered crumpets and strawberry ice cream soda for sixpence at bright lights near the strand arcade afterwards and mother would say i think perhaps we will not do that again.

dad was in the living room playing backgammon with mr george when we got home and miss fox was there and mrs rich and mr harwood, and mrs pickburn, perhaps, and langland and john busby. where have you been ma ptite.

mother suggests a boy threw rotten egg gas in the second half and it was a shame. it was after all someones son.

that sullivan is an enterprising devil mr harwood said, scratching the back of his neck and rolling his right foot to let a little air in.

osullivan, said langland. he lost that getting off the boat in london. probably hoped no one else picked it up too. he went to school at the marist brothers you know. was there with him. theyre a part of st marys, maam, just here in the loo. now where did he get a wild idea like that i dont know.

peter felix, said mr george. checkmate, no, pardon, i win. do you remember peter felix. i believe he fought here in the state heavyweight championship in o nine. he dressed himself head to toe in black. it was a sort of stocking i suppose. gave me a real fright. he terrified all the children. truly, you dont believe me. cozens spencer told me, you know cozens spencer who built the rushcutters bay studios, filmed jack johnson knock tommy burns teeth out, you remember that. well he told me crazy pat got the idea watching peter felix. i dont say. in any case that is what i heard. you dont have to believe me.

im sure i dont know where a wild idea like that comes from.

how are you liking your new home mrs rose.

i was just saying to peter this morning how lovely i find it. its a wonderful building, even quite beyond my expectations. we were so fortunate mr alberts friends happened to leave when they did, i really dont know a place in town id rather be.

ah but can you sing and dance like franks friends.

if you please, madame riche, an alto like mr roses is not to be found every day among the non professional classes. a command of feeling that, well, if you dont mind, for a banker.

mr george.

je marrete la. oh. he struck his forehead. i was almost going to leave it behind incognito. listen, ma puce, guess what, i have prepared a little surprise. do you want to know what it is. can you guess where i have hid it. mon grand drageoir. theres something in there with your name on it.

you are not to touch it now, chick.

but i want to see her face.

she has just had crumpets and strawberry ice cream.

what is it.

you know perfeclty well.

it is only the good old cacao like mum makes.

what did you say.

a little sweetened. they are only her what do you call them. she will get a new set in any case. all the better to see candy with.

may i ask how you found the apartment.

my wife. word of mouth. she has her associates here longer than i have.

yes of course, many of the tenants at the astor are country folk. perhaps youve met my ruby.

im sorry to say i havent, mrs rich. it was my brother in fact who put us on to it. hes known the alberts for some time.

how nice. im sure the character of host suits the alberts terribly well. i can hardly bring myself to call them landlords. have you been up to the little cinema yet. well, the next soiree you are in for a treat. and the company needless to say is divine. no stink bombs up there i can assure you.

they buy into the astor dont they. one takes shares. is it like that here. it seems a very efficient way of conducting the business. what do you say, mr george, its the air of the times. that was quite an end to the year, mr rose. have you noticed how the domestic interior is beginning to take cues from industry. no more fitted carpets. i could only wish they had shops on the lower floors as they do below the temperance and general insurance company apartments. fitzgerald had a fine idea but one has to know when to be an integralist, no mr rose. to my mind it would have been a happier use of the street level property in an area like this, any chance to open it up on rational principles. the townhouses appear mercifully on their way to falling down by their own volition. it was quite inspired of albert to buy up this place. he told me he first considered it when he read an article more than a decade ago called the profit possibilities of tall buildings, and now, well, it has to be seen to be believed, but there are more projects in the pipeline for this year than there have ever been. the prospect certainly looks clear. i mean with the price of primary products, and the foreign loans. now the obstacles to a central bank have toppled. the department stores are extending credit to the working class. it does look promising doesnt it, i mean, and it is stable.

as long as we stay on gold.

gold! with a money market this tight and the price of wool in this house itll be wealth riding on the

dad smiled at mr harwood who had been bending towards his ear, though mr harwood stopped short and said they havent been in the fires have they. no said dad and ran his hand over the top of his mouth and put his other on my shoulder and said shall we see if we can fit on the balcony, a breeze seems to be coming on and i think these ladies might enjoy the relief of our company a moment. you two have had quite an excursion for such a scorcher.

naturally i snuck into the hall and pushed up the lid of the hallstand and stuck my head in and poked around until i found the box of californian chocolates. is that right. i may be jumping ahead. they came in a lovely large cedar box. they were called starck chocolates and had the shape of umbrellas and cars and coins and cigarettes. the umbrellas had little plastic handles. mother who was coming back in from having laid on the kettle grabbed me by the back of the neck and beat me quite savagely with the first rod she could get her hand on. later the heat really broke up and there was an electrical storm. that was the year the biggest hailstone fell in potter, nebraska. there were electrical storms in those days. we used to put away all the silver and cover the mirrors with sheets. sometimes there was a fireball, which was really a luminous ball that appeared where the lightning was going to strike and travelled slowly in a horizontal line with a hissing noise and then exploded but there was no fireball that time.

for a while on the days mother went out alone i was minded by miss fox. look she would say faking to draw an egg from behind my ear. she cracked it into a bowl. from the bench where i sat i tip the milk jar until i am satisfied. what need all this cookery. the smell of sulphur and a piece of butter frothing in the pan can still recall to me those evenings. scent the persistent reminiscent. her omelettes were hell but you have to be bought up on something.

miss fox was attending chartres business college on liverpool street, opposite hyde park. we went walking there sometimes after lunch. we fed the birds. saw shapes in the clouds. the clouds have shapes. miss fox sees animals. i see clouds. animals. what motion. her devergondage. look she says, theres one just like your monkey. get a taste for higher things. but ice cream cone and cathedral must be kept separate. most times after eating she just laid on the bench a sheet of paper with a grid drawn on it that had irregular sides like the periodic table and in each square a letter or a punctuation mark. i watched the white arcs of her index fingers fly up and down on the tables sometimes her hands would stop and fall in her lap and she would frown for a moment at the pummelled sheet then begin again. her cheek quivered when the fingers hit home. your hands she told me are machines, and finer calibrated than any typewriter. all it takes is to train them up to the capacity of a typewriter. i dont have one so i practice on this.

how will you know.

know what, that im at capacity. i wont till i try on the machine. when it jams ill know ive exceeded it. wouldnt that be something, to type impossibly. im rather slow now and make mistakes. she takes to it.

what are you typing i ask. robinson crusoe she says.

wybalenna. she played the piano just as punctually. now i could follow a a b a but i couldnt wrangle anything yet from o t o f t h a c o u n t damn. excuse me. you wont repeat that to your mother. other times we went walking in the park but that isnt worth telling you about.