George Bedser’s house sits in a small hollow at the end of the street. It is made from plain weatherboard, painted white, and has a small rose garden which is struggling to survive the summer. The front door is open, and inside, the voices of the first guests can be heard. The colour has left the sky now and the white paint of the house has turned to grey and dark shadows. But the lights of all the front rooms are turned on, and the porch light and the party lights across the front hang in the air like fake fruit.
As Vic, Rita and Michael enter the front gate and walk up the newly concreted pathway that leads to the front door of the house, they see George Bedser, in his starched white shirt, waiting for them on the porch.
He is a small man, five feet four, his hair is thinning and grey and he has a cautious smile. He is a shipbuilder from Liverpool, a welder who spent twenty-three years in the shipyards of the city welding giant sheets of iron to the frames of trawlers, tankers, ferries and ocean liners. The famous, the forgotten, the numerous coal boats of the city, it was all the same. He was born in the city, married in the city, and spent all his life there. His family, his brothers and sisters, and all their families are still there. And he would be too. But his wife suddenly left him one day for a spiv. No warning, no tell-tale signs. Suddenly she was gone, with a drifter in a slick suit who sold something or other door to door. He heard things from time to time, but never saw her again. Nor did he want to. What was the point? She wasn’t his Vera any more. She was someone else. And George Bedser loved his Vera.
Patsy was just fourteen then, now she is twenty-one. They spent two more years in Liverpool while they were waiting for permission to emigrate. Finally, one drizzling June day the two of them boarded the Otranto and left England for good. He had never sailed before but he was unconcerned by the journey. He knew a good ship.
Tonight his daughter is getting engaged, and, in the absence of his family, George Bedser has invited the street. And why not? He and his daughter have lived in the street for five years now, longer than most. He found work easily on the docks when he arrived, but he is a quiet man, one who has always stuck to his family and is unused to making friends, and so he made none at the docks. If he has a sense of family now, of community, it is the community of the street he has come to live in. Even if he never indulges in long conversations with his neighbours, even if he never much hangs about at the local shops passing time, he has still come to regard the street, and the people in it, as his.
As Vic, Rita and Michael step onto Bedser’s small front porch, shake his hand and meet the shy, cautious smile in his eyes, they compliment him on the look of the house; on the coloured lights, the ribbons on the door, and the white, yellow and red roses along the front fence. He nods, raises his eyebrows and is about to respond, to make some comment about the dry soil, when his daughter joins them and he is distracted. His eyes become bright, as if bright with wine, even though he has had nothing to drink.
Patsy wears a bright, swaying summer dress; her hair, cut with a fringe and held in place by a velvet band, is auburn; her eyes are green. Her skin has the translucence of a young woman and, immediately, Rita admires that skin and remembers what it was to be twenty-one. Patsy welcomes the three guests, shakes their hands, winks at Michael, then turns to her father, grinning, and Rita can see there’s cheek in that grin. But it’s George Bedser that Rita is really watching, for he hasn’t taken his eyes off his daughter since she stepped onto the porch.
There he is, George Bedser, his eyes on his daughter, his eyes only for his daughter, and she’s looking away. He can’t take his eyes off her because he probably never thought he’d be able to get her this far by himself. But he has. I wonder if Vic sees the look in the old man’s eyes too, but he’s only looking at her. She’s talking to me, she’s talking to Vic, she’s talking to Michael and I wish she’d turn just once and catch the look in her father’s eyes.
Patsy is being called from the hallway of the house. She hears her name but does not respond. Patsy is puzzled, not so much by the sound of her name as the voice that is calling to her. She looks out across the yard, to the darkness beyond the suburb, and for that moment the party smile leaves her face. Her eyes are suddenly sad and Michael watches the line of those eyes, calculating the direction she’s looking in, somewhere out beyond the mills, beyond the station. But her party eyes return as quickly as they went, she finally responds to the call and a young man steps out onto the porch.
‘There you are.’
This is Allan, the young man who is going to marry Patsy. On hearing his voice George Bedser takes his eyes off his daughter and scrutinises the young man with a slight smile in his eyes. Patsy’s young man is twenty-one, his hair is a little long and brushed back in the modern style. But he’s no lair. Bedser nods quietly to himself. He’s a good lad. A local lad. Quiet. Some might even call him gormless. In fact, some of the locals do. But he’s just quiet. Besides, that doesn’t bother George Bedser. He’s seen the flashy types, the loud ones, come and go, at work, at war, and they’re usually the first to disappear when they’re needed. More than likely, it’s the gormless ones who get the job done when the job needs doing. They have their time, quietly meet their moment, without too much fuss, then go back to being the gormless types who sit in corners at parties and dances, content to watch. No, Bedser doesn’t mind the young lad at all, though he’s never said as much.
It is then that George Bedser gestures to the inside of the house, talking of pies, rolls, biscuits, beer and sparkling wines. As they all step inside a slow song begins on the record player, and in the far part of the lounge room a couple is already dancing.
George Bedser is summoned to the front door again the moment they’re inside. And for the next ten minutes the street, family by family, enters George Bedser’s house and the party begins.