‘I think I will ask little Lisa to come to luncheon here tomorrow after we finish at the shop,’ said Magda to Stefan. ‘What do you think? Would you enjoy meeting a little Australian schoolgirl? A bluestocking who has neither style nor beauty but who is charming, so well brought up, and so to say adorable in her naiveté.’
‘What are you up to, my Magda?’ asked her husband. ‘What are you plotting in your Balkan brain? When have you developed this taste for little schoolgirls? Especially when you tell me she is not pretty, eh?’
‘I did not say she is not pretty—though as a matter of fact she is not—I said she is not beautiful. You know perfectly well the difference. I would not like her more if she were pretty, but in fact she will be pretty: for I shall make her so. Anyone young can be pretty, with a little contrivance if needs be, and anyone young should be. It is otherwise a disaster, to be young, or at least a waste of time.’
‘Ah, so you are going to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, are you?’ And Stefan laughed heartily.
‘You may laugh—go on, laugh like a drain—’ Stefan laughed the more ‘—but I cannot see what is so funny. I do a good deed for once in my life, I cannot see the humour.’
‘No, if you could, it would cease to be,’ said Stefan, chuckling. ‘Well, Magda my beauty, have your little schoolgirl here if they who have so well brought her up will permit such a thing—which I doubt—and, I assure you, you will have my full support. You know I am in favour of any enterprise which has beauty as its end.’
‘I did not say I would make her beautiful,’ said Magda. ‘I said pretty. Please do not make me to be more of a fool than I am.’
‘You are not at all a fool,’ said Stefan. ‘I will remember that you said pretty. Perhaps I would rather meet her after you have made her pretty, however.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Magda. ‘And supposing she can come, will you go up to the good delicatessen at Cremorne Junction tomorrow morning and buy some nice things for us to eat? Get some rye bread, also some black, some cream cheese if it is very fresh, some good ham—’
Stefan cut her off. ‘I can do the shopping,’ he said, ‘without a list, my angel. Oh but!’ and he suddenly struck his head with one large hand. ‘We are forgetting! Rudi comes tomorrow!’
‘Ah yes,’ said Magda. ‘But we do not know when. He will quite possibly come much later—who can ever say, with Rudi? It does not matter in any case. What is one Hungarian the more or less? We will eat, we will talk. If Rudi is abominable, Lisa and I will go out for a walk. Everything will manage itself.’
Rudi was a comparatively recent—a post-revolution—emigrant, the cousin of the wife of one of Stefan’s former clients: Stefan being an accountant with a small but thriving practice among the migrant colony of Sydney. The former client—Rudi’s cousin-in-law—having moved to Melbourne a few years before, Rudi had tried life in that capital in the first instance, but having soon concluded that Sydney must be more to his taste was now about to launch himself on its brilliant blue expanses.
‘I have had Melbourne,’ he had announced at the end of three months in that place, ‘up to here,’ indicating as he did so a point roughly twelve inches above his head.
Magda and Stefan had met him several times during his reconnaissance trip to Sydney: now that he had come lock, stock and barrel to live there they had undertaken to introduce him to the crowd, help him find a flat, and generally give any necessary moral support. It did not appear that this latter would be much required. The matter of his employment had already been settled, at least for the time being: he was to work for the cousin-in-law’s former partner in the latter’s import-export business.
‘The work will be dull,’ said the former partner, ‘and poorly paid, but there is a wonderful view of Darling Harbour from the window of my office, and I give you leave to come and look at it as often as you please, up to a maximum of five minutes per diem.’
‘Could anyone, I least of all, resist so handsome an offer?’ said Rudi. ‘Expect me on the first day of the New Year.’
‘Better make that the second,’ said his employer-to-be. ‘The first is here a public holiday, and I would be breaking the law if I had you to work that day.’
‘Unless you paid me time and a half,’ said Rudi.
‘Just so,’ said his cicerone. ‘So I will see you on the second, at nine a.m. sharp.’