sense to know that if I went to bed too early I’d wake with the birds. Jim and Bob were having a meeting, I could hear the buzz of voices through their door, a loudly neighing laugh which didn’t belong to either of them. But Toby’s ladder was down, so I jingled the bell he’s rigged up for visitors, and got an invitation to come on up.
There he was at the easel, three brushes clenched between his teeth, four in his right hand, the one in his left hand engaged in scrubbing the tiniest smidgin of paint on a dry surface. It looked like a wisp of vapour.
“You’re a southpaw,” I said, sitting on white corduroy.
“You finally noticed,” he grunted.
I supposed that the thing he was working on was an excellent piece of work, but I’m not equipped to judge. To me, it looked like a slag heap giving off steam in a thunderstorm, but it caught the eye—very dramatic, wonderful colours. “What is it?” I asked.
“A slag heap in a thunderstorm,” he said.
I was tickled! Harriet Purcell the art connoisseur strikes again! “Do slag heaps smoke?” I asked.
“This one does.” He finished his wisp, carried his brushes to the old white enamel sink and washed them thoroughly in eucalyptus soap, then dried them and polished the sink with Bon Ami. “At a loose end?” he asked, putting the kettle on.
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Can’t you read a book?”
“I often do,” I said a little tartly—oh, he could rub one up the wrong way!—”but I’m working in Casualty now, so when I get off duty I’m in no fit condition to read a book. What a rude bastard you are!”
He turned to grin at me, eyebrows wriggling—so attractive! “You talk as if you read books,” he said, folding a laboratory filter paper, inserting it into a glass laboratory funnel, and spooning powdery coffee into it. I was fascinated, not having seen him making coffee before. The screen was shoved out of the way for a change—it must have got a mark on it.
The coffee was brilliant, but I thought I’d stick to my new electric percolator. Easier, and I’m not all that fussy. Naturally he’d be fussy, it’s in his soul.
“What do you read?” he asked, sitting down and throwing one leg over the arm of his chair.
I told him everything from Gone With The Wind to Lord Jim to Crime and Punishment, after which he said that he confined his own reading to tabloid newspapers and books on how to paint in oils. He suffered, I discovered, a huge inferiority complex about his lack of formal education, but he was too prickly about it for me to attempt any repair measures.
Artists traditionally dressed like hobos, I had thought, but he dresses very well. The slag heap in a thunderstorm had received his attentions in clothes the Kingston Trio wouldn’t have been ashamed to perform in—crew-neck mohair sweater, the beautifully ironed collar of his shirt folded down over it, a pair of trousers creased sharp as a knife, and highly polished black leather shoes. Not a skerrick of paint on himself, and when he’d leaned over me to put my mug down I couldn’t smell a trace of anything except some expensive piney-herby soap. Obviously tightening nuts in a factory paid extremely well. Knowing him a little bit by now, I thought that his nuts would be perfect, neither too loose nor too tight. When I said that to him, he laughed until the tears ran down his face, but he wouldn’t share the joke with me.
“Have you met Harold yet?” he asked later.
“You’re the second person tonight to put that question to me,” I said. “No, and I haven’t met Klaus either, but no one asks if I’ve met him. What’s so important about Harold?”
He shrugged, didn’t bother to answer. “Pappy, eh?”
“She looks terrible.”
“I know. Some bastard got a bit too enthusiastic.”
“Does that happen often?”
He said no, apparently oblivious to the hard stare I was giving him. His face and eyes looked concerned but not anguished. What a good actor he was! And how much it must hurt him to have to endure that kind of rejection. I wanted to offer him comfort, but that tongue of mine has developed a habit lately of getting too tied up to speak, so I said nothing.
Then we talked about his life in the bush following his dad around, of this station and that station out where the Mitchell grass stretches to infinity “like a silver-gold ocean”, he said. I could see it, though I never have. Why don’t we Aussies know our own country? Why do we all have this urge to go to England instead? Here I am in this house stuffed with extraordinary people, and I feel like a gnat, a worm. I don’t know anything! How can I ever grow tall enough to look any of them in the eye as equals?
My goodness, I was in a self-abnegatory frame of mind last night when I wrote the above! It’s Toby, he has that effect on me. I would really like to go to bed with him! What’s the matter with Pappy, that she can’t see what’s right under her nose?
Well, I did it at last. I’ve had the family to dinner in my new flat. I invited Merle too, but she didn’t come. She rang me in January while I was still in Chests, and I had to have a junior tell her that I couldn’t come to the phone, that staff are not allowed to receive private calls. Apparently Merle took it as a personal rebuff, because whenever I’ve phoned her at home since then, her mother says she’s out. The trouble is that she’s a hairdresser, and they seem to spend half their lives on the phone making personal calls. At Ryde the policy wasn’t so strict, but Queens isn’t the same kind of institution. Anyway.
I’d wanted to have Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz and Flo to dinner as well, but that lady just grinned and said she’d come down later to say hello.
It wasn’t a huge success, though on the surface it was smooth enough. We had to wedge up at the table, but I’d grabbed extra chairs from the front ground floor flat, which is vacant again. Two women and a man who said they were siblings had rented it, but I tell you, men are not fussy when it comes to getting rid of their dirty water. The prettier of the two “sisters” made Chris Hamilton look like Ava Gardner, and both of them stank of stale, horribly cheap scent over the top of their B.O. The “brother” just had B.O. They were doing a roaring trade until Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz rang the Vice Squad and the paddy wagon arrived. There’s an American aircraft carrier in port, and when I pushed the front door open on Thursday night, I saw sailors from arsehole to breakfast—sitting on the stairs, leaning against Flo’s scribbles in the hall, spilling into Pappy’s hall and trooping by the dozen to the upstairs toilet, which was flushed so often that it took to groaning and gurgling. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was not amused. The “brother” and his “sisters” were hauled off to the pokey in the paddy wagon, and the sailors scattered far and wide at the sight of the Boys in Blue behind Norm and his sergeant, a hugely beefy bloke named Merv. Good old Norm and Merv, stars of the Kings Cross Vice Squad!
It really hurt that I didn’t dare tell this story to the family.
As I haven’t met Klaus yet, let alone started to learn to cook, I cheated and imported all these delicious foods from my favourite delicatessen. But they didn’t like any of it, from the macaroni salad to the dolmades and the shaved ham. I’d bought this divine orange liquer gateau for pudding, skinny layers of cake separated by thick layers of aromatic butter cream. They just picked at it. Oh, well. I daresay steak-and-chips followed by Spotted Dick and custard or ice-cream with choccy syrup are what they dream of when their tummies rumble in the middle of the night.
They