Angel Read Free

him to the Savoy to see Gervaise-Zola, David explained as we came out. I felt like a wrung-out dishrag, which isn’t a bad comparison, actually. It all took place in a Victorian version of a giant laundry. The heroine was so young and pretty, but there wasn’t a man worth looking at within cooee-they were fat and bald. I think David might end up bald, his hair isn’t as thick as it was when I met him.
    David insisted on taking a taxi home, though I would far rather have walked briskly down to the Quay and grabbed the bus. He always lets the taxi go outside our place, then escorts me in up the side passage, where, in the dark, he puts a hand on either side of my waist and squishes my lip with three kisses so chaste that the Pope wouldn’t think it sinful to bestow them. After which he watches to see I’m safely in the back door, then walks the four blocks to his own house. He lives with his widowed mother, though he’s bought a roomy bungalow at Coogee Beach which he rents out to a family of New Australians from Holland-very clean, the Dutch, he told me. Oh, is there any blood in David’s veins? Never once has he put a finger, let alone a hand, on my breasts. What do I have them for?
    My big Bros were inside, making a cup of tea and killing themselves laughing at what had gone on in the side passage.
    Tonight’s wish: That I manage to save fifteen quid a week at this new job and save enough by the beginning of 1961 to take that two-year working holiday to England. Then I’ll lose David, who can’t possibly leave his bloody mice in case one grows a bloody lump.
    Thursday, January 7th, 1960 My curiosity about Kings Cross is going to be gratified on Saturday, when I am to have dinner at Pappy’s place. However, I shan’t tell Mum and Dad exactly whereabouts Pappy lives. I’ll just say it’s on the fringe of Paddington. Tonight’s wish: That Kings Cross isn’t a let-down.

Friday
January 8th, 1960
    Last night we had a bit of a crisis with Willie. It’s typical of Mum that she insisted on rescuing this baby cockatoo
    off the Mudgee road and rearing it. Willie was so scrawny and miserable that Mum started him off on a dropper of warm milk laced with the threestar hospital brandy we keep for Granny’s funny little turns. Then, because his beak wasn’t hard enough yet to crack seed, she switched to porridge laced with threestar hospital brandy. So Willie grew up into this gorgeous, fat white bird with a yellow comb and a daggy breast caked with dried porridge. Mum has always given him his porridgeand-brandy in the last of the Bunnyware saucers I had when I was a toddler. But yesterday she broke the Bunnyware saucer, so she put his dinner in a bilious green saucer instead. Willie took one look, flipped his uneaten dinner upside down and went bonkersscreeched high C
    without letting up until every dog in Bronte was howling and Dad had a visit from the Boys in Blue, who arrived in a paddy wagon.
    I daresay it’s all those years of reading whodunits sharpened my deductive powers, because, after a hideous night of a screeching parrot and a thousand howling dogs, I realised two facts. One, that parrots are intelligent enough to discern a saucer with cute little bunnies running around its rim from a saucer of bilious green. Two, that Willie is an alcoholic. When he saw the wrong saucer, he concluded that his porridge-andbrandy had been withdrawn, and went into withdrawal himself-hence the racket.
    Peace was finally restored to Bronte when I got home from work this afternoon. I’d grabbed a taxi at
    lunchtime and dashed into the city to buy a new Bunnyware saucer. Had to buy the cup as well-two pounds ten! But Gavin and Peter are good scouts, even if they are my big brothers. They each donated a third of the two-and-a-half quid, so I’m not much out of pocket. Silly, isn’t it? But Mum so loves that dippy bird.

Saturday
January 9th, 1960
    Kings Cross is certainly not a let-down. I got off the bus at the stop before