Angel Read Free Page A

Taylor Square and walked the rest of the way with Pappy’s directions memorised. Apparently they don’t eat very early at Kings Cross, because I didn’t have to be there until eight, so by the time I got off the bus it was quite dark. Then as I passed Vinnie’s Hospital it began to rain-just a drizzle, nothing that my frilly pink brolly couldn’t handle. When I reached that huge intersection I believe is the actual Kings Cross, seeing it on foot with the streets wet and the dazzle of all those neons and car lights rippling across the water was completely different from whizzing through it in a taxi. It’s beautiful.
    I don’t know how the shopkeepers avoid the Sydney Blue Laws, because they were still open on a Saturday evening! Though it was a bit disappointing when I realised that my route didn’t lie along the Darlinghurst Road shops-I had to walk down Victoria Street, in which The House is situated. That’s what Pappy calls it, “The House”, and I know she says it with capital letters. As if it is an institution. So I admit that I hiked past the terraced houses of Victoria Street eagerly.
    I love the rows upon rows of old Victorian terraced houses inner Sydney has-not kept up these days, alas. All the lovely cast-iron lace has been ripped off and replaced by sheets of fibro to turn the balconies into extra rooms, and the plastered walls are dingy. Even so, they’re very mysterious. The windows are blanked out by Manchester lace curtains and brown-paper blinds, like closed eyes. They’ve seen so much. Our house at Bronte is only twentytwo years old; Dad built it after the worst of the Depression, when his shop started making money. So nothing’s happened in it except us, and we are boring. Our biggest crisis is Willie’s saucerat least, that’s the only time the police have called on us.
    The House was a long way down Victoria Street, and as I walked I noticed that at this far end some of the terraced houses still had their cast-iron lace, were painted and well kept-up. Right at the end beyond Challis Avenue the street widened into a semicircular dead end. Apparently the Council had run out of tar, because the road was cobbled with little wooden blocks, and I noticed that within the semicircle no cars were parked. This gave the crescent of five terraced houses which filled it an air of not belonging to the present.
    They were all numbered 17-17a, b, c, d and e. The one in the middle, 17c, was The House. It had a fabulous front door of ruby glass etched in a pattern of lilies
    down to the clear glass underneath, the bevels glittering amber and purple from the light inside. It wasn’t locked, so I pushed it open.
    But the fairytale door led into a desert waste. A dingy hall painted dirty cream, a red cedar staircase leading upward, a couple of fly-dirt-speckled naked lightbulbs on long, twisted brown cords, awful old brown linoleum pitted from stiletto heels. From the skirting boards to a height of about four feet, every single bit of wall I could see was smothered in scribbles, aimless loops and whorls of many colours with the waxy look of crayon.
    “Hello!” I yelled.
    Pappy appeared from beyond the staircase, smiling a welcome. I think I stared quite rudely, she looked so different. Instead of that unflattering bright mauve uniform and hair-hiding cap, she wore a skin-tight tube of peacock blue satin embroidered in dragons, and it was split so far up her left leg that I could see the top of her stocking and a frilly lace suspender. Her hair cascaded down her back in a thick, straight, shining mass-why can’t I have hair like that? Mine is just as black, but it’s so curly that if I grew it long it’d stick out like a broom in an epileptic fit. So I hack mine really short with a pair of scissors.
    She led me through a door at the end of the passage beside the stairs and we emerged into another, much shorter hall which went sideways and seemed to end in the open air. It held only the one door, which