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all still be allies of the workers,’ he said, giving another short laugh, ‘if you still see yourself as a worker.’
    She didn’t know if she saw herself as a worker. ‘I am looking for a position. I am an unemployed worker, if I am what you would call a worker,’ she said with her own laugh, which was very much like his, she observed. It was their family dinner-table laugh. Those years in Europe had not, then, changed her laugh much from her childhood at Jasper’s Brush. Nor had Prague, or wherever, changed his.
    They reached the door to the suite.
    ‘Why didn’t you telephone?’ she asked as it occurred to her, pausing at the door and knocking.
    ‘Didn’t think a brother had to call and make appointments to see his big sister.’
    ‘I suppose not.’ She laughed, knocking on the door again. ‘Except to make sure we are in. Or receiving.’
    Ambrose, in his velvet gentleman’s smoking jacket and clubbish leather slippers, opened the door with a large welcoming smile, holding out his hand. ‘Surprise, this,’ he said, shaking Frederick’s hand. ‘Frederick, isn’t it?’
    ‘Fred – people call me Fred.’
    ‘Fred it is, then.’
    ‘I prefer Frederick,’ Edith said, guiding Frederick in. She closed the door behind her.
    Ambrose looked to her with a smile and then to Frederick. ‘I should think a chap could decide what he’s to be called.’
    ‘Not this chap,’ Edith said, playfully pushing her brother’s arm. How easily that came to her, the arm-pushing. ‘Big sisters decide what their brothers are to be called.’
    Ambrose gave Frederick a grin of alliance. That was a good sign – when men exchanged agreeable smiles.
    ‘Scotch all round,’ Ambrose said, looking to Frederick.
    ‘Scotch is fine by me.’
    ‘Make mine large – very large,’ Edith said, flopping onto the sofa. ‘Sit down, Frederick.’ She patted the space beside her on the sofa. ‘Make Frederick’s large too.’
    ‘Yes, large,’ Frederick said.
    ‘Mine too,’ Ambrose said, laughing.
    She was relieved that Frederick took a drink.
    ‘What makes it all the more satisfying as a drink is that we do not have to pay any duty on the Scotch,’ Ambrose said, making conversation. ‘Yet for reasons that elude reason, we always find we finish our ration of Scotch from the HC and end up purchasing a bottle from the hotel. Hence your first Scotch is first-class: Ballantine’s – Queen Vic’s drop and duty-free – and your second will be from the hotel: White Horse, which is good enough itself.’
    She found she kept staring at her brother, this only living kin, glad now of the presence of Ambrose, which gave her time to be silent. His intonation when they had met in the lobby had been broader, but it was now returning to the intonation of their family accent.
    ‘Soda, Frederick?’ Ambrose asked, waving the soda siphon above their glasses on the butler tray.
    ‘A fair bit – quite a while since I’ve drunk first-class Scotch.’
    The sound of the squirting of the soda filled the room like heavy rain, as Ambrose filled Frederick’s glass and then added her usual amount and his usual amount.
    ‘And what are you about in the national capital?’ Ambrose asked, serving them their drinks from the tray.
    She drank. She wished to be stilled by the alcohol.
    ‘I work for the Australian Communist Party, although we are about to change our name to the Communist Party of Australia.’
    ‘Why?’ she asked.
    Frederick looked at her. ‘I won’t go into it now.’
    There was a knock on the door and Ambrose ushered in the waiter with the tea, scones and bottle of Scotch.
    When he had left, Frederick took up where he had left off. ‘I recruit here in Canberra on the building sites, around the hostels and at the Snowy scheme – though the European migrants aren’t actually friendly to the Party. I have only two members there. I go as far out as Wagga – agricultural workers, shearers. Good unionists, but also not that keen on