Monica Bloom Read Free Page B

a clean tracksuit to eat,’ clearly incredulous that anyone might expect otherwise. My mother was into roasting a lot by that time, and the peak of my father’s hospitality on those nights was the point when he would offer the guest first pick of the carcass. Needless to say, Andy and I didn’t get into the habit of introducing many girls to our parents. ‘We should make girls sign a waiver,’ he said to me once. ‘A waiver that says they acknowledge we aren’t responsible for the night’s activities and aren’t to be judged for any of it.’ He was a lawyer by then.
    In 1980, our family was very different to that. My mother would have spent most of the day putting the meal together, and she had new candles on the table, and fresh flowers.
    â€˜Long pants,’ she said rather too fiercely to Andy when he came out of his room wearing shorts. ‘Long pants.’ She herded him back towards his door. ‘These people are from head office. These people are from Melbourne.’ Andshe emphasised Melbourne as if that should have been all he needed to know.
    â€˜Melbourne people vomit if they see knees,’ I told him, and he said, ‘Why is that kind of information never part of the briefing?’
    The men from Melbourne arrived with my father and gave up their jackets and ties for beers. My mother brought a bowl of nuts and a bowl of cubed cheese from the kitchen and took the three of them out to the verandah, where she said it would be cooler, while she finished preparing the meal. ‘I have some crystallised ginger as well if anyone would like it?’ she said, but there were no takers.
    Andy and I set the table and had a difference of opinion about the order of the cutlery. My mother stuck her head around the door and hissed some instructions and told Andy he should ask our guests if they would like wine with their meal. He slouched off to do it, shaking his head. The food was good on those nights, and sometimes we scored a half glass of wine ourselves, but the price to be paid was too great as far as we were concerned. Too much tension. Too much fuss going on.
    He came back and reported that they wanted wine but no ice, and my mother said, ‘You didn’t really ask them if they wanted ice with wine, did you?’
    Andy glared at her and seethed most of the way through the prawn cocktail. My parents put ice in their wine all the time when it was just the four of us, but we pretended they didn’t on nights when we were entertaining.
    That night my father drank more than he normally would, or maybe it was the lack of the usual diluting effect of the ice that meant more wine ended up in his glass. The men from Melbourne, though, put their hands over their glasses when they were offered more. Andy had been sent to the kitchen to get the cask from the fridge and only my father ended up taking some. ‘Just a half,’ he said, and Andy knew that meant three quarters. My father later went to the fridge himself at least a couple of times.
    The men from Melbourne were bean counters, he told me a few days after their visit. It was the first time I’d heard the expression and I wondered what business a mining company would have with beans. My father was an engineer, and accountants had become a much bigger part of his life since he had become state manager two years and four months before. I’m not sure that he liked the job much, ever.
    We ate our prawn cocktails, and Andy and I tried to look practised at it, since that’s what these people from Melbourne would surely expect. I watched them closely, how they handled their forks, where they put their hands when they weren’t eating. We had always been brought up not to lean on the table.
    â€˜Carol makes her own thousand-island dressing,’ my father said proudly. My mother’s prawn-cocktail recipe was special, and its features worth bringing into conversation. ‘She’d never