Georgia Disposes

6

Georgia Disposes

    I dunno if I’m gonna be able to hack sharing this weekender—holiday house, cottage, whatever—with Anna for the rest of the so-called summer, ’cos she’s standing in her studio bawling. Not out loud, no, the tears are just slipping down her cheeks. And she goes: “Sorry.” Sniffle.

    “What’s the matter, Anna?”

    “Nothing. Sorry.” Sniffle.

    For Pete’s sake! “Look, it’s not nothing, or ya wouldn’t be standing in the middle of ya studio bawling! Now what is it?”

    So she goes: “My boards and stuff are still up at the fluh-flat.” Gulp, sniffle.

    And? “Yeah?”

    “I duh-don’t know how to guh-get them down here!” Gulp. “Sorry. I know it’s stupid…”

    It’s that, all right! There must be a million ways to get the fucking things down—

    “This isn’t actually Outer Mongolia. Look, if it’s that hard, ask John.”

    “He’s done tuh-too much for me already,” she sniffles.

    “You mean for us, I think, Anna! Well, yeah, I’m with you on that one. Okay, plan B. Who do we know that drives? Don’t suggest Luke Beaumont, don’t think he’s ever driven on the left. Well, with his history, how’d he ever of afforded a car in the first place?”

    “No,” she goes, blowing her nose and looking at me hopefully. How old is the woman? Oh, well, she can’t help it, it’s her nature, plus and forty-odd years of being crushed by fucking Aunty Julia, don’t let’s forget that small item! Then she takes up with that prick Bruce God’s Gift to Educationalism (not a word, but he’s the type that thinks it is, see?) and gets more crushing! Well, there is a fair bit of it about, yeah.

    “Graham Howell from the servo’d do it for ya like a shot, Anna. Not the taxi—the tow truck.”

    “He wouldn’t let me pay him what the job was worth, I’m absolutely sure, Georgia! And it’s an awfully long trip, I mean it’d be a round trip. And—and it is important, but if he would let me pay him, I think it’d be too expensive. Most of my money’s in that term deposit account that Philip made me open.”

    I know that, but I go: “Three cheers for Philip,” anyway. “Lemme think. That useless Terence Haworth is still on leave: get him over with his dad’s station-waggon—” The look of horror on her face is enough, she doesn’t have to gasp “I couldn’t possibly ask him!” but she does anyway.

    “I could ask him.”

    She’s gone red as a beet. “No! Um, I think if you did that he might, um, read more into it than you, um, meant.”

    “He is pretty dishy, ya know. No, okay, I don’t wanna upset John, though why he imagines I’m still a kid that can’t handle types like Terence with both hands tied behind me, don’t ask me! Well, I could ask Max Lattimore, dare say he might not be as useless as he looks. –Go on, say it: then he’d read something into it!”

    “Men are like that,” she goes in a strangled voice.

    Yes, well, so they oughta be! And it’s not that I’m not all for Women’s Lib, but shit, those boards weigh a tonne, and as a matter of fact the blokes that delivered them just dumped them behind the lifts, down on the ground floor. Dunno if John actually knows they’re there, ’cos he’s never mentioned them. Anyway, after him and Rosie had both gone back to the cottage Rupy showed them to me and said what did I think. I thought we better flaming leave them there, so we did.

    Actually the sensible thing would be to get a firm of reliable movers to do it: they must have them in London. Like, I guess Grace Removals are just an Aussie firm, but something similar. Only that’d cost megabucks and I’m almost flat broke, I can’t help her out. I’ve had a sort of audition, well, more of a camera test, and I’ve signed contracts with Henny Penny Productions for the final series of The Captain’s Daughter, but would Brian Hendricks wear an advance on my pay? Well, no, given that there’s nothing to say I might not be run over by a truck, talking of trucks, before he can get his money’s worth out of me. Rosie’d give us the money like a shot, but that’s the problem: she’d give it, she wouldn’t hear of loaning it, and she’s feeding us every other meal as it is, we can’t possibly ask her. And the same goes for John, in spades. Which reminds me—

    “Hey, Anna, John said we shouldn’t give Roger milk, cos he’s not a puppy and it tends to make adult dogs up-chuck. Or gives them the runs.”

    “Ooh, heck!”

    Puts it well. Roger’s my dog. Okay, he’s a corgi, and yeah, ole Doris Winslow from the flats did get him for me and so what, I like corgis! “Yeah. Well, we couldn’t know. Mum’d never let us have pets.”

    “No, nor would Mum.” –Gee, couldn’t of guessed that, Anna.

     “Um… Look, the Hell with it, I’m gonna give Max a bell. If he turns me down, it’ll show he’s not interested, won’t it, so at least I’ll know!”

    “Have you got his number, though?”

    “Well, yeah: he got very friendly on the way home from the festival—not that friendly, ya nana! And insisted on giving me all his contact numbers. Think he decided to approve of me once it dawned that I liked the opera and I loathed that putrid Molière as much as he did!”

    “Yes, it was terrible,” she says dazedly. “They didn’t seem to understand that Molière’s meant to be really funny!”

    “You said it!” So I ring Max on his mobile, slightly preferable to trying Sir Bernard and Lady Haworth’s number, ’cos funnily enough I don’t wanna speak to either of them, they always say “May I ask who’s calling?” I kid you not. Gee, he’s answering.

    “Hi, Max, it’s Georgia.” Gee, real pleased to hear from me, in fact, I’d say real thrilled to hear from me. Well, he’s into the second day back at the gracious Haworth residence, possibly it’s not all me. “Yeah good, thanks. Listen, Anna and me are in a bit of a bind, ’cos her heavy boards that she needs for her painting are up in town and we can’t really afford to hire a carrier—” Cripes, that struck a chord, he’s off and running. Absolutely no problem, Engineer Grogan’s brother drives a van, they live in Portsmouth, he’ll borrow it. That sounds okay, great! He’s looking forward to seeing me again? Well, yeah, your tone of voice has actually indicated that, Max. Added to which I’m speaking real nayce, I’ve decided to tone down the Australian with types like him. Well, when in Rome. And as I know I’m doing it in a spirit of pure hypocrisy, can it count?

    So I report to Anna. She looks at me dazedly.

    “Apparently blokes are like that on this side of the world, too. Like, thrilled to do the big strong hero bit, show the helpless little woman how helpless she is? –Yeah,” I go as she bites her lip and nods. “It’s meaningless, it’s mere biology plus millennia of selective breeding so as the morons can get out there and defend the cave. However!”

    “I’ve always thought that!” she goes with a sudden giggle, phew! At least she’s cheered up!

    “Yeah? Well, don’t let on to any of them, I don’t think there’s a bloke alive that could handle one of us actually saying it, Anna. Well, not without damning us as hopeless Leses.”

    “No, isn’t it silly?” she agrees placidly. “Thank you very much, Georgia!”

    “That’s okay. You up for a foray to Tom Hopgood’s?”

    She is, so we go. Roger comes on his lead, I was worrying about tiring out his little legs dragging him up Church Lane, because it’s so steep, but good ole John explained very clearly that Roger is a young dog, he needs the exercise, unlike Doris’s elderly Buster—who doesn’t get enough, elderly though he is—and in fact, short though Roger is, he could probably go for considerably longer than I could. And if I jog, take him with me. Okay, I’m doing it. He doesn’t seem to be suffering yet. In fact he’s been real bright and frisky. So I guess John was right all along. Funny, that!

    He’s not allowed to come inside the butcher’s shop, but he knows what it is, he’s terribly excited as we tie him firmly to the bike rack outside. It hasn’t got any bikes in it, in fact I’ve never seen any bikes in it, and the only reason Tom got permission to put it there was he got a very special lot of pork liver in for Ma Granville Thinnes in person the year she got onto the Parish Council. One of the worst of the retirees—that’s it.

    Tom’s got some nice beef kidney today, well, bully for him. No, we can’t make steak and kidney pudding, Tom, or steak and kidney pie! (Whaddareya, mate? Jesus!) He can give us Maureen’s recipe—

    We finally manage to escape, but not without Mrs Hopgood’s recipe for steak and kidney pie, looks more like a stew that ya bung a bit of bought frozen pastry on top of when it’s cooked, we could probably do it, that is, if we had a decent Aussie stove instead of the original electric Brit stove in that dump.

    So I hug Anna’s arm and go: “Don’t worry, Roger’ll”—“Yip, yip, yip!”—“Yeah, you, good boy! What a good boy! Nice walkies, eh?—Roger’ll eat the kidney, no sweat.”

    “Can dogs, though?”

    “Uh—no idea. I’ll ring Rosie. Dare say she won’t know, but she can ask John.”

    “That’d be best,” she goes, terrifically relieved.

    “Yeah. And Isabel Potter from the hardware shop reckons Tom’s steak’s okay fried if ya bash it first.”

    “Bash it?”

    “Yeah; anything’ll do, a rolling pin or like that, but she had these neato little meat hammers for sale, so I bought one. She gave me a real good price, too. Not what was on the label, that was for Them!” Wink, wink.

    So she collapses in giggles right outside the dreaded Bakery, obstructing the passage of three very up-market dames in pearls and silk blouses. Yep: mid-morning in Bellingford. And they got the triple-parked Volvos to prove it.

    “Come, on, let’s go to the superette,” I say loudly, “and buy some real sliced bread!”

    So we go. She can hardly walk, she’s giggling so much. Can’t be bad, eh?

    So today Max rings us first thing, all of a doo-dah. He has got the van, so what’s the prob? Oh: Katherine, the ex, has landed him with their two little girls, after swearing blind he wasn’t gonna get his mitts on them this leave. He isn’t explaining why he wasn’t, but it was because she’s a bitch, that’s pretty clear, though he’s too nayce to say it to me in so many words. So why has she changed her mind? Right: trip to Bermuda with the new boyfriend. Normally she’d dump them on her bloody mother—he isn’t too nayce to say that to me—but she and her husband are going off to Florence in two weeks’ time and she’s too busy packing and shopping to have her own grandchildren to stay.

    “Right, got that, Max. Um, this must’ve been a bit of a shock to Lady Haworth, wouldn’t it’ve been?”

    “Yes. Not the grandmotherly type,” he goes grimly. “I was planning to stay on with Terence for a bit, but I’ll have to rethink—have the girls at the flat, I suppose. If only I’d known in advance I could’ve arranged a decent holiday for them!”

    “Yes, I suppose everything’ll be booked solid, now. What about staying with your parents for a bit?”

    Oops, Mummy’s away until some time next month, always visits some friends in Wales this time of year. And Dad’s willing but getting vague, he says, you can hear he’s grimacing: Hell, does that mean the old joker’s coming down with Alzheimer’s? Like, the sort that swears he’ll keep an eye on them while you pop down the shops and then he lets them drown themselves in his fucking artificial lake. (Yep, Lattimore Court’s got one of those—only a small one, but.)

    “Well, people do cope in London in the holidays, Max. There’s always the zoo. Hang on, have their school holidays actually started?”

    More grimacing while he admits that no, the term doesn’t officially end until the end of the week. And he’s got no idea what lies Katherine told the bloody school. He does say that.

    “Gotcha. Oh, well, they’re only little, and most schools don’t do much at the end of term. Well, no worries, Max, bring them, most kids’d die for a ride in a van!” If I’m sure I don’t mind? Why the fuck would I mind, ya nana? But I tell him I don’t mind and he cheers up and says he’ll see me later this morning.

    … So here they are! It’s a nice big van, good. Gee, get this: me and Anna are in old tees and daggy jeans, Max is in a new tee but almost human-looking jeans, and Miss Julie Lattimore, aged nine, and Miss Sally Lattimore, aged seven, are in delightful puffed-sleeved floral cotton frocks, white socks (the woman must be mad—or else she’s got the most efficient washing-machine in Britain and a daily help that doesn’t mind doing the washing), and dainty pale pink shoes (Julie) and pale blue shoes (Sally).

    So I go: “Yeah gidday, Julie; gidday, Sally. Ya do know we’re gonna be doing grubby jobs today, do you?” Not quite remembering in time to tone down the Australian.

    They’re both dark, like him, but they haven’t inherited his good looks. Julie’s one of those pale, skinny, rat-faced little kids—bit like Molly’s Micky, actually, though the hair’s much darker than his mouse colour. Sally’s a small, plain, stoutish object with what would probably naturally be a ragged mop but Mummy’s settled that: tied into two very tight bunches over her ears with ruthless bobbled elastics, it must be killing the poor sprat! She’s certainly scowling as if it is. Julie’s scowling, too, but given that Mummy’s given her one of those very In, shoulder-length, dead straight cuts, guaranteed to make a rat face like more pathetically rat-like than ever, can ya blame her?

    Julie gives me a bitter glare. “We’re not allowed to get our good frocks dirty, I’m afraid, Georgia.”

    Crikey Dick, talk about a plum in your mouth! “Uh—yeah,” I go with an effort. “That’s what I mean. They’re awfully nice frocks, it’d be a shame to muck them up with paint and stuff.”

    “I’m sorry. They don’t seem to have any holiday clothes,” says Max weakly.

    Translation: the bitch deliberately didn’t send any with them. “Right, and you didn’t have the sense to pop into a shop in Portsmouth and buy them some shorts and tees.”

    “Mummy doesn’t like us to wear shorts!” growls Sally, glaring horribly.

    “Shit, doesn’t she? Ya poor things, sounds like my Mum when I was a kid.” (Not. She wasn’t that bad. Well, heck, every Aussie kid wears shorts in the summer! No, well, she was that bad, but in other ways, geddit?) Max is giving me that helpless male look: gee, mate, that is not calculated to appeal to Georgia Leach, whatever it may do the rest of female humanity. ’Cos I don’t wanna be ya mother, see? And looking at them again, I don’t wanna be anyone’s mother. “Well, you can’t stay here by yourselves, I’d say your mother would throw a fit at the very idea, and good on her. So you’ve got the choice: run the risk of ruining your good frocks, or let your dad buy you some grubbies—holiday clothes.”

    “We call him Daddy,” replies Julie grimly.

    “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know. Your daddy, then.”

    Dead silence and they both glare. Max says weakly: “Perhaps they could stay in the van…”

    “The van’ll be where we’ll be putting the huge boards, Max. Dusty, most probably.”

    “I think they’ll be clean,” says Anna in small voice. “But I do think shorts and tee-shirts would be a good idea. And, um, perhaps sneakers?”—eyeing those pale pink and pale blue shoes. “We could manage it easily, you could change in the shop,” she says kindly.

    More glaring. Eventually Sally says in a very small voice: “Would we have to change in the shop?”

    Eh? I’m just gonna rubbish her good an’ proper, silly little nit, when suddenly a vague recollection of what it meant to be a small, plain, stoutish object comes back to me. I don’t for a moment think that their mummy’s as mad as Mum, but I go: “Ya don’t have to if ya don’t want to, Sally. When I was your age I’d of died rather than change in a shop, ’cos guess what? My Mum made me wear a giant safety pin to hold my underpants to my singlet, just because once my pants fell down in the mall!”

    They’re both goggling at me in awed horror. After a minute Julie goes: “You do mean your knickers, do you? I say, how absolutely frightful!”

    “Terrible!” agrees Max with feeling—obviously he’s wondering what sort of a home I come from, well, too bad, if he hasn’t gathered it before he might as well get it now. “When Australians say singlet they mean vest, Sally,” he adds kindly.

    Sally just nods violently, goggling at me in awed horror.

   “I bet your mummy’d never make ya do that, eh? Look, come inside, we can’t stand out here talking about undies!”

    Gee, they both give smothered snickers, that must of struck a chord. “And you can have a drink of Coke or something.”

    “Thank you, but I’m afraid Mummy doesn’t let us drink Coke, Georgia,” says Julie nicely, following me up the sinful Coke-owning path nonetheless.

    Flaming—bloody—Norah! What is the woman, a sadist?

    “Have you got allergies?” asks Anna kindly.

    “Sally does have an allergy to tomatoes, but that’s all,” she goes primly. “We’re not allergic to food dye but Mummy thinks it isn’t good for one.”

    Right, not allergic to food dye, the woman is a sadist. I don’t mean that Coke should be a regular item in the diet, but shit! “Well, a glass of milk? We’ve got stacks, see, we got a lot because of Roger, only then our cousin’s husband said that adult dogs shouldn’t drink milk. –This is Roger,” I explain as we go into the sitting-dining room and here he is in his basket, sleeping off that large breakfast of raw beef kidney and left-over tough steak.

    “Ooh!” goes Sally, her eyes lighting up.

    Julie’s eyes have also lit up, but she’s trying not to show it. “Is he a corgi?”

    “Yeah. I really like them. Some people say they’re more like cats.”

    She looks dubious. “Mummy says cats are horrid disease-carriers.”

    “She won’t let us have a dog, either!” bursts out Sally aggrievedly. Oops, the “Mummy is perfect and Daddy, his girlfriends and all his works are B,A,D” bit is starting to wear thin, is it?

    “No, my Mum wouldn’t let us have pets, either. Do ya want milk? There’s sultana cake, too.”

    Mummy doesn’t let them eat between meals is the answer supplied by Miss Julie Lattimore. Couldn’t of guessed that one.

    “This is elevenses,” says Max very neutrally indeed.

    In that case they’re allowed to have it, fancy that. Anna hurries out to the kitchen, swallowing a smile. Gee, Sally’s gone bravely right up to the snoring Roger and bent over him, breathing stertorously—almost as loud as him, actually.

    “Sally, be careful, he might bite!” says Julie sharply.

    “He won’t bite. Not unless he thinks you’re a cat. And he had so much breakfast that I doubt if he’d even yawn at a cat. You can pat him—go on.”

    So she pats him very gingerly. He flicks an ear at her and sort of opens one eye.

    “Georgia, you haven’t been over-feeding him, have you?” asks Max.

    He’s not getting away with that! “Speaking as one whose kids are not even allowed to have pets, is this?”

    “We did have a pet!” bursts out Julie.

    “Mm. Charlie Bird—he was a budgie. That was back before the divorce,” says Max, trying to sound neutral. “We got him when Julie was three—she remembers him quite well.”

    “I remember him, too!” cries Sally aggrievedly.

    “You do not!” snaps her sibling.

    “Do too!”

    “That’ll do. She was younger than you when he died, so she doesn’t remember him as well, but of course she remembers him,” Max says quickly. Maybe he isn’t such a rotten father as I was thinking.

    “We had a funeral for him,” explains Sally. “A real naval funeral, Commander Haworth came and everybody!”

    “Mrs Green from next-door and the au pair,” says Julie on a scornful note.

    “And Daddy!”

    “Yes! Of course! I wasn’t counting him!”

    “And then we had to move,” says Sally regretfully.

    “Yeah? My cousin Rosie, her pet pigeon died when she was ten and they moved when she was thirteen, only her brother Kenny, he dug up its remains and reburied them in the new garden.”

    “We could’ve done that!” cries Julie angrily, rounding on her father.

    “My flat hasn’t got a garden,” he replies on a grim note.

    The poor little sod doesn’t say anything, even she, partisan though she is—been brainwashed into it, I’d say—has got the point that no way would Mummy let them do anything so unhygienic and unheard of as reburying the corpse of their budgie in her garden.

    “Is this Kenny Marshall?” says Anna mildly, coming in with a tin tray. It’s a nice one, it’s got a picture of corgis on it, we got it off Jim Potter at the hardware shop, he shot out the back and found it for us the day we introduced him to Roger. “I wouldn’t take any notice of anything he did, he’s a twit! The sort of kid that the minute his father told him not to mix two chemicals in his science set he went right ahead and did it.”

    “Help, what happened?” breathes Sally, her eyes on stalks.

    “Kaboom! Blew his eyebrows right off!” she says happily.

    “Gosh!” they both cry in awe.

    “They took months and months to grow back,” she says detachedly, handing out drinks and offering Max the sugar. He doesn’t take it, he watches his weight, I’ve noticed that.

    Good for Anna: by now they’re so thrilled they drink their milk up and eat two slices of sultana cake each without announcing that it’s the wrong sort of milk or Mummy doesn’t let them have sultana cake or it’s the wrong sort of sultana cake. My God, there oughta be a law to stop morons getting married and producing kids they’re only having because their hormones tell them to or because everybody else is doing it and then getting divorced because it’s dawned they hate each other’s guts and it was only sex in the first place. Not that these two’d be better off if the parents had stuck together, that’s glaringly obvious.

    So I nip out and ring up Rosie: does she know anybody in the village that might have kids’ clothes of the right size? She thinks try Isabel Potter, there might be some stuff Cora—that’s their youngest—has grown out of. I don’t think so, Cora must be about fourteen, but I ring Isabel anyway. No, gave what she hadn't reduced to rags to the Salvation Army (they don’t call them Salvos here, but it is the same organisation), but she suggests Jessica Smith. She’s in Lower Mill Lane. Right, over on the far side of the High Street and perilously near to the frightful Ma Granville Thinnes’s abode, but in what’s technically Upper Bellingford: only a few of its cottages have been snapped up by the trendies and retirees, ’cos it’s gotta be almost ten minutes’ easy stroll down to the High Street—like where none of them ever walk to anyway, they always drive their Volvos and BMWs. Like that. Jessica and Martin are at Number 28, next to old Mrs Stout, do I know it? No, but I’ll find it, no sweat! Thanks, Isabel. So I ring the number. The phone rings for ages and then a wavery old voice goes: “Hullo—o?”

    Turn out it’s Mrs Stout in person, but Jessica is there, she’s in the garden. Jessica’s only too pleased to donate some old tee-shirts that Meriel and Nicole have grown out of. Shorts? Yes, but they’re a bit raggy. Heck, that’s no prob, Jessica!

    “Hey, listen. We’re gonna go over to Jessica Smith’s place and get some of her kids’ shorts and tees they’ve grown out of, and there’ll probably be an old lady there called Mrs Stout, and don’t laugh if she’s stout, okay?”

    They’re opening their mouths to say they wouldn’t dream of laughing but Anna goes: “I might laugh. I think I'd better stay here.” So that settles their hash. And we nip over there in the van.

    Sally has a panic when we get there but Max and I were expecting that and assure her that no-one’s gonna make her change in public, Jessica’ll let her use one of the girls’ rooms.

    Bless you, Jessica Smith, experienced mother of Meriel and Nicole! She admires the frocks and shoes terrifically and is very sympathetic over not spoiling them and even provides some very worn sneakers they can wear. And Sally changes in Nicole’s room, it’s really super (not): loads of posters of pop stars and a really nice one of Brad Pitt that I wouldn’t mind having myself. Plus and Mr Pitt, naturally! Oh, heck, the poor little sod doesn’t know who he is! The woman oughta be shot! Though she does recognise the Harry Potter poster. She got one from Amy McLintock at school because she had two, her mummy got her one and her Aunty Pamela got her one, too, but (as if ya couldn’t have guessed) Mummy won’t let them put posters on the walls, it ruins the good wallpaper. Jesus, the woman owns the place, it’s not as if they’ve got a pig of a landlord, she ruddy well is a sadist!

    “Yeah, ’tis ace, eh? That’s really cool underwear, Sally!” It’s cotton with little roses all over it. (And I’m not asking why, after all the coyness, she wanted me to stay in here with her.)

    “They’re only Mark and Sparks!” she hisses.

    Uh—yeah? Like does this mean instead of Harrods, or—Forget it.

    The tactful Jessica makes a lovely parcel of their own gear in a real shopping carrier, and after she’s pressed a bunch of carrots out of the garden on us, and old Mrs Stout, who can’t do much in the veggie garden these days but is thrilled to have me admire her lavender bushes out the front, has pressed a huge bunch of that on me, we go.

    “That lavender smells wonderful!” says Max with a smile.

    “Mmm! Yes! –Hey, old Mrs Stout was, eh?”

    And we all, even Miss Julie Lattimore and Miss Sally Lattimore, explode in giggles. Phew!

    It takes a certain amount of redistribution, not to say arguing, before we set off for London. Think this Grogan brother must’ve done the van up himself, it’s more like a minibus inside: it’s got a front and back seat, each seating three, but as well there’s two long flip-up seats against the walls in the back part. At the moment they’re up, firmly kept in place by neato little straps—yeah, he’ll of done it himself, all right. Someone’s put tiny floral curtains on the windows in the back doors, too. The looped-back sort, y’know? No, Sally, Roger cannot come! NO! Like that. Everybody will go to the lavatory, please! Anna goes meekly, so that shuts them up. Well, she is used to stroppy kids, of course, keep forgetting she was technically a teacher. Children don’t get to ride in the front on the motorways in anything Max drives, either. At least he’s got that much sense. Fortunately there are no arguments about seatbelts, so chalk one up to Mummy. So we really are off.

    … “Where are we?” –Sally.

    “Somewhere in between Not-Nearly-There and Only-Just-Left,” replies her father.

    Julie giggles and Sally scowls. Think I’ll try not to look in the rear-view mirror, actually.

    … “Ooh, there’s a cow!” –Sally again.

    “A Guernsey.” –Julie, blightingly.

    Sulky silence. I’m not looking.

    … “There’s a horse!” –Both of them.

    “Mm, nice-looking isn’t he?” –Max. Oops, now he’s going: “Do you ride, Georgia?”

    “Nah. Only wooden horses on merry-go-rounds. Do you?”

    “A bit, yes.”

    “Daddy had a pony when he was little!” –Julie. She is at that age, come to think of it.

    “I geddit. Lucky him.”

    “Daddy, why can’t I have riding lessons?”

    “Your mother says the riding stables are too far to get you there and back after school.”

    “But I could go on Saturdays!” she wails.

    “Amy McLintock’s starting next term, and she only lives three streets away from us,” notes Sally.

    “Possibly her mother doesn’t mind her coming back from riding lessons at seven in the evening, Sally,” he goes coldly, ouch! Poor kid!

    “No, Daddy! Saturday lessons!”

    “See?” cries Julie angrily. “And she’s only Sally’s age!”

    “Look, shut up about riding lessons! It’s your mother’s business!” he goes angrily.

    Sulky silence. I’m still not looking in that rear-view mirror.

    … “Why are we stopping?” –Julie.

    “Petrol.” It’s self-serve: he gets out.

    “Maybe we could—” begins Anna. “Um, no,” she mutters.

    “It’ll be full of food dye, whatever it was gonna be,” I note.

    “That’s NOT FUNNY!” shouts Julie.

    “No, but are you claiming it’s not accurate? ’Cos if you are I’ll nip out and get you a Mars Bar.”

    “Amy McLintock’s mother lets her eat Mars Bars.”

    “Shut up about Fat-Face Amy McLintock!” she screams. Fair enough.

    Sulky silence.

    Max gets in again. “Anyone need to go to the lavatory?”

    More sulky silence.

    “Julie? Sally?”

    “No,” they mutter.

    We set off again. Anna tries to pay for the petrol but he rubbishes her genially.

    … “Where are we now?” –Sally.

    “Four miles on from that last stop. Do you need to go—”

    “No! I only wanted to know where we are!” She shuts up

     … “Where are we now?” –Sally again.

    He takes a deep breath. “Two miles on from the last time you asked. You do need to—”

    “No!”

    We drive on in the thickening traffic…

    “Daddy, I really, really need to go to the lavatory!” she wails.

    “My God!” he shouts. “I just asked you that!”

    “Ten minutes ago,” ascertains Julie, stupid little toad.

    “Everyone look for a service station,” says Anna quickly. “Um, whatever you call them.”

    “With a sign saying Clean Restrooms, hopefully,” I note.

    We all look…

    “Daddy, I’m desperate!” Right, goddit, nayce English for bursting.

    “I can’t stop here!” he snarls.

    We all look…

    “THERE!” we all shout.

    So we turn off. It’s a huge place, loads of giant lorries and heaps of cars and station-waggons parked, even though it isn’t the school holidays yet. Cripes, what must the roads be like when the holidays start? She wants me to take her, don’t ask why. There’s a huge array of bogs and most of them are sparkling clean, thank Christ! Cos what I was gonna do if they were like some of the ones in the Outback servos back home— She’s washing her hands when Julie and Anna come in, Julie looking sulky. “Daddy says I have to go.”

    “In that case, I’d go.”

    “But I don’t need to,” she says grimly.

    “Nor do I, really, but I think I will,” says Anna placidly. “The first rule of the seasoned traveller is never pass up a clean loo, at least that’s what my cousin Carolyn reckons.”

    “What, Aunty Kate’s Carolyn? Is she a seasoned traveller?”

    “Work it out,” she says with a twinkle. “Her and Philip drove across the Nullarbor last Christmas.”

    “Jesus, with Aunty Kate at the end of it!” I choke, falling all over the sparkling clean tiled hand-washing area of these strangely clean Pommy motorway dunnies.

    “Is that far?” asks Sally.

    “Pretty far, even in Aussie terms. Well, uh—fifteen hundred K, maybe? The complete distance from Perth to Adelaide’d be two thousand, seven hundred and fifty—I looked it up once, had this mad idea of doing the trip,” I explain to Anna.

    “It’d be interesting, I think, but Carolyn said it was very boring. –I don’t think they have K, Georgia.”

    I take a look at the blank faces. “Oh! Um, around a thousand miles, I guess.”

    “A thousand miles?” gasps Sally.

    “She’s exaggerating,” said Julie scornfully.

    “No, I’m not, it’s most of the way across Australia.”

    “Australia is big on the map, Julie,” goes Sally doubtfully.

    “Yeah. –Go—to—the—toilet,” I order Miss Julie Lattimore evilly.

    Scowling, she goes.

    “Um, lavatory, Georgia,” says Anna lamely.

    “Eh? Oh! Forgot. It’s a different language, isn’t it? Well, she understood me.”

    “But Daddy said you do speak English in Australia!” goes Sally.

    Help! Little pitchers!

    “Yes, but it’s what called a different dialect. Sometimes we use different words, like ‘toilet’ instead of ‘lavatory’, or sometimes ‘dunny’, that’s just an Australian word,” Anna tells her kindly. Should she of? Oh well, five’ll get ya ten Mummy won’t know it’s generally regarded as beyond the pale back home, certainly by Aunty Kate, because it’s glaringly obvious she’s the sort that isn’t aware that other cultures even exist.

    “I see! What are some more Australian words?” Sally asks eagerly.

    “Chunder?” I suggest delicately.

    “Stop it, Georgia!” she says with a laugh. “Um, well, that means to be sick, Sally; to throw up, you know? But polite people don’t use it.”

    “Ooh! What’s another?”

    “Well, there’s quite a few words that were originally Aboriginal words but everyone uses them now.” Eyes her doubtfully. “The Australian Aborigines are the native Australians, they were there for thousands of years before the white people came.”

    “I know!”

    “Kangaroo. Wallaby. Emu,” I note.

    “Well, yes! All the Australian animal names are Aboriginal names, Sally.”

    “Koala?” she goes eagerly.

    “Yes,” Anna agrees nicely. Personally I’ve given up, I’m fixing my face, they’ve got nice big mirrors.

    “Amy McLintock’s got a lovely koala, she calls him Koala,” she tells us sadly. “Her Uncle Freddy got him for her: he’s in the Navy, like Daddy, but he’s not in subs.”

    “Stuffed toys are for BABIES!” shouts Julie bitterly from the cabinet, didn’t her Mummy ever tell her polite people don’t do that? On the other hand, if they say “lavatory” instead of “toilet”, maybe that’s the opposite way round in England, too, and in short, I don’t care.

    “Yes; she was only little when she got him,” Sally tells us. “But he is an awfully nice koala.”

    Silence from the cabinet, so he must be.

    Gee, Max doesn’t want to stop for lunch. Personally I’d say this is a mistake, but it is a recognisable male syndrome—yeah. Determine the quickest route from Point A to Point B and go there regardless of anything.

    … “Where are we now?” –Sally, who else?

    “We’re in Surrey,” says Max heavily.

    “Does that mean we’re nearly there?”

    “Yes!” snaps Julie. “Don’t you know anything?”

    “We’re a lot nearer than we were, but we’ve still got to get into London,” he says heavily.

    “That’s the hard bit!” Julie announces.

    After a bit it dawns that that was addressed to us foreigners. “Uh—yeah, I geddit. Coming into a city’s always confusing, isn’t it?”

    “Portsmouth was really easy,” objects Sally.

    “Yeah, but Max knows it pretty well, and it’s miles smaller than London.”

    “Daddy knows London really well,” objects Julie. –Contradicting herself: right.

    “I wouldn’t say that. There may be a few old-fashioned taxi-drivers who could claim to know London really well, but I don’t think anyone else does. I know a few routes in and out, and a few areas quite well, but there are enormous areas where I’ve never been.”

    “Did you ever see that TV programme on the Knowledge?” asks Anna out of the blue.

    “I did, Anna, yes!” he says with a sudden laugh. “Wasn’t it fascinating?”

    And they talk about that, thank Christ, while the traffic gets thicker and thicker… In the back seat Sally asks Julie quietly where we are, but she has to admit she doesn’t know…

    Crikey, we’ve made it! It’s mid-afternoon, no wonder the kids are now whingeing they're hungry.

    “Are they allowed to eat spicy food? ’Cos we could nip in The Tabla. Or there’s a lovely Chinese takeaway just round the corner. The thing is, if Rupy’s on form he’ll of long since eaten everything edible in the flat and forgotten to do any shopping.”

    Max is hesitating, added to which he can’t park here long, this is a loading zone, but suddenly the big front door opens and Rupy and Doris hurry out. That’s all right, he can use the loading zone, no-one in the flats is expecting a delivery today and no-one ever moves in or out!

    So I go: “Rupy, have you checked with Mrs Merrihew? What about her antiques?”

    “That superb walnut commode went yesterday, dear, nothing due to come or go today.”

    “You don’t mean that glorious chest of drawers?” I cry. “How could she bear to sell it?”

    “Well, it is her business, Georgia. –Antique dealer,” he explains to Max. “Hullo! I’m Rupy and this is Miss Winslow,” he explains to the girls.

    “Come on, out you come, that’s right!” approves old Doris. “Had your lunch, yet?”

    “No, lunch is for wimps that aren’t in the Navy, Doris,” I explain, following Anna out. “How’s it?”

    “In the pink, ta, dear!” she chirps. “Well, that’s all right, Rupy and I have got a lovely lunch for you!”

    The kids cheer up immediately—actually so does Max, don’t think he relished the idea of having the ex find out he let them eat Chinese or Indian—and up we go to Doris’s place on the second floor.

    “Oh!” cries Sally as Buster frisks round us going “Yip, yip, yip!” “You’ve got a corgi, too!”

    And after that everything in the garden’s rosy. Specially since Doris (by a pure coincidence) hasn’t made the mistake of putting tomato in anything. Cold ham, lovely chutney, potato salad (easy-peasy: cook the spuds, chop them up and add Heinz salad cream. Five million calories per teaspoonful, yeah, but it’s ace.) I’ll just have one spoonful, thanks, Doris. There’s lashings of white sliced bread, plus some special little bread rolls from Mr Goldman, the kosher grocer in the next block, nice hunk of cheddar, pickled onions that Rupy only allows us to have, giggling, if we all have one, cups of tea, and pink-iced cake to follow. There’s lemonade or Coke for the girls! she beams. They have to have the lemonade and look real surprised when it turns out to be the ultra-sweet, fizzy sort. Julie opens her gob and then thinks better of it. See, it isn’t stuffed with food dye, it’s white, so what can Mummy say? Well, a lot, yeah, but it is within the letter of the law.

    Then we load up the boards with relatively little trouble, Doris holding the girls back. They have to go up and see the flat, God knows why. Think they’re too little to make invidious comparisons, they don’t say Mummy wouldn’t approve or their place is nicer or isn’t it brown or like that. And after everyone has been to the lavatory—yes, again—and Miss Winslow has been thanked nicely for all her trouble, we go. Complete with an extra pink-iced cake in a Tupperware container.

    … “Where are we now?”

    “Just sit back and try to enjoy the drive, Sally,” he says tiredly. “This is still London.”

    “I knew that!” says Julie smugly.

    We drive on. The traffic’s terrible. Oh, cripes, would be this be the early commuters heading for home already? Sneak look at watch. Not quite. Depends what sort of flexitime they’re on. Well, could definitely be shift-workers, yeah.

    … “Where are we now?”

    “Surrey,” he says tiredly “And if this traffic keeps up, we may be in Hampshire in another hour.”

    “Do we want to be in Hampshire, though?” I go cheerfully.

    “Georgia!” cries Julie scornfully. “That’s where we’re going!”

    “Don’t you know?” cries Sally.

    “Apparently not,” says Max drily.

    “No. But put it another way, Max. If you were in Melbourne, would you go north or south to Bathurst?”

    There’s a short silence Then Julie cries: “Which, Daddy?”

    “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’m really sorry, Georgia. They’re both in Australia, you see, Julie. We can’t blame Georgia for not knowing English geography if we don’t know any Australian.”

    “You goddit,” I note.

    “But Australia’s a foreign country!” she cries scornfully.

    “Julie, sweetheart, England is a foreign country to people who weren’t born here. Just try to envisage it.”

    There’s a sulky silence as Mummy’s little darling tries to envisage it and—I’m risking a glance in the rear-view mirror—by the looks of the scowl, can’t.

    Sally jumps in. “They’ve got different words in Australia, Daddy, Anna explained it!”

    “Not very well,” admits Anna.

    “Yes! Dunny!” she says proudly. Gulp. Why’d I know that’d be the one the kid’d remember?

    “It’s not very polite. It means lavatory,” murmurs Anna.

    “The same as toilet, Daddy!” urges Sally.

    “I get it,” he says with a smile. “Any more like that?”

    “I forget,” she says regretfully. “But all the names of the animals are really Australian Aboriginal words!”

    “Of course, they would be! I suppose we’re so used to Kanga and Roo that we forget that, mm?”

    “Yes! And Koala!” she goes eagerly.

    “She means Amy McLintock’s stupid Koala,” says Julie on a sour note.

    “He isn’t stupid!”

    “That’ll do,” says Max quickly. “I suppose if we were driving in Australia we’d see kangaroos and koalas just sitting around in the fields and trees!”

    Disbelieving silence emanates from the back seat. Finally Sally says: “Would you, Georgia?”

    “Like instead of factories and towns? There are places where you see kangaroos, sure. But koalas are nocturnal, they doze in the trees during the day, they’re hard to spot.”

    After a bit Julie ventures: “When you see the kangaroos in the fields, what are they doing?”

    “Um, it’s not like your countryside, Julie. It isn’t divided up into fields.”

    “Remember we were talking about ‘home on the range’?” says Max suddenly. “Last time I was home on leave.”

    “Yes! I remember!” she says crossly.

    “I remember too,” goes Sally valiantly.

    “You do not!”

    “Do too!”

    “Do not! Daddy, she doesn’t!”

    “Stop it,” he says grimly. “Or we’ll go straight back to Lady Haworth’s place and you can both go to bed.”

    “No! I hate that nursery!” wails Julie.

    “I can’t say I blame you,” he goes drily and the wailing suddenly stops and this uncertain feeling emanates from the back seat. “Just try and behave. Let Georgia and Anna tell you about the range land in Australia.”

    “That is what it is,” agrees Anna.

    “Yes, it is. Um, well, it’s pretty flat, and the kangaroos that you see are usually just eating. Sometimes jumping.”

    “Not hopping?” goes Sally.

    “No, jumping. Really, it’s more like bounding,” says Anna, smiling.

    “Yes,” I agree.

    “Do they eat with their hands?” asks Julie eagerly.

    I’m just sitting here with me gob open at that one—I mean, I might have expected it from Sally, but Julie is nine, after all—but Anna goes, cool as you please: “With their front paws, do you mean? No, they don’t really use them like that. They bend down to graze. But then they often sit up chewing with a big mouthful of grass.”

    “I must say, I’d have thought they, um, picked bunches of gum leaves, too,” says Max feebly.

    What? Is this the country that produced David Attenborough?

    “No, they’re grazing animals, that’s why the farmers hate them, they compete for the grass,” says Anna serenely.

    “But the koalas pick gum leaves, don’t they?” asks Sally eagerly.

    I’d of just said yes and let it go, but Anna’s got a really literal mind. “Not really. Usually they just hold the tip of a branch down with one paw and chew the leaves off it. They’re usually hanging onto the tree with the other paw: they’ve got long claws, you see.”

    So I go: “I don’t think we’re getting over the point that marsupials aren’t primates, but let it go.”

    “As a matter of fact, Georgia,” says Max ruefully, “it’s only just dawned that I was making the self-same assumptions.” Short silence. He makes a face. “About a few other Australian-related matters as well as marsupials and geography,” he admits.

    “Yeah. People do.”

    “Mm. I apologise, Georgia.”

    “Apology accepted.” After a minute I admit: “Actually I got a bit pissed off down at the festival, ’cos you weren’t the only one, by any means, and, um, I was being aggressively Aussie, to tell you the truth.”

    “I see!” he says with a relieved laugh.

    Yeah. Well, ya think ya do, Max.

    The kids’ve both dozed off by the time we reach what he reckons is Hampshire—looks the same to me. The traffic thins and he can put his foot down at last.

    So we get home by only slightly after normal teatime and ages before the more up-market Poms have it. John’s cousin Luke Beaumont’s leaning on his gate. He isn’t wearing his jeans and tee, he’s in his alternative gear that he suddenly produced the other day. A caftan. Bright orange cotton. The standard caftan pattern of swirls and so forth in black and gold on the front and back, except that this pattern’s printed crooked. On a very dark Black person it’d look real striking, On him it looks ludicrous. The first time he came out in it this old joker from Harriet Burleigh Street, further up the hill, he was having a beer over the road in Bob Potter’s front garden, and when Bob asked him where the Hell he got it from the old bloke said: “The Seventies.” And he wasn’t wrong.

    “Hey, there,” he goes, looking with interest at the Tupperware container. “Your buddy Rupy send down something nice?”

    “Yeah, and hands off, it’s a pink-iced cake for us!”

    “Yes, it is, see?” adds Julie, suddenly coming up to my side and glaring at him. Cripes, what’d I do to be thus honoured?

    Hurriedly Max comes over with Sally—she’s gone suddenly shy—and introduces them.

    Kindly Luke asks if they’d like to come in and have a glass of milk but they want to go into our cottage and see Roger and actually, so do I. In we go and he rushes up to us: “Yip, yip, yip!”

    “There you are! Good boy!” I scoop him up and give him a good cuddle.

    Wrong move: immediately Sally cries: “Can I hold him?”

    Yikes. “Well, don’t squeeze him too tight, will you?”

    She knows: she’s held Amy McLintock’s granny’s cat! So she’s allowed to hold him and naturally he licks her face and she gives a yelp and nearly drops him, but I’m on the watch for that, you betcha.

    So we go into the kitchen and he hasn’t finished the water in his bowl but never mind, I give it a rinse and Sally carefully refills it. And he gets some dog biscuits, and I explain they’re supposed to be that hard, Julie, they’re good for his teeth. They watch the subsequent gnawing and gulping narrowly, not saying anything, but finally Sally straightens with a deep sigh from her bent-over position and I realise it was breathless-interest watching.

    By the time we get out to the passage again it’s all over: the big boards are leaning against the wall of Anna's studio and Max has completely disappeared.

    “Has that Yank ning-nong dragged him into his feebleized peer group?” I groan.

    Gee, the answer’s yes. And that leaves me and Anna and two spoilt, snot-nosed Pommy kids with refined ideas that we never met before today.

    Just as I’m desperately wondering what the fuck to do with them, not to say what to feed them on, not to say what Max proposes doing with them this evening if he’s not gonna take them back to Lady Haworth’s nursery, which I sort of got the impression he wasn’t, my mobile rings. Isabel Potter wanting to know how it all went and imparting the glad tidings that there’s a fish and chip supper on at the Workingmen’s Club tonight—starting in about twenty minutes. Thank God! We’ll go! And to Hell with Mummy and all her works! So I thank her fervently, hang up and rush over to Luke’s. Yeah, they’re knocking back the frosties, the silly wankers! Why are blokes incapable of withstanding the male peer group? And blow me down flat, the old joker from up the road’s in there, too!

    “I dunno if you lot intend eating solid food tonight, but there’s a fish and chip supper on at the Workingmen’s Club, and I’m going. Or put it like this, there’s nothing in the fridge but a bit of cold kidney.”

    “But do you belong to this club?” goes Max feebly.

    “No, but anyone’ll sign us in.”

    “I’ll sign you in!” pipes up the old joker, grinning like mad, how much has he had?

    “I guess I’ll come, too,” goes Luke. “There’s nothing in my icebox but a loaf of illegal Bakery bread I shoved in there when I thought I saw Rosie coming down the street.”

    “Funny joker. –Well? Or don't your kids need tea like the rest of humanity?” I demand, giving up entirely on the effort to be nayce or use the correct Pommy expressions or anything.

    “Well, if you’re sure it’ll be okay?”

    I’m sure. The old joker’s sure, too. So we pile in the van and go. We don’t explain to the kids exactly what it is or remind them to change, we just go as is. Including Luke’s caftan.

    The Workingmen’s Club is quite a new building, put up to spite the git that runs the pub and won’t let workclothes in his fake-horse-brassed bars. It’s over on the far side of the High Street: you head east, the Portsmouth direction, past Tom Hopgood’s butchery and the Potters’ hardware shop, but before you get to the corner where you’d turn left for Graham Howell’s servo, there’s this little unnoticeable lane between two tall, untidy hedges. Just wide enough for a car but there’s no sign on it. And you go very cautiously up it and there it is! A big, one-storeyed building with a huge gravelled carpark in front of it. Fairly full of beat-up heaps at the moment.

    It’s Maureen Hopgood in person on the door. She signs me in, and signs Anna in on behalf of Tom, he’ll be over by the bar. Then Isabel and Jim Potter come in with their kids, so they sign Luke in, and the old bloke from up the road—Parker, that’s it, Jim Parker—he signs Max in, grinning like anything, and starts telling him a long, boring story about the git that runs the pub.

    The Potter kids are lots older than Julie and Sally, so that would be enough to induce goggling awe in any case, but the eldest kid’s called Harry Potter! So what with the fact that he’s about eighteen and the sort of big, shambling boy that grins amiably at funny little skinny rat-faces and funny little short, stout objects, he immediately becomes an object of goggling adoration. And we all sit down together at a big round table and Jim Potter and old Mr Parker have an argument over who’s gonna get ’em in and they both go off to the bar, and pretty soon a grinning Georgia Carter comes up to us and goes fervently: “Hullo!”

    She’s the hairdresser’s assistant, and one of the local tribe of Carters, and though she’s finished her apprenticeship and is looking round for a job in Portsmouth, still very much part of village life. She was absolutely thrilled to discover I’m Rosie’s cousin and look so much like her and I’m gonna be in the final season of The Captain’s Daughter and my name’s Georgia like hers. So I go: “Hi, Georgia, you’re looking smart!” and she giggles like anything and asks if we’re ready for our fish and chips.

    Max says anxiously the girls had better only have small helpings and she assures him they do kids’ portions and asks how many, and goes off to get them, accompanied by, at Isabel’s loud prompting, Harry, Gwennie and Cora Potter, or are they helpless?

    “I wish they’d do this more often, it’s an absolute Godsend!” she confesses, sitting back with a sigh.

    “You said it!” And as the male peer group has surfaced with the grog at long last, we all drink to that. Old Mr Parker’s got Coke for the kids but frankly, I’m way, way past caring. And I’m pretty sure Max is, too: I think he’s deliberately ignoring the whole bit.

    Julie and Sally just look numbly at the glasses of Coke in front of them.

    “They have got orange, but it’s orange cordial, the very, very bright sort, the kind of food dye that can make ya go real silly: hyperactive, y’know?”

    “Amy McLintock’s cousin Alice had that!” gasps Sally.

    “Yeah. Coke’s not that bad. Why not try it? If you don’t like it, I guess you could have glasses of water.”

    Funnily enough they decide it’s not bad at all.

    Then the steaming plates of fish and chips arrive. To Hell with diets, I am starving, in fact I don't think I can ever remember being so hungry!

    Hospitably old Mr Parker passes the tomato sauce and the vinegar. Forcibly I stop Sally from putting tomato sauce on her chips like him. “Tomato plus and red food dye, are you nuts?”

    Suddenly Julie goes into a fit of the giggles.

    “Yes!” I go, wink, wink. “Go on, try them, they look ace, don't they?”

    And with that we all fall on our fish and chips and eat ravenously…

    The Workingmen’s Club usually features a bit of a band, and there’s pokies and a pool room (billiards, not swimming) for them that fancy them, and some nights they have karaoke, but mercifully not tonight. We don’t indulge, we just follow the fish and chips with dishes of ice cream and jelly (food dye—exactly, though it is yellow and green rather than red or orange) and then cart them home before they can actually fall asleep where they sit. Dunno why Luke wants to stay on boozing with the Potters while the Potter kids go off to play pool, he's been nursing one glass of beer all through the meal.

    Except when we get home it dawns that they don’t actually live here!

    Old Mr Parker’s come with us, explaining he doesn’t need too many late nights and there’s a good programme on the telly in a bit, he usually watches that before bed. “Come on, I’ve got two beds in me spare room, the kids can bunk in together for one night.”

    “We haven’t got our pyjamas, Daddy,” objects Julie.

    So I go: “You can wear your undies just for one night. Go on, Max, these two are just about dead on their feet.”

    “We did get up early… Well, thanks very much, Jim: if you’re sure it won’t be too much bother?”

   “It won’t be no bother. Well, there’s the pub, I suppose, but that poncy git don’t welcome kids.”

    That settles it and Max gives in—did anyone think he wouldn’t? And they drive on up the road.

    “Yip, yip, yip!” Roger goes as we open the door.

    “Yeah, good boy!” Yawn. “It’ll be a short walk tonight!”

    … He’s watered every tree and lamppost, I think that’ll do. Oops, does a present on Bob Potter’s front verge. Not that he’d care, but I pooper-scooper it up and home we go!

    “It isn’t really late,” says Anna with a silly grin on her face, as I come out of the bathroom yawning.

    “No, I guess it only feels like half-past forty-two. Boy, aren’t kids tiring? I mean, Molly’s Micky is quite bad enough, but two! They sort of multiply the aggro!”

    “Yes. And I think girls are worse.”

    “Those two are, that’s for sure! I thought I was gonna scream if one of those fluting little holier-than-thou upper-class voices said ‘Mummy doesn’t’ once more!”

    “Yes, me too. –Poor little sprats. What on earth is he going to do with them for the rest of the holidays?”

    “Dunno.” Yawn. “Well, the minute his mother comes back from Wales he’ll dump them at Lattimore Court, that’s for sure.”

    “Yes.”

    “Don’t look at me like that, he’s not gonna dump them on me! Well,”—yawn—“think about it tomorrow, huh? Nighty-night!”

    “Night-night, Georgia. And thanks very much for managing it all for me.”

    I’d almost forgotten her boards were the object of the exercise, actually. “No worries.” And I crawl off to bed, boy am I bushed!

    Next morning. Me and Roger are up early. No sign of Anna, must be still zonked out after the ordeal yesterday. We go for a bit of a run, not far. We’ve just got back and I’m giving him his breakfast when there’s a tap at the door—at first I think I’m hearing things, but no. Sally. “Daddy says I can come and see Roger!” Read, anything to get one of them out of his hair? Oh, well. She comes in. Hullo, Roger! Bends, breathes heavily as he wolfs his breakfast down. Mr Parker has funny breakfasts. (Does this mean she ate it or does she want some of my muesli?) Huh? No juice—oh, right. Funny toast? Be sliced white from the Superette. (Don’t say it.) No Marmite? Horrors! (Don’t say it.) Strawberry jam, Daddy said it’d be all right for once. Goddit. Can she tell me a secret? Oh, go on, if ya must. (Don’t say it.). I bend down and she huffs in my ear: “I’m wearing yesterday’s knickers!”

    I’m just gonna say so what, it won’t kill ya, when I take another look at her round, plain, thrilled face. So I go: “Hah, hah; sucks to Mummy, eh?” and she squeaks “Yes!” and collapses in giggles. Lèse majesté and a half, see? Oh, well. She’s not all bad.

    She greets with awe the news that Anna must still be asleep and imparts the titbit that Mummy always has a sleep-in on Saturdays. Gee, could this be connected with the reluctance to drive Julie miles to fucking pony riding? Not that I don’t feel a certain sympathy, today’s kids seem to think it’s their God-given right to be driven for miles by their martyred parents to school, sports, Scouts, ballet—you name it. I dunno about Britain’s kids, but there’s a real health problem with overweight kids in Australia, and Guess Why? Jesus! Mum always made us take the bus or the tram and if you couldn’t get yourself there and back by public transport that was all she wrote. And if it ended later than five-thirty that was all she wrote in any case. It does explain why I never went to those early evening aquarobics classes that might’ve helped take some of the flab off in early adolescence, yes. Mind you, they never did Mandy any good. No, well, moderation in all things, for Pete’s sake! Micky’s mate Danno Walker’s mum used to spend all weekend chauffeuring him around, ’cos Saturday morning it was school cricket or footy, Saturday arvo it was club cricket or footy, Sunday morning it was swimming practice (at one time she was convinced he was gonna be the next Kieran Perkins and have his name on the milk cartons), and Sunday arvo it was band practice (silver trumpet, Goddawful). A fair indicator the syndrome is not actually the kids’ fault, but nevertheless they all expect it, geddit?

    Sally wants to know what I’m gonna do today. Well, it looks like it might be a nice day, I was thinking of going to the beach. “Ooh! The beach!” Wrong move, Georgia, talk about foot in mouth syndrome. I take a look at her face. “Um, I think Max might have other plans.”

    “He hasn’t got any plans! He told Mr Parker that he can’t think what to do with us, and Mummy doesn’t like us to spend the holidays at the cinema!”

    Go figure. “Yeah. I’ll check with him, but you haven’t got any bathers, have you?”

    Blast, the lip’s quivering!

    “Um, well, lessee…” Personally I lived in bathers most of the summer when I was a kid: we weren’t that far from the beach. Well, fifteen minutes’ walk in the blazing sun and take the short-cut through the caravan park. Um… Goddit! “I can’t see why you can’t wear your shorts and tees, and change back into your frocks afterwards.”

    “Yes!” she cries. “We could do that!”

    Right. Goody. So once Roger’s forcibly had his lead put on him—he’s had his walk, now is the time for his nap, he thinks we’re barmy—we drag him forcibly up to old Mr Parker’s place in Harriet Burleigh Street. Oh, yeah! The cottage with the neato mermaid fountain! We stand here admiring it for ages and ages, breathing stertorously…

    Max thinks the beach is a wonderful idea, especially as I point out that if he’s decided not to stay on with Lady Haworth, he can dash back over there and collect their gear. But he hates to impose! (Not much.) Am I sure? Well, I do owe him one, we’d never of got Anna’s boards down without him, so I agree I’m sure.

    “I’ll take them to the Superette and get some sunscreen, too. Apart from tomatoes, food dye, Coke, and normal food, anything they’re not supposed to have? Brands of sunscreen they might just happen to be allergic to?”

    He makes a face and admits she hasn’t told him of anything.

    “I can show you the right brands of everything, Georgia!” says Julie bossily.

    I’m sure she can, but will the Stouts stock everything? Highly unlikely—highly.

    “Jim had the wrong brand of soap,” admits Max, making a face.

    Old Mr Parker winks at me and I only just manage not to laugh.

    So it’s settled. And if Belinda Stout dares to grin as I enter the Superette with two kids in tow, I’ll buy me bread from the fucking Bakery from now on in!

    She doesn’t grin, in fact she’s very sympathetic. This is the soap Captain Haworth’s little boy has: it’s supposed to be very mild, would it do? (It’s the brand all the little kids of the village use, in fact I think all the little kids of Britain, but good on ya, Belinda.) Julie consents to use it, though—warningly—they’re not babies! Of course not. And this bath powder is very nice. (The one the whole world uses, right.) Oh, yes, that is the brand Mummy uses for them! Shampoo? Belinda rolls an eye at me but produces some. No... This is just for babies, isn’t it? Desperately Belinda says that Ms Deane Jennings uses it for Kiefer, he’s nearly four, and she’s very particular. “Tell her about the food dye, Belinda,” I prompt. She’s not slow, she immediately goes: “Kiefer’s mummy wouldn't dream of allowing him anything with food dye in it, dear!” Julie accepts the flaming shampoo.

    Oops, Belinda’s offering—very kindly, they don’t actually stock fresh veggies—to let us have some tomatoes. “No, thank you, Mrs Stout, I’m afraid Sally’s allergic.”

    This is too much for Belinda: she just goggles at me.

    “The rest of us can eat them, though. Thanks very much, Belinda, I’d love some, but you gotta let me pay you for them!”—Rubbish!—Yes.—Nonsense, Georgia, dear, they’re only out of the garden!—Yes.—Absolutely not! And there are some nice lemon ice-lollies in the big freezer down the back, would the girls like one? Bravely Julie leads Sally down to look, though warning us all that they may not be suitable.

    Belinda just looks at me limply.

    “Yeah, well. The parents are divorced, she’s a gazetted B,I,T,C,H intent on taking it out on him, and I don’t know any of the details, but apart from him spending most of his life sitting underwater ready to let off his nuclear missiles—he’s in subs with Terence Haworth—she has gotta be the control freak par excellence!”

    She eyes me drily. “I don’t think so, Georgia: she lives at The Church in Church Lane.”

    Ms Deane Jennings—too right! And we collapse in splutters.

    “Poor little sprats!” she hisses.

    I make a face. “You said it.”

    “Where is he?” she hisses.

    “Gone back to Lady Haworth’s dump to rescue their gear, ’cos guess what? It’s dawned that she’s not the grandmotherly type!” And we both collapse in agonised splutters: the whole village has had an earful from Rosie on the subject of Lady H. Not to mention, in the case of those that are old enough to remember back to when the senior Haworths used the cottage as a beach house, the way she used to come the lady of the manor all over the village. Yeah.

    And we finally exit with two dye-free white “ice-lollies”, the soap, the powder, the shampoo, the sunscreen that I use, since Belinda didn’t have anything that Julie recognised (don’t think Mummy takes them to the beach, actually), the freebie tomatoes (huge ones), and the stuff for the picnic: ham, sliced white bread, sliced wholemeal bread (I gotta get some roughage into my system!), Marmite, cheese that is mild but not Mummy’s brand (God!), and non-free-range eggs that Mummy never buys. (The Stouts do stock free-range, but last evening Ms Deane Jennings sent Mr Jennings in to buy the last of them.) And some basics that we actually need. Plus and a huge pile of mags and comics. Because whatever Mummy might not, in Australia ya read the comics in your holidays! Gee, neither of them told me this isn’t Australia, they just looked dubious.

    Hang on! I slather us all with sunscreen. They look dubious but don’t tell me Mummy wouldn’t do that in the street.

    … Hard-boiled eggs! Granny always does those for picnics!

    Er… yes? Thought they called her Grandie and him Grampy? No, Granny Lattimore, Daddy’s mummy! Grandie doesn’t have picnics! Of course not, no, silly me: she’s the woman that spawned the Great White Bitch.

    They watch, breathing stertorously, as the eggs boil.

    Anna comes down in her dressing-gown just as I’m taking them out of the pot. “Hullo, Julie, hullo, Sally! That’s a lot of eggs!”

    “We’re going on a picnic! A beach picnic!”

    She’s got it: she looks at me drily and says: “Where’s Max?”

    “Collecting their stuff from the Haworths’ place. Dare say he’ll be back by—well, afternoon teatime, with a bit of luck. I’m doing all these eggs because I’ve got a strong feeling that we’re gonna be landed with self-invited Luke. And if ya think he’ll bother to boil an egg, ya must be raving!”

    “No, but I dare say he’ll bring some real American Coke!” she says with a laugh. Boy, is she Up, now she’s got her boards. Plus a load of paint that Fiona’s thrown in with them.

    “You wanna come, Anna?”

    “No, thanks: I think I’ll stay home and sort things out,” she says in this dreamy voice.

    Goddit. So I get on with making the ham sandwiches (no mustard, thank you for that intel, Miss Julie Lattimore) and the Marmite and cheese sandwiches. Some white and some brown, Julie actually approves of that, is the sky a-falling?

    I’m just getting out the Tupperware container with the pink-iced cake when someone taps at the front door. And an American voice calls out: “Hey, there! Anybody home?”

    “See?” Anna’s collapsed in giggles so I get the door, correction, Sally and I get the door.

    “We’re going to have a beach picnic!” she informs him, beaming.

    “Really? That sounds great, Sally!” Looks at me hopefully, ye gods! How old is the man?

    “All right, Luke, you can come. In fact you can carry the stuff for us.”

    And at long last we’re all ready. We haven’t got a hamper like Granny Lattimore’s, no, Julie, but these assorted bags will do—and we go. Luke has fetched a six-pack of Coke, yeah.

    We get halfway down the track to the bay but then have to squash ourselves back out of range, this enormous moving van lumbers past us, followed by Graham Howell’s taxi. What was all that about?

    What it was all about, it turns out—and Rosie is sure she mentioned it was gonna happen—was Mr and Mrs Thwaites from the third cottage moving out. Because he had a win on the Pools a few months back, and they’ve made up their minds to it, and they’re moving to Florida! Gulp. Moving to Florida leaving their supposedly adored kids and grandkids behind, is this? And heck, John put that cottage up specially for them, old Thwaites was his yeoman on Dauntless up until he retired.

    “John could pull that place down,” Luke notes thoughtfully.

    “What?” cries Rosie. “It’s a lovely little cottage, Luke!”

    “But if you used some of the vacant lot next to it, you’d have room for a real nice place.”

    “We’ve got a real nice place, your early American brainwashing is showing!” she says with a laugh. “Come in, you’re just in time for morning tea!”

    “Elevenses,” I translate heavily. “Have it on the beach with us, Rosie?”

    “Why not?” So she scoops up Baby Bunting and the rug and we select a really good spot (the entire beach is empty, needless to state) and settle down to it. Yum! Er—didn’t really mean to eat so much, the cake was meant to be for lunch. Oh, well.

    “Hey, did you say Max is stuck for something to do for the next couple of weeks, Georgia?” Rosie asks. “He could use the Thwaiteses’ cottage.”

    “YES!” they scream, all notion of manners thrown to the wind.

    Why not? It’s a lot better than being stuck in a stuffy city in a small flat with a dad that’s being driven rapidly bats.

    “Thanks, Rosie, that’d be really great. Hang on, I’ll try his mobile!” So I try it and get him—pause while he pulls in to the side of the road like a good little boy. He’s thrilled. So I put him on to her and he’s thrilled all over her.

    “That’s settled!” she beams.

    “HURRAY!” they cry.

    Put it like this: I do quite want to go on seeing Max, but I’m very glad it’s not gonna be me they’re all staying with for the next few weeks. So, yeah, hurray.