Free Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson

a bludg—’
    ‘I’ll do the swearing round here! He’s a bludger, all right, but naturally, he had to kick in som
e
thing.’
    ‘Why can’t she make the place into flats, and live in one of them?’
    ‘Would you like to live in a flat, Nora, after having had your own home?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, Mum’s different.’
    ‘I know. That’s why I don’t want to go.’
    ‘Oh, come on, Nora, be reasonable. It won’t be for long.’
    ‘Oh. Won’t it?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’
    ‘You didn’t give me a chance.’
    ‘How long?’
    ‘Oh … just till we see how things work out.’
    ‘Oh. And after that, could we come back here? Or somewhere like it? Anyway, a place of our own?’
    ‘I don’t see why not. Come on, now—smile.
That’s
better. Kissie, kissie, kissie.’
    I went to Bomera and told the artists. ‘Cheer up,’ they said. ‘It’s not Timbuctoo. Half an hour in the train. You can come to see us often.’
    I went and told Ida Mayo. She kissed me. ‘Well, he’s not the only one that’s panicked. Come any time you like, Nora. I’m always here.’
    I walked up to Bayswater Road and told Lewie. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘you poor thing.’
    ‘Oh, cheer up,’ I said, ‘it’s not Timbuctoo. I’ll come to town quite often.’
    ‘Oh, good. And we can go for a walk, or to Ida’s. And if we’re terribly rich’—he raised his voice against the noise of a tram grinding up the hill to the Cross—‘we can go for a
tram ride
.’
    Very early the next day, Betty Cust comes to attend to my morning needs and to make me a pot of tea, which she stays to share with me.
    ‘Do you remember the Depression, Betty?’ I have not slept well, and the question seems a natural extension of my night thoughts.
    She replies that she remembers it very well. ‘But it musthave been worse in the south, because such a lot of men came up here. Or perhaps that was because it’s easier to be broke in a warm climate. They used to come to our place for hot water, or for tea or bread or anything else we could give them. Dad said we must have had a chalk mark on our gate, but I think it was only because we lived near the park. One afternoon I was coming home from school across the park, Nora, and a man suddenly sat up from where he had been lying in the long grass. Sat up and stared at me. And then lo and behold a woman sat up beside him. They were both still half asleep. They had been sleeping in the grass with their heads on rolls of blankets. Imagine in those days a woman humping a swag. There were hundreds of men, but that was the only time I saw a woman.’
    ‘It wouldn’t have occurred to most women then,’ I say, ‘though some must wish it had.’
    ‘Not too awful, I suppose, as long as they could travel with a man for protection. Jack and I are going over to Clayfield this morning, Nora, with some plants for our daughter-in-law. But we’ll be home in time for your lunch. And to get you up, I hope. Gordon Rainbow said he will try to get here about half past ten.’
    ‘And he said I could get up?’
    ‘He thinks so, for a while. Oh yes, and I brought you a pawpaw. I left it in the kitchen. It’s not quite ripe yet.’
    At about nine o’clock Lyn Wilmot comes.
    ‘A pawpaw! They’re not ripe here yet. It must have been sent down to them from Cairns. People are always sending the Custs things. Not that they need it. Oh well, to them that hath! That old newsagent’s shop—you know that old newsagent’s shop they had, with the great big backyard?’
    ‘Yes. Somebody used to practise scales,’ I say slowly, ‘in the sitting room above the shop.’
    ‘I wouldn’t know. Long before my time. What I was going to say is, there’s a supermarket there now. A hundred thousand, the Custs are supposed to have got for the site. And just afterwards, Mrs Cust’s mother died, and Mrs Cust got
her
place. And what happened? Ampol bought it!’
    But I am still hearing those