Free A Woman of the Inner Sea by Thomas Keneally Page B

them.
    —I’d better get back and sober up. In any case the technicians will come and fix the phone.
    He did manage to convey, almost despite himself, that once he sobered up and the phone was fixed he would not have any future need to expose his grief to any outsider.
    Bernard awoke, and Kate made him a sandwich. In strengthening light, perhaps she could open the doors to the sun deck soon and let the sea air discreetly in.
    But then thunderheads bulked up around the headland again.
    The telephone rang and it was Jim Gaffney, master of the hypercinema.
    —I was thinking. Your mother is going to the ballet with her group.
    For Mrs. Gaffney had become in middle life a balletophile, if not -maniac. She had discovered the work of a Sydney choreographer called Graeme Murphy, and had taken to the dance with very nearly the same degree of loyalty she displayed to her brother, the fallen priest.
    —I believe Paul is away in Brisbane, said Jim, always better at intelligence than anyone ever expected. I think this is a good chance for us to have dinner.
    —I’d have to see how Denise is placed.
    —You ought to get a live-in nanny.
    —I’m a professional mother, as everyone kindly points out. I don’t need a nanny yet.
    —What if we went to Bilson’s and looked down on Sydney Cove? asked Jim. Where it all began, eh? Phillip and the convicts. Father and daughter?
    —Have you been talking to Uncle Frank?
    —Well, I don’t have to talk to Uncle Frank to work out what’s happening.
    —I don’t need comforting.
    Jim said, not quite plausibly, I’m the one who needs comfort. I haven’t seen my daughter sufficiently.
    She made a number of excuses. For this was supposed to be the afternoon for the dancing lesson. There were balletomanes in this household too. She wanted to be home for them when Denise brought them back from their class. However, since they had colds, she doubted she would send them to the dancing class.
    She asked Jim to wait a moment. On the rule of thumb that if the child was sick, she would say,
No, I want you to stay with me
, she went and asked Siobhan whether she would like Denise to come and stay with her that evening.
    Siobhan did not even take her eyes from the page on which she was drawing a dancer, yet another one.
    —No worries, she told Kate.
    The idiom of the Avalon playground was there.
No worries
.
    Bernard had just woken and had overheard the question. He satup, greeting the idea by clapping both hands in front of his face. A memorable gesture, to do with life’s abundance.
    We can indulge and find outright poignant Kate’s minor flush of jealousy. It had been apparent for some years that Denise the baby-minder was not merely a substitute Kate. She was autonomous in the children’s order of things.
    It worried Kate that envy arose even so minutely. The chance was inherent of slipping into the habit of resentment, of growing up to become Mrs. Kozinski senior, whose life consisted of the bitter assertion of the primacy of her own vision of Paul; of pushing the idea that nobody understood Paul as she did, that in connecting with Kate he had placed himself in the hands of a base interpreter.
    Kate went back to the telephone and told Jim that—dependent on Denise being free—she could meet him. She felt like something quiet and less special-occasion than Bilson’s, though.
    He nominated a restaurant in Double Bay, one of his favorites though not one of hers. He liked hearty meals. He was not an enthusiast of nouvelle cuisine.
    —Shall I send a car? he asked.
    But then she remembered what had happened in the Forest last time, and couldn’t accommodate any more misunderstandings of that nature.
    —No, I’ll drive myself.
    As was usual, he wanted to dine early. It was his working-class origins, he said. Six-thirty.
    Worn out from the strenuous business of creating a universe of balletic success for her central character, Siobhan now fell asleep. Kate read to the refreshed Bernard on the