Adelaide, SA

6

Adelaide, SA

November (ctd.) “Just watch out for that bugger, Micky Mulvaney,” the genial Mr Lewisham—“Shit, call me Greg!”—adjured us, as we all sat round the big old kitchen table of his roomy, sprawling bungalow. The scene was very reminiscent of those many happy hours spent in the Ovendens’ kitchen back in Blighty, except that it was early November and the sun was streaming in through the big bank of windows over the sinkbench and the back door was open to reveal a patch of dusty yard, a large hedge of something smallish-leaved named Lily, unlikely tho that seemed, and a stretch of bright blue sky, all somewhat mitigated by the metal mesh screen door through which they were on view. –Fly-screen. Australian houses all seemed to feature them.

    The gent referred to so slightingly by our host was nothing to do with his vineyard, Silvercreek, but a South Australian jockey encountered during the three-hour flight from Melbourne, who had chummed up with Bean and Crumpy (in the same row of very cramped seats), and offered to show them the ropes any time they felt like “coming in to Morphettville.” The two chumps had accepted this offer eagerly on behalf of all of us and to boot told him all about my and Devon’s big win on the Cup, the which had apparently caused a paroxysm of delight in Mr Mulvaney, not, as Crumpy later revealed, on account merely of the size of the win, but on that of a jockey’s having got away with it.

    “Do you know him, then, Greg?” asked Crumpy weakly.

    “Know of him, yeah, the whole of SA does! Crooked as a dog’s hind leg! Lost his licence, um, woulda been about five year back, I think. He got it back, but it didn’t stop ’im. Anybody that puts his dough on anything he rides is a bloody nit.”

    “What about laying off on the nags he rides?” asked Bean with a grin.

    “Yeah, well, that’d work. If the websites’d let ya. The S.P. boys wouldn’t have a bar of ya.”

    S.P. meaning “starting price”, and the “boys” being the on-course Aussie bookies, we all nodded obediently, tho Bean looked rather dashed.

    “Um, he asked us if we’d like to meet up for, er, a meal in town, too,” added Crumpy uncertainly.

    “He’ll make you pay,” returned Mr Lewisham instantly.

    We gulped.

    “Make it somewhere reasonable, you’ll be jake,” he added kindly.

    “Er—yes,” Crumpy agreed. “But—er—would Micky have meant lunch or dinner, when he said ‘a feed’?”

    “Either, mate!’ Greg Lewisham replied with his robust laugh. “I’d make it lunch: ya don’t wanna be driving back here at night when ya don’t know the roads.”

    The lads nodded fervently. His lovely boutique winery, Silvercreek, was reached by means of a nice wide main road leading out of Adelaide City (northeast according to the Bean), to the Barossa Valley. Which is rather large and rather complex and the further you get into its more obscure reaches, the narrower and dustier the roads become. Silvercreek is tucked away in what seems to be a little offshoot of the big valley itself, and I certainly hadn’t noticed any streetlamps at all in the last long stretch of dirt road.

    Helpfully Greg added: “Most of the pubs downtown’ll give you a decent feed. The Seven Stars in Angas Street isn’t bad. Steaks, snitzles—you know.”

    “So it’d be more than just a ploughman’s?” Bean ventured.

    “Eh?”

    “Um, more than bread and cheese and pickles,” he fumbled.

    “Hell, yeah! That what they’d give you in England?” he croaked.

    “Um, for lunch, yes, at lots of pubs,” the unfortunate lad faltered.

    “Yes, especially round Dad’s way,” Egg agreed.

    “Jesus. Think they’d go out of business if they tried that on here. Nah, it’ll be a proper feed.”

    “Righty-ho. Thanks awfully, Greg,” said Crumpy politely.

    “No worries.” His eyes twinkled. “Mindjew, you could always have a steak here!”

    “I’ll say!” beamed Bean Minor. “Those steaks you did for us last night were super, sir!”

    The burly Greg Lewisham, who was, I suppose, about fiftyish, eyed his gangly frame and eager face tolerantly. “Glad ya liked them. The secret is to get the barbie really hot and sear the meat. And it’s gotta be room temperature: no good if it’s straight out of the fridge.”

    The chaps nodded earnestly, drinking in these words of male wisdom from the expert. Personally I had taken a vow—very, very soon after reaching Australia, actually—never to touch a dashed barbecue as long as I lived. They were not simple grates over fires, they were terrifying giant pieces of shiny hardware. Named shiny hardware. The Lewisham barbecue, for instance, was called Webber.

    A trifle unfortunately, so was Greg’s foreman at the winery: Webber Johnson. We’d met him at dinner on our first night at Silvercreek. He was a bachelor, a youngish man, and had a room over the winery office but usually ate with Greg, who was divorced.

    We had received the intel on the ex-wife from one, Janine Stuart, Mrs, who “popped in” to do housework for Greg, and had obligingly stayed on past her usual hour the day we arrived to see us nicely settled. The “silly woman” had thought she’d be living the life of Riley being married to a vineyard owner.—Scornful sniff.—She had walked out on him, complete with the Mercedes sports car for which Greg had paid and Baby Harrison, after discovering a vineyard was “bloody hard yacker” with no glamorous gold medal wins—words to that effect. Subsequently taking up with “a sleazebag” who’d taken her to Bali and dumped her there so that she’d had to phone “poor Greg” to bail her out. (Meaning pay her air fare home, we worked out, she hadn’t been jailed for such crimes as “walking around half-naked” or “smoking pot and I dare say worse” –Mrs S. Tho she certainly deserved it! –Ibid.) By this time she’d dumped little Harrison on her mother “for free day-care”. About the time the divorce came through she’d crowned her follies, so to speak, by immolating herself, the aforesaid Mercedes and the boyfriend of the moment on “the Princes Highway”. (Googled by Bean, with some difficulty, and found not to contain any apostrophe, no. Hugely long, running from Sydney through New South Wales and down into Victoria.) This horror story had resulted in the grandmother’s dumping Harrison, then aged three, back on Greg. A succession of unsuitable nannies and au pairs had followed, until the capable Janine S. had taken over. This must have been some time back, as Harrison was now a bouncing boy of around twenty-three, working as a rouseabout (more googling: a general farmhand) on a cattle stud with a very unlikely name “up the boo-eye somewhere. Well don’t ask me, Michael, dear: you head for Port Augusta and turn off somewhere, is all I know. Of course his father was terribly disappointed—he started the Ag. Sci. course, you see, and we all thought he’d specialise in grapes, but no, he got all keen on blimmin’ cattle.” Unquote.

    As far as we could tell, Greg was very fond of his son and not particularly disappointed that he didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, and in fact had arranged that he would be left an interest in the business along with his two top employees, if they were still with him: Webber, who was very keen and hardworking, and the winemaker, a very bright young man by name James Drake, nickname not the customary “Jimbo”, nor the tepid English variants “Jim” and “Jimmy”, but “Duck”. Since his early schooldays, apparently. Everybody seemed to use it and Duck didn’t seem to mind. Golly, as Trelawney had put it in awe.

    Or, as Egg had put it rather faintly: “You know, I could have sworn I was back in Mum and Dad’s kitchen, with our Mrs Terry holding forth.”

    Well quite. One’s head seemed to have become somewhat detached from one’s shoulders, as it were.

    “Global village?” Crumpy had ventured.

    “Crumpet, old friend and comrade of those golden hours of our misspent youth, just don’t, there’s a good chap,” sighed Egg.

    So the Crumpet had obediently subsided but was still—this was now our third day in South Australia—rather goggle-eyed. Greg’s helpful info on the luncheon customs and venues in the aforesaid state being a definite contributing factor.

    In fact, when Greg had finished his third giant mug of milky instant coffee that had helped wash down the breakfast of hot sausages and fried tomatoes, cornflakes with milk and sliced banana, and several slices of, variously, toast and marmalade, toast and Vegemite, and toast and peanut butter, and departed to the winery, which was a fair way down the road from the house, Crumpy asked weakly: “Well should I ring Micky Mulvaney, do you think, Egg?”

    The Egg looked dubious. “I suppose it’s better to be shown the local ropes by a local crook than not to have a guide at all.”

    “Yes,” I agreed with a giggle: “any local is better than none: we’d still be wandering round Sydney looking for rocks without Rob’s help!”

    Trelawney at this collapsed in splutters, gasping: “Does that prove Egg’s point, Sister Bean?”

    “That young lad,” I noted in annoyance, “is getting above himself.”

    “Abso-bally-lutely!” Crumpy agreed. “Silence, Trelawney! On pain of having all buttons torn off and your sword broken across the Colonel’s knee.”

    “I say!” he objected. “You chaps are too hard on a fellow!”

    “We could send the blighter to Coventry, chaps,” the Bean suggested.

    “Isn’t that a bit far? I mean, on the other side of the world?” I gasped, collapsing in more giggles at my own brilliant wit.

    The Egg sighed. “Ignore that, you fellows, it’s all that genuine Australian Rose’s Sweet Orange Marmalade: gone to her head.”

    “Guess what!” I beamed. “Duck says they actually grow them here in South Australia, and his uncle’s got an orange orchard up near the Murray and he’ll take us up there if we like!”

    “That was quick,” croaked Bean Minor.

    “She gets it from Mum,” returned Bean on a sour note.

    “I didn’t make him offer!” I cried, somewhat flushed as to the edges, so to speak.

    “No, you just smiled at the poor sap and he was putty in your tiny paws, as per usual,” sighed the Egg.

    “Well wouldn’t it be interesting to see a real orange orchard?” I cried.

    He eyed me drily. “What is ‘the Murray’, Mel?”

    Er…

    Promptly they all collapsed in splutters, dashed Bean into the bargain slapping his be-jeaned thigh with glee. –Those who had feared, incidentally, that we might be somewhat underdressed for a posh boutique winery, hadn’t needed to. Jeans were de rigueur here—except for Mrs S., who favoured flowery frocks and loyalist aprons. So far, one with the Australian flag and, er, possible dolphins, anyway leaping marine life, possibly advertising Pure Cotton and the Environment, at least, those words were on it; and one with an intriguing design of sparrow-like birds with too-long tails and very strange bright red, um, blooms, in which Bean discerned a relationship with the genus Pisum.—“What was that, Michael, dear? –Goodness! Sturt’s Desert Pea, of course!”—Yet more googling. The State Flower of South Australia! Thanks, Bean, Resident Botanist, we all needed to know that. Trelawney had later asked what the birds were. Willy wagtails, Teddy, dear, surely you had them in England? The poor boy had retreated, smiling weakly.

    Bean recovered from the splutters, unfortunately, and looking down his dashed nose, enlightened my ignorance with: “The Murray is a huge Australian river, their longest, running along the border between New South Wales and Victoria and down to the sea through South Australia.” Then he was actually seen to hesitate over his putrid smart phone.

    ‘”Go on,” drawled Egg.

    “Well it’s very odd, but it seems to be called ‘River Murray’ in South Australia, but ‘Murray River’ by the rest of the… Country,” he ran down sheepishly.

    “What?” we cried.

    “Honest! It’s on Wiki—”

    Before the dread word was out of his mouth the Crumpet had leapt upon him bodily and wrenched the horrid instrument off him.

    “Um, surely one can’t say— I mean, it’d be like saying ‘River John’,” faltered Trelawney. “As if it was a person!”

    Well yes. We all looked expectantly at Crumpy.

    “It does say that here,” he admitted, peering.

    What?

    Finally the Egg offered, tho very weakly: “I suppose one does say ‘the River Thames’.”

    Very probably proving that the young have a great deal more stamina than their elders, Bean Minor asked: “Well what did Duck actually say, Mel?”

    Er… They stared at me in exasperation as my lips moved desperately.

    “Just ‘the Murray’,” I decided at last.

    Experimentally Egg tried: “‘The Murray. The Thames.’ …Yes, that’d work. It might sound a bit casual, but at least it’d prevent the irreparable shoving of the great hind appendage into the masticatory apparatus. All vote Aye on the articulation ‘the Murray’, Junior Drones?”

    The Ayes had it.

    After which it was agreed that Yes, a trip to see an orange orchard would be interesting, and No, Mel would NOT go alone with Duck Drake. And thirdly, returning at long last to the topic actually in Q., Yes, Crumpy should ring up Mr Mulvaney and arrange to meet him for lunch in Adelaide.

    Well he’d forgotten that was the topic, actually, but he duly rang, and reported: “Done.” And started to read out the electronic communication which followed—

    But the Egg stopped him in time. Inscribed paper messages only, we’d had more than enough of the 21st century these last few days, thanks. And kindly don’t bother to return that other piece of junk to the Bean, old chap.

    The Crumpet had forgotten he’d shoved it in his pocket, actually, but he agreed amiably. And as the Bean, tho taller, is definitely not up to his fighting weight, that settled that.

    In the end only Egg, Crumpy and I piled into the shiny, very pale grey car that belonged to Greg but which he seldom drove, preferring the vineyard’s ageing 4x4 or its dusty ute, and headed for the city, my siblings and their little pal having voted to get down to the bottling shed and be given the tour by Duck and Webber. One hadn’t thought that Trelawney would be interested, but it turned out it was the mechanics of it, Mel— Okay, Trelawney, dear. Very nice. –Yes, he did make one feel old! the Egg agreed to the subtext. I smiled palely. Mm.

    Well there was a certain amount of confusion, not to say panic when we got there, at least, to the edge of what was possibly the city proper; Adelaide consists of lots of very, very spread-out garden suburbs and a very small CBD with not-tall buildings. Micky had instructed us to park in the parking lot of the Entertainment Centre and take the tram into the central city. That sprawling but not tall unlovely structure must be it, but where was the— Oh. A HUGE parking lot, nearly filled already, altho it was relatively early on a Saturday morning, with shiny white, off-white and very pale grey vehicles: we were never going to find Greg’s car again! However, the 21st century for once came to the rescue. The “key” was a beeper thing. So provided no other cars had beeper things on the exact same frequency… Not thinking about that at all.

    There was a group of brightly-dressed humans standing looking somewhat forlorn at what must be a tram stop, so we joined them. Nothing happened. After a bit  Crumpy ventured: “I say, excuse me, sir, but is this the stop for the city?”

    “Yeah.—English, are ya, mate?—Yeah, the line ends here. But it’s Sat’dee, see? God knows when one’ll turn up. We been waiting half an hour already, eh, Mon’?” Sourly the distaff side confirmed this.

    Uh-huh. Right. Got it. Crumpy managed to thank him, but only just.

    After quite some time—it was getting hotter and the strangely-designed tram stop featured very little roof, certainly not enough to afford shade at this time of day—another disaffected would-be passenger offered sardonically: “The bloody thing’s prob’ly broken down again. Must be at least thirdy today.”

    “Yeah, or even twenny-five,” agreed the burly gent in the apricot Tee who’d answered Crumpy’s query. Very, very sour as well as very snide.

    “They’re German, ya see,” his helpmeet explained on a bitter note.

    “They got no idea what an SA summer’s like,” he elaborated. “When they started running them, the bloody air-con kept conking out, wouldja believe? Stuck halfway down the ruddy line in a sealed tin can with no air-con in fordy-two degrees? They were droppin’ like flies. Me sister-in-law flaked, eh, Mon’?”

    “Yes, poor thing. She’s never set foot on one since. But it’s hopeless trying to get a park in town,” she added with a sigh.

    We got it.

    Well to cut a long story short a tram did finally arrive. Very smoothly streamlined shiny metal, it was, with a gigantic coloured ad all over it, windows and all. Inside, this proved to be composed of a mesh-like pattern, the tiny holes in which allowed one to view as if through a glass darkly the passing— Never mind. No air conditioning at all, as far as we could tell. The couple from the tram stop decided to get off early, he remarking: “We can walk to the flamin’ railway station from there, easy.” The two small fluorescent objects with him began objecting vociferously but he gave a bellow of “SHUDDUP!” which worked.

    Bravely Egg asked: “Would that be anywhere near the casino, sir?”

    “Eh? Yeah, ’course! Aw, you wouldn’t know,” he recognised with complete amiability—the bellow having been a mere form, one gathered. “It’s the same thing. –This is us! Come on! –YES! GeddOFF, youse mob!”

    “Come on, I’m about to faint,” said Egg, and we got off gratefully.

    “Straight ahead, mate,” said the helpful gent kindly, hosting the smaller of the two products of his loins onto his shoulder. “Ya CAN’T walk, Cheryl, it’s too far!” And off they set, at quite a good pace, considering the ambient temperature and the giant sneakers cunningly designed to impede the natural motion of the human foot.

    “Hang on!” hissed Crumpy.

    “That hat’s okay, old man,” said the Egg as he was seen to be adjusting the cream straw cowboy hat acquired earlier.

    “Eh? No!” he hissed. “Did that chap actually say ‘Cheryl’ with a Chuh, not a Shuh?”

    “Yes, yes: your ears haven’t gone funny,” the Egg replied soothingly. “You all right, Mel?”

    “I am now,” I admitted, removing my cream straw cowboy hat and fanning myself briskly with it. “Phew! All those windows were sealed, did you notice? There was no ventilation at all! So much for German engineering!”

    “Exactly!” the heirs of the winners of the Second World War agreed fervently. And we all set off, rather slowly, towards possibly the railway station, possibly the casino, and possibly, er, both?

    … It was both.

    Micky was waiting outside it. The structure was undoubtedly an elderly railway station, of the unlovely, or rather squat variety, no St Pancrases or Gares du Nord need apply, but only the suburban trains used it, the jockey explained: that was the bottom bit, ya see, and the casino was upstairs. Nothin’ much, really: loads of pokies for the mugs. Sniff. Anyway, come on, his brother-in-law—wink—was on the gate at the (insert name of local establishment) carpark today. And we were led off along the not nearly tree-lined enough street, past some delightful Edwardian buildings somewhat marred by the presence of a glass-fronted long box or, er, square tube? set between two of them, and over the road to where, sure enough, having dived down a tunnel-like alleyway and into another tunnel, we found his car in the parking building. And emerged triumphantly, with a wink to the brother-in-law and the casual remark: “Ya could give ’im a tenner, if ya like”—and the consequent ten dollars from Crumpy, who of course was always in funds thanks to his dad—as I say, emerged onto the same road as in we went. And headed for…

    Just how crooked was a dog’s hind leg? Possibly Micky was kidnapping us, I reflected, as miles of garden suburb fled by us. Well, Mr Lamont could afford to pay our ransoms, yes, but would poor Lucius L., aka Crumpet, ever hear the last of it?

    Just as I was starting to panic Micky announced: “Here ya go. Not too busy today. See, we’re a bit early, but I gotta get over to Morphettville this arvo. There’ll be a few families, but the old dames that come here during the week, they don’t usually turn up in the weekends.”

    “It’s lovely!” I cried.

    He smirked. “Nobbad, eh?”

    It was a tiny seaside shopping area amidst suburbia, with several cafés that faced onto a little central plaza with a wonderful view of gently frothing waves and a wide stretch of blue sea.

    “I say! Is that the Tasman?” asked Crumpet admiringly.

    Mr Mulvaney shook slightly. “Nah, mate, ya got the wrong end of the stick! You’re in SA now, ya know! Yeah—no, that’s Gulf St Vincent. Like, that’s Yorke Peninsula over there.”

    We peered into the glare but couldn’t see a far shore. Okay, if he said so.

    He grinned suddenly. “Ya keep on sailing that way,” he said, waving his hand, “you end up in Antar’tica!"

    Gulp.

    Er, yes, we were on the other side of the world, all right. None of us uttered: we just sat there, contemplating the awe-inspiring thought that to our left there was nothing but sea between us and the South Pole…

    Micky headed on along the coast for a few yards and parked, and we walked back the short distance to the little plaza. And had a blissful earlyish lunch under the sun umbrellas of the café nearest the water, looking out dreamily over the silver sands and the frothy wavelets on a perfect summer’s day…

    The lunch lived up to the day, too. Light and delicious. The café’s fare was what Egg would later categorise as “Graeco-Roman”, both Italian and Greek influences being discerned—which turned out to be because SA, according to the helpful Mrs Janine Stuart, had large populations of both Italians and Greeks. I chose bruschetta, maybe not terrifically Italianate, as it was laden with approx. half a good-sized avocado as well as the trad. fresh basil, large slices of tomato and mozzarella cheese, but totally delicious. Crumpy chose grilled lamb (i.e. shish-kebabs) with a Greek salad, discovering that the large black olives in it along with the fetta cheese, tomato, cucumber, lettuce and narrow onion rings were gaspingly salty. “Kalamata,” said Micky kindly, if arcanely. Okay, olives that had a name. Well if a barbecue could, why not? Just in time the Crumpet remembered earlier experiences with rings of onion in Aussie restaurant salads of whatever racial derivation, and left them severely alone. (Reeking. Horrifically strong. Ruined one’s palate for the rest of the day. Normal here, apparently.) Without them, the combo was smashing, he reported happily. Egg had chosen the moussaka with an Italian side salad (why not?) and was rather surprised to find the aubergine in the former eked out not with the expectable potato à la the nosh-houses of Soho, but pumpkin. However, the overall effect was delish!

    Well yes, Crumpy did end up paying for Micky’s lunch, but it was only a salad and a spring water: we’d all forgotten that if he was racing he wouldn’t want to eat much: he’d have to keep his weight down to a minimum.

    And after excellent Italian-style espressos that one had to call “short blacks” and ask for “short black, full cup” in order to get more than a thimbleful, we were able to embark on the true object of the exercise.

    Accompanying Micky Mulvaney to Morphettville Racecourse and putting on bets for him. Egg and Crumpy both being keen on horses, and Egg’s dad of course being in the business, they didn’t object to the races as such, but…

    It wasn’t as one might have expected. I had naturally assumed Micky would be backing himself—tho I must admit Egg was looking remarkably neutral as we prepared to receive our instructions, prudently in the carpark, in the car. These two exact S.P. bookies, yeah, on-course, that was, and never mind about the odds—Crumpy looked very startled. One bet on each of these horses to win and one to place, oke? And don’t put both on the same horse with the same bookie, goddit? In race X, Fiona’s Favourite and My Little Boy, in race Y, Woomera Wind and Nancy’s Fancy, and in race Z, Toowoomba Two-Toes and Brindabella Baby. –Yeah, that’s right, Crumpy, mate, write it down, make sure ya get the names right, oke? Yeah, we could bet on them if we liked but better make it on the Tote. –Eh? Yeah, he was riding in those three races but—airily—he didn’t think he had much of a chance. I for one was now looking narrowly at his thin, very tanned, slightly lopsided face with its amiable grin and twinkling brown eyes. Its expression didn’t change. O-kay.

    He had two other races this arvo, too, and we could put a bit on for ourselves if we felt like it, but the field was very strong. Sukiyaki and Outfielder. With a different bookie, oke?

    And then it was ho! for the track proper.

    Well one racecourse is very much like another except that at Flemington the gardens had been full of masses of the most wonderful yellow roses for the Cup. Morphettville wasn’t very big, but it was pretty crowded, stands and rails. Micky towed us up to the right stand, provided us with a couple of pairs of borrowed field-glasses, and disappeared.

    “Will we ever be able to find our way back here again?” wondered Crumpy faintly, looking down at the brightly coloured crowds in the sun. “Help, I don’t see the bookies!”

    “Over there,” spotted Egg. “I’ll nip down, shall I? Let’s have a look at your notes, Crumpy, old man. …Hm. Let’s see… Um, well, two bookies, but not the same two horses to both win and place in the same race with the one bookie, and not two horses to win their race with the one bookie… No, you’re the maths whizz, Crumpy, can you work it out?”

    Some heavy breathing and a lot of work with the gold pen ensued but finally it was all worked out. With a warning from Egg that those placing the bets had better not let themselves be seen together by the two bookies concerned. One wouldn’t matter: why shouldn’t a couple of chums have had an argument over which nag was likely to win? But twice could look odd, and thrice would definitely look suspicious.

    “Okay,” said Egg, “I’ll put the initial bets on with Bookie A. Fiona’s Favourite to win and My Little Boy to place. And then you can pop down and do Bookie B, Crumpy: My Little Boy to win and Fiona’s Favourite to place, that right?”

    “That’s it,” he nodded. “Reverse of yours, so to speak.”

    “Want to come, Mel?” the Egg asked kindly.

    I took another look at the seething crowds. “No, thanks, Egg. Maybe I’ll go down to the Tote a bit later.”

    “Yeah. Well make it to place on each of the six, I’d say,” he said on a dry note, and disappeared.

    “Um, Crumpy,” I hissed, “what do you think Mi—um, he’s up to?”

    The Crumpet bent down from his superior height and hissed in my ear, having to move my straw cowboy hat in order to do so: “Going to pull his nags!”

    Gulp. Funnily enough I’d had an idea that might be the case. Help.

    Hang on, tho… “I say, Crumpy, will that necessarily work?”

    He winked at me, and mouthed: “Hang on.” Then he said politely to the large, red-visaged gent who had just installed himself next to us, complete with giant binoculars over the vast expanses of a bright floral shirt, and a list of what even I could see were runners in a tightly folded product of the Fourth Estate: “I say, excuse me, sir, but we’re strangers here. Could you tell me how Fiona’s Favourite and My Little Boy are fancied?”

    Immediately recognising that these equine personalities were in race X, the gent obligingly replied: “Nobbad, the odds have shortened. But they’re second and third favourites to OnceUponaDream.”

    “I see; thanks awfully. And who’s riding it, do you know?”

    “Lessee. …Oh. Micky Mulvaney.” He shrugged. “In that case it’s a toss-up, mate. I wouldn’t put yer dough on it, or if ya do, make it each way. Hang on… Yeah, well. The bugger’s on the favourites in (numbers of races Y and Z), as well. Wouldn’t bet on Shandrydan or Cassie-Oprah if was you: put yer dough on Woomera Wind or Brindabella Baby.”

    “Oh—righty-ho,” said the Crumpet a trifle weakly. “Thanks awfully, sir.”

    “No worries, mate! English, are ya?”

    The Crumpet having admitted the soft impeachment, he was then favoured with “a lend” of the gent’s newspaper. We peered. Crumpy pointed silently to the list for race Y. Yep, “Shandrydan (M. Mulvaney).” Favourite at evens. Uh-huh. And in race Z… Er… Oh! In race Z Micky was slated to ride Cassiopeia! I had to swallow. I peered at the odds…

    “The favourite, yes,” the Crumpet confirmed. He began to shake silently.

    “Don’t you dare to laugh!” I hissed.

    Some gulping ensued, but he recovered and was able to focus his glasses on the track.

    Official business having successfully been concluded, as it were, Crumpy elected to hold our place in the stand for us while Egg and I ventured forth to the Tote, where we adventured a joint thirty dollars both ways upon the aforesaid half dozen fearless quadrupeds, being pleased to note that public estimation of their form was such as to secure us quite reasonable if not generous odds. Then we returned to the stand and the company of the large knowledgeable gentleman, and readied ourselves…

    Well suffice it to say Micky’s picks all won their races or placed second, he lost all his races and we three won moderate sums on the Tote and collected considerable largesse from the two unfortunate bookies. Micky’s final race wasn’t the last race of the day but by common consent we packed it in after that and staggered off to a bar.

    “Well, now, chaps!” grinned the Crumpet. “Beer or bubbly? On me!”

    “Crumpy, old man, we can’t let you pay for everything,” objected Egg.

    “I’m not: it’s Dad’s dough,” he replied simply.

    “But I’ve still got all those winnings from the Melbourne Cup!” I reminded them. “I’ll pay, Crumpy!”

    “No, you won’t,” he said, promptly getting up. “I’m for an ice-cold Aussie beer: dashed hot out, isn’t it? Fancy a glass of fizz, Sister Bean?”

    “It’ll be as cold as the beer,” noted Egg with a grin.

    “Oh, yes, so it will! Lovely, thanks, Crumpy!”

    “I’ll get you a beer, too,” he said to Egg, departing.

    We were sitting back sipping gratefully when Micky came in, grinning all over his face.

    “I say, Micky, jolly bad luck, old man,” said Egg immediately. “Five losers in a row, eh? Not your day.”

    “Aw, well: ya win some, ya lose some!” the jockey replied airily. “Whatcha drinkin’, Liddle Mel? Fizz? Right! I’ll get a bottle!”

    “It’d serve him bally well right if we scarpered with the lot!” hissed the Crumpet, glaring at his back.

    “Yes!” agreed Egg, suddenly collapsing in helpless laughter. “But he knew—at a glance—that we wouldn’t!”

    “Oh, hah frightfully hah!” the Crumpet retorted, what time I bit my lip hard. Of course he’d known, the cunning thing!

    … “Well?” grinned Greg Lewisham as we finally tottered into the big kitchen at Silvercreek, very hot and tired at the end of the long, hot afternoon.

    The Crumpet cleared his throat. “Put it like this: the blighter only definitely pulled his nags in three of the five races he rode.”

    The Egg nodded. “Yes. But he was quite generous, really: he advised us to bet on the nags he was backing in all three of them.”

    “Yes,” I agreed. “We did win a bit. And at the end of the day he shouted us to, um, well, to Angas Brut, but it was a whole bottle.”

    “Of which he drank?” Greg returned, poker-face.

    Abruptly the Crumpet collapsed in a horrible fit of sniggers. The Egg tried to control himself, failed, and joined him.

    Oh, dear. I had to sit down rather suddenly. It had been, really, the cherry on top of the Micky Mulvaney sundae, so to speak.

    “Three quarters of it, Greg,” I admitted.

    Abruptly Mr Lewisham broke down in ecstatic howls of laughter, gasping: “Toleja! Classic!”

    Something like that. It was far too late to say that we’d all spotted the man, but had gone along with him because—well, really, because, as he’d long since realised, we were too nice not to. Dashed chumps, one and all, what? Call me Bertie.

    When the boys returned from the bottling plant they had of course to hear the entire saga. Chortling ensued but then Trelawney appeared to lapse into deep thought. “He must really have had it in for those two bookies,” he concluded.

    Out of the mouths of babes and—

    “Yes,” we agreed weakly.

    Greg had ascertained that we hadn’t really seen much of the city, unless one counted Morphettville Racecourse, a drive through endless garden suburbs—he blinked, the phrase was perhaps strange to him—and the dubious delights of the frightful tram and a shortish walk along a longish hot road infested with the aforesaid conveyance and featuring a strange mixture of hideous modern hotels and department stores and charming Edwardian architecture—Aw, yeah, that’ll of been (insert name of local thoroughfare). So after an early brekkie he loaded us into the vineyard’s people carrier, rather like the Pearsons’, but larger, a small minibus, and off we went for the day. By the time we got to the CBD it already seemed very hot to us, so after a certain amount of attempting to drive around the centre itself, largely foiled by the presence of the dashed tram lines right in the middle of it, tho we did manage to see a goodly number of not-very-high office towers and banks, he decided to “hit the beaches” and then drop in on his old dad up in North Adelaide and take him to lunch. He supposed—cheery laugh—that we wouldn’t wanna go to the beach on the bloody tram, eh? Eleven K. Oddly enough we concurred in this sufficiently negative supposition.

    So we drove through endless garden suburbs along miles of wide, cambered streets, each stretch seeming longer and straighter, until suddenly the road intersected with the dreaded tram line, we turned sharp right, and in two seconds or thereabouts found ourselves at an unlovely paved area featuring in the foreground an almost undoubted tram stop. Well the line certainly came to a stop there. And beyond, the wide blue sea under the azure sky of South Australia. Er, to the left a glitzy modern erection featuring a certain amount of glass. It looked very closed.

    “That is a restaurant,” admitted Mr Lewisham, eying it with disfavour, “but ya don’t wanna go there. One of those poncy places that’s always changing their chef. And half the time it’s booked out by the trendies with the funny sunnies from the city.”

    Duck Drake, who had volunteered to come with us, the people carrier having plenty of room, at this put in, disentangling his right arm from my shoulders where somehow it had found its way, seemingly of its own volition: “And the shaved heads. Ruddy hideous. Look bloody silly with the sunnies, too.”

    “Gosh! We get those back home!” said Crumpy in astonishment. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d have them here.”

    “Scores of ’em, mate!”

    “Don’t they get sunburnt, tho?” ventured Bean Minor, adjusting his own sunnies (not funny) carefully on his slightly sunburnt nose.

    “Nah, mate: nippin’ from the A-C in the downtown towers into the Porsches with their A-C, into the A-C in the flamin’ up-market nosh houses? No way!”

    Right. As different as one could imagine, really, from the tall, very tanned, and very good-looking Duck, with his neat brown hair: the sort that tries to curl but has been trimmed carefully on top to just suggest the merest hint of it.

    Trelawney, of course, always likes to get things absolutely straight, so he pursued: “Do they wear business suits, Duck?”

    “Strewth, yeah! Yer draped Armani, or something direct from Hugo Boss!”

    “In wonderful warm South Australia,” l said weakly.

    “That’s right, love,” he agreed cheerfully, patting me, for a change, on the shoulder. “Ya don’t wanna have a bar of them!”

    Yuh—uh—no. Well I wasn’t quite sure what a bar was, in this context, but they certainly sounded most unappealing. “No,” I agreed feebly.

    And we got out and headed down to the beach.

    Well it was a beautiful stretch of beach but horribly built up as to the shore with a really hideous something along to our right. There were already quite a few families there, and a considerable number of what must be tourists, and altho the view out to sea was lovely it was all a bit too busy, really. And Greg admitted on a sour note: “I’d forgotten what it was like these days. Used to come here when I was a kid. They had the old trams, then: old wooden ones. Rattled like Hell, but at least you could open the windows! Great fun…” he ended with a sigh. We looked at him anxiously. “Oh well,” he said, smiling at us: “let’s pack it in here, and try (Something) Beach.”

    So we walked slowly back to the van, Bean managing to draw me aside—Duck at the precise instant having become immersed in an oenological argument with Bean Minor over the merits or otherwise of Grenache—and hiss: “I say, did he say Henley Beach? Henley’s on the river!”

    Er, yes. Site, if one recalled it correctly, of a Regatta of that ilk, and a certain slightly misspent day with a rather older and very sophisticated gent indeed, not to say several bottles of bubbly and a super alfresco lunch with his friends who had a house just far enough away to miss the crowds but near enough to see the edges, so to speak, of the tournament in Q. Supposing that one was interested.

    “Sss! Oui, t’as raison!” I hissed in the lingo with which we’d both more or less grown up. Until Grannie (gaunt, very French, very determined) forced Grandfather (stuffy, very English, firmly separated from her and the lot of us), by methods unknown but suspected to involve du chantage, to disgorge the moolah for our English school fees. As I may have mentioned heretofore.

    He rolled his eyes madly but nodded.

    And we all piled back into the van and headed off through miles of garden suburbs to…

    “Ooh! This is lovely!”

    “Yeah,” Greg agreed happily. “Beaudy, isn’t she? Only ya don’t wanna go too far in that direction,”—left—“’cos there’s a bloody sewer outlet.”

    And we stared admiringly at the great sweep of silver sand, the plashing wavelets of probably Gulf St Vincent again, a spread of blue-green sea deepening to darker blue, and a misty horizon, maybe way out there somewhere there was a Cape Something, under the wide, embracing azure firmament…

    I was about to remove my genuine Bertie-type sandshoes, courtesy of the Ovenden attic, but Duck stopped me. “The sand’ll be boiling hot, pet, ya don’t wanna burn your liddle pink toes!” he grinned.

    “Oh. Well further down, then,” I replied limply.

    Obligingly he took my enfeebled arm and led my frail feminine form and its toes down to the hard damp sand.

    Now, the acid test of an adult chap—well one of them, but certainly acid—is whether, when the party of the first part paddles, he will roll up the gentlemanly trouser legs, remove the footwear, and do likewise.

    The sufficiently macho Duck Drake didn’t. I wasn’t surprised. Most of them grow out of it after they start shaving.

    One can say there are three types that will paddle, but with a certain, um, caveat, I think might be the word. Type 1, to which my darling Colonel John Raice certainly belongs, is the sort that knows that the female of the Sp. enjoys paddling and good-humouredly goes along with this strange predilection, without sneering, complaining, or smirking. And without hoping for any reward. A very, very rare type. Flying colours, yes. The others fall by the wayside. Type 2 is the sort that’d do anything to get into the knickers of the party of the first P., and cunningly pretends to enjoy whatever she wants to do. Rather common, yes. And Type 3 is the slavish sort that also wants to get into the knickers but even if he hasn't a hope copies everything she does. Far too common, alas, and very, very wet. No pun intended.

    Well I had had a feeling that, never mind the pallid shaven heads with the funny sunnies, Australia might be full of the macho types who remain stubborn non-paddlers, and Duck pretty much proved it. Which I think the Bean would have to agree was QED, tho I must admit I never understood those School Chem. Lab. things when he tried to explain them.

    Meanwhile Bean Minor and Trelawney, having registered joyously that there was a pier!—“Jetty,” Greg corrected them laconically.—Was it, sir? A jetty, then!—were joyously mounting its gnarled and weathered grey boards and racing along it… High above the water, yes. I tried not to look. It didn’t strike me as at all safe. So I paddled for a bit in the other direction, until Duck called out: “Hey, Mel! Wanna go on the jetty?”

    Ugh! It was high! Was the man mad?”

    “It’s too high!” I cried.

    “What?”

    “It’s too high!”

    “Eh?”

    “It’s too—”

    This might have gone on for some time but fortunately Egg and Crumpy had overheard us and came to my rescue.

    “She won’t. She hates heights,” said Crumply flatly, awarding the unfortunate chap a good glare.

    Egg, meanwhile, took the tack of eying him sardonically and drawling: “She suffers from vertigo. No idea what it might be here, but at home it’s considered a clinical condition.”

    Poor Duck went rather red. ‘It’s not high, for God’s sake, Alan, are you blind?”

    “It is to her!” said Crumpy crossly. “It’s no use insisting, you won’t get her up there.”

    “No,” agreed Egg on a horribly smooth note.

    Oops! Hurriedly I splashed out of the shallows and came over to them. “Sorry, Duck. I simply can’t take heights. I can’t even stand on a chair without shaking like a leaf.”

    “Correct,” agreed Egg. “But you go on it by all means, Duck, if you’d like to.”

    He opened his mouth, thought better of it, shrugged, and walked off towards the long rickety line of ancient grey posts and the worm-eaten planks perched insecurely on top of them.

    “Good,” said Crumpy brutally. “Come on, Mel, what about a jolly old dip? Greg says we can change out of our wet things in the minibus.”

    I agreed thankfully that changing in the vehicle would be the go, given that the parties of the second P. promised, Baden-P. honour, to turn their backs while one did it, and we all removed the outer integuments, anointed the epidermis with sunscreen, and were able to dash joyously into the water in the swimsuits Greg had ordered us to wear underneath. It wasn’t long before Duck joined us and proceeded to demonstrate his much superior aquatic prowess, but as Egg and Crumpy tacitly refused to compete he had to be content with beating the Bean and my very kindly standing up and applauding him from the shallows, which were nice and warm and just my level.

    After a little it was observed that Bean Minor and Trelawney had joined the other kiddywinks on the jetty, all less than half their age, who were jumping joyously from it, but I almost managed not to gasp and wince each time they leapt into space.

    Greg, meanwhile, merely sat down placidly in his jeans on the hot sand, adjusted his straw cowboy hat, and proceeded to read his newspaper. Oh, dear. What with the jumping and the paddling, the phrase “treat for the children” did rather come to mind!

    Greg’s dad lived in North Adelaide, as he’d mentioned. We were none the wiser. He headed the car up the long road which ended at the beach through more—or possibly the same—miles of flat, sprawling suburbia…

    “Ooh, look!” I gasped, as we came to a halt at a set of traffic lights in the midst of a suburban shopping area. I was now on the right-hand side of the vehicle by a window, firmly walled off from Duck’s encroaching arm by the substantial form of Lucius (Crumpet) Lamont, and to my right were visible: “Morning glories! A whole bank of them! Aren’t they magnificent!”

    Greg glanced over at them and sniffed. “That site’s been empty for yonks. God knows who owns it, must be worth a bomb. Eyesore, really, piece of wasteland like that in the middle of the shops. Mindjew, noddas bad as that place up near Dad’s. They’ve plonked something hideous on it, now. Can’t even remember what was there originally: giant site, bang on the main road. Le Cornu’s, was it? Big furniture store—yeah, might of been. Think the Council and the owners were wrangling over how high they’d let ’em build—something like that,” he said, as the lights changed. “Crikey Dick! Suburban ruddy drivers!”—as a shiny pale grey Something failed to move on with the traffic beyond it. “Be a pensioner,” he added sourly. “Didn’t oughta let ’em on the roads. Thought Dad was bad enough, but at least he doesn’t sit there dreaming while the flamin’ lights change!”

    “Nah, he only acts as if nobody else has a right to be on the roads,” noted Duck drily as we moved on at last.

    “Ya right. –Never let yaself be caught down Pulteney Street with ’im,” he advised us.

    “Hutt Street?” ventured Duck.

    “It as well. Yeah—no, ’e’d crossed over—been to the Seven Stars for lunch, ya see. Course ’e wouldn’t listen when I told ’im we’d better get a move on, the flamin’ public servants all start heading for home round four, and it was a Friday as well, the streets were already chocker with dames doing their shopping. Well at least I got ’im onto the light-beer,” he ended with a sigh.

    “That’s a first,” noted Duck. “S’pose he wouldn’t let you drive, mate?’

    “Don’t be funny!” –A phrase which it’s impossible, actually, to transcribe as it sounds in the Aussie mouth. The first syllable, heavily stressed, comes out more like “D’aaaahn’t”— No, impossible. Immeasurable depths of scorn, really!

    “Um, he’s not going to drive today, is he, Greg?” I quavered.

    “Over my dead body!” he replied genially, apparently having cheered himself up by the last peroration.

    And we drove on and on and on…

    “Oy!” cried Duck. “There’s the underpass, mate!”

    “Bugger. –Aw, well, nothin’ much comin’.” Promptly he performed the manoeuvre that several of the younger Australian males of our acquaintance had now confided was popularly known as “a U-ie” in the fairly wide but somewhat cluttered city street we were now in. Gulp.

    Luckily no angry law enforcement personnel descended on us and by dint of another turn, possibly also illegal, we ended up on a flyover. Which took us over a putative railway yard and a putative narrow river as well as a lot of commercial clutter, but so fast that one couldn’t really register it.

    “North Adelaide,” explained Greg as we headed up a shallow rise along yet another long, straight road.

    “Will this take us up to yer dad’s place?” asked Duck dubiously.

    “Yeah, ya drongo! Just off it, up the top.”

    “Uh—aw, yeah, that’s right, last time we come up O’Connell Street.”

    “Yeah. Not goan through that again, thanks. Wall-to-wall stupid moos in four-wheel-drives they can’t handle in between the flamin’ wall-to-wall buses.”

    “Better than bloody Volvos backing out on ya without looking,” his winemaker noted.

    “Right. –Had some of that, too,” Greg informed us. “Thought we’d be safer in the back streets, ya see. Hah, bloody hah. –Places round there are worth a bomb, full of dim moos with rich hubbies that drive like they own the road.”

    “Prob’ly do,” drawled Duck. “Prob’ly got the Council in their pockets—or at least in the hubbies’ pockets.”

    “Right. Just off flamin’ Lefevre Terrace,” said Greg through his teeth.

    “Was it?” groped Duck.

    “Yeah! Halfway up, not down where they’ve turned it into a fuckin’ racetrack, mate!”

    Er—okay. We’d come to an enforced halt: a huge removal van was blocking the street, trying to reverse or turn or something. So I ventured: “The gardens are pretty round here, aren’t they?”

    “Nobbad, yeah,” Greg agreed tolerantly.

    “Mm.” I peered. “That’s a lovely climbing rose… It’s not as striking as those wonderful morning glories that we saw earlier, tho!”

    “Yeah,” he replied on a dry note. “That council oughta get rid, strictly speaking: they’re an invasive weed in SA.”

    “Surely not!” I gasped.

    “The dark blue ones, yeah. Most other convolvulus types, too,” he confirmed.

    Dubiously Duck opined that that might only be in “the regions”, to which Greg retorted that it was definitely in the Barossa, because they’d had a hedge smothered in them back when Harrison was little and they’d hadda be destroyed.

    “That’s terrible!” I said fervently.

    “Not really: they’re creepers: things like that choke the crops,” said Duck heavily. “Spread everywhere: impossible to eradicate.”

    “That or they destroy the sacred bloody Environment capital E,” noted Greg sourly. “Crikey Dick, ’e’s done it!” –as the giant van drove off at last. “Thought we were gonna be stuck here till Doomsday.”

    And we, the line of cars behind us and a large omnibus behind them were all enabled to proceed.

    Then we had to slow down again in order to negotiate a pretty little square. Not very big, grassed over with some nice big trees in it. Hardly any seats, tho. The surrounding houses, detached but on small sections, were very pretty: nearly all white-painted and two-storeyed, the styles dating, at least if they were following the English pattern, from the Twenties and Thirties—just the Junior Drones’ period! Not in the Stockbroker Tudor bracket, but clearly affluent.

    “This is pretty,” I ventured.

    Greg was seen to move his shoulders uneasily. “Yeah, but bloody cramped.”

    “The little park’s nice,” added Crumpy.

    “The square? Yeah!” He laughed suddenly. “Infested with maggies, Crumpy: when they’re nesting it’s more than ya life’s worth to walk through it with yer head unprotected. They’ve taken a real scunner to sunnies, too, so anyone that’s wearing a pair and looks up at them is for it.”

    “Er—droppings?” fumbled the Crumpet.

    “Nah, mate! They dive-bomb ya! Them beaks can do real damage!”

    “Good grief,” he said numbly.

    “But— You do mean magpies, do you, Greg?” groped Bean. “Are they native birds?”

    “Dunno,” replied Greg cheerfully, driving on. “That on the left,” he said as we passed it, “is the street when they got this poncy old folks’ home. Quite nice as they go—I mean, ya couldn’t find better. Nice little cabins for independent living as well as the big residential block. Tried to persuade Dad to put ’is name down—wouldn’t have a bar of it. Reckoned he knew a bloke that had a unit there and he said the half of the inmates that aren’t totally out of it, all they could talk about was the bloody soapies on TV. He gave up eating in the dining-room: couldn’t take it. Used to get over to Fasta Pasta in the shopping mall three times a week for lunch instead. That was a really good Fasta Pasta, only the buggers have closed it down, and the nearest one’s the other side of the city on South Terrace,” he ended sourly.

    “So, um, are we going to have lunch in this area?” ventured Crumpy.

    “Yeah, might as well. The Archer—that’s an old pub, been done up real trendy, but it’s a bit of laugh, mindjew. Well it can vary: they had some rotten reviews a few years back, before COVID, but Dad likes the Seniors’ lunch special for twenny bucks—quite a decent choice, it’s not just one dish, take it or leave it. He really likes Italian, but we’ve tried the other Italian places on O’Connell Street—well not the real poncy one down the bottom end, costs an arm and both legs—but the other two near him, and neither came anywhere near good ole Fasta Pasta—had the best coffee in the city, I reckon, and a decent bar as well. There’s a rumour that half the restaurants in the street, they’re flamin’ fronts,” he ended drily, braking at an intersection to let two elderly ladies totter across it. “Look, there’s a couple of maggies for ya!” he added with a laugh.

    We peered. Oh, yes, so there were: just pottering on the grass verge. –Which, we would come to realise, was an indicator that North Adelaide was definitely one of the more up-market suburbs of the greater Adelaide metropolitan area. The majority had verges of nothing but dust and tiny fawn stones which might once have been gravel.

    Greg swung left, and in two seconds flat we’d pulled up before a set of stepped dark brown brick townhouses. Small, two-storeyed, the word “dinky” came to mind. His dad’s was the end one, a good pozzie, only the flamin’ drongos that had built that new place next-door had cut down one of its trees, claiming it had termites. Well, before Dad’s time but a lady from down the road had told him about it. The previous owner, a ruddy doctor, had had tenants in—let it for years, he’d obviously been into negative gearing, the wanker, they were all at it—and of course the tenant hadn’t been able to do anything about it and the lazy sod of a doctor hadn’t bothered to check if the bastards were lying and it was because it would of shaded their front windows. Which it would, not to mention dropped leaves and flowers on their concrete driveway, geddit?

    We got it—more or less. Give or take the odd “negative gearing”.

    “Never did a thing to the ruddy place all the time he had it, the mean-fisted bastard,” he elaborated. “The bedroom had the oldest air-con unit in the bloody world, put in by a real cowboy outfit: ya never saw anything so ugly. Great lumps of Selley’s all round it, never let a lick of paint get near it. Think the land agent must of made ’im fancy up the garden to sell, because it was planted up all down the middle with white petunias: looked really pretty; only a week after Dad moved in they all croaked. He dug round a bit and they must of been plonked in straight from their pots, underneath it was all compacted clay and builders’ rubble. And see that lot on the left?” he said, opening the brown-painted wooden gate in the handsome high dark brown brick wall. Well, high to me. The boys could have seen over it easily.

    We certainly did. “Ivy,” said the Bean faintly. The front garden was very small, very suited to a townhouse, and the front righthand side was occupied by a beautiful large tree, light yellow-green leaves with lovely white hanging swathes of wisteria-like flowers, but the metre-wide bed on our left, which ran the length of the front yard to meet some sort of narrow dividing wall parallel with the front of the building, was smothered in ivy. Its heavy gnarled branches twined along the top of the side wall, thicker than my forearm.

    “Yeah,” Greg agreed. “It’s run mad. It’s a haven for snails. They eat anything decent ya put in. Dad had a go with the old chainsaw but he couldn’t get the stuff off the wall, and the bloody neighbours in the new house complained about the racket, so he gave up; just slashes it back every so often. Decided to turn the middle bit into a rock garden, see? None of them cactuses and things seem to be snail fodder.”

    He went up the dark brick path—it wasn’t much more than two metres long—and knocked briskly on the door, to boot calling out: “HEY! DAD!”

    Nothing happened, so he continued: “The whole place is jerry-built. Well—solid enough, yeah, but designed to look good on paper. See those narrow windows upstairs?”

    We stood back a little and peered. Oh, yes: very attractive: sets of tall, narrow, floor-length windows.

    “Originally they wouldn’t open at the top. Had little ones right down the bottom that’d open about ten centimetres,” said Greg very drily indeed.

    “But surely the heat would shoot straight up into the gable?” gasped Egg.

    “Yeah. Heat rises—yeah. Poor Dad nearly passed out the first summer here, and he’s lived in SA all ’is life. So we altered all the windows so’s they’d open and installed fly-screens, and ripped out the old A-C unit and put new reverse-cycles in every room. Dad hates ducted, and it woulda been impossible with the flamin’ gable anyway: no crawl-space, ya see. –DAD!”

    Nothing.

    “Nip round the back, wouldja, Tommy,” he said to Bean Minor, who was nearest the back path. “Dare say ’e’s got ’is head stuck in the ruddy heap.”

    Obligingly Bean Minor disappeared down the narrow brown brick side path.

    “I say!” he panted, rushing back. “He’s got a fabulous old car! –But he isn’t there, sir.”

    Strangely, Duck had produced a choke of laughter at the mention of the car.

    Greg looked dry. “The original Holden Kingswood, whaddelse? The classic car of choice for the motorhead in ’is seventies.”

    “Ooh, really?” gasped Trelawney.

    “It’s totally smashing!” his peer informed him. “Turquoise, with lashings of chrome, and a Venetian blind on the rear window!”

    “Go on, then. Just don’t put smeary finger marks on it,” said Greg, and the two of them rushed off with shining morning faces. –It was still morning. We’d left Silvercreek pretty early and altho it had seemed like forever driving round the long suburban roads, it was only twenty past eleven.

    Greg looked at his watch. “They open,” he said on a dry note, “at eleven-thirty, so either he’s in the shower, or he’s got his bloody headphones on again. Ruddy Harrison’s idea, of course—last Chrissie. Now the silly old bugger’s got addicted—I warned him ’e would—and he never hears the phone or the door.” And he produced a bunch of keys from his pocket.

    “He’ll do ya,” warned Duck.

    “Yeah.” Greg unlocked his father’s front door and went in.

    Ooh! The stairs went up just in front of the door, like old city row-houses in the northern climes. But unlike them, these were pale varnished pine, open at the side, and actually in the sitting-room. It was quite a good size: on two levels, the back bit forming the dining area, with a strange doorless archway leading to a small kitchen. The atmosphere was nice and cool, so the famous “reverse-cycle” air conditioner must have been on.

    Well old Mr Lewisham wasn’t flat-out on his sitting-room floor. I sagged slightly, what time Egg and Crumpy, obviously having had the same awful thought, exchanged relieved glances. And we could now hear the shower running upstairs.

    “In the shower,” said Greg resignedly, sitting down on the sofa. “Probably been tinkering with the heap all morning. Take a pew: nothing on earth’ll hurry him up.”

    So we sat down, everyone tactfully avoiding the big armchair with the footrest that was clearly the old man’s preferred seat, and waited…

    The moment Mr Lewisham, Senior, reached the bottom of the stairs he noted sourly: “Let yaselves in, didja?”

    “Yeah,” replied Greg stolidly.

    “Whaddif I’d of thought you was burglars and phoned the cops?”

    “They’d of done ya for wasting police time, ya silly ole B.,” his son returned tiredly. “Ya might say hullo to your guests.”

    “I might if I knew them from Adam. Well I know him.” –Eyeing Duck without favour.

    “Yeah, gidday to you too, Charlie,” the winemaker responded, unmoved.

    Looking dry, Greg introduced us all.

    Our weak Pommy attempts to greet the old boy politely as “Mr Lewisham” were overridden by: “Shit, call me Charlie! I’m not in me dotage yet, whaddever he says!” –Glare at the unfortunate Greg L.

    Okay, we agreed to call a seventy-two-year old gent who’d married very young, Greg at fifty being his eldest (Mrs Janine Stuart, who else?) by the familiar form of his personal name.

    He then said kindly to me, out of the blue: “Ya might need a cardie, Mel, the air-con in The Archer can be freezing before the crowds are in,” and I’d stood up and was just about to smile nicely and assure him I’d be fine, when—

    BANG!!!

    I jumped and gasped, and the boys all jumped, gasped and spun round to face the windows whence the noise seemed to have come, but Duck and the Lewishams, tho they had jumped, remained unmoved.

    “’Nother one,” noted Greg.

    “Yeah,” the old man agreed. “Makes three these last six weeks. Be the spring weather: brings ’em out.”

    “But what was it?” I gasped. Dash it, I was beginning to tremble!

    Quickly Crumpy came and put his arm round me. “I don’t think it was a bomb, Mel.”

    “No,” croaked Bean Minor hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “No, it wasn’t, Mel.”

    “No, but it was definitely a missile of some sort aimed at the house,” said Egg grimly. “What’s going on, sir?”

    The elderly Charlie eyed him drily. “None of yer sirs, lad, we’re not in the Army. It was a flamin’ golf ball, that’s all.”

    “What?” he said faintly.

    “Eh?” croaked the Bean.

    “It can’t’ve been!” I gasped. “It sounded murderous!”

    “Yeah. Like I say, three in the last six weeks. It’ll be in the garden somewhere,” said the old man calmly. “That’s the golf course, over there,” he added, waving at the windows.

    The street was lined with trees on the other side: I’d thought it was a park. “Not a park?” I managed faintly.

    “No, love, ya don’t wanna go for a walk there: some drongo’d brain ya. –Never heard any of ’em shout ‘fore’,” he said thoughtfully.

    “I see,” I said weakly. “I—I think I’d better sit down.”

    “Oh, Hell!” gulped Bean, looking at me in dismay, as Crumpy, gulping somewhat, ushered me back to my chair.

    “Damn,” muttered Egg. “Have you got any brandy, Charlie?”

    “Nah,” he said scratching his head—the hair was silver, still quite thick and wavy, very like his son’s. “Whisky or Bundy.”

    “I’ll get her a Bundy,” said Greg. “Any Coke left?”

    “Unless it’s walked out of the fridge since last time ruddy Mandy was here,” his parent replied on a snide note. –Greg’s younger sister. Lived not far away: her hubby, twenny years older and completely under her thumb, having made his pile and retired, they’d recently moved into a smaller house that she called a Colonial cottage, but if it had ever had bluestone facings before they bought it the speaker’s hat would be eaten (the loquacious Mrs Janine S. again).

    So I was duly supplied with an ice-cold Bundy and Coke, and having sipped it, was able to reply to Charlie’s concerned: “Something’s up, isn’t it? You better spit it out, love,” with “I can’t, I’m not supposed to tell!” and a stupid burst of tears, dash it!

    Egg pulled up a chair close to mine. “Come on, old thing, we’re on the other side of the world.”

    “Yes, you’re safe here, Mel,” put in Bean Minor anxiously.

    I sniffled. “Mm. Sorry. It sounded like—”

    “—a shot. Yeah,” Egg finished.

    I’d been going to say “a bomb,” but actually he was right, so I just nodded.

    “What the fuck is up, Alan?” demanded old Charlie.

    Egg sighed. “If I tell you the lot I’ll have to shoot you, Charlie.”

    The old man eyed him sardonically. “All right, we’re not asking. –You feeling better, love?”

    “Yes, much, thanks,” I agreed, smiling at him.

    “Good-oh. Come on, then: get some solid nosh into you: you’ll be jake!”

    “I’d let her go to the bog first, Charlie,” drawled Duck.

    He was rewarded with an annoyed look and: “All right, we don’t wanna hear about how you know all about dames, thanks. –Use the downstairs one, love: through the kitchen.”

    Gratefully I went, patted my face with cold water, looked in the tiny mirror at the tangled mass of blonde-ish curls on my head, decided that the straw cowboy hat would hide them anyway, and returned to the sitting-room. And we were off, old Charlie firmly taking my arm, having shoved Duck bodily out of the way, help!

    Well I don’t know whether it was the fresh seaside air and exercise or the fright of the big bang followed by mixed relief that it wasn’t a terrorist threat and alarm at my stupidly bawling, but Bean Minor and Trelawney ate like starving wolves, and Bean wasn’t far behind. And The Archer certainly catered for that sort of appetite! It was nothing like the lunches provided at that nice café that Micky had had the sense to take us to on a broiling South Australian day. “All solid nosh!” as Duck noted with a grin.

    It was that, all right. Even the Caesar salad, which I fell back on, faute de mieux, featured both hard-boiled egg and bacon. Chicken on it as well would have been a few dollars extra, no kidding. Greg and his dad had an argument over whether the old man would have the 250-gramme steak on the Seniors’ menu or the “Crumbed Chicken Schnitzel”, intriguingly pronounced as “snitzle,” Greg maintaining the latter would be better for him and Charlie claiming it was only there for the ladies. And he hadn’t had steak this week! The steak won. Both Greg and Duck firmly had the Chicken Schnitzel from the main menu but whether in order to spite the old boy I couldn’t tell. Duck taking the option of making it Parmigiana (extra) and Greg selecting the mushroom sauce (extra but slightly cheaper).

    The older lads, even the Bean, seemed overcome by the choices on offer, and no wonder! Well it was chips with everything, and we could see from the other lunchers’ piled plates that the portions were by no means small or even moderate. Finally Bean chose the beef schnitzel (or again, “snitzle”, according to the waiter) which came like the chicken with chips and salad (and overlapped the plate!) and the other two chose “The Archer’s Fish and Chips”, largely on the score, I rather think, that the fish had an intriguing Australian name: barramundi.

    “Barra’,” said the old man blankly. “Get it everywhere.”

    “Not in England, tho!” replied Crumpy with a grin. “Tends to be cod.”

    An intense discussion on the rival merits—or demerits—of cod and barramundi ensued, Bean enlivening the proceedings with a cry of: “Hang on! Where’s my— Blast! Give me back my smart phone, Crumpy!” However, the precious spongy comestible replied happily that he’d left it back at the vineyard, thus incurring a fervent blessing from the Junior Drones’ Hon. Chairperson, one Egg (Alan) Ovenden. The discussion continued, the Aussies once more claiming the Ashes as the plates emptied, the quality of the barra’ sank in, and the levels of the beer (special offer with the menu meals) sank likewise.

    —The sporting metaphor, alas, springing to mind because most of the rest of the meal was occupied by an intense discussion of the rival teams’ chances in the next round of the Ashes not to say past combats back to the Year Dot, dashed Bean Minor and Trelawney entering into it as eagerly as the three Australians, tho there was a distinctly sardonic look in Egg’s eye and Crumpy and Bean merely concentrated on their food.

    Sigh. Fish and cricket? Really!

    Subsequently a somewhat somnolent afternoon was spent back at old Charlie’s place. At one point everyone adjourned to the tiny back yard, about the size of an average carport, which was what it was, in order to admire the glorious be-chromed Kingswood… Oh well, darling John loved old cars, he’d enjoy hearing about… it.

    If I was ever allowed to get in touch to tell him! Bother.

    Funnily enough no-one felt like an early dinner, in fact Charlie was planning toast and Vegemite for himself. Greg decided to wait until the home-going mobs had cleared and then drive us up to Mt Lofty—a horrified “Ya not gonna eat at that poncy joint, are ya?” from his dad, met by the response: “NO, ya drongo! Gonna show them the view.”

    So we waited until the mobs had cleared, and headed through the city towards, um, well the highest hill, it wasn’t exactly lofty, from what we could see through the fast-gathering dusk—there is almost no twilight in Adelaide, it’s too far north, tho the brilliant Trelawney supposed they’d have some in Tasmania, which no-one wanted to know—and up into the low hills edging the city on the um… “East!” Thank you, Bean, Geographer of the Year. East. It was dark by the time we reached the intended destination—was any male human being ever known to change his mind and potter off merely for fun to a different point from that Point B at which he’d been aiming from Point A? And piled out of the people carrier to admire the view, Duck very kindly putting an arm round me in case it was a bit chilly for me. A goodly distance below us, lights twinkled over the stretches of the wide, flat plain that was Adelaide and suburbs, mm, lovely: jewels on dark velvet.

    “How’s that for a view?” said Greg proudly. Yes, that was a view, all right!

    The lads were all somnolent on the drive home to the vineyard, Bean Minor and Trelawney actually nodding off. But I kept awake and alert; who wouldn’t, with that Duckly arm in the offing? Oh well, such is Life!

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriendsdownunder-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/05/olives-and-oranges.html