“The Royal Australian Navy owns Potts Point,” Dad said.
Mum looked as if she was going to cry. “Why, Harriet?”
“Because I’m twenty-one and I need space of my own, Mum. Now I’m through training, I’m earning good money, and flats at Kings Cross are cheap enough for me to live yet still save to go to England next year. If I moved out to some other place, I’d have to share with two or three other girls, and I can’t see that that’s any better than living at home.”
David didn’t say a thing, just sat on Dad’s right looking at me as if I’d grown another head.
“Well, come on, bright boy,” Gavin growled at him, “what have you got to say?”
“I disapprove,” David answered with ice in his voice, “but I would rather talk to Harriet on her own.”
“Well, I reckon it’s bonza,” said Peter, and leaned over to give me a cuff on the arm. “You need more space, Harry.”
That seemed to decide Dad, who sighed. “Well, there isn’t a lot I can do to stop you, is there? At least it’s closer than old Mother England. If you get into trouble, I can always yank you out of Kings Cross.”
Gavin burst into a bellow of laughter, leaned across the table with his tie in the butter and kissed my cheek. “Bully for you, Harry!” he said. “End of the first innings, and you’re still at the crease. Keep your bat ready to deal with the googlies!”
“When did you decide all this?” Mum asked, blinking hard.
“When Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz offered me the flat.”
The name sounded very peculiar said in our house. Dad frowned.
“Missus who?” asked Granny, who had sat looking rather smug throughout.
“Delvecchio Schwartz. She’s the landlady.” I remembered a fact I hadn’t mentioned. “Pappy lives there, that’s how I got to meet Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz.”
“I knew that Chinky girl was going to be a bad influence,” Mum said. “Since you’ve met her, you haven’t bothered with Merle.”
I put my chin up. “Merle hasn’t bothered with me, Mum. She’s got a new boyfriend, and she can’t see any farther. I’ll only come back into favour with her when he dumps her.”
“Is it a proper flat?” Dad asked.
“Two rooms. I share a bathroom with Pappy.”
“It isn’t hygienic to share a bathroom,” said David.
I lifted my lip at him. “I share a bathroom here, don’t I?”
That shut him up.
Mum decided to bite the bullet. “Well,” she said, “I daresay you’ll need china and cutlery and cooking utensils. Linen. You can have your own bed sheets from here.”
I never thought, the answer just popped out. “No, I can’t, Mum. I’ve got a whole double bed to myself! Isn’t that terrific?”
They sat gaping at me as if they envisioned the double bed with a bus conductor’s bag on the end of it to collect the fees.
“A double bed?” asked David, paling.
“That’s right, a double bed.”
“Single girls sleep in single beds, Harriet.”
“Well, that is as may be, David,” I snapped, “but this single girl is going to sleep in a double bed!”
Mum leaped to her feet. “Boys, the dishes don’t wash themselves!” she chirped. “Granny, it’s time for 77 Sunset Strip.”
“Kooky, Kooky, lend me your comb!” carolled Granny, skipping up lightly. “Well, well, did you ever? Harriet’s moving out and I’ve got a room to myself! I think I’ll have a double bed, hee-hee!”
Dad and the Bros cleared the table in double-quick time, and left me alone with David.
“What brought this on?” he asked, tight-lipped.
“Lack of privacy.”
“You have something better than mere privacy, Harriet. You have a home and a family.”
I pounded my fist on the table. “Why are you such a myopic git, David? I share a room with Granny and Potty, and I have nowhere to spread my things without picking them up the minute I’ve finished with them! Whatever space I have here is also occupied by others. So now I’m going to luxuriate in my own space.”
“At Kings Cross.”
“Yes, at Kings bloody Cross! Where the rents are affordable.”
“In a lodging house run by a foreigner. A New Australian.”
That killed me, I laughed in his face. “Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, a foreigner? She’s an Aussie, with an Aussie accent you could cut with a knife!”
“That is an even greater indictment,” he said. “An Australian with a name that’s half Italian and half Jewish? At the very least, she married beneath her.”
“You bloody snob!” I gasped. “You bigoted git! What’s so posh about Australians? We all came out as bloody convicts! At least our New Australians have come out as free settlers!”
“With SS numbers tattooed in their armpits or tuberculosis or stinking of garlic!” he snarled. “And ‘free settlers’ is right—they all came out here for a mere ten-pound subsidised passage!”
That did it. I jumped up and started whacking him on both sides of his head right over his ears. Wham, wham, wham! “Piss off, David, just bloody piss off!” I yelled.
He pissed off, with a look in his eyes that said I was having one of Those Days, and he’d be back to try again.
So there you have it. I do like my family—they’re good scouts. But David is exactly what Pappy called him—a constipated Catholic schoolboy. Thank heavens I’m Church of England.
I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to sit and write this, but things are looking all right. I managed to talk Dad and the Bros out of inspecting my new premises (I went last Sunday to have a look, and they’re not fit yet for inspection), and I’m working like stink to get my things together for next Saturday’s move. Mum has been colossal. I’ve got heaps of china, cutlery, linen and cooking utensils, and Dad shoved a hundred pounds at me with a gruff explanation that he didn’t want me touching my savings for England to buy what by rights belonged in my Hope Chest anyway. Gavin presented me with a tool kit and a multimeter and Peter donated his “old” hi-fi, explaining that he needed a better one. Granny gave me a bottle of 4711 eau de Cologne and a set of doilies she’d crocheted for my Hope Chest.
There’s a sort of an archway between my bedroom and my living room in my new flat—no door—so I’m going to use some of Dad’s hundred quid to buy glass beads and make my own bead curtain. The ones you can buy are plastic, look awful and sound worse. I want something that chimes. Pink. I’m going to have a pink flat because it’s the one colour no one at Bronte will permit anywhere. And I like pink. It’s warm and feminine, and it cheers me up. Besides, I look good against it, which is more than I can say for yellow, blue, green and crimson. I’m too dark.
My flat is in the open air passage that goes down alongside Pappy’s room and leads to the laundry and the backyard. The rooms are big and have very high