ough she had decided on no account to do so. The blackfellow, who had at last succeeded in reconciling attitude with balance, now began to sing: "Hi digger, hi digger, My uncle is bigger Than my father, But not as big as Friday night. Friday is the big shivoo, When the swells begin to swell, And poor Mother has her doubts. Hi digger, hi digger, The moon has a trigger, Which shoots the buggers down, Whether they want to be hit, Or to pro-cras-tin-ate…" "Go easy!" interrupted Mrs Khalil. "I don't allow language in my place. Not from clients. If I'm forced ter use a word meself, it's because I got nowhere else ter go." "Why don't they lock 'im up?" Mr Hoggett complained. "Why?" asked Mrs Khalil, and answered it easy. "Cos the constable 'imself is in the front room, as always, with my Lurleen." By this time the black, who had started in a lazy, loving way, only lolling and lurching, as he sowed seed gently with his hands, or took out his heart to present to the different members of the audience, had begun to grow congested. He was darkening over, purpling even. His sandshoes began to beat a faster time. Short, stabbing gestures were aimed, not at another, but inward, rather, at his own breast. He stamped, and sang faster: "Hi digger, hi digger, Nail it! Nail it! Nail the difference till it bleeds! It's the difference, it's the difference That will bleed the best. Poppies are red, and Crimson Ramb-lers, But men are reddest When they bleed. Let 'em! Let 'em! Le-ehtt…" So he sang, and stamped, and stamped on a cat or two, which yowled in their turn. Baskets fell, of lingerie, which the sun had hardened into slabs of salt fish. As the abo jumped and raised hell, Mollie Khalil appeared to have started jumping too, or at least her breasts were boiling inside the floral gown. "Catch 'old of 'im, willya, please! Someone! Mr Hoggett, be a gentleman!" She had revived herself somewhat, with something, to cope with a situation, and now was holding her side hair, so that the sleeves had fallen back, from rather moister, black-and-whitest armpits. "Not me!" said her client, though. "I came 'ere for a purpose. Not for a bloody rough-'ouse." "But the constable!" she had to plead. "He will disturb the constable." "Okay for Daisy…" sang the abo. He was stamping mad. And cutting wood. Or breaking sticks. "Okay for Mrs McWhirter…" the abo sang, and stamped."… and Constable O'Fickle, And Brighta Lamps, To see with, To see see see, And be with…." Just then Lurleen came in. At one moment, where the shambles of sound fell back, leaving a gulf to be filled, her bare feet were heard squelching over lino. Lurleen was a good bit riper than her sister. She suggested bananas turning black. She was rather messed up. She had the bruised-eyelid look, and some rather dirty pink ribbons just succeeded in keeping the slip attached to her sonsy shoulders. "I have had it!" she said. "That man has one single thought." "Waddaya expect? Latin thrown in?" "No, but conversation. There's some tell about their wives. That's the best kind. You can put the screw on them." "Did he pay?" the bawd asked. "Don't tell me! He said to chalk it up!" she said. "I am hungry. What is in the fridge, Mum?" Lurleen asked, but did not bother about an answer. She went to the fridge and began to eat a sausage, which cold and fat had mottled blue. "I gotta get Mantovani," she said, and started twiddling the knob. "Gee, not Mantovani!" Janis hoped. She herself felt the necessity to writhe, and was threatened instead with sticking-plaster. Lurleen twiddled the knob. Except for a couple of bruises, she was really honey-coloured. But now somebody was coming in. "Waddaya know, Fixer?" Mr Hoggett laughed. He was enjoying it at last. The little one had decided to plaster herself against his ribs. Inside his cotton singlet, his belly was jumping to answer her. "The sun rose over the woolshed, The coolabahs stood in a row. My mother sat in the cow-paddock, And heard the Reverend come…." the abo recited; he no longer felt inclined to sing, and had retreated far from the present room. "Arr, Mr Jensen," called the bawd, from the springs of a rusty lounge, where she had extended herself after further revival, "fix me this abo bloke," she invited, "and you are a better man than ever I thought!" But Fixer Jensen, who was tall, thin, putty-coloured, with his wrinkles pricked out in little black dots, stood and picked his nose as usual. He needed, of course, to get inspired. He looked at Mrs Godbold. Not that he knew her. But he had not expected exactly to meet a statue in a room. There one sat. Fixer said, "Waddaya got 'ere? A party?" Then he began to laugh. "It only needs the constable!" he laughed. Lurleen pouted. "The constable has gone home," she advised, and was stroking herself to the accompaniment of music, and revolving, in her pink slip. "Business good, eh?" Fixer asked. "Not since the Heyetalian cow set up," Mrs Khalil snapped. "Business got donged on the head." Suddenly the abo fell down. He lay on the harlequin lino. He was very quiet, and a little gusher of purple blood had spurted from his mouth. "That man is sick," said Mrs Khalil, from much farther than the droopy lounge. "I am not surprised!" laughed Fixer Jensen. "In such a house!" "Mr Jensen, _please__!" laughed the owner. "But he is pretty sick," she said, serious, because it could happen to herself-all the things she had read about; she began to push her breasts around. The abo lay on the harlequin lino. Mrs Godbold, who had been growing from just that spot for the hours of several years, produced a handkerchief which she had down the front of her dress, and stooped, and wiped the blood away. "You should go home," she said, altering her voice, although it was some time since she had used it. "Where do y ou live?" "Along the river at the parson's," he answered. But collected himself. "What do you mean? Now?" "Of course," she said, gently wiping, speaking for themselves alone. "Why, in Barranugli. I got a room with Mrs Noonan, at the end of Smith Street." "Are you comfortable?" she asked. "At home, I mean." As if he was a human being. He worked his head about on the lino. He could not answer. The music had stuck its sticky strips over all the other faces, as if they might break, without it, at any time. Some of them were sleepy. Some were soothed. Still, a hammer could have broken any of them. "What is your name?" Mrs Godbold asked. He did not seem to hear that. He was looking, it was difficult to say, whether at or beyond the gentle woman in the black hat. He held his arm across half his face, not to protect, rather, to see better. He said, "That is how I want it. The faces must be half turned away, but you still gotta understand what is in the part that is hidden. Now I think I see. I will get it all in time." In a voice so oblivious and convinced that Ruth Joyner was again sitting in the cathedral of her home town, watching the scaffolding of music as it was erected, herself taking part in the exquisitely complicated operation. Nor had she heard a voice issue with such certainty and authority out of any mouth since the strange gentleman referred to that same music. Now it was the abo on Mrs Khalil's floor. He was saying, she began again to hear, "When the frosts were over, the Reverend Calderon used to take us down along the river, and Mrs Pask would bring a basket. We used to picnic on the banks. But they would soon be wondering why they had come. I could see that all right. Mrs Pask would begin to remember daffodils. I could see through anything on those days in early spring. I used to roam around on my own when I got tired of sitting with the whites. I would look into holes in the earth. I would feel the real leaves again. Once I came across a nest of red hornets. Hahhh!" He laughed. "I soon shot off, like I had found wings myself! And seven red-hot needles in me!" When he had finished laughing, he added, "Funny I went and remembered that." "It was because you was happiest then," she suggested. "That is not what you remember clearest/' he insisted with some vehemence. "It is the other things." "I suppose _so__." Because she wished to encourage peace of mind, she accepted what she knew, for herself at least, to be only a half-truth. "Still," she offered, tentatively, "it is the winters I can remember best at Home. Because we children were happiest then. We were more dependent on one another. The other seasons we were running in all directions. Seeing and finding things for ourselves. In winter we held hands, and walked together along the hard roads. I can still hear them ringing." Her eyes shone. "Or we huddled up together, against the fire, to eat chestnuts, and tell tales. We loved one another most in winter. There was nothing to come between us." Such a commotion had broken out in the roomful of music and people. It was something to do with Mrs KhaliPs Janis, whom Mr Hoggett wanted bad. He was finally convinced that young flesh must be the only nostrum. But Mrs Khalil herself was of quite an opposite opinion. "Over my body!" she screamed. And could have been shaking it to show. "This ain't no concern of yours," Mr Hoggett was shouting. "Whose else, I'd liketa know?" Fixer Jensen, in his putty-coloured hat with the pulled-down brim, was laughing his head off. He could afford to; nobody had ever known Fixer run a temperature. But the little one was possessed by a far subtler kind of detachment. She suddenly sprang, like a cat, and stuck the point of her tongue in Mr Hoggett's ear. She was almost diabolical in her attitude to love matters. She would jump, and swerve, in her cat's games, and at a certain juncture, leaped on a chair, which collapsed rottenly under her. She became screaming mad then. Everybody was too well occupied to disturb the abo and the laundress, who kept to their island, not exactly watching, for they had their thoughts. "Are you a Christian?" Mrs Godbold asked quickly to get it over. Even so, she was mortified, knowing that the word did not represent what it was intended to. "No," he replied. "I was educated up to it. But gave it away. Pretty early on, in fact. When I found I could do better. I mean," he mumbled, "a man must make use of what he has. There is no point in putting on a pair of boots to walk to town, if you can do it better in your bare feet." She smiled at that. It was true, though, and of her own clumsy tongue, as opposed to her skill in passing the iron over the long strips of fresh, fuming, glistening sheets. "Yes." She smiled, once more beautiful; her skin was like fresh pudding-crust. But he coughed. Then she dabbed again with her handkerchief at the corner of his mouth. This, perhaps, was her work of art, her act of devotion. All the commotion of life, though, continued tumbling in their ears: the ladies protesting their dignity, the gentlemen calling for their rights. Doors were opening, too. So Mrs Godbold looked at the ball of her handkerchief. Soon, she realized, it would be her turn to bleed. A woman had come, or marched into the room. Her skin was the greyer for flesh-colour chenille, from which her arms hung down, with veins in them, and a wrist-watch on a brass chain. "I am shook right out," she announced. "I am gunna catch the bus." She was no longer distinctive in any way. She could have been a splinter, rather sharp. "There is Mr Hoggett," indicated the desperate bawd. "He has waited all this time." But the other was clearing her throat. "Tell 'im I got a cold. Tell 'im to stuff 'imself/' she said. She was the lady from Auburn, and was known as Mrs Johnno. Mrs Khalil near as anything threw a fit. All the blows she was fated to receive in rendering service to mankind. "Some women are that low," she complained, "you can't wonder at the men." And looked to Mrs Godbold for support. Which the latter could no longer give. She had stood up. She did smile, as if to acknowledge guilt in ignoring a request. But must hoard her resources carefully. The room had shrunk. For there was Tom now. Tom Godbold had followed in Mrs Johnno's tracks, and was offering the bawd a note in payment. His wife would have paid more, and torn off a pretty little brooch besides, if she had felt it might redeem. She would have taken him by the hand, and they would have run up the hill together, through the bush, over the breaking sticks, to reach the lights. Instead, when the note had been crumpled up and pocketed, Tom Godbold crossed over to his wife, and said, "You done a lot to show me up, Ruth, in our time, but you just about finished me this go." She was standing before him on her sleeping legs, in her clumsy hat and long, serviceable overcoat. Only a membrane was stretched between her feelings and exposure. He might have kicked her, as in the past, and it would have been a kindness. "Come on," he said. "I got what I wanted. You're the one that's missed out." As they left, the whores, it appeared, were finishing their business. The little one had disappeared. The window was blacker than before, whiter where the jasmine held the frame in its tender grip. Whether Mr Hoggett would allow himself to be appeased might never be known now. He was, at least, accepting refreshment from a bottle which had once contained something else. It made his breath come sharp and quick. While Mrs Khalil continued to deplore the contingencies of life, and Mrs Johnno's toenails created havoc in the tunnels of her stockings as her feet entered them. Godbolds were going out, and away. She followed him as a matter of course. The bush smelled of the leaves they bruised in stumbling. It had rained a little. It was fresh. When they stood beneath a lamp, in a half-made street, on the edge of Sarsaparilla, she saw that the flesh had quite shrivelled from Tom's skull. "I was wrong, Tom," she said. "I know. I _am__ wrong. There!" she said, and made a last attempt to convince him with her hand. "I will follow you to hell if need be." Tom Godbold did not wait to see whether he was strong enough to suffer the full force of his wife's love. "You won't need to follow me no further," he said, and began to pick his way between the heaps of blue-metal. By his deliberate concentration, he appeared, if anything, less his own master. More remorseless than the influence of drink, age seemed also to have mounted on his shoulders, and to hold the reins. So his wife realized, as she watched, there was nothing more she could do for him, and that she herself must accept to be reduced by half. Several years later, summoned to assume the responsibility of kin, she recovered the token of her lost half. On that occasion they allowed her to sit beside a bed, and observe, beneath a thin blanket, stained by the piss and pus of other dying men, what, they told her, was Tom Godbold. Of the husband she had known before disease and indulgence carried him off, nothing lived without the assistance of memory. "No more than half an hour ago," the kind sister told. "After a boiled egg. He enjoyed his food up to the last. He spoke about you." The wife of the man who had just died did not dare inquire for details of those dying remarks. Besides, the sister was busy. She had looked out between the pleated screens at several giggly girls who were washing the bodies of the living far too lingeringly. The sister frowned, and wondered how she might dispose discreetly of the bereaved. Then did, without further ceremony. She could not endure to watch dereliction of duty. The widow who remained behind in her little cell of white screens was ever so well controlled. Or it could have been that she had not cared about her husband. In any case, when at last a glossy young probationer peeped in, the person was gone. She had given instructions, however, downstairs. Mrs Godbold left Tom embedded in the centre of the great square building which a recent coat of shiny paint caused to glimmer, appropriately, like a block of ice. She walked a little. The acid of light was poured at nightfall into the city, to eat redundant faces. Yet, she survived. She walked, in the kind of clothes which, early in life, people had grown to expect of her, which no one would ever notice, except in amusement or contempt, and which would only alter when they fitted her out finally. Mrs Godbold walked by the greenish light of early darkness. A single tram spat violet sparks into the tunnel of brown flannel. Barely clinging to its curve, its metal screeched anachronism. But it was only as she waited at a crossing, watching the stream churn past, that dismay overtook Mrs Godbold, and she began to cry. It seemed as if the group of figures huddled on the bank was ignored not so much by the traffic as by the strong, undeviating flood of time. There they waited