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auditorium. First thing in the morning it was still hot from the night before. Acantia cooked bolar roast, onions, potatoes and silverbeet in a top-hat pressure cooker stashed all day in a corner of the fire. If it worked, the roast was so good that it fell apart in onion-honeyed skeins and the potatoes were reddish orange toffee almost to the core. The onions disappeared altogether. When it didn’t work, it was charcoal but they chewed on it anyway.
    The fireplace was the only hot, dry place in the house in winter. All the walls oozed moisture and the sheets were damp. They huddled around the fire, steaming and contented, and it roared and flared welcomingly when they opened the door and walked in. Fire loved them and they loved it.
    The kitchen had a low ceiling that Acantia papered with paintings done by the children. She gummed the backs, laid them over the broom and swept them over the marine blue.
    The kitchen had a wooden floor with holes in the corners by the skirtings. At first they thought of rats but later they blamed the house itself. When the house was gone they found piles of molten cutlery, coins and ashen jewellery stashed away where the floorboards had coffined them.
    The kitchen also had a real window; a huge expanse of glass, four foot by three.
    Mr Tarsini was the Man in the Window. The Tarsinis were their neighbours over the years. They also had a family of six children, and had a baby to make it seven at about the same time as the Houdinis.
    The Tarsinis were as messy as the Houdinis, although they were much quieter. They were very similar but conducted their affairs in a more civilised fashion. They were three girls and four boys, all with the same names as the Houdinis and the same ages. At times they were ignored and at times watched avidly. Ursula, Siegfried and later Lilo were amused at first by their identical forms and mannerisms, and then, bit by bit, noted the differences. The Tarsinis’ world was dimmer and the dirt didn’t show. The dimensions of their house were bigger and the dimensions of their Pa smaller. They fitted into their world with less trouble than the Houdinis squeezed into theirs. They were theatrical when the Houdinis were serious. They were creatures of the night. The Houdini kids only ever saw the back of Acantia Tarsini’s head and in turn Acantia Houdini always sat with her back to the window. She was, however, made conscious of the Tarsinis’ antics by the attention they elicited from her own children, and she was increasingly annoyed by imbecilic behaviour directed at the window.
    The game of sea warfare was played out in the kids’ room in smothered explosions. Then, when everyone got tired, several raised tents of sheets glowed eerily long into the night. In the early years, the most intensely pursued pastime was sillytalk and the favourite story was the Three Billy Goats Gruff.
    The punishment for being caught sillytalking was the same as for ‘shit’ or ‘bloody’: mouth washed out with soap. This made it all the more enticing. Beate and Gotthilf couldn’t stand it but the rest of them could be reduced to hissing paroxysms of laughter squidged between their teeth and eyelids by the sound of Siegfried and Helmut sillytalking into the night.
    â€˜Bottom,’ Helmut started, leaving the word hanging in the darkness. Silence. Then from the other bunk the retort, ‘Pu-pul.’
    â€˜Shhhhhh,’ Beate’s bunk rocked and springs whined with her irritation.
    The conversation died but the air was tense with many pricked ears.
    Then . . .
    â€˜A-Aa.’
    Siegfried snorted in agony and squeaked, ‘Wee Wee Penis!’
    Little snorts of laughter began popping and bubbling around the room. Helmut waited. Everyone got themselves under control and began drifting towards sleep, smiling. Then, into the still air:
    â€˜ Mister Yewrine.’
    The galleons whined and rocked. Mouths were stuffed with pillows as Acantia