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together. The sherry was heavy and sweet, with a pronounced meniscus. At first they talked only about recent events, what they had done with themselves as civvies and the fates of the men they knew. Eventually, they fell to swapping yarns about the war. Rex didn’t resist; he was squiffy from the sherry.
    The two men talked a blue streak, interrupting and finishing each other’s sentences, as women do. Every now and again, one of them pushed back his chair and went out to the garden to relieve himself on Irene’s crepe myrtle. By the middle of the afternoon, the kitchen table was sticky with plonk. ‘We’re drunk as skunks,’ they chorused, by this time finding their every utterance a source of amusement.
    Irene hovered at the kitchen sink, listening to the men’s conversation and staring at her garden. For Lent, she had decided to drink her tea cold, with no milk and sugar, a version of sackcloth that she had come to like. As the day progressed, she drank a quantity of this bitter brew, pouring it from a teapot that stood on the sill above the sink. She grew increasingly jittery, in counterpoint to the men’s relaxed inebriety.
    Girlie and Boy came home from school. Something was wrong. Girlie sensed it before she was at the gate. In the kitchen, her father and a strange man. Her father’s face was flushed, and he stank of sherry and scratched his crotch as if nobody else were there. She had never seen him like this. He was telling the story of his only brush with the law.
    â€˜We were at a pub in Crows Nest. It’s raining, and we’ve had a few. I go to hail a taxi. There’s one coming. I can see the light on top. It doesn’t stop. So I whistle and yell, I jump up and down like a madman. That works all right. Blow me down if it isn’t a police car.’
    Rex stopped, conscious of the children standing in the doorway. He lurched out of his chair.
    â€˜Here’s my bonny lass. Come and dance with me, lassie.’
    Girlie ducked.
    Boy hugged the wall, trying to make himself invisible so he could listen to the men’s stories, but it was too late; his father’s friend was taking his leave. They were both unsteady, so the army mate flung an arm around Rex, and he likewise, and they proceeded awkwardly through the door and onto the verandah, trailed by Irene, Girlie, and Boy.
    They forsook the steps and made for the edge, where they fell off and landed in a heap on the lawn. They picked themselves up, giggling like girls. Proximity sparked their next idea: they must dance a tango. Heads together, arms leading at a stiff right angle, they pranced down the lawn. And fell in another heap.
    Irene, Girlie, and Boy were lined up on the verandah watching this spectacle. Irene, hopped up on caffeine, was genuinely amused; she had been mollified by some complicitous glances that had passed between her and the army mate. She laughed, throwing back her head, as if this were the funniest thing she had ever seen. Girlie turned red and kicked herself in the ankle; she found what was happening unbearable. Boy’s eyes tracked from his mother to his father and back again and then took his mother’s lead and brayed like a little donkey.

15
    Sex Is the Big Preoccupation of
My Life, and Why Not?
    R EX BORROWED A bull to service his cows. The bull came crated on the back of a truck, a self-satisfied brute with stupid eyes. Girlie loitered near the water tank, hoping nobody would notice her. She didn’t know why she shouldn’t advertise her presence, except that every time the subject of the bull came up, voices were lowered. Boy was there, too, running around, getting underfoot.
    Neighbors had dropped by to help: Cecil, Ernie, Roy, in blue overalls and heavy work boots. They had a purposeful air; this was serious work. Men’s work. A ramp was attached to the truck, and the bull came down it gingerly, urged along by the men; they yelled and poked at his flanks