Uncle Jim's Fortune

1

Uncle Jim’s Fortune

    “‘Ah’m a mod-dull, ya know what I mean, Ah shake my liddle tush ah-awn the catwalk!’” croaked Miss Barbara Muller at the top of her lungs, parading along Uncle Jim’s big old kitchen table.

    “Get down, Dad’ll kill ya if he catches ya doing that,” noted Jimmy without interest.

    Ignoring her dumb brother, Buffy continued to parade and sing: “‘Ah’m a mod-dul, ya know what I mean—’”

    Jimmy sighed. He tipped the contents of a kitchen drawer onto the bench and began sorting through them without enthusiasm. Electricity bills, mainly. Surprize, surprize. Dad was mad, saying there must be a will in the house somewhere: old Uncle Jim had been barmy, everyone knew that. And if he hadn’t left a will with his solicitors while he was more or less in his right mind, he wouldn’ta made one while he was barmy and left it lying around the house! Well, if he had, it wouldn’t count, wasn’t there some sort of a law that said a will wasn’t legal if you were mad when ya made it? Added to which, the old bloke hadn’t had anything to leave! ...Except, apparently, a lot of flaming electricity bills! Sighing heavily, Jimmy began trying to sort them out, more or less in date order. ...Couldja leave ya debts to ya heirs? Now, that was a thought! Wonder if Dad had thought of that one, while he was at it!

    “‘—Ah shake my liddle tush ah-awn the catwalk!’” gasped Buffy breathlessly, making a flying leap onto the bench at the far side of the sink.

    Jimmy glanced up at her sourly. “How do ya tell if an electricity bill’s been paid or not?” he said sourly.

    Buffy replied brilliantly: “They turn the power off, of course! –‘Ah’m a mod-dull, ya know what I mean—’”

    She had a point. Sighing, Jimmy got on with sorting bills. There were a fair few for such items as repairs to Uncle Jim’s broken-down tractor, repairs to Uncle Jim’s broken-down Holden Commodore, and such-like mixed up with them, too. They oughta go with the ones from the farm office, really. Sighing, he set them aside.

    Above his bent head, Buffy wriggled her hips energetically on the other half of the bench. “‘Ah’m a mod-dull, ya know what I mean, Ah shake my liddle tush ah-awn the catwalk! Ah’m a mod-dul, ya know what I mean—’”

    Jimmy closed his eyes for a moment. “Must you make that bloody racket?” he groaned.

    Ignoring him, Buffy continued to wriggle and chant.

    Jimmy didn’t insist. It was no use insisting with Buffy: she had a will of iron. Well, witness the name. Ugh. She’d been christened “Barbara”, and “Barbara” she had remained until approximately the summer of her thirteenth year. Then she’d seen some bloody Yank TV programme, and— Well, she’d been “Buffy” ever since. Dad had told her approximately a million times it was dumb, it was American, and it wasn’t a name. Well, a million times a week, in the first year. After that it had only been about a million times a year. Buffy was sixteen, now, and it had slackened off to approximately fifteen times a week. Unless he was really pissed off with her, of course.

    “‘Ah’m a mod-dull, ya know what I mean, Ah shake my liddle tush ah-awn the catwalk! Ah-awn the catwalk!’ –Those are all bills.”

    “I know they’re bills, but if I don’t go through them all, Dad’ll have a piece of me.”

    Changing the subject to her second-favourite topic of the moment after that of her chosen career as a supermodel, Buffy announced without preamble: “I hate school.”

    Jimmy ignored her.

    “It’s dumb,” she said, pouting. “That dumb Mrs Broughton, she makes ya do stupid elocution instead of proper Home Ec! I bet it’s the only school in Australia that makes ya do elocution! Amanda Gibson’s sister, well, she says it’s like somethink out of the nineteenth century!”

    Jimmy ignored her. He’d had a lot of practice.

    In the farm office at the far side of the house Len Muller sighed and muttered: “Those bloody kids are fighting again.”

    Dave Hordern, who was old Uncle Jim’s nearest neighbour and had kindly come over to give the Mullers a hand with sorting out his stuff, volunteered: “Sounded mostly like young Buffy, to me.”

    Len sighed heavily. “Yeah.”

    There was a short pause. Dave sorted through some fertilizer bills. “She still reckon she wants to be a model?”

    Len grunted affirmatively.

    “Well, some kids must make a go of it,” said Dave, scratching his head.

    “Jesus, Dave, would you let one of your girls?” returned Len heatedly.

    “Well—uh—no. Not if it was up to me, no,” he admitted with a sheepish grin.

    “No,” said Len grimly. He opened another drawer in the battered old desk.

    “Probably won’t be up to you, ya know,” drawled Dave.

    Len tipped the contents of the drawer onto the surface of desk. “It will while she’s under age,” he said grimly. “And according to her, if her rotten father makes her stay at school until she’s eighteen, that’ll be too late.”

    “Eh?”

    Len pushed a few rusty gearwheels aside. “Half those kids flashing their tits in the bloody fashion mags are younger than Buffy is now,” he said grimly.

    “Eh?” he croaked.

    “Innocent lives you mob lead out here in the woop-woops, Dave.”

    “Yeah, but those flaming mags— Well, the ones Shelley and Tanya read, Pam only reads the Women’s Weekly, not that it isn’t just about as bad, these days, mind you. Uh—yeah: those mags that the girls read, half those models are—uh—”

    “Half-naked and flashing their tits: yeah. Next thing to child pornography,” said Len grimly.

    Dave gulped. “Mm. Well, uh, more or less. Yeah.”

    “No kid of mine is gonna get caught up in that rat-race,” said Len grimly. “What the flamin’ Christ are all these bloody gearwheels out of?” he added by the by.

    Dave was sitting on the floor beside the desk. He glanced up at them cursorily. “Uh—dunno. This bottom drawer’s full of bits of rusty iron.”

    “Chuck ’em out.”

    “Righto.” Dave emptied the drawer, with a great rattling and slithering, into the tea chest that stood at his side. “S’pose I could take the new ute off ya hands. Well, the boys might able to do something with it,” he offered dubiously.

    Len sighed again. “Thanks for the offer. Only we can’t legally do anything until we find out whether the silly old goat made a will!”

    “Uh—no-o... Wouldn’t Marion and the kids be the heirs anyway, Len?”

    “Don’t ask me,” he returned glumly. “Marion reckons ’e’s got hundreds of rellies back in Pongo. All panting to get their mitts on this little lot.”

    The two men looked drily round the dusty, shabby little office.

    “Yeah,” concluded Dave drily.

    Len sniffed slightly. “Yeah,” he agreed.

    In the office Len and Dave continued to sort old bills, old receipts, none of which were matched to the bills, old letters, and bits of rusty iron. In the kitchen Buffy continued to wriggle and chant, and Jimmy continued morosely to sort bills.

    In Uncle Jim’s bedroom Marion Muller and Pam Hordern sorted carefully through the old man’s clothes. Everything in the drawers and cupboards was spotlessly clean and carefully ironed, but all of it looked as if it dated from around about the War and none of it looked as if it had been worn since.

    “How old was he?” said Pam at last, shoving a curl back behind her ear.

    Marion straightened, sighing. “I honestly don’t know, Pam. He must’ve been well into his eighties. I suppose he could even have been in his nineties.”

    Pam nodded. “I don’t know what on earth we’re going to do with all these undies.” She held up a pair of carefully darned drawers. “I mean, Y-fronts are one thing, but these!”

    “I thought the Salvos might take them,” said Marion dubiously.

    “Well, yeah: the singlets and the shirts and suits—okay. But would even a dero wanna wear these?” She held them up against herself. She was quite a tall woman: nevertheless the drawers reached to her knees.

    Marion gulped. “Yeah. Uh—well, I dunno, I’ve never asked a dero what sort of undies he had on!”

    Pam gave a loud giggle. Marion smiled.

    “Did he ever wear them, anyway?” asked Pam, putting them neatly on the pile of their brothers.

    “It doesn’t look like it, does it? I think he just stopped bothering when old Mrs Binns died. I think he just wore those overalls, year in, year out.”

    The two matrons had already burned the remaining pairs of overalls. Ignoring Dave’s loud complaints that they were gonna start a flaming bushfire, couldn’t they see how dry it was out there?

    “Mm...”

    “He musta done, Pam: I’ve never seen anything else on his line!”

    “Eh? Oh: not that. I’m sure you’re right,” said Pam in a sheepish voice. “I was just wondering about him and old Mrs Binns.”

    Marion swallowed. “Yes. Well, we’ve wondered, too, of course. –I never heard him call her anything but ‘Mrs Binns,’ did you?”—Pam shook her head.—“Mind you, with that generation...”

    “Mm.”

    “She never had any children, of course,” offered Pam. “Um—I wouldn’ta said old Jim woulda been into birth control!” she added with a smothered giggle.

    “No, but she musta been past it by the time she came to work for him, Pam!”

    Pam’s jaw sagged. “That was back before me and Dave got married,” she croaked.

    “Yeah. She’d have been in her fifties, then. Dad was still alive, we used to come out every Christmas... Mum always hated Mrs Binns, I could never see why at the time. Maybe that was it.”

    “Because she was sleeping with the old boy? Yeah, I s’pose...”

    Marion nodded. “Mm. Or maybe it was because she was afraid he was gonna have a family by her, and we’d miss out on the fortune!”

    Pam sniggered and replied to the sub-text: “Len isn’t so keen on looking for the will because he really believes in the fortune, is he?”

    “Um, no, not really, Pam,” she said weakly. “He just likes everything to be neat and tidy—ya know what he is.

    Pam nodded. She didn’t suggest that perhaps this tendency was the influence of Len Muller’s German ancestry, because the thought never occurred to her: after several generations the German families who had come out to South Australia and settled and started growing fruit and vegetables and a few grapes in the Barossa Valley and the Adelaide Hills were so thoroughly absorbed into the Australian ethos as to be unnoticeable. Only the surnames, generally Anglicized out of all recognition, remained to hint at the original difference from the Anglo-Celtic majority. That and the pretty little village of Hahndorf in the hills, touristified out of all recognition. It was, of course, possible to belong to some sort of ethnocentric club or another if you were that way inclined but the Mullers, like the majority, weren’t. The fact that Marion’s mother was a Frenchwoman was of much more interest to Pam, who like her contemporaries tended to regard such recent European immigrants as excitingly exotic whilst ignoring history almost entirely. Non-European immigrants were a different story, but there were none of those in the dry and dusty stretch of South Australia that the Horderns called home.

    Pam now stared vaguely out of the window at the sufficiently barren stretch of South Australia that had belonged to the old man, and said: “I suppose he woulda put the money into the place, if he had of had a fortune.”

    “Yeah, or got out of it,” agreed Marion.

    Pam nodded, and sighed.

    “It’s been quite a good year for grain, hasn’t it?” said Marion cautiously.

    “Well, we had a good harvest, yeah. Very early. The first loads got to the silos before they’d even been cleaned from last year, did you know that?”

    Marion and Len had a cherry orchard, not a million miles from Hahndorf in the hills; Marion shook her head, and allowed. “That is early.”

    Pam sighed. “Mm. It’s not just a matter of the harvest, though. You need the market as well... I dunno. It all seems crazy to me: there are the Yanks paying their farmers not to produce wheat, and the Russians starving...”

    “Yeah, it’s mad, all right,” agreed Marion.

    “Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing it for,” admitted Pam. “When I was a kid... I dunno. Maybe things weren’t as secure as they seemed, back then. But Dad was always absolutely sure that Jack’d want to take over the place, and Dave’s Dad was absolutely sure he would.”

    “Ye-es... I thought Andy and Shane were quite keen, Pam?”

    Pam began folding singlets. “Shane isn’t. He’s joined up with some mate of his and they’ve found some idiot hobby-farmer that’s willing to put money into their whacky schemes and they reckon they’re gonna start farming alpacas and vicunas!”

    Marion gulped.

    “I said to him, look at what’s happened to the wool market in recent years, and he went on and on about luxury fibres: he doesn’t seem to understand that if there’s a glut on the market, the prices drop through the floor!”

    “Ye-ah... Well, the rich seem to be getting richer and the poor getting poorer every year, Pam. Maybe there will always be a market for luxury fibres. –What do they make out of them, anyway?” she ended on a weak note.

    Pam folded singlets grimly. “Don’t ask me. All I know is, if some rich hobby-farmer from Sydney’s in on it, it won’t be Shane and Bob that’ll make their fortunes out of it. Supposing any fortunes are to be made, which I doubt. Ask me, he’s doing it as a tax dodge.”

    “From Sydney?” quavered Marion. “Out here?”

    Pam folded singlets grimly. “Yeah. Him and his wife fly out every other weekend. He’s had a manager on the place, up to now, but now the boys’ll take over. –Second wife, need I add?” she did add.

    “They fly out from Sydney?” gasped Marion. “They must be rolling in it!”

    Pam folded singlets grimly. “Yeah. Private jet, if ya please.”

    Marion began taking shirts out of a drawer. “Help.”

    There was a short pause.

    “She’s the sort that wears those designer jeans and silk shirts. Oh, and fancy cowboy boots. And every time I’ve seen her she’s been wearing these huge pearl earrings.”

    Marion and Pam were themselves in sleeveless floral cotton dresses. They looked at each other drily for a moment.

    Pam went back to the singlets. “Skinny as a rake, of course.”

    Marion and Pam were themselves well into their forties and having been pretty busy for over twenty years being mothers and housewives, not to say invaluable unpaid workers on the orchard or the farm, had never had that much time to consecrate to dieting into what today’s fashion dictates declared was the In Look. And what Dave Hordern described as “like flamin’ scarecrows” and Len Muller described as “damn well unnatural and if I catch a kid of mine shoving her finger down her throat after her dinner I’ll belt the living daylights out of ’er.”

    Marion and Pam exchanged glances. Marion sniffed slightly. Pam rolled her eyes slightly. They went back to folding singlets and shirts.

    “Andy’s quite keen,” revealed Pam sadly as she folded. “But it’s a question of whether we’ll still own the place, when his time comes!”

    Marion’s and Len’s income didn’t depend on the mad fluctuations of overseas markets. Nevertheless Marion sighed and said very sympathetically: “Yes.”

    “Of course, the flamin’ government—” Pam broke off. “Don’t get me started on them. Well, that’s all the undies done, anyway. Whether or not the Salvos’ll take these weird old underpants!”

    They grinned at each other. Pam began to investigate a small bureau. “Help! It’s absolutely crammed with ties and hankies! –Aw, heck: no, it’s not. Look, Marion: there’s letters and stuff in these bottom drawers.”

    “Blow. Um—well, let’s get the clothes out of the way, first. Then maybe Len and Dave can give us a hand with the papers and things.”

    Pam went back to the smaller top drawers. “Good grief!” She held up a bunch of something and flapped them at her.

    “What on— Collars?” said Marion limply.

    “Yeah. I’ve only ever seen them on the flicks.”

    “Um... I sort of remember Grandad had a collar box,” recalled Marion hazily. “It didn’t have any collars in it, though.”

    “Shall I throw them out?”

    “Well, I don’t think the Salvos ’ud thank you for them, Pam!” said Marion with a laugh.

    “No. It seems... Not a waste, exactly.” Pam dropped the collars into the tea chest that stood in the middle of the room. “Sad,” she said, looking into it.

    “Times change…” said Marion vaguely, heaving up a pile of flannel shirts. “Ugh, mothballs!” she gasped.

    “Mm... Doesn’t it give you a funny feeling, thinking of all the time and energy some unfortunate woman must have expended on these collars, once?” said Pam, looking into the tea chest.

    “Mrs Binns, I suppose,” said Marion vaguely. She began inspecting the flannel shirts, just in case the moths had won.

    “Mm... Who did she leave her stuff to?”

    “Jimmy,” admitted Marion. “He was only a tot, at the time.”

    “Your Jimmy?”

    “Yeah. –I suppose it proves she must’ve been really fond of the old man. Well, Jimmy was named after him.”

    “Oh, yeah. So she didn’t have any relatives of her own?”

    “Yeah, of course she did!” said Marion with huge irony. “Scores of Binns rellies were lining up from here to Kangaroo Island, dead keen to get that gold brooch and that hideous pair of vases off Jimmy!”

    Pam swallowed, and smiled weakly. “Was that all she left?”

    “Yes. –I think you might’ve been having Tanya, at the time,” admitted Marion, smiling at her. “She had almost nothing to leave, poor old thing. And apparently no family left at all.”

    “It’s sad,” decided Pam. She went back to the bureau, but stared into space. “It gives you a funny feeling.”

    “It’ll be the mothballs,” said Marion drily. “Open the window and turn the fan on.”

    Pam grinned but said: “Better not. The fly screens are all busted.”

    “Oh, well, shall we have the fan on, anyway?”

    “It’s busted, too. I tried it before.”

    Marion sighed heavily. “The fridge had better not be busted, that’s all!”

    “Well, if it is, it won’t matter, because Dave’s shoved an esky full of beer in the ute!” she revealed with a giggle.

    “They have their uses after all,” discovered Marion in surprise.

    “Yeah!” said Pam with another giggle.

    In Uncle Jim’s bedroom Marion and Pam sorted clothes and ruminated on the price of wheat and the ultimate sadness of existence. In the office Len and Dave sorted old bills, old receipts, old letters, and bits of rusty iron. In the kitchen Buffy paraded, wriggled, and chanted, and Jimmy sorted bills.

    Out in one of the multitude of broken-down sheds Kyle Bayley, who was Len Muller’s son-in-law, and the amiable Andy Hordern, who had come over with his parents to lend a hand, looked at the mess of rusty iron that passed for old Jim Frazer’s farm equipment and scratched their chins.

    “Just write ‘Junk, assorted,’” decided Andy at last. “After all, if ’e hasn’t left it to Marion and the kids, whadda you mob care, and if ’e has, it’s all coming to them anyway!” He grinned.

    “Yeah. Right,” agreed Kyle with feeling. “Junk, assorted,” he wrote under the heading “Shed 4.”

    “Ya could put that for the next shed, too, I know what’s in there: the remains of the Model T and the remains of the last three utes and five hundred years’ deposits of chook droppings and feathers.”

    “Any chooks?”

    “Nope: think ’e ate ’em.”

    “Oh. –Doesn’t look as if he did any farming,” ventured Kyle.

    “Not in my lifetime, no,” agreed Andy drily.

    “Cripes. Well, what did ’e live off?”

    “Baked beans. And the odd chook.”

    The baked beans bit was true enough, there was a mountain of baked bean tins out the back behind the sheds.

    “What paid for the baked beans, And’?” asked Kyle curiously.

    “Never thought about it,” admitted Andy.

    “Well, something must of! They don’t grow on trees,” he said, regardless of the fact that the flat, dusty countryside around them was entirely treeless to the horizon. “And hang on: did ’e have a mortgage?”

    “Musta done,” replied Dave and Marion’s son promptly.

    “Ye-ah... It’s bloody funny, when ya come to think of it, Andy.”

    “Uh—well, maybe he had money in the bank from the good years.”

    “Thirty years back, by your reckoning,” he noted.

    “Well, heck, he musta done, Kyle, or the bank woulda chucked him off the place!”

    “Yeah. Oh, well, come on, let’s take a dekko at these utes and junk.”

    Andy shrugged, but amiably led the way.

    “It’s practically an archaeological site,” said Kyle limply. “That really is a Model T, eh?”

    “Part of one: yeah. And about twenny others,” replied Andy, unmoved. Most farms had piles of old inorganic junk of one sort or another on them. In the burning South Australian climate it was more than possible that these artefacts would remain in situ until the sites could justifiably be classified as archaeological, too.

    “Um—what say I just put ‘Car parts’?” ventured Kyle.

    “You’re catching on,” Andy allowed.

    Kyle wrote “Car parts,” under “Shed 5” and they moved on.

    In the kitchen Buffy paraded, wriggled, and chanted, and Jimmy sorted more bills. Most of them were properly to do with the farm business but he’d now decided it was no use trying to make a distinction. In the office Len and Dave finished sorting old bills, old receipts, and bits of rusty iron, and Len began glancing through the letters in case a will was mentioned, while Dave began taking all the drawers out of all the cabinets and cupboards and the desk, in case something like a will had got stuck behind them. In the bedroom Marion and Pam sorted clothes and packed them into Uncle Jim’s old suitcases and the cardboard cartons Marion had brought up from the orchard (“Muller Cherries,” it said on most of them). Out in the multitude of broken-down sheds, where it was even hotter than in the old house, Kyle and Andy sweated and swiped their hands across their faces and waved endless flies away and wrote things like: “More junk”, and “Dead tractor”, and “More b. junk.”

    In the sitting-room the red-haired Miss Sarah Bayley, aged two and a half, and thanks to the warped mind of her maternal grandfather known as “Fergie” to the whole of the Muller and Bayley tribes, not excluding Aunty Mim and Uncle Joe up in Townsville, Aunty Sue and Uncle Ross down in Launceston, and the cousins over in New Zealand, had gone to sleep in the playpen her grandmother had insisted on packing for her over the loud objections of her grandfather and her parents. Not to say Jimmy: it wouldn’t go in the boot and it had been him it had been sticking into all the way. At intervals her mother, Rose, reported she looked hot, felt her forehead, and reported she seemed to be all right. The big ceiling fan in the sitting-room was working, possibly because the old man hadn’t used the room in the last twenty years, but in forty-two-degree heat under a tin roof it was no wonder that Fergie’s round cheeks were very flushed.

    Rose Bayley, Shelley Hordern and Shelley’s sister-in-law, Lorrae, who was Andy’s wife, had volunteered to sort out the things in the sitting-room. Since it hadn’t been used for twenty years—well, possibly a little less, Jimmy had been Fergie’s age when Mrs Binns died and he was now eighteen—but since it hadn’t been used within the memories of any of them it was actually very neat. If very dusty. But fortunately Pam had thought of that and had brought over a vacuum-cleaner and a dust-buster which Lorrae and Shelley, respectively, had wielded to startling effect. The sitting-room cupboards were now being emptied by Rose, Shelley and Lorrae. Rose was carefully inventorying the china. Shelley was carefully inventorying the linen which occupied a large camphor chest and a cupboard: carefully but somewhat inaccurately inventorying it, as the linen dated from around 1930 and Shelley dated from around 1970. As they searched these containers Rose and Shelley of course checked carefully for anything resembling a will. Lorrae was going through the pretty little desk, carefully sorting out old bills, old receipts, old letters and old account books. And of course checking carefully for anything resembling a will.

    These activities did not need wholly to occupy the mind, so as they sorted and checked and inventoried, Rose, Shelley and Lorrae maintained a cheerful flow of conversation. On such fascinating topics as Shelley’s fiancé’s probable intention of returning to the district after he’d done his Ag. Sci. course at the University of Adelaide, the dress Shelley was planning to wear to this gentleman’s twenty-first, the dress Shelley’s sister Tanya (not present) was planning to wear to this festivity if Mum’d let her go, the shade Shelley’s friend Anne had had her hair tinted by Hair Image in Adelaide, the late doings of all Shelley’s and Anne’s co-workers at their mutual place of employment in this metropolis but more especially their doings at the office Happy Hour on the last Friday before Shelley’s holidays had started, and the pub Shelley, her fiancé, Anne, Anne’s boyfriend and other specified friends had recently honoured with their presences in order to hear its ace Group.

    Being married women, Rose and Lorrae were only able to counter this flow with a description of the house that had gone up next to Rose and Kyle’s in Adelaide not excluding a narrow examination of what its price had been and the sort of mortgage they musta had to get, the style, colour and price of Rose and Kyle’s new body carpet, and the style, colour and price of Kyle’s new car, on the one hand; and on the other hand the dress Lorrae was planning to wear to her cousin Peter’s wedding next month, the cost to Peter’s fiancée’s parents of hiring a mansion in the Barossa whereat to hold this function, the proposed honeymoon destination, cost of getting thereto and return plus cost and style of accommodation thereat, and the style, colour and cost of the bride’s and her bridesmaids’ dresses. Plus some slight diversions into the gynaecological health of Rose’s Aunty Mim’s daughter Felicity, the gynaecological health of Lorrae’s sister, Greta, and the paediatric health of the twins that the said suffering body had recently produced. A passing reference to the scandals in the Royal Family might have been in there, too, but you could have missed it if you weren’t concentrating.

    On the other side of the room, next to old Uncle Jim’s wall of books, Linnet Muller, oblivious to all this exciting information, was sitting on the floor, reading. Linnet had been deputed by her younger but much more vigorous sister, Rose, to check through the books to see if Uncle Jim had hidden his will inside them because in books, that was what people did. Linnet had not asked how Rose, who read nothing but the Australian Women’s Weekly, which was the most popular monthly in the country, and New Idea, which was very similar, with the occasional daring excursion into Australian House and Garden when she was feeling up-market, knew this. After Shelley had fiercely dust-busted the books, Linnet had started. She’d conscientiously worked her way through five shelves of books, sneezing a lot. Then a title had caught her eye.

    The other three young women hadn’t noticed. If they had done, they would have concluded without surprize that that was just like Linnet. It wasn’t that she didn’t intend to pull her weight: it was just that she was a hopeless dreamer. A Hopeless Dreamer.

    This hopeless dreaminess could be proven, supposing anyone had demanded such proof, which after the sitting-on-the-floor-reading bit admittedly no-one was likely to, by the three following points.

    Firstly, Linnet, at twenty-seven, was unemployed. She had gone to uni and done endless years of study resulting in a Ph.D. and a job in plant genetics with the South Australian Department of Agriculture which she’d just lost because, like all research jobs in the Australia of the go-ahead nineteen-nineties, it was a three-year contract, not a permanent position, and after the State Bank had run the state three billion into debt the plug had been pulled on all non-essential research, in other words anything that wasn’t a permanent government position. This first point could be compared with the situation of Rose, three years Linnet’s junior, who had worked in an office and saved up religiously apart from a short trip to Bali and a short trip to Singapore and a short trip to Cairns and the Gold Coast, before getting pregnant and married and buying a house with an eighty percent mortgage at an interest rate that she still hadn’t admitted to her father; and who had had Fergie and was thinking of having another one because there weren’t any part-time jobs but if she kept up her keyboarding skills she could go temping a bit later on, that always paid well.

    Secondly, Linnet was living at home, although she was twenty-seven. This second point could also be compared with the situation of Rose.

    Thirdly, though possibly firstly in order of its significance to her peers, Linnet wasn’t married—or anything—although she was twenty-seven. This third point could also, very clearly, be compared with the situation of Rose. And not infrequently was, particularly by Rose, Lorrae and even Shelley. Not married or anything? Help.

    Kyle, Andy and Shelley’s fiancé, when interrogated, would have been found to have opinions ranging from complete lack of interest (Shelley’s fiancé), to: “Oh, well, she’s got her qualifications. –What? Um, well, I s’pose she doesn’t wanna get married, Lorr’. –What? Yeah, I did go out with her once or twice, so what? No, pretty skinny, isn’t she? Um—yeah, ’course you’re miles prettier than her, don’t be silly.” (Andy Hordern); to: “Why’dja have to keep going on about it? I dunno why she’s never got married, Rose! What? Uh—pretty skinny, yeah, I s’pose so. Eh? Yeah, I s’pose I’d say she’s the intellectual type, she’s got a flamin’ doctorate, hasn’t she? –For Pete’s sake, Rose, don’t ask ME why she’s living at home at her age: she’s your flamin’ sister!” (Kyle Bayley.)

    On the other hand, it must be admitted that Andy Hordern and Kyle Bayley, neither of whom was totally thick, thanks, were not prepared to be entirely truthful with their wives on the subject. While acknowledging that Linnet was in the main pretty skinny, Kyle silently considered her to have the best pair of knockers on ’er he’d ever seen in person and legs like Elle Macpherson’s and if anyone was looking for a model type in the Muller family they didn’t have to look any further than the eldest sister. For his part Andy silently considered her to have the best pair of knockers he’d ever seen barring girlie mags, and those long, slim legs weren’t half bad, either. And it was a mystery to him why she hadn’t given him more encouragement! Because he’d been more than willing—more than. Maybe she was a dyke, he’d concluded glumly, when even the treat of being rolled on by twelve stone of warmly breathing Andy Hordern in the back of the 4WD in thirty-eight-degree heat hadn’t roused the then twenty-year-old Linnet to the pitch of ecstasy. Pity: Helluva waste of those knockers.

    True, Linnet didn’t do anything to display her best attributes. The legs were generally shrouded in denim—cheap denim. The sort that went baggy and faded at the knees and bum in no time. The bust was generally shrouded in a baggy sweatshirt of the heavy knit, fluffy-lined variety in the colder weather, and in a baggy cotton-knit tee-shirt in the warmer months. When it was very hot Linnet usually wore one of her three sundresses. One was washed-out blue with small washed-out pink flowers on it. It was sleeveless with a lowered waist and looked as if it was at least three sizes too big for her. The second was identical except that its background was a particularly vile shade of faded olive green and its flowers were yellow. The third was even looser and baggier round the bust and had even more of at tendency to dip unevenly round the hem. It was washed-out fawn with some flowers that might once have been red. None of these colours suited Linnet. The legs, perhaps needless to state, were not displayed to advantage by any one of these dresses: in the first place they all came to around four inches above her slender ankles and in the second place it was her habit to wear ancient brown Roman sandals in the summer. Roman sandals had lately had a brief revival but Linnet hadn’t noticed it. In anybody’s terms, Linnet was pretty much of a sartorial disaster.

    Linnet Muller, in short, gave the impression of a shy, skinny, plain girl. Yet her features, on analysis, were not plain at all. But even Rose had given up telling her she ought to do something with herself. Because in her quiet way, Linnet was every bit as stubborn as Buffy.

    Linnet’s features were small and neat. Her face was heart-shaped and her eyes were large and hazel and quite attractive but as she habitually walked with her head lowered warily because of the uneven Adelaide pavements and in any case wore sunglasses and a large straw sunhat in the warmer weather only a tiny proportion of the population had ever noticed this. Her hair was very thick and of a strange, light brown shade, almost a pale bronze, that verged on the greenish. Strangers meeting her for the first time sometimes wondered if she dyed it but it took no-one very long to realise that young Dr Muller was not the sort of woman who dyes her hair. The thick, wavy hair might have looked quite attractive, had she bothered to do anything with it. Brush it, for example. Linnet wore it the way she had worn it since she was ten years old: in a big, fat, fuzzy plait down her back. She didn’t bother with make-up. During her student days she’d discovered that not only did it cost far too much, she was hopeless at putting it on.

    Perhaps Linnet might have made more of an effort with her appearance if she hadn’t suffered most of her life from comparison with Rose, who had always been considered the beauty of the family. However, the current local style in feminine adornment would, in fact, have done nothing for Linnet’s small, elegant features, slender, elegant figure and long, thick, strange hair.

    Rose, on the other hand, conformed as closely to the local norms in feminine beauty as she did to those in acceptable feminine behaviour of the under-thirties set. The two sisters’ appearances in old Uncle Jim’s hot sitting-room on that broiling summer’s day were typical. They were about the same height, about five-foot-nine: the Mullers were not, on the whole, a short family. Today, because it was very hot and they were on holiday, or at least in the country in what was to them a holiday setting, one’s great-uncle’s death not being an occasion for a holiday, they were both in shorts. With the shorts and the height the resemblance ended.

    Linnet’s shorts were grey cotton, and came to about where Uncle Jim’s underpants would have come on Pam Hordern. They were baggy, but it wasn’t a with-it, Today bagginess, rather the bagginess of shorts that had never fitted and had been bought because they were on special. Above the shorts was a shapeless drab green sleeveless thing. Her hair was in its usual plait but in deference to the heat and the lack of air conditioning she’d pinned it up with a large clip. Originally the clip had been brown plastic, possibly imitation tortoiseshell, but the plastic bit had fallen off. The metal mechanism itself was still good, however, so Linnet was using it. Her feet were, of course, in her battered brown Roman sandals. She would not have bothered to sunbathe in any case but her mother, rather worried by the odd shade of the hair which in some lights might have been fancied to be reddish-gold, had told her that she should keep out of the sun as much as possible: there was Scotch blood on her grandfather’s side of the family. And with the prevalence of skin cancer in our climate it was sensible not to take risks. So the long, slender limbs were very pale.

    Rose’s shorts were pink. A bright, cheerful pink: she often wore this shade. They were neatly tailored, and displayed a considerable length of rounded, tanned thigh. It was too hot, really, for a belt, so Rose had just looped a gold chain through the waist-loops of the shorts. Her paler pink top was very short, a thin cotton-knit coming to just below her breasts. It had a scooped neck, not very low in front but lower at the back, and tiny cap sleeves with shoulder pads. The normal effect of shoulder pads with cap sleeves being to make the shoulders of the garment stand out well clear of the actual shoulder, Rose’s sleeves did this. She was a modest young woman as well as a conventional one, and though the top would have been perfectly acceptable without a bra, was wearing one. The outfit, of course, showed a good deal of Rose, and all of it was well Jazzercized and nicely rounded and tanned to a smooth, deep-honey perfection. The Bayleys of course had a patio. And as the house was crammed with the modern conveniences so readily affordable on the credit cards so readily available to those with the excellent credit ratings of heavily mortgaged homeowners, there were many hours in her day when Rose was free to sunbathe out there, in spite of little Fergie.

    Real gold jewellery was very popular with the ladies of Adelaide and environs, though perhaps only the most determined sociologist could have ascertained whether this was due to the prevalence of Greeks and Italians in the more recent immigrant section of the population, or merely to the local jewellers’ relentless television advertising campaigns. Certainly Rose did watch a lot of daytime TV. Today she had a gold necklace of flat incised links, and three gold rings on the right hand: one a twist of entwined loops, one a swirl surrounding a small pearl, and the third a large amethyst dress ring. Two gold chains and a slender, incised gold bangle encircled this wrist. The left hand of course featured the engagement and the wedding rings: the former three pale sapphires interspersed with diamond chips in a two-tone setting of rose and white gold, and the latter a wide, incised gold band set with minute diamond chips. The pinkie finger of this hand was adorned by a little gold ring which was Rose’s favourite, it was in the shape of a teeny bow. This wrist bore a gold chain bracelet that dangled over the modern large-faced watch. Gold metal on a wide pink imitation-lizard strap. Rose had several watches and of course to do a grubby job like sorting out old Uncle Jim’s sitting-room she wasn’t wearing a good one. She was, however, wearing her deep pink nails: she was seldom seen in public without them.

    Facially the two sisters were most unlike. Rose was, as she'd been told innumerable times, very like her name, with a round, pink-cheeked face, and large blue eyes set very wide apart. Her nose was slightly snub and she’d been thankful all her life it wasn’t large. Her wide mouth was well shaped and she encouraged the lower lip to pout just a bit and during her teens had religiously exercised with a pencil every night in order to keep that entrancing curl in the upper lip. She had the small, white, even teeth that all three Muller girls had inherited from their mother.

    Even though she was more or less on holiday Rose, of course, was not in her natural state. Even on one of the hottest days this summer—forty degrees back in Adelaide and thirty-nine up at the Mullers’ orchard in the hills but out here in the country, a good deal further north and further inland, forty-two—she was carefully made up. Perhaps she might not have been had she been married to a different man, but Kyle was so thoroughly indoctrinated that it had never occurred to him to tell her she was batty and it was chucking money down the drain. Over her smooth, careful tan and her naturally rosy cheeks Rose had spread, first, a good moisturizer with plenty of Vitamin E and a 15+ sunscreen. It was, of course, a very drying climate and even young women’s skin tended more to the dry than to the oily end of the spectrum. Then she’d applied a tinted foundation, carefully matched to her summer-time skin tones. The cheeks had got two shades of blusher: a rose-pink one in the middle, more or less, and a more bronzy tint at the sides, to shade and narrow the face. The eyes hadn’t got the full treatment, she reserved that for special outings, so the eye-shadow was just a plain bright blue, and the long, fine lashes had merely been carefully blackened with the sort of mascara that had little hairs in it to thicken and lengthen. No-one had ever pointed out to her that the effect was to make her big blue eyes look as if they were surrounded by lumpy spider’s legs, so Rose was very happy with the result. The lipstick was very, very bright pink and very, very glossy. It had the effect of slightly enlarging her already quite large mouth. If some might have said that the end result of all this was distinctly tarty, Rose’s mirror told her that she looked just right. And in terms of her social norms, she did.

    Hair, of course, was all-important to Rose and her contemporaries, and Rose’s hair was her most drastic cosmetic alteration. If left to itself it would have formed a riotous curly bush standing out all round her head: Marion Muller had the photos to prove it. Its natural colour was a light fawn. Currently it was streaked blonde. Most of it shoulder-length. The lower strata were allowed to retain almost their natural shade, but each succeeding layer was artfully lightened, the top strands being almost white.—Marion had told her faintly that she’d regret that, but hadn’t been listened to.—The lower layers curled thickly and artfully upon the shoulders. Then on top there was a much shorter bit, equally graduated as to the colouration and layered as to the cut. Not a fringe, more a sort of all-over puff: slightly ragged and untidy, because that was the In Look. The overall impression verged perilously near to that of a round-faced blonde French poodle in need of a trim, but very fortunately Rose and her friends looked upon the products of her coiffeuse’s art with entirely prejudiced eyes and the comparison had never occurred to them. Because the hair was naturally curly and shiny this very In style was terrifically expensive and the visits to the hairdresser terrifically long-drawn-out: an immense amount of work went into the raggy ends alone, never mind the straightening and streaking. Lorrae, who also attempted this most fashionable of styles, but had to fall back on the hairdresser in the nearest country town to the farm, had looked at it with green envy.

    Rose’s ears supported one set of gold keepers and one set of thin gold hoops, each dangling a small amethyst. Linnet, by contrast, had never had her ears pierced and possessed no earrings.

    In dress, figure, and features, then, the two older Muller sisters were most unlike and perhaps only their dentist would have classed them unhesitatingly as close relations. But the essential difference between them was one of temperament—their parents had always said they were chalk and cheese. Intellectually Linnet was, obviously, far brighter, but apart from nagging Rose in her teens to do her homework the family had always more or less ignored what was to them not an essential point. Rose, demonstrably, was not only a conformist, she was a happy conformist. Whereas Linnet, described gloomily by her mother as “going her own way” and by her father as “stubborn as a bloody mule”, was perhaps not a born nonconformist—there was nothing of the rebel about the quiet, studious Linnet—but certainly a fish out of water.

    In other places under other skies, or perhaps merely if she’d been born into another family, Linnet might have found her niche. But although in the South Australia of the 1980s and 1990s it was quite acceptable, if not entirely usual, for a girl to go into plant genetics and even get a doctorate in it, she never had, apart from the work itself. It might have been supposed that all those years at the university might have afforded her other rôle models, and the opportunity to make friends with a different type of young woman than Rose, Shelley, Lorrae and their ilk. Not to say offered something more acceptable in the way of male companionship than the Andy Hordern type. Unfortunately they hadn’t; and her recent work mates were more of the same.

    Linnet’s immediate boss at the Department had been a man of around forty or so, named Jack Waters. Jack had a doctorate from the same university as she did, and in the same general area of study. He had worked for the Department ever since he was seventeen and with the help of some leave without pay had completed his degree while still employed as a permanent public servant. Two years after finishing his doctorate he’d had a year overseas on an agricultural aid program in the Middle East. He’d published a paper, as one of the Department’s own Technical Papers, on this venture. Subsequently he’d published another paper in an Australian journal on the same topic. After that he’d published a Technical Paper every year on his current research programme, which did not relate to plant genetics directly, but rather to crop results. Jack spent most of his days out in the field (that was, at any one of five widely separated regional offices in the huge state) inspecting his crop trials. Mainly chickpeas and soybeans. South Australia was not a huge producer of either.

    Jack was a conscientious and hard-working man, but he took no interest whatsoever in the work of his subordinates. Therefore he never exchanged more than half a dozen words with Linnet about her research project, which in any case was largely funded, apart from the facilities, by an outside source. Even had it been funded from within his own budget, however, Jack Waters wouldn’t have taken any interest in it. He had an aversion to any and all research techniques that had been developed since he finished his degree, and since Linnet was using the very latest techniques—

    Besides, she was a woman. If you’d strapped Jack down and interrogated him he would have protested that he had nothing against women scientists providing they did their job. A lie-detector test would have revealed that this was entirely untrue. He believed that if women had a place in agricultural science it was as humble laboratory assistants; their real place, however, was in the office doing Jack’s typing. But what the test would not have revealed was that Jack actually believed the lie himself. He was in the curious position of not being old enough to be frankly one of the old brigade, whilst still having been with the Department long enough to have absorbed its thoroughly hidebound, macho ethos.

    Outside work, women had a very definite place in Jack’s life. Well, two places. One was as his mum, and the other was as his wife. The two rôles, entailing the provision of a complete life-support system, up to and including making the decisions about buying and selling the house and the car, were not significantly different, except of course that Jack was allowed to copulate with his wife.

    Clearly, then, Linnet Muller did not fit into the rôles which Jack perceived as suitable for women and he thus found it very difficult to talk to her. Fortunately his far-flung crop trials meant that he rarely needed to.

    The other men of around Jack’s age had precisely the same attitudes. The older ones were even more hidebound. The Head of the Section was a man of sixty-ish named Fred Smith. Luckily he had had no say in Linnet’s appointment. She worked in his section for almost eighteen months but he never directly addressed her. To his male subordinates Fred’s attitude was one of loud mateship. Whether in fact he supported their research proposals and fought for their funding was not discernible. Nor was what he actually did: it certainly wasn’t research, though thirty years ago he had published a couple of papers.

    In the tiny office to the right of Linnet’s room there worked a man of around fifty-ish. No-one introduced him to her, and it was several months before she found out his name and several more months before she found out what he actually did. Which wasn’t strictly speaking plant genetics at all, though nominally he was part of their Section. His name was eventually revealed as Kevin Hughes and his job—apparently—was biostatistics. He certainly had shelves of books on the topic and he was always working at his computer. There was a Biostatistics Section, housed about fifty kilometres away, but Linnet had never liked to ask why Kevin wasn’t with them. Once she’d spoken to him a few times Linnet came to realize that Kevin was what could fairly be categorized as a lovely man. He had the sort of very, very slow drawl which she’d only ever heard before in the smallest of small country towns, a slow smile to go with it, and a completely unassuming manner. However, it wasn’t possible to hold a conversation with him. All he liked to talk about was football, which was a completely closed book to her.

    Kevin was a man of very regular habits: every day at ten past twelve precisely he would abandon his little hutch of an office and his huge computer and go along to the typists’ office. There, there being no tea-room, he would sit on the small two-person couch and eat his lunch. As he ate Kevin would usually, in his slow, slow drawl, chat to Belinda. Belinda was one of the typists and she usually had her lunch at the same time. She never sat on the couch with him, but in a battered armchair on the other side of the coffee table. What they talked about was football. Australian Rules, of course. Not only Belinda’s father, brothers and boyfriend were keen supporters, Belinda herself was, too.

    If Kevin was a lovely man whom Linnet couldn’t talk to—it had never occurred to her that Kevin had made no attempt to find out her interests and ask her about them when it became clear she didn’t share his—Belinda was a lovely girl. Whenever she saw her a sort of feeling of despair came over Linnet, because Belinda was such a lovely girl and she couldn’t talk to her at all!

    Besides football Belinda was quite willing to attempt the topics of Social Club picnics or sports outings and Happy Hours. Linnet didn’t belong to the Social Club: no-one had suggested she might: there was a covert resentment by the old hands of all the new research appointees. She tried her very best to look interested in these topics and to ask Belinda the right questions, but this didn’t work. Belinda didn’t attempt the topics of clothes, make-up and hair: she could see for herself there was no point in it. She tried netball—she herself played—but Linnet had been the school’s greatest dunce at netball and was unable to conceal her amazement, though she tried, at an adult woman’s still wanting to play.

    Belinda was a tall girl who, though she was dark-haired, was otherwise very like Rose—the hairstyle, the many bits of real gold jewellery and the make-up. At work she wore huge shoulder pads in her smart, pinch-waisted suits with mini-skirts or calf-length, split-to-the-knee skirts, and very high heels.

    Although her office job was far from demanding Belinda was very bright: Linnet discovered with something like horror that she’d done two years of a B.A., getting Distinctions in all her subjects, and then abandoned it. She couldn’t explain why, except that she hadn’t really been interested in swot. Soon Linnet realized that, though it wasn’t officially part of her job, Belinda acted as computer trouble-shooter for all of the sections housed in their complex of buildings.—The Department’s actual IT Section was housed fifteen kilometres away and it was impossible to get any of its experts on the phone.—Belinda had only done a word-processing course plus an elementary introduction to computers, and all of the rest of her knowledge she’d picked up as she went along. Linnet tried to encourage her to do a proper computer programming qualification and get a much better paid job: she was sure that she’d not only find it challenging and satisfying, she’d do it on her head. But Belinda only said vaguely: “Aw… It’d be too much swot.”

    Her male co-workers took her competence with the machines that baffled them for granted. Perhaps this was because they associated computers with typing—who could say?

    Linnet had two younger men working for her as her research team but they were, though she didn’t phrase it like that to herself, clearly embryo versions of the older Ag. Scientists. One of them was interested in computer-generated art, possibly not what he called it but that was what it was, and the other one was interested in modern jazz, but apart from that it was football and surfing. One of them had a dad with a boat and so he was also keen on fishing. Period. Oddly, though clearly slated to become as hidebound as the older men, they deferred to her meekly about their work. Why? It was unfathomable to Linnet. She did mention it to Rose but her sister only said sensibly: “Well, you’re their boss, aren’tcha?” So perhaps that was it. Linnet had some very puzzled thoughts about hierarchies and, um, automatic responses and things, after that, but as she didn’t know that such things could be looked up, most certainly in the big university library of her own alma mater, didn’t.

    Linnet loved her work and found it very satisfying, which was just as well. The more so as outside work hours she had virtually no aesthetic or cultural stimulation.

    Adelaide prided itself as the Festival city (when it wasn’t priding itself for being the Grand Prix city) but Linnet had never, up until she started her job, been able to afford to go to anything. When she had started working she’d been too busy. Besides, weren’t the Festival events all terribly highbrow? And you had to go to the Festival Theatre and book... Linnet had never been to the Festival Theatre: the mere sight of it terrified her. She had once been to a smaller, more old-fashioned theatre with her parents: Charley’s Aunt. Marion had thought she’d enjoy it, after all at seventeen it was about time she tried something different! Linnet had replied, upon being asked how she’d liked it, that she’d thought it was very stagey and artificial. Marion had been very annoyed and even though the next big theatrical event was to be a famous English comedian that they watched every week on TV, hadn’t taken her. This was just as well: Linnet sat through the TV programme only because it was on at the time her parents always had supper, and if she hadn’t been in the lounge-room she’d have missed out.

    School had done nothing to introduce her to the more cultural of the delights that the city had to offer: Marion and Len hadn’t been able to afford to send their eldest child to the excellent private school which Miss Buffy Muller was currently gracing with her presence. And since persons who do science degrees at university are normally surrounded by other persons doing science degrees, most of them large young men of the likes of the two who later worked on her research team, with similar healthy outdoor interests, she had of course met no-one who might have helped to open her eyes a bit. There was an art gallery, just along a very pleasant street from the main campus of the university, but Marion had once decreed that people who went to art galleries were cultural snobs, and that all this modern art was rubbish. Linnet had never darkened the gallery’s doors in order to check this assertion.

    The Mullers’ cherry orchard was set in a countryside consisting of an odd mixture of orchards of European fruits and nuts, neat hedges and ornamental plantings of European trees around the sites of the homesteads, the remnants of the native vegetation, mostly eucalypts and acacias, and great groves of olive trees introduced and gone wild. In the height of summer the hills dried out and you got the burnt fawn shades typical of great tracts of the Australian landscape; in spring it was terrifically pretty in the European style, with the fruit trees and almonds in blossom; and in the damper months the whole place turned a misty, silvery green. Sometimes Linnet thought she loved the winter best. She was quite unaware that the feelings she experienced in the Adelaide Hills in winter might have been akin to the aesthetic experiences to be gained from the better travelling exhibitions at the art gallery or the dreaded Festival Theatre.

    Linnet Muller, in fact, at the age of twenty-seven with a Ph.D., was pretty much of a cultural nullity. Many persons would have been utterly happy to be so but Linnet was not utterly happy and had not been utterly happy even when she’d been gainfully employed at the work she was trained for. But she couldn’t have said why. Her happiest leisure moments were spent in what Len Muller called “Mooning round the place, and if you’ve got nothing better to do, you can come and give me a hand with—”

    In the kitchen of the old farmhouse, while Buffy continued to parade, wriggle, and chant, Jimmy had just about got all the bills sorted out and there was nothing in any of the drawers resembling a will.

    In the farm office Len had become immersed in a pile of letters from someone in Pongo that signed themselves “Joe”, or it might possibly be “Joel”, it ended with a flourish, all dating from before the War. Dave was sitting on the floor with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, also immersed in a pile of letters. He was tracing the words with one finger, muttering to himself and breathing heavily, but Len hadn’t noticed this odd behaviour, he was too immersed. Joe/Joel was going on about some Froggy mate of theirs—at least, he had a Froggy name, so Len thought he must be. He wished had the old joker’s replies, some of it he couldn’t make head nor tail of.

    In the bedroom Marion and Pam had packed all the packable clothes and chucked the discards into the tea chest. Now they’d started on the last drawer, but it was full of very heavy, very old account books and a few neat bundles of letters... Marion and Pam became absorbed in the letters…

    In the sitting-room Linnet was still reading and the other young women were still gossiping.

    Out in the heat Kyle and Andy had finished the inventory of the multitude of broken-down sheds and had done a sort of inventory of the broken-down farm machinery, utes and old cars that were lying round the place and had retreated to Dave Hordern’s very new ute for a well-earned frostie. Or two. Well, for cripes’ sake, it was bloody well forty-two degrees!

    Suddenly Jimmy said loudly: “Right! That’s it. –And geddown, Dad’ll do ya!”

    Buffy twisted on the table. “Do you like these shorts?”

    “No.” Jimmy went out, scowling.

    Pouting, Buffy twisted and turned and endeavoured to hold out the legs of her baggy multi-coloured cotton shorts as if they were a dress and she was on the catwalk. She’d told Mum that look was Out! She wanted a proper pair of white cycling shorts, stretch Lycra, but Mum had said she’d get something nasty, wearing horrid, hot, tight things like that in the hot weather, she was MEAN! With the brightly coloured baggy shorts Buffy wore a halter top. Screaming orange. True, the shorts did have some screaming orange in them along with everything else. She had ignored her father’s remark that as she didn’t have anything to put in the said top, why bother?

    Her neck was ornamented with a tight circlet of very large plastic bobbles, multi-coloured, strung on black hat elastic, all the girls in her class were wearing them these holidays. There was another such string on her right wrist, slightly mixed up with her gold charm bracelet, but Marion had made her remove the one on her right ankle. Buffy had had her ears pierced some time since without asking her mother’s permission and in the result was wearing, reading from audience’s left to audience’s right, in upper portion 1, three gold studs, and in lobe 1, one orange feather on a gold chain, one gold stud and one fair-sized green hoop; and in upper portion 2, two gold studs and a small gold hoop, and in lobe 2, a huge pink glass bobble, one long gold chain and the other small gold hoop. Since it was school holidays assorted rings, ranging from glass to plastic and in innumerable colours and shapes were featured on the hands. Sadly, Buffy’s mean and horrible mother didn’t let her spend a fortune on having huge purple artificial nails attached to her hands. But Buffy had done pretty well with the help of Mr Woolworth. Pretty well considering that one thumbnail and both pinkies were approximately the size and shape of a Chinese emperor’s but the rest had got broken and were filed right down.

    Her hair was the same curly texture and fawnish colour as Rose’s had once been but as her mean and horrible mother wouldn’t let her have it streaked it wasn’t. She had been to the hairdresser recently, however, and the hair was shaven very short at the nape and up to about half an inch above the ears, then graduated out into a great flat bush. Much fluffier at the front than at the back. It did not form a fringe but stuck out over her wide forehead in a shelf for something like three inches. Though streaking was out, Buffy had done her best with the pharmaceutical products readily available from Mr Woolworth’s emporium and so a top section of the front shelf was pinkish. Possibly the hairdresser had not envisaged that the back portion of the head would be ornamented with a huge lime-green satin bow which sprouted from a large buckle of iridescent plastic brilliants, but so it was.

    Her mean and horrible father made her wash her face if she put make-up on it in the weekends and holidays unless she was going out, but there was nothing he could do about the eyebrows, which had recently received a promotion from the natural look to the terrifyingly sophisticated hoop. Not unlike Rose’s, if the truth be told. The lashes were adorned with black mascara—lumpy spider-legs, yes. Len apparently hadn’t noticed this effect. Or possibly the effort of trying not to notice the shorts and the halter and the junk jewellery had exhausted him.

    Any rational adult must surely have said that there was no way that this could possibly metamorphose into a model, let alone a supermodel, and that Len therefore had nothing to worry about. Marion in fact had said it. Quite often. And also that it was a phase she was going through, dear. In his more rational moments Len had to admit she was right. It was true that neither of them had really noticed that Buffy had Rose’s big blue eyes, wide forehead, and wide mouth with that entrancing curl to the upper lip, plus Linnet’s high cheekbones, a heart-shaped jaw, and the neat, straight nose her sisters shared, not to mention the family straight, even, smallish teeth, and that she was already an inch taller than her sisters and had the same legginess as Linnet and took a tan as well as Rose. Nor that these attributes, plus the small but shapely bosom recently referred to so slightingly by her father, were, if Buffy’s current supermodel idol was any guide, precisely those that the model agencies were looking for. Not to mention the small, taut and cheeky bum which she practised pouting with before her mirror every night—unbeknownst, needless to say, to her mother.

    Jimmy marched into the office without ceremony. “When did ETSA get you mob onto the grid, anyway?” he said disagreeably to Dave.

    Dave glanced up vaguely from his letters. “What? Uh—wouldn’ta been them back then, would it? I mean, didn’t they change their name, or— Sorry. Why?”

    “Because I reckon the old joker kept every flamin’ bill he ever had from them, that’s why!” said Jimmy angrily.

    Len looked up vaguely from his letters. “Found ’em, have ya?”

    Jimmy scowled. “Yeah.”

    Dave rubbed his chin. “That all ya found?”

    “YES!” he shouted angrily.

    “Better have a smoko, eh?” suggested Len kindly, his shoulders shaking slightly.

    “Might as well,” agreed Dave. “Anything in the fridge?” he said hopefully to Jimmy.

    “I haven’t looked, but if ya want my opinion, there’ll be a pile of opened baked-bean tins. –Gone off,” he added pointedly.

    “Might be a tin of catsmeat,” returned Dave, rubbing his chin slowly.

    “Never had a cat, did ’e?” said Len vaguely.

    “Look, how long have you two been sitting in here reading letters?” demanded poor Jimmy angrily.

    “Mm? Aw—not long,” said Len vaguely. “He seems to’ve had mates in Pongo,” he said to Dave.

    “Pongo!” retorted Dave with rich scorn. “Get a load of this!” He passed it over.

    It was all spidery purple writing on checked paper. Len looked at it blankly. “This paper’s got little squares all over it.”

    “Foreign,” explained Dave simply.

    Len took another look. “Here, I can’t read this!”

    “Well, I never did much French at school but the bits I can make out, are good.”

    Len turned it over and looked for the signature. “Madeleine.”

    “Musta been the dame ’e married. I remember Dad going on about her. She was a Frog,” admitted Dave.

    “Your dad wouldn’t go back that far, would ’e?” asked Len.

    “Uh—yeah. She musta come out round 1935. Dad woulda been—uh—seventeen or so, I s’pose.”

    “She didn’t come out till then?” said Len in some surprize.

    “Yeah. S’pose the old joker woulda been... Um, ’e was a fair bit older than Dad, of course. Woulda been about thirty-five himself,” he conceded.

    “Shit, that means ’e was ninety-one when ’e died!” gasped Jimmy.

    “Thought you were getting ’em in?” returned Dave mildly. “Uh—yeah, woulda been. More or less. Think ’e was born at the turn of the century, I remember him telling us that once when I was a kid. Used to talk more in them days, poor old joker.”

    “How old was Madeleine?” asked Jimmy with interest.

    “When what?” replied Dave blandly.

    “When she came out here, of course!” he said crossly.

    “Oh. Now, well, that was interesting. Ladies never let on about their ages back then, but Grandad always reckoned she musta been well into ’er forties. At least ten years older than old Jim. More, maybe.”

    “Heck,” said Jimmy.

    “He did marry ’er, didn’t he?” asked Len.

    “Aw, Hell, yeah. Dad could remember the wedding. They hadda get hold of the Catholic travelling priest they used to have up these parts. She insisted on staying in the pub in town until the ring was on ’er finger—mind you, probably just as well, the women woulda been rabid if she’d come straight on out here. Well, I can remember Gran was always pretty rabid about her anyway.”

    “Why?” asked Jimmy eagerly.

    Dave shrugged. “Dunno, Jimbo. On account she was a Froggy, I think. Well, Dad’s story was Gran reckoned she was an ex-French tart; but Dad reckoned even the Frogs wouldn’t be so hard up they’d make do with something that had a moustache like that!” He went into a wheezing fit.

    “Hah, hah,” said Jimmy weakly. “Um, you don’t remember her, do ya, Dad?”

    “Mm? Oh—no. –Here, is she going on about the old man not being dead yet in this?” he said incredulously to Dave.

    “Something like that—yeah. Seems she was waiting for him to croak so’s she could collect the dough before she came on out here and got hitched to old Jim. Well—Catholic country and that, s’pose there was no divorce in France, in them days.”

    “Yeah. Pretty hard-boiled, eh?” he said in awe.

    “Yeah. Well, Gran’s story was that she was: had old Jim minding his P’s and Q’s.”

    “What happened to her, did she die?” asked Jimmy.

    “N— Well, musta done, she’d be around a hundred and ten by now. Uh—no, she left ’im. After the War. Wanted him to sell up and move to town and ’e wouldn’t. So she packed up and went back to France. According to Gran old Jim went round tearing up every photo she’d left behind: that’s why there aren’t any of her. Funny he kept these old letters.”

    “I suppose she is dead,” said Len uneasily.

    “Eh? Crikey, Len, she must be!”

    “We’ve only got your word for it that she was actually older than him, ya know,” he said uneasily.

    Dave shrugged.

    “She must be dead, Dad,” said Jimmy.

    “Well, if she isn’t, it’ll invalidate the will, unless he’s left it all to her. –Did you take out all those kitchen drawers?”

    “No.”

    “Well, GO AND DO IT!” he shouted.

    “Half of them only had cutlery and stuff in them!” cried Jimmy indignantly.

    “There could still be something behind—”

    Dave got up, creaking and groaning. “Yeah. Pigs might fly, too, of course. Come on, Jimmy, there’s definitely beer in the ute, because I put it there.”

    Grinning gratefully, Jimmy allowed Dave to put a heavy, bony hand on his shoulder and steer him out.

    Len was scratching his head over the strange foreign letter. “Frère... Hang on!” he said to himself. He read the sentence over again, lips moving. “Bugger,” he muttered. He got up and went through to the sitting-room. “Oy, Linnet— OY!” he said loudly.

    The chattering abruptly ceased and Linnet looked up from her book.

    “Have you moos done any work at all?” he cried indignantly.

    “Yes, of course we have, Dad!” said Rose crossly. “We’ve been through all these cupboards and things and there isn’t a thing!”

    “What about that desk?” said Len in an evil voice.

    Lorrae turned puce. “I’ve done most of it!”

    Len sniffed. “You’ve been real busy, I see,” he said nastily to his eldest daughter.

    “Uncle Jim’s got some super books,” replied Linnet vaguely.

    He sighed. “Well, if he has left you kids and your mum the lot, they’re yours, I doubt if there’ll be any other takers. Only first,” he said pointedly, “we gotta find the will!”

    “Yes,” agreed Linnet guiltily.

    Len sighed. He held out the letter to her. “Read that.”

    Linnet took it obediently. “It’s in French,” she said in surprise.

    “I KNOW THAT!” he roared.

    “Um... ‘My Angel…’ Dad, Mum’s French is better than mine,” she said uneasily.

    “No, it isn’t,” he said with a sigh. “ You only think it is. Hang on, look, just read the bit about ‘frère’.”

    “Frère?” said Linnet blankly.

    “BROTHER”!” shouted Len.

    “Um—yeah, hang on. Um—here? Um... ‘My dear brother Hubert is still very sick...’ Um, ‘almost on his deathbed’, I think she means,” she said uneasily. “‘Agonisant’, that means dying. Only he isn’t.”

    Len took a deep breath through flared nostrils, his mouth tight.

    “Sorry, Dad. This writing’s awfully hard. Um .. ‘As we know, the money will be yours after his death provided that—um—that the news from Great Britain’—is it? Yes, Great Britain, um... ‘is correct. The—the’—I can’t read this, Dad, it’s a name. ‘The something family will not have a claim. The fairy story...’ No, that’s wrong. ‘The count’—she means like a count: you know, Dad, a lord—‘does not recognize my dear brother and I think that we can—can—discount this claim,’” said Linnet in a puzzled voice. “This doesn’t make sense, Dad.”

    “No,” agreed Rose and Shelley.

    “It sort of does,” said Lorrae dubiously. “Whose money is she talking about, Uncle Len?”

    “I dunno, Lorrae, that’s what I’m trying to find out. –Never heard old Jim knew any ruddy counts,” he muttered to himself.

    “Oh!” cried Linnet. “I know! The Comte de Bellecourt! It must be! Hang on!” She read it over again to herself. ‘‘Yes: look, Dad: ‘The Bellecourt family won’t have any claim. The count refuses to recognize my dear brother and I think that we can discount that claim!’” She beamed at him.

    “I suppose that makes a bit more sense,” said Len limply. “Who the Hell’s this flamin’ Count dee Bellecourt, when he’s at home?”

    “Dad! Uncle Jim told us!”

    “Never told me,” he grunted.

    “Um—no-o... Maybe you weren’t listening.”

    Dave had come into the room with a can in each hand. “Not if ’e was on form, ‘e wasn’t, no. Never seen him do anything up here in old Jim’s day except drink the old bloke’s beer and kip on the verandah.”

    “I’ve seen him kip in the kitchen!” said Shelley with a loud giggle.

    “Yeah. That as well,” acknowledged Dave. “We having a smoko, or not?”

    Len had taken the letter off Linnet and was silently moving his lips over it. “Uh—yeah. Might as well. Look, get ’em all in here, I think there’s something in this!

    Dave rolled his eyes but ambled off down the passage, whence the voices of Marion and Pam could immediately be heard raised in soprano enquiry.

    Len went down to the kitchen.

    “‘Ah’m a mod-dul, ya know what I mean—’”

    “What the— GEDDOWN!” he roared.

    “I was only—”

    “GET OFF THAT TABLE! WHADDAYA THINK YA DOING?” he roared.

    Pouting, Buffy got off the table.

    “Have you done any work at all?” he said dangerously.

    Buffy pouted.

    “By Christ, you left it all to poor old Jimmy, didn’t you?”

    Buffy just looked sulky.

    “Get in the sitting-room before I flamin’ paddle ya pants,” said Len tiredly.

    Pouting, Buffy wobbled down the passage on her high-heled sandals (borrowed from Rose) to the sitting-room.

    Len sighed. He looked at the fridge. His nerve failed him and he went back to the sitting-room.

    By the time copious amounts of the Christmas cake Marion had brought up with them from home and copious amounts of the Christmas cake Pam had brought over from home and copious amounts of the ham sandwiches Pam had made had been consumed along with copious amounts of beer by the adults and copious amounts of Coke by Buffy and everyone else had vetoed, twice, Marion’s making a nice cup of tea, Len was calm enough to point out to his friends and relatives that he really thought they were onto something, with this French letter he’d found! –Nobody laughed, though Dave looked as if he was going to explode, Kyle’s and Andy’s shoulders shook and Jimmy’s ears turned scarlet.

    He got Linnet to read out the whole letter, and explained about Madeleine—Dave explaining about the mo’—and everybody agreed, though without marked enthusiasm, that there might be something in it. Len looked pleased. Only they hadda find the will! And the old boy musta have had some other papers, surely!—Private papers, Jimmy, you idiot! Birth certificates and marriage certificates and stuff!—And everybody THINK!

    Everybody thought.

    Finally Marion quavered: “Wasn’t there a big tin box, dear? With a lock.”

    “I don’t remember one,” admitted Len regretfully.

    “I think... Well, of course he didn’t like people mucking round with his things, but...”

    “Ring Mémé,” suggested Rose.

    “He wouldn’ta let old Lisette muck round with ’is things, that’s for sure!” choked Dave. “Hey, that last time yer sister Mim came down from Queensland and started tidying up the joint he told her to get the Hell out of it and she was as bad as yer mother, ’member that, Marion?”

    “Shut up,” said Len, sighing.

    “No, he’s right, though, Len, Uncle Jim and Mum never did get on. I could ring her, though, dear, if you think it might help,” said Marion.

    “Ya can’t ring her. Or anyone. The buggers have cut the old boy off,” Len reminded her sourly.

    Marion’s face fell.

    “I found some keys,” volunteered Lorrae. “In the desk.”

    Len was about to tell her to shut up but thought better of it. “Uh—well, one of them could be for the tin box, yeah. If it ever existed,” he added, looking hard at his wife.

    “Mum and Dad didn’t bring us out here all that much when we were little, dear...” She looked at him plaintively.

    “Her mum couldn’t take the dust before Mrs B came and couldn’t take Mrs B,” Dave explained airily to the Mullers and Bayleys. “Not say, old Jim couldn’t take her.”

    “I remember it,” said Linnet calmly at this point.

    “Well, where did he keep it, dear?” asked Marion, while Len’s jaw was still sagging.

    “Um...” Linnet looked round the room vaguely.

    “In here?” Len was on his feet.

    “No.”

    Scowling at Dr Muller, her father sat down again.

    “Actually, he used to keep it in the office. On top of that big cupboard.”

    Jimmy began: “No—”

    But Len and Dave had thundered out.

    Marion and Pam looked at each other and sighed.

    “Wild goose chase,” interpreted Andy to Kyle, shrugging.

    “Somethink like that, yeah,” Len’s son-in-law agreed.

    “Last time I came up here there was only a box of screws and stuff on top of that cupboard,” ventured Jimmy.

    “There you are,” agreed Andy.

    They waited.

    Len came back looking frightfully efficient.

    “Nothing, dear?” asked Marion kindly.

    Ignoring his wife, he announced: ‘”Now, we’ve gotta go about this efficiently. I’ll— LINNET! WILL YA COME OUTA THAT BOOK!”

    Linnet came out of the book and Len decided he’d give her a hand with the books, otherwise they wouldn’t get done, and Andy and Kyle could help Marion and Pam in the bedroom and really have a good look, and Jimmy and Buffy could go in the spare room and sort through the books in the bookcase in there. And if he caught her walking on any more tables, young lady— And Jimmy was to mind he kept her up to the mark! Jimmy went out looking resigned and Buffy went out looking sulky. Len then told the three young women kindly that “you girls” had better start cleaning out the kitchen, otherwise your mothers’d be doing it. And—glancing at Rose’s outfit—Marion had put some aprons and rubber gloves and that in the car. Rose, Shelley and Lorrae went out, abandoning Fergie in her playpen.

    Andy came back just as Linnet had become re-immersed in her book and Fergie’s maternal grandfather had got her on his shoulder and was telling her what a pretty girl she was, more brains than the rest of ’em put together, what was more—

    “I’ve had an idea, Len,” he said mildly.

    “What?” said Len suspiciously, putting Fergie back in her playpen.

    She immediately wailed: “Gram-pa-a!”

    “You’ve got her all excited,” said Linnet detachedly.

    “Get on with those books!” replied Len heatedly.

    Sighing, Linnet got on with the books.

    “Go on,” he ordered Andy.

    “Ya not gonna like it,” he said, scratching his chin.

    “Spit it out, And’!” said Kyle with a laugh from behind him.

    “Um—you remember that time Dad rung you up in a flap because the bloke from the bank had turned up and no-one could find any of the old boy’s papers?” said Andy to Len.

    “Ye-ah... Aw: ’bout ten years back? That’s right, yeah. –Oh, bloody Hell!” he said, staring at him.

    Andy rubbed his chin. “Yeah. What I was thinking, ’e mighta buried this lot, too.”

    Len said slowly: “He was already pretty barmy back then...”

    “There you are,” said Andy simply.

    “Yeah, but— Shit, that means he coulda buried this tin box affair any time these last ten years!”

    “Or earlier,” said Kyle logically. “Depends how mad ’e was. –How mad was ’e?” he asked Uncle Jim’s neighbour.

    “Pretty mad,” Andy admitted. “Well, not stark, raving troppo.”

    “Eccentric,” said Len heavily.

    “Dose of raging Alzheimer’s, more like,” muttered Andy.

    “He did not!” said Linnet angrily. “I rung him three weeks before he died and he was as lucid as you are! –More lucid,” she amended, glaring at him.

    “This woulda been before ’is phone was cut off,” noted Andy, unmoved.

    “Yeah. Just,” agreed Len. “Uh—bugger, s’pose we’ll have to pay that bill.”

    “Not if the beasts cut him off, Dad!” cried Linnet angrily.

    “Well, ya gotta admit, love, that with not paying the bills since Kingdom Come, and stringing ’is washing line up to their ruddy mast even though ’e’d been told times innumerable not to, and—what was that other? Aw, yeah: training them runner beans up their ruddy mast,” said Len heavily: “ya can’t blame them!”

    “I can. He was an old man living alone, miles from nowhere,” said Linnet grimly.

    “I’d forgotten about the runner beans,” admitted Andy, grinning at Kyle. “Musta been them that kept him from getting scurvy, then.”

    “Thought he’d had it for years?” returned Kyle in confusion.

    The two wits went into a sniggering fit, what time Linnet cried angrily: “SHUT UP! He didn’t have scurvy at all, and he was brighter at the end than you two idiots put together!”

    “Yeah. So, what didja ring ’im up about, love?” said Len kindly. “—Look, shut up, you clowns, ya know she was fond of the old boy!”

    The two wits, shaking slightly, managed to shut up.

    “Orchids,” said Linnet sulkily.

    “What?” said Andy.

    “Not out here in this dustbowl, idiot!” she said crossly. “I wanted to ask him if he’d lend me those specimen books he made when he was younger—when he used to do those trips.”

    “That woulda been to get away from this Madeleine female with the mo’,” noted Kyle brilliantly.

    The boon companions collapsed in sniggers again.

    “Look, if you lot can’t be sensible, GET OUT!” shouted Len.

    Sheepishly Andy said: “Sorry, Len. Uh—well, whaddaya reckon, though?”

    Len made a face. “Where did he bury the bank papers?”

    “Under the mast, where else?” admitted Andy.—Kyle gulped.—“In a cocoa tin,” he elaborated.

    “Along with the runner beans,” said Kyle faintly.

    “You can get out there and start digging. It’s only forty-two today,” noted Andy kindly.

    Kyle glared.

    Len took a deep breath. “If all else fails, we will dig under the ruddy mast, yeah. Only we’re gonna search the house first.”

    “Yeah. Um—look, I might give the girls a hand in the kitchen,” said Andy. “Think some heavy-duty cleaning’s gonna be needed in there, by the looks of it.”

    “Yeah—righto,” agreed Len mildly.

    Looking relieved, Andy escaped.

    Kyle looked after him wistfully. “Um—I could—”

    “You could give us a hand with all these ruddy books, that’s what!”

    Resignedly Kyle gave them a hand with shaking out twenty miles or so of dusty old books.

    It was Dave Hordern who eventually found the tin box. Since it was he, with the possible exceptions of Andy and Kyle, who had been most sceptical about its existence, this was hardly fair. He’d gone into the master bedroom to check that Marion and Pam, with the ineffectual assistance of Andy before he went out to the kitchen and Kyle before he started helping with the books, had really looked.

    “That wardrobe’s got a false front, didja look there?”

    “Yes, of course, dear!” said Pam brightly. “And guess what! We found a real old hatbox up there!”

    “Not on top of it,” said Dave heavily, sighing. “Underneath it.”

    He got down on his hands and knees at the side of the heavy old oak wardrobe and felt under it, grunting. Then he withdrew the tin box.

    “Cripes,” he said numbly.

    The keys that Lorrae had found in the pretty little escritoire in the sitting-room proved to include the one that opened the tin box and inside the tin box were, sure enough, all old Uncle Jim Frazer’s private papers. They included such things as his birth certificate (1897, not 1900) and discharge papers from the British Army (First World War), a copy of the birth certificate of Madeleine Bernadette Eugénie Louise Frois, the marriage certificate of James John Ernest Frazer and the said Madeleine Frois, a copy of the birth and death certificates of Hubert Marie Guy André Frois, a copy, mysteriously, of the death certificate of one, Vernon Andrew Thomas Miller, a copy, equally mysteriously, of the death certificate of one, Peter George Meredith Foulkes, and copies of the birth, death, and marriage certificates of John Ernest Lionel Frazer and Mary Harriet Frazer (née Dunne) who after some thought Marion Frazer Muller pronounced to have been old Uncle Jim’s parents.

    “Yeah: your grandparents,” agreed Dave heavily. –He was still far from convinced there was anything in it. Tin box or not.

    “No: great-grandparents,” corrected Marion mildly.

    “What?” he croaked.

    “Yes: Uncle Jim was my great-uncle, Dave. Didn’t you realize?” she said mildly.

    “Was he?” said Buffy in confusion.

    “YES!” shouted Jimmy and Linnet.

    Buffy shrugged. “He was ancient,” she conceded.

    Marion was explaining to Dave: “My grandfather was Thomas Frazer. Him and Uncle Jim came out from England together. That was just after the First World War. They had another brother but he was killed in the War. –The First World War, of course,” she explained placidly. “And there were two sisters, I think. Uncle Jim was a bit younger: Granddad said he lied about his age to get into the army.”

    “He’da been in it anyway. Musta turned 18 in 1915,” grunted Len. “What are all these death cert— Never mind. There must be a will in here somewhere!”

    “There’s loads of old newspaper cuttings,” reported Jimmy with interest. “Look, Dad, this one’s all about a fire in a pub in England!”

    Len ignored him. “Ah!” he grunted. “…Crikey,” he said numbly, having unfolded it.

    “It’s in French: let Mum and Linnet have a go at it, Dad,” ordered Rose.

    It was a huge legal document, written in handwriting and spattered with seals and God knew what. Len unfolded it gingerly. “S’pose this wouldn’t be old Madeleine’s divorce papers, would it?” he said hopefully to his wife.

    “It’s all legal...” she quavered.

    Len began tiredly: “Just give it a go—” but at that moment Jimmy cried: “Here’s the will, Dad!”

    Len seized upon it. “Flaming— A Sydney solicitor, no wonder that local thicko never knew anything! What’d ’e wanna go to a Sydney solicitor for, for God’s sake?”

    “I never even knew he’d been to Sydney at all,” revealed Jimmy.

    “No, well, you wouldn’t, this was drawn up back in 1975,” admitted Len limply. “You’da been about three.”

    It was a very thick document. He unfolded it carefully and began to read. “Shit,” he said limply. “He’s cut old Madeleine out, all right.”

    Dave squeezed in beside him. “That woulda been the year your Buffy was born,” he noted with interest. “Wait on: same year old Ma Binns died, right?”

    “Uh—no. Just after…” said Len vaguely. “Shit. Read this, Dave.”

    Dave read it. “Shit,” he reported, scratching his head. “What’s it mean?”

    “Beats me.”

    “What?” cried Rose aggrievedly.

    Len looked up. “All the rest of it’s Helluva complicated, but he’s left it all to you kids, all right. Equal shares. Mentions all of you by name. –Didn’t know ’e even knew their names,” he noted to his wife.

    “That’s not fair, dear! He was very fond of them! Especially Linnet.”

    “Yeah. Well, Mim and her kids don’t get a look-in, that’s for sure. He’s cut them out specifically, too.”

    “That’s not necessary, is it?” said Pam, very puzzled.

    “Tying it up as tight as a drum,” reported Len on a grim note.

    He and Dave read on.

    “But—but why? Who’s going to argue about it? I mean, in a good year... But the place has been let go for so long,” quavered Pam limply.

    “Yeah. Even back in 1975 he wasn’t doing much with it. Well, poor old joker, he’da been over seventy-five himself at the time,” recognized Dave.

    “Yeah. –Quarter share in a dustbowl isn’t gonna make you rich, Miss Supermodel,” Andy informed Buffy sourly: she’d just told her siblings that they could sell it and get the money. Buffy stuck her tongue out at him.

    “That’ll do,” said Marion feebly. “Well, that’s all right, then, dear!” she said brightly to her husband. “We can get everything cleaned up and send the clothes off to the Salvation Army, then!”

    “Eh?” he said vaguely. “Aw—yeah. All legal to do that, I’d say, yeah. –Jesus wept, read this!” he said to Dave.

    Andy gave way entirely and came and squeezed in between Len and Jimmy, reading over their shoulders.

    Len looked up. “Marion— Bugger it, where’s she gone?”

    “Her and Aunty Pam have gone to put the boxes of clothes in the car, I think, Dad,” said Rose. “We could throw out all that kitchen stuff,” she said to Lorrae.

    Len sighed. “Yeah. Look: get on out to the kitchen, then, and chuck out the lot. Well, anything anyone wants to keep, have it.”

    “A quarter of it’s mine!” cried Buffy aggrievedly as Rose, Lorrae and Shelley exited.

    “You do wanna get your breeches dusted,” he discovered grimly.

    “No! But a quarter of it’s legally MINE!” she shouted.

    “Right! We’ll get a valuer in to value all them rusty kitchen implements and work out what a quarter of ’em’s worth and by the time we’ve paid for the valuer that’ll have taken care of your quarter of the lot!” said Len, very loudly.

    “No! You’re mean and horrible, Dad!” Buffy got up and ran out.

    “Good riddance,” noted Jimmy. “Hang on, Uncle Dave, don’t turn over.”

    “Sorry.” Dave turned back.

    “This is beyond me,” decided Andy. “Uh—look, we’ll clear out the junk, eh? Um—could tidy up the verandah. S’pose ya will wanna sell the place?” he said to Linnet.

    “What?” she said vaguely. “Oh. I suppose so, Andy.”

    “Yeah. Come on, Kyle.” They went out.

    “We’re gonna need a dictionary,” said Len to Dave and Jimmy. They nodded. Jimmy scrambled over to the bookcase and got the dictionary.

    Len read out slowly: “‘Tontine. Annuity shared by subscribers to loan, the shares increasing as subscribers die…’” He swallowed, and finished weakly. “‘Last survivor gets all.’ Gruesome.”

    There was a short silence.

    “That’ll be it!” spotted Dave.

    “Hey, yeah!” agreed Len. They looked at each other excitedly.

    “Was he the last survivor, though?” said Jimmy cautiously.

    “He musta been!” cried Dave. “Ninety-four? Hang on, when was his birthday?” He scrabbled in the tin box. “Yeah, he’da been ninety-four last year.”

    “Yeah, but what if one of the others was younger than him in the first place, Uncle Dave?”

    There was a short silence.

    “Jesus, that’s what all those other death certificates’ll be!” cried Dave.

    “You’re right. –Get that big French dictionary and translate that bloody thing, I think that’s it,” said Len grimly to his eldest daughter.

    “What, Dad?” she replied vaguely.

    “Put that BOOK down!” he shouted.

    “It’s the original edition of Black’s Flora of South Aus—”

    “I’m not interested! You’ve come into a fortune, girl, the least you could do is show some INTEREST!”

    “This place isn’t worth a fortune,” said Linnet, nevertheless putting the book down and going over to the far corner of the bookcase where Uncle Jim’s big dictionaries lurked.

    Len, Dave and Jimmy read the will right through again. It and the codicil. Uncle Jim couldn’t have been barmy after all, the codicil stated specifically that if Rose died before he did, Sarah Rose Bayley was to get her share. Well, he might have been barmy as far as ruddy phone masts were concerned, but he was pretty much on the ball as far as his fortune was concerned.

    “Right,” said Len on a grim note. “That’s pretty clear. Everything to you four kids.”

    “Including the tontine!” agreed Jimmy, eyes shining.

    “Yeah. Get Linnet some paper, Jimmy, and make sure she writes down every bloody word,” Len ordered him. “And don’t for Pete’s sake let her write on the bloody document!”

    “No, righto. Um…”

    “Look in the writing desk,” suggested Dave.

    “Oh—right.”

    Len and Dave looked at each other with suppressed excitement shining in their eyes.

    “Depends how much they put into it originally, I suppose,” said Dave cautiously.

    “Ye-ah... But according to this, each of ’em had the same amount; and if old Jim’s was enough to let him buy this place outright, and all those shares he’s listed in the will—hang on, Dave, are the share certificates in there? –Thank Christ!” he said, as Dave produced them from the tin box.

    “Wonder where the original loot came from?” wondered Dave, flipping idly through the shares. ”Hey, this’ll be what the old bloke was living off. No wonder he was so popular with the ruddy bank, he’ll ’a’ been the only farmer in these parts that wasn’t into them for the lot including his false teeth!”

    “Mm. Well...” He elbowed his daughter aside and looked at the French document. “Ugh, the ones are like sevens, bad as ruddy Lisette!” he reported with a grimace. “Uh—yeah: if this was drawn up in 1918 and if it’s it, which I reckon it bloody well has to be, then loot’s probably the operative word, Dave.”

    “Uh—oh. See whatcha mean.”

    “What do ya mean, Dad?” asked Jimmy, handing his sister a writing pad and a pen. “Write down the translation. Every word. And don’t write on the document,” he ordered.

    Linnet sighed. “Every word?”

    “Yeah.”

    Sighing, she got on with it.

    Meanwhile, Len was explaining what he meant. If these jokers that were in the tontine had all been in France at the end of the War...

    It took a while.

    In fact, it wasn’t until very late the following day, when the whole house had been gone through very carefully and every document, especially the letters, scrutinized carefully (and sorted into categories by Len) and Marion’s mother, Lisette Frazer, the children’s Mémé, had been rung from the Horderns’ place and consulted on obscure French words and obscure bits of family history, that they got it more or less straight. And worked out that if everybody that was supposed to be dead was dead, Uncle Jim in fact had left the Muller children a fortune. Musta done. Well, Hell, if these English and French investments had turned out anything like decent!

    Dave at this point struck a note of caution by reminding them that the Australian investment sure as Hell hadn’t turned out like anything, unless a dustbowl was anything, but was cried down.

    After a celebratory dinner prepared by Pam and consumed in the Horderns’ air conditioning (chicken in a pineapple sauce, fried rice, jellied beetroot and a lettuce and tomato salad, followed by a huge pavlova with ice cream), they sat back in the air conditioning with celebratory drinks in their hands (Irish Cream for the ladies, whisky for the men, and the Coke that was all their mean and horrible fathers would allow them for Buffy Muller and Tanya Hordern) and began to build castles in the air.

    Buffy declared she was gonna spend her share on going to a really good model school in Sydney, the best there was, and becoming a supermodel!

    Len sighed.

    Jimmy thought cautiously he might buy a launch. And he’d be able to finish his architecture degree fulltime, that’d be good. Dave pointed out kindly that if there was enough, he’d be able to set up on his own when he’d finished the degree, if he wanted to. Jimmy decided that he’d put the money in the bank for a bit, you needed to get some working experience behind you before you started up on your own.

    Rose thought they’d pay off the house, first. And buy her a little car of her own, that’d be great! And definitely put Fergie’s name down for Buffy’s school. And then maybe they could have a trip. Bali was lovely, of course... Ooh! What about Hawaii? Kyle agreed that they might make it to Hawaii if the dough held out. Not a cruise, love: remember how sick you were on the Kangaroo Island ferry? Rose’s face fell. But then she recollected that flying would be a lot easier with a kiddie, really.

    “What’ll you do with your share, Linnet?” asked Len kindly, as the eldest fruit of his loins hadn’t spoken.

    “Um... If it’s enough, do you think I could pay Jimmy and Rose and Buffy for their share of Uncle Jim’s books, and keep them?”

    Len groaned, and clutched his head.

    “I don’t want his old books, Linnet! You can have my share!” said Rose in amazement.

    “Mine, too,” agreed Jimmy, grinning at her.

    “I own a quarter of them,” said Buffy firmly.

    “That’s right. And some of them are very beautiful,” said Linnet anxiously.

    Len breathed deeply through flared nostrils, mouth tight.

    “I s’pose you can have them. Stupid ole things,” allowed Buffy.

    “No, I’ll pay—”

    “YES!” shouted Len.

    There was a short silence.

    “Is that all ya want, Linnet?” said Len limply.

    “Um... I dunno. Maybe if I get that job with CSIRO I might be able to afford to buy a flat in Melbourne.”

    “That’s the ticket!” he said encouragingly.

    “And a car, Linnet!” urged Rose.

    “What? Oh. Yes. But I like the trams.”

    Everybody sighed.

    “I just want the books, really. They’re lovely.”

    Everybody sighed again.

    “I’d rather have Uncle Jim back, really,” said Linnet sadly.

    At that one, everyone avoided everyone else’s eye. Well, heck, he’d been in his nineties, for Pete’s sake! And sentiment was one thing, but…

    As Pam pointed out to her hubby as they retired that night, there was no getting away from it, Linnet was a bit odd, really, wasn’t she? Good Heavens, it wasn’t every day that someone left you a fortune!

Next chapter:

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