You made these the day before. Nonno sent you up to King and Godfree to get Vin Santo. The man at the till asked after Carlito and nodded and laughed when you said Carlito was ‘good as gold’. He made a doubtful shape with his mouth.

It was on the way home from the wedding that Nonno began feeling a strange burning sensation in his jaw and throat. Nonna said it was all that laughing and singing. But then it spread, there was a heaviness in his left arm, and he said he thought he’d drunk too much—his head was odd, he was dizzy. Nonna said he needed to watch it: he ate like he didn’t care about his waistline, and he drank like a fish. She’d been telling him for years to do more exercise, drink less alcohol. He didn’t reply. She put her hand on his forehead and it was cold and wet and his breath was coming in short little bursts. By the time they reached Thornbury, he was dead.

30 OCTOBER 1985

Dear Mr Ferrugia,

Let me first thank you for meeting with me last Thursday to discuss your mother’s work. Further to our conversation, we have set a tentative date for publication of The Poems of Veda Gray of 8 May next year. I attach the intended contents list for your perusal. Where untitled, poems are identified by their first lines. We are planning to include 316 of the 410 you originally sent us. This will include all from her original book in their intended form.

I reiterate that we feel very grateful to you for allowing us to publish your mother’s work—it is daring and experimental and casts new light on mid-century modernism. I understand too that this project brings up difficult memories for you and appreciate your preparedness to assist.

In response to your question re readership: there is currently a genuine excitement occurring in feminist scholarship and art curation, and a renewed interest in overlooked works of female authorship. Certainly, we will use this broadening interest to our advantage in marketing.

Further to the poetry, your mother’s letters to her sister, as we discussed, are a piece of literature in their own right. We have communicated our thanks to the estate of Matilda Bryant for bequesting these, but await your opinion before proceeding with publishing plans on that account.

As requested, I now forward this correspondence from your mother to her sister in as close to its original chronology as possible. I hope you find her letters as vivid and interesting as we have.

Yours truly,

JULIA GRAHAM-HAMMOND

Bacchae Publishing

Carlton

Melbourne

EXTRACTED LETTERS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF VEDA GRAY (FERRUGIA) AND MATILDA BRYANT, 1961-62

10 NOVEMBER 1961

Dear Tilde,

Have just come inside from bright sunshine in the backyard, tomato plants covered in green baubles, beginnings of a ‘kitchen garden’ evident in fronds of dill and mint (such a hardy wanderer once it gets going!)—all of which sounds idyllic had I not, wheeling up to come in, nearly garrotted myself on the washing line. (One hardly conceives how the accumulation of wet white flannels turns the whole apparatus into a death trap.)