You ran the bath, and you washed my hair. My hair had got so long that sometimes people thought I was a girl. You washed and washed my hair till the whole bath was full of soapy bubbles right up to my chest and then you let me soak, with my eyes closed, and my hands across my chest, and the deep burble of under-water in my ears. And when I got out, you warmed up the towel in the tumble-dryer. I stepped into the big warm towel and it came around me and dried me without me having to do anything.

In the reissue of The Poems of Veda Gray—the thirtieth anniversary of Bacchae Publishing’s first edition back in 1986—Julia has decided to include all the variations on FUCK that Mother came up with. There are over thirty of them. They comprise a sort of appendix at the back of the book.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Julia asked if I wanted to include extracts from Mother’s letters in this edition. This time I said yes. The selected correspondence are printed in a slim companion volume, and the two books are paired in a cardboard sleeve, with notes. It’s a beautiful little publication, no expense has been spared.

I’m not going to get you out of care for the thirtieth anniversary, though, Ornella. It’s not worth the discomfort and confusion it would cause you. They’ve just put a new bed in your room, and that’s enough for you to get used to for now.

And I’m not sure I’ll tell Papa. I’m not sure what the purpose would be. Papa has no interest in the past, even though the life he lives now is the sum total of it.

The old house in Hawthorn is too big for him but it’s derelict enough to keep him busy patching, mending: he pulled up the carpet recently and there in the dust and damp were sheets from the Age newspaper, July 20 1969: ‘Man Walks On Moon’. He pinned the sheets on the corkboard in his living room—which is not really a living room, but a bachelor’s workshop: disordered papers, tools, half-eaten plates of food. The house smells of apples when he’s been buying cheap bags of apples, and cinnamon at Easter time when he stocks up on discounted hot cross buns, but generally, it smells like bins that should have been emptied last week, and rooms that should have their windows opened. The hallway and living room are lined with crumbs he won’t sweep up; the contents of his fridge are an exercise in self-denial.