‘There’s no class in Australia,’ you said, Ornella. Didn’t you know you were working class? Carlito did. It was what made him angry all the time.

But you were too busy doing your nursing training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital to think about class. Nonna’s house in Coburg had been sold. Papa had taken the money and bought our house in Hawthorn for $36,000 (‘much too much!’ said Mother). He kept helping you with your bills and with your rent. But you were learning hospital tucks and catheter-insertion and fluid-drainage and instrument cleaning and cardiogram-reading and expert patient-transfer. You could do phlebotomy. Not to mention hand-holding and reassurance-giving. Did you think you might get yourself a nice middle-class doctor, Ornella? But then Carlito married you, all of a sudden. He married you with little ceremony and very few relatives. No fuss. It was sprung upon us: a quick jaunt up the aisle and into a waiting car and it was over. And then Carlito was fully moved in, for ever and ever, and I just had to suck it up, as they say nowadays.

I was glad you worked at the Royal Melbourne and not at the Iron Ear Hospital. You had once threatened to take me to the Iron Ear Hospital when I put candlewax in my ear-hole. I was scared of the Iron Ear Hospital. I had learned about medieval torture from a book Carlito had brought home from the Richmond library. Iron was a frightening medieval product that brooked no escape. ‘The Iron Lung,’ I told you, muddling my references, ‘crushes its victim’s bones one at a time, until they are dead and their heart has stopped beating forever.’

You put on your nurse’s smock and support stockings and washed your hands extra well with Salvol so you could really feel the germs come off and said, ‘Don’t be stupid, Owen. Where do you get your imagination?’ Then you walked me to the Eye and Ear Hospital at a snickety pace I could barely keep up with, and they got the lump of wax out quick smart, without even hurting.

Carlito slept through the mornings and left the coffee you made him to go cold next to the bed. I heard you gloatingly tell the neighbour from Number 6 that he was your husband. You had a big fat ring, like an ugly blister, on your finger. It looked like it was going to go bust or get jammed in a door somehow.

LEGACY

Yes, Ornella, you are quite right: better to forget childhood altogether. You have forgotten yours entirely now. And you have kept nothing to remind you.