The summer drifts on, and Nan outwits it with cucumber peel stuck to her forehead, home-made lemon-cordial, heart-shaped Fiji fan; with lettuce like mermaid’s hair, condensed milk mayonnaise, Narcissus Blancmange, Dainty Chocolate Mould, Delicious Hawaiian Cake.
The iceman becomes important.
I wait for him to come round the corner with his cabbage-leaf hat, nose hung with an icicle, sad-eared horse. I cry ‘Ice-o!’ with the others, and dance after his cart and the wet trail of drips it leaves behind; watch him juggle the blocks from house to house; crow when he smashes one to shivers and gives us each a piece.
The sun is everywhere.
It is in the garden: peering huge-eyed over the berry bush, roosting behind the chimney, floating like a fried egg in puddles. It mocks me when I burn my bare feet on the earth and scorch my fingers on the iron fence. It peels my nose to jigsaw patches, gilds my skin with freckles, turns the hair on my arms to gold.
It is in the house: spangling the passage with leopard spots, turning the sheepskin rug tawny, casting zebra stripes through the shutters. It curdles the milk, melts the butter, shows the dust, fades the curtains. It steals into vases and drinks their water; creeps up the cold tap and turns it into hot.
In the evening, after tea, we carried the cane chairs and the wireless with the long cord onto the lawn; sat under the fig-tree in the twilight.
(The sun hangs suspended in O’Briens’ almond-tree like a tennis-ball, then lobs behind the lemon, sinks into the flowering quince. For an instant the garden blazes coldly with ruddy flowers; then geraniums, zinnias, and marigolds disappear. The moon comes into the sky; a butterfly skims the grass. The garden blooms again with pale stocks, nicotiana, sweet rocket.)
Nan shivered and fiddled with the wireless knob. We listened to the ‘Australian Amateur Hour’. And complained about the mosquitoes; forgot the moon.
TEN
February came.
The secateurs sang in the lily-bed, and heralded the demise of the nerine, the Madonna, and the spotted tiger. The rose mourned and flecked the earth. The wall was embroidered with climbing-geranium and ivy. There were dahlias and snail trails in the garden.
I walked to the Infant School on the corner.
It was separated from the street by a picket fence and a line of jacarandas. As I walked towards the trees they merged to a blue umbrella.
Beyond the picket fence and the trees was the red-brick school slit with eyes of classrooms and a wide-mouthed door. I only entered this door once, and that was on the day my grandmother took me to enrol.
After that I went in at the side gate.
This gate was approached by a gravel lane, that once past it forked and became two lanes. The right fork was stunted and led to a rickety building that housed the Sno-White Bag Laundry, and a room above where the floor trembled and the dust swirled as a brass band practised on Sundays, and the Technical School girls did gymnasium during the week. With the left fork the little lane became a big lane that divided the yards of the houses with odd numbers in Rose Street from those with even numbers on the Henley Beach Road.