The house was pervaded with a curious musky odour — raw and coarse, sweet and fusty. It crept into the sausages placed at every door to swallow the draughts. It had long since seeped into flaking paintwork and walls sprigged with grease spots and damp. It was most marked in the room where Carol slept with her mother.

Here it was perpetual evening. What little light penetrated the fern-hung verandah was smothered by tightly-drawn curtains. The muskiness mingled oddly with the reek of stale urine from the chamber-pot under the bed. Humped shadows were cast on the walls by discarded clothes. There was a sewing-machine even older than ours, rag rugs, old-fashioned furniture, a crazy patchwork quilt.

The quilt was made of every sort of material. Carol and I sprawled on it happily — unmindful of the premature twilight, the urine, the brooding shadows. We plotted the wanderings of a piece of apple-green silk that conjured up visions of garden parties and sunshades and spring afternoons; sniffed greedily at snippets of embossed velvet impregnated with the wistful ghosts of Parma violets and patchouli. There was spotted navy and white satinette that evoked waxed cherries and chip-straw hats; squares of red serge that signalled feverishly to dark blue flannel. I was fond of a wobbly brocade diamond; while Carol claimed as hers, a triangle of imperial purple.

Ida and Maisie were Carol’s sisters. Older than she, they had a room of their own that I envied. The walls were papered with film star pin-ups from old Photoplays and Woman’s Weeklys — Clark Gable and Franchot Tone smouldered upon their narrow beds. Crumpled ribbons, bottles of Mystère perfume, hair-grips, and dirty powder-puffs were scattered on the dressing-table; a koala bear and a doll dressed as a bride sprawled abandonedly in a corner.

Ida was adenoidal, with a deep voice and myopic eyes; Maisie resembled the romantic young lady in the photograph. Ida’s hair was combed forward over one eye in parody of Veronica Lake; Maisie’s tangled in uneasy imitation of Rita Hayworth. They both wore puff-sleeved dresses with elastic bodices, charm bracelets, and ankle-strap shoes. Soon Carol was able to boast of Maisie’s diamond engagement-ring. My grandmother and Mrs. O’Brien were at their front fences the Sunday the fiancé came to visit. Nan whispered that he looked something like Van Johnson, only shorter.

Ronald was Carol’s brother. He shared a room with his father. They slept on identical camp-beds and peed into the same china pot. The room was full of crystal sets and ear-phones furred with dust, broken wirelesses, yellowing newspapers, flannel underwear. Ronald, at thirty, had cocooned himself securely in khaki apathy. He was a clockwork man who turned the corner into Rose Street each workaday evening at half past five — except Friday, when he got drunk before the pubs closed. He reminded me of a ventriloquist’s doll, with his round face and polished hair, his dull eyes and bobbing khaki shoulders.

At night everyone crowded into the front room around the red chenille table. Carol’s father presided at one end over tobacco-tin and pipe cleaners. The smoke from his pipe spiralled towards the ceiling and the faded garlands of paper chains that hung there from one Christmas to the next. Carol’s mother worked opposite at her latest quilt, scraps of cloth flecking her lap, gums tirelessly pacing her dancing needle.