We floated cigarette packets and walnut shells for boats in the rain; poked our heads under the culvert to see which came out first. We played cricket with a white ball in the dusk and frightened ourselves at hide-and-seek in the lane. We pulled the pods of itchy-powder from Borchers’ carob-tree and thrust the waxy pills down people’s backs. We bought newspaper parcels of fish and chips from the Greek and ate them in the gutter — sometimes had Coca-Cola too.

We heard the water sing in the culverts and knew it was winter, and our boats raced faster, and the dustman’s horse stood forlorn under his hessian cape. The berries fell from the trees and rolled like marbles on the asphalt; we saw the old man from the house with the fernery skid and tumble to the pavement, saw his wife trembling like an awful puppet, and got the giggles — and felt ashamed. In November we trudged with the sagging guy, stood in Carol’s garden and twirled sparklers as Catherine wheels and Roman candles dissolved away. We followed the iceman and his watery trail, watched shoals of spiralling insects round the lights, saw moons float like red balloons above bushfires in the hills.

I lived in Rose Street.

It was my street. It belonged to me, as did the O’Briens and the German lady (like a daddy-long-legs), the New Australian, Mr. Shipp and the white and honey dog, Dot Cherry and her sailor, Puffing Billy, Nursie and her secret skin, the lady who was dying, and all the others.

I only saw its ugliness, the telegraph wires and greyness when I came back from the sea and the hills. By the time the seaweed and flowers were flung away the ugliness had faded (the trees had started to grow), and Carol called for me at the gate; we went to play.

SIXTEEN

I ventured from Rose Street by myself.

My wanderings were random. They took me past the bloodied chop block and swirling hens’ feathers in Daphne Ring’s back-yard to the sanctities of Janice Budden’s sitting-room where I listened to a honey-voiced crooner sing ‘Down Among the Shadowy Palms’, and was told it was Frank Sinatra. I was led home by the eager hand of an over-developed little girl I met in the street who alarmed me by offering to exhibit the hairs between her legs. I encountered smouldering older brothers with rose-bud mouths and spidery lashes, velvet coats, and names like Vernon or Julian in unlikely Methodist drawing-rooms. I visited the beach with another little girl and her big sister who kissed incessantly a youth who was just a mouth beneath a groping rug — she went to the lavatory and took off her brassière because he had broken it.

I made sorties to Maria Street to visit Joan Stott, who had a sister called P.K. after the chewing-gum. There was a harp that made silvery music in the passage, and some dusty bulrushes, and a chenille curtain. There was a house for her grannie at the back, and a playroom papered with film stars.