My mother was complicated. She had personalities nesting one inside the other like Chinese boxes. She hid her innate romanticism and its attendant vices — timidity, tremulousness, sensitivity — under the swathes of her veil; stamped them with her heels, smothered them in her fox-trimmed coat. But still they flourished — sliced her onion disguise.

At fourteen she put away the navy tunic, the blazer, the striped tie and left the school where she learned to say ‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ and ‘Comprenez-vous français?’ and wrote the prize-winning essay bound in grosgrain ribbon. It was the Depression, and she began work at a hairdresser’s in the Arcade, answering the telephone for two shillings and sixpence. A few weeks later she showed the Staff Manager at one of the big Rundle Street stores the drawings she had made. She became an artist.

By day she drew cork-soled sandals, tiger-striped lounge suites, wirelesses like Aztec temples. At night she became Rambling Rose and competed with the Tommy Tadpoles, Broom Witches, Star Maidens, and Happy Jacks of Adelaide for lilac, blue, and pink certificates for stories and poems and drawings in the Sunday Mail’s Children’s Page.

She grew older. She sewed puff-sleeved peasant blouses, monogrammed chiffon and feather-bordered scarves. She had a favourite evening frock with a fishtail train and décolleté back. Her hem was weighed down with pennies; she tucked handkerchiefs inside her front. She read Ella Wheeler Wilcox, collected for her Glory Box, bought coffee-coloured underwear, pinned a gardenia to her wrist at tea-dances.

She met my father at a dance in the King’s Ballroom. His name was Maurice, but they called him Bob. He looked like Tyrone Power. He looked charming, and he was — ‘But moody,’ they said. Different from the others, he was a gentleman — pronounced cock: ‘coh’. He read a newspaper in a corner all night; watched her; took her home.

They were married at Holy Trinity on North Terrace, just past the railway bridge.

For a while they lived with Grandfather Hanrahan in Dew Street. But he got drunk; accused my mother of steaming his letters. He locked the letter-box and my mother pried with a pin: broke it. There was a row and they left.

My mother longed for security. My father strained from the tameness of marriage — from the sameness and mediocrity of the machine-shop at Holdens.

While she was giving birth to me at St. Ives, he found the thirty pounds she had hidden in the wardrobe to pay the bill: took it, and bought drinks for Jock Beresford and Fred Juncken and all the others whose names are forgotten. He got drunk and wrecked a billiard saloon; she had to pay for the damage and see the Sergeant at the Thebarton Police Station. He carried me into the bar of the Hotel Gambier in Light Square, and she found us there — him: the bookmaker, with her navy bag round his neck, taking bets on me: the prize. He told my grandmother at her own front door that she was no plum. ‘It all comes from marrying a Catholic,’ they said.