I went down the back steps into the yard. I could see Les sitting in front of his aviary, watching his birds. Singlet, shorts and thongs. He was listening, then writing something on a sheet of paper. He didn’t look up or seem to care where he was or what was happening. Wendy came out with a basket of washing. ‘Sun’s out,’ she said.

He didn’t reply.

‘Any good?’

‘Na.’

‘You gonna enter them this year?’

Again, nothing.

Wendy started hanging out the washing. First, a baby blue jumper (you’d often see her on the porch, knitting), big enough for an old child, or young man.

Les said, ‘Why you doin’ that?’

‘Just am.’

‘Stupid.’ But returned to his birds.

Another jumper, baby blue, same size, or a bit smaller. It seemed strange. They wouldn’t fit anyone at number 28.

‘What would people think?’ Les asked, as he made marks on his sheet.

‘Don’t care.’

‘Doesn’t help no one.’

‘Helps me.’

More jumpers, gradually becoming smaller, paler, but always blue.

Les said, ‘It’s morbid. I reckon you need a psychologist.’

‘Perhaps I do.’

‘Why’d you gotta keep washin’ ’em, anyway? What’s that prove?’

‘Keep ’em in good nick.’

The last few were small, the very last, baby-sized, like it’d been knitted for a doll. When she was finished she stood back and said, ‘Nice bita sun, should get them dry.’ Turned, and went in.

I counted seventeen jumpers. Maybe they were for some sort of charity, or refugees, or starving kids in Africa.

I walked down the drive, and home. Mum and Pop were sitting on the verandah, Pop in overalls with his spray-pack, surveying the few weeds that dared grow in his garden. I sat beside him and he said, ‘Go on, tell your mother what I scored.’

‘What?’

He took some folded papers from his overall pocket, opened them and showed me. Fighting Dementia.

‘I thought we’d get some information,’ I said.

Mum read the pages, returned them to me and said to Pop, ‘He’s just concerned.’

‘That’s not gonna help, is it?’

I dared not speak.

‘So?’ Pop asked, bending over, pulling a weed.

‘Twenty-eight out of forty-nine,’ I replied.

‘Clem,’ Mum said.

‘You weren’t meant to notice, Pop.’

‘What if it’s not that bad?’ he said. ‘I’m an old bastard, and something else will probably get me first.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Mum said.

‘See, Clem? You’re thinkin’ I’m gonna be wandering down North East Road starkers and people’ll be laughing. If you go through life worrying about things …’

They both looked at me.

‘Twenty-eight,’ I said.

‘Fuck.’ Pop reclaimed the pages, tore them into pieces and scattered them to the wind. ‘If I hada done it to you, would you have done any better?’

‘No, but …’ I stopped, realising I was burying myself.

‘Instead of studying me, you could help me.’ He handed me the weed-wand, and pushed the spray-pack in my direction. ‘Off you go.’

I checked. ‘There aren’t any weeds.’