Laying bricks sounded like hard work. But I’d always assumed he’d lost interest in domestic life, his family, me, Jen. ‘How long did he lay bricks?’

Ernie backed off. ‘Not sure. Just at the beginning. Before he …’

‘What?’

‘Left … or had to go.’

‘Had to go?’

‘I dunno, ask your mother, it’s none of my business.’ He sipped his coffee and gazed out of the window. ‘I was just saying, if he’d been in a union things mighta been different. Ten hours a day out in the hot sun, and not enough to support his family.’

‘Do you know why Mum doesn’t say anything?’

‘Her business.’

‘It’s like everyone in the street’s been warned off.’

‘Rubbish, we just say what we know. You don’t go sticking your nose in other people’s business.’

I held the manifesto. I wasn’t sure that it was going to help me, or that I really cared. You had to work your own life out before you could worry about other people’s. I needed my own revolution, and John Lennon seemed more relevant then Vladimir Ilyich.

‘Ern!’

Ida. Ernie jumped up, ran down the hall, into the kitchen. I followed.

‘What?’

‘Look!’

Ida pointed to the kitchen window. A few metres away two cats stood on a fence strut going their hardest. Ida knocked on the glass but they didn’t care.

‘Dirty bastards!’ Ernie said. He ran into the laundry, found a bucket and started filling it with hot water. ‘Filthy bloody creatures.’

Apparently his ideals didn’t extend to Val’s tabbies. He ran out, threw the water, and they squealed, and jumped.

I stood on his back porch, watching, half-laughing, as the drama unfolded. I looked up to see Val, staring out of her kitchen window, seeing me and pulling the curtain.

Ernie called, ‘Why don’t you keep them locked up?’

No reply.

‘Place smells like piss.’

Then he came in, threw the bucket in the trough and returned to kitchen. Again, I followed, and he said, ‘I wanna have a talk to your mum. It’s about time we did something.’

I didn’t know what to say. The cats didn’t bother me. I guessed that Ernie was more a hates-the-boss than loves-the-worker sort of person. ‘I better get going.’

‘Righto. Read the book, get back to us. We’ll talk, eh?’

Ida had started filleting fish. She had a pile of bones, heads, fins. She emptied them into newspaper, wrapped the bundle and presented it to Ernie. ‘Go on.’

‘Cosa them cats I gotta bury them,’ he said to me, going out the back door, picking up his shovel and digging a new hole.

I watched him work, and realised we only ever know part of the story.

Pop let the chain run through his fingers. It glided through the gears, and the engine started to lift. ‘Steady it,’ he said.