A Literary lunch - an adjunct in fiction to The Way We Were. The story was published in my collection Libbing (1990).

I wrote this in 1989.

If only literary lunches were like this.

‘Olga’ is Olga Masters who died before realising her potential as a novelist.

‘Elizabeth’ is the late Elizabeth Jolley.

‘Jill’ is Jill Wran – then a literary agent to only the best and wife of ex Premier Neville Wran whose delaying of the decriminilisation of male homosexuality in New South Wales (1984) was scandalous.

Frank Moorhouse didn’t exactly escape homosexuality but that’s all too complicated for me – ask him.

As for the others …

LUNCH WITH HELEN AND FRANK AND ELIZABETH

`Homosexuality was a strange, romantic cult ... Sometimes I think I was lucky to have escaped.' Frank Moorhouse quoted in Outrage.

Elizabeth got to Place de l'Aus first, she'd caught the train.

She was admiring the huge flower arrangements in the vases on the bar, they had something haphazard about them. Was it the bottlebrushes? Slightly dusty from the bush? Those mad lilies - gymea? raggedy.

No, she wouldn't have a drink, she said to the waiter, a slim blond whom one could use, the perfect type, she thought, for something. Just waiting?

It was at moments like these, she thought on, one should smoke. She wondered if it were more worse for you than good, under what circumstances, probably the number had something to do with it but the woman next to her on a bus once had told her she was going to her hairdresser's funeral: lung cancer and he never smoked or drank and did exercises; his wife was distraught. That was the odd bit. But she hadn't used that word had she? what word?

Really, it was good being schizophrenic, not that this was schizo, one knew that, one had tasted that. One had to have.

Frank came in next. She saw him get out of the taxi outside, charging it and saying something matey to the driver who was a vanished stereotype. The sort who said, `Lady, I don't go that far for my holidays' but would drive Bea Miles to Melbourne. Oh, she'd pretend she hadn't seen him, didn't know him. Let him handle it, he'd been to the Gollan Heights, or whatever it was when he got stale or whatever it was, hadn't he?

‘Yes,’ she said.

He sat down and said, ‘So she set you up with a piece of trendy Sydney, did she?’

He meant the restaurant.

It was Jill. Elizabeth had ignored her when she came in with Andrew Peacock. Oh well, she wouldn't get this at the Fremantle Arts Centre. She wondered what sort of food it was.

Frank waved with ironic urbanity to Jill, and Andrew.

‘Is he writing a book?’

‘Everyone's writing a book. Probably about the pressure to conform.’ He chuckled.

Helen came in.

Clothes-wise, Elizabeth thought.

Everyone took a look but Elizabeth was already peering outside; so she'd come in a hire car, a white stretch limo. Great. Great. She smiled. This was quite good.

They knew one another.

The headwaiter came over and welcomed Ms. Everyone was getting their money's worth today: Jill and Helen. He wished Peter Carey was with them; who was that guy? knew him from somewhere - where?

The waiter turned up and said hullo to Ms and what did she want to drink?

Did they have lite?

She was probably writing that afternoon.

Frank made searching enquiries about the beers and sent the glass back because it hadn't been chilled and made the waiter take the bottle away because it'd gone off while he was getting the glass chilled and he had to get another.

‘He's the type that likes to obey, don't you think?’ he said by way of revealing something of his capacity for insight.

Helen said nothing.

Elizabeth decided she wanted a gin and tonic or she would have to take one of those headache tablets later on and they made your gut bleed or something.

Helen gave a charming wave and smile to Jill, ignored whoever it was she was with. We all have to make a living, or something, something. Who cared? She had to get back to her hotel in Bondi. The guy next door was freaking out, or going to, on something he'd bought in the bar and he had to play tonight at Selina's. He'd said she could come along.

She mused over a phrase from the lieder, Schumann. She was Schwarzkopf. Why didn't she have one of those little headsets? What on earth were they here for? Why here? Why did that woman set it up for here? Was she a sadist? Watching over there from that public corner.

Elizabeth said, ‘Garçon!’ The eyebrows of the other two shot up. Helen could get hers much higher than Frank.

‘Please take the straw away.’

The other two were aghast.

‘Democracy gives, of the political forms which I can think of at the moment,’ she said, ‘the most opportunity for sadistic play.’ Oh God, she was pissed off, how dare they keep her waiting! anyone.

‘I haven't really thought about it,’ Helen said, sitting up straight and wishing she'd worn gloves.

Frank was remembering it.

He didn't dare do anything with the wines after that, ordered plain, straight and expensive.

‘I want to talk. Let's get the business out of the way. Do you both want to be in it?

I think you can trust something Don's set up and Jill's done her apprenticeship.’

It was, Elizabeth decided, entirely unnecessary to say, in what?

‘I wouldn't mind the exposure, to be frank. The Americans . . . ‘

‘Don was her tutor at Sydney Uni in the sixties.’

Helen flinched. How she loathed that expression.

‘Tell me,’ Elizabeth thought she'd better not let this get away from her, ‘how do you get so much mileage? I know how you do,’ she said to Frank.

He was the first to recover from his abusement, or was it that he wished to address that and Helen wished to keep counsel with herself?

He laughed a beer-softened throat laugh that he could even do without the beer when threatened sufficiently. ‘How do I?’

‘Oh well, one reads you . . . everywhere.’ Elizabeth's hand corkscrewed through the air.

Helen decided she liked her enough to want to use the gesture herself.

The food. Oysters. A dozen for him, half for her. Elizabeth had prosciutto but dragged it off in shrivels to get at the melon, which was nice. Fortunately, she didn't care anyhow, the gin was getting to her.

‘It seems a good idea. It's reputable and there'd probably be an American reading or two out of it. New York, of course.’

‘I do not wish to tour America. At this juncture,’ Elizabeth said.

Helen tapped the side of an oyster shell with her fork. She hoped this woman wasn't going to turn out to be an old bitch. She wanted a mother, she ought to know that.

‘I do hope it's alright?’ Elizabeth enquired in lucent tones. ‘We don't want you getting sick. They wouldn't be from the harbour?’ she said sharply to Frank, giving Helen what she wanted, slapping him around a bit too.

‘No. Oh no. Not these days. I hope.’ He laughed his urbane chuckle.

‘It seems odd, just three. It's not representative of . . . well, anything, is it? But it suits me,’ Helen added hastily. ‘A third each. Three stories?’

‘Or two long ones,’ Frank said, his eyes on Elizabeth.

‘I would want to see what you two were putting in.’

‘I'm scripting,’ Frank remembered to say.

‘Oh, what?’

‘Something early. I - a few of us thought it'd come out well, make the move nicely.’

‘Like ‘The Coca Cola Kid?’ Elizabeth said brightly.

Who was this? 'Look I don't think I need this. I've got a . . . ‘

Second course.

‘I remember your marvellous line about a cold collation,’ Helen said to Elizabeth, eyeing with some distrust the colourfully glazed chicken breast on her plate.

Elizabeth smiled warmly over her grilled lobster. ‘Do you remember the grilled lobster in that book?’

Helen nodded.

‘It was better than this,’ she said.

They both laughed.

Frank cut a chunk of his smoked buffalo.

‘I wonder what Patrick White's eating,’ Helen, who loved parlour games, said.

Then she got away first. ‘Scrambled eggs in ham cornets, and he's dribbling – ‘

‘Manoli!’ Frank roared with laughter.

‘Dog's balls,’ Elizabeth said when he'd subsided.

Oh, that's off, he thought.

Helen shrieked.

‘Oh don't dear,’ Elizabeth said.

‘So it looks as though it's not on.’ Frank wasn't having this feminist collusion shit.

‘Oh.’

‘Then we can just enjoy our lunch?’

But Frank wasn't having that either.

Leonie came in.

‘Showing some bankers around, I bet,’ Frank explained to the two women.

‘Don't you just want to go up to her and say, the word is cunt. And you won't forget it, will you?’

‘It'd turn them all on,’ Helen nodded.

Elizabeth wanted some decent sliced white bread, no butter. She simpered at the waiter who ignored her. She got up and went over, ‘You don't want me calling you garç, do you?’ she said.

She got a bread roll and decided to complain to Jill about it later.

‘I'd want Rose and Jean in on it,’ Frank said.

Helen nodded.

‘I think I know them,’ Elizabeth said.

‘Won't . . . well what about the photographs. How . . . ?’

‘We'll get someone, that can be got around.’ He was thinking of American money, Hollywood, that cute kid in the film . . .

‘Who's . . .?’ Helen was less sure.

‘Diane Arbus is dead. I think that one of you sitting, cross-legged on the bed is as good as an Arbus.’ Elizabeth thought Helen would be pleased.

She wasn't.

‘We could - we've got a guy here, a fucking Chinese prince - now, he could – ‘

‘No photographs. Tacky.’

They ate for a bit.

‘Awful wine,’ Elizabeth thought she owed it to something to start the conversation again after slaying it.

‘Mine's O.K.’ Frank was doing well with the red.

‘It's alright with the chicken.’ Which had no taste in any case. At least they hadn't overdone the msg in the aspic, or the gelatine.

‘Well that's settled then,’ Frank said, having devoured the buffalo.

‘It worries me . . . ‘ Elizabeth said and the other two gave her their undivided attention, ‘that there is so little representation of gay writing in Orestralia.’ She had, in her intoxication (one gin, one wine) become royal. ‘I know you did your best in the past Frank dear but, and let's face it . . .That nice Don in his nice anthology - congrats dears, I was so pleased to see us all included in this one.’ She gave Frank a dowager's ravishing smile; he squirmed as was intended. ‘But no gays. Helen, you - I've always . . . why aren't there ever any dykes in your books? I mean, do you feel you've internalised the issue to the extent that it's enacted without direct correlatives? In your writing.’

‘I do have dykes. I'll have a whisky with my coffee. No, no dessert- pudding.’

‘A nice pear dear.’  She ignored the waiter's intrusive remonstrations.

‘Strega. And coffee. Any chocolates?’

‘Oh, I know that bit on St. Kilda beach but surely, hardly . . . ‘ Elizabeth lifted one quizzical eyebrow. It was an expression worthy of Garbo: wise, tolerant, weary, graceful.

Helen scratched her neck. She'd buy some new earrings with this, rubies. And thank God she'd put a stash of cassettes in her bag. This would obviously have to be a Bach-on-the-bed afternoon. Why wasn't he, if he wasn't dead - that was another way they had of nay-saying - why wasn't he a Maori? at least.

‘There was not, as one reviewer I thought succinctly and truly put, one transgression in it. Not one. That is of course . . . And how is Michael? One hears so little of him - either from you or him lately.’

‘Oh, what are ya?’ Frank said. ‘I put Gary in mine. He's in Rose's stables. She should be here! Bloody Jill! All this fucking around. What is this? I thought we were here to work out the parameters at least.’

‘Are there a lot of Maoris in Sydney? I just thought I saw one go – ‘

‘Not in fucking Balmain!’

‘I think too, that they ought to import more. Too much Mediterranean is . . . ‘

The other two looked at her.

‘Well look at Carlton,’ Elizabeth said. ‘An infusion of the Pacific. And they make such wonderful, such sure . . . gays, though the pallid New Zealander has not . . . enough, don't you think?’

‘Oh absolutely.’ Helen thought this woman was fucking marvellous.

‘Gary's on her books. He's doing a treatment. What da ya mean? Gays?’

‘You are an apostate.’ Elizabeth decided coffee would give her a headache. Ordered cognac. Then coffee because she couldn't drink it by itself: only in alternate sips with coffee. ‘The trouble is, you're supposed to sniff and - What do I mean?’ The restaurant stopped. ‘What do I mean? You were never one, so you can't be an apostate. What were you? What were you? What happened to you and Michael? What did? And the embassy?’ Her tones rang out very Ingrid Bergman.

Heavens she's beautiful, Helen thought.

They drank, sipped, sniffed on.

‘Well, it's agreed,’ Frank sighed at last.

It was going to be quite a trip with those two.

Before they rose Elizabeth decided to make another fuss. After all, this was only Sydney, nobody knew her here. ‘And what about Tim Winton?’ she said.

‘I can't stand intra-uterine writers,’ Helen said, after considering this.

Elizabeth was drunk enough to be insistent. ‘If you are not an apostate - in your own remarkable idiom - what are ya then?’

He belched some buffalo. Probably the best part of it, he thought. He smiled at this old woman.

‘And Olga's dead,’ she sniffed, thinking of Sydney again.

‘Oh, let's not get maudlin.’

‘Yes dear,’ Helen said, ‘come on and I'll help you find a taxi.’

‘Maudlin? At least no-one mixes me up with Craig McGregor!’

Frank gasped.

‘And I can sustain a narrative line.’ She glared at Helen too but decided to stop, she wasn't on the strongest ground with that one.

‘At least I can write about more than dykes,’ Frank said, wishing this place had tooth-picks.

‘Yeah,’ Helen said. Who did she think she was?

‘The parameters, to use your so very useful word, of my world - actual and fictional, not that I distinguish any longer - stretch beyond one small aspect of a single suburb,’ she glared at both of them again – ‘some idealised portion of Australia au naturel,’ (her accent's quite good, Helen noted) ‘and Barcelona,’ (Elizabeth, oh Elizabeth, say it again) ‘in the thirties, and there, only the telephone exchange.’

They all smiled at Jill and ignored him with her in their ways.

Frank dallied towards the bar, the waiter. ‘Gees I'd like to put a silver bracelet on him, wouldn't you?’ he said. ‘One with a lock.’

‘Where?’ Elizabeth asked.

Helen was playing a Bach cello suite in her head. She hoped her daughter would put in the full hour's practice tonight. She'd give her a ring before she started to get ready for dinner and Selina's. She hoped the guy wasn't dead. Then she thought, maybe it'd be better that way. She could always go by herself.

THAT WOULD BE ME xi - serialisation of a chick lit (if you must) novel of neo colonialism and identity

That Would Be Me
Chapter 11

In which our heroine makes amends for deserting her best friend, manages Christmas and ventures into the South Pacific with her other true friend

Lady Tierney let her into 'Longleat'.

She knocked and knocked on Therese's door.

Finally there was a 'who's there?'

Therese said she'd see about going to Christmas dinner in a hotel. Then warmed enough to her presence to ask if she'd like a cup of tea.

She walked away from 'Longleat' feeling something important had been accomplished. She had in some way grown up. She had confronted Therese's anger, sat with it until her fear had abated. She had watched Therese's anger and hurt give way to pleasure in her company.

She knew Therese would come to Christmas dinner with her. Which hotel?

Mrs Coleman told her she'd be lucky, they would all have been booked out long ago.

But she found one.

Now she turned her thoughts to what she could do about Mrs Coleman and Christmas. Eventually she decided to offer to make her a suit.

Mrs Coleman demurred then agreed.

They went into town together to choose the material. She persuaded Mrs Coleman that a blue patterned silk would suit her then sent her to look at patterns while she paid for it. The material would have to be cut on the bias to match up the pattern. She spent far more than she had intended.

Mrs Coleman had something of a paunch so she dissuaded her from one pattern and into a pattern which had a frock which fell from two darts wide apart under the bust. It was matched with a loose one button jacket. She suspected that it was beyond her sewing skills but thought she could always take it to  Polka Dot and persuade Leni or someone to help her. She decided to make a visit in any case and see if she could get work there after she and Allison had returned from New Caledonia.

She thought about buying a sewing machine then went around and asked Therese if she could use hers.

She sewed with inspiration. Therese rose from her chair every now and again to inspect her progress.

She fitted the parts to Mrs Coleman and repinned, stood back to look, adjusted the pins, took the garment off Mrs Coleman and basted. She called Mrs Coleman back, fitted, unpicked, pinned again and sewed. The round neck had to be just high enough, the short sleeves long enough. The frock should not have been difficult but she was determined it would be as flattering as possible. The fall of the fabric depended on the darts. She wanted to suggest a waist. Mrs Coleman stood impassively through the pinning and pinning.

At one point she looked up from her position kneeling at Mrs Coleman's feet and wondered what she was doing here. What was this worship about? Some sort of masochism. Never again.

She nearly tore her hair out over the jacket. Therese told her to go for a walk. When she got back she was astonished to find Therese had basted the sleeves in. The stitching was precise. The pattern met up almost perfectly. 'That's marvellous. How did you do it?'

Therese returned to her chair.

She could not wait to get Mrs Coleman to try it on. As she carried it around to 'Casuarinas' She smelled the nicotine in the silk. She smiled.

At last Mrs Coleman stood in the finished suit, appalled. It was too impressive. Wherever would she wear it? 'You'll have to get married now so I can have a wedding to wear it to.'

'You could wear it to your own,' she replied.

Mrs Coleman almost sprang back. 'Mr Coleman's only been dead for five years.'

She helped Mrs Coleman out of the suit. She was going to fold it in tissue and place it in a box then wrap it in plain rich wrapping paper to give to Mrs Coleman on Christmas Day.

Over bridge that night Mrs Coleman smiled at the thought of her own gasped response to the idea she should marry again and wondered if indeed she might. Her unconscious smile was misread around the card table.

She got Allison a history of New Caledonia.

The Christmas lunch with Therese remained an ordeal until Therese noticed some children running around the restaurant. Therese regarded them at length. 'It's a good thing I never had children, I would have spoilt them rotten.'

She gaped. 'How? How would you have spoilt them?'

'I would have let them do anything they liked. I would have given them everything they wanted. What I could afford. And I couldn’t, I would have worried about.'

A little girl came up and took a potato from Therese's barely touched plate. Therese carefully cut some of the turkey, wiped some gravy on it and raised it on her fork. 'Open up,' she said. The little girl unhesitatingly obeyed. Therese popped it into her mouth. 'Chew it twenty times,' she commanded. The little girl began chewing dutifully. Her mother rushed up, apologised and said, 'She'd take the food out of your mouth.' And laughed nervously. 'I guess she's at that stage.'

She smiled at the mother.

Therese ignored the mother.

The mother whisked the child away.

Therese examined the food on her plate.

After several minutes of increasingly desperate conversational effort about children and Christmas, Therese responded. 'It's not only for children. Adults have got to have a good time too. There's a child in all of us, you know. It has to be let out. Christmas is a good time to do it. And birthdays. People should never forget birthdays. These women who stop having birthdays aren't doing themselves a favour. Men have started to do it too. Some men. There's nothing worse than a vain man. Frank Sullivan could be vain. He was very particular about his turnout. That must have been what attracted me to him in the first place. Can't think what else it could have been. One time he put on some weight and I had to keep him on a diet till he lost it. I must say he didn't look too bad once he'd lost a stone. One thing he appreciated in me was his shirts. I sent him off looking immaculate. People commented. Spanky Franky, they called him. Behind his back at work. One little trollop told me at one of their Christmas parties. I put a flea in her ear. The decorations are lovely, I love those coloured lights. They're wonderful these days, blinking on and off and making patterns but I don't think you can go past the coloured bulbs. I suppose people don't do it any more. They used to put them in their trees - trees in their gardens. You've never seen anything so beautiful. Special bulbs, you couldn't just paint them. And I suppose you had to have a special set-up, you know in case it rained or something. I used to look forward to it. I used to walk with my girlfriend and we'd admire them. At night, through the streets. She's dead now. One year I went alone. I wasn't afraid, you weren't in those days. You could walk down the street any time without thinking about being attacked or having your pursed snatched, or something. I don't know what's happened to Australia, it's all those migrants. Got to be. Not you! Not your type from the Home country. The foreigners. You know the ... They come from everywhere these days, they let anyone in. It's not safe. And those birds, silver with the spun glass tails that you clip on the tree. The coloured glass balls.'

They went outside so Therese could have a cigarette before pudding. Therese ate a bit of the pudding with her coffee and cognac. She was persuaded into another cognac.

She gazed with intent at the waiter who hovered with the bottle over Therese's snifter, then lowered one eyelid towards it. He got it and half filled the snifter.

She tipped him very generously.

Therese nodded off in the taxi but started awake when she put her hand on Therese's when they reached 'Longleat'.

Therese grabbed her hand with astonishing alacrity. Therese's hand was icy and bony. 'Thank you,' Therese said, 'it was such a lovely Christmas. Best I've had in years.' And was gone.

She went on to 'Casuarinas' and went to bed. She was going to Michiyo's later.

Michiyo had a new Australian boyfriend. He was in real estate.

'It's good to have Australian boyfriend. In Australia,' Michiyo said.

She could see Cal didn't like him so they only stayed as long as they should.

She wondered if she could get out of sex with Cal. But it was Christmas, whatever that meant to both of them. During it she thought she was past sex.

Noumea was lovely. She and Allison made daily journeys back and forth between Anse Vata and the Baie des Citrons.

They'd made a pact to only speak French, which they broke but made amends for by encouraging boys who only spoke French.

Their carefree air combined with a quality of subdued substance made them very attractive.

Allison was throwing herself into the Noumean life style, cultivating a tan, dressing in the wildly colourful sarongs fluttering from the many stores around the market where Allison insisted on sitting over coffee each morning.

She was trying to stay out of the sun, kept revisiting the Tjibaou cultural centre and the deserted local museum. The other young tourists were making her uneasy. She was haunted by thoughts of Lynton and had to persuade herself into knowing it was almost impossible he would be there. But what if they came across someone she had met in Thailand, still lingering in this part of the world?

She told Allison she wanted to get out of Noumea, it was too touristy, she wanted to see the Loyalty Islands, that she wanted the real Nouvelle Calédonie.

Allison was allowing herself to be drawn into something with a local boy back for a few weeks before he had to return to his course in a Polytechnic in Nantes.

She said she was going, she found Noumea empty.

Allison said she would catch up with her in a few days, she wanted to see how she coped by herself.

The resort she chose was on what seemed to be the least developed of the Loyalty Islands. It turned out to be a few local huts set aside for tourists. The dazzling white sand drifted everywhere. In the morning the lagoon beach was a cliché miracle of marble white and turquoise blue. She found her French more than adequate to the colon French of the locals. Every night she had dinner alone in a large hut lit by steady kerosene lamps. The waiters argued over serving her the fish and vegetables she ate. She discouraged them. After dinner she would sit on the edge of the lagoon regarding the golden star patterns cast across the soft deepest blue of the sky. The moon rose golden and turned fiercely silver as it sailed its course. The waves lapped. The wind whispered in the palms. It was ridiculous.

She had brought some reading to prepare for next year's study but found herself dropping into a torpor. Drowsiness dragged her down again and again. She slept and slept.

The four days till Allison's arrival became endless. She was very afraid of the inertia which had gripped her. She forced herself to take walks as a way of fighting the weight which kept dragging her down to sleep. She ventured along the little paths she found radiating out from the village. She did not even start when a huge pig barred in a camouflaged pen suddenly raised its snout at her and squealed. She made herself get into her swimming costume and glide across a grotto formed in rocks around the lagoon. Then she made herself push off from the other side and glide back again. She greeted some people in a collection of dilapidated huts as if she had known them always. They responded with equal indifference. She decided it was the elemental life, dragging her under.

Going to meet Allison's plane was an effort.

As soon as she saw her, she realised Allison had changed. During lunch it occurred to her that Allison was no longer an innocent. So Allison was no longer a virgin. Her mother would be pleased.

She wanted to say, 'You fool! You were much better off the way you were.'

Allison smiled at her as if she knew what she was thinking and called the waiter over for nothing but to flirt. As if synthesised with her transformation, Allison's French had become much more fluent and idiomatic.

'Allison,' she said when the waiter had gone off to get colder water, 'he thinks you're encouraging him.'

'And I might be. I haven't decided yet.'

She was appalled.

Again Allison seemed to read her mind. She smiled her new, worldly smile and said, 'You're not to worry, I won't embarrass you.'

'I'm not worried about your embarrassing me,' was all she could say. The lecture on how these boys saw one as a cash cow, a way of escaping their confined lot, evaporated in her mind. She decided she should get Allison back to Noumea as soon as possible. Allison would surely be bored by this nothingness.

And by the end of the next day Allison did seem to have been gathered in the arms of torpor herself. But she said, gazing out at the almost nothingness, 'You were so right to come out here, it's so basic, cleansing after all that nonsense.'

She did not dare ask, 'What nonsense?' She was alarmed by this new Allison who seemed to be so worldly, to know everything. She had decided to get away from her as soon as she could. She would get clear of her. They were doing some different courses this year in any case. She would make sure they were in different seminar groups.

As if in reaction to this silent rejection, Allison padded across the dark hut and slipped into bed beside her.

She froze.

Allison put her arm over her, said, 'It's not making you too hot, is it?' And sighed her amused sigh.

She awoke deeply rested.

She knew there was no escaping Allison now.

By the lagoon the next day Allison said, 'I'm thinking of becoming a lesbian when I get back.'

She thought. 'Oh no, not me.'

And as Allison laughed her too knowing laugh she heard herself countering it - terse, hard, straight forward - as Therese, 'Are you Allison? Why do you say that?'

Allison's response was a deeply complicit look.

Oh there's no escaping Allison now, she thought again, she knows everything. I'll have to stick by her and try to keep her quiet.

'It's probably simpler. I've got things to do.'

She could not say, 'What? What have you to do?'

'I've probably always known that,' Allison continued, 'but not known. Not denial exactly ... but some kind of avoidance. I want a career, I've always wanted a career. That's what I've always wanted but didn't spell it out to myself. Until now.' She gestured a wide yawning type stretch at the lagoon. I've always wanted to travel.' Allison turned towards her, 'Obviously you always knew that ... Did you?' she asked.

She nodded, a little too enthusiastically.

Allison looked at her as if considering her afresh. After a thoughtful silence Allison said, 'You know who really likes you?'

Her heart clutched again. This was getting too much. 'No?'

'Lou. Lou really likes you. Seriously.'

'But ... Isn't Lauren ... after him?'

'Yes. She's been after him since she arrived on the scene in first year of Senior but she hasn't got a chance, she's too pushy. She knows she hasn't got a chance. I told her but she can't help herself. She's desperate to belong, that's why she's so attracted to him. She thinks he's the very centre of it, which in a way he is - his mother's the centre of it, she used to keep a pony where the Old Paddock is now - but all of that's over. And who cares anyhow? Who wants to spend their whole life on the North Shore? Lauren's an idiot. She'll be on the move as soon as she wakes up that she can't have him, she'll probably end up in Mumbai running the film industry there.'

At night Allison just got into her bed.

In the morning Allison greeted her with, 'And how is ma sœur this morning?'

They befriended a local girl doing a Nursing Practical in a nearby village. She introduced them to the District Nurse who invited them to accompany her on a visit to a clinic on one of the furthest islands in the group.

She was worried, the excursion was to be on the day they were supposed to fly back to Noumea.

'But we don't go until five, that's the whole day. Kitti said we'd back in plenty of time. We can pack and just be ready to jump on the plane. Bertie will look after our things. I'm going,' Allison said.

It was a glorious day. They walked to the end of their island, where a boat took them across a dazzling sea.

The remote island was small, the clinic, run by a nun, hardly more than one of the local houses.

They inspired awe-struck curiosity. The children hardly dared peep at them.

Kitti talked to the nun, took some blood samples.

She couldn't watch it. 'I'm going for a look around.'

Allison followed.

They saw how quickly simplicity could shade to squalor.

The fled back to Kitti, were given coconuts to drink, a little piece of yam and fish to eat.

They retreated from Kitti's work again and sat under the palms by the lagoon.

The sun was passed the meridian.

'We'd better hurry Kitti up,' Allison said.

Kitti would not be hurried.

It was after three when they boarded the boat again.

'You were right,' Allison said, 'we'll miss the plane. I wanted to have three days in Noumea, now we'll only get there and then we'll have to go straight to the airport the next day.'

The plane only made the round trip from Noumea to their island every second day.

She said nothing. She didn't care. She didn't care if they missed the plane, she didn't care if they missed their flight from Noumea.

Allison asked Kitti to ask the boatman to make his boat go faster.

Kitti ignored her.

'Don't you understand? We have a plane to catch!' Allison shouted at the captain.

When they landed on their island Kitti said, 'We will have to go along the beaches, it is quicker.'

They had to wade across a lagoon.

She thought it was glorious.

The tide was coming in. Crossing the next lagoon was a little more difficult.

Allison baulked at the next. They were already up to their waists. 'We could drown, their might be a current. What if a shark comes? This is the time of day they attack.'

She just kept going. The water climbing above her waist felt delicious. She hoped they would have to swim. She didn't care if she drowned. Perhaps her little backpack would fill with water and drag her under. She didn't care if a shark attacked.

Allison took strength from her graceful indifference and followed though every dark shadow seemed to presage being torn to pieces.

Soon they were walking, not too fast, along the familiar lagoon. There were their bags where they had left them. Of course Bertie had not taken them as requested to the airstrip.

He came around smiling, offering to help.

Allison ignored him.

She thanked him and tipped him when they arrived at the airstrip.

The plane was late.

The pilot told them to hurry on, it was dangerous flying in the dark.

On the flight back to Sydney she thought, 'I don't care what happens to me, I have become a terrible person.'

Mrs Blackmore met them at the airport.

'Darling! I'm so proud. You did so well. I opened the letter from the university, I knew you wouldn't mind. Your brother got into his course. Now your father wants him to do Medicine, he did much better than we expected. How was it dear? Let me look at you.'

She watched Mrs Blackmore's face. She saw it registering the change in her daughter.

'Oh get away from me!' Allison suddenly growled and pushed her mother away.

Mrs Blackmore's face was swept by astonishment, then hurt.

THAT WOULD BE ME x - serialisation of a chick lit (if you must) novel of neo colonialism and identity

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