The Serpent's Sting by Robert Gott Page A

flat in South Yarra that seemed possible. I tore the page from the paper and put it in my pocket. There was no show on Sunday — the absence of anything to do in Melbourne on Sunday had been a cause of tension between the Americans and the city fathers. After a great deal of pressure had been applied, picture theatres were allowed to open on Sundays, thereby getting thousands of soldiers off the street and into the movie houses, along with their giggling and compliant Australian girlfriends. The experiment didn’t take, however, and Sundays soon returned to dull normality.
    It was an overcast day, but by 10.00 a.m. it was already hot. I went into the back yard, much of which had been turned over to the growing of vegetables. Peter Gilbert was out there, turning earth with a garden fork. He was wearing baggy shorts and no shirt. He’d kept himself in good shape — I gave him that. The hair on his chest might have been grey, but his skin hadn’t yet begun to go slack and sag indecorously. He must have been sixty-five, yet he carried himself convincingly like a much younger man. The sight of him bare-chested had an unexpectedly positive effect on me. I realised that part of my antipathy towards him had been a sort of visceral disgust when I thought of him as my mother’s lover. The thought wasn’t quite so disgusting now, which may point to a shallowness in me, although I don’t think it does, really.
    â€˜Good morning, Peter.’
    I could tell that he was surprised to be addressed civilly by me. He leaned on the garden fork.
    â€˜You know, Will, I could have happily killed you on Friday when you blurted out that Cloris and John had a brother.’
    I was immediately defensive.
    â€˜No reasonable person would imagine that that particular nugget of information had been withheld.’ I regretted my tone instantly. The ‘nugget’ was, after all, the source of both Mother’s and Peter Gilbert’s grief. He didn’t give me time to redress what I’d just said. Instead he sighed, as if he could expect nothing better from me — a presumption I resented mightily — and ran his forearm across his brow.
    â€˜I was going to say, Will, that early in the evening I wanted to kill you. Later, though, I realised that you’d done your mother and me an enormous favour. Cloris and John had to find out sometime, and the longer we left it, the more awkward it was becoming. My wife has been dead now for almost six months. Of course my children are shocked by what they rightly see as almost a lifetime’s deception. They don’t understand, they can’t understand, how I could live a lie. I think Cloris knows that I did it for them — and yes, I did it for myself, too. Don’t imagine that I’m not aware of that. However, a separation from their mother would have disrupted their lives. She was a fanatical Catholic. It didn’t bother her one iota that there was nothing between us. We slept in separate bedrooms, for God’s sake. She liked the arrangement. She found sex disgusting, and took no pleasure in it.’
    â€˜Why are you telling me this?’
    â€˜Because I’m going to marry your mother in a few weeks, and I hardly know you at all.’
    â€˜My father and you were very good friends.’
    â€˜Yes, we were, when we were very young.’
    â€˜And yet you cuckolded him.’
    Peter Gilbert didn’t bat an eyelid.
    â€˜Yes, I did. Our friendship wasn’t worth the tiniest part of the love I felt for Agnes. I threw it away without the slightest qualm, and I’d do the same again. Your father was a strange, cold man, Will.’
    â€˜Mother is very fond of saying that I’m very like him.’
    â€˜I’m sure she’s only referring to your mannerisms, which are similar to your father’s, and you do look remarkably like him.’
    â€˜I don’t really want to discuss these things with you,