Piano; and shed true tears for Caro's gold medal in French. It was this that set Caro to wondering about the backs of houses, and whether Dora was in some form inevitable to every household.
Supremely confusing was the Dora, all loving normality, who followed the release of the good row. At those intervals the girls became, for an evening or a day, young again. It was of course a confounding of all they knew for sure, through the certainty of suffering. But, like others in the clutch of absolute authority, they settled for the brief respite. It seemed easier to lie—to Dora, to oneself, to God—than willfully to precipitate the other Dora.
Into these hostilities came war. One year it was statesmen shrieking "Peace! Peace!" while marshalling, like Dora, for a holocaust.
The next it was Poland, the Siegfried Line, the Graf Spee. A family from Vienna, Jews, took the house next door, and Dora reported,
"He's an engineer, she's a children's doctor. Supposedly." Because a professional woman aroused mistrust. The two boys, Ernst without the second e and Rudolf with f, mooned on the lawn. Their father, slim and grey, pondered a row of freesias that in October had forced itself through from the far side of the earth.
The following June, the greengrocers' windows were smashed because of being Italian. Manganelli's at the Junction put out a sign: WE ARE GREEKS. Once again the men set sail for history, in darkness and without streamers. France fell. There was the blitz, the RAF, and Mr. Churchill. Caro's class put aside the War of the Spanish Succession to read a book about London, the buildings standing out like heroes—the Guildhall, the Mansion House—
which every night the flames consumed on the seven-o'clock news.
Dora seethed under rationing, but yearned to be where bombs were falling. She took the conflict personally, frenzied by Mr.
Churchill. It was Dora's war.
The neap tide of history had, as usual, left them high and dry.
Caro was becoming flesh. Her hands were assuming attitudes. In shoes dull with playground dust her feet were long and shapely.
The belt of her school uniform, which at the time of Dunkirk had banded a mere child, by the siege of Tobruk delineated a cotton waist. Her body showed a delicate apprehension of other change.
Caro knew the sources of the Yangtze, and words like hypotenuse.
Even Grace did homework now, sitting on the floor. Dora was knitting for the merchant marine, charging this calm activity with vociferous unrest.
Greece fell, Crete fell. There was a toppling, even of history.
One hot day Caro looked up Pearl Harbor in the atlas. Buses were soon painted in swamp colours. Air-raid shelters were constructed, and a boom, useless, across the harbour mouth. You kept a bucket of sand in the kitchen with a view to incendiary bombs.
Mr. Whittle was an air-raid warden, and the Kirkby boys were called up. The noble rhetoric of Downing Street scarcely applied to dark streets, austerity, and standing in the queue. Colonial families arrived from the East destitute, and Singapore fell, fell. Or-phans were numerous now; and the girls, in their civilian loss, no longer commanded special attention.
The school was moving to a country house, where the invading Japanese would hardly penetrate. Grace was too little to be saved by such methods, Caro would go alone. Caro would try out the fugitive state; if it came up to snuff, Grace might later be included.
Caro was installed one afternoon at the foot of the Blue Mountains. On the plain below, gum trees straggled back towards Sydney, bark was strewn like torn paper. The littlest children cried, but the parents would visit them in a fortnight if the petrol held up and the Japs did not arrive. There was also an ancient train as far as Penrith, but after that you were on your own. They knew about Penrith, a weatherboard town with telegraph poles and the sort of picture-house where you could hear the rain.
Grace waved out the car window: jealous,
Supremely confusing was the Dora, all loving normality, who followed the release of the good row. At those intervals the girls became, for an evening or a day, young again. It was of course a confounding of all they knew for sure, through the certainty of suffering. But, like others in the clutch of absolute authority, they settled for the brief respite. It seemed easier to lie—to Dora, to oneself, to God—than willfully to precipitate the other Dora.
Into these hostilities came war. One year it was statesmen shrieking "Peace! Peace!" while marshalling, like Dora, for a holocaust.
The next it was Poland, the Siegfried Line, the Graf Spee. A family from Vienna, Jews, took the house next door, and Dora reported,
"He's an engineer, she's a children's doctor. Supposedly." Because a professional woman aroused mistrust. The two boys, Ernst without the second e and Rudolf with f, mooned on the lawn. Their father, slim and grey, pondered a row of freesias that in October had forced itself through from the far side of the earth.
The following June, the greengrocers' windows were smashed because of being Italian. Manganelli's at the Junction put out a sign: WE ARE GREEKS. Once again the men set sail for history, in darkness and without streamers. France fell. There was the blitz, the RAF, and Mr. Churchill. Caro's class put aside the War of the Spanish Succession to read a book about London, the buildings standing out like heroes—the Guildhall, the Mansion House—
which every night the flames consumed on the seven-o'clock news.
Dora seethed under rationing, but yearned to be where bombs were falling. She took the conflict personally, frenzied by Mr.
Churchill. It was Dora's war.
The neap tide of history had, as usual, left them high and dry.
Caro was becoming flesh. Her hands were assuming attitudes. In shoes dull with playground dust her feet were long and shapely.
The belt of her school uniform, which at the time of Dunkirk had banded a mere child, by the siege of Tobruk delineated a cotton waist. Her body showed a delicate apprehension of other change.
Caro knew the sources of the Yangtze, and words like hypotenuse.
Even Grace did homework now, sitting on the floor. Dora was knitting for the merchant marine, charging this calm activity with vociferous unrest.
Greece fell, Crete fell. There was a toppling, even of history.
One hot day Caro looked up Pearl Harbor in the atlas. Buses were soon painted in swamp colours. Air-raid shelters were constructed, and a boom, useless, across the harbour mouth. You kept a bucket of sand in the kitchen with a view to incendiary bombs.
Mr. Whittle was an air-raid warden, and the Kirkby boys were called up. The noble rhetoric of Downing Street scarcely applied to dark streets, austerity, and standing in the queue. Colonial families arrived from the East destitute, and Singapore fell, fell. Or-phans were numerous now; and the girls, in their civilian loss, no longer commanded special attention.
The school was moving to a country house, where the invading Japanese would hardly penetrate. Grace was too little to be saved by such methods, Caro would go alone. Caro would try out the fugitive state; if it came up to snuff, Grace might later be included.
Caro was installed one afternoon at the foot of the Blue Mountains. On the plain below, gum trees straggled back towards Sydney, bark was strewn like torn paper. The littlest children cried, but the parents would visit them in a fortnight if the petrol held up and the Japs did not arrive. There was also an ancient train as far as Penrith, but after that you were on your own. They knew about Penrith, a weatherboard town with telegraph poles and the sort of picture-house where you could hear the rain.
Grace waved out the car window: jealous,
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