He leaned back and looked at me through half-shut eyes. “You know, princess, there are times when you remind me awfully of our landlady.”

I took that as a compliment.

When Pappy and the Prof got up together and departed, leaving his students looking as if they were contemplating suicide, Toby and I decided to go home too. We weren’t far behind them, but when we emerged onto Elizabeth Street there wasn’t a sign of them. I didn’t want Toby to follow me down to my flat in case Pappy and the Prof were in her room, but he insisted on accompanying me.

Oh, good! No light under Pappy’s door, no cackles of carnal content. Perhaps the Prof had a lair of his own, considering his liking for droves of nubile students.

Toby and I had coffee and talked about the brothels on either side of 17c. He had names for all the whores—Chastity, Patience, Prudence, Temperance, Honour, Constance, Verity, Columba—and he had christened the proprietress of 17d Madame Fugue, the proprietress of 17b Madame Toccata. In fact, given that the love of his life was probably in bed with a bald old coot with tickets on himself, Toby was in excellent form, had me laughing until the tears came. He disapproved of so much pink and dismissed my bead curtain as a subconscious wish to be shut up in a harem, but I enjoyed myself.

“I’m surprised you haven’t walloped me the way you did David,” he said, and looked at me sharply. “I don’t get on with women.”

“Unless they’re Lezes.”

“Lezes don’t weigh a bloke up on the marriage scales. No, I reckon I don’t get on with women because I say what I think.” He sighed and stretched, let his eyes roam over me. “You’ll be a lovely, lanky old lady one day, and I still think you’ve got a terrific pair of breasts.”

Time to change the subject. “What do you think of Harold?”

Toby lifted his lip. “I don’t. Why?”

“He hates me.”

“That’s a bit strong, Harriet.”

“It’s true!” I insisted. “I’ve encountered him quite a few times now, and he scares me witless. The hate in his eyes for me! Even worse, I can’t work out what I’ve done to him.”

“Wormed your way into Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s affections, is my guess,” he said, getting up. “But don’t worry about him—he’s on the skids. The old girl’s fed up with his shenanigans.”

I walked to the door with him, where he balked on the step.

“Would you mind hopping down onto the path?” he asked.

I obliged. It put him slightly above me.

“That’s better. I need all the altitude I can get.” His hands gripped my shoulders firmly but gently. “Goodnight, princess,” he said, and kissed me.

I thought, after the traumatic evening he’d had, that he was fishing for a warm and beautiful salute of consolation. But it wasn’t like that at all. He slid his hands under my arms and across my back, pulled me against him, and kissed me properly. My eyes flew open in shock as a quiver of some highly emotional sensation crept along my jaws until it got to my lips. Then I closed my eyes and got into the mood. Oh, it was wonderful! After David and Norm, I couldn’t believe what I was feeling. I know his hands on my back never moved, but I fancied that they burned their way into my very bones. It was all for me; he just cruised along at my pace, and when I needed to come up for air he pushed his face into the side of my neck and kissed it hard. Ooooooo-aa! That provoked all sorts of reactions! Come on, Toby, I was thinking, cop a feel of those terrific breasts!

The bastard let me go! I opened my eyes indignantly to see his glowing at me impishly.

“Goodnight,” I said, struggling for the upper hand.

His eyes danced with unholy laughter, he flicked me carelessly on the cheek and went off up the path without a backward glance.

“April fool!” he called.

I leaped inside and slammed the door, ground my teeth for a minute, then simmered down. April fool or not, I’d just had my first decent kiss, and I loved it. Finally I have an inkling of the pleasure being with a man might be. My blood is dancing.

Monday,

April 4th, 1960

Pappy came home for long enough to have coffee with me before she left for work, even though this meant she dragged me out of bed two hours earlier than necessary. I was so anxious to find out what was going on that I didn’t care about the two lost hours of sleep. She was radiant—so beautiful!

“Where did you go?” I asked.

She explained that he keeps a weeny flat in Glebe, near Sydney University. “We went there, bolted the door, took the telephone off the hook, and never moved outside until six this morning. Oh, Harriet, he’s wonderful, perfect—a king, a god! Nothing like it has ever happened to me before! Would you believe that we lay naked together and played with each other for six hours before he took me the first time?” Her eyes glazed at the memory. “We tormented each other—licked and sucked until we nearly came, then stopped, then started all over again—our climax was simultaneous, isn’t that incredible? At one and the same moment! And then we plunged into a sadness so deep and full that we both wept.”

These confidences were so embarrassing that I begged her to keep the gory details to herself, but Pappy lacks inhibitions, she really does.

“You’re embarrassing yourself, Harriet,” she said in tones of disapproval. “It’s high time you came to terms with your body.”

I stuck my chin up. “There’s no one I fancy,” I lied. Toby, Toby, Toby.

“You’re afraid.”

“Of getting pregnant, for sure.”

“Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz says that if a woman doesn’t want a baby all the way through to her soul, she won’t conceive.”

I snorted. “Thank you, I have no intention of testing the Delvecchio Schwartz Theory, Pappy, and that’s that. So you had a jolly time with the Prof. Was it all sex, or did you talk too?”

“We talked endlessly! We smoked a little hashish, lay in each other’s arms, inhaled a little cocaine—I never realised how some substances can heighten one’s pleasure almost unbearably!”

I knew if I started to remonstrate with her about that, we’d quarrel, so instead I asked if the Prof was married.

“Yes,” she said quite happily, “to a sad, dreary woman he detests. They have seven children.”

“He can’t detest her that much, then. Where do they live?”

“Somewhere out near the Blue Mountains. He drives out there occasionally for the sake of the children, but he and his wife sleep in separate bedrooms.”

“That’s one method of birth control,” I said, a bit waspishly.

“Ezra told me that he fell in love with me the moment he set eyes on me. He says I’ve brought him joy no other woman ever has.”

“Does Ezra mean that your weekend parade of men is a thing of the past?” I asked.

Pappy looked genuinely shocked. “Of course it does, Harriet! My search is over, I’ve found Ezra. Other men are meaningless.”

Well, I honestly don’t know how much of all that I ought to believe. Pappy believes, so for her sake I hope my own doubts are without foundation. Hashish and cocaine. The Prof certainly knows how to indulge in ultimate pleasures. Married, too. Lots of men do have unhappy marriages, no reason to think that Ezra Marsupial—what is his name?—isn’t one of them. Oh, but what truly does set my teeth on edge is the way darling Ezra chooses to live his life. He keeps his wife and seven kids far enough away from his place of work to negate them, and he keeps this weeny flat in the Glebe. Very handy, a weeny flat right next door to a bottomless supply of nubile young maidens. For the life of me I can’t see why the wretched man is so attractive to those idiotic girls, but obviously he’s got something, though I doubt that his dingus is as long as Dad’s garden hose. It’s the hashish and cocaine, I reckon.

He’s just using Pappy, I know it in my bones. But why did he pick her, with all those others gazing at him with their tongues hanging out? Why, for that matter, is Pappy so desirable to so many men? When sex is uppermost on a man’s mind, the beauty of a woman’s nature isn’t what draws them. There’s a mystery here that I have to solve. I love Pappy, and I think she’s the prettiest creature in the world. But there’s more to it than that.