The Friday after Pappy gave me her theory on happy marriage and I told Chris Hamilton that she needed a good fuck was Good Friday, but up at the Cross Good Friday isn’t very different from any other Friday. Business as usual. Toby, Pappy and I went to the Apollyon, a basement coffee lounge. It’s too intellectual for my taste—everybody seems to sit there playing chess—but Pappy loves it and Toby thought his friend Martin might turn up there. Rosaleen Norton came down the stairs with her poet friend, Gavin Greenlees—the first time I’d seen the Witch of the Cross. Nothing much to frighten a person there, is my conclusion. She does herself up to look satanic—peaked black brows, scarlet lipstick, black hair and eyes and stark white make-up—but I don’t feel any satanic emanations, as Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz might put it.

Then Martin arrived arm-in-arm with this stunner of a bloke. Even the most ardent chess players stopped to stare at him, so did Rosaleen Norton and Gavin Greenlees. I was riveted, and tickled to death when the newcomers moved toward our humble table.

“Mind if we sit with you?” Martin lisped.

Mind? I couldn’t shuffle my chair to make room quickly enough. Though Martin is an unabashed and vociferous member of the Cross’s homosexual contingent, he doesn’t lisp because he’s poofterish. He lisps because he has no teeth. One of those peculiar people who refuse to darken a dentist’s door.

“This,” he said, waving a graceful hand in the direction of the smiling Adonis, “is Nal. He’s being singularly difficult to seduce—I’m absolutely worn out from trying.”

“How do you do?” asked the reluctant seducee in an Oxford accent before seating himself opposite me. “My full name is Nal Prarahandra, I am a doctor of medicine, and I am in Sydney for a week to attend a World Health Organisation congress.”

He was so beautiful! I’d never thought of men as beautiful, but there isn’t another word that adequately describes him. His lashes were as long and thick and tangled as Flo’s, the brows above his perfectly arched orbits were drawn in as if with a charcoal pencil, and the eyes themselves were black, liquid, languishing. His skin shared Flo’s colouration too. The nose was high-bridged and faintly aquiline, the mouth full but not too full. And he was tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped. Adonis. I sat looking at him the way a country bumpkin looks at the Queen.

Then he reached across the table, picked up my hand and turned it over to look at the palm. “You’re a virgin,” he said, but not out loud. I had to read his lips.

“Yes,” I said.

Toby had Martin rattling away in one ear, but his eyes were on me, and he looked angry. Then Pappy put her hand on his arm and he looked at her; the anger faded, he smiled at her. Poor, poor Toby!

“Do you live in a suitable place?” he—Nal—whispered.

“Yes,” I said.

My hand was still in his when he stood up. “Then let us go.”

And we went, just like that. I wasn’t even remotely tempted to wallop him, but I suspect Toby was. I suppose Toby was worried because I was leaving with a stranger.

“What is your name?” he asked as we emerged into the lights and blare of the Cross.

I told him, my hand still wrapped in his. “How on earth did you fall in with Martin?” I asked him as we crossed William Street.

“This is my first day in Sydney, and everyone said I must go to Kings Cross. When Martin accosted me, I was contemplating an interesting window, and as I found him amusing, I consented to accompany him. I knew that he would lead me to someone I liked, and I was right,” he said, giving me a smile that isn’t quite as wonderful as Mr. Forsythe’s, I think because such amazing beauty isn’t suited to smiling.

“Why on earth me?” I asked.

“Why on earth not you, Harriet? You are not yet fully awake, but you have great potential. And you are very pretty. It will make me very happy to teach you a little about love, and you will endow my week in Sydney with memorable pleasure. We will not know each other long enough to feel true love, so when we part, we will do so as good friends.”

I don’t think there’s much of Pappy in me, because I find that I don’t want to write down all the gory details. Except that he made love to me for the first time in the bathtub off the laundry—thank God I’d had time to paint it out with scarlet bicycle enamel! And that he was wonderful, tender, considerate, all the things everybody kept telling me I had to have in my first lover. He loved my breasts, and I loved his attentions to my breasts, but I suppose the best part was his sensuousness. He really made me feel that he was enjoying himself, yet his lovemaking was geared to me and my feelings. As I wasn’t ignorant about any aspect of the act, especially after nearly four months in The House, I daresay I could appreciate it and him a great deal more than virgins did in the old days. It must have been a shock to them!

He moved in with me that night, and stayed in my flat for the whole week with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s blessing. The only landlady in Sydney so broad-minded, I reckon. When Flo came down on Sunday afternoon, her muteness fascinated him. I assured him that her mother says she talks to her, but he doubts that very much.

“They may communicate on a different plane,” he said, having met Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz when she came to collect Flo after her two hours entertaining Harold. “The mother is an extraordinary woman. Very powerful, and a very old soul. Thoughts are like birds that can fly straight through solid objects. I think Flo and her mother speak without words.”

Speaking without words. Well Nal, who is a psychiatrist, and I did a lot of that ourselves. Despite his alien way of looking at things, I liked him enormously, and I think he liked me for more than just sex. We did a lot of talking with words too.

He taught me to cook two Indian dishes, a korma and a vegetable curry, taking care to explain that a real curry isn’t made on our “curry powder” because every dish requires a different selection of spices and herbs. On Sunday morning we went down to Paddy’s Markets and bought the mace, the turmeric, the cardamom, the cumin, the fenugreek, the garlic. I don’t think Indian food compares to Klaus’s Beef Stroganoff or Veal Piccata, but I suppose it takes a bit of time to tune the tastebuds to such foreign flavours.

The one item we disagreed about is Pappy. Isn’t that peculiar? All he would say is that she is a typical half-caste. Indians can be as prejudiced as Old Australians, it seems. Of course he’s very high caste, his father is some sort of maharajah. He told me that his bride has already been chosen for him, but for the time being she’s too young for marriage. I already knew the answer to the question I didn’t bother asking—that, after he married, he would still seek out women like me whenever he went abroad. Well, his ways are his ways. They’re not ours. No doubt his wife will think no worse of him, so how can I?

Every evening he was waiting in Cas to walk me home, sitting on one of the hideous plastic sofas reading the Mirror until I came out and locked my door. Then he would take my bag and we’d leave, strewing a trail of delicious gossip behind us. Sister Cas works an early shift like Chris, but I’m sure that Sister Herbert, who’s in charge on the evening shift, reports all the news about us. Chris gave me some funny looks, but that little outburst of mine has improved our relationship no end. Chris is, besides, starting to go out with Demetrios. They’ll probably have very nice children, her stolid Pommy blood spiced with his Wogness. Provided that she doesn’t get cold feet. Sister Cas is looking down her nose at the pair of them and feeding Chris subtly poisonous remarks. If Chris marries, she’ll have to find another flatmate, won’t she?

Nal flew out to New Delhi at the crack of dawn last Saturday. Somehow I couldn’t face the thought of spending the weekend alone at The House, so I retreated to Bronte and the lounge room couch until this morning. Mum eyed me sharply, but didn’t say a word. Nor did I.