the window, at the neighbours in the next block of flats. The Man was sitting on the couch, stripped down to his shorts. The relentless TV was on. The Woman was currently out of sight. ‘Leave them alone,’ Vianney would growl if she commented on them. He did not share her view of neighbours as entertainment. ‘Let them be.’
‘It is so disappointing,’ Claudia was saying, ‘especially for Loyola.’
There was a pause, as if Claudia were pondering how else it might be done. Does she want me to search Vianney’s emails, Hilary wondered, and suddenly saw it, felt it, saw herself hunched over the computer, the adrenalin rush. But how would she ever guess the password Vianney never gave away.
Vianney treated his passwords as if they were the Da Vinci code. He rarely wrote them down, and certainly never together. It was incomprehensible to him why Hilary kept her passwords together on one piece of paper in the kitchen drawer, where, as he kept saying, anyone could find them. But how else was she to remember her Visa, GE, Hotmail, Apple, Commonwealth Bank, PayPal, Qantas Frequent Flyer, Facebook, LinkedIn, ASIC, Amazon, Gmail, Digital Pacific, Credit Union, Book Depository, Drop Box, and Skype accounts.
‘But I wonder if -’ Claudia was thinking aloud, slowly, deliberately, just like Lolly. Two lawyers. Jesus.
‘So I guess Lolly will just have to deal with it.’ Hilary interrupted, suddenly impatient with it all. He’ll just have to eat his green aeroplane jelly alone.
‘No.’ Claudia spoke firmly. ‘It’s very important for Loyola to have all his family with him at his fiftieth birthday.’
Hilary suppressed a laugh at the pomposity. Claudia had no idea how normal people spoke, or what they did. Her father was a judge or something ridiculous like that. Clever country boy Lolly Ryan had gone to Sydney Uni on a scholarship, and married up. Into boredom, Vianney said. Poor Lolly, weighed down by his responsibilities – the King Man of the Ryans. The favourite Eldest Son. His mother had set him up for life, Vianney said. She had bowed Lolly’s shoulders prematurely, and the early balding was surely all part of the package. Loyola Ryan was a sad Prince Charles character under the lash of the unlaughing Queen. He had been doomed from the beginning.
Hilary decided to come clean. ‘Actually Vianney thought it was Kate asking for Xavier’s whereabouts, through you guys.’
‘Kate?’ Claudia sounded genuinely surprised. ‘I am organising this party, not Kate. It is at our house.’
‘Yes, but is Kate invited?’
‘Well of course she is. She is their mother.’
‘Well, you know Vianney may not want to come then.’
‘Hilary,’ Claudia was now speaking very firmly to the five year olds she was so clearly dealing with. ‘When is Vianney going to -’ she slowed down her words even further, for emphasis, ‘get....over....it?’
Chapter 2 - The prospects of this country were never so hopeless
Letters from Irish bishops to the Irish College of Rome, 1879
‘The last winter was the most severe I could ever remember. The cold has been accompanied by drought until the middle of May, and though the rain has finally come, the cold is persisting. The result is that the planting of the new crops is a month behind. I never remember to have seen such depression in trade and such universal poverty among the farming and grazing classes in this Diocese.’
Thomas Nulty, Bishop of Meath, May 29, 1879
‘The present year is one of unprecedented depression all over Ireland – town and country. Since the Famine time, there has not been such desponding along all classes as at present.’
John Power, Bishop of Waterford , July 3 1879
‘The weather has been and is still very cold in Ireland. The harvest will be late on account of the cold and continual rain. I trust in God we shall soon have a change for the better.’
Francis Kelly, Bishop of Derry, July 10, 1879
‘Our weather is very unfavourable, almost constant rain. If we have another bad harvest, our hopes will be blighted – and our people obliged to leave the country.’
Daniel McCarthy, Bishop of Kerry, July 14, 1879
‘Since the Famine years the prospects of this country were never so hopeless. There is an appeal for reduction of rent from one end of the land to the other: to be followed, I suppose, by the cry of distress and hunger when winter comes round. May God help our poor people.’
Rev Denis Hallinan, Newcastlewest in the diocese of Limerick, September 18, 1879
‘I fear we are in for a famine in Ireland next year. God’s will be done.’
Patrick Dorrian, Bishop of Down and Connor, September 24, 1879
Chapter 3 - The greedy landlords of Coogee
Sydney was displaying her early autumn splendour. Flower litter everywhere. Crepe myrtles blushing pink, frangipanis scattering their creamy petals onto the pavements. The sea mild and blue and green and kind - glittering gently at the shore.
Siena Ryan loved Coogee Beach in all its aspects, from riotous, ridiculously overcrowded summer through to the pearly quiet winter. But it was these occasions; her sporadic dawn visits, which always took her breath away. The sense of freshness, of possibility, of a powerful yet infinitely gentle Universe lying right here in front of her, oblivious to the great struggle and grind and road and light rail rage behind. Siena loved the sea, and she longed for it, as maybe everyone must, she thought, who had endured a landlocked childhood.
Leaning over the stone wall above the beach, she could see the morning swimmers lapping determinedly across the bay. They would be doing the same determined laps up at Wylie's Baths. To her left and right, all along the northern and southern headlands, people were walking briskly up and down, or jogging or running. Sydneysiders, she thought, you have to give it to them. Always on the up and up, working for some invisible drill sergeant. Training for their own personal Olympics.
Why can’t they just stop and look?
She walked past the statue of the Digger and the surf lifesaver holding hands, and checked out the usual crowds at Barzura. How come they were always so packed. She knew the answer. The view, the view, the view. The view of the great wonderful ocean that Hilary's poor Planet does not have.
Yet by the time she came up reluctantly from the beach, The Planet was also full – of swimmers, joggers, walkers, silver haired retirees and svelte suited workers. This new Sydney of social breakfasts and brunches, of endless community. No-one eats at home anymore. All to the good of course for Hilary’s business.
Siena stepped up and into The Planet, met by the aroma of Sacred Ground coffee. Renata was this morning’s barista, a sullen but glorious tattooed girl with a great cleavage and determined wrist. She bangs the coffee grinds into submission. She looked at Siena with mild disdain. Hilary says it’s not personal, Renata is contemptuous of everyone, but Siena still feels unsure.
Out from the tiny kitchen where the heroic Pirate and his crew work,
