constant throbbing in my head and my hair smelt of smoke.
‘Hey, you can’t go back to sleep,’ she whispered urgently.
‘Why not?’ I moaned softly with closed eyes.
‘I have an important subject to discuss with you.’
I felt a pillow hitting my head. Playfully, but hard enough to make me open my eyes. I knew when I’d lost.
‘What is it, Dalena?’
‘Tell me more about your brother.’
I threw the pillow back at her head.
‘He’s dangerous. He smokes and he drinks and he breaks girls’ hearts by the score. What more do you want to know?’
‘Sounds irresistible.’ Dalena smiled her shamelessly wide smile.
‘Did you like the movie?’
‘I can’t remember a thing about it,’ she said. ‘It was impossible to concentrate with your brother sitting so close to me.’
‘Good morning!’ My mother stuck her head round the bedroom door. ‘I’ve brought you coffee and rusks.’
Ma was wearing her Japanese dressing gown, the one she called a kimono. One day she would see the East, she always said. (And Russia and Egypt.) She didn’t bring me coffee in bed as a rule but she liked to impress my friends. She didn’t wear the kimono every day, either.
‘Thank you, tannie, that’ll be delicious!’ Dalena said in her sweetest voice and jumped up to take the tray with its crocheted cloth, starched stiff as cardboard, from my mother.
Ma gave a grateful smile. ‘Did you have a nice evening?’
‘We saw a good movie. The Graduate. Have you heard of it, Ma?’
‘With Dustin Hoffman?’ Ma seldom went to the movies these days but she greedily absorbed every bit of scandal about Hollywood stars in all her favourite magazines. ‘He’s so short and dull! I know I’m old-fashioned, but I still like a leading man to look like a leading man!’
‘Like Clark Gable or Rock Hudson,’ I mumbled, my mouth full of rusk.
‘Like Clark Gable or Rock Hudson,’ Ma agreed seriously.
The moment Ma’s shiny blue kimono disappeared round the door, Dalena jumped up to sit cross-legged on my bed, almost on top of me.
‘Tell me honestly, Mart,’ she said urgently. ‘Tell me if you think I stand a chance.’
‘Of what?’
I sucked the coffee out of a soaked rusk and put out my hand to switch on the radio on my bedside table. It was my first ever opportunity to tease my roommate. I had to admit it was a pleasant sensation.
‘Do you think there’s a chance, no matter how small …’
She got no further because Niel and Lovey ran yelling into the room. Niel held his arms protectively over his head while Lovey made a frustrated grab at his hair. It was only when she tickled him under his arms and he laughingly dropped his hands that we saw he had tied one of those long, old-fashioned sanitary towels on to his head, the loops hooked around his ears. I caught Dalena’s eye and we tacitly agreed that we wouldn’t laugh at such a childish joke.
But I had difficulty keeping a straight face. Where had he found the thing? Ma had had that operation a long time ago and Lovey …
‘Mart, tell Niel to grow up!’ Lovey yelled when Niel grabbed her hands.
‘Niel, Lovey says you must grow up!’
Dalena gave up the struggle and started laughing. Pleased, Niel turned his head towards us and with his attention diverted for a moment, Lovey jerked the sanitary towel off his head so roughly that he seemed in danger of losing his ears. He screamed like the victim in a bad murder movie and fled, laughing.
‘Men!’ Breathlessly Lovey sank down on the bed opposite Dalena and me. She clutched the towel like a trophy. I still couldn’t believe that my baby sister could be the owner of this strange object. ‘If only they knew what it is to be a woman …’
I also fell into helpless laughter.
‘But, Lovey, that thing is miles too big for you.’
‘I know,’ she said, mortified. ‘But Ma says I’m too young for the kind that you push in …’
‘But doesn’t Ma know about the new kind that you stick on?’
‘Lovey!’ Simon called from somewhere in the house. Lovey and Dalena both jerked upright.
‘He said I could go with him to buy the Sunday papers,’ Lovey said before disappearing. ‘Ciao.’
The sanitary towel was left lying on the bed like an ugly, stranded boat.
‘This morning she’s under the impression that she’s in an Italian movie,’ I said to Dalena.
‘Why didn’t he ask me to go with him?’ Dalena wanted to know.
I turned up the volume on the radio and hummed ‘Sorrow’ along with David Bowie. Simon said his son’s name was Zowie, Zowie Bowie. It would be quite fun to have a name like that, Simon said, especially in the army. Sapper Zowie Bowie.
‘He probably didn’t even notice me!’
‘It’s quite difficult not to notice you, Dalena,’ I consoled her. ‘You’re not exactly a shrinking violet.’
‘Maybe he likes shrinking violets?’
‘If you really want to know, I think he likes anything that wears a skirt. Especially after three months in the army.’
She fell on to her back with a sigh that sounded as if it had been fished from the depths of her stomach and folded her hands behind her head.
‘Listen, Dalena,’ I said, my eyes on her bare legs, ‘I don’t want to interfere …’
‘Then don’t.’
‘But I must warn you …’
I didn’t know how to say it without sounding stupid. Do it fast, I thought, as fast as possible. ‘Don’tletmybrothermisuseyou.’
‘What do you mean?’ Her mouth trembled as she tried to control a smile.
‘You know very well what I mean.’
‘I don’t care what your brother does to me, Mart!’ The smile spread. We were back in our usual roles, Dalena the teaser, I the teased. ‘This is the first time since Miss Lourens’s brother that I’ve had this ticklish feeling in my body.’
‘Where in your body?’ I asked warily.
But she just laughed. And I felt as if I had pushed a car to get it started, with
