or lanes leading off its left side, that our little cul-de-sac was a dead end, that there aren’t any houses lower than number 17. The brick paving of my side passage continued in the backyard proper, which was crisscrossed with washing lines, a good few of them festooned in sheets, towels, and clothes which seemed to belong to a man and a woman. Cute little lace-trimmed Gorgeous Gussie panties, boxer shorts, men’s shirts, girls’ bras and blouses. I pushed through them—they were dry—and discovered why there were no side streets off the left side, and why we were a dead end. Victoria Street was perched on top of a sixty-foot sandstone cliff! Below me the slate roofs of Woolloomooloo’s rows of terraced houses marched off toward the Domain—for this time of year, its grass is lovely and green. I like the way it divides Woolloomooloo from the City, though I never realised it did until I stood at the back fence to look. All those new buildings in the City! So many storeys. But I can still see the AWA tower. To the right of Woolloomooloo is the Harbour, flaked with white because it’s Sunday and the whole world has gone sailing. What a view! Though I’m very happy with my flat, I felt a twinge of envy for the inhabitants of 17c who are upstairs and whose flats look this way. Heaven, for a very few quid a week.
When I parted the sheets to go back to my painting, a young man carrying an empty basket was striding down the passage.
“Hullo, you must be the famous Harriet Purcell,” he said as he reached me and stuck out a long, thin, elegant hand.
I was too busy staring to take it as quickly as I ought have.
“I’m Jim Cartwright,” “he” said.
Oooooo-aa! A Lesbian! Close up it was obvious that Jim was not a man, even one with a limp wrist, but she was dressed in men’s trousers—fly up the front instead of side placket—and a cream men’s shirt with the cuffs folded up one turn. Fashionable men’s haircut, not a trace of make-up, big nose, very fine grey eyes.
I shook her hand and said I was delighted, whereupon she left off laughing silently at me, took a tobacco pouch and papers out of her shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette with one hand only, as deftly as Gary Cooper did.
“Bob and I live on the second floor, up above Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz—beaut-oh! We look this way and to the front.”
From Jim I obtained more information about The House—who lives where. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz has the whole first floor except for the end room, right above my living room; it’s rented by an elderly teacher named Harold Warner, though when Jim spoke of him, she screwed up her face in what looked like detestation. Directly above Harold is a New Australian from Bavaria named Klaus Muller, who engraves jewellery for a crust, and cooks and plays the violin for amusement. He goes away every weekend to friends near Bowral who hold apocalyptic barbecues with whole lambs, porkers and vealers on spits. Jim and Bob have the bulk of that floor, while the attic belongs to Toby Evans.
Jim started to grin when she said his name. “He’s an artist—boy, will he like you!”
The cigarette disposed of in a garbage tin, Jim began taking the washing down, so I helped her fold the sheets and get the lot neatly tucked into the basket. Then Bob appeared, scurrying and frowning, tiny feet in blue kid flatties skittling like mouse paws. A little blonde Kewpie doll of a girl, much younger than Jim, and dressed in the height of female fashion four years ago—pastel blue dress with a great big full skirt held out by six starched petticoats, nipped-in waist, breasts squeezed into sharp points that my Bros always say mean “Hands off!”.
She was late for her train, Bob explained in a fluster, and there were no taxis. Jim leaned to kiss her—now that was a kiss! Open mouths, tongues, purred mmmmms of pleasure. It did the trick; Bob calmed down. Washing basket on one inadequate hip, Jim guided Bob down the passage, turned the corner and vanished.
Eyes on the ground, I wandered toward my flat, busy thinking. I knew that Lesbians existed, but I had never met one before—officially, anyway. There have to be plenty of them among the heaps of spinster sisters in any hospital, but they give nothing of it away, it’s just too dangerous. Get a reputation for that, and your career is on the garbage dump. Yet here were Jim and Bob making no secret of it! That means that while Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz might object to girls on the game in her front ground floor flat, she isn’t averse to housing a pair of very public Lesbians. Good for her!
“G’day, love!” someone screamed.
I jumped and looked toward the voice, which was feminine and issued from one of 17d’s mauve lace windows. 17d’s windows intrigued me greatly, between their mauve lace curtains and the boxes of puce-pink geraniums under each of them—the effect was actually quite pretty, and made 17d look like a seedy private hotel. A young, naked woman with masses of hennaed hair was leaning out of one window, lustily brushing the hair. Her breasts, very full and oh so slightly pendulous, swung merrily in time with the brush, and the top of her black bush peeked among the geraniums.
“G’day!” I called.
“Movin’ in, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Nice to see ya, hooroo!” And she shut the window.
My first Lesbians and my first professional whore!
Painting was a bit of a let-down after that, but paint I did until my arms ached and every wall and ceiling had a first coat. Some of me was missing my Sunday game of tennis with Merle, Jan and Denise, but swinging a paintbrush has much the same effect as swinging a tennis racquet, so at least I was getting my exercise. I wonder if there are any tennis courts near the Cross? Probably, but I don’t think too many Crossites play tennis. The games here are a lot more serious.
Around sunset, someone knocked on my door. Pappy! I thought, then realised that it wasn’t her knock. This one was authoritatively brisk. When I opened the door and saw David, my heart sank into my boots. I just hadn’t expected him, the bastard. He came in before I issued an invitation and stared around with this look of fastidious distaste, how a cat might look if it found itself standing in a puddle of beery pee. My four dining chairs were good, stout wooden ones I hadn’t started to sand down yet, so I poked one forward with my foot for David and perched myself on the edge of the table so I could look down on him. But he didn’t fall for that—he stood so he could look me in the eye.
“Someone,” he said, “is smoking hashish. I could smell it in the hall.”
“That’s Pappy’s joss sticks—incense, David, incense! A good Catholic boy like you should recognise the whiff, surely,” I said.
“I certainly recognise licentiousness and dissipation.”
I could feel my mouth go straight. “A den of iniquity, you mean.”
“If you like that phrase, yes,” he said stiffly.
I made my tone conversational, tossed the words off like mere nothings. “As a matter of fact, I am living in a den of iniquity. Yesterday a Vice Squad constable checked up on me to make sure I’m not on the game, and this morning I said hello to one of the top-flight professionals next door when she leaned stark naked out of a window. This morning I also met Jim and Bob, the Lesbians who live two floors up, and watched them kiss each other with a great deal more passion than you’ve ever shown me! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
He changed tack, decided to back down and beseech me to come to my senses. At the end of his dissertation about how nice girls belong at home until marriage, he said, “Harriet, I love you!”
I blew a raspberry of thunderclap
