Those Brisbane Romantics

By Danielle de Valera

Way back in the day when people wrote letters, a box of Old Gold chocolates had significance and the City Hall at 91 metres was the tallest building in town, everyone’s under twenty-five and single, and everyone’s trying to get that special someone into bed. But in Brisbane, 1961, that’s not so easy. Perils abound: The Pill can’t be dispensed to unmarried women, pregnancy terminations are illegal and being gay is a criminal offence.

After being drafted into work for the war effort, women are back in the home. Tara Mahoney, a budding artist, has fallen for childhood friend Joe Gordon, whose ambition is to make it in international music; marriage at twenty-two will ruin his chances (and Tara’s) for a career in the arts. Joe and Tara are desperate for one another, but with no reliable birth control it’s hands-off for both of them.

Into this fraught situation steps Klari Nadassy, a Hungarian ballet dancer. When she becomes pregnant to Joe, tragedy ensues. Joe turns back to Tara, who faces the choice of marrying a man she’s not in love with and keeping her career or playing second fiddle to Joe.

If you remember pounds, shillings and pence, you’ll enjoy revisiting this time. If you never used Imperial currency, you’ll be surprised at how little has changed in the emotional Land of Will I, or Won’t I? There can only be one first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danielle de Valera
• Release date: Nov 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9780994274595

Danielle de Valera

Until now, Danielle de Valera's been best known for her short stories, which have appeared in such diverse magazines as Penthouse, Aurealis and the Australian Women’s Weekly.All in all, she's had a chequered career. She’s worked as a botanist, an editor, a cataloguer for the Queensland Department of Primary Industries Library and the John Oxley Library, and on the main floor of Arnott’s biscuit factory.The manuscript of her 1st ever novel (then titled Love the People!) was placed 2nd to published author Hugh Atkinson's in the Australia-wide Xavier Society Literary Award for an unpublished novel - in those days, there was no Vogel Award for Unpublished Writers under 35. After that, she abandoned writing for 25 years to raise her children, whom she raised alone.She resumed writing in 1990, somewhat behind the eight-ball. With Louise Forster she won the Australia-New Zealand-wide Emma Darcy Award for Romance Manuscript of the Year 2000 with Found: One Lover.That first novel, Love the People! was shortlisted for the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2011, and for the UK’s Impress Prize in 2012, under the title A Few Brief Seasons. It's due out here in October 2021 under its final title Those Brisbane Romantics.A freelance manuscript assessor and fiction editor since 1992, she has won numerous awards for her gritty, streetwise short stories. MagnifiCat, a departure from this style, is her first published novel. It was followed in 2017 by Dropping Out: a tree-change novel in stories - to put it another way, a collection of linked short stories.For more information on this author, see Smashwords iInterview. There's lots there.About that NameDanielle de Valera’s father claimed he was related to the controversial Irish politician Eamon de Valera on his mother’s side. But he told some tall tales in his time, and this is sure to be one of them. Born Danielle Ellis, she found that this name was replicated many times on the web. In searching for another under which to write, she first tried her mother's maiden name, Doyle, but there were a number of those, too. What to do? Then she remembered her father’s story and chose it as her writing name. But she feels any real connection is unlikely.

Book preview

Where are they now, all those Brisbane romantics?

Lyle Freeman

PRAISE FOR THOSE BRISBANE ROMANTICS

… de Valera has woven everything together with vivid, dynamic prose. A beautifully written tale about Australian dreamers that pointedly captures them at a crucial time.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

It’s a lovely book. It really captures what being young was like. The writing about nature is sublime. It captures the atmosphere of Brisbane when it was a big, sub-tropical country town still scarred by the Second World War. It immortalises an unspoilt Stradbroke Island, Spring Hill as a multi-ethnic slum, a rural Samford, the dreaming suburbs …

Susan Geason, former Literary Editor, Sun Herald, Sydney.

Those Brisbane Romantics is as much about changing times as shifting hearts and minds. Danielle de Valera has crafted an engaging saga of 1960s Australia and affairs of the heart alike, as her characters enter the wider world and childhood is left behind.

Diane Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Descriptions of natural settings are eye catching. They paint vibrant images of the backgrounds …The characters in the novel are dynamic.

Readers’ Favorite

The work sports a delightfully lyrical narrative, and the author has what I’m tempted to call a genius for dialogue. An important Australian novel.

Emeritus Professor K L Goodwin

For Norman Victor Lonn

1

Autumn

The house crouched down and hid among the trees, an old house. Set away from the road with a long back yard that ran down to the banks of the Brisbane River, it must have been splendid once, but in 1961 it was in poor repair. A rose arbour lurched over the front gate. Cassias straggled around the flagstone patio. The paint had worn off the wrought-iron panels that ran around the first-floor verandas on three sides; here and there, an entire panel was missing.

An unsuspecting widow of means was renting the young men the tower house. It took up most of their allowances, but as Joe their unofficial leader said, it had eight bedrooms, a tree house and an obsolete fountain with an imitation frog on the rim, and they were content.

No one knew who’d built the tree house in the back yard. It was there in the ancient jacaranda tree when Joe and the Mates moved into the house. Well made, waterproof, though draughty—but that didn’t matter in the summer—it had a sturdy rope ladder Tara Mahoney could pull up after her and a view of the river. Sometimes little skiffs went by in the night. Their sails cut through the gloom. Their hurricane lamps shone a golden glow on the autumn air.

The floor space in Tara’s makeshift apartment was three metres by three. Just enough room for a single-width air mattress and the pine fruit box she used as a bedside table, where she kept books, candles, wax matches and a tiny transistor radio. Under the house was an old bathroom and toilet. There was even an antique wardrobe, a huge dark carved affair that no one used, in which she kept spare clothes. If she got bored (and that wasn’t often), she could climb up the loquat tree at the front of the house and watch Joe practise. It made a nice change from reading by candlelight or listening to the radio. She liked it best when Joe picked out jazz on the piano in the living room—a bit of Benny Goodman, maybe. Still, the violin would do, and mostly it was the violin.

She had everything she needed in her little home away from home. And, for a while, she was free of Jack Mahoney. Bastard at home, big hero on the Kokoda Trail. Searching through the backwoods of her childhood, Tara could remember her father teaching the local boys how to make billy carts and kites. And laughing.

No more.

Tara Mahoney had known Joe Gordon since they were children putting pennies on the tracks for trams to run over; hiding in the bushes from irate conductors; running out to retrieve their prizes after the tram had gone. Sometimes the coins were cut cleanly in half, sometimes they weren’t. There was a skill to the placing of them.

Now Joe and Tara were twenty-two, sprawled in squatters’ chairs in front of the tower house. Supposedly finalising plans for their faculty revue, they were basking like lizards in the beautiful day.

I paid an unscheduled visit to the printer yesterday, Joe said. The programs for the revue still aren’t done. He leapt to his feet and began pacing. And do you now put on your best attire, and do you now strew flowers in his way, who comes in triumph over printer’s blood?

Tara opened her eyes. Cassia petals were falling in flutters at the whim of the wind.

You didn’t lose your temper, did you?

He smiled at her. She was cute in those days, and she knew it. Skinny, though, the bane of her life, for skinny wasn’t fashionable. Still, she made the best of things.

Want to come to the Hop with me? he asked. I’m between affairs.

What happened this time? But she already knew. Sure, he’d have affairs, but where the siren song of emotional involvement was concerned, Joe Gordon had tied himself to the mast. No matter, Tara wasn’t interested in him. Not that way. Are the Mates going to play during the scene changes?

The Mates were seven young men doing honours in agricultural science. Four years at Gatton Agricultural College followed by four years at university had made them tight, like war buddies. Five of them had formed a jazz group with Joe on piano.

Joe dropped back into the squatters’ chair. To answer your question. Depends how drunk we get. He pulled a blade of grass from the overgrown lawn and began picking his teeth with it. What are you looking for, Tara?

She was looking for a Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man kind of love. She didn’t know how to explain that, so she said, You don’t just marry the first man who asks you.

Joe tossed the piece of grass away, lit a cigarette. Some women do.

Not Tara, she was a dreamer. All those ’40s torch songs were written for her. Besides, marriage meant children, and she was determined not to have any. Every day at her house until her mother disappeared had been like the gunfight at the OK Corral. Her father yelled. Her mother screamed. Objects flew as Tara hid under the kitchen table, that battleground of the working class. School friends complained because their parents weren’t demonstrative. Tara dreamed of having parents who repressed their emotions.

The washing machine started up in the laundry under the tower house. Over the noise, a male voice could be heard singing, "Ooh, Big Bad Bill is Sweeeet William now—" The voice broke off, followed by a crash and a smothered squawk. Then silence.

Bill. Joe’s faithful sidekick since Gatton College days.

Joe put a restraining hand on Tara’s arm. Don’t go down. He’s probably got his foot caught in the wringer or something.

Bill had the reputation of being unlucky. Even his closest friends advised against going anywhere with him. The car engine would blow up, they claimed. Failing that, it would rain.

Did I tell you we’re having the cast party here after the revue? Joe waved towards the old house behind them. The Mates are making their famous punch.

The Mates made the punch in their metal garbage bin. They’d started out making it in buckets. Eventually their parties had grown so large they’d resorted to the bin, applying their combined knowledge of chemistry to the task of sterilising it. Tara didn’t trust the punch and always avoided it.

There were sounds of pottering in the laundry below, some crashing of cans.

He’s oiling it, Joe said. He always oils everything when anything goes wrong. It gives him time to think.

Bill’s cat, a huge marmalade he’d named Wash House, was hunched over something near the fountain, his long, striped tail undulating over the ground behind him.

Tara said, That cat has the longest tail I’ve ever seen.

He jumped Alastair in the garage when Al was coming in just on dawn the other day. You should’ve heard Alastair scream. We thought some girl’s father had got him.

Bill came up the path from under the house, dripping blood from one finger, grease on his face and clothes. Thanks for the help, Joe. He greeted Tara, wrapped a handkerchief roughly around his bleeding finger, picked up the cat and held it over his head. Hey, Wash House! Then he sat down on the flagstones, pulled some unshelled macadamias from his shorts pocket and began breaking them open with a rock.

Well, Joe said. What are you going to do now?

Re-sort some of m’ dirty washing, I guess.

The beautiful day began to cloud over. Storm clouds the colour of Joe’s eyes drifted in and draped themselves around the shoulders of Mount Coot-tha.

More rain coming, Bill observed, pushing a strand of light brown hair off his forehead.

Of course, there is, you bastard, Joe said fondly. Why didn’t you do us all a favour and stay inside?

The Mates knew Tara used the tree house to escape from home, but no one knew she prowled at night, an early victim of insomnia. She had a bad moment one evening when they came back from squash unexpectedly. Bill had tuned his old car that day. There was none of the usual backfiring she’d come to rely on.

Buddy Holly was singing That’ll Be the Day, on the transistor radio in Bill’s car as it rounded the corner. Tara was high in the loquat tree at the front of the house, watching Joe practise. The Whippett pulled up at the kerb, and five Mates leaped out and loped up the path through the drizzle. They wore raincoats and army disposal ponchos. All carried squash rackets, three carried bottles of rum and none of them had a key to the front door. They beat on the solid oak panelling and banged the lion’s-head knocker.

Open the door, Joe!

Come on, mate. We don’ wanta stand here all night!

Tara was relieved to see Joe hurry downstairs to let them in. When the Mates forgot their keys, they’d use the tree, one branch of which ran on to the roof below the tower’s north window—Bill had already fallen once, breaking his collarbone. Not that Tara was concerned about Bill. She just didn’t want to be discovered, lurking out there in the dark like a stalker.

In the front hallway, the men were a mass of squash rackets and rain gear. They hung their dripping raiment on the antique hallstand and pushed past Joe into the huge living room. A stripped-down Harley Davidson lay on a tarp in the middle of the room. They moved carefully around it and threw themselves down in the worn Chesterfields.

Tara moved halfway down the loquat tree to give herself a better view of the living room. What a room it was, she realised years later, with its spiral staircase, mezzanine gallery and ornate fireplace with the art nouveau tiles: tulips, swirling down the panels. All the men were present except Alastair, the bank manager’s son, and Ling, the overseas student—who was probably out with her friend Cass again. Alastair’s absence from the group Tara viewed as no loss. She hadn’t cared much for him since he’d committed the cardinal sin of making a pass at her.

Joe went into the kitchen to get glasses for the rum. The Mates drank Beenleigh or Bundaberg rum when they could afford it, the rest of the time they drank Fourex. As he came back with the glasses they were making lists of what to take when they sailed to Papua New Guinea on a catamaran they were planning to buy at the end of the year.

Cluster said, Don’ forget the grog. We’ve gotta have some grog.

Buy it in the ports, you idiot, Tim Kalo said goodnaturedly. No sense in taking it all with you at once. You’d sink!

Tim was short, stocky and serious. His mother had died when he was twelve. His father had packed him off to Gatton Agricultural College at thirteen when the new mother arrived. In his first week there he tried to hang himself in the dorm one night after lights-out, but a late-prowling prefect named West cut him down. He was always saying in his soft slow drawl, She’ll be right, you’ll find. But this belied his feelings.

Now he asked Joe, What’ll you do if the programs don’t arrive in time?

Joe handed him one of the empty glasses and poured a hefty shot of rum into it. I’ll probably murder the printer.

Cluster spotted Joe with the glasses. "What’ve you been doing, hey, hey, hey?"

Just practising. Joe was working towards the inaugural under-25s’ national concerto competition to be held in Sydney the following year. His great hope was to win the violin section and get to study music in Europe.

Bill had his dreams too. He wanted to travel by motorbike to India. Except for the water, of course, he was saying. When I come to an ocean, I’ll hop on a cargo boat.

What about the creeks, Bill—what about them?

I’ll just balance the bloody bike on m’ back and dog paddle. Bill had the route all mapped out; he’d show anyone who’d listen. That night he said what he always said, I’m going straight after I finish honours. You gotta go straight away. Otherwise you never get there.

They stared into their glasses. They knew what he meant.

Women.

You just gotta be careful, that’s all, Cluster said.

Careful, they intoned like the chorus in a Greek tragedy.

Wash House sat on top of the piano. He seemed to smile.

A man in a business suit appeared at the open front door, and Rupert crawled behind the nearest sofa. Joe went out and misdirected the stranger.

Poor bastard. Bill poured the cat a rum and milk. There was always a saucer on the top of Joe’s upright piano. Where’d y’ send him?

I’m not sure. But I don’t imagine he’ll find his way back.

Rupert emerged from behind the sofa. He brushed the dust from his chinos, sat down on the edge of the coffee table and began cleaning his horn-rimmed spectacles with a well-ironed handkerchief. He was always meticulously turned out. It’s about money.

There were moans all round at the mention of the word.

Speaking of money … Meticulous, yes. But Rupert knew how the game was played. Did I tell you about this girl I took out the other night? It cost me a fortune.

They leaned forward. Y’ get anywhere?

Rupert ducked his head. For an instant, his perfectly combed blond hair shone gold in the weak electric light.

Nah.

Their faces fell. Rupert was still a virgin. They were beginning to worry about him.

Alastair came in from the back veranda, scrubbed and polished, on his way out.

DayO! Da-ay-ayO! Bill began to sing. Dere de light an’ I wanna go home.

Alastair made a habit of coming in just on dawn.

Gotcha Jupiter deodorant?

They hooted derisively, various things.

Alastair said, Fellers, this is the night. I can feel it in my bones. He went out through the front door, spinning his car keys around one finger. Soon the sound of his red MG starting up in the broken-down garage at the side of the house rose up to Tara.

Bill went into the kitchen to investigate the alcohol situation. Standing in the archway between the living room and the kitchen, he held the empty bottles up to the light.

Tara put a foot wrong in the loquat tree causing one of the smaller branches to snap. Joe rose, frowning, from his chair to pull the curtains and walked into a corner of the coffee table.

"Scheisse! I’ve knocked my shin. I’ll get cancer of the bone."

Never mind, Joe fella, Bill said, you’ve got mates. We’ll walk in front of you ringing a bell.

Unclean … unclean … they all chanted.

The last voice Tara heard as she scrambled down the tree was Cluster’s.

Hey Tim, your father still got that place at Booval? What a place t’ live. I can just imagine Timbo home on holidays at sixteen. Belonging to the Booval Push. Derailing the weekly rail motor. Did you stand to at dawn an’ fight off the natives?

Tara got out of there and went to bed in her tree house.

She had a good thing going. She didn’t want to ruin it.

2

The roof of the tower room that topped the house (Joe’s room, windows on all four sides) was rusting through in at least one place. He needed a bucket when it rained. But no rain fell on the night of the faculty revue. The programs arrived just in time, the Mates’ informal jazz group filled in during scene changes and Cluster scored an unexpected triumph as the leading nymph in a spoof on Purcell’s Nymphs and Shepherds. Now the revue cast party was in full swing.

Gawd, Bill said, we should’ve moved that bedstead.

When they’d first moved in, the Mates had lashed six empty forty-four-gallon drums to the base of a large iron bedstead they’d found under the house. With timber planks over the frame and a couple of rough oars, it provided a quick way along the river to the university when the tide was right. Now some of the rowdier members of the party had spilled out on to the back lawn and the broken-down jetty at the bottom of the garden. People were paddling around the river on the bedstead shouting, Out with the grappling hooks! and Stand by to repel boarders! The usual.

I wonder how many will be drowned, Joe said. He didn’t care.

Tara clutched an old Vegemite jar of white wine as she wandered around the overgrown garden, aimlessly eating savouries and talking to people. Something was at the back of her mind, something she needed to explore.

It was Joe dancing, Joe in a loincloth, his body rubbed with oil so that it gleamed. She’d always thought of him as the brother she’d never had. Yet when he’d lifted his partner, that blonde New Australian, at the finale of their dance and carried her upstage to the cave it had taken Tara three weekends to construct out of papier mâché, a bolt of something quite unsisterly had shot through her.

She went up to the tower room and sat on the edge of Joe’s bed. She ran her fingers over the spines of his books. A new feeling was being born in her. She knew it concerned him and that it would change her life.

She found him in the kitchen, very drunk, asking overseas student Tripta Srivastava the meaning of her dance. Tripta was not in the agricultural faculty. Joe had imported her from somewhere to give the revue a little culture.

What’s your dance all about? he was asking.

The young Indian woman was holding a glass of orange juice. Tara hoped for her sake she would not move on to the punch.

It is the story of a young girl whose lover has gone to the wars. Now she hears that he is returning.

Is that all?

Tripta gestured with her free hand. She prepares for his homecoming. It takes time.

But—

He was so drunk. She was so sober. Tara dragged him away. It took her half an hour to get him through the crowd to the back door; people kept coming up and congratulating them on the revue. It made Tara nervous and jumpy. She wanted him to herself.

They settled themselves halfway down the back steps. She’d intended to take him to the tree house in the back yard, that ultimate stronghold, but a glance from the landing had shown her the glimmer of a candle, even there.

What’s wrong, Joe? She’d never seen him so drunk.

He lit a cigarette off the burning end of the one he already had and ground the old one out on the worn timber step. Nothing. How about you?

Tara wanted to move the conversation quickly on to an emotional level, so she said, I’m depressed.

Joe drew deeply on the new cigarette. Yes?

I just suddenly thought, The world will go on without me when I’m gone. I thought about it going on without me and I got depressed.

Would you like it to stop with you?

She shook her head.

Then you’re a fool. You’re letting something that’ll never cause you pain later cause you pain now. Relax. Try to appreciate things as they come.

Conversations were so difficult to control. This one had shot off in an entirely different direction from the one Tara had intended. It was like trying to play squash when you didn’t know how. She decided to try silence. It usually got to most people. Just as she was thinking the ploy hadn’t worked, Joe spoke.

"At the end of my life, I don’t think having a few scientific papers in the Australian Journal of Agricultural Science is going to cut it for me. I should’ve concentrated on the violin."

Tara risked a swig of the white wine. I did ag. because I hate being stuck in rooms. The only time I feel okay is when I’m outside, in nature. If I could just feel okay all the time, I could help more people maybe.

All altruism’s pseudo. You’re an idealist. Joe broke off to speak to Tim Kalo, who’d appeared, swaying, on the landing behind them. Tim, Tara’s just declared herself an idealist.

Tim sat down two steps above them. What’s wrong with that? Christ was an idealist.

And look what happened to him. I’m suspicious of idealism. It cuts down your adaptability and blinds you to other things. Tara wants to be self-sufficient so she can be altruistic.

Why not? Tim asked. I’d like to be able to help people. Like the blokes who work for FAO in Third World countries.

What do you want to be—a hero? Sir Timothy Kalo! Say, that runs well. Joe turned and touched Tim laughingly on the shoulder with his empty beer bottle. Arise, Sir Timothy Kalo.

Tim sucked the last drops out of his beer glass. There’s a word for you if I could just think of it.

Bastard, probably.

He’s an existentialist! Tara bounced up and down on the wooden step. At last, at last I’ve run one to earth.

Maybe he is, you know, Tim said—they were talking about Joe as if he weren’t there. And then again, maybe he isn’t. Me, I’d like to be very good at something, anything. Not just middling at everything.

Tara passed Tim her wine, she wasn’t much of a drinker. Her father drank enough for both of them.

You’re not middling, Tim, what about your football? He was a university rugby star, a front row forward.

That doesn’t count. Creativity’s what I always wished for. But wishing’s only for fairy tales so I’ve compromised. Now I read the best books, go to the best films, listen to the best music—I’m what they call an appreciator. Tim Kalo’s laugh was bitter. Between the creators and the unthinkers lie the appreciators. Wallowing in the fathomless gulf. See ya. He rose from the steps and lurched back into the party.

Oh Christ. Joe ran a hand through his hair. I should’ve got away from here sooner. Hitched to Italy, learnt the violin over there.

There was little light on the back steps, he couldn’t have seen her frown. But he knew her so well he reached out and wiped the frown away with one fingertip. His breath smelled of smoke, but Tara was used to it. Almost everyone’s did.

Don’t worry, he said. This is just a temporary depression. The concerto competition’s my big hope. If I win that, I can get to Europe. I don’t want to stay in one place too long. Stronger men than me have gone under. Succumbed to the call of a tight skirt and suburbia.

In the living room, the men were singing lustily, The Virgin Sturgeon Needs no Urgin’. Tara knew they would move on to similar songs.

Joe drew on the last of the cigarette. Exhaled. We went out to see one of Tim’s old football friends yesterday. He’s settled in a new house. Settled. He ground the butt out under his heel and tossed it over the railing. Yeah, that’s the word for it. He’s settled all right. In any way you like to name.

And there Tara had it, the crux of his atypical depression. Maybe he’s happy, she ventured.

Joe snorted. For how long?

Bill Hereward had been preparing to get rolling drunk that night when he spotted Leigh Christopher on the other side of the living room. She was small and fine, with shoulder-length, ash-blonde hair, delicate hands and oval-shaped nails. She was wearing red; she liked to wear reds. Red lipsticks, red nail polishes.

Bill tripped over his feet crossing the room to her. She was eating peanuts out of a small wooden bowl.

Here, have some of these. The Turks love ’em. He thrust a bowl of Turkish Delights at her.

She looked up, gave him a blast of those azure eyes and he was history. He leaned against the wall and looked down at her. Could he get her a drink or something? Maybe she’d like him to fetch her the moon. How come he’d never seen her around before—she was doing ag. science, wasn’t she?

But Leigh was in third year. At that time, all third-year agricultural science undergraduates had to live, work and study for nine months at Gatton Agricultural College to give them what the dean called a taste of real farming. Bill’s honours project was in Brisbane, eighty miles away.

She smiled at him, turning her head, and fibred moonlight brushed the shoulders of her red satin evening coat. She smiled a lot, he discovered later. She was not a cool blonde at all.

He took her outside to meet Tara and Joe; he’d seen those architects of the revue sneaking away. Tara was glad to see them. Drawn to something she’d never considered before, she was in the agony between the perception and the embrace, careful not to touch Joe even accidentally.

And how do you like the college? Joe asked Leigh. He was smooth socially. The protocols of greetings and farewells didn’t faze him.

Do you slip the Arab stallion more hay after tea? Tara asked her. And lie around in the hayshed, just dreaming and chewing the stalks?

It sure was nice in the evenings after tea, Bill sighed.

They talked of Clydesdale races and midnight marauding, of horse rides in the rain and forbidden trips to Gatton pubs on bicycles concealed in the hayshed.

Tara tossed her bit of gloom into the mix. I wish I could go back. You’re really lucky to be there, actually belonging, Leigh.

I know. I love it.

I’ve tried going back, you know, Tara went on, but it’s not the same. There are other people there, you don’t know any of the students. Some other person’s got your bed and your place in the dining hall. They don’t know who you are. You’re a stranger. You don’t belong anymore.

Joe moved to get the conversation off this mournful track. What do you think of Dr Roberts?

Leigh grimaced. She didn’t like him much.

Tara picked up her mood; she could sometimes. No wonder. He hates women in ag. science. Says they should stay in the kitchen where they belong.

Rotten old man.

Bill eased a tentative arm around Leigh’s shoulder. Tara’s jeans fell apart during a horticultural prac.

Leigh was all eyes. Did they really?

They did indeed, Joe said. "Dr Roberts loved that. He had to drive her back