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Thinking about things might have helped someone else, but not Billy. If he acted, and the result went against him, he could only act again.
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    â€œYou’re good at this waitering caper,” said Billy at dinner.
    â€œWaitressing,” Frances corrected, and primly set his things down. “It’s just for the holidays. Next week I’ll be back at St. Catherine’s.”
    â€œI didn’t know you were Catholics,” said Billy with relief. He felt less stupid. Small wonder she had confused him. He could never fathom a Catholic.
    â€œI’m not.” Without explaining she went on: “There’s a choice of vegetable soup or liver and bacon to start, but you can have both if you want to.”
    â€œBoth.”
    A male voice at his shoulder made him jump: “Howdo you like the food?” The silverware tinkled as Mr Reilly bumped the table with his stomach. “Nothing for me, dear,” he called to Frances. “And how do you like our Franny?” he asked. “A happy girl.”
    Billy smelt whisky.
    â€œHer mother insists on the city.” He leaned forward, revealing tufts of unshaven beard in the dents of his face. “The bush doesn’t agree with her — too hot in summer, too cold in winter.” Mr Reilly lifted a piece of meat from Billy’s plate and dropped it whole into his mouth. “Franny’s going to have looks. I’ll need to be on my guard against fellows like you,” and he reached across to rap a finger on Billy’s chest. “You’re not a Catholic, are you?”
    Billy made a noise with his mouth full.
    â€œThat’s a good thing, a Catholic Mackenzie.”
    â€œI never said I was.”
    But Reilly was on his feet, swaying.
    â€œI may not see you in the morning.” They shook hands. “Tell your father you ate with Pat Reilly, eh?” He straightened chairs across the room as he left, shouldering aside the glass doors with a thump.
    Frances was at his elbow tidying up. “You mustn’t mind Dad.”
    â€œHe reckons I’m a danger,” he grinned.
    â€œWhat to?”
    â€œAr,” he looked up from a preoccupation with the sugar bowl, “to you.”
    â€œDad’s awfully good at running this hotel though you’d never think so sometimes. But he doesn’t know the first thing about what a girl thinks, or why she thinks what she thinks. Do you?”
    Billy played with the sugar bowl until she lifted it out of his hands.
    â€œNo-one’s a danger to me,” she concluded with kindness. “Do you understand?”
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    Then she spoke to him in a dream. The situation was exactly the same — dining room, Frances’s black hair spilling down towards the waist of her starched pinny — and the words were the same too, except that Arnie Scott’s widow was sitting at the table as well. When Frances asked, “Do you understand?” Mrs Scott said, “Of course he understands, my dear. I’ve been wife and mother to Arnie Scott and he knows it. Now don’t you think you’ve been silly enough?” With that Billy felt intensely relieved. In the shifting planes of his dream he found himself tilted out of the dining room and poised on the crest of a wave, he was the wave, swaying backwards and forwards, ready to swoop down and run foaming along a human beach which suddenly was the naked body of Frances.
    But why was Yabbie howling endlessly at the far reach of everything?
    Damn!
    He rolled out of bed and stood naked in the cold room, wide awake, his erection standing out like a stick. The municipal gaslamps threw planks of artificial moonlight on the wall. Yabbie now yap-yapped, holding at bay whatever she’d howled at earlier. As he dressed he heard the rattle of a distant window and a male voice cutting through the angry bark.
    In the corridor the polished boards shone like water below the night lamps at either end. Someone