An Angel In Australia Read Online Free PDF Page A

intense and encompassing smells of roast potato and moist lamb.
    â€˜We’ll sit down in five minutes,’ said his mother. ‘I have beer if you would like it.’
    After the long tram journey, he chose to have a glass. ‘An aperitif,’ said Aunty Madge, for the sake of elegance or of what his father called ‘bush flashness’. While his mother went to get it, Darragh took off his jacket and went to the room he had occupied as a boy to hang it up. He also undid the press-stud at the back of his neck, and released the Roman collar and stock he had worn all the way from Strathfield. The underside of the stock was sodden with his sweat. So now he became an ordinary fellow in black pants and white shirt, about to eat spud and carrot, baked onion and lamb, with mint jelly taken from a cutglass bowl.
    With the heaped plates before the three of them, Mrs Darragh asked her son to intone grace. He did so, and after a perfunctory sign of the cross as habitual as a kiss between spouses, Aunty Madge looked at her plate and said with an augustness of elocution which was her style, ‘Who would believe there was rationing?’
    â€˜I would,’ said Mrs Darragh, and risked a smile at her son.
    Aunt Madge had extracted a price for helping out the family during Mr Darragh’s unemployment, which had barely ended six months before he died. She had a habit of inviting herself to all occasional meals—Sunday, Easter, Christmas—and even many evening meals at Arbroath . Her company was welcome to Mrs Darragh, and Aunt Madge disliked the fuss of shopping and dealing with books of ration coupons. She devoted a great deal of her free time to film-going, and could always tell Darragh which film to see on Monday nights after tennis. ‘ That Night in Rio is a commonplace little thing, but if you happen to like Carmen Miranda … Dive Bomber ’s not a bad war drama, a little unrealistic if that’s what you’re after. Errol Flynn, what a looker! They say he’s an Australian. I met a fellow after Mass the other day who claimed to have shared a desk with him at Marist Brothers, Parramatta. I said to him, “Mr Henry,”—that’s his name—“Mr Henry, I wouldn’t believe you except I know a fellow like you wouldn’t lie on the doorstep of the church.” I’m not sure the beggar wouldn’t though. Blossoms in the Dust … very touching. Handkerchief-soaker. Greer Garson looks like a saint but from what I’ve read may not be one. Love on the Dole … now that’s a real film about real people.’
    â€˜I’m surprised,’ said Mrs Darragh, with a half-smile which invited Frank into the cautious joke. ‘A woman of your age going to see Love on the Dole .’ It was said to be a notorious film. Priests and ministers who had not seen it had widely preached against it.
    â€˜Well, it’s the way people live,’ said Aunt Madge, her voice sweeping in its authority. ‘If you treat people unjustly, they don’t just offer it all up for the souls in Purgatory, you know. They try to find an outlet. Anyhow, where were all those priests who runit down when the working men and women were hard up during the Depression? They weren’t to be seen then. But they’re quick to blame the poor for living close to the bone.’
    Frank Darragh was used to Aunty Madge being an anti-clerical but devout Catholic.
    â€˜The actors in Love on the Dole ,’ Mrs Darragh surprised Frank by saying, ‘were never your poor working men and women, Madge. That Deborah Kerr. In real life she’s got a plum in her mouth like the queen of England.’
    â€˜That’s not what I read,’ said Aunt Madge. ‘In fact, I read that she had quite a hard upbringing as a shopkeeper’s daughter. Anyhow, you’d approve of the newsreels.’ Fork in one hand, Madge raised her other to trace phantom headlines in the