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side of the front staircase and at each of the corners of the house. Smaller palms and ferns clustered at the bottom of the mature palms. The effect was pleasing, and in summer must have created an illusion of coolness.
    ‘Nice house,’ said Arthur simply.
    ‘Too nice for a girl who works in a department store you mean,’ she said.
    Arthur was caught off guard. This wasn’t what he had meant. He didn’t think like that. It was what I thought, though, so I was glad he had said it. Polly rescued him from his embarrassment. She smiled at him and said that she was just kidding.
    ‘My grandfather made a pile out of timber. He built this. He had servants and all. My dad was hopeless and lost all the money. Don’t look too close. You’ll see that it’s falling down. There’s no money to repair anything.’
    The front door opened and a woman in her sixties emerged. She was small, and stood at the top of the steps with her hands on her hips.
    ‘That’s not papists with you, is it?’ she screeched. ‘I won’t have papists in the house!’
    Polly didn’t reply. She looked at me and said that the circus was due to arrive tomorrow, and that I should take her to the railway station to watch it come in. Before I had a chance to comprehend this, she said that she would be ready at midday.
    She ran up the stairs, past her mother, and into the house.
    ‘Go on,’ Mrs Drummond screamed at us. ‘Get away from my gate! No papists here! No papists!’
    She looked about her as if she were searching for something to throw at us. We headed back to the centre of town.
    ‘She’s crazy,’ was all Arthur said. ‘Don’t get mixed up with that family.’
    I thought he was talking about Polly’s mother, but I wonder now if he wasn’t talking about Polly herself. Somehow I felt mixed up with the Drummonds already. Polly had spoken to me as if we had been going out for some time. It was as if we were picking up from where we had left off. I was pathetically flattered by this, and I should have known better. If I’d said ‘no’ at this point, the hideousness of what happened soon afterwards would not have turned my life from relative order to terrifying chaos.

Chapter Two
    in the wrong place

    THE SECOND NIGHT OF TIBALD’S COOKING was as smashing as the first, although the entire menu was fish and crustaceans. It was a Friday night — a beefless day. There wasn’t a full house, by any means, but the word would spread and the crowds would come.
    The next day I arrived at the Drummond house at midday exactly. I’m a stickler for punctuality, it being the courtesy of kings. I mounted the steps, crossed the verandah, and knocked on the door. It was opened by Mrs Drummond.
    ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘We don’t want papists here.’
    ‘I’m here,’ I said patiently, aware that I was speaking to a mad person, ‘to see your daughter, Polly.’
    ‘She doesn’t want papists here either.’
    ‘I assure you, Mrs Drummond, I am not a papist.’
    ‘Don’t believe you. You look like a papist. You can tell them by their eyes, and you’ve got popish eyes.’
    Polly emerged from the gloom behind her mother and spoke sharply to her.
    ‘Leave off, mum. Go inside.’
    Mrs Drummond spat at my feet. The glistening globule of drool landed on the floor. I was taken aback.
    ‘Popery!’ she snarled, and retreated.
    Arthur was right. This was a mistake, but when Polly slipped her arm through mine and I caught the waft of honey that came from her hair and skin, I rationalised that all I was doing was walking her to the station to see a circus come to town. What harm could flow from that?
    We weren’t the only ones who wanted to see the train carrying the circus roll into Maryborough. There were bicycles everywhere, all headed towards the railway station in Lennox Street. We reached it just as the Sole Bros. Circus and Zoo arrived. The place was swarming with children, but there seemed to be an equal number of adults as well. What