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chair outside the toilet and stubbornly sat there until her stomach stopped cramping, ignoring her family, who ribbed her: ‘Got the trots, have you, Girlie?’
    Later, Girlie, with the odor of excrement still in her nose, examined her face in a mirror and had no trouble at all making out the boiled, folded features of a goanna.

21
    Secret to the Earth, Sowed by No One
    A NOTHER FAVORITE FOOD of Irene’s was mushrooms, which she sautéed slowly in flour and butter until they swam in a thick grey gravy. The mushrooms could be found in the winter months in a low-lying pocket of unploughed land. The trees that grew there had black bark and threw a deep shade, and the grass under them was always a delicate mint-green. The mushrooms were white on top, velvety brown underneath, and sometimes as large as saucers. Finding one never failed to elicit surprise; several paces away the soil turned unwilling and had to be coaxed to germinate anything other than burrs and thistles.
    As soon as the children were old enough for such expeditions, Irene buttoned their cardigans, gave them a basket, and sent them across the paddocks. Girlie strode purposefully, gumboots slapping against her legs, determined to acquit herself, while Boy trailed behind, distracted by everything. He swung on gates, took imaginary aim at birds, kicked ant nests to smithereens, pelted paddy-melons at fence posts.
    One cloudy day in May, proceeding in this fashion, the children arrived at the edge of the depression. The trees murmured, faint and low. Before they could find any mushrooms, they came across the remains of a dead sheep. The head and hooves were gone, only the fleece lay there, spread out invitingly, like a rug before a fireplace. Sun had bleached the wool, rain had washed it clean; it dazzled as if in an advertisement.
    â€˜Let’s take it home and give it to Mum,’ said Girlie.
    Boy did not say anything. He took a stick and poked experimentally at the fleece, as if expecting the sheep to reconstruct itself and run off. He lifted an edge, revealing something that resembled the padding placed under carpet to give it spring. The padding moved, swarmed. Maggots.

22
    The Bravest Thing God Ever Made!
    G IRLIE WROTE A composition on Simpson and his donkey, and it won first prize in a Returned Services League competition. She painted a vivid picture of the sea at Gallipoli streaked with the blood of Australian soldiers, the cliffs strewn with their broken bodies. Behind tangles of barbed wire, she placed the enemy: black-eyed Turks. And in the middle of the mayhem, the doughty Simpson carrying the wounded on his donkey, shells bursting around them. She used words like ‘intrepid,’ ‘tenacious,’ and ‘selfless,’ and imagined herself to have some of these virtues.
    A ceremony was held at school where she was presented with an oversized book of photographs of the Royal Family: crowns, scepters, sashes, ermine-trimmed robes, gold-encrusted coaches, ladies-in-waiting, but also ‘casual’ shots of Charles in a kilt playing with the corgis and Anne in a sprigged frock bending to smell a rose.
    Girlie was invited to read her prize-winning composition on the radio as part of the Anzac Day observances. Irene accompanied her. Freddie Garlick, who ran the radio station, tried to put Girlie at her ease. He adjusted the microphone, pushed the chair close. She read with a reedy voice, lisping slightly, the paper shaking in her hands.
    When the program was over, Freddie accompanied them to the front door. ‘Keep up the good work,’ he said to Girlie. His tone of voice was such that Girlie thought it quite possible he didn’t mean either that it was good work or that she should keep doing it. Then he said, ‘Your socks are falling down.’ Girlie hurriedly bent to attend to them, pitching forward in the process. Freddie said to Irene, ‘I like your style. You wear your dresses as if they were Paris