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responsibility for his sister’s kids when she and her husband had been buried in their bed after a mudslide hit the outskirts of their mountainside village. The mudslide took the half of the farmhouse occupied by her, her husband and the family donkey, while missing the other half where the three girls lay asleep.
    Surrounded by females at home, Con’s first real contact with a male his own age each day was when Billy appeared at half-past six every morning, just as Con had completed cleaning and testing his precious cappuccino machine. It was a task he would never willingly leave to one of the girls, as the New Hellas Cafe enjoyed a citywide reputation for the quality of its coffee. By seven o’clock in the morning, the queue of commuters looking for their first caffeine fix would be twenty metres long.
    Con greeted each one in turn with the same words, ‘In the world, the best, no questions, put down your glass, fair dinkums, myte!’ Con was convinced that it was his peculiar downward pressure on the cappuccino handle that made the entire difference to the taste of his coffee. It had become a ritual, perhaps even a superstition, that the first coffee he pulled each morning to test the machine would be set aside for his good friend Billy O’Shannessy.
    ‘Good morning, Con,’ Billy called, approaching the counter at the entrance of Wharf Two. He was feeling considerably better for having composed a good part of the essay on Trim, promising himself that this time he’d get it down successfully on paper.
    ‘Gidday, myte!’ Con called back, ‘How’s tricks?’ Con spoke with a strong Greek accent but was desperate to sound like an Australian. He also added an unnecessary s to most of the slang he used, for example, ‘fair dinkum’ became ‘fair dinkums’. He now pointed to the styrofoam cup fitted with a plastic lid that sat at one end of the counter. ‘The coffee I got it ready already, myte. Perfect, best in the worlds.’ Billy saw that half a loaf of bread in a plastic bag rested to one side of the coffee container, and on the other side, on a paper napkin, Con had placed a finger bun with pink-iced topping. ‘Today, you eat something, hey, Billy. It’s no good not to eat for the stomach, myte.’
    ‘Did you send off those migrant papers to Canberra?’ Billy asked.
    ‘For sure, myte.’ Con grinned happily, ‘Soon I be having a new young wife, eh? Very sexy, young Greek girl. Very lovely, I think. Not like Arse-stri-lian lazy bitch.’
    Billy laughed, ‘Con, the photograph your cousin sent wasn’t all that clear, it was in black and white and looked as though it might have been taken a fair while back. You sure she’s only twenty-seven?’
    ‘No worries, myte. No colour photograph on that island. She’s a name Sophia, beautiful, I’m tellin’ you. That’s for sure, fair dinkums, cross me heart, myte, spit on the devil.’
    Billy grinned, ‘I hope you’re right.’ The slightly outof-focus photo of the young woman, Sophia, looked as if it had been taken on a box-brownie camera and the dress she was wearing appeared very much like one his first date had worn back in the early sixties. Still, Con’s people were peasants. He supposed things didn’t change all that much on an outlying Greek island.
    Billy couldn’t help wondering to himself why, with his five women, all of them working in the cafe, Con could possibly want another woman around to look after him. Con was of an age where paying a visit to a lady happy to accommodate him for a small return would have been more sensible than sharing his cot with a randy peasant girl who might prove much too much for him. But Billy kept this opinion to himself. Greeks, on the whole, seemed to enjoy being married. A client once explained to him that marriage allowed them to misbehave in safety as Greek couples almost never divorced. The client, a Greek himself, went on to say that a Greek male was far more likely to make an accommodation with a lady