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away?”
    â€œI don’t know, Dad. I’m ambitious. Some day I may own Fleet Street.” She laughed as she said it: still, it was a nice dream. One that had come to her only last night, the shaft of light on the road to London.
    The Senate was in session in Canberra when she left Sydney for London and her father could not get away. He phoned her, wished her goodbye. Perhaps it was a bad connection (“Connections are always bad between Canberra and Sydney,” he had once said, but he had meant it in another context), but his voice seemed to break. He hung up hurriedly, saying he had just heard the division bells ring. She put the phone slowly back in its cradle and let the tears come. She felt guilty: as much as anything else, she was running away from him, from his name and what passed for fame in politics. She wondered if he had guessed.
    Her brothers and sisters-in-law came to the airport to see her off. Her brothers, Alexander and Perry, short for Pericles (heroes both; or so her mother had hoped when she had christened them), hugged her to their beer bellies, the Great Australian Profile as she called it, and wished her the best of Aussie luck; in their own way they had tried to escape from their father by being as ordinary and plebeian as they could be. Her sisters-in-law, Madge and Cheryl, kissed her and, she sensed, envied her. They had both married young and if sin and temptation ever crossed their paths it would be in the form of some footballsy stud from the Leagues club, not a boulevardier from some Gomorrah like London, Paris or Rome.
    Madge, the quiet sensible one, said, “I won’t wish you the best of Aussie luck. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
    Perry, who wasn’t her husband, laughed and slapped Madge on the rump. “You girls don’t know when you’re well off.”
    Cheryl said, “If you get into trouble, Cleo love, enjoy it. That’s the best I can wish you.”
    Suddenly she loved her sisters-in-law: us women against the male world. But she knew they were not women’s libbers; and neither was she really. Men just goaded them into sounding that way.
    Alexander, her elder brother, took her to the gate that led to Passport Control. “Don’t think too harshly of Dad for not being here to say goodbye.”
    She looked at him in surprise. “Of course I don’t. He’s been like this all our lives, hasn’t he? We shouldn’t have chosen a politician for a father.”
    â€œNo, this is different. He really wanted to be here. I talked to him last night—he called me. He didn’t want you to think that he didn’t care about you going away for so long. You’re going away at the wrong time.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œHe still thinks he has a chance of toppling Gough Whitlam as Leader. If he did, he’d be Prime Minister at the next election.”
    Then I’m going away at absolutely the right time.
    â€œHe’s got to be there in Canberra every minute, just in case Whitlam slips up.”
    â€œDo you think he has a chance?”
    Alex, vague and soft, more like his mother than his father, shrugged. “I hope so, for his sake. When you have as much ambition as he has . . .”
    â€œI’m ambitious, too, Alex.”
    â€œThen I hope you’re never disappointed.” Then he smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “The best of Aussie luck, Sis.”
    She went through into Passport Control. She showed her passport, then took her first step into the future. There was no turning back now, she had stepped off a cliff. It was a lovely feeling—almost, she guessed, like sky-diving. Her parachute, she hoped, would be her talent.

2
    I
    NOVEMBER IS not a good month in which to land in London. No sensible invaders, Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, or American tourists ever chose any time but summer to start their conquest of Britain; some summers, of course,