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closest friend, hate too if he catches you staring at the wax figures? Or because you aren’t his, will he leave it to Mamma to command? Only it will not happen, you will not be there, you …
    The old cracked flowerpot slanting lurching cracking crunching you are standing in the slush and smell the quivering of mashed snails mercifully below the sill. There is the garden. Doxa sto Theo , there will always be the garden to scuttle through like any of its insects who have learnt the hiding places.
    Scuttle then.
    Looking back from where you have dropped on your knees on something sharp it no longer matters worse blood could not be drawn the sisters have arrived at the window and stand looking out a fright or at least suspicion has shut them up for the present they stand in the wreckage of their principles there is nothing they can see exactly except looking down the rubble of an old flowerpot their faces quivering like a pulp of drying snails. Almost as though they have been caught out like children.
    The Lockhart glances at her wrist. ‘Mustn’t forget this boat you have to catch.’ It is a relief to remember there is something she can do, where she can be of use, after straying into the prickly thicket of principles.
    Mamma receives less comfort. ‘… yes, the boat…’ She ought to feel released, perhaps she will when they draw up the gangway, but standing at the window, her ideals are still squirming for the trampling they have undergone in what she sees as this rough neglected Australian garden. She says screwing up her face, ‘I must say good-bye to my poor child. I could not bear to have her come to the boat. That would be too heartrending.’
    The Lockhart tears a fresh pack from the cellophane binding it to the carton. ‘I don’t doubt…’ she turns a laugh into a cough, swivelling the end of a scaly nose.
    Mamma says, ‘It is only a temporary separation. When we have won, Eirene will come … join in building a better Greece…’
    They turn back into the house, two sisters united over practical details, like stuffing a suitcase with what has almost been forgotten, and fastening the hasps.
    Mamma’s voice is choked at first. When it is next heard, agape now, she is standing on the rotten back steps. She clears her throat and the voice floats out as clear as that of a singer in opera. ‘Eirene? We must say good-bye darling. Mamma cannot miss her boat.’
    The Lockhart one has gone up the path to start the car.
    Mamma continues, her voice like a descending scale of feathers floating down through the tangle of trees, as you lie with your face in rotting leaves, so warm and smoky they may be at the point of kindling. A red centipede is crawling over your bare arm. A black beetle scratches at your cheek as it tries to climb.
    Presently the guardian’s voice. ‘… too upset I expect, Madame Sklavos. Poor little soul.’ She blunders about a bit, because it is her duty, barely leaving the path once she has run her face into a great spider’s web ‘… urrh … nasty! Poison a person…’
    ‘Sensitive child … don’t you worry, madam, every care will be taken of her. Mamma and the woman are struggling up the path towards the snorting car carrying Mamma’s heavy suitcase. Mamma soon leaves it to the one whose services will be paid for.
    Soon there will be the garden alone. If only you could take the form of this red thread of a centipede or beetle that might have crawled out of the dregs of an inkwell to claw and scratch and burrow and hide amongst what is not just rottenness but change to change. To become part of this thick infested garden so swallowed up where Mamma suffers. You could no longer want either house or garden for your own. Only to burrow. Only this other enemy would come, and crush the beetle out of you. Crush you as a girl too, if you did not resist.
    As you get up on your uncomfortable heels, the garden which is yours, in your nostrils and under your nails, glooms and shimmers