The Freudian Slip

by Marion Adlerstein

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Mad Men...Paper Giants...The Freudian Slip. Looking back has never been so entertaining. 'A perfect gift for anyone who can remember the 60s or aches to live in a world of red lips and hourglass curves.' The Australian Women's Weekly Sydney. 1963. Women wear princess-line dresses, edge-to-edge duster coats, gloves, perfectly matched handbags and shoes and seamed stockings. They are defined by the vital statistics of their bust, waist and hip measurements and if they are over thirty they're over the hill. Kings Cross is bohemian, Paddington is pre-gentrified and the crowd at Beppi's and the Ozone charge their boozy lunches to job numbers. At the advertising agency Bofinger, Adams, Rawson, & Keane, two talented women hold important creative roles. One, Bea, is a copywriter. The other, Desi, is a television producer. Because they are successful in their work and rewarded by it, few of their colleagues know how adept they are at mismanaging their private lives. Anxious to join this starred twosome is a young secretary named Stella, who embodies all the qualities for success - ambition, dedication, energy, efficiency - except creative talent. In its absence she relies on stealth, flattery and plagiarism, to walk, in her Jane Debster toe-peepers, all over the others in realising her ambition. She succeeds. At least, for a while. The Freudian Slip is a deliciously witty novel about three very different women, all trying to make their way in a man's world. The equally delicious sequel One More Slip is now also available. PRAISE for The Freudian Slip : 'a truly terrific book...A fast-paced, funny, fabulous read' The Daily Telegraph 'a great beach read' Marie Claire 'an intoxicating portrait of the 1960s' Sydney Morning Herald 'a rollicking and entertaining read' Good Reading

Release date: December 18, 2012

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 279

Sample

Guy K Garland leaned across the table that served as his desk and fingered the pointy coloured pencils in a white Casa Pupo pot. After a moment’s deliberation, as though choosing a pocket handkerchief to match his silk tie, he singled out the dark blue pencil. He placed it on his diary, open at Monday, 10 September 1962, then shook a cigarette from a soft pack of Kents and stuck the filter end in his mouth. As he lifted the telephone receiver he dug into the fob pocket of his waistcoat for his lighter and said, ‘Mavis, love. Give us a line.’

‘Yes, Mr Garland,’ murmured the voice in his left ear. There was a click, then the sound of an open line. He placed the rubber-tipped end of the pencil into the wheel on the telephone face and began to dial.

He drew deeply on his cigarette, exhaled a wobbly smoke ring and let the casters on his Danish Modern chair swing him gently back and forth. Through the window a facsimile of the Eiffel Tower, sitting on top of the AWA Building in York Street, shone optimistically against the clear blue sky. To him it symbolised the tendency of Australians to be influenced by overseas designs rather than summon up the courage to originate. A hangover from colonial days, he supposed. The creative department of this very advertising agency was a case in point. Freddie Hackett was forever sticking ads from Doyle Dane Bernbach in New York or Leo Burnett in Chicago on his corkboard and urging his writers to study them.

‘Cowper.’ The voice sounded more like a command than a response. At least this client answered his own direct line instead of hiding behind a secretarial barricade.

As though activating a light switch, Guy turned on a smile in the hope that it would be reflected in his voice. ‘Russ! Guy here. You free for lunch?’

‘What, today?’ Although he was merely the marketing manager of Crop-O-Corn Foods—or maybe because of it—Russ had adopted the aggressive characteristics of those above his station.

‘We need to discuss the direction for next year. Beppi’s, I thought.’ There was no response from Russ so, after a few seconds and because he subscribed to the belief that the best work is done over a good lunch, Guy went on, ‘I know it’s early in the week but I’d like us to agree on a few basics before we involve anyone else. When we brief the team, we need to set them off in the right direction.’ Guy was smart enough to use the collective ‘we’ in order to engage his client in shared responsibility for whatever creative outcome the agency might present.

‘Yes, well I was just looking at my schedule.’ Russ pronounced it ‘skedule’ because he liked to remind people that he’d once spent three months in Crop-O-Corn Foods’s Chicago headquarters. ‘Okay. One o’clock?’

‘You’re on.’ Guy replaced the receiver and yelled, ‘Stella!’ Although he was barely five foot six and about as weighty as George Moore, who’d ridden Prince Aly Khan’s horses to honour and glory in France a few times in the recent past, Guy longed to be thought macho, like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. In fact, he sometimes wondered if the deciding factor in his hiring Stella Janice Bolt two months before had been her name.

Stella’s beehive appeared around the open door. ‘Do I need my notebook?’ At least she wasn’t as slatternly as Kim Hunter in the movie but he did wish she’d get rid of that beehive hairdo, a hangover from the fifties. It didn’t suit her narrow face, or the agency’s image. Only a man with a bee in his bonnet could find it attractive, thought Guy, pleased with what he considered a witticism. But all he said was, ‘Book a table for two at Beppi’s. I’m taking Russ Cowpat to lunch.’ His smirk was Stella’s cue to giggle at his crude joke and say indulgently, ‘You are naughty, Mr Garland.’

In a businesslike tone she then asked, ‘One o’clock and a cab to get there?’ As she turned to leave he glanced appreciatively at her round bottom; if she weren’t so flat-chested she’d have a good figure. She was quick on the uptake, though. What she lacked in sophistication she made up for in willingness. Guy recognised the effort she was putting in to succeed in the job but there was no mistaking her origins. While her mother had moved a notch up the social scale when she inherited a bungalow in a suburb on the Cronulla line, Stella had Western Suburbs stamped all over her. It was there in the cheap material of her chartreuse princess-line dress—sewn on a Singer by her mother from a Butterick pattern, no doubt—to her nasally voice that cawed like the crows on the hobby farm of his parents-in-law at Windsor. She had good ankles, though, and they were set off to advantage by a pair of black winklepickers with stiletto heels.

‘You got it, Stella.’

Back at her desk, Stella made the telephone calls, wondering what it would be like to lunch at Beppi’s, the Italian restaurant she understood was filled with advertising executives charging their lunches to the job numbers of print ads and television commercials. She knew this because it was her task to process Guy’s expenses, which usually amounted to the price of a new frock from Mark Foys Piazza Store.

When the hands on her watch told her it was eleven, Stella clickety-clacked along to the staff kitchen to prepare Guy Garland’s morning tea.

Desi, a producer from the television department, was already there talking to Assunta, the tea lady. To Stella, Desi seemed sort of elongated, as though someone had grabbed her head and feet and stretched her, like a piece of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. She towered over Assunta, bending down to converse with her in a language that was double-dutch to Stella, whose only brush with a foreign tongue had been at St George Girls High, Kogarah. ‘Frère Jacques’ was about all she retained from two years of French lessons.

Assunta finished loading paper cups on to a trolley already burdened with two large metal urns, bottles of milk, a jar of white sugar, a stack of wooden stirrers and two packets of Arnott’s Assorted Biscuits before she pushed off.

‘Ciao, Assunta,’ said Desi, as she poured boiling water over Nescafé powder. She paused to smile at Stella and hand her the tea jar before reaching into the cupboard above the sink for a packet of Iced VoVos. Stella couldn’t help noticing the enormous hunk of glass on the third finger of Desi’s left hand.

‘I love your rhinestone ring,’ she said with genuine admiration. ‘I’ve never seen one that flashes like that.’

The size of the rock on her finger was an embarrassment to Desi but Tom would be hurt and bewildered if she left it in the safe at home when she went to work.

At that moment, while Desi tried to decide what to reply, Kelvin the skinny kid from despatch came in to raid the biscuit cupboard.

‘It’s a diamond, boofhead,’ he snorted.

Desi blushed and smacked his hand as it delved into the Iced VoVo packet. He managed to take two anyway and went off, whistling, leaving Stella speechless with mortification. Since neither girl knew what to say next they fussed with spoons and jugs and trays and paper napkins for about the length of a fifteen-second radio commercial.

Finally, ‘How was your weekend?’ broke the silence. Desi pronounced her vowels as beautifully as a news reader on 2BL, although it sounded to Stella as though she still had her adenoids and they were swollen.

The moment the words were out of her mouth Desi could have bitten her tongue. She was not interested in probing into Stella’s private life, only anxious to divert attention from her own. She now realised she’d offered an open invitation for Stella to reciprocate.

Since she’d started working at Bofinger, Adams, Rawson and Keane (aka BARK) more than a year ago, Desirée Whittleford had come to the conclusion that when most people found out about her background and where she lived, they were either intimidated or resentful. It was certainly not a good idea to dwell on the attractions of her fiancé, a young man destined for an outstanding career as an architect—or so her parents said. Safer to keep all that to herself. She didn’t want to be thought different from the people she worked with. She was determined to fit into the team, one reason why she was pleased that they shortened her name to Desi.

‘Um …’ Stella was momentarily at a loss for words, not so much cowed by the accent, but discomfited because she had to find a way to make something interesting of a Saturday morning spent paying off her mother’s lay-by on a kidney-shaped coffee table at Bebarfalds, the afternoon washing and setting her hair in rollers and pushing her cuticles with an orange stick, and the evening at the pictures with Dolores, who lived two doors away on Wyralla Road, Miranda.

‘I saw West Side Story on Saturday night,’ she said at last. ‘I’m rapt. Mum’s buying me the LP for Christmas.’

‘Yes, it is an exciting musical.’ Desi remembered being in the audience at the premiere of the stage version in London in 1958 but she was too well-mannered to mention it because it would seem like showing off.

Her fear that there might be a question about her own weekend turned out to be groundless; Stella had not been schooled in the social niceties of the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney so she didn’t recognise the cue. She just busied herself with warming the teapot, re-boiling the water, trying to put her blunder out of her mind and thinking of something that might impress Desi. How could she have known that Desi was already more than impressed, she was touchingly grateful?

‘I’m going to Palings at lunchtime to buy the new Shirley Bassey single,’ Stella said at last.

‘You’re a fan?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Stella, then her voice faltered when she realised she might have said the wrong thing. ‘You’re not?’

‘I prefer Elvis. Have you heard “Only Fools Rush In”?’

‘Oh yeah, I like him too,’ squawked Stella.

‘I’d come with you, but we’re all going to lunch at Diethnes,’ intoned Desi of the perfect vowels. ‘It’s Freddie Hackett’s birthday.’

Stella knew that Freddie was the creative director and that the ‘all’ Desi referred to would be the writers, art directors and television producers. Judging by past performances, half of them would return tipsy after five o’clock and stumble into the boardroom with Freddie to raid the fridge for more drinks. As for the other half, they’d probably go to the Journalists’ Club and not turn up at the office until the next day.

Desi was watching her. ‘I don’t suppose Guy would let you come.’ There was an unspoken law in advertising agencies that secretaries did not fraternise with the ‘creatives’. Male art directors in particular posed a dangerous threat to discipline. There was that incident when Noreen from accounts got back from lunch legless and was found snoring under her desk when her boss, the company secretary, needed some urgent typing done. There were more unsavoury episodes than that one, but they were kept quiet, at least officially. Just whispered about in the washroom.

Stella didn’t allow herself to be tempted by the suggestion of lunch at the Greeks even though she knew Guy would be late back from Beppi’s and he’d never know where she’d been at lunchtime. Except that someone might let it slip, deliberately or not, and she didn’t want to lose his trust and risk her job. This secretary knew her place. At least for now.

‘I’d better not,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I want that Shirley Bassey.’

The afternoon dragged. The whole place was silent except for Lavinia Olszanski, the casting director. As everybody in the agency knew, she’d been on the stage and seemed to think she was still there, projecting her voice to the back row of the gods at Her Majesty’s. She claimed to have been one of the Tivoli Lovelies, but Stella found it difficult to imagine that a face as craggy and a backside as bountiful could ever have been described as lovely. Her legs were long, though, so perhaps she’d done some high kicks in her day, but that must have been a long time ago.

Lavinia’s office was at the other end of the floor from Guy Garland’s, but Stella could hear her holding forth on the telephone about composites and over-exposure and same old faces. ‘Not her again, for godsake.’ The voice rose dramatically. ‘She looks like a pommie housewife. I want a reffo, New Australian, or whatever you call us now, an exotic … Lollobrigida type but older, like her mother. You know, it’s for spaghetti, hon, not porridge.’

Stella was updating Guy’s Rolodex when her own telephone rang. She was so grateful for the distraction she picked up the receiver before there was time for a second ring.

‘Mr Garland’s office.’

‘Is he there?’

‘May I ask who is calling?’ Stella hadn’t meant to parody Desi but that’s how it came out, plummy but squeaky at the same time: My ay ahsk whoise coiling.

‘Eh? It’s Tim Broughton from Slazenger. I’m the product manager for balls.’

‘Mr Garland is not here at the moment. He’s in conference with a client. I don’t know when he’ll be back.’

‘Well, it’s urgent. Can you transfer me to Freddie Hackett?’

‘He’s in a client meeting, too,’ said Stella. The lie came easily. ‘Can I be of assistance?’

‘We need a script for a thirty-second spot to go live on 2UE this afternoon.’

‘Can it wait until tomorrow?’

‘No!’ He was agitated. ‘Rod Laver has just won the Grand Slam in America—with our balls! Is there a copywriter there?’

Stella didn’t even hesitate before replying, ‘You’re speaking to one.’

English had not been Stella’s best subject at school but she had often earned reasonably good marks for her compositions because of their fanciful imagery, if not for their construction. ‘Stella is very imaginative,’ went the comment on one of her teacher’s reports from primary school, ‘but she needs to pay more attention to spelling and grammar.’

Rather than give herself a headache trying to sort out the mystery of gerunds and split infinitives, Stella had learned to get by on the work of others. By the age of ten she had taught herself to read simple words upside down, a skill that stood her in good stead throughout her life. Any feelings of guilt at being a cheat were buried beneath a belief that something was owed to her, although she couldn’t have said precisely what it was.

Her parents were still living together in Granville at the time. Most afternoons when Stella came home from school through the back door, first wiping her feet on the wire mat, then letting the screen door bang behind her, her mother would be sitting at the green Formica table in the breakfast nook shelling peas or stringing beans as she listened to the wireless. About the only time the Bolt brick bungalow was free of the airwaves was when everyone had gone to bed. Although the only program Stella paid attention to was The Search For The Golden Boomerang, she couldn’t help absorbing the full range of her mother’s favourites, in particular Doctor Mac (‘Hullo. Hullo? Aye, it’s me, Doctor Mac’) and When A Girl Marries (‘Dedicated to those who are in love and to all those who can … remember’).

On a typical afternoon, without turning down the volume or looking at her daughter, Hazel would ask: ‘Did you wipe your feet?’ It was such a predictable question, Stella found it irritating. What was she supposed to say? She always wiped her feet.

Old bat, she would say to herself.

‘Go and wash your hands. I’ve made pikelets.’ Hazel was not large, but she moved heavily, as though dragging a dead weight strapped to her waist. Her faded cardigans were almost worn through at the elbows and her hair often looked as though it hadn’t seen a comb since before breakfast. No wonder Dad makes himself scarce, thought Stella, as she turned on the tap in the bathroom and picked up the cake of Palmolive soap. Her feelings for her mother—her shabby appearance and her attitude of defeat—were ambivalent and confusing; shame, anger, pity, resentment and love were all tangled up together, like strands of wool in a messy knitting basket.

After Stella had eaten three pikelets with golden syrup and drunk a glass of milk, she would take her school bag across the street to the Drummonds. The daughter, Jean, had grown up with an instinct for the correct use of language and she was the best speller in the class. All Stella had to do, when she and Jean did their homework together at a mouldy marble table in the fernery, was take a peek-a-boo over her friend’s shoulder for a lead in what to write down in her own exercise book. If Jean or her mother noticed her sneaking a look, they didn’t say so. Stella was small for her age, had a lot of charm and an impishness that made people forgive her for not being perfect. They let her get away with almost anything, so she came to expect it. They felt sorry for her because her father was a no-hoper and her mother seemed to have dropped her bundle.

When Stella was fourteen, she bought a bunch of Dorothy Perkins roses with her pocket money and made a special card for her mother’s fortieth birthday. By then, her father had done a bunk and they were living at Miranda. On the front of the card she pasted a print of Picasso’s portrait of a mother and child from his rose period. Inside the card, in her best handwriting, was a piece of poetry that brought compliments from relations and neighbours—and tears to her mother’s eyes—except for Mrs Riley, next door, who noted that the words were oddly old-fashioned and said so to her husband.

Stella’s poem read:

Today’s your natal day,

Sweet flowers I bring;

Mother, accept, I pray,

My offering.

And may you happy live,

And long us bless;

Receiving as you give

Great happiness.

Opposite these words, Stella added:

To Dearest Mother on her 40th Birthday.

From your Loving Daughter, Stella.

That the poem was written in 1842 by Christina Rossetti when she was eleven years of age was a piece of information Stella chose not to reveal. She’d copied it from a book in the school library. Since nobody in her family was much of a scholar, her borrowing remained undetected. They were left with the impression that Stella was gifted with rare creative ability.

So it was that when Tim Broughton from Slazenger rang the agency that afternoon, when everyone in the creative department was full of moussaka and retsina at Diethnes, Stella had the confidence and the chutzpah to write her first radio commercial.

By the time Guy returned to the office after four o’clock, Stella had read a draft of her script to Tim over the telephone, he’d cleared it after two minor adjustments—replacing ‘terrific’ with ‘super’ and including ‘all Australians’ in the congratulations—and Stella had dictated it to a production assistant at 2UE. It was due to go to air just before the six o’clock news.

‘Any dramas?’ Guy took off his jacket, put it over the back of his chair and lit a cigarette.

‘Almost. But I fixed it.’ Stella’s small dark eyes had a sparkle in them that Guy hadn’t noticed before. Bright and shiny, like jet beads.

‘Fixed what?’ He sat back and yawned. She thought how well he held his booze.

‘The radio spot for Slazenger.’ She was quivering with excitement, wound up like a tight little spring.

‘What radio spot?’

‘Rod Laver just won the Grand Slam in America. Tim Broughton needed a script. So I wrote it.’ The look on her face was a mixture of triumph, apology, pride and guilt.

Guy sat up. ‘Where was Freddie?’

‘They all went to lunch for his birthday.’

‘You’d better show me the script. Then sit down and give me a blow by blow.’

At about five o’clock they heard the lift doors opening, some muffled giggling, ‘Ssshhh!’ then the sound of footsteps, which were light, as though on tiptoes. Freddie’s over-excited voice was hushed but unmistakable; his words tumbled out, as though fighting each other for precedence. ‘I’ll see what’s doing in my office and meet you in the boardroom.’

‘Freddie, have you got a minute?’ Guy was on his feet. Stella stood up to leave, but he motioned for her to sit down again. ‘No, you stay.’ She began to feel uncomfortable, fearing a clash between the two men, especially since they’d both been drinking. Stella would do almost anything to avoid a confrontation; there’d been too many at home.

It amazed her that nothing of the kind took place. Guy was generous in explaining what had happened, as though he and Freddie had been saved by Stella’s heroic deed.

Freddie surveyed her with the benevolent gaze of one who has imbibed enough to become sentimental; there was something about her shy smile and her nervous manner that reminded him of himself when he first came to the big smoke as a vulnerable kid from a poultry farm at Tamworth. He gave her a flamboyant kiss on both cheeks and said, ‘Darling, you’ve been hiding your light under a bushel! Come and have a drink in the boardroom and we can listen in to your masterpiece when it comes on.’

She looked at Guy and, when he nodded his approval, she smiled and stood up. ‘I’d better ring Mum and say I’ll be late home.’

‘You do that but don’t sneak out on us, will you, darling? Let’s go, Guy. I’m thirsty.’

By now the switchboard was closed and Mavis had plugged a direct line into Stella’s extension. She dialled her home number wondering when—if ever—she had felt so elated.

‘Mum? It’s me!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Hazel regarded a ringing telephone with dread. Calls were rare and they usually meant trouble.

‘I’ve been asked to work overtime, so I’ll be late home.’

‘Well, don’t be too late.’

‘No, no. Only an hour or so.’

‘I’ll leave your tea in the oven.’

Stella had been in the boardroom only twice before, to take dictation from Guy at a client meeting and to help tidy up afterwards, but it had a totally different atmosphere this time. It was noisy with talk, hazy with smoke and there was an occasional burst of laughter. The long polished-metal table was smudged with fingerprints and scattered with a few spent butts from full ashtrays. There were rings of moisture where chilled glasses had been. Bottles were lined up in a reckless way on the black lacquered bench that ran the length of one wall. Somebody had forgotten to put tops back on the Beefeater and the Johnnie Walker.

‘Stella, darling, what can I do you for?’ Freddie pointed to the bottles. ‘I know,’ he went on before she had time to say anything, ‘champagne!’ He opened the fridge door and grasped something with gold foil capping its bulbous cork.

‘Great Western is not champagne,’ said a gravelly voice behind Stella. It sounded like a weary version of the foreign actor she’d seen not long ago in Let’s Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe. She turned around to look but what she saw was no Yves Montand. Slight and sallow-faced, with dark eyes and full lips, Jacques Boucher was attractive in an ugly way.

‘Ah, Jack,’ said Freddie, easing the cork from the bottle. ‘Call yourself an art director? You’re a pedant.’

‘I am not a peasant.’ Jacques sniffed in a semblance of disgust as the cork popped out of the bottle. ‘Champagne comes from Champagne, not from some backyard vineyard in the Antipodes.’

‘You frogs, you’re all the same. Up yourselves.’ Freddie used slang to indicate, in case there was any doubt, that he was one of the blokes. For the same reason, he pretended to be interested in football. And he was. Not for the game, but for the balletic footwork of the soccer players and the muscular thighs and body contact of the big boys who played rugby and footy.

He filled a glass and handed it to Stella. ‘How about you, Jack?’

‘Mais oui, since you ask and I am courteous.’ He turned to Stella. ‘And my name is Jacques, despite what you hear from the creative director.’

‘Oh,’ said Stella as she realised they were having fun and not spoiling for a fight. ‘I’m Stella.’

‘Salut, Stella!’ Jacques raised his glass, so she did the same with hers. ‘Stella,’ he repeated, when he’d taken a mouthful. ‘Une étoile.’

‘What?’ She looked startled.

‘Stella means a star. In French, une étoile.’ He spun out the word, as though weaving a stairway to the moon. Stella thought she had never heard such a beautiful word. Ay-twahl. She determined to commit it to memory.

‘Now can we have a bit of shush here?’ called Freddie. He gave his glass a few taps with his signet ring to make it tinkle like a bell. Most faces turned to look at him, the others were so engrossed in conversation they took no notice and kept on talking. ‘Hey, Bea. Control your group!’ The hubbub calmed down. All eyes were now on Freddie. He basked in moments like this, could have warmed himself in the glow of their attention forever. He pulled his stomach in and seemed to grow even taller than his rangy five foot eleven.

‘As you can now hear, Guy has switched on 2UE because in a minute or two we’ll be listening to a spot that would not be going to air if it weren’t for Stella Bolt, Guy’s secretary here.’ He paused. There was dead silence. Everybody looked at Stella, who didn’t know what to do so she stared at the floor.

‘While you lot were fighting over dolmades and spanakopita and guzzling the rotgut,’ Freddie went on, ‘Slazenger needed a script. So what did Stella do?’ He looked from one blank face to another, then fixed on a junior copywriter. ‘What did she do, Gary?’

‘I suppose she wrote one.’ Gary fiddled with his spectacles and shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘Big deal.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Freddie. ‘It was a very big deal, so let’s show Stella how much we appreciate it.’ He raised his glass and said, ‘Stella, you’re a star!’ A few voices echoed the toast without much enthusiasm, except for Jacques, who bowed to her in an exaggerated way and said, ‘To l’étoile.’

Before Stella had a chance to savour Jacques’s tribute, Guy said ‘I think it’s on now’ and turned up the volume. From the twin speakers in the room came a few notes of ‘Waltzing Matilda’, followed by these words, read slickly by the station announcer:

Slazenger joins all Australians in congratulating Rod Laver on his super Grand Slam. What a winner! Has he got balls? Slazenger makes ’em, Rod makes ’em win. We’re proud of you, Rod Laver!

The last strains of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ were accompanied by canned applause.

When Guy turned down the volume the first words anyone heard came from Kelvin, the despatch boy, who’d sneaked in and now stood at the back of the room. ‘I wouldn’t mind giving her a grand slam!’ There was a burst of laughter. Stella pretended not to have heard, turning to smile at Jacques as he topped up her glass.

‘What did he say?’ asked someone.

‘He wants to get into her pants,’ said someone else.

‘Whose?’

‘Guy’s seck-a-tree’s.’

Freddie glared at Kelvin, who looked the other way and starting fixing himself a vodka martini.

‘Take it from me,’ Freddie said, bending down to whisper in Guy’s ear, ‘that kid’ll find himself in real trouble one day.’ His speech was beginning to slur and he was swaying, like bamboo in a variable breeze.

‘Or he’ll be managing director,’ said Guy, who was having difficulty keeping the room in focus.

Freddie hooted. ‘You’re kidding.’

Stella checked her watch and disappeared to put on her fawn edge-to-edge duster coat, proud that its tent shape with no fastening was so up-to-date. With her handbag on her forearm she returned to the boardroom and found Guy and Freddie together. She laid a gloved hand on the arm of each of them and said quietly, ‘I want to thank you both for what you’ve done for me. I’ll be grateful to you, always.’ As she turned to go, she said, ‘Nigh’, nigh’,’ like a good little girl at bedtime.

A few tears followed. Not in Stella’s eyes, but in Freddie’s and Guy’s.

Bea O’Connor’s leaf-green coat flapped behind her as she sprinted down the hill to Cremorne Point Wharf on Tuesday morning just in time to catch the 8.45 ferry. Neither her speed nor the damp wind blowing from the south had much impact on her long black hair, which was brushed up and away from her face, tucked into a pageboy and sprayed to armour. Her eyebrows were as thick and sculpted as Elizabeth Taylor’s, but there the resemblance ended. Bea’s eyes were moon-shaped and dominant, set a bit too far apart so that she looked perpetually startled. Her cheekbones were wide and prominent but beneath them her face fell away to a little pointy chin. Although her mouth was small her lips were full and when she smiled—which happened often—she revealed the rewards of preventive dental care, in two rows of perfect teeth. She was engaging, with a warm personality that succeeded in putting people at ease and encouraging confidences. Her colleagues had nicknamed her Possum. They meant it affectionately because she was respected and popular, so she tried not to be irritated by what she felt was a patronising put-down.

She usually tried to get a seat outdoors on the port side as the ferry ploughed and shuddered and shook its way to Circular Quay because the most interesting sight these days was the mas. . .