Thursday, June 27

 Sometimes you don't need television to be entertained in Tasmania.  Back in May we had a spectacular Aurora which was highlighted in all the papers.  Marilyn and I missed it, of course, because we went to bed early but, thankfully, all the local night owls were out with their cameras and the local Facebook page was a riot of colour the next morning.  Yesterday, we had a hailstorm; the hailstones weren't very big and when they gathered on the ground they looked like snow.  Most of them melted very quickly but, in the shadow of the fences, they lay there for hours just like snowdrifts.  I wonder what will be next.

Todays story is very recent and I've called it A Dark Family Secret.

Mum showed me an album of old photographs once and told me my father had brought them with him on his voyage to Australia.  He had never even told my brother and me that he had come by ship; I just assumed he had flown here.  In the back of the album was a bundle of photographs in a faded Kodak folder.  They were shots taken in the various ports he had visited on the voyage: Aden, Port Said, Colombo, Perth and so on. There were so many stories he could have told us and I had never heard them. Of course, I felt guilty about that.

 

The research was straightforward, at first.  Looking back through the UK census I found a mention of him.  At that time, his family was living in Glasgow and, listed in the household were his parents, his brother and two sisters, and another person named James Kirby.  I had heard that name casually mentioned a few times over the years but I wasn’t sure of the relationship and, of course, I hadn’t had the good manners to ask about him.

 

My interest was aroused now so I determined to look further.  In an earlier census, my grandmother was there, noted as married but my father and his siblings had not yet been born.  James Kirby was there, though, listed as ‘son’.  Who was this person?

 

I found the answer in an even earlier census in a listing of a family named Howard, with an address in one of the more well-to-do suburbs.  Among the list of those present in the house on the census date was Elizabeth McNair, housemaid and James Kirby, child.  Elizabeth McNair was my grandmother.  I hadn’t realised that she had worked as a servant but I could now start to understand how the details fitted together.

 

My grandmother, in service, had become pregnant, probably by another of the staff and her employers, instead of throwing her out on the street, had allowed her to remain in the house while she was carrying the child.  At some point after the child was born, she had married my grandfather and he had agreed to bring up the child as his own.  That child was James Kirby.  His name hadn’t been changed  to my family’s name, for some reason.

 

Some twist of fate had brought my father to Australia where he had met my mother, married and, in due course, my brother and I were born. His life in Australia had been positive.  He had been proud of his family, fulfilled by his occupation, and content with his circle of good friendships.

 

Now, I was in possession of new information about his beginnings and his early life, and I wondered what I should do with that information.  Would it honour his memory if I announced to the world that his mother had been a housemaid to a wealthy family, that she had become pregnant without being married and had an illegitimate child?  

 

In today’s society, those revelations would hardly raise an eyebrow but, on balance, I decided that it was information I didn’t need to share.  I couldn’t believe that I heard myself thinking, ‘Best to let sleeping dogs lie.’

 

 

Wednesday, June 26

 WEDNESDAY, 26 JUNE

Our life has taken an interesting turn this week as we have started Meals on Wheels.  We’ve talked about it for a while and I was keen because I worry about Marilyn having to slave in the kitchen.  We’ve tried various frozen meals but they’re often too big and wasteful.  I try to do my share of food preparation  but Marilyn sees it as ‘her job’ and that’s all there is to it.  She’s been doing it for over 60 years now and that’s long enough.

We’ve only ordered one meal each a day for five days, with no desserts, and will look after ourselves the rest of the time.  They are delivered fresh each week day.  So far, we’ve been very happy and, because they come in a tray, we don’t even have to wash up. All good, so far.

Today’s story comes from 2020 and is a flight of fantasy about what might happen if the British Royal Family were ousted and had to make a living as private citizens.

MRS WINDSOR’S CHILDREN                            

 

Living in a modest three-bedroom house in Rocherlea might seem like a world of difference from the very comfortable (some might say privileged) existence they had enjoyed in England but Kathy and Bill didn’t see it like that.  The fiasco of Brexit had not delivered what PM BoJo had promised, the shambles of their Coronavirus response and the withdrawal of Scotland and Wales from the Union hadn’t helped and, when Bill’s grandmother had died (of a broken heart, perhaps) and his father had taken over the family business, all the resentments of a disillusioned population had spilled over into riots in the streets.  Everyone said performances like that were disgraceful and to be expected in places like Hong Kong, perhaps, but never in civilised England.

Bill’s brother and his wife had already settled in California and, by all accounts, were living life to the full, but Kathy and Bill wanted something different – to be normal for a change.  Moving to Tasmania seemed a good start.  Adopting other versions of their names also seemed like a good idea – another break from the past. His old name, Will, smacked too much of Eton and Kate sounded too much like the sort of person who played Netball on Saturday afternoon and got drunk with her mates after the match.  Kathy and Bill, on the other hand, sounded like the middle-aged couple you might meet playing bowls. 

 

Bill couldn’t do much about his receding hairline but he did manage to grow a pretty decent moustache, even though Kathy said that it reminded her of Frank Zappa, whoever he was.  Kathy was quite happy with her life, working three mornings a week at Woolies, and looking after their kids who were at the local high school, and Bill had a job selling cars.  He had first been offered a job with Holden but that didn’t last long so someone put in a good word with Errol Stewart and a job was found for him at the Ford dealership in Launceston.  It was probably that nice Mr Morrison who arranged it.  

 

When Kathy and Bill had first come to Australia, their visas were signed personally by a Mr Dutton.  Mr Dutton and Mr Morrison had met them at the airport with welcome gifts and offers of directorships and so on.  Kathy and Bill hadn’t realised that Australia was so welcoming to refugees.  All those reports in the Guardian about turning back the boats and locking people up in concentration camps must have been fake news as Mr Morrison had said. 

 

The local people they had met in Rocherlea all seemed nice.  Australians didn’t seem to have the habit of tugging forelocks and bowing like people in England, and they seemed to swear a lot.  When Bill had sold his first car, the manager had said, ‘You’re a bloody beauty!’  Bill didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not but when the boss bought him a beer later, he assumed it was a good thing.

 

Yes, life might be alright in Tassie.  Well, the kids were picking up some bad habits, like chewing gum, and Kathy had taken up smoking but these were probably just teething problems.  As the Australians often said, “She’ll be right.’

Tuesday, June 25

 Jamie has just arrived to take Marilyn to an appointment.  He has our car at the moment as his is at a workshop getting a major repair done - something to do with the radiator.  Not every mechanic will take on the job and the workshop he found says it might be 2 or 3 weeks before they  get around to it.  So, he has borrowed mine, the price being that he makes sure we can be transported to our appointments.

I've dug today's story out of the archive.  It goes back to 2020 and is a nostalgic look at Sydney as I remember it in the 1950s and 60s.

THE LIFT ATTENDANT                                                                                           

On the wall of her apartment, Rose had a framed poster showing the magnificent Anthony Hordern’s Building in Brickfield Hill in Sydney.  This was where Rose had begun work as a shy 16-year old many years before.  She had only worked there for a few years before marriage and her husband’s career took her overseas, but those few years had left her with very happy memories and a sense of satisfaction and achievement. 

Rose’s husband worked in the Diplomatic Service so they spent a lot of time overseas, mainly in smaller countries in South America and Africa.  They had never been offered a plum posting to somewhere like Washington or London; these were reserved for favourites of the Government of the day or, more often, as consolation prizes for leadership contenders who were becoming too dangerous, or failed cabinet ministers who had to be shuffled out of sight.

There had been dangers, of course, in some of the out-of-the-way places but excitement and satisfaction as well.  Her husband’s generous salary and retirement benefits had also made it possible for Rose to enjoy this spacious apartment with views of Sydney Harbour.  Sadly, her husband was gone now, a victim of a fever picked up in years past.  Their only daughter, Sylvia was married to an international businessman and was living full-time overseas.  Sylvia rarely visited but phoned regularly and Rose was now getting the hang of Skype.

On most days, Rose was up early.  She dressed carefully, always with hat and gloves, and caught the train to St James Station to spend part of the day at David Jones department store.  Of course, it wasn’t up to the standard of Anthony Horderns but at least it had tried to maintain something of the classic setup that Rose had grown up with.  She always had tea and a scone in the small café and made a point of travelling from floor to floor in the wood-panelled lifts.  She had visited the monstrous Myer Store once (although it had been called Grace Bros in her day) but she couldn’t tolerate the immense escalator which dominated the centre of the store.  The escalator was always so busy she thought that some people travelled up and down all day, never getting off to browse the departments.

Wandering around David Jones, on the other hand somehow reminded her of her younger days.  Growing up in the suburbs, Rose had always enjoyed the trips with her mother to Anthony Horderns.  On these visits, she always wanted to spend some time on the Sixth Floor where she gazed in awe at the impossibly glamorous ladies who shopped there.  They were matched only by the immaculate shop assistants in their crisp black dresses, with their heeled shoes and refined voices.  Rose was too young to realise that the adopted accents were laughed at by the socialites of the North Shore and Eastern Suburbs.  To become one of these ladies in black became Rose’s burning ambition.

She was sad when Anthony Horderns closed down and especially when the landmark building was demolished to make way for another modern eyesore.  It would have made a wonderful apartment block and Rose would have loved to have lived there.  Now she only had her memories, and the poster on the wall, to remind her of a special milestone in her life.

One day, there had been a whisper around the floor that management was looking for a new Lift Attendant. Like most other big stores, Anthony Horderns had, until that time, employed ex-soldiers for these jobs, giving them a uniform and a stool to sit on if they needed to rest their legs.  Now, it was said, a new young director wanted to change the image of the store and employ someone younger.  Of course, the invitation to apply was only extended to the young men on the staff.  It had never occurred to anyone in authority that it might be a suitable job for a woman.

When Rose applied, many eyebrows were raised, but the young director recalled a trip he had made to Japan and how he had been impressed with the attractive, friendly, female lift attendants there.  They even bowed when people entered the lift, though he thought that might be too much to ask in Australia.  Rose was appointed to the role: the first female Lift Attendant employed by Anthony Horderns, and probably the first in Sydney.

Rose often thought there were three parts to her life: she was Mrs Avery, wife of His Excellency, the Australian Ambassador, she was Sylvia’s mother, but she was also Anthony Horderns’ first female Lift Attendant.  It was not a bad score-line.

 

Monday, June 24

 I wrote this story back in 2021 and called it Song of Ireland.  Later, I changed it to Steal Away, although I prefer the first.   It's still one of my favourites.  My grandfather's name was Alexander Donachie and he had a brother called Owen.  The Donachie family came from the Longford region of Ireland but, despite all that, the story is totally fictitious.

STEAL AWAY

Owen Donachy had never felt the pressure of being Head of his family as much as he was feeling it at the moment.  As itinerant farm workers, he and his brothers followed a familiar pattern as they moved from one part of Ireland to another.  Changes in their regular routine were rare and usually agreed to by consensus.  Tonight, however, he had called his brothers together to discuss a much more difficult decision altogether.  Owen Donachy was informing his brothers that, before they all left in the morning to travel to their next destination, he planned to kill a man.

The man in question was a priest, known as Father Patrick.  He was, in fact, the third son of a local landowner who had proved to be a disappointment to his family.  Returning from school in England, he had shown no aptitude to take his place helping to run the family estates.  The army had made it clear that there was no place for the boy as an officer so, in desperation, his father agreed that he would be ‘given’ to the church.  A generous donation to the local parish, and an even more generous endowment to the Bishop saw Patrick welcomed into the priesthood.  There were enough eager and enthusiastic priests among the local clergy to cover for Patrick’s laziness and lack of interest and he may have continued his indolent and useless life but for one severe failing: he began to take an interest in the young daughters of the local farmworkers.

 Owen Donachy told his brothers that evening that Father Patrick had turned his attention to Owen’s own daughter who was just 14 years of age.  Owen’s wife had wrung her hands and gasped at the thought of what would happen oif the child became pregnant: she would be ostracised by the community and accused of using her feminine wiles to tempt a holy man, and no blame would be levelled at the priest.  Worse, when she began to show her symptoms, she would be gathered up by the Magdalene Sisters and put to work in one of their notorious laundries.  Eventually, her child would be put up for adoption in Belfast or Cork.

 It's no small thing to kill a man, but Owen was arguing that this was the just solution to an on-going problem.  The Donachy family could move on, removing their child from the situation, but the problem of the priest would remain for the unwitting families who would follow.  What kind of man would he be if he left the predator to prey on other young women?

 

Thomas, the most conservative of the brothers summed up their reluctance. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”  In a flash of insight, Owen replied, “But who is to say who the Lord might choose to be the instrument of his vengeance?”

 

It wasn’t much of an argument but it convinced the two younger brothers to side with Owen, leaving Thomas no option but to give his agreement.  Owen was relieved that he now had the full support of his brothers.

 

Owen knew that the girl had been instructed by the priest to meet him in a particular part of the forest just as the moon was rising that night.  The brothers arrived at the spot early and found appropriate hiding places.  When the priest arrived, he was annoyed to find that the girl was nowhere to be seen as he had been looking forward to a quick fumble, a satisfaction of his lust and a quiet stroll home in the moonlight.  Instead, he was shocked to see a bulky figure rising up before him.  He sensed another presence behind him, and one on his right and on his left.  A blow was struck, and another.  The priest was probably dead after the first blow but the brothers’ agreement called for four blows, one from each of them.  Efficiently, the body was buried underneath a fallen tree.  These men were agricultural workers, adept at moving wet earth around and soon there was no sign of anything amiss.

 

Hurrying home, the brothers gathered up their families and set off along the road to the coast.  It was close to midnight but the roads were already busy.  It was the time of year when itinerant workers would make the regular trip across the Irish Sea to Scotland where they would take part in the annual potato harvest there.

 

There were dozens of small boats on the beach, ready to set sail at dawn for the short voyage.  The Donachy family were among the first to leave and soon arrived in Scotland, heading south to the town of Mauchline where Owen knew a farmer who would give them work.  The family never returned to Ireland, choosing to make their home in this new country.

 

Because of the secrecy surrounding it, this story might never have been told but for a strange coincidence.  Many years later, a curious child from a different generation came across a sealed envelope between the pages of an old book.  Across the envelope was written: ‘Not to be opened until after my death.’  In the envelope was the detailed account of the incident and it was unsigned.  These words, if they had been known at the time would have led to the deaths of the four brothers.  It was right that it be kept secret.  But one member of the family could not bear that the truth be stifled and we should be grateful for his or her determination to value honesty.

Sunday, June 23

 It's cold again this morning so we were late getting out of bed; however, the lounge room has warmed up, we've finished breakfast and are ready to face the day.  Not that there is much organised.  Life is very quiet at the moment.  

We're expecting Jamie to pop in this afternoon.  Nera's nephew, Brendan, has just arrived from the Philippines and is staying with them.  He's 18 and enrolled to study here.  His plan is to qualify in Nursing to start with but transfer to Medicine later.  Working part-time as a nurse will help pay for his study to become a doctor.  He's very bright and he's lucky to have family here who will support him.

Today's story is my response to the topic Against All Odds:

It was Geordie’s ambition to visit every continent on earth before he was too old to travel.  Easy, you might say; there are only seven of them, there are excellent air services connecting them and only one of them could conceivably pose a problem. That, of course, is Antarctica.  However, nowadays, there are cruise ships which will take you there in comfort and make sure you have a choice of a dozen wines to enjoy with your cordon bleu dining experience after you have spent a day on the ice.  So, you were right, it will be easy.

 

Being an organised sort of person, Geordie knew that the best results from any project would always be achieved through careful planning, so he sat at his computer, pulled up a Word document and typed SEVEN CONTINENTS ADVENTURE in capital letters at the top of a new page.  He thought for a moment and decided he would not underline it; rather, he would make it BOLD so that it would stand out and follow it with a double return.

 

A planning document has to achieve several purposes.  First it needs an open, readable format so that you can see at a glance what is the daily objective.  Second, it should ensure that all possibilities have been considered and the anticipated activities are the best possible under the circumstances.  Thirdly, it should be structured to take advantage of any particular opportunities which might come up from time to time, and there must be enough flexibility to accommodate last-minute changes. Finally, it should never lose sight of the primary objective: that Geordie will achieve something that he will re-live for many years into the future.

 

Geordie started by typing a list of the seven continents, in no particular order but just as they occurred to him.  Later, he thought, I will re-order them in alphabetical order, perhaps.  Or perhaps not!  Maybe, I should start with the easy one: Australia, or is it Australasia, or is it now designated Oceania?  Clearly, some investigation is needed.  Eventually, he had a list of the seven continents with Antarctica filling the last place.

 

The next few months were memorable for Geordie.  Each evening, when he arrived home from work, he would turn to his computer, open his planning file and work on fleshing out his dream for what he would do on his great adventure.  He found Youtube invaluable in checking out what tiny villages in Croatia might be worth visiting, whether he should stay in a Japanese ryokan or whether a nearby international hotel might suit him better., and whether visiting the pyramids in Egypt was enough to say that he had ‘done’ Africa.  Gradually, the pages of his planning document began to take shape.  It was difficult.  Geordie found himself wanting to focus on planning the details of just one continent at a time when, he knew, that he needed to give equal attention to the other six or he would never achieve a suitable itinerary.  He had already decided his plan would be to visit the seven continents, one after the other without returning to Australia between each one.  A tentative plan seemed to be taking shape:  Australia to Africa, to Europe, to Asia, to North America to South America and to Antarctica.  

 

It would be expensive but, luckily, financing this trip would not be an issue.  His family had been wealthy and had left him comfortably well-off when they passed away.  He had a well-paid job, had never had a steady girl-friend and he lived very well, but without excessive expenditure. 

 

Any young man might have thought himself very fortunate indeed that he had the opportunity and the resources to set out on such an extraordinary adventure.  However, any other young man might have taken extra delight in sharing the adventure with another human being and Geordie did not even have the pleasure of talking about his plans, or discussing possibilities with anyone else.  Occasionally, he leaned back in his desk chair, took his eyes from the computer screen and wondered.  Is this all worth it?  

 

As he became more involved in the planning, Geordie loaded his itinerary on to an iPad so that he could work on it during his breaks at work.  Over time, he became aware that a particular young woman who worked in an adjacent office was showing an interest in the brochures he often had lying around.  If Geordie had any awareness of human relationships and how they develop, he might have felt a sense of anticipation when she asked what he was doing.  However, he didn’t and it was against all the odds that a few months later, Geordie and his new fiancée waited at the airport for their flight to Johannesburg.  He was to find, to his delight, that a special adventure is even more special when it is shared.

 

 

Saturday, June 22 ...

  When I opened the blog this morning, I had to think carefully about what I was doing.  You'd think that it would be second nature as I've been writing it since 2010, but I've been very slack for months now and my muscle memory is not what it used to be.  Must do better!

Yesterday was the last day of the School for Seniors' Writing Group and I have decided that I won't be going back next term.  I've been going for five years and it's been great to have an avenue for sharing my stories.  The group has been very positive, the fellow in charge is terrific at suggesting new ideas and has introduced us to 'Flash Fiction' which suits me very well.  However, several oldies have stopped coming, a couple off newbies have joined this term and the balance has altered. The expectations are that our stories will be no more than 800 words, or a page and a bit, have a beginning, a middle and a twist at the end.  All good, and I have no trouble fitting in to that outline.  But not everyone is so accommodating.  One woman apologises every week that she couldn't limit her story to 800 words and routinely, churns out about 1200 words of uninteresting prose.  Another doesn't write any more and entertains us with bits she wrote in her journal 25 years ago!  One bloke is writing a history of his family and regales us with anecdotes about some ancestor who played football for Subiaco after the war (World War 2, I think).  It's all too much.  I'm not a whinger, but...

So, I'll have to find another avenue for my writing.  And that's where the blog comes in.  I intend to write something ever day.  It might be just an anecdote about what we've been doing, or a bit of a story I'm playing with, but I intend to stick at it.

To start, I'll include the exercise we had at the group session yesterday.  We were given three words and had to make them into a story.  The words were: SUNSHINE ,, TAPIOCA .. REVELRY

 

Growing up in Australia in the 1950s was a wonderful experience.  Oh, I realise I am looking at those times through rose-tinted glasses but what I remember is a time of sunshine every day, of carefree afternoons and evenings with no TV when revelry was the norm.  I forget of course things like Mum serving tapioca pudding for afters when my brother and I were hoping for ice cream.  You don ‘t see tapioca pudding any more; some famous chef  like Jamie Oliiver has probably renamed it Four Spices Fondant or something which will better entice the taste-buds.  But tapioca never done us any harm.  I like to think that Australia is what it is today because of things like tapioca pudding, and Arnotts ginger snaps, and vegemite, and bread you had to slice yourself, and homemade soup using a bone you got from the butcher, and ….

A NEW DIRECTION

I've become bored with writing about the mundane life we lead and have decided that, in future, I'll use this blog to record some of the stories I write regularly.  I used to post these on '1000 Words or Less' but they'll now appear here.  I'm starting with a story I wrote at Christmas, entitles A CHRISTMAS STORY.

Like many country girls, Mary found living in a rural town stifling.  Chudleigh was a pretty enough little town but, when Mary was 17, she had had enough of the narrowness of village life and told her parents she was off to see what else the world had to offer.  They were not happy at all about it but Mary was a headstrong girl and would not be swayed. Her father made sure she had a reliable mobile ‘phone, access to emergency funds and made her promise she would keep in touch and always tell her family where she was.  She ended up in the Riverina, in fact, having found the big cities not at all to her liking, and made her living picking up casual work at various farms.

 

It was here that she met Joe, a relaxed country boy, with no apparent ambition but a great sense of humour.  Perhaps they would marry one day but, for now, it was enough that they shared their lives and, as Joe put it, looked out for each other.

 

It was in December a couple of years after she had left that Mary started to think about home in a different light.  Perhaps it was memories of Christmases she had enjoyed in the past which made her a little nostalgic and she started to think seriously about returning to Chudleigh for a visit. Also, she was pregnant and Mary was determined the child would be born in Tasmania.  It was a quiet time for work in the Riverina and Joe said he would come with her so the decision was made.  Each carrying a backpack, they stood on the highway with their thumbs up. Getting to Geelong was relatively easy and they managed to secure a last-minute booking on a night sailing of the Spirit.

 

Once she arrived on Tasmanian soil, Mary was reluctant to complete those few remaining kilometres to the village where her family would be planning their Christmas .  She had deliberately not told them she was returning, not sure of how her father, particularly, would accept the idea of a baby fathered by a man they had never met.  For that same reason, she refused to ring her family to tell them she was on her way. Her father, of course, would have rushed to pick them up but Mary felt she would be better able to cope if she arrived at the family home, unannounced.

 

Hitch-hiking turned out to be more difficult than they had anticipated. Perhaps, drivers were more anxious in those days before Christmas and less likely to stop for a couple of scruffy individuals, especially as one was obviously pregnant, so it was late afternoon before the tired couple reached Chudleigh.  Mary again held back from the inevitable confrontation with her parents and suggested they pitch their little tent at the showgrounds in Chudleigh, and promised Joe she would ring her father in the morning.  They chose a spot on the far side of the ground out of sight of the road and settled down. 

 

They were both tired after their long journey and, after a make-do meal of the remains of what food they had left, they crawled into their sleeping bags.  They must both have dozed off because they took a while to become aware of the sound of singing which was coming from the small hall on the other side of the ground.  It sounded like ‘Away in a Manger’, Mary thought.

 

‘Of course,’ she realised, ‘Tonight must be the night of the Christmas Carol Service.  All the town will be there and,’ her heart sank, ‘so will Mum and Dad.’  Nudging Joe, she said,

 

‘There’s a change of plan, Joe.  Mum and Dad, and half the town are in the hall over there and it won’t take long before someone notices our tent and comes to investigate.  Comb your hair; you’re about to meet your in-laws.’

 

Joe hastily pulled on his shorts, dragged a comb through his unruly mop and, hand in hand, they walked across the grass towards the sound of the familiar old carols.  They passed tethered sheep and goats, and the occasional calf which had been brought by local members of the Young Farmers’ Club to brighten up the evening, and to be photographed with the children, many of whom had come dressed as shepherds, or angels.  Outside the hall, too, there were groups of playing children, too young to be involved in the singing and several surly-looking teenagers hanging about, too cool to take part in such an old-fashioned activity.

 

At the entrance to the Hall, they paused, took each other’s hand and slowly pushed the door open.  At the sound of the creaking hinges, several people turned to see who the intruders were.  Mary recognised neighbours she had known all her life but it took several long seconds for the first voice to say, ‘It’s Mary!’

 

Nearer the front, her Mum and Dad, turned as one.  They’re looking older, thought Mary, though it had been only a couple of years since she had left. Her mother’s hand rose to her mouth as she clambered to her feet and pushed her way past her friends and neighbours sitting in the same row, her husband not far behind her.  The pianist who had been accompanying the carols abruptly ceased her out-of-tune playing.

 

Mary was engulfed in a huge embrace by both Mum and Dad and others in the audience rose to their feet, affected by the excitement.

 

“Who is this, then?” asked Mary’s dad, gruffly,  “And I suppose he is responsible for this,” he continued, pointing to Mary’s quite obvious bump.  And Mary knew, from the big smile on Dad’s face, that everything would be alright.