LITMIR.BIZ

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a demonstration of brute strength, Roger limbers up. “I’ll stoke up the fire.”

      He pulls a face like a smacked arse, which gets a good deep chuckle out of Jayne who by now is tired of climbing chairs.

      “So you reckon compared to our Antipodean friends in their tight swimmers, we’re no match in our Arctic clothing.”

      Sue draws a deep breath, “With our feet planted firmly in double socks. And don’t forget the Wellington boots and fleece lined overcoat to the beach.”

      “Last time I went beach fishing at Great Yarmouth I was nearly toppled by a wind so strong I had to lean hard on the car door to get out. It felt like an Arctic wind; come to think of it even the seagulls sat quiet with their beaks huddled deep into their ruffled chests.”

      “And that’s Autumn, not Winter,” Sue’s mouth is pinched into a thin line as she prepares to redress James.

      Jayne is adamant, she points at James. “Can’t want him. Take him back.”

      Sue grins at their enraged toddler. “Her new baby brother is too small to play with her. Without doubt, if he were bigger, she’d punch his lights out.”

      After a brief game of Eeny-meeny-miney-mo Roger continues his tale.

      “There I was all rigged up, struggling to the edge of the water in near hurricane conditions. A supreme effort and a great cast.”

      Noticing he has the floor with three pairs of eyes on him, he goes for it.

      “The wind was so strong it lifted my sinker mid cast and blew it right back up behind me on the beach.”

      Jayne giggles. Roger sits her on his knee to continue with his story.

      “Undeterred Daddykins puts on a heavier sinker,” he raises his eyes, “but it was so heavy now that the tip of the rod’s sagging from the weight.

      Have you any idea the thrill of satisfaction Daddykins felt catching a fish for our dinner under difficult circumstances like those?”

      Jayne shakes her head and says, “No!”

      Roger makes another face. “No! You’re right and neither did Daddykins. Not even a herring! All was lost. So thoroughly fed up I came home.”

      His audience laughs.

      Seeing himself as an enlightened dictator in his own home, a left-over attitude from earlier in the century, pompously Roger feels the need to reinforce not wanting to go to Australia.

      “For twenty-five years I’ve practiced the fine art of being an Englishman that has been my defining quality in life.”

      “Good for you.” Sue is unimpressed.

      Roger pushes, “Why would I suddenly decide to send myself into voluntary exile 16,500 miles away for Christ’s sake? That’s a bloody long way to go for a sandy beach and a job in a factory I don’t need or want.”

      “We live from hand to mouth, literally. I do my best. I buy proper meat once a week, maybe sausages on another. I’m tired of the Israeli Army Diet.”

      “What’s that?” Roger asks.

      “It means existing on two days of cow cabbage, two days of cheap dairy products, two days of tinned sardines, and one day of fasting.”

      Roger looks impressed.

      Sue continues, “We’d discharged ourselves from the Israeli Army Diet by Week One but I’ve kept balancing two sardines on a lettuce leaf, topped with a few carrot shavings for colour and a sprig of parsley, as dinner. It’s cheap.”

      “Mussels and offal are cheap, although I’d rather stick my dick in a blender than eat tripe.”

      “That can be arranged.” Sue becomes serious. “There’s nothing left over from your salary for small luxuries.” She wrings her hands. “God knows how we’ll manage when the children get older.”

      Sue draws her deepest ‘all is lost’ sigh.

      “I’ll need to get a part time job.”

      “What! No! Absolutely not!” Roger shouts. “Sue, when we married it was agreed you would be a stay at home wife and mother. I’ll not go back on that. No!”

      “You’d miss me if I went out to work, wouldn’t you?”

      “No more than I would my eyes,” Roger replies tersely.

      Sue had agreed to be a stay home wife and mother, which was not unusual among their other family members. Roger never changed a nappy, nor got up in the middle of the night to attend to Jayne or James, because Sue saw that as her role. Roger is the breadwinner. He works. She feels it only right that he has uninterrupted sleep.

      She breaks away to serve cereals, boiled eggs, and buttered toast for their breakfast.

      “I suppose we could always sell a child.” Roger jokes in a whisper, to lighten the mood.

      Sue is not amused.

      “You wouldn’t mind though, would you?” Sue asks, as Roger clears table.

      “Mind what?”

      “I’d like to know more about Australia. You wouldn’t be too upset if I sent away for their brochures, would you?”

      “Me? Upset? Course not. Why should I get upset? I’ve got balls the size of Planets.”

      Sue pats him on the knee, much as she would pat Fred on the head. “In your dreams, Darling.”

      The continual dull monotony of attempting to keep body and soul together in such a grey and cheerless place as England is getting Sue down. The bags of tiredness and stress under her eyes seem to swell whenever she speaks.

      That night his dream searching for Seal Flipper Pie continues. He is walking through The Lanes in Brighton, every shop is selling Haddock testicles, and no-one knows anything about his pie. His dream ends with him chasing a bikini clad Sue along a sun drenched beach of white sand.

      Monday Roger sets off to greet the start of his working week with lime enthusiasm.

      After he has gone, Sue sits glumly at their dining room table, her temples throbbing from lack of coffee. Sipping some instant, the strength of such she can almost feel her pulse rise with each swallow, she recovers shaking her head at their predicament.

      Looking out the window at the front of the house the view offers little entertainment. Living on one of the quietest streets in the Village of Coxwell, like her life, it was leading nowhere.

      Hugging the cup, she wonders if she should send off for those Australian brochures.

      It is as if her life is unravelling. She can feel it, sense it, like a big ball of string someone has tossed down a long flight of stairs and yet, that post box is just outside the Coxwell shop, and they do sell postage stamps.

      She worries about Roger’s guarantees to the bank for his father’s loans, but as he said, no news is good news.

      Chapter 2

      THE TOILET SEAT DEFENSIVE

      Another working week is done and dusted.

       When Roger arrives home to hilarity HQ Sue is grinning like a prospector who has just struck the mother lode

      “Look!” she cries clutching armfuls of brochures. “The postman had to make two trips.”

      What arrived from Australia House three weeks after Roger’s twenty-fifth birthday, six weeks after James’s birth, sixteen weeks before Jayne’s third birthday, seven months before Sue’s twenty-eighth birthday, and twenty-seven days shy of their fourth wedding anniversary, was far too bulky to pass through any letter box. Sue is almost unable to contain her excitement.

      “I’ll bet the postie was overawed making two trips,”

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