Illywhacker

"But why not? Have you never smelt bread?" Rosa shut her eyes and her nostrils flared as she smelt imaginary loaves. "You wish to be of use. I was the same. I joined the Party. Of course I was often travelling, on the road, but I did whatever work I could. My husband thought I was mad, but I did dull and menial things for the Party and I felt that being a dancer was of no worth. But a danceris of worth and a baker… candlestick makers too."

Rosa sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes. "I will tell you why, really, I left the Party. It was because they could not take a dancer seriously. They could not imagine I was a serious person. I was not dowdy enough for them. Do you believe me?"

"Yes, Rosa," said solemn Leah.

"It is a lie," said Rosa, looking out across the harbour where a liner was coming around the point from the Quay, coloured streamers still dangling from its sides. "I am so used to saying it, I believe it." When she turned her gaze was so fierce that Leah averted her eyes and began to fiddle with the loaf of bread. "The bastards expelled me."

Leah blushed.

"Because", Rosa said, "they are puritans and hypocrites, because I had an affair with a married comrade. We used to come on picnics, like this, and tell secrets to each other. But they did not expel him. He was a man. They expelled me. It's quite true. He was very senior too. That is why I can't forgive them." She drank her wine, thirstily, emptying the tumbler and refilling it. "So now, darling, you have my secret. You are shocked?"

"No," said Leah, who was shocked. "Not at all," she said, as if she heard about such things every day. "I was thinking about your son, Joseph, in Moscow."

"What else is there for him to do?" said Rosa hotly, rubbing her eyes. "How could he be anything else but a Marxist? Better a Marxist than some wishy-washy social democrat." And to emphasize the point she threw a prawn head at a scavenging seagull.

"Oh, Rosa!"

"Yes, I know Izzie is your friend, but he is my son." This time it was the wine cork she threw.

"He is very kind," said Leah, "and that is what is important."

Rosa's face then underwent one of those transformations that would always delight Leah – it sloughed off its tired miserable lines and became drum-tight with a splendid smile.

"And that is what's important? Kindness?"

"Yes."

"Yes," said Rosa, shaking out her hair. "Kindness and dancing. Can we agree on that?"

Leah could not say yes but smiled instead.

"I will teach you to dance," said Rosa with a shyness that Leah did not understand. "Then you will understand what I am talking about." But it would be another week before Leah realized how important the dancing lessons might be to Rosa and now she only smiled, relieved that Rosa's mood had passed.

But even then, as they contented themselves with the progress of a tugboat pushing its way back to Pyrmont, a man came up to them and asked them for money. His eyes were downcast and he had cardboard tied to the bottom of his shoes. He was a young man too, no more than thirty. Rosa gave him the money and he went away.

They watched him trudge around the path beside the seawall.

"I am suddenly struck," Rosa said, her smile quite collapsed, "by how evil we are." She looked down at the empty prawn shells, the broken heads, the long thin feelers and something -perhaps it was only the flies crawling on them – made her shudder.

16

Secrets sheltered within secrets, boxes within boxes, and in the heart of this secret world, in the ultimate box, sweet as sandalwood, Leah Goldstein danced, felt her heart pump, her glands secrete, savoured the sweet ache of unused muscles and knew herself – beneath the eye of her stern-faced but contented teacher – to grow beautiful.

In this final box, the stories had no moral. They were dancing stories set in country halls, flapping tents. Here Rosalind danced for miners. There Leonard bent his iron bar and swallowed fire to wild applause, while the man he had become drove his trucks through the Sydney streets unaware that, in his own house, his wife was romancing about their difficult past, turning those country halls into theatres as glittering as the fortune they had never found.

It was months before they were sprung and by then it was too late. The women, both of them, were addicted. So when Lenny found them -having arrived at the house in the middle of the day, his heart set on nothing more complicated than cheese and pickles – there was nothing he could do to stop it. He opened the door of the spare room as Leah Goldstein – moving to the rhythms of Lou Rodana's Orchestra – dropped a coloured scarf to reveal her small leotard-clad breasts.