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Sport 10: Autumn 1993

[section]

And there were others, Rose says, never quite able to leave this matter. Reen watches her mother holding the teapot high, far from the cups, pouring a long, cross, spitting stream.

'He censors all the tricky bits,' she tells the girls.

'There's nothing tricky,' Tommy says. 'It's just not important.'

'What about June,' says Rose. 'He took her to The Gondoliers.'

'What's tricky about that?' Tommy asks.

'It was just before we met,' Rose says.

'And after that,' Tommy says, grinning over the table, 'there was no one else but you.'

'But what about June?'Rose says, ignoring such transparent blandishment, those lips puckered across the table in invitation.

'Why did she disappear into the blue yonder?'

'She wasn't interested,' says Tommy, subsiding. 'Wasn't serious anyway.'

'Well,' says Rose, 'we've never really known what happened to June.'

Tommy drags them back to the real story. There was his education, for instance. When he was four Nana took him across the road to Montessori...

'But he ran home and hid under the house,' Rose says. 'Never went back, either.'

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In Primers, says Tommy, sunk in the cosiness of nostalgia, there was Sister Aloysius, warm and gentle, motherly.

In Standard One ...

In Standard One there was Brother Martin, Standard Two, Brother Tarsisius, Standard Three, Four, and Five, Brother Alfred.

And then there is Brother Alfred's famous maxim.

'What did he say?' Tommy asks at the table, grinning madly.

'Life is real! Life is earnest! and the grave is not its goal!' There are many Brother Alfred stories, Reen and her sisters know them by heart.

'Funny where old Brother Alfred ended up after all that,' says Teresa.

'Unnecessary, Teresa,' Tommy says, 'quite unnecessary.' His voice is cold, warning.

'Oooo!' says Teresa, but she's retreating, she pulls a face and presses her lips together.

'But where did he go? What happened to him?' Reen asks her aunt later. They stand in the hallway, whispering.

'Sunnyside,' Teresa says, looking over her shoulder for signs of Tommy.

'Loony bin.'