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little thing. Carol had never accepted to tell her the name of the man
she had loved so much in the 70’s, and whom she could not yet forget
two decades later, Kathy was sure. So she would repay her in the same
currency, informing her of her decision to live with Jacques, but withholding
his identity or any telling details.
She was going to stop taking the pill after her next period at the
end of the month, she had told Jacques, who had no objection. Quite
the contrary : he said he had never had a chance to raise a child, due
to his successive separations, it was high time for him, if he did not
want this new son or daughter to know him only as a wrinkled old man.
Joël, for this reason, was more like a young friend, and touchy at this,
someone to be counted with, especially since he knew that he had not
been wanted by his father. “Are you sure that you will not regret it, if
it does happen? Don’t worry, I would not leave you if you preferred not
to have children with me, or if you wanted to delay it for some time, I
would understand it very well. I had never really thought of becoming a
mother myself until I met you, but it simply feels like the natural thing
to do.” For months everybody had been discussing the new Australian
banner that Bob Hawke was seeking to impose to the population and the
international community before he left office, some said that this brand
of superficial nationalism was meant to keep minds off the state of the
economy, not Japanese hands off Aussie natural and tourist resources,
he could as well paint a rising sun on his bum, if he fancied it; others
were in favour because they believed we needed a new image and it was
a first step towards the Republic. All agreed that a new banner was the
closest thing to a place in history, even if it did not set new standards of
morality. Humorously, Jacques had thus voted by unanimity the birth
of a nation whose banner, a waltzing whale, would float over “Casa
Periwinkle”, their blue-roofed house: “Let’s hope passers-by don’t take
it for a carwash or a supermarket. We would be sued for opening shop
without licence in a residential area!”
The funny thing about this child business is that it had come
to her mind because she had felt happily pregnant the first morning
after, knowing full well that she could not be: it was a general sensation
of participating in the course of things, a new assurance that she had
never realized she lacked, needed or aspired to in the past. Was it because
Jacques was so much older than her, or rather so mature and at the same
time less jaded than any boy her own age? Or because she had found all
her ill-defined personal expectations suddenly fulfilled with no effort,
no soul searching on her part, while she had never dreamed of meeting
someone “for good” and committing herself before she was twenty-five
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