Of course, I knew what to expect when imaginary breasts were fully exposed, even if the world went out of its way to protect my innocent eyes from such horrors. There had been sightings of various aunties when breast-feeding infants—one even invited me to stay and watch. I feared for my underpants, but while I was utterly fascinated, somehow the eroticism failed to function. Maybe there was some sort of natural inhibitor—in any case it was a relief to know it was possible for my rampant libido to be turned off when completely inappropriate.
    Additionally National Geographic and Life magazines sometimes offered splendidly drawn images of prehistoric tribeswomen and ladies of ancient times over which we had often drooled in the school library.
    These recreations had the most perfect breasts conceivable and were obviously rendered with the likes of me in mind. But elsewhere in their pages photographs of living, clotheless natives offered far less impressive curvatures—saggy, baggy things without definition. Plainly breasts weren’t what they used to be.

It didn’t take long for things to come unstuck in Warrnambool. Lennie lost his job, gambled away his rent, got into some sort of other trouble, and he and Evie turned up one night on our doorstep like wet kittens. Rosely by then had recovered sufficiently to find one of the local lads of interest, and Howie moved back into my room—as was the habit whenever there were overnight visitors—and the refugees were given succour.

And finally came what might be regarded as my first genuine adult book—or perhaps in fairness to a number of those that have gone before—the first book that I read from an adult point of view. The book was Evan Hunter’s Strangers When We Meet, and it is probably quite unremarkable and I did have to persist to get through it. But it was about an average successful suburban man and his family and work life as he is slowly drawn into an affair with a neighbour’s wife with increasing fear and loathing and finally they are sprung and he suicides. I had never encountered real people whom I might have met at the local milk bar in a book before—that was what surprised me about it. Of course, this ‘real suburban’ concept was that of a John O’Hara imitator and not even nearly realism. I realise that I had always separated people in books from real people, even in factual accounts. Edmund Hillary and Jim Corbett were no different to Captain Nemo and Alain Quartermain to me. I wasn’t sure whether I liked this idea of book-people intruding in a possible real world at all. Anyway, to me the realm of imagination was always where everything happened—the objective world was just sleeping and eating and crapping, sustenance to provide a base from which the imagination could set forth on its forays and return with the latest tidings. I suspect our general reaction to the news media is much the same—none of those terrible things actually happen in the world we live in, but some parallel dimension when they can influence our lives but never really touch them.