AN EDWARDIAN CHILDHOOD

Cristina woke, dehydrated: too much red wine the night before. Sip, sip, sip, she hadn't poured many but it was a proper claret glass, large and inward curving at the rim to allow the wine space to expand its bouquet. Not that cask wine had much bouquet, but the colour was rich and last night Cristina had poured ruby fluid until the glass brimmed, sipped until she really couldn't have cared less about anything. She bent to drink from the bathroom tap, lifted her head and stared at the puffy moons beneath her eyes. Thank God it wasn't the day for visiting her mother. As well as nagging her to eat, Theodora would have had something to say about those eye bags.

In the kitchen she checked the fridge where the cosmetics lived on empty shelves, filled the kettle and glanced along the row of tea caddies. Her stomach baulked at the thought of Earl Grey , too perfumed for a body in a sensitive condition, likewise the Fauchon Apple-Scented. She reached for English Breakfast , a civilised start to the day.

With her eyes cosseted behind dark glasses, Cristina decided on a trip to David Jones to cheer herself up. There was a time when she used to joke at dinner parties that the ground floor of the department store was her spiritual home.

"I've written in my will," she would say, "that my ashes are to be stored in one of those urns they use for the spring flower arrangements."

People laughed. They didn't think she was serious. Couples she and Barry dined with, families with smart cars and second homes down the coast, had no idea how proud she was to shop in such a store. Browsing foreign delicacies in the food hall, gliding up from the basement into the orbit of the glassy notes drifting from the lid of the grand piano, was always a thrill. The piano had been white when she was a girl. Sometime in the early 90s it had turned dove grey, but the pianist still had the same flowery style as on those Saturday mornings in her teens when she caught the train to town to stare at the wealthy women trying on hats, to finger designer handbags and flimsy lingerie.

Cristina smoked a cigarette in the privacy of the ladies lounge, entertained by the conversations of young women on their cell phones. Everybody had a cell phone these days but even if Cristina could have afforded one she liked to think she shied clear of anything that smacked of vulgarity, that she maintained a certain style, even though since the split it was harder and harder to keep up appearances.

When he came to see her now Barry stalked back and forth like a caged tiger, but without a tiger's cold courageous stare.

"I'm not asking you to scrimp," he said, "just cut back a bit! Nicole doesn't want to take the food from your mouth, but she'd like to make a home of her own."

In the end it was Cristina who had the straight golden glance of the wronged.

She stubbed out her cigarette and took the lift up to china and glass, not that she needed more. The Spode service and the tea sets she had collected over the years were still in the sideboard and Barry never mentioned them in conversations about their assets. Perhaps the patterns weren't to Nicole's taste.

From the security of her own virtue it seemed to Cristina improbable that Nicole (of the long limbs, sun-streaked hair, feral face, no shame,) had ever turned her mind to something so exacting as the right choice of china. But tea parties were Cristina's speciality. She loved the fragile cups and dainty sandwiches, the antique plates with silver handles to pass them round, and especially the teas, mouth-watering as fine wines, their names dripping music. Lapsang Souchong, black and smoky; Darjeeling , plucked from the foothills of the Himalayas; Java Green; Yunnan, a sweetly-fragrant, golden liquoring tea from China's western province ; Prince of Wales; Assam; Orange Pekoe, and the ambrosial Russian Caravan , beloved of the Russian aristocracy and carried to them by caravan from the Far East two hundred years ago. It was her favourite, but Cristina knew and loved them all. No, Nicole had been far too busy to study the gentle but demanding art of making tea.

She moved between displays of handpainted Italian earthenware, pretty in its way, perfect for a beach house but that was another dream bubble Nicole had burst with her sharp little claws. Past alcoves piled with Villeroy & Boch and the Japanese Mikasa, Cristina paused at a table of pink Spode plates and ran a fingertip across the familiar faces of the willow pattern and the girl on the swing. She had worn a taffeta dress of just that ruby shade for a ball soon after they were married and Barry's mother had remarked on what a gay colour it was. Gay! Funny the way a word could be hijacked by those with another use for it.

This slipperiness of words reminded Cristina of her schooldays and the sunbaked playground where she handled words with care so as not to draw attention to her clumsy English. The sounds that spiked Cristina's speech came from the Greek her parents spoke at home, irregularities that set her sentences bumping awkwardly against the sentences of her peers. Even now an unfamiliar word could strike her with the same sick panic as when the teacher asked her to stand and read aloud in class, although these days she had gained control of her bladder. Dago, wog and reffo were missiles Cristina had learned to dodge by keeping silent and by scrubbing her mouth with mint leaves and parsley on the walk to school, exorcising any lingering scents of Theodora's New Australian cooking. Cristina shrugged: Gays, Greeks, they held festivals in the Parklands now; it was the poor bloody boat people who were the new reffos.

She turned a pink willow pattern sauce jug to trace with a fingernail the path of the fleeing lovers. Would she have hated her rival more if Barry had told her he was gay? Impossible. She hated with the passion of her forefathers who had flung themselves into bloody civil wars, had even reverted to her maiden name to invoke their support. Well, not for that reason alone, if she were honest. Cristina Dimartinous was a name that tinkled like bells down a mountainside. If she was no longer to be the cherished wife of Barry, why should she suffer a dull name?

"No woman ever refused to marry a man because she didn't like his name," her mother said when she first heard it, but then Theodora had never been offered marriage by a man like Barry. Any of the men in her village would have given her a name that shimmered against her own like glass chimes stirred by the wind.

She had reached an alcove packed with blue and white Spode, the rich colour and glaze of the Italian pattern and the delicate flowers and leaves of the Botanical series. Cristina had cupboards and boxes full of it; a dresser piled high, and had even bought one or two items since the split, despite Barry's pleas to tighten her belt. Now her glance fell on an enormous cup and saucer, so large it would have to be lifted with two hands. She placed her palms on either side. It was perfect for the quantities of tea she needed on mornings when she felt a little frail. Cristina turned it to check the bottom: Spode, An Edwardian Childhood.

The sides were decorated with nursery drawings: blue teddybears, a rocking horse, a cricket bat and ball and a pull-along cart. From just such a cup would an exhausted nanny sip a reviving brew while the children napped. Cristina tipped it to read the verse inside.

"However you try to drink me up
There's always a swallow left in the cup."
A blue swallow coasted on the white glazed surface. She squinted at the price tag: one hundred and six dollars. She had that much, just, although the money was meant for food and for the phone bill. But food was a problem for Cristina: whatever she cooked she couldn't seem to swallow. It was as if her marriage, when it broke, had leaked a bitter juice that tainted the taste of everything. As long as she had wine and a few cigarettes for the evenings and the caddies of blessed tea for the days – which were long and a trial to her now that she had no one to cook and care for – she would be fine. Cristina stroked the glaze where it gleamed on the lip of the cup: it was more important to own a beautiful plate and fast than to suffer an ugly dish piled high with food.

As she carried the cup and saucer to the cashier she smiled to think of her mother's reaction. Theodora would never believe that any cup could cost one-hundred-and-six dollars. No cup in the world! Most of her life she had drunk from tin, plastic, and chipped china, and in better times thick white espresso cups. Theodora laid vine leaves over indifferent platters and piled up spicy rings of calamari, filled cheap earthen ramekins with rich moussakas. With her plump capable hands she gouged the flesh from melons and used the shells as bowls. No, Theodora would not have given the blue Spode cup a second glance.

On the way home Cristina felt faint. She hadn't the money for a taxi and waited a long time for a bus. The pavement radiated heat as she stepped down and walked the three blocks to her house, a modest suburban villa where her children had been born and raised. How much longer, she wondered, would Nicole let her keep it? In the smoked glass of a neighbour's front window she saw herself reflected, a stick figure with razor sharp shoulders in a sleeveless dress. As she fumbled with the key she felt the glide of sweat under her arms; her face was moist and clammy and she set the carrier containing the cup and saucer on the doorstep so she should not drop it.

Framed photographs stared at her from the walnut table inside the front door, herself and Barry and the two boys, laughing faces, happy and gay: another lifetime. The pictures described a life that was no long real. She should put them away. Oh, Dimi and Pete were real enough, living their own lives away in Sydney and far-flung Cairns, sad of course and embarrassed about a stepmother their own age, but not damaged.

In the kitchen Cristina took ice cubes from the freezer, dropped them into the wineglass and filled it with claret from the cask. While she waited for the ice to cool the wine she unwrapped the cup and saucer, washed it in hot soapy water and polished it with a lint free cloth.

It was the consistency she loved about her Spode , the reliability. If you looked after it you could hand it intact to your grandchildren. Break a piece and you could replace it with another exactly the same.

Unlike marriage, Spode lasted.

Cristina set the cup and saucer beside the kettle, kicked off her shoes and picked up the glass of wine. In the morning she would require copious quantities of tea, but sipped from such a cup, it would be a pleasure.