She comes to see that her only skill is in needlework, but it is not well developed. Nora has been sewing tapestries as a young woman. The Tirra Lirra of the title is what Lancelot sings as he approaches. She can only see the world through a mirror, and in it she must watch people passing her tower. The title refers to the Lady of Shallot, who wove tapestries under a curse that she should never stop. She finds the courage and energy to examine some of the seminal episodes and people in her life, some of which she has hidden from herself: her marriage, the fate of her friends, some adolescent dalliance with a young lad and so forth. This is not so much the story of her life retold, but more her attempt to understand her life, the decisions she made and the influences upon her. During this time, she considers and revisits her past. In fact, Nora also has pneumonia and spends the first weeks of her return in bed recovering. Nora Porteous has returned from several decades spent in England, because she has run out of options, of places to escape to, and this house was the bequest of her sister, to her nephew, not to be sold in Nora’s lifetime. I press back my shoulders and make first for the living room. It is the shape of an old woman who began to call herself old before she really was, partly to get in first and partly out of a fastidiousness about the word ‘elderly’, but who is now really old. Through the long mirror in the big black hall stand I see a shape pass. Nora is in her late 70s and describes herself as old. She begins her story with her return to her childhood home in Brisbane.

Tirra lirra by the river