Illywhacker

by Peter Carey

  It was a noisy and confusing day. Emma tried to feed the baby behind a plywood screen but was interrupted by children wanting to know how much the cockatoos cost. She had stained the front of her dress and was embarrassed. The proprietor of the sandwich shop, a woman with a growth on her hand the size of an apple, came to tell her about the war and all the men rushing off to enlist. Emma murmured vaguely, nodding her head, patting Henry regularly on the back, feeling the damp spreading from his napkin on to her dress. She was not worrying that her husband would leave her to fight a war. It was bad enough that he was away for two hours. She was in a panic about technical questions.

  A murmur did not suffice. Perspiration formed on her lip and she observed, helplessly, an old lady poking her soft pink fingers into cages where they had no place. The bed was not made. The kitchen was littered with millet and cake crumbs. The whole flat stank of bad apples and overripe horsemeat and, although they said you couldn't get pregnant when you were breast-feeding, she knew she was.

  Through all this confusion the goanna wandered and was, as usual, quite at home. He could be trusted to stay within the confines of the shop and he was learning, Emma thought, not to frighten the birds who died easily from what the vet called "trauma". It seemed never to have occurred to the goanna that he was a prisoner, rather that he had blundered into some cornucopia and his manner, although hardly charming, was amiable enough. He pressed himself against the bubbling aquariums and blinked a slow, meaningless, reptile's blink.

  But on the day that war broke out all this was to change. First the woman from the sandwich shop returned to say that Mr Badgery was enlisting. He had been seen, she said, at Victoria Barracks.

  Emma dissented, struggling with a napkin pin on the shop counter, watching two boys poking at the goanna's pale underbelly.

  "No," she told the boys, but lacked confidence.

  "With two galahs", the woman from the sandwich shop said, "in a cage, in a queue."

  Only when the galahs were described in detail did Emma realize that the story was correct.

  The front of her dress was stained with milk and damp with pee, but she did not pause to change, nor, when she issued her instructions, did she murmur. She put the baby firmly on her hip. "Look after the shop," she said to the woman from the sandwich shop. "I'll be back in half a mo."

  "It's the lunch hour. My Sylvie's by herself."

  "I'll tell her where you are," said Emma Badgery and pushed herself through a panic of children's legs into the confusion of George Street where the war was declaring itself, flapping on the wings of newspapers.

  It was then that the goanna who had, perhaps, been prodded one time too many, decided to make its move. Under the illusion that it was a free agent it dragged its leathery belly along the cool tiles of the arcade, passed safely through a forest of thin legs and got itself as far as the fruit shop, right on George Street itself. The fruiterer, a young fox-faced man, took fright and slammed down the mesh grille with which he locked his shop at night.

  The goanna was alarmed and climbed to safety. He got to the top of the grille and stayed there, thus preventing the fruiterer from opening his door again. The fruiterer could afford to wait a minute or two, but he was not prepared to see good business pass him by. He therefore began poking at the goanna with a broom handle. His wife managed to sell two bananas through the grille, but had her situation exploited by the customer who walked away without giving money in exchange.

  The escaped prisoner was dashed to the floor with a broom stick and set upon by a passing fox-terrier.

  The monitor reared up and stood on its back legs. Its throat inflated and it hissed like a dragon. The fox-terrier was small and fat. It had its teeth into the monitor's front leg and hung there, its back legs quite off the ground. No one passing seemed to notice. The monitor was six foot tall and it brought up its back legs and raked the fox-terrier's belly. The foxie yelped, dropped, walked a few yards, and collapsed, its green-grey intestines spilling out while it died, twitching, in the George Street gutter. It was Sylvie from the sandwich shop who put the rubbish bin down over the goanna. The greengrocer then helped her turn it and put the lid on. He swept its amputated leg out into George Street.

  The Gould's Monitor was never quite the same again and all because, as Emma pointed out, Charles Badgery had gone off to enlist on behalf of the King of England.

  26

  Emma never did like those old toast-rack trams. She did not understand which was the green line and which the red. She was confused by the hieroglyphics they displayed on their front. She did not like the way they threatened to throw you out the door on bends. She had organized her life so that she avoided them completely.

  But on this day she had no choice. She and the baby travelled by tram to Victoria Barracks. The army had set up a tent at the front gates and the men all queued to have their particulars taken down. She smelled the smell all right. She did not like it, but she would not be beaten by it. She pushed her way to where the odour was strongest, inside the tent itself, and demanded to see her husband. The men smiled at her. She saw the smiles, distant detached things like little red purses full of teeth. It was some time before she could be made to understand that if her husband was not in the queue and not in the tent then he had already been "done".

  She turned to face the terrors of the trams again. She was dizzy. She went to a milk bar at the tram stop and asked for a glass of water. It was unthinkable that he would leave her. He had promised, in a church. She did not wait for the water. There was no time. She was dizzy like the other time, but worse. She was his possum, his mouse, his cherub, his delight. She rode down Oxford Street in a daze and when she found herself close enough to home – she recognized Hyde Park – she got out of the tram and began to walk. It was not her strong legs or countrywoman's walk that drew comments from passers-by. It was the unfocused look in her big round eyes. The pin (never properly clipped) dropped from the napkin in Liverpool Street, and the napkin itself flopped to the footpath on the corner of Pitt Street. There was something in her manner that prevented it being returned to her.

  She pushed through the schoolchildren outside the shop and, finding her place behind the desk already taken by the lady with the growth, crawled quietly into the big cage that rightfully belonged to the goanna. The goanna, however, was in a rubbish bin behind the counter and so Emma was able to stay where she was, curled up, quite still, while conferences took place around her. The jeweller's nephew tried to speak to her but she did not seem to hear. It was decided best to leave it to her husband and so they put up the closed sign and shut the door.

  Charles did not get home until six at night. He had been rejected from the tent because of his hearing and told, loudly, that there was no point in his name being written down. The rabbitoh persuaded him to go out to Bankstown where there was a fellow with his backyard full of golden-shouldered parrots. So when he arrived home he had the gang-gangs and a pair of golden-shouldered parrots as well. He did not realize anything was wrong.

  He busied himself making the gang-gangs at home, whistling to himself all the while. He assumed Emma to be upstairs with the baby and took the pair of parrots up to show her. When he found the flat empty he came downstairs again and only when his son, asleep on his wife's breast, gurgled, did Charles see the situation.

  He squatted before the cage.

  "Emma," he said.

  She murmured.

  "Emma, what are you doing?"

  Emma was not so dizzy any more. She drank some water from a bowl. He could not go and leave her without water. When it got cold in the night, she moved enough to let him push a blanket in around her.

  27

  Charles did not know what to do. He did not dare telephone a doctor in case they took her from him and locked her away in an asylum. He was still only eighteen and had no experience of such things. He was very close to panic and because he was so frightened himself he adopted a very firm approach that gave no indication of his tru
e feelings.

  He prepared a meal and set a place for her. He told her the meal was there, but he did not bring it down to her.

  That night he slept on his own side of the bed with his hearing aid connected and turned up loud. In the morning he found Emma's side of the bed still empty, disturbed only by his dream-churned limbs. He had a headache. He rose wearily, tucked his hearing aid into his pyjama pocket, slipped his big feet into felt slippers (once the very symbol of his perfect happiness) and padded into the kitchen. He sat on a bin of millet and stared for a long time at the meal he had left out for her. The heavy mantel clock struck seven. He stood. He examined the meal closely and found two tiny scratch marks where a mouse had sampled the congealed white fat on the plate. Towards the centre of the table were two small droppings.

  A cacophony of cockatoos vibrated the diaphragm of his ear. He could make out, in the midst of this din, the peculiar calls of the gang-gangs, cries they would normally have made in flight, but he was too depressed and frightened to take pleasure from anything so simple and everything that might have delighted him on a normal day now caused him pain, even – in the bathroom -the sight of Emma's worn-out toothbrush produced an agony that could not have been greater had she actually died.

  He washed his hands fastidiously and returned to the chops. He fetched a sharp knife and began, slowly, to cut them into cubes of a size that might be acceptable to a puppy. Then, with one chop still to go, he changed his mind, laid down his knife, tied up his dressing gown, licked his larded fingers, and went downstairs.

  Emma already had the baby at her breast. She looked up at him and murmured. There was nothing mad about her face, nor the slightest sign of any hostility. But when she made goldfish motions with her lips there was a look in her eyes that did not go with kissing.

  "Emma," Charles said, squatting beside her. "Emma, I'm going to make you a really good breakfast."

  Emma made goldfish kisses.

  "But you've got to cut this out. Stop it. Stop it, Emmie. You've got to come upstairs and eat like a human."

  No matter what words he said, his voice betrayed him and Emma saw that she did not have to do anything. She showed him her gums and her teeth but her eyes remained alien, connected to rooms full of curtained thoughts.

  "Please, Emmie."

  She frowned and shifted her bulk within the tight confines of the cage. At this stage she still wanted to get out. She was hungry. She wanted to eat bacon and eggs and chops and then have kisses. She wanted everything to be normal, as it had been before, and she did not guess that she was already clearing a path for her emotions to travel along, that the path would soon be a highway, cambered, sealed, with concrete guttering along its edges. She wrenched the baby gently and shifted him to her other breast and felt his lips begin their pleasant rhythmic contractions.

  "All right," said Charles, standing so suddenly that the guinea-pigs next door suffered a nearly fatal terror. "All right," he said, stamping his foot, causing the ceiling of the fishes' world to see-saw, sickeningly, upsetting the sea perch which now began to bite the rufous redfish, tearing its pretty tail which flowed behind like a bloodied bride's dress.

  "All right," he said, "if that's what you want."

  He started to clean out the finches' cage, then, with tears streaming down his face, slammed the door shut.

  He inspected his cockatoos and found the Major Mitchell already biting its feathers so severely that its glory was almost gone. The moth-eaten bird only reflected his emotions.

  "All right," he said. "All right."

  Emma saw his face as it came back to her cage. It was red and terrible. The eyes were bloodshot and the forehead creased. He squatted in front of the cage and groaned and Emma felt a pulse of pure pleasure. It did not last long. There was fear as well, fear mixed up with it, but the feeling was lovely. Those great red hands clenched and unclenched as if they would circle her white neck and throttle her and those brimming wet eyes were worshipping her, begging her. Henry Underhill's daughter had never experienced such a thing. She felt trembling weakness and steely power, was tiny and huge, was a wren within an all-protecting hand that might, at any moment, crush her.

  Charles did not know what he had just done. His temper left him on the stairs. He went to the kitchen and fussed over the second chop, cutting it even more finely than the first. He placed the meat in a cereal bowl together with some mashed-up vegetables. He brought the offering downstairs and placed it in front of his wife's cage.

  When she saw the bowl, Emma knew that she was stronger than the men in the tent. Her big straight toes curled and stretched. She murmured her thanks, but did not eat, letting him guess that she would prefer a drink first. He fetched milk and poured it into another bowl. This she drank, not like an animal, but like a two-handed primate.

  "Fork," she said and Charles was so pleased to hear a clear word from her that he pounded up the stairs and down again. Emma felt the heavy footsteps. They set up reverberations which lasted much longer than the simple journey upstairs. She felt the eggshell edges of a pure white ping-pong ball that would not stop bouncing.

  She became languorous and heavy-lidded. She accepted soap and water. She had no objection to fresh napkins and pins, but she had no inclination to abandon such a pleasant place.

  "Emma," Charles said. "Emma, it's going to be a big day." His calf muscles were weary and so he kneeled beside her. "Come on, fair's fair. We have a shop to open."

  Charles did not, at that moment, give a damn about the shop. He wished only for everything to be as it had been before. He was not saying what he really felt, and this did not matter, because Emma was not listening to the words themselves, only the emotions behind them.

  "I can't open the shop and stay here with you, Honeybunch. Honeybunch, are you listening? I can't do business with my wife in a cage. Why don't I help you upstairs? Do you want a cage? I'll carry it upstairs for you. Would you like that?"

  He knelt before her in his dressing gown. It was a rich diet for anyone brought up in Henry Underhill's house.

  28

  There were already people at the door who wished to be admitted. Charles was in his dressing gown and he had not shaved. The customers rattled the door handle and poked their fingers through the brass letterflap and although he did not wish them to come into his shop he was like a man who is incapable of leaving a telephone ringing – he opened the door.

  In order to distract them from his wife he told them many facts about cockatoos, e. g. that the pink cockatoo is just another name for the Major Mitchell, that its scientific name is Catcua leadbetteri, that it is less popular as a pet than you might expect because it cannot learn English or (ha ha) Spanish either.

  He succeeded in getting rid of customers almost as soon as they arrived. Only the jeweller's nephew would not be easily put off. He went straight to the cage and was surprised to find Emma where he had last seen her.

  The young man made Charles feel both uncouth and guilty. He could think of nothing to say in his own defence.

  The fox-faced fruiterer came next. He also handed Charles a sealed envelope with a signed petition inside it. Charles was, by then, so distracted that he did not even realize that the fruiterer was angry with him, and when the man left he locked the door behind him and hung up the "closed" sign. He sat behind the counter. Emma blew him goldfish kisses. He was frightened.

  29

  Leah slept on an old couch in the wide passage that led from the front door to the living room. She was careful not to be seen there by visitors but anyone passing down that echoing passage could hardly miss the evidence that the couch was occupied. There were folded rugs and pillows stacked neatly. Beneath the bed there were glasses of water (usually two, sometimes three), an ashtray, a writing pad, a pen, a Westclox alarm clock with a cracked glass and a loud tick.

  It would be misleading to say that she slept here, because she slept so little. She napped, on and off, with the light always on. If those comrades who thought the
mselves her friends could have seen her they would doubtless have been shocked – all this insomnia and secret note-making. Sometimes she was shocked herself. She was a light living on its own reserves, a snake devouring its own tail. She could not see where the nourishment came for her feverish imagination. She had never thought herself inventive or clever. Yet now she had a nicotine-stained callus on her writer's finger and spent her night making orange groves and children, views from windows and waving fields of talk.

  Sometimes she thought it was useless and wasteful but she knew, at the same time, that it was not useless and wasteful to knit, say, a sweater to send to someone one loved. She looked at her face in her compact, peering at three a. m. for signs of selfishness. Sometimes she found them, sometimes not. Her view of her face is not worth a pinch of shit. Let me tell you it is not a selfish face. Even her comrades could tell you that much. But who would expect to see selfishness anyway? You might, more reasonably, expect to see a young woman already marked by years of waste and disappointment, to see a face corroded by her husband's acid jibes. Yet there is no trace of bitterness or disappointment and those flinty features of hers, which should have become gaunter and beakier, have done quite the opposite. The eyes, which were once so steely and unforgiving, now show something gentler. Also she has developed a way of lifting her chin and raising her eyes, an expectant look, as if someone has just knocked on the door and she is looking up to see who it might be.