Illywhacker_ A Novel Part 12

The figure landed with a thud on the gra.s.s beyond the canna lilies.

It said: "Hoof."

Molly McGrath was beset with hot p.r.i.c.kling skin and a thundering heart which she tried to still with the pressure of her hand. She saw her daughter stand, and saw her arm hang like a broken wing.

Molly McGrath whimpered and curled her fifty-year old body into a shaking ball beneath the sheets.

When Jack McGrath arrived home, triumphant from his negotiations in Colac, he had great difficulty in persuading his wife to leave her bed. The slightly fixed smile she brought to the table made him feel very uneasy indeed.

38.

I find myself, with Phoebe in mid-air, wondering about Mrs Kentwell's nipples, and whether they were ever sucked by man or child, and by G.o.d one is tempted to imagine her little black-suited cricket of a brother with his soft child's lips sucking at them, snorting and moaning, and Mrs Kentwell's teeth in a gla.s.s on the dresser, but I can't stretch to it, and will content myself with more or less established facts.

Jonathon Oakes, Mrs Kentwell's brother, stole letters.

He was twice arrested, but never charged. He followed the postman like a nervous dog, always at a distance, hiding in the gateways, behind hedges, dipping into unknown letterboxes in hope of news. He also had two post office boxes of his own, to which certain private correspondences were addressed.

It is easy enough to understand why he got himself into this state, because Mrs Kentwell ruled the house in Western Avenue with an ivory-handled paper knife on which was engraved the image of an elephant-headed G.o.d from India.

On the day in question, Jonathon Oakes was doing his rounds and Mrs Kentwell was taking tea alone in the drawing room. She poured with a steady hand and placed the cup and saucer to her left. She then slit open each of the morning's letters with her paper knife. She removed the stamps and placed them in a neat pile and then removed the contents of each envelope. Those from her friends in England she placed on the top, those from a.s.sam (there were two) were placed underneath. The two local letters were for her brother but she would, as usual, read them before he did (which would not be until she had dealt with matters in a.s.sam and England). He was far too timid a fellow to protest at this high-handedness, but not such a dull one that he would not take his own compensation.

As Alice Kentwell concentrated on parish problems in a village in Kent, her brother was puffing up the hill from his morning's work, anxious to get home before he was soaked by rain. Phoebe, meanwhile, was flying from the roof.

Mrs Kentwell looked up just in time to witness Phoebe's fall. She stood, immediately, subst.i.tuted paper knife for umbrella and strode out on to the veranda in the style of a woman about to lay low a marauding snake. She tapped the metal point of the umbrella up and down on the wooden floor. She hissed. The naked figure of Phoebe McGrath ran with its rag of a broken arm, while the umbrella played an angry tattoo.

Mrs Kentwell was not astonished. She was beyond astonishment. Western Avenue, she decided, must stand up and fight if it was to remain anything at all.

She stood on the veranda, a tall straight figure in severe black which had begun as mourning for a dead husband and now seemed to represent a different mourning altogether. Mrs Kentwell mourned the lost standards of English civilization which wilted and died in this society of Irish peasants and jumped-up c.o.c.kneys.

She was still on the veranda, a black sentry with a black umbrella, when yours truly, Herbert Badgery, the ruffian aviator, walked across the roof of the McGrath house and climbed down a fig tree, arranged clothes, and strode out of sight around the north side of the house which had once been known as "Wirralee".

She tapped the umbrella once, a full stop to everything, and returned to her letters whose fine calligraphy danced before her eyes, unravelling before the pull of her anger.

39.

When Phoebe fell from the slippery roof she knew, before she hit the ground, that her life was ruined. As the real world rushed up to meet her, she knew she was not brave enough to be what she would like to be. In mid-air, naked, she wished for death, her chest crushed, her heart pierced, her legs snapped like quail bones. Her feelings were not those of a radical, Bohemian, free-lover, but a seventeen-year-old girl in Geelong who faces social ruin.

When her arm cracked she knew it broken. She leapt to her feet. The light was shining into her mother's window the wrong way, and she could not see Molly, only the reflection of her own nakedness. She was winded.

She heard Mrs Kentwell's umbrella tattoo. They locked eyes a second: the naked girl and the black soldier with the umbrella rifle. She moaned as she ran across the veranda in full sight of two Dodges which were racing fast along Western Avenue. One blew its horn.

d.a.m.n them, d.a.m.n them, d.a.m.n them all.

Yet before she had closed her bedroom door behind her, a change had come over my beloved who was no longer wishing for death but already making plans for her survival.

It is no struggle to imagine the desperate alibis that came to her-half-formed jelly-like things with no proper legs or faces, desperate creatures that fell to powder when inspected, invisible cloaks with holes in them. They swarmed through the sea of pain as she awaited her mother's inevitable arrival. The arm was useless. She dressed none the less. She bit into her lip to stop the hurt. She had mud on her bottom. She managed to get herself inside a dress, and in all this desperation she was careful to choose a yellow dress that was very similar to the one she had abandoned on the roof.

Inept stories came to her, e.g. she had gone on to the roof to fix a tile; she had taken off her dress to avoid ruining it in the rain; worn no underwear for similar reason.

No, d.a.m.n it.

When the knock on the door came she was still not ready.

"Come in," she said brightly.

She prepared her face for her mother, opened the door with her good arm, and found not Molly, but me, my face livid with fear, my hands trembling.

"Go away," she hissed, "for G.o.d's sake."

I was so pleased to see her in one piece, alive, felt such relief that I was faint and wanted to sit down. I opened my mouth and croaked relief.

"Your b.u.t.tons are undone. Go away." She pushed at me. She was more than my equal. She was definitely my superior, for she had, at last, a plan, flimsy, fragile, but one she would make work by the sheer force of her green-eyed will. "I am not in the house," she whispered. "Take them to sit in the parlour at lunchtime and watch watch the esplanade." the esplanade."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes, but did you hear me? Then please, I beg you, do what I say."

She closed the door and locked it. I did up my b.u.t.tons as Jack skidded the Hispano Suiza to a halt and left a new set of skid marks on the bright green lawn.

40.

The morning's drizzle had turned into heavy rain and the wagon driver with his high load of turnips huddled inside the black oilskin while his fox terrier ran along beneath.

The rain bit into her, sweeping across a bay so hateful that anyone could see the town was right to turn its back on it.

"So much the better," she thought, "so much the better for me to run in this, and slip." But when she came around the corner of Martha Street where she had waited for her wet-gla.s.sed wrist-watch to bring its hands to one o'clock, the pain was so intense that she almost fainted. She was soaked through and shivering. She stopped and huddled against one of the esplanade's few trees.

At the other end of the avenue a small grey figure with an umbrella battled into the wind.

It was one minute past one. She prayed her audience were a.s.sembled in the parlour, that some talk about aeroplanes would not distract them from her fall.

Jonathon Oakes, the Kentwells' brother, beat into the wind with his illicit letters bulging fat inside the pocket of his waistcoat. He did not lift his umbrella. He was nearly home. He would run the bath and read his letters in delicious privacy.

Phoebe seized this chance that fate had thrown up. She waited for the umbrella to come a little closer to her parents' house before she began to run.

Every step jolted her. She ran with a pitiful "oh, oh, oh" which she said to herself for comfort, a soft cotton-wool bandage of sound around the pain.

Jonathon Oakes had little warning (just an "oh, oh, oh") before Phoebe McGrath collided with him and screamed with pain.

For a second he believed he had speared the girl with his umbrella.

41.

Molly McGrath remained in the parlour while the men carried in her wounded daughter. People afterwards remarked to themselves on the curious stillness of the mother who would normally have darted about the room in hysterical activity, billing, cooing, ooohing, and making far too much noise and flutter for most people's taste.

She remained seated by the electric fire with the flex wound round her ankle (a tangle so odd that no one dared point it out to her) and smiled a fixed smile at Mr Oakes who had a small brandy to settle himself down.

She smiled the same smile at the doctor who arrived at short notice with his luncheon gravy still wet on his tie.

She smiled the same fixed smile at the pale, brave-chinned daughter who, lying in state on rugs and pillows in the parlour, shuddered a little before such icy radiance, imagining that her mother had seen through her deception.

She need not have worried. It was the sort of smile you save for the Devil, an attempt at sarcasm in the face of provocative coincidence.

42.

It was not even Easter and winter had come to Ryrie Street. The owners of T Models put up their side curtains. The vendors in Anderson's Fruit and Produce Markets held cauliflowers in large red hands and the bottle-oh with the cleft tongue rode his wagon wrapped tight in an old grey blanket and had his bottle-oh cries blown westwards before the icy gusts of wind. The big houses on the coast at Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads had been closed down. The jazz bands had returned to Melbourne and the summer's flappers were safely subdued (on weekdays at least) inside the heavy uniforms of The Hermitage, Morongo, Merton Hall and MLC.

I dressed in my suit and walked along Ryrie Street like a gentleman, picking out the puddles with the point of my Shaftesbury Patented Umbrella. A connoisseur of walks might have detected that although my walk was indeed the walk of a gentleman, it also exhibited subtle but obvious signs of depression. What had changed in the walk was not easy to detect, may have been nothing more than a slight sc.r.a.pe of the sole on every third stride, a refusal to pick up the feet properly, a tendency to stumble on uneven paving.

I was in love, and although I had used the term a hundred times before (would have said that I was in love with Mrs O'Hagen had you asked) had, in short, misunderstood, misused, and abused the term, confused it with l.u.s.t or friendship or the simple pleasures of a warm breast, or a wild whooping f.u.c.k on a river bank, I had not known what I was talking about.

For two weeks I had groaned in my sleep and tossed and turned. I was denied the roof. I was denied the merest civility as my plaster-armed beloved affected normality.

Did she blame me for her fall? Did she hate me for jeopardizing her life? I did not know, could get no answer, merely watch her as she took up occupations she had previously rejected. She had taken to socializing with the sons of squatters once again. She had gone, with high hemlines, to "At Homes" and b.a.l.l.s, and left me jealous, half mad, to cluck with her parents who were concerned she might be mixing with a fast crowd. I shared their concern. I made it worse. I rubbed at it until it was red and blistered. I wished them to order her to cease, not just the squatters but also the history lessons. I knew what those history lessons were about. But Jack was indulgent, and Molly distracted, and I could get no commitment from them to do anything.

I tried to corner Phoebe in hall or music room, but I could get no rea.s.surance. She hissed caution and pa.s.sion all at once and did nothing to calm my fears. I attempted dangerous embraces in the bathroom and was savagely repelled. I tried to catch her eyes between spoons of porridge but she refused the very possibility and smiled dutifully at her father and asked serious questions about capital, loans, the structure of companies and the future of an aircraft factory in Geelong.

Her dedication to this deception was remarkable, and was so thoroughly undertaken that, hisses notwithstanding, I felt no hope.

I lost my appet.i.te and could not summon up sufficient interest in the aircraft factory I had so carelessly set in motion. I was forced to imitate my former self, counterfeit an enthusiasm to match that of my host who, in antic.i.p.ation of our backer's visit, wanted me to tramp around the bush looking at timbers. He had the hang of this aspect very well. We would want mountain ash or white ash for spars; blue fig for struts; cudgerie for the fuselage. He was becoming quite knowledgeable on the subject and telephoned a man at the Forest Commission who promised to conduct tests on our timbers to see they met British Aeronautical Standards. He wanted to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s but he did not tell me it was because c.o.c.ky Abbot had his doubts. He did not wish to offend me.

"What is it, Badgery?" he would ask. "Cat got your tongue?"

"I'm down," I admitted, "there is no denying it."

"You'll see," Jack cried, clapping his hands against his knees, not worrying that his spilt Scotch was lifting polish from the table, not noticing that his wife was sitting alone in the parlour with electric flex wound absently around her wrists, encircled by electricity travelling to and fro from the crackling wireless. "My word, you'll see."

I wished to Christ he would leave me alone, because I had other things on my mind which had no room for Great Plans, or Vision, which in the end have never been worth a tinker's fart in comparison with a woman.

I was busy trying to establish what the papers call A Love Nest.

Indeed, the only thing that kept me from shuffling my feet like a tramp as I walked down Ryrie Street was that I had arranged a room above a Chinese laundry. The room had a bed and a washbasin and was three shillings a week with laundry thrown in. The Chinaman knew what I was up to, and I would say he did not approve, but he let me have the room none the less, and it gave me the strength to get on with other matters. I bought a new jute sack for the snake. I stopped at Griffith's for the Geelong Advertiser Geelong Advertiser which contained my third article on the future of the aeroplane in the Western District of Victoria. Although my story contained such attractive fancies as the transport of wool by air, it was remarkable for its dullness, a lack of enthusiasm that set it apart from its two predecessors which had, if I say so myself, shone forth with a luminosity of style that even the editor's meddling could not diminish. which contained my third article on the future of the aeroplane in the Western District of Victoria. Although my story contained such attractive fancies as the transport of wool by air, it was remarkable for its dullness, a lack of enthusiasm that set it apart from its two predecessors which had, if I say so myself, shone forth with a luminosity of style that even the editor's meddling could not diminish.

I pa.s.sed the post office as Mr Jonathon Oakes scurried down the front steps, tucking a large white envelope into his waistcoat pocket. I crossed the street, stepping carefully across a pile of steaming horse dung which lay between the two shining tramtracks.

The draughtsman's office was in an alleyway off Ryrie Street. As I mounted the steel fire-escape I was already at war with the man. I entered the office without knocking, slapping the newspaper briskly against my leg.

It was a poky office divided by a large counter. The draughtsman, with unfounded optimism in regard to his future prospects, had left far more room for his customers than for himself. He huddled at his desk. He was like a thin spider with his web on a dusty window. He squinted at his plans through small steel spectacles.

"Shop."

"I saw you, Mr Badgery," the draughtsman said, s.p.a.cing his words to coincide with four thin-ruled lines of graphite.

There is an arrogance that seems to come naturally to a certain type of Englishman and this one had it. There was nothing in his gloomy little office above the alley that justified it. There was nothing in his bearing, his physique or his dress that could explain it. He picked up a roll of plans from the desk and brought them to the counter. The undersides of his pale wrists were dirty and his cuffs were frayed.

My eyes narrowed. My squiggly mouth straightened itself into an ungenerous line which left no trace of the lower lip that so entranced Phoebe and along which she had loved to run the tip of her red-cuticled finger.

"There is just one particular," he said (I stared at the pale scalp that shone through his thin black hair), "in which I have not been able to oblige."

"Oh, yes."

"In the matter of the copyright which is already registered and held, you see," the pointing finger had three long black hairs on its bony knuckle, "by a Mr Bradfield of Sydney."

"Do you recall my instructions?"

"Oh, exactly, Mr Badgery."

The draughtsman removed his spectacles and cleaned them with his handkerchief. The watery eyes, thus revealed, showed no respect for his customer.

"My instructions were that you should put my name on the plan in respect," I said, "in respect of the substantial changes I have made to the aileron designs."

Of course I had stolen the d.a.m.n plans. Never mind that my method of getting them had been clever or that Bradfield himself was never able to get a backer to make his six-seater B3, and that I was, in this way, actually doing the man a favour by attempting to make the craft he had laboured so long on.

Bradfield would have sympathized with me. He would not have grudged me his drawings, his technical data or the stress diagrams and calculations which he had, with typical thoroughness, had checked and pa.s.sed by Captain Frank Barnwell, the man who designed the Bristol Fighter.

There was only one reason Bradfield could not make his B3-British interests didn't want him to.

Now another member of the master race was trying to do the same to me. I held my temper nicely: "You don't understand, it would appear, that these drawings you have executed are the foundation stone on which the Australian aircraft industry shall be built."