Illywhacker_ A Novel Part 13

The draughtsman allowed himself a thin smile at the very thought of such a thing. "Legally, Mr Badgery, a very shaky foundation."

It was very quiet in the office. A horse and dray rattled down the laneway, its driver singing "Annie Laurie".

"Have you ever been to Grafton?" I asked, leaning across the counter as one might lean across a bar.

"No," the draughtsman said, and blinked.

"As you enter Grafton from the south," I said pleasantly, "there is a rather large house on the left-hand side, a big stone place with leadlight windows, three houses before the post office. There is a gentleman who resides there, a Mr Regan, the Town Clerk of Grafton. Perhaps you know him."

"No."

"A pity, because you would know that Mr Regan has only four fingers on his left hand."

The draughtsman tried to look me in the eye, but could not hold it. He blew his nose to hide his confusion. "Why do you tell me this?" he said.

"Because it was I who tore one off," I smiled. "Just like a chicken wing."

"You are threatening me?"

"The same in his case," I said. "Now would you please place my name as the designer of the craft." And I spelt my name out for him slowly.

This Regan story was, at least for the moment, a lie. Unnecessary, of course, but I enjoyed it. I liked the detail of it, the quick fabrication of the large stone house and the nine-fingered inhabitant within, forever sitting at a table which, although I did not trouble the Englishman with the details, was set for dinner. I silently encircled the house with elms and dotted daffodils across its brilliant lawns while the draughtsman hesitated before his vision of the stricken Regan whose four-fingered hand was torn and b.l.o.o.d.y.

"I will need this amendment by next Tuesday afternoon," I said, putting on my hat. "You will oblige me by delivering them to Mr McGrath's house in Western Avenue."

It was because of this visit to the draughtsman that many people in Geelong said that I was a Chicago-style mobster. It was merely one of the conflicting stories I would leave behind me when I finally departed.

43.

Molly unplugged herself, released her anxious coils of wire, and recaptured the kitchen from Bridget who was bidden to make stuffing for the goose. Bridget watched her mistress sew up the goose with too much thread and drop knives and forks in her hurry to have it done with.

Jack arranged chairs in the music room which were destined to be unused (the meeting with the squatters would never move beyond the dining room). He ran new wires to the front porch and hooked them up to a globe of extraordinary dimensions which would give the backers a floodlit entrance and bathe the inside of Jonathon Oakes's bedroom whether he liked it or not.

The snake, confused by winter heating, shed its skin out of season and began to search for frogs which were not forthcoming. It moved at summer speed, its tongue flicking, and bit its discarded skin in irritation.

"It knows something is up," Jack insisted. "Animals can feel these things and if you put it down to heating you are missing half the point."

He was inclined to philosophize on this but I had too much on my mind to take pleasure from conversations about snakes or knots or wheels. I had to take the Morris Farman down to Colac to pick up a squatter for the meeting, an easy enough a.s.signment, but I also had business with Phoebe in Geelong. Time was running short, and I left Jack at the dining-room table, rolling a rubber band off the plans which he had already made worn and grubby in his enthusiasm.

44.

I flicked open my fob watch. It was already two o'clock. I should have been at Barwon Common.

I stood on one side of Little Maude Street, Phoebe on the other. She was in front of the milliner's, her plastered arm in a cerise silk scarf which did not make her the least less attractive, not to me, not, I a.s.sumed, to the lanky boy who had come, the night before, to drive her to a gathering in an American Stutz. She wore the latest straight-line dress, a dazzling yellow, against which her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pushed most attractively and below which her wonderful calves (calves she had wrapped around me, calves I had licked and stroked) were there for total strangers to have dirty dreams about. I ached to hold her, but was totally forbidden.

When Stu O'Hagen drove between us in a brand new T Model with his straw-hatted wife sitting proudly beside him I did not even see him. When Jonathon Oakes (whose pockets included a stolen letter his own sister had written to Jack McGrath Esquire) tipped his hat to me I was unaware of him. Only later, in the air above Warn Ponds, would I recognize these incidents as things from a dream, forgotten on waking, can be remembered later in the day.

Phoebe would not speak to me in public, but she had agreed to inspect the room. Her terms had been clear, hissed quickly. She would inspect it on her own, without me. She knew things that I did not. She had already intercepted one letter from Mrs Kentwell, a terrifying thing with an ultimatum like a scorpion's tail. As for telling me why she was dancing with boys she had once rejected, she a.s.sumed that I would know exactly why she did it.

Yet there I was, across the street in front of the ironmonger's, like some moon-eyed boy, and there was Jonathon Oakes, the wrinkled spy, picking his fussy way along the footpath, his little head turning this way and that, observing everything.

The pig-tailed Chinaman was watching too. He stood in the doorway of his laundry and Phoebe was her father's daughter because she saw, not a man, but a cartoon from the Bulletin: Bulletin: John Chinaman outside his den. John Chinaman outside his den.

I could stand it no more. I began to walk across the street towards her. The sweating Clydesdales of the brewer dray missed me by inches and the c.o.c.kney driver's abuse fell upon love-deaf ears.

Phoebe, having stopped to see me safe, turned angrily upon her heel and carried her broken arm sedately into Maude Street. I reached the milliner's and stopped. Phoebe pretended to be interested in something in a baker's window on the corner-let's call it a dead fly, beside a tray of vanilla slices. I turned and saw that the Chinaman had come to stand in the middle of Little Maude Street to watch our love dance. I walked back towards the grinning sticky-beak who took a few steps backwards before fleeing for the steamy safety of his laundry. When I turned to look for Phoebe, she was no longer looking at flies or vanilla slices and Maude Street was empty except for a tram and a young man in a natty suit swinging on the crank handle of his Chevrolet. The Chevrolet was straddled squarely across the tramlines and the Newtown tram was bearing down on it, its bell clanging loudly.

I felt empty and angry all at once. I walked down Yarra Street to Little Mallop Street and then turned into Moorabool Street with the intention of going to the airfield. It was market day and the streets were filled with the low-crowned, broad-brimmed hats of farmers. They poured in and out of the ABC Grill Rooms and Cake Shop where I, on a happier day, had bought Bridget her ice-cream cone. On an inspiration I pushed my way in and found my frightened lover sitting at a booth all alone with a dish of vanilla ice-cream whose melted mounds she prodded with a silver spoon held awkwardly in her left hand.

It was now twenty minutes past two. The welcoming committee at Colac were already donning their hats and fussing with their bows. I sat down opposite her. She would not look at me. She mashed her ice-cream with her spoon.

"You didn't even look at it," I said. "I paid three shillings and you didn't even look."

"The Chinaman was watching," she whispered, keeping her eyes on the puddling mess of ice-cream.

"Chinamen don't talk to anyone," I said, "except other Chinamen." I did not even have the fare for a tram to the Barwon Bridge. I would have to walk all the way.

"Please," I said. "For G.o.d's sake, have mercy."

"He saw," saw," she said. she said.

"Oh merciful Mother of G.o.d," I stood up. It was two twenty-three, "save me from the brave talk of little girls."

"You don't understand Geelong," she pleaded and I had to steel myself to stay angry in the face of those liquid green eyes. "It's not like Melbourne."

"I understand enough," I said, looking casually into the next booth and finding the most inquisitive eyes of Mrs Kentwell peering up from a pearly cup of milkless tea.

"Mrs Kentwell," I said, holding out the hat I was clasping to my chest.

She cut me dead.

As I strode from the ABC I realized that my flying suit was not at the hangar at Barwon Common but at Western Avenue. Stratoc.u.mulus clouds streaked feathers of ice crystals in the high blue sky.

I strode up the hill in Moorabool Street with a vigour that demanded attention which is how I got myself written up in the Reverend Mawson's sermon.

The reverend gentleman was gazing out of his leadlight window at All Saints Vicarage, his pen handle resting on his pendulous lower lip, when he saw a man of such vigour and optimism that he set to work immediately to embalm the image in his sermon. The congregation of All Saints next Sunday would all see and admire me in their mind's eye, a modern muscular Christian striding up the hill, his soul bursting with good Anglican intentions.

I brushed through the Reverend Mawson's demands as lightly as through a spider web. I strode past the Geelong West Fire Station, tipping my forty-shilling hat to the men outside. I pa.s.sed Kardinya Park where the tramline ended and where I had spent a dismal afternoon with the older McGraths, watching monkeys and worrying about Phoebe who had gone away with some people in a Dodge with a badly timed magneto. I pounded across the bridge on the Barwon River where a strong southerly cooled my sweating face too rapidly.

At Barwon Common I enlisted the help of a nearby cabinet maker to swing the prop. He swung it twice to draw fuel into the engine.

I switched on. "Contact."

The man (burly-armed, slow-witted) was lucky not to break his arm. I turned around in my seat to see the prop miss his arm by less than an inch.

I taxied down the b.u.mpy common without the benefit of gloves, goggles, flying suit, or even a cap.

I took off into the wind, banked, and followed the road up the Belmont Hill which lead out to the main Colac Road. It was now ten past three in the afternoon.

Flying is normally an interesting enough occupation to soothe the most troubled man, and I am not just speaking of the much-praised beauty of earth and sky, the people like ants, etc., etc. There is a lot of work involved in flying a craft like a Morris Farman, and it is good for a temper, much like chopping wood can be. But on this afternoon my eyes were watering in the wind and my hands were so cold that when I tried to open my fob watch I couldn't manage it. I did not like the Morris Farman. It seemed a slow, heavy, irritating plane and not worthy of me. This was not sn.o.bbishness. It was a fact: the Morris Farman was built as a trainer, and I was a long way from being a student. Ross Smith (who continued to get a three-inch par in the Geelong Advertiser Geelong Advertiser every day) would not have been seen dead in it and Bradfield's B3 was ten years ahead in every aspect. every day) would not have been seen dead in it and Bradfield's B3 was ten years ahead in every aspect.

I set my face into a concrete grin and cursed the head wind. All the way I battled to hold the craft in the turbulent sky. I slipped and skidded and, in the face of angry gusts, sometimes moved backwards rather than forwards.

I found the racecourse in Colac without much difficulty and I was momentarily soothed by the sight of a small crowd. It was only natural that I flew low over the ground (as the Shire Clerk's horses bolted in terror and carried his screaming wife and blissfully sleeping baby out towards Cemetery Hill) and did a little fancy flying in a belligerent sort of spirit, pushing the craft a little beyond its safe limits. The spruce-wood frame groaned and the rigging wires sang in the wind. If there was anyone below who was knowledgeable enough to sneer at the plane they would know, at least, that its pilot deserved something better.

I brought the craft in for a perfect landing and taxied to the waiting crowd of townspeople whose numbers had been somewhat depleted by the departure of a search party for the Shire Clerk's wife (the Shire Clerk himself had remained behind, explaining to anyone who would listen that duty compelled him).

Thus a certain confusion greeted me as I jumped from the plane: there were heads turned towards Cemetery Hill, loud shouts, odd cooees, the plucking fingers of the Shire Clerk and the potato farmer's hands of c.o.c.ky Abbot (hands which belied his status) which grasped mine to give me a hearty shake. The Shire Clerk made one or two attempts at an official welcome but eventually gave up and, feigning indifference, began to tweak at the rigging wires like a man called to tune an indifferent piano.

Although he was well past fifty, c.o.c.ky Abbot was a man of immense strength, famous for his ability to wrestle a steer and throw a bag of wheat. He had a huge head, a high forehead, a long nose, and a big round chin with an extraordinary dimple that I could not take my eyes from.

I hardly heard a word he said. There was too much noise, much grabbing, small boys likely to damage the craft. All I could think of was the dimple, and what a heavy man he was.

A second dimpled chin presented itself. I did not need to be told (although I was-we shook) that this was c.o.c.ky Abbot's son. This was a different animal entirely. I did not like this son. He wore an AIF badge and an Old Geelong Grammarian's tie. At the time I did not know what the tie represented, but the camel-hair coat, the military moustache, the way in which cane and gloves were held, all indicated that I was in the presence of an Imaginary Englishman.

The son handed me a small suitcase with the distant eyes of a man dealing with a chauffeur. I placed it in the pa.s.senger's compartment. I pulled a boy from the wing. A man with a bucket in his hand gave me a letter he wanted posted in Geelong. In other circ.u.mstances I would have blossomed in the face of these attentions and turned my eyes to meet those of the Colac beauties who hid their meanings beneath the shade of their hats. But I was late, my pa.s.senger was far too heavy, and I was cold and lovesick.

I was disappointed in Jack too. How could he make an Australian plane with Imaginary Englishmen? You would think c.o.c.ky Abbot a reasonable fellow until you met the son, and then you saw what was wrong with him. It was what happened in this country. The minute they began to make a quid they started to turn into Englishmen. c.o.c.ky Abbot was probably descended from some old c.o.c.kney lag, who had arrived here talking flash language, a pickpocket, a bread-stealer, and now, a hundred years later his descendants were dressing like his gaolers and torturers, disowning the language, softening their vowels, greasing their way into the plummy speech of the men who had ordered their ancestors lashed until the flesh had been dragged in bleeding strips from their naked backs.

The old man was as rough as bags but he was proud because he had sired an Englishman.

I lost the pair of them in the crowd and then turned to find them both sitting, side by side, in the plane. They were busily arranging rugs around themselves.

"What's this?" I demanded of the old man. "I was only picking up one pa.s.senger."

"I'm bringing the boy," c.o.c.ky Abbot said, producing a silver brandy flask and taking a swig. He wiped his mouth and pa.s.sed the flask to his son.

"It's too much weight," I said. The crowd pressed around, eager to hear.

"If you can't carry two men," c.o.c.ky Abbot said, "it beats me how you'll ever carry a bale of wool."

When I had envisaged an Australian-made aeroplane it was as a weapon against people like this and I felt an almost overpowering urge to walk away and leave them for the crowd to laugh at. I was so overcome by irritation that I did not know what I was likely to do next. I took the small bra.s.s rigging tightener from my pocket and walked around the craft. I tightened several struts which had been stretched by the aerobatics. It was only my desire for Phoebe that brought me back to the c.o.c.kpit. I seated myself and fussed with the hessian bags to make myself more comfortable.

"I'll need one of you blokes," I called back over my shoulder, "to swing the prop."

"Donaldson will do it," said the Imaginary Englishman, smiling pleasantly at the crowd.

The representative from the Colac Times Colac Times demanded my attention while c.o.c.ky Abbot called out: "Where's Donaldson?" demanded my attention while c.o.c.ky Abbot called out: "Where's Donaldson?"

The Shire Clerk, scanning the dusty road behind the grandstand for sign of his wife and child, was summonsed to the craft where, to general hilarity, he grasped the propeller in this fingernail-bitten hands.

I was too preoccupied with poor Donaldson to give the Colac Times Colac Times a decent interview. Donaldson was a small man, all b.u.m and pigeon toes, whose beard could not hope to hide the insecurity of his mouth which quailed before authority and cheeky children. He held the propeller and blushed the colour of a nerine plum. He knew that something bad would happen to him. a decent interview. Donaldson was a small man, all b.u.m and pigeon toes, whose beard could not hope to hide the insecurity of his mouth which quailed before authority and cheeky children. He held the propeller and blushed the colour of a nerine plum. He knew that something bad would happen to him.

The crowd gave him no mercy. "Come on, Donno," they yelled. "Show us your stuff."

"Push your pen."

"Swing it."

He pulled on the propeller twice. Nothing happened. The crowd hooted. They were as ignorant as any crowd: I was simply drawing fuel into the engine and the switch was on "off".

I turned to "switch on".

"Contact!" I yelled.

The Shire Clerk did not understand the terminology. He stared at me, bright red with mortification.

"Again," I yelled, "now!"

Donaldson's scream of pain must have been drowned by the engine, and it was only later, clipping my pars from the Colac Times Colac Times, that I learned of the unfortunate Clerk's broken arm. I dictated a long letter to him, apologizing for the injury and discoursing at length on the ignorance of the townspeople. I hope it gave the man some comfort.

"Mr Badgery," the Colac Times Colac Times of 25th April 1920 reported, "was anxious to return to the air, explaining the uncertainty of winds and the necessity of landing in Geelong before dark." of 25th April 1920 reported, "was anxious to return to the air, explaining the uncertainty of winds and the necessity of landing in Geelong before dark."

For once, I had understated the case.

Due to the weight of the two c.o.c.ky Abbots the Morris Farman barely cleared the cypress trees at the end of the racecourse. A second line of eucalypts brushed their spa.r.s.e umbrellas against the undercarriage.

After twenty miles of labouring hard I could not get the craft above five hundred feet. No tail wind in the world would get us to Barwon Common before nightfall.

I watched the wintry sun as it settled behind a low ribbon of cloud and wondered whether it might not be better to land on a road or in a paddock and ferry the pa.s.sengers to Geelong by some other method. It was only vanity that kept me going.

I glanced back at them and was pleased to see that they were frightened. They sat in their rugs, staring ahead, not daring to look over the side.

Jack, I reflected, kicking angrily at the rudder bar, had understood nothing. He had gone on in his blundering, amiable way, liking everyone without discrimination, anyone, that is, who was not a Chinaman or a Jew. Jack, who had read aloud the poetry of Henry Lawson, had understood nothing about it. He had let me down.

I flew low across the melancholy landscape of long shadows, stewing in the juices of betrayal.

45.

Of course the night landing was my fault and no one else's. If I hadn't hung around Geelong mooning over Phoebe I would have been back in plenty of time.