Illywhacker_ A Novel Part 51

And Goldstein saw all this and would not criticize. She pretended it was all quite normal. Not once did she say to Emma that it was not a useful way to behave, was not good for the children or even herself. Instead she stubbornly stuck to her first impression which was that Emma was kind and affectionate and the thing she found remarkable about the cage was how attractive Emma made it seem. This was not merely because Charles had bought her tributes of satin sheets or that the blankets she slept in were of mohair so soft that you had to-it was quite impossible to resist-stroke it against your cheek, or that her doting husband always seemed to be able to find her fruit out of season and b.u.t.ter when they had no b.u.t.ter coupons left. Goldstein was not untouched by this luxury, although she would not let herself admit it, but what impressed her most was the way she was with her children-she whacked them across the head when they misbehaved and nuzzled them when they were good, and Leah, who so much wanted children of her own that she invented them in letters, was in no mood to criticize the woman she called "A Perfect Mother".

There were things that you would expect to make Goldstein uneasy-the youngest boy's Asiatic face, for instance-but she does not seem to have noticed it. You would expect her, also, to have had stern words about Emma's penchant for silk stockings and leg-of-mutton sleeves, both of which were banned for the duration, and yet she did not. Even when she herself was getting blisters and a bad back in the Land Army she never saw Emma in an unfavourable light. When she had leave she would come up from Narrabri on the train and she and Emma would go to the matinee together. Sometimes they just sat and knitted and, on a rainy afternoon, with the sky falling gently on the gla.s.s above their heads, it was hard to imagine a nicer place to be.

If Leah had once, only once, said that Emma was crazy it might have helped. It was left instead to Nathan Schick who delivered the opinion while they sat drinking in the gutter in William Street. But while his diagnosis was accurate, his advice was not good and led only to the incident with the hose.

Nathan liked Charles, but he did not understand his situation. For instance, when he saw that a wife in a cage had done nothing to deter the boy's ambition to have the best pet shop in the world, he admired him for it, and saw it as an example of that characteristic he admired most, i.e., GOING DOWN THE G.o.dd.a.m.n MIDDLE GOING DOWN THE G.o.dd.a.m.n MIDDLE. This was about as big a misunderstanding of the situation as it was possible to have.

Charles did not have his magnificent new shop in spite of Emma. He had it because of Emma. If he had not been so bluffed and bamboozled by his wife he would have been, deaf or not, in the army.

Nathan Schick admired Charles for keeping out of uniform. Charles, on the other hand, was embarra.s.sed to be a young man in plain clothes. He imagined himself a coward. He was the proprietor of a non-essential industry. He camouflaged himself in an old grey boiler suit. He gave an elderly impression. He walked close to the cages and kept his head down. He hired women who would have been better used as telegraphists or machinists or Land Army labourers and he paid them money so they would sell pets for him. He was ashamed of the very thing that gave him so much pleasure.

When Nathan Schick came looking to buy that inappropriate mascot for General MacArthur, he did not have to go poking around in the dark end of Doyle's Arcade. The pet shop had moved twice and it was no longer a mere pet shop. The sign said it was an emporium. It was too. Charles was renting (and would soon buy) the old Stratford Arcade in Pitt Street. No matter how inconspicuous he might wish to be, he was still a Badgery. He had grand visions. So even though he saw that an emporium like this must draw attention to his non-essential status, he could not resist those four wooden-railed galleries stretching upwards towards that lovely skylight, a delicate thing of lacy iron and clear gla.s.s. Each gallery was a good twelve foot wide, enough to build deep cages and still have room for customers. Here you could accommodate a c.o.c.katoo in the proper manner. You could have a wallaby run. Possibly, one day, you could install a platypus. On the Pitt Street end of the gallery there were proper rooms. In one he could breed flies. In another he could place incubators in preparation for the day when the war was over and there was kerosene enough to run them. On the top floor they could have a flat and they would be able, on summer evenings, to bring deckchairs out on to the top gallery and stare down into the canyon and watch parrots flying to and fro in fifty-foot-long cages.

Once my son, in a perfect echo of Henry Underhill, bellowed at me that I was not a business man's bootlace. He loved to style himself a practical man. It was bulls.h.i.+t. He was an enthusiast, a fan. He did not even calculate the money he would need to fix the arcade which had been disused since the depression. He signed the lease without getting a quote for building cages or aquariums. He did not even think about the extra cost of feed if he was going to stock the place in accordance with his dream which was, I must tell you, an expression of the purest patriotism-pure Australiana-definitely no bunny rabbits or p.u.s.s.y cats no matter how tearfully his little boys begged him.

There was no one to tell him that Sydney was not big enough to support such poetry. Any real business man would have told him that the best pet shop in the world would be a failure.

The Americans, however, saved his a.r.s.e. They arrived just when he needed them and although everyone remembers them for nylons and candy bars, they also paid big money for rosellas and lorikeets, blue bonnets and golden whistlers, all varieties of c.o.c.katoos, king parrots and western parrots, finches, warblers, even a pair of dancing brolgas courtesy of Harry the rabbitoh. The GIs handed their money across the counter like children sent shopping by their mothers. You took what you wanted and you handed the rest back to them. Charles did not cheat them, but he did put his prices up until he reached the delicate point where they no longer said they were low.

Gang-gangs cost a fiver. Australians came to stare at the mug Yanks wasting their money. They put Charles in a temper. He thought them ignorant and ill-educated and would have liked to give them a piece of his mind. But being a non-essential coward in a boiler suit he could only b.u.mp into them belligerently as they stood in front of the pretty white cages.

Normally he tried to keep away from customers. He was happier in the fetid room where he bred his fly pupae, or away on the lakes around Kempsey collecting stock. Petrol was rationed but he had an old Ess.e.x with a gas producer and he went hunting in this.

So when Nathan Schick did arrive he was lucky to find the boss home. Charles had a termite nest in a hessian bag. He had his head down and there was something in the walk, the suggestion of a limp, that gave the impression of someone old and smelly although he was only twenty-four.

"Charlie Badgery," said the Yank, blocking his access to the stairs.

Charles may or may not have heard him; he tried to push past.

"Charlie." The Major had a bony hand on the round fleshy shoulder. "Don't say you don't recognize me."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

The Yank removed his cap and revealed a bald head. Nathan was now ten years older, but there was no denying the crooked regretful gold-toothed smile.

"How nice to see you, Mr Schick."

Charles did not feel nice at all. He felt ill. This face before him was the face of his nightmares. His sister was skun and this was a face licked by camp fire. There were American baubles on the end of a fis.h.i.+ng line, hooks, razors, blades, balloons, feathers, knives. Soon his ear would go dull and fill with blood.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n, Charlie. I read about your shop last year and I wondered...."

Charles lowered his bag. "That was a different shop."

"And I've been wondering if this is the same boy I knew."

Charles could not help himself-he smiled. He liked Americans. He liked the careful round way they spoke and the way they never hesitated to give an opinion. He liked the smart lines of the Major's jacket and the floppy officer's cap. Most of all he liked the sense of cleanliness that emanated from Nathan Schick. The real Nathan Schick had little to do with the grotesque figure in his recurring dream.

It was lunchtime, and the shop was busy with browsers. Charles wanted to get out of the stair entrance but Nathan, oblivious to the pus.h.i.+ng people, wanted to talk. "Remember the corellas," he said, releasing Charles's shoulder and holding his upper arm instead. "The corellas you got for the show in Ballarat. And the first one s.h.i.+t on s.h.i.+rlene Maguire."

"Don't talk about Sonia," Charles said.

Nathan blinked.

"I know you weren't going to, but... don't...."

There was a soft part to Nathan Schick. It was as mushy as marshmallow, all sweet and sentimental. And when Charles said that to him it was almost enough to bring him undone. Charles backed off the entrance to the stairs, dragging his termite sack with him. Nathan followed him and began to pat him, comfortingly, on his shoulder but when he saw the look on the boy's face, he stopped.

"h.e.l.l's bells," he laughed, a silly false laugh. He tapped out a battered Lucky Strike and lit it. "I'm not here to talk about the past, Charlie Badgery. It's business. The U. S. of A. requires your services."

It is difficult to convey the impact of this simple slogan on Charles Badgery. He was like a man struck by love for whom all the world-a minute ago so clear, delineated by crisp lines and sharp colours-now runs at the edges until it is nothing more than a blurred velvet frame for the object of its affections. It did not matter that the saleswoman with the bruise on her throat wished a confirmation of the price of a children's python or that, having smiled and excused herself to the Yank, she shouted in the direction of his hearing aid. Not two feet away an old man was stuffing breadcrumbs through the bars of a mynah bird's cage, although there were signs forbidding it. And even when Henry's slipper fell four levels and landed-dead on target-at his father's feet, Charles did not react, and his children, leaning over the rail, got no fun.

"What services?" Charles put down his bag of termites.

"Professional services, what else?"

"How?"

"General MacArthur," said Nathan Schick, "has asked me to buy him a mascot."

And that is how Charlie Badgery came to provide MacArthur with his celebrated c.o.c.katoo. It was he who taught the bird to say, "h.e.l.lo, Digger." He put the cage on the preparation bench and sat on a cage in front of it for five hours every night. Every time the bird said "h.e.l.lo, Digger" he gave it Vegemite on toast.

The important thing about this episode was not the c.o.c.katoo's brief blaze of glory in the newsreels and newspapers, nor was it the letter MacArthur wrote to Charles declaring his emporium the best pet shop in the world. No, the important thing-our whole future hinged on it-was that he renewed his acquaintance with Nathan Schick.

33.

Nathan Schick was a juggler. He had so many schemes going on in his head at once that he rarely got any of them going. I don't think this disappointed him. The soft burr of sadness in his ascetic face was not produced by this, but rather, the contrary: it was the schemes that took the edge off his sadness. I do not believe that his business was to make money. It was to make schemes, and in this you must cla.s.s him a runaway success. It did not matter that there were five schemes smashed and bleeding at his feet, he had another one arcing through the air and it was this his eyes concentrated on.

With Nathan, nothing was what it seemed. The show in Ballarat, for instance, was not a dry run for the Tivoli in Melbourne, although that is what he told Badgery & Goldstein. He set up the show in Ballarat to attract a certain Gloria Beaudare. There were sixteen complicated moves to checkmate, and I forget how it was meant to work, except it didn't.

Likewise with MacArthur's c.o.c.katoo. MacArthur was almost incidental to the scheme. He had not wanted a mascot. It was Schick who convinced him that he needed one, and the last thing on Schick's mind was how the "h.e.l.lo, Digger" would be received by the Australian public. He did not have time to worry about details. The bird had to say something. Nathan knew enough about Australia to know that people would take offence at a c.o.c.katoo calling a Yankee "Digger," but he was in a hurry and couldn't think of anything better. MacArthur liked it. Nathan did not care. It was not important to the scheme, because he also knew that once the c.o.c.katoo had been in the newsreels and in the papers it would be worth a lot of money. He did not bother to a.n.a.lyse why this should be so, that the public would pay good money to own a party to a presumption. What he knew was that one c.o.c.katoo looked exactly like another, and that he could produce fifty MacArthur's c.o.c.katoos, or even a hundred, and sell each one as the original. It was a good scheme, as smooth and flawless as an egg.

He was not ready to discuss the scheme with Charles. When he sauntered into the shop, he had been ready, but in his memory he had confused the character of the father with that of the son. He had not been prepared for Charles's earnestness, and he was now embarra.s.sed by his enthusiasm for the Allied cause.

Charles did not want money. He told Nathan it would be an honour to be involved in any scheme at all-he did not even ask what the scheme might be.

Nathan smiled, a regretful smile, the smile of a man who remembers honour and knows what it feels like. He folded his soft hands behind his back and moved along the galleries behind Charles, gliding on thin-soled American shoes, as light as a dancer. He observed the silent incubators and dry-retched in the fly-breeding room. On the fourth gallery he met the three-legged goanna and Charles's unconventional family. He did not inquire as to why Charles's wife should have a small j.a.panese child at her breast. He watched the pets' meals being prepared in the family kitchen. He then went out to the gallery again and stood and watched his countrymen in the canyon below. It was then that the second scheme came to him. This scheme was so much bigger than the first that it immediately claimed all of his attention. When he had thought it through a little he went and found Charles and persuaded him that they should go down to King's Cross and discuss business. He smiled at Emma, but she unnerved him, and he went to wait on the wide creaking stairs while Charles changed from his grey overalls into his Dedman suit.

They went to several clubs. They ate steak and chips and oysters. They drank Scotch. Charles had few of the social graces and he was only at ease when he could discuss birds, marsupials or mammals. Nathan was not bored at all. He was delighted to listen while Charles shouted about necrobacillosis in wallabies, neoplasia in a palm c.o.c.katoo. Nathan asked questions, nodding and frowning and showing sympathy. Charles confessed his plan for a whole factory staffed by budgerigars. He revealed his plan for a goldfish sleep-inducer. Nathan advised him to see a patent attorney.

In a taxi on the way to Double Bay Charles confessed his delight to be doing something for the war. Nathan s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. In a room above a fruit shop they played poker with two giant negroes who mesmerized Charles out of five pounds. Then they walked three miles to Darlinghurst amidst streets of wind-blown garbage cans. Here, at last, they were in harmony, both becoming lyrical about the uniqueness and beauty of Australian birds and animals.

They knocked on some doors, which turned out to be wrong.

They were already drunk, but Nathan stopped a Yankee captain in Crown Street and bought the rest of his Scotch from him. They went down to William Street and sat in the gutter to drink it. The westerly wrapped newspapers around their ankles.

There is something about a westerly. When you're inside a house, there is no nastier wind. It pulls and tugs at you. It howls and shudders. But when you're in an open s.p.a.ce it is a different matter entirely and it affected both of the men. Charles was struck by a desire to remove his clothes and let the wind wash around him; he was almost drunk enough to do it.

"So," Nathan said. He detached a sheet of newspaper from his ankle, and held it up fastidiously between thumb and forefinger before releasing it.

"So," he said. The newspaper sailed through the air and wrapped itself eagerly around a lamppost. "So what are we going to do?"

"We're going to get drunk."

"We've done that." Nathan handed over the whisky all the same. He noticed, as he did so, that the street was totally empty, all of William Street from King's Cross to Hyde Park. Something went tight in his chest and he put his hand to his face and held it. But then two taxis appeared beside the New Zealand Hotel and came up the hill towards them.

When the taxis pa.s.sed, Nathan tried to light a cigarette but the wind was too strong. "What," he put his Lucky Strike back in its crumpled packet, "are we going to do when your customers have gone home?"

This was the Intro to the Scheme. It confused Charles. He could not see how the "we" had got itself messed into "your customers". He pulled the cork out of the bottle and raised it to his lips.

"The war can't last forever," Nathan said. "Then all your rich Yanks will go home. My question to you, Charlie, is have you thought about this?"

Of course he'd thought about it. It had kept him awake at night, wandering around his galleries, sitting in pyjamas on those wide lonely stairs, staring into the aquariums in search of sleep.

"I want the war to end tomorrow," he said. "I would give my right arm."

"Yes, yes, I know." Nathan did know. He was not without sympathy. He merely wished to get to the scheme. "But what will you do?"

Suddenly Charles was lurching to his feet and roaring into the face of the westerly.

"How in the f.u.c.k do I know?" His eyes were watering, but possibly it was only the wind. "How ... in ... the f.u.c.k ... do ... I ... know?" Some girls in a taxi drove past and waved at him, and he waved at them. His mood suddenly changed. He stood smiling after their tail-lights before returning to sit, more or less neatly, beside Nathan. "I'm s.h.i.+kkered. I've never been so s.h.i.+kkered before. Do you know how I know? Because," he started giggling, "because I don't normally f.u.c.king swear. Nathan, I don't know what I'm going to do."

It was then that Nathan said all that stuff about Emma needing treatment. It was unnecessary. He regretted having said it immediately.

"What do you mean, treatment?"

"Believe me, Charlie, it costs. I know. My first wife is the same."

"There's nothing wrong with Emma."

"Charlie...."

"There's nothing wrong with her. I love her...."

"Charlie...."

"Do you love your wife? Course you don't. You said you didn't. I feel sorry for you, Mr Schick, but I love my wife and my boys."

Nathan took the bottle and felt the golden liquid dull the pain in his cigarette-sore throat. It was a long drink, as long as drowning, and when he had finished, and fumbled with the cork, and got it, at last, firmly into the throat of the bottle, he looked up and saw that his partner had gone.

Then he saw him, lurching at an angle across William Street.

"s.h.i.+t," said Nathan Schick.

The big pear-shaped figure paused in the middle of the street. It turned and shouted ("I love her") and before the cry had been swallowed by the wind the figure turned and stumbled on its crumbled way. It tripped on the kerb on the other side of the street, kept its balance with vaudevillian precision, and disappeared into the darkness of the Forbes Street steps.

Nathan moved lightly across William Street. He regretted having said anything about his wife. He could never guess that his comment, so vigorously denied, would lead to a hosing down within the hour. Nathan took special care at the kerb. He crossed the footpath as dainty as a shadow and started to ascend the unlit steps.

"How the f.u.c.k do I know?" said a voice from the sixth step.

Nathan threaded his way past a nest of knees and elbows and sat on the step above him. He felt the cold in the old stone steps and resisted the strong desire he felt to talk about love and loneliness.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"How in the f.u.c.k do I know?"

"Charlie, listen."

"I listen."

"Do you want to go back to selling puppy dogs in a one-room dump?"

"I never sold a puppy dog in my life."

"All right, Mr Clever d.i.c.k." He gave the boy the Scotch and watched him drink it. There was a lighted window in a house above their heads and he could see the flow of the whisky as it ran down the boy's big chin and dripped, in a dotted line of liquid light, on to his s.h.i.+rt and tie. "All right, Mr Wise Guy, you tell me. How are we going to make a quid when the Yanks go home?"

Charles saw the answer, right there, in the p.i.s.s-sour gloom of the Forbes Street steps. The whisky stung a cut on his hand and he saw it-this patch of dazzling clarity in the middle of the murk.

"Export," he said.

Nathan leaned forward and tried to hug him. He poked a finger in his eye before he got an arm around his head and squeezed his ears. "That's my scheme," he said.

"Me here, you there."

"That's right."

"Hands across the f.u.c.king ocean."

It is true that the discussion on the Forbes Street steps led to the hosing down and thus contributed to the loss of the affection of his two eldest boys, but it also led to the formation of a company with Nathan Schick, to the printing of letterheads with a Los Angeles address, and to one (only) c.o.c.katoo that could say, "h.e.l.lo, Digger."

By 1949 Charles Badgery could afford to buy his wife a pearl necklace the price of which-he told me so himself-was one thousand guineas.

34.

In 1949 I was sixty-three years old. I was now perfectly equipped to live in a world that did not exist, the world of Goldstein's letters. Had you seen me you would have been amazed that a place like Rankin Downs could produce such a specimen. I was educated, frail and decent. My voice was soft. I had a pretty stoop. My handshake was as smooth and as animated as a kid glove. I had the complexion of a eunuch and a Degree of Arts from the University of Sydney. You wish to discuss the Trade Union Movement in the 1890s? I'm your man. I can do it as if we are walking across streets of autumn leaves and there is warm cocoa waiting in the study. An interesting theory about the Shearers' Strike? Please be my guest. The role of lies in popular perceptions of the Australian political fabric? You have my speciality.

I was a marvel. Of course I was. I did not even mind that the Rankin Downs' Parole Board thought the credit was theirs. They could never imagine the work, the endless boring work, it takes to achieve this sort of transformation. I modelled myself on M. V. Anderson. I got his way of hunching his narrow little shoulders together and sinking his chin into his chest and bringing his long nicotine-stained fingers together and looking up, a little coyly, at his questioner, pursing the lips and raising the eyebrows, etc., etc. Oh, I was a cute little popsy. You would have loved me.