Illywhacker

by Peter Carey

  While Phoebe squeezed her mother's perspiring hand, Oswald-Smith chose to argue in favour of the rabbit. He was one of those men who like a talk so much he will take a contrary position just to get things started.

  Jack, whose teams had ripped many an acre of land riddled with rabbit burrows, burying them, cutting them, suffocating them, was shocked to hear a successful farmer speak of rabbits in such terms.

  I knew what Oswald-Smith was doing. He was getting me to talk and he laid his argument before me like a fisherman will drop a mud eye, ever so gently, and let it float downstream where a brown trout, old enough and smart enough to refuse such blatant tricks, takes the damn thing anyway.

  "I'd have to say, Mr Smith," I said, uncoiling my long bowed legs and stretching back in my chair, "that you are talking rot."

  Jack tried to flatten his creased napkin with the edge of his fist, back and forth like a widowed ironing woman.

  "The rabbit has no place in this country," I said. "The things that will ruin this country are things like the rabbit."

  The things that I had in mind were the Oswald-Smiths and the Cocky Abbots.

  "Yes," said Oswald-Smith pleasantly. "Please go on."

  "That's it. Nothing else to say. The rabbit is a mongrel of a thing."

  I had said nothing new but they were all, except Jack who continued to iron his napkin, ridiculously pleased with me for having said it. It wasn't so much that the subject was rabbits, but that I was addressing myself to it in a definite manner. I could see that the Cocky Abbots were pleased that I was speaking their thoughts.

  Right in the middle of my irritation and confusion with everything I smelt a whiff of that interest that comes in every sale, like a wooden case cracking open to spill out honey: a heady, intoxicating aroma.

  I tried to use this moment to cross the bridge from rabbits to aeroplanes, but the gap was wide and I misjudged the distance. "We're going to have our own animals," I said. I found myself in mid-air, not knowing exactly what I meant.

  There was a silence as everybody tried to imagine what it was that I was trying to say.

  "How do you mean?" asked Cocky Abbot Junior helpfully.

  "Breed them," I said recklessly.

  "How?" asked Oswald-Smith.

  "How do you think?" I said so lewdly that Phoebe and Molly, for different reasons, grew bright red, and only Oswald-Smith, a man who enjoyed the picturesque, permitted himself a quick smile before his sense of diplomacy encouraged him to change the subject.

  "I think", he said, "it's time we moved on to business."

  "My word," cried Jack, and pushed back his chair loudly.

  There was much fussing around as the women tried to clear the table and Molly became entangled in her wire and knocked over the stand of the electric kettle. She was close to tears as Phoebe untangled her but she wished us all luck before she left the room.

  "Wireless," she whispered to her daughter. "I'll sit by the wireless."

  Bridget removed the tablecloth and Jack stamped around distributing writing pads to his visitors. He was so agitated that even Cocky Abbot Senior realized that the aeroplane factory was more than a casual venture for him.

  There seemed to be nothing to prevent a successful meeting. There appeared to be a positive excess of goodwill on the part of the investors. When Cocky Abbot Senior resumed his seat at the table he sat opposite Jack McGrath and winked at him like a conspirator.

  I spread out the plans on the table. Bradfield's B3 was a beautiful craft and I had no trouble speaking enthusiastically about its function. I could feel some resistance from the older Cocky Abbot. I pushed against it with my enthusiasm. I discussed the purchase of steel from BHP and the method of bringing in timber from the bush. The young Cocky Abbot caught my eye and nodded. Oswald-Smith made notes on his writing pad. But the older farmer folded his arms against his chest and looked at me impassively.

  The wind howled around the house and pushed its fingers under doors, through cracks in the floor, lifted rugs in the long passage so they rode the timber in ghostly waves. The women felt the wind and did not like it, but all I felt was this stubborn wall from Cocky Abbot Senior. I talked and talked, but I could not talk him down. I knew, before I sat down, that I had not made the sale.

  "I knew your father," said Cocky Abbot Senior, unfolding his arms at last. "He was a practical man, so I suppose you are too. Now what I want to know, Badgery – and I mentioned this to Jack down at 'Bulgaroo' – why wouldn't we set ourselves up as agents and import the best the world has to offer? I don't doubt you when you say there's a future in the aircraft, but why should we risk all this capital to manufacture something when we can import the best the British Empire can produce?"

  "What did Jack say?"

  "He said you were a practical fellow."

  I looked at Jack. He grinned at me fondly. I sucked in my breath and studied the wallpaper behind his shoulder. I tried to remind myself that the whole thing was only a lie except it was not a lie any more. It was an inch from being the shining thing I had described so lyrically.

  "Mr Abbot," I said, "I've sold two hundred T Model Fords and it has made me a lot of dough, but it never made me happy."

  The table was quiet. They heard the tremor in my voice and they knew how I felt, but they had no idea why I felt it or what I was saying.

  "Happy!" snorted Cocky Abbot Junior.

  "Does it make you happy", I asked him, "to be a child all your life? That's what an agent is, a child serving a parent. If you want to serve the interests of the English, you go and be an agent for their aircraft, and you'll stay a damn child all your life."

  The younger Cocky Abbot sought his AIF badge on his lapel and, having found it, squinted at it down his long nose. Everybody waited for him. "And yet", he said, "you served the Empire."

  "I never served," I said. "I had no intention of dying like a silly goat for the British."

  Jack, who had loved every war service story I told him, recognized the voice of truth. His great face folded in misery.

  "You're lucky you don't live in Colac," said young Cocky Abbot.

  "Lucky indeed. I saw it from the air. It looks like a cow of a place."

  "We tar and feather micks for saying things like that. Our mates died for England."

  "My point," I shouted. "My point exactly."

  "We tarred and feathered a bloke two weeks ago, a Sinn Feiner from Warrnambool. It was written up in all the papers. He wrote a poem you might approve of, in 1915."

  "You are fools," I said, and said it so quietly, with such passion, that Cocky Abbot Junior, whose large red fist had been placed very prominently on his expensively trousered knee, dismantled it quietly, and put the pieces in his pocket.

  For a trembling instant I had them all.

  I had a full five seconds in which to say something, anything, to begin a sentence that might, with its passion and precision, convert them to my view.

  I did not even get my lips to open.

  "I am here to make a quid," said Cocky Abbot Senior, ignoring me and addressing unhappy Jack. "I would not have come for anything else. I would not have risked my life in that machine for amusement or politics. It was only to make a quid."

  "But you can make a quid, Mr Abbot," I said. "There is a good quid to be made by us selling aircraft to Australians. That is the point. This is the country for the aeroplane, Mr Abbot, not Europe."

  "I must say", Oswald-Smith said sternly, "that I had no intention of investing my money in a political party."

  "This is not a political party." My voice rose in frustration. "I could not give a fig for politics." And as far as I understood politics, I was right. It was an understanding I shared with the shivering sergeant in the street outside, a man who had killed an officer and would not join a union.

  "It sounds like politics to me," said Oswald-Smith. "Why do you have this chip on your shoulder about the English? Dear God, you are English. You talk English. You look English. You have an English name."
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  "Not a chip on my shoulder," I said, relieved that Oswald-Smith would at least look at me. "Common sense. Anyone can see that the English are as big a pest as the rabbit. No offence, but they're identical. They come here, eat everything, burrow under, tunnel out -look at Ballarat or Bendigo – and when the country is rooted…" I faltered, "it'll be rooted."

  "Watch your language," said Cocky Abbot Junior, retrieving his fist.

  But Oswald-Smith was a more complete Imaginary Englishman than Cocky Abbot Junior and felt relaxed enough to be amused by this analogy. In fact he was now amused by the whole turn of events and was pleased, more than ever, that he had come. "It makes no sense to the rabbit, surely," he said, "for when the country is," he paused and smiled, "rooted, there will be nothing left for it."

  "Then they'll get on boats and go home and leave their tunnels and heaps behind."

  "Rabbits? On boats?" Oswald-Smith smiled at the fancy.

  "Oh, for God's sake, man, this isn't an argument about rabbits. It's about aeroplanes."

  "If you two would shut up for a moment," said the older Cocky Abbot, as much irritated with Oswald-Smith as he was with me, "I'd like to say something. The first is I couldn't care if you was a German from Jeparit and I don't mind what you vote about. You can stand on your soap box till the cows come home. The second is I don't think you know a thing about rabbits. And the third thing is I'd like to listen to Jack McGrath, our host, who has had to put up with all this bulldust about rabbits. I'd like to hear Jack tell us how all this is going to make us a quid. And fourth, son," he told me, "I'd like you to shut up and listen."

  I pointed a straight finger at him. "I'll be right back," I said.

  I strode from the room.

  "Come on, Jack," Cocky Abbot said. "What's it to be?"

  But Jack felt ill and his deep depression, normally kept at bay by the company of other men, pushed its way into the room and claimed him in public.

  "Come on, Jack," said old Cocky Abbot kindly, "let's have a look at what you want."

  But Jack could be persuaded to say nothing, and Oswald-Smith, who had been entranced by the scene he had chanced upon, now wondered where Molly had hung his overcoat.

  49

  Whilst dining on goose Phoebe had seen Mrs Kentwell attack the Morris Farman with her umbrella. It had done no more damage than a knife in water. The craft was a figment, a moth attracted by the electric light of the house. It was Mrs Kentwell's natural enemy and the old hag had recognized it, gone to battle, and discredited herself.

  Mrs Kentwell, Phoebe thought, would have no allies in this house. She had attacked the dream and proclaimed herself mad.

  Phoebe retired to a chair in the music room and wrote, triumphantly, in her erratic left hand: "Nor shall the bosom proud, / Be hid with shame."

  Tomorrow, please God, Herbert Badgery would permit her to fly with him to Barwon Common. She had chosen a scarf. ("Vermilion wraps the And then, if he still wanted to, she would go with him to the She was recording these intentions in her notebook when I burst from the meeting in the dining room and strode down the passage.

  She assumed I was going to get the snake, that a performance had been called for.

  She tucked her notebook inside her sling and was waiting in the passage as I rushed back carrying the snake. When she saw me she knew that something was wrong, and the snake looked like some writhing demon exorcized from my guts, the source of the twisting emotions hinted at in my angry face.

  "I love you," I said, so loudly that she thought her mother, hunched over the wireless in the next room, must surely hear.

  She fled to her bedroom and closed the door. When her mother did not appear she took out her notebook and began to write again, attempting to cage the snake with rhymes.

  50

  "This", I said, as I walked back into the dining room, "is a true Australian."

  Oswald-Smith stood up, and then sat down again. Jack stayed at the table shaking his head.

  "Ha," I said. "Ha." I threw the snake at young Cocky Abbot who leapt into the air and knocked over the chair he had been sitting on. He scrambled backwards and stood on a wingback chair.

  The snake landed where his lap had been. It looked angry and nasty. I cared for nothing. I was beyond it. I picked up the snake without looking at it. I held it behind its neck and at the tail.

  "You cannot make this a good little bunny," I told the silent men in the room, "no matter what you say to it, no matter what you feed it. You cannot buy it or tame it or make it nice."

  I swung the snake by the tail towards Cocky Abbot Junior and the snake, beside itself with rage, struck out and got a fang into the farmer's scarf and when it was pulled away the scarf came with it, poison soaking into the warp and weft of top quality merino wool.

  "Bow," I said to young Cocky Abbot.

  Jack moaned. Oswald-Smith pushed his chair back a fraction, closer to the window.

  "Bow", I bellowed, "to a true Australian snake."

  Young Cocky Abbot tried to look threatening but lacked the conviction. He went down on his knife-point creases and did not have to be told to put his head on the ground.

  "Now," I said, "you understand something."

  My voice softened a little, and the farmer, having looked upwards carefully, retreated slowly into the wingback chair.

  I then addressed the gathering with a friendliness that doubtless struck them as strange. "This snake", I explained, "has been in gaol. It is a mean bastard of an animal and it cannot be bought."

  "What are you trying to say?" Young Cocky Abbot tried, without much luck, to combine sarcasm and servility in one intonation.

  "I'm trying to say I'm an Australian," I said, "and we should have an Australian aeroplane."

  Cocky Abbot Senior now shook his head. He stood. He knew when a man had lost his strength. It had all gone from me now. I stood there in the middle of the room, as if I'd pissed my pants and was ashamed of it.

  "I came here to talk to Jack about making a quid," Cocky Abbot Senior said. "I didn't come here to listen to some ratbag and I didn't come here to see a circus with snakes. I would have put my money into this scheme of yours but you've done me a favour by showing me what a ratbag you are so early so I'm saved the horrible discovery later on when you've got your oily mits on the dough I worked so hard to make. I'm inclined to punch you in the nose, snake or no snake, but I think I'd rather ask Mr Oswald-Smith if he'd give us a lift in his auto to the Criterion Hotel."

  He went to Jack McGrath and shook his hand. "I'll see you again, Jack," he said, "but my advice to you is to get this bugger out of your house before he does some real damage."

  I stood alone with the snake. No one looked at me. They shook Jack's hand as they departed.

  51

  "Ah," I said, after five minutes of silence during which Jack had poured himself two large tumblers of Scotch. "I'm sorry."

  Jack could only shake his head. There was no malice in him, no anger. He had big eyes like a Labrador. "Why? What came over you?"

  I was a sleep-walker trying to explain my presence, barefoot, on a midnight street.

  "You should have lit the flares down at Barwon Common," I said. "You shouldn't have sent me down to Colac and not have anywhere for me to land."

  "You never told me, Badgery. I'm not a mind-reader."

  "Anyone knows a plane can't land after dark."

  "Well, I didn't know," he bellowed, and the whole household heard his voice and they felt frightened. "I didn't know," he yelled. Sergeant House heard him. Mrs Kentwell and Jonathon Oakes, playing cribbage in their parlour, heard him.

  "Ah," I said, wondering if I might have a whisky and then deciding against it. I looked at Cocky Abbot Junior's fallen chair and Oswald-Smith's teacup. "Agents! I've had enough of being an agent."

  "We're a young country. We've got to crawl before we can walk."

  "If you start out crawling, you end up crawling."

  Jack looked at me resentfully and poured more Scotch
into his glass. "You were wrong about the snake," he said.

  I shrugged. I was not worrying about right or wrong any more. I was only worrying that I had been a fool.

  "You don't know anything about animals," my host said. "There isn't a creature alive who won't respond to kindness. You're not a kind man, Badgery, and it hurts me to say it."

  Judged, I put my head in my hands.

  "If there is one thing I know about," Jack went on, "it's animals. I had a tame kangaroo in Point's Point. I raised it on a bottle when its mother was killed. It used to follow me. You ask the wife, she'll tell you. It followed me everywhere and then some larrikins from Mansfield shot it, with a rifle."

  "I dare say," I said, "but that is what they call an analogy."

  "I don't know anything about analogies," Jack said impatiently, "but by Jove I know about animals."

  "It's not the point."

  "It is the point. It's the whole point. If kindness is not the point, what point is there?"

  I put out my hand and touched Jack's clenched fist, I was as close to tears as I had ever come. I said a few words to comfort him but I doubt he heard me. He sat with his heavy smudged tumbler before him and looked at this stranger he had invited into his house and wondered how any man alive could not believe in kindness.

  "It's a great disappointment," he said.

  I always believed he was referring to the aeroplane.

  52

  There were too many things that Geelong could not explain or understand. Why would a healthy, happy man like Jack McGrath go sneaking into another man's bedroom and remove a hessian bag containing a snake? Why, at two o'clock in the morning, would he open this bag in the kitchen? And why, when he was bitten, would he walk out on to the front lawn to die in public (in his pyjamas) rather than raise his family and ask for help?

  It was I who found poor Jack, poor grey-faced dead Jack. I could not bear his staring eyes. I can bear few memories of that dreadful day. I look at them still through half-closed lids against a too bright light. Molly in nightgown howling like a dog inside the music room. Mrs Kentwell standing at the fence ducking the clod of earth Phoebe hurled at her. Sergeant House with notebook suggesting I was not telling everything.