Illywhacker

Charles showed the man his snake and the man gave Le

After that they went to a cafe in Rowe Street and Le

Le

When Le

"Excuse me, please, sir," said Le

The man was very fat. He had wet red lips and slicked-back hair. He sat sketching in a book no bigger than a matchbox but Charles noted none of this. Neither did he listen to Le

"Know her?" the artist's voice was high and fluting. "I should say I know her. Casually," he said, "artistically, socially, biblically."

Charles was brought back from the open door to meet the man who knew his mother. The man's hand was soft as a pillow.

"Your mother", he said loudly, "is one of the great characters of Sydney. One of the great hostesses. One of the great free spirits. Go," he said, tearing a page from his tiny sketchbook and giving it to Charles. "Here is her address. See her. Talk to her about your wardrobe."

The whole cafe burst into laughter and Le

And that was how Charles presented himself at his mother's doorway looking for all the world (as Mr L., her visitor at the time, remarked) "like the very latest thing in bank clerks".

8

Svelte cats named Swinburne arched their backs above the harbour and rubbed their silver fur against the fluted plaster columns that A

Charles, imprisoned in his new suit, pressed his knees together as he perched himself on the tiny chair. His neck burned beneath his collar. His mother had not, as yet, so much as touched his hand. There had been no embrace. No lipstick marked his cheek and every eye was free from tears. She had taken the parcel of rabbit skins but had not even opened it. He tried not to blame her. The fault was with the other visitor, this Mr L. who droned on and on in a voice that Charles, having limited experience of such things, thought must be that of a clergyman, the mistake being made because of its mellifluous nature, its lack of self-consciousness, its easy assurance that its audience would not escape.

Charles balanced his cup and saucer on his knee. He had already finished it but he did not know where to put it and this problem occupied his entire mind. He felt himself observed and wondered what was correct. He was inclined to put the cup and saucer on the glass table and yet it was so ostentatiously bare that he felt it might be wrong to do so and, in any case, the table was glass and would make a loud noise and draw attention to his mistake, if mistake it was. So he continued to hold the saucer on his knee and looked, with what he imagined was polite attention, in the direction of Mr L.

The famous Mr L. sprawled in the settee while remaining, somehow, as neat as a pin. He was boom-voiced, big-nosed, with a sensuous mouth below oddly pinched, slightly disapproving nostrils. His hair was cut fringed like a boy's but was flecked with silver and Charles, attempting to understand the gist of the argument, gathered only that the speaker did not like communists, Jews or proponents of what he called "Bank Clerk Culture". He went on and on about "LCD" and it was twenty years later that an older Charles realized, one insomniac night, that he had been referring to Lowest Common Denominator and that what he was most frightened of was democracy.

But it was to my wife that Charles gave the bulk of his attention, and it was not the polite uncomfortable look he felt obliged to give the self-satisfied Mr L., but something its object felt to be a reprimand. Charles stared, his eyes heavy with love and censure. His mother was, in her mid-thirties, still a young woman. If there was something dark and shadowy around her eyes it suggested no more than the burdens of beauty. Charles's mother was like a gypsy. She was totally beyond imagining. Everthing about her (the painted pillars, the arching cats, the smooth honey colour of her skin) was unlike anything Charles had ever seen. She wore a scarf wrapped around her head and its tail fell, a cascade of tiny roses, over one bare shoulder. Her hands were shapely, the fingers long, flexible and expressive. When she spoke a throaty contralto came from lips which hardly seemed to move and yet enunciated her vowels in a ma

He waited for a pause in the man's speech, imagining that, when it came, his mother would have a chance to explain that he was Charles Badgery, her son, and that they would, of course, wish time together and then the man might look at him less oddly. She had introduced him, with a jerky motion of her hand, as Charles, then held her bare throat and laughed. It was a jarring, silly outburst. Mr L. had blinked and continued with his speech.

The pause, at last, arrived. His mother stood. She took the saucer and cup from his knees and departed, with a murmur, to the kitchen.

Charles, disappointed, stretched himself inside the confines of his suit. He knew that Mr L. was staring at his brown boots and knew that Le

"Nice day," he said to Mr L., unable to stand his staring.

"Noice day," said Mr L., and Charles could not believe that he was being mocked.

Meanwhile Phoebe clattered around the kitchen in a tizz, not knowing what it was she should do. Afterwards she would regret (particularly when in her cups) not having sent the famous little satyr away and thus removed the problem of having to socialize with two such different personalities at once. Yet both of them had arrived, almost together, and both without warning; she had found herself trapped between what she had once been and what she would like to be.

One always gave boys biscuits. She looked for biscuits but A