Illywhacker

So I embraced Horace as a friend. I promised the child would bear his name (a promise I later made to several others and all of which I honoured).

We opened beer. I strutted around the kitchen. I found glasses to drink from and a few stale Thin Captain biscuits to eat. I fancy I was like a cocky rooster, with chest and bum thrust out before and after. I erased all memory of bile and tears.

"To wife and child." I raised my glass of warm frothing beer. "To aviation, to Australia."

"To wife and child," they drank.

Ah, they all must have thought I was a mug in their different ways, but their wisdom did not stop them from dying in the end, and my foolishness has not killed me yet.

We had several bottles of that soapy-tasting beer. I became garrulous and told stories about flying. Molly recited Lawson at my request. Horace, unused to alcohol, declaimed two so

When the doctor judged his work quite done, he rose to go. I took him by his arm and walked him to the door. There was another matter I wished to discuss with him in private.

I left Horace alone with Molly. The poet was nervous and recited Lawson (whom he loathed) with the same enthusiasm with which he had earlier knelt to pray.

Molly watched him as one might watch a spider that may or may not be venomous.

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I would not let the doctor go, and yet I could not bring myself to examine the tender matter which so much occupied my mind. The poor fellow found himself stumbling at my side through the tussocked darkness, wandering into flower beds and stepping into horse shit while I thanked him for his trouble and followed a line of conversation that echoed our odd perambulations through the mist-streaked dark.

Ernest Henderson must have thought I had something contagious to admit: syphilis or TB or both.

But it was legs that were on my mind, and nothing else. What I wanted to know was how it was that one characteristic was passed on to a child and how one was not. I gave not a a damn for the shape of a head, or the colour of an eye, or even (as yet unaware of the stubbor

"Should, for instance," I asked the doctor as we turned back for the fifth time towards the dank direction of the Maribyrnong, "I feed her up on vegetables?"

Now Dr Henderson, you will say, had had no time to notice my legs, and I must have been puzzling the fellow to distraction, wasting his time, wearing him out when he should have been home in his bed. But if that is the case, he did not show it. He answered me as best he could, saying that the shape of legs could indeed be determined by a bad diet but he had also observed them to be as hereditary as Habsburg ears and as to whether the male or the female would triumph in the selection of legs for the child, it was a toss-up.

I received this comfortless news in silence. The doctor peered at the luminous face of his watch.

"So it's vegetables," I said, "or nothing."

"There is no harm in vegetables."

I saw him to his car, shook his hand, and waited for him to turn it. As he reversed he caught me in the full glare of his lights. I had no idea whether he was looking forwards or back, but I turned my left foot sideways and stood with my hand on my hip, in such a ma

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I have made no great study of epilepsy, so I have no accurate idea as to why Horace chose the moment of the doctor's departure to have a fit. It may have been the strain of reciting Lawson's poetry, the excitements of the day, the introduction of alcohol to his overwrought system, or just plain relief that no one was going to put him on a charge. Whatever caused it, the moment the headlights of the doctor's car washed across his bulging eyes all his systems went suddenly haywire. He was a ball of elastic unravelling. He was a full balloon suddenly unstoppered. He tossed and crashed on to the floor, thrashing his arms and banging his big head. His eyes rolled dreadfully. He made shocking noises, gurgling up from the back of his throat.

Molly screamed. He heard her. He heard every sound. Every word. He heard my footsteps as I ran inside, and every syllable that followed.

"He's choking."

"It's a fit."

"Pull out his tongue."

A pause.

"Quick, Mother," helpless Horace heard me say, "get a hatpin."

77

It is unendurable, Phoebe wrote to A

A

No, I am not disenchanted with H. He works hard and loves me, but I am bored. You would not recognize me. I sit for hours staring out the window. I ca

I was so ignorant. I did not even think to do anything to stop getting in this condition. I assumed it was something he would do. What a child I was. Now I feel fifty years old and sad and wizened and I look at my mother and listen to her talk about buying ataxi business and you would not believe how sad it makes me. I enclose my latest poems. Please criticize them. Tear them to shreds. Tell me. I have only Horace to show them to and he is so sweet. If I listened to him I would start to imagine myself a genius. are they any good? Am I deluding myself? Should I stop all this useless dreaming and be content with what I have? For he does love me, A

I do not go into town. I do not go to the theatre. I sit on the back step shelling peas and trying to love the child kicking at me. I know you are busy but I beg you to visit. Please write as soon as you get this letter. There is nothing else in my life that brings the prospect of so much pleasure.