Illywhacker (29 page)

“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 manner that my deformity, looked at from the doctor’s point of view, to all intents and purposes, disappeared.

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.”

It is unendurable, Phoebe wrote to Annette, and she has become quite mad. She is no longer dotty, which she always was, but mad. You would find it hard to imagine, if you can only think of her as the dear happy soul she was in Western Avenue. She has small unblinking eyes like a currawong, turning its head on one side and staring malevolently, as if she thinks I’ll pull the needle from the wool and drive it between my legs into the baby’s heart. I cannot talk to her. I have tried. Of course we both know what the matter is: she thinks poor Horace is my lover, God help me. Even Horace has the grace to laugh about it.

Annette, I am big and heavy like a fat bloated slug and I am so bored. The aeroplane sits where I can see it from the window. It is the only thing that keeps me sane.

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 cannot even clean the house or cook. Only Horace amuses me, and how can we discuss poetry or life or
anything
while
she
sits there with her hands folded on her lap as if we will, at any moment, leap on to the table and start performing adulterous acts.

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 a
taxi
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, Annette, and I know I can make him so happy yet I did not, even for a moment, guess that what he wanted was so
ordinary:
a fat wife with a dozen children and cabbage and stew every night.

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.

With much love,

Phoebe

It was not the ghost that made me fearful. I was already fearful before it came. It was the counterweight to my contentment and the greater my contentment grew the greater was my fear of losing it. The eucalypts I had planted now thrust out tender pink shoots that glowed in the spring sunshine like blood-filled skin. My wife’s belly pushed against her dress. Her breasts swelled. Everywhere life seemed tender and exposed and I did not need a whistling ghost to make me consider the risks of both life and death.

I could not bear to hear my wife discuss aviation. This subject, which had, so short a time before, contained the juices of happiness itself, was poison in the air we breathed. My mind was filled with
visions of ruptured organs and broken struts and I wished to encourage her in gentler safer pursuits. This was one of the reasons I invited Horace to stay. I built a room for him. And while Molly clucked her tongue in censure I cut new timber with my saw and inhaled the sweet sour smell of blackbutt. This was a real room, fifteen feet by fifteen feet, with shelves for books and a proper desk for poetry.

Horace was cosy and comfortable and domestic. He was as fearful as a guinea pig and his nervousness soothed me and made me feel safer. It was comforting to have him in the house, like a pet who can be relied upon to give affection. Also: he could read. I had it in mind that I would learn the knack from him so that when my ink-stained wife offered me her poetry I might have some idea what it was, that I would no longer stare dumbly at the dancing hieroglyphics, my skin prickling with suspicion while I counterfeited understanding and enthusiasm. In the meantime I could have him read the work aloud, pretending that I liked his feathery voice.

Horace was a nice man, but far too gentle. He was no match for Phoebe’s will, and when she wished the subject to be aviation he could not and would not swerve her from it. When Phoebe demanded to have her knowledge of Sidwell tested it was Horace who held the tattered volume in his warty hand while I, watching from my place at the head of the uncleared table, did not know whether to be jealous that my position was usurped, pleased that my illiteracy had not yet been uncovered or delighted that I had, at last, a home, a family, a domestic hearth.

“Should the engine stop suddenly?”

“The cause will be failure of the ignition or fuel supply,” said my wife, her brow untroubled by the thought of such a calamity.

“To cure it?” Horace turned the page with the same leisurely sweep of hand he brought to his prized edition of Rossetti.

“To cure it, test the magneto and switch off the petrol supply.”

“If the engine is misfiring?”

“Ah,” said Molly, replacing her fluffy pink knitting in its paper bag and standing. “You should be reading recipe books, my girl.”

“If the engine is misfiring on one cylinder,” Phoebe smiled at her mother, “it is a faulty plug.”

“Or ironing your husband’s shirts,” said Molly, putting the big kettle back on the stove.

“Herbert doesn’t mind. If the misfiring is accompanied by loud banging or rattling it is probably a broken valve. Anyway, Horace irons the shirts.”

“If irregular or infrequent firing occurs?” asked Horace, colouring at this public mention of his housekeeping. He looked up at Molly then looked away quickly when she caught his eye.

“You spoil her,” she said to me. “I’ll never know why you signed that silly paper. It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

The paper she spoke of was a legal document that I had signed to honour my promise to her about the aeroplane.

“It will be because the rocker arm on the magneto contact-breaker sticks occasionally,” said Phoebe smiling at me. “It’s only sensible,” she said to Molly. “He’s a liar.”

“Phoebe!”

“I love him, Mother.”

“Oh dearie me,” said Molly, clattering with teacups at the sink. “Perhaps I’m just old-fashioned.”

“No doubt about it, Mother. Or,” she told Horace, “because there is oil or dirt on the distributor or the platinum points require timing.”

The document in question is probably worth including here. I only signed it to demonstrate my kindness to the ghost.

THIS INDENTURE
made the twentieth day of September 1921
BETWEEN HERBERT PETER BADGERY
of Dudley’s Flat West Melbourne in the State of Victoria (hereinafter called the Grantor) of the one part
AND PHOEBE MATILDA BADGERY
his wife of the other part.

WHEREAS
the Donee is possessed of a desire to pilot an aircraft
AND WHEREAS
in the course of their marriage the Donee has become and is currently with child to the Grantor
AND WHEREAS
the aforesaid pregnancy has greatly frustrated the Donee in her aforesaid desire to pursue her career as an aviator
AND WHEREAS
the Grantor is the owner of an aircraft, to wit one Morris Farman Shorthorn (hereinafter called the Aeroplane).

NOW THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH
that the Grantor in consideration of his natural love and affection for the Donee and
other good and sufficient consideration
HEREBY COVENANTS
(subject to the final proviso set out below) that he will not again during the currency of this Indenture impregnate the Donee or make any advances such as may induce the Donee to desire union with the Grantor during such times as she is susceptible to becoming pregnant or otherwise have a second child
AND THE GRANTOR FURTHER COVENANTS
that he will provide the Donee with all the means and support and will use his best endeavours to teach the Donee to fly and navigate the Aeroplane and that he not withhold either monies or information needed for the maintenance of the Aeroplane in an airworthy condition
AND THE GRANTOR FURTHER COVENANTS
that from such time as she is delivered of child he will do nothing to discourage the Donee from flying the Aeroplane at any time irrespective of the clemency of the weather or the time of day or night
AND THE GRANTOR FURTHER COVENANTS
that he will provide the Donee at all times with sufficient funds to purchase her requirements of fuel, oil, mechanical assistance and ground support staff
PROVIDED HOWEVER
that the Donee will not fly more than eighty (80) miles from her matrimonial home except with the prior written approval of the Grantor which approval shall not be unreasonably withheld
AND THE GRANTOR FURTHER COVENANTS
and the parties hereby agree that in the event that the Donee does once again fall pregnant to the Grantor this Indenture shall operate as an assignment of the Aeroplane to the Donee free and clear of all encumbrances and in such event the Grantor shall provide the Donee with sufficient funds to maintain herself and the Aeroplane in an airworthy condition and with sufficient funds to fuel and fly the Aeroplane without any limitation whatsoever in terms of distance or time and irrespective of whether the Donee continues to live as the wife of the Grantor or in the matrimonial home
AND THE GRANTOR FURTHER COVENANTS
that in the event that the Aeroplane is destroyed or otherwise becomes unairworthy and beyond repair he will replace it with another aeroplane of the same make and model or failing that with an aeroplane of equivalent performance and capacity
PROVIDED HOWEVER
that nothing in this Indenture shall detract from the liberty of the Grantor at all times to sustain the marriage by vera copula consisting of erectio and intromissio without ejaculatio.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF
the Parties have hereunto affixed their hands and seals on the day and date first herein before written.

A man who wishes his tale believed does himself no service by speaking of the supernatural; I would rather have slipped in some neatly tailored lie to fill the gap, but the gap is so odd, so uniquely shaped, that the only thing that will fill it is the event that made it.

I told no one about the ghost. From March to July in 1921 I saw it often. It sat at the kitchen table. It wandered across the flats. Sometimes it was there every night. Sometimes I would think it gone for good. For two, three, four nights I would be left alone. And then I would wake up and hear it, sitting at the kitchen table, whistling out of tune. The hairs on my neck would raise themselves on end, and those on my arms, and those on my legs that had not been worn away by my straight-legged trousers. I soaked the sheet with perspiration.

The hens were my witness to the ghost. They set up the sort of fuss and panic you hear when a snake enters the chook-house late at night. One of them, a big old Rhode Island Red rooster, died of fright. Molly’s verdict was that it had fallen prey to damp and I did not disagree with her. The dead rooster, however, smelt of snake.

The ghost was not a single solid shape, but rather a confluence of lights nestling in a lighter glow, like one of those puzzles for children with dots numbered from one to ninety-five. It sat at the kitchen table with the snake. The snake slithered like a necklace around the ghost, entered into it and streamed out of it. You could see the snake’s innards pulsing: liquids, solids, legs of frogs and other swarming substances with tails like tadpoles.

The ghost was Jack. Its gait, as it drifted past my bedroom window, was unmistakable. I saw it move out across the grass flats and on to the mud. It hovered round the Morris Farman.

Now you can say I manufactured this ghost myself, and that it was nothing more than my guilty conscience scorched on to the night. I will have to grant it is possible, providing you also give me credit for killing the rooster and making it smell of snake. You are free to argue it, but it makes and made no difference, not to the story, not to my prickling skin, or to my bowels which loosened and gave me a liquid shit to spray and
splatter around the dunnycan at odd and unpredictable hours of the night and day.