Peter Carey - Illywhacker

"What would you make", Les Chaffey began, tucking his comb neatly into his shirt pocket, "in your line of work, in an average week?"

Charles was wondering if they might give him an aspirin or a slice of bread, but he decided to deal with the question first. But when he had answered, it was quickly replaced by another.

What was his experience with the red-bellied black snake? How did it differ from the blue-bellied variety? What was his mother before she was a Badgery? Would they be any relation to the Minyip McGraths? What does your father do? What do you reckon about Mo McCaughey? Who do you vote for? What's your opinion of General Franco?

Charles answered this last question carefully, but when he discovered his host was both a nationalist and a socialist he told him the truth: that he had been on the brink of going to fight against "that mongrel Franco" when he had been waylaid.

Les, of course, was interested. He herded the spilled grains of sugar with the edge of his hand and when he had them into a little pile he swept them into the sugar bowl. Then he placed the sugar bowl on the shelf behind his head.

"Now," he said, "how did it happen?"

Charles was thinking about the Harrises' house at Horsham -they had served him six lamb chops for breakfast and cut a lunch for him to take when he left. They had put sweet gherkins on his cheese sandwiches and he had thrown them away because he did not like gherkins. Now he regretted it. He could, for instance, have taken the gherkins off the sandwiches. He could even have washed the gherkin taste off the cheese. He had been a mug. He would never throw away good food ever again. Even if he could not have got rid of the gherkin taste from the cheese he could, at least, have kept the bottom slice of bread which the gherkin had never touched.

"You were on the boat?" Les Chaffey suggested.

"No, I never saw the boat."

"He had the ticket," suggested Mrs Chaffey. It was the first time she had spoken, but Charles liked the way she leaned towards him as she spoke.

"I had the money for the ticket to get to London."

"Right," said Les. "You had the do-re-mi. You had it in your pocket."

"In my money belt."

"In your money belt, right you are. Then what happened?" The shutters were all propped wide open and Charles could hear the cry of a solitary owl, Mo-poke, Mo-poke. He was about to ask for a slice of bread and then he looked up, the question on his lips, and he saw how keenly Mrs Chaffey was listening. He decided to tell the story first.

He had, in the beginning, no intention of going to Spain at all. He had been going to Sydney, to find his mother. As the train swung and swayed in between the dingy backyards of Sydney he felt that his life was about to begin. He imagined his mother would live in a house similar to the ones he saw by the railway line and this did not dismay him at all, quite the contrary. He was expecting warm embraces and hot tears, soft beds, big dinners; the noise of the trains passing his window could only increase his happiness.

He had brought his last two, his best two, rabbit skins to give her. She could make them into a hat or a stole. They were hard on one side and soft on the other and when you bent them, they made a crinkly noise. They were his best-quality skins and he took them out of his bluey on the last leg up from Liverpool. He showed them to the sailor.

"They're for my mum," he said. "I haven't seen her since I was a little nipper."

The sailor advised him to find his mother whatever effort it took. He himself had grown up in an orphanage. He offered to help, but Charles said he already had a friend who was helping him. When the sailor learned the friend was a female he showed Charles a French letter in a paper envelope. It was stamped "air-tested" and he insisted on Charles taking it.

Leah Goldstein was not expecting him. If she had seen him in the street it is doubtful if she would have recognized him, for he had grown large and the dress he now adopted was of his own choosing – a combination of cast-offs from municipal tips and certain flash items for which he had paid too much money. Thus he wore a big checked jacket with bright blue and gold squares which had been refashioned from a man's dressing gown, a pair of heavy hobnailed work boots which, judging from the number of eyelets, might have been thirty years old, and a big white Texan hat bought by mail order from Smith's Weekly. He carried a rolled bluey, but not across his shoulders. He had made a leather handle to buckle on to its straps so that he could carry the bluey at his side, like a suitcase. He did not wish to be thought a swagman.

Leah Goldstein would not have recognized him in the street, but she could do it – did do it – before she turned on the porch light and saw him standing there still holding his tram ticket in his hand. The smell of tea-tree oil came to her, blown on the westerly wind, and the austere set of her face was already softening and her lips were forming the shape of his name before she reached the light switch.

For a moment she feared he would, like a new puppy, burst through the fly wire. But he contained himself and in a second, with the flimsy screen door still intact, he was crushing her to him and she was laughing out loud. She was pleased to see him, more pleased than she would have imagined, but just the same she had to shush his croaking voice, his joyful shouts, because there was a meeting in progress inside and she – the minute book was in her hand – was secretary. She put her finger to her lips and said he could come in and listen, that they would not (she pulled a face) be too much longer.

In the little room, sitting on the floor, on broken chairs, on the bed, were a number of men and women who would be, or already were, famous as artists and writers. They were meeting to organize an exhibition to raise money to send Australians to fight against General Franco and when Charles entered they smiled at him in a good-natured way and went back to their business. Charles blushed bright red and sat in a corner against the wall.

There was a fierce argument proceeding about whether there could be any such thing as proletarian art. Charles was surprised to see that Leah, whom he remembered most for her strong opinions, took no part in this. Neither did she write down anything that was said. She sat beside and a little behind Izzie's wheelchair and, twice, smiled at Charles. No one seemed to take any notice of Izzie's mutilation and Charles was shocked that he did not take the trouble to throw a rug across those trousered stumps.

Charles felt self-conscious and ill at ease. He understood almost nothing about the room or the situation. He could not see why a man should wear a fur hat or a woman have green stockings. He did not understand the abstract print on the wall or even the language that they spoke. He listened to Izzie Kaletsky pouring scorn on the possibility of proletarian art but he could not understand what he was talking about.

And yet he had trapped rabbits and sold birds. He had been fencing in Western New South Wales. He could trap rosellas with no other bait than a cup of water. The total of his savings was a hundred and five pounds six shillings and twopence. This was more, he thought, than most of these people were worth. They had no right to make him feel so stupid. He sought a way to move the ground to something that would be more favourable to him. He was not so ambitious as to attempt to make the Picasso print disappear or the problems of proletarian art vanish, and yet this is precisely what he succeeded in doing – he opened his swag and took out his snake, a little green and yellow tree snake, startlingly beautiful and very active, which he had bought that afternoon in Campbell Street.