Peter Carey - Illywhacker

"One thing's certain," Chaffey said, folding his glasses, rubbing his eyes, smearing black oil across his weary eyelids, "there'll be no more done without a drop of sleep. I've been up all night on this." He dropped his glasses into their case and snapped the lid shut. "Do you have anything planned for the day?"

"I was heading up to Horsham."

"Ah well, Horsham will still be there tomorrow. It won't run away." He put his arm solicitously around Charles's round shoulder. He only did it for a moment, because, being shorter, it was not comfortable. "Come on, Chas. We'll have some bread and jam and then I'll get my forty winks."

There was no bread so they had jam in the tea. While his host snored across the corridor Charles sat at the big table with Mrs Chaffey while she apologized for her husband.

"There's nothing here", she said sadly, "to challenge his mind. I see him some days on the tractor and I know he's gone off into a daze. It's very dangerous to ride a tractor not thinking. That's how I lost my brother – sitting there, not thinking, and next thing you know it's rolled on top of him. Wife and five children. I'm sorry about your motor cycle, son, but I've got to be honest and say I'm pleased you came. It's woke him up. It really has. Did you see his eyes? Well, you wouldn't know the difference but he's been going to sleep after tea and sleeping half the afternoons as well. There's nothing for his mind. The mice ate all his books. They ate all his plough drawings too, but he didn't even seem to mind. He took the bits that were left and threw them in the fire. Well, he doesn't know how to put your cycle back together, but he will, I promise you. He'll teach himself. When he made the plough he read up all about engineering and he made these little gadgets for telling about stress. I don't claim to understand it all, but there was a professor up here from Melbourne who looked at them and he said to me, 'Mrs Chaffey, it's a marvel.' Mind you, his mother told me he was a genius. She never forgave me for laughing at her. I wish she was still alive so I could apologize to her face. Sometimes I dream she's alive, and I'm so happy because I know I can say I'm sorry. But really, it's all for the best. She'd hate to see him now. He hasn't been the same since the banks pulled out of the plough and he lost his patent. There's an American crowd, I hear, who are making it now. It makes me so cross, I could spit."

The tea and jam had done nothing but accentuate Charles's hunger. He was eager that the talking finish so he could go outside and raid the chook house for eggs. He knew that anything he said would extend the conversation, but he could not help himself – he felt sorry for Mrs Chaffey and being a young man he imagined that words might help her.

"Still," he said, "you've got the farm."

She did not quite laugh, but she expelled some air. "He only bought the farm because it was so bad, to demonstrate the ploughs. Wally Jenkins," she explained, nodding down towards the road where an old Chev made the leading edge of a feather of soft dust. She watched Wally Jenkins's progress for a moment. "To demonstrate the ploughs," she said. "We've got a rocky paddock and a paddock full of stumps and we've got a bog which will be boggy if it ever rains again, and he was so happy when he found it. Just like a little boy. We were boarding with the Ryans in Jeparit at the same time and he came home and said, 'Marjorie, I've found the perfect bit of land.' Oh dear," she said, smoothing her dull hair back over her head.

Charles made a sympathetic noise.

Mrs Chaffey placed her oil-smeared hands palm downwards on the table and Charles – the urge came on him suddenly – wanted to pat them.

"I must say I'm pleased you came," she said. "I must say you are like an angel to me." And she touched his hand. Perhaps it was the hunger, but his head started humming and he felt a not unpleasant sensation on his neck, just where the hair was cut short and prickly. She did not pat his hand, as he had considered patting hers, but grabbed it, and squeezed it hard until it hurt.

"If you had wings on your back", she said, her forehead creased with frown marks, "and a halo round your head I couldn't be happier."

And then she stood, made a jumble of cups and saucers, and left the room, accompanying the soft brush of her feet with the light clink of crockery.

It was such a gloomy room. It faced the west and the mornings were spent in deep lifeless shadow. Charles sat alone with his back to his host's rifle-shooting trophies, staring down at the bright yellow ribbon of empty road. It was so still that Mr Jenkins's cloud of dust still hung like a chalky smudge across the sand-washed landscape. His head still felt odd – probably, as I said, only hunger. He looked down and found the oily mark Mrs Chaffey's hand had left on the back of his, and in the face of all the forces to the contrary, the gloomy light, his empty belly, the melancholy snoring of his host, the lost snakes, the various stinks of mice, sweat, must, seaweed, the dismembered motor cycle, the flies fucking on the jam spots on the table, this oil smudge of affection was enough to make him happy.

When he heard Mrs Chaffey splitting firewood he went out to help her.

The next morning was as fine and clear and windless as the one before. Wally Jenkins drove past and made his chalk plume of dust. They ate porridge with golden syrup, fresh soda bread with plum jam and cocoa made from new cow's milk. Charles saw a little lump of snake's shit and kicked it under the table.

There was no talking during the eating although Les Chaffey took out his wooden-handled pocket knife and, very carefully, cut the weather map from his two-day-old copy of theArgus. He placed this on the table where his bread and butter plate should have been; then he put on his spectacles so he could study while he ate.

When breakfast was finished and the table cleared, Mrs Chaffey ripped a big rag from an old floral dress and gave it to her husband. Charles heard the rip but did not think about it. He was still seated in his chair, his head back, his eyes patiently combing the cobwebby rafters, looking for his snakes.

Chaffey had to ask his guest to move. Mrs Chaffey invited him (wordlessly) to stand beside her and watch Mr Chaffey wipe down the oilskin. Mr Chaffey did not do this like a husband performing a chore, nor did Mrs Chaffey watch him as if he were.

Mrs Chaffey smiled at Charles. Mr Chaffey spat on the rag and worked on the hardened gravy spots. He rubbed like a demon. He polished the oilcloth as if it were made of first-quality cedar. He felt the surface with the flat of his hand and was not easily satisfied.

When he was done with spitting and rubbing, he tucked the rag in his back pocket from whence it hung like a bedraggled bantam's tail. Unconscious of the comic effect, he took down his dictionary from the shelf, opened it at the beginning, and removed his collection of yellowed newspaper weather maps. He then spread these on the table like a hand of patience.

"Come here, Chas. I'll show you something."

Mrs Chaffey nodded encouragingly, although she herself remained leaning against the open window.

Charles went and stood beside his host but because he was confused as to what was happening he did not listen properly to the first part of the explanation and thus found himself saying "yes, yes" when he was, in reality, totally bamboozled.

Les Chaffey was explaining the weather to him. He was doing it in terms of a game of snooker. There was rain coming. It was there, sure as chooks have chickens. It was not on the map yet, but it would be. There was a high, there, which would be snookered. It would wish to move across, but would be blocked. Then this low would come in and drop, plop, into the pocket in the Great Australian Bight. This itself would not bring rain, but it left the field wide open, any mug could see it, for this one, here. Les called it the "Salient Low".