Peter Carey - Illywhacker

"We're going to get drunk."

"We've done that." Nathan handed over the whisky all the same. He noticed, as he did so, that the street was totally empty, all of William Street from King's Cross to Hyde Park. Something went tight in his chest and he put his hand to his face and held it. But then two taxis appeared beside the New Zealand Hotel and came up the hill towards them.

When the taxis passed, Nathan tried to light a cigarette but the wind was too strong. "What", he put his Lucky Strike back in its crumpled packet, "are we going to do when your customers have gone home?"

This was the Intro to the Scheme. It confused Charles. He could not see how the "we" had got itself messed into "your customers". He pulled the cork out of the bottle and raised it to his lips.

"The war can't last forever," Nathan said. "Then all your rich Yanks will go home. My question to you, Charlie, is have you thought about this?"

Of course he'd thought about it. It had kept him awake at night, wandering around his galleries, sitting in pyjamas on those wide lonely stairs, staring into the aquariums in search of sleep.

"I want the war to end tomorrow," he said. "I would give my right arm."

"Yes, yes, I know." Nathan did know. He was not without sympathy. He merely wished to get to the scheme. "But what will you do?"

Suddenly Charles was lurching to his feet and roaring into the face of the westerly.

"How in the fuck do I know?" His eyes were watering, but possibly it was only the wind. "How… in… the fuck… do… I… know?" Some girls in a taxi drove past and waved at him, and he waved at them. His mood suddenly changed. He stood smiling after their tail-lights before returning to sit, more or less neatly, beside Nathan. "I'm shikkered. I've never been so shikkered before. Do you know how I know? Because," he started giggling, "because I don't normally fucking swear. Nathan, I don't know what I'm going to do."

It was then that Nathan said all that stuff about Emma needing treatment. It was unnecessary. He regretted having said it immediately.

"What do you mean, treatment?"

"Believe me, Charlie, it costs. I know. My first wife is the same."

"There's nothing wrong with Emma."

"Charlie…"

"There's nothing wrong with her. I love her…"

"Charlie…"

"Do you love your wife? Course you don't. You said you didn't. I feel sorry for you, Mr Schick, but I love my wife and my boys."

Nathan took the bottle and felt the golden liquid dull the pain in his cigarette-sore throat. It was a long drink, as long as drowning, and when he had finished, and fumbled with the cork, and got it, at last, firmly into the throat of the bottle, he looked up and saw that his partner had gone.

Then he saw him, lurching at an angle across William Street.

"Shit," said Nathan Schick.

The big pear-shaped figure paused in the middle of the street. It by the wind the figure turned and stumbled on its crumbled way. It tripped on the kerb on the other side of the street, kept its balance with vaudevillian precision, and disappeared into the darkness of the Forbes Street steps.

Nathan moved lightly across William Street. He regretted having said anything about his wife. He could never guess that his comment, so vigorously denied, would lead to a hosing down within the hour. Nathan took special care at the kerb. He crossed the footpath as dainty as a shadow and started to ascend the unlit steps.

"How the fuck do I know?" said a voice from the sixth step.

Nathan threaded his way past a nest of knees and elbows and sat on the step above him. He felt the cold in the old stone steps and resisted the strong desire he felt to talk about love and loneliness.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"How in the fuck do I know?"

"Charlie, listen."

"I listen."

"Do you want to go back to selling puppy dogs in a one-room dump?"

"I never sold a puppy dog in my life."

"All right, Mr Clever Dick." He gave the boy the Scotch and watched him drink it. There was a lighted window in a house above their heads and he could see the flow of the whisky as it ran down the boy's big chin and dripped, in a dotted line of liquid light, on to his shirt and tie. "All right, Mr Wise Guy, you tell me. How are we going to make a quid when the Yanks go home?"

Charles saw the answer, right there, in the piss-sour gloom of the Forbes Street steps. The whisky stung a cut on his hand and he saw it -this patch of dazzling clarity in the middle of the murk.

"Export," he said.

Nathan leaned forward and tried to hug him. He poked a finger in his eye before he got an arm around his head and squeezed his ears. "That's my scheme," he said.

"Me here, you there."

"That's right."

"Hands across the fucking ocean."

It is true that the discussion on the Forbes Street steps led to the hosing down and thus contributed to the loss of the affection of his two eldest boys, but it also led to the formation of a company with Nathan Schick, to the printing of letterheads with a Los Angeles address, and to one (only) cockatoo that could say, "Hello, Digger."

By 1949 Charles Badgery could afford to buy his wife a pearl necklace the price of which – he told me so himself – was one thousand guineas.

In 1949 I was sixty-three years old. I was now perfectly equipped to live in a world that did not exist, the world of Goldstein's letters. Had you seen me you would have been amazed that a place like Rankin Downs could produce such a specimen. I was educated, frail and decent. My voice was soft. I had a pretty stoop. My handshake was as smooth and as animated as a kid glove. I had the complexion of a eunuch and a Degree of Arts from the University of Sydney. You wish to discuss the Trade Union Movement in the 1890s? I'm your man. I can do it as if we are walking across streets of autumn leaves and there is warm cocoa waiting in the study. An interesting theory about the Shearers' Strike? Please be my guest. The role of lies in popular perceptions of the Australian political fabric? You have my speciality.

I was a marvel. Of course I was. I did not even mind that the Rankin Downs' Parole Board thought the credit was theirs. They could never imagine the work, the endless boring work, it takes to achieve this sort of transformation. I modelled myself on M. V. Anderson. I got his way of hunching his narrow little shoulders together and sinking his chin into his chest and bringing his long nicotine-stained fingers together and looking up, a little coyly, at his questioner, pursing the lips and raising the eyebrows, etc., etc. Oh, I was a cute little popsy. You would have loved me.

I told the Parole Board I was off to write a book; I was lying. What I really had in mind was no more complicated than drawing my pension, getting visiting rights to the Kaletskys, and effecting a reconciliation with my son. This last was a difficult matter. I wrote to him once, a short note I admit it, to say I was sorry for belting him across the ear. He never wrote back, and although Goldstein explained that it was due to excess of emotion – too many thoughts and feelings for his stubby HB pencil to control-I was angry just the same.

But damn it, I had a weakness for grand buildings and I liked the sound of his shop. It was not merely a building with a tower. Itwas a tower. Goldstein, of course, had not informed me about the situation on the fourth floor. I did not know I had a grandson named Hissao or that his mother lived in a cage. I did not even know that the whole edifice depended on the Americans' enthusiasm for Australian birds and reptiles. I will tell you the truth – it would not have put me off my plan to get myself put up there.

Various women have threatened me with the prospect of a lonely old age. They have said it in the desire to frighten me and they have said it again when they've seen how it has worked on me.