Peter Carey - Illywhacker

I had to tell lies, of course, to explain this miserable location to Leah, but she was naive about halls at this stage of her career, never having had to hire one herself.

So there I was, at seven o'clock of a rainy night, shivering before the fly-spotted mirror while spiders kept on at their business on the bare tin roof above my head.

Leah made tea and talked to me softly about stage fright, but it was not stage fright that was the point at all: if the business in hand had been juggling or card tricks, I would have been in my element. I would have enjoyed those spangles and thought them my right for they provided an aura no less dazzling than the one that surrounded me when I walked down Ryrie Street in Geelong with my dreams intact and a Shaftesbury Patented Umbrella in my hand.

Charles marched before the gaping entrance, squeaking back and forth on his brand-new boots, clicking on steel toecaps, clacking at the heels, his garters itchy-tight around his wounded calves, his short tweed trousers rubbing at the knee, his jacket buttoned tight below his jutting chin, his hair parted with a knife edge and held flat with shining oil, his button eyes afire with dragon light.

Before him he held a jam tin. He jangled it – prouder than a blackboard monitor – jiggled the eleven separate shillings up and down and was pleased (triumphant) that the audience contained his hateful teacher and giggling strapper, Mr Barry Edwards Esq. who was known to grown-ups, it seemed, as 'A-plus-B'.

So Charles marched before that door waiting for his revenge or, at least, his vindication. His bald-headed father would soon arrange himself in the style that Barry Edwards had mocked, had compared to both standard lamp and ballerina.

The walls and ceiling of the little hall were lined with tongue-and-groove boards that had been, mistakenly, coated with kalsomine. Along each wall some well-intentioned person had placed coloured light globes (blue, yellow, green) at six-foot intervals, just below the empty picture rail.

In this evil light the eleven paying customers, all great supporters of Douglas Credit, all from the one bar of the Shamrock Hotel, hawked and spat and conversed in echoing voices about the banner for the Eaglehawk Bowling Club which, having been left behind five years before, now billowed in the draughts above the proscenium arch.

Sonia stood on a chair in a kitchen, her hand already on the heavy brass switch that would soon plunge the hall into darkness while her father transported himself, she had no doubts, into the arms of Jesus Christ Himself. She took her hand from the switch and pressed it against her arm, nervously assuring herself of her own solidity.

Leah had wrapped herself in a moth-eaten red robe which covered her emu feathers in a lumpy sort of fashion. She shivered. She rubbed her legs. It was not cold. She jumped up and down and declared that she was petrified, that she hated this life, that she would vomit any moment. A huge flake of silver paint detached itself from her shoe and revealed a bright red slash, like a wound.

"Please, Mr Badgery," she said. "Don't let me down." And went on stage, before I had a chance to make an escape. I sat hunched on my chair. I saw the back of her cloak disappear around the corner of the tea urn, and then she was on stage, making a very formal speech. Her voice was a tight-stretched mirror of anxiety as she publicly confessed the lies I had persuaded the newspaper to print. This unexpected piece of entertainment fell, shivering, in spooky silence: there were to be no death adders, no Gay Paree. They shuffled their boots. Charles clicked his money together apprehensively.

"But", the snake-dancer said (Charles' boots creaked), "I am one hell of a dancer."

There was applause.

"And I will dance with venomous snakes. I will dance with two red-bellied black snakes and also a python big enough to choke a grown man. But if this is not enough, you can have your money back now."

Charles held his jam tin very still, but he need not have worried: no one wanted their money back. Someone wanted a drink. Someone else wanted to see Leah's legs. They were in a good mood and did not complain about the leaking roof.

"But," Leah said, and her voice was suddenly sleek, groomed on the oil of their approbation. "But", she said, "there is more." She was so confident about my act I could not bear to listen to her. I plugged my ears and sucked in my breath. I stood up. Sonia smiled at me. She jumped down from her chair and kissed me on the hand, then jumped again to stand guard beside that dreadful switch which was to put me in the centre of attention.

Leah finished singing my praises. The applause was strong and riveted with whistles. I began my walk towards the stage. On the steps: Leah, pink, glowing. She patted my bald head and I got a laugh as I stumbled (missing floorboard) on to the dusty stage.

And there I stood.

I stood there for a long time without doing anything. Neither did the audience. We regarded each other. I blinked and peered miserably into the gloom.

Charles creaked at the back of the hall and it was for him that I arranged myself in the position for summoning dragons, the foot on knee, the stretched hand, etc. It was, I stress, merely the position, nothing more, as harmless as an unarmed grenade.

"Badgery," roared Barry Edwards in the dark. I peered out at him. "I swear it must be a Badgery."

The hall tittered. Charles's boots creaked in anticipation of a delicious revenge. His dragon stretched itself.

"Ha ha," said A-plus-B, "Two ballerinas, two lampstands. Not one, but two."

"Shut up, A-plus-B," a woman hissed. "We come for his show, not yours."

"Sorry, Kathleen," said brown-voiced Edwards. "A million pardons but I thought you come for the beer."

This was considered funny. They laughed for a while and when they had finished I was still standing there. I shut my eyes.

"God help us, he's gone to sleep."

I opened them.

"He's awake," they shrilled, "he's awake."

There was a rush of feathers and I received a clip across the head and a push in the back. I fell, heavily. A four-letter word escaped but was stamped to death by the hooting, squealing audience.

There was an emu dancing over me. It lifted its net-stockinged legs high. It stamped on my hands and on my legs. I retreated, crawling, but did not escape the final indignity – a simulated peck on my dusty backside.

"Get off," the emu hissed, putting on the gramophone with its beak.

"Get off," the mob echoed joyfully, for no matter what faults the Bendigo Mechanics' Institute may have had, bad accoustics could not be numbered amongst them.

"Oh God," roared A-plus-B, "God save me, this is wonderful."

Charles opened his mouth in pain.

My son gripped his hands together and was given coiled visions of revenge no less luminous than Sonia's angelic hosts who fluttered in her mind's eyes, as disturbed as pigeons who find their coop door boarded shut.

I crawled off the stage and left the show to Leah Goldstein. My daughter came down off her chair and held my hand, but I did not want the shy sympathy of children, not that my son offered any. He would not even look at me. He put his precious jam tin on the kitchen sink and sat on the stairs where he could adore Leah without obstruction.

The Emu Dance was a great success. When the emu chick hatched they applauded the cleverness (Charles also, noisily). When she did the Veil Dance even the woman whistled her (Charles stamped). The tap was a triumph and when she returned for the great finale, the Snake Dance, the hall was as quiet and vibrant as a shiver.

My bleeding hands curled into fists and I could have punched the dancer on her little parrot's nose. I was far too jealous to watch her, and thus missed the moment when it started to go wrong. Perhaps, as I have seen her do, she held a clutch of assorted snakes in her hands and let them drop on to her head. It was called the Shower of Snakes. In any case, she attempted too much for the credulity of the big-voiced woman who asserted, loudly, that the serpents had obviously been defanged, their poison sacs removed and that fraud was being openly committed on stage. This was not, in itself, what stopped the show and Leah did not, as she often did later, make a simple speech about the technical difficulties of either defanging or removing poison sacs. She could explain the operation required with scientific precision and point out the adverse affect on the health and happiness of the snake. What did stop the show was A-plus-B's footnote to the charge of fraud and this was made sotto voce, beneath his hand, under his beard. I did not hear the complete sentence, but heard him say "three by two" which is, in case you did not know it, rhyming slang.