Peter Carey - Illywhacker

She was wrong about herself – what sustained her were the threads from the famous suit which she had woven into something new and personal, something finer than that sour greasy object which she had, if not misunderstood, at least imperfectly comprehended. With the threads of the suit she had woven kindness into a philosophy that was as simply practised as sending money to Rosa, picking up bagmen on the road, teaching me to read, sharing her food and being attentive to someone else's children. What she had made had little in common with Izzie's giant dream, was like one of her proverbial baby swallows beside his giant canvas of smooth grey forms, that complex ants' nest bathed in golden light.

"My husband is sustained by a better world, you see, not by fear or selfishness."

"Yes."

"He has probably killed his brother," she said, as if talking to herself, "and he thinks this is permissible. He thinks this is just. He thinks it is Correct."

"And that is better than being sustained by a belt?"

"Probably," she shivered, and tried to shut the scratched side curtains. "The intention is better. The intention is generous, not fearful."

"But why did he have to dob in his brother?"

"Not dob in."

"Do the Russians have a patent out on communism? Why does he have to explain himself to them?"

"It is a science," she said without conviction. "And the Russians have performed the first successful experiment. You'd have to ask him, Mr Badgery," she said bleakly. "I don't understand either."

"I liked him," I said.

"People do," she said and sat hugging her bare arms, no longer curious about the rabbits leaping from the bracken-covered paddocks we were passing through.

"No one asked me," said the voice from the back. "No one asked what sustains me."

What sustained my son, it seemed, was his new friendship with the cockatoo and Leah, guilty, weary, gritty-eyed, hugged him awkwardly across the back of the seat, and, with tears running down her cheeks, told him he was a good boy.

"I won't hurt her, will I, Leah?"

"No, Charles. I know you won't."

"I won't let her down."

"No."

"I know what sustains Sonia," Charles whispered, putting his arms around Leah's neck.

I turned to look at the sweet smile on my daughter's sleeping face.

"Disappearing," said duplicitous Charles, attempting to see what reaction this would get. "She tries all the time," whispered the little informer. "She says prayers to Jesus to make her disappear."

I couldn't help smiling. I never had a high opinion of the power of the Christian god: electric crosses, holy pictures, Irish priests at country football matches.

"Jesus doesn't know the trick," I said.

"I told her," Charles said.

"And who should she pray to, Mr Badgery?" said Leah who had never, once, referred to my act since the Bendigo fiasco.

"You don't pray to Jesus, I promise you that."

"But who", she insisted, "do you pray to?"

"Matilda," I grinned.

She frowned.

"Goddess of Fear."

Leah did not laugh. She put her hand on my knee. "Do you become afraid, Mr Badgery?"

"Sometimes."

"Let's buy alcohol," she said suddenly. "Let's buy alcohol in Violet Town."

Alcohol sustained us, it is true, and had it not been for this (and a packet of French letters I was forced to buy in Benalla) we would have made it across the border with petrol in the tank and five bob to spare, free, ready to make an honest quid without the help of the Victorian Police Force.

Alas we ran out of petrol in Wodonga and Charles, to his everlasting pride and eternal shame, sold his yellow-tailed black cockatoo to the man in the pet shop outside whose establishment fortune decreed we should come to rest.

There is nothing to tell about this except to let you see the expression on my son's face when he had bid up the price from ten shillings to one pound. His face seemed to swell, as if ruled by air or fluids; it became quite pink and taut and his eyes brightened with moisture and his mouth quivered at that odd uncertain point – a point I would like to leave it at forever -where, tickled by pride, made loose with relief, it may burst into the broadest smile or, alternatively, fall in on itself, feed on itself, a bitter meal of self-hatred that might sustain a man forever.

I would rather fill my history with great men and women, philosophers, scientists, intellectuals, artists, but I confess myself incapable of so vast a lie. I am stuck with Badgery amp; Goldstein (Theatricals) wandering through the 1930s like flies on the face of a great painting, travelling up and down the curlicues of the frame, complaining that our legs are like lead and the glare from all that gilt is wearying our eyes, arguing about the nature of life and our place in the world while – I now know – Niels Bohr was postulating the presence of the neutrino, while matter itself was being proved insubstantial, while Hitler – that black spider – was weaving his unholy lies.

Lies, dreams, visions – they were everywhere. We brushed them aside as carelessly as spider webs across a garden path. They clung to us, of course, adhered to our clothes and trailed behind us but we were too busy arguing to note their presence.

So while Arthur Dempster discovered Uranium 235 I was learning to be a funny man, mocking the dragon, standing on a dusty stage in Bellingen, NSW, and looking like a fool while an emu pecked my bum.

I had painted a map of Australia on the soft canopy of the Dodge and marked our path in red. "Badgery amp; Goldstein (Theatricals)" it said. Later I added " amp; Pet Suppliers" in acknowledgement of Charles's role in our survival.

Charles grew large and strong, but in an awkward way, with powerful bullock driver's thighs atop his bandy legs. He had a long trunk, a huge head with a powerful jaw, a face painful with pimples. He suffered his adolescence, talking to various animals in a breaking voice. When he should have been masturbating or spying on girls in the changing sheds of shire swimming pools, he was caressing some bright parrot or persuading a carpet snake to give up its freedom.

During some bad times in the Northern Rivers, it was fourteen-year-old Charles who kept us alive, selling birds to a charming old American, a fellow named Parson who wore rimless glasses like Teddy Roosevelt. He robbed us, of course, but we didn't know any better. He paid us a shilling for king parrots, sixpence for a galah, and we stayed in Grafton while the jacarandas dropped their lilac carpets across the streets and Charles went out each day with his nets and his climbing boots, a sanctimonious look on his face.

We paid for all this, the rest of us, paid for it in Charlie's moods, his slammed car doors, his stamped foot, his flood of tears.

It was also in Grafton that I bought Sonia a pretty white dress so she could go to Church of England Sunday School. Leah, who dressed drably off stage, disapproved of this. I was never religious myself but I thought it a harmless sort of thing. I would rather have my daughter pray to Jesus and sing Christmas carols than flirt with dragons. Besides, I had nothing against a pretty dress and I liked to dress up my beautiful daughter, to brush her hair and tie her ribbons. I was not approved of and later, in a moment of heat, Leah would scream at me: "All you saw of her were pretty dresses, not who she was. She was just skin to you."

Ah, skin.

We cannot avoid it. Ever since her husband had walked, glass-eyed, mask-faced, from our camp, skin had been an obsession with my puritanical partner who suffered her guilt, that she had rejected her husband for an unworthy reason. She did not even understand her own reasons. She put all the weight on that poor envelope and would not let herself see beyond it.