Peter Carey: Illywhacker

He told me the story of his life, and I'll tell you too, later.

I also told him the story of my life, or rather the parts of it I had never told a man before. It has to be told again now, and I find it harder than I did when I looked at Jack's soft eyes in his crumpled sympathetic face.

This story concerns my father who I always imagined to be an Englishman, who made such a thing, as long as I knew him, of his Englishness, who never missed a chance to say, "I am an Englishman" or, "as an Englishman" that I was surprised to find out he was born in York Street, Warrnambool, the son of a shopkeeper. Yet for all that, I must carry his lie for him. For he made himself into an Englishman and my first memory of him is being chastised for the way I spoke.

"Cahstle," he roared at me, "not kehstle." He did not like my accent. He did not, I think, like much about me. My brothers were older and they got on with him better. They were useful to him in his business and I was too young to do any more than feed the animals and jump down to apply the brake on hills.

His business was to represent the English firm of Newby whose prime product was the Newby Patented 18 lb. Cannon, and with this machine in tow we covered the rutted, rattling, dusty pot-holed roads of coastal Victoria, six big Walers in front, the cannon at the rear, and that unsprung cart they called a "limber" in the middle.

Always we were in a hurry. There was never a time when we might stop at a pretty spot, or a morning when we could lie late in bed. Always there was some group of squatters who had got themselves together or -and this must be what really happened -who my father thought could be persuaded to get together to buy a cannon to protect themselves from Russians or Chinese or shearers.

He was a man who saw threat everywhere – thin but very strong, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, black-bearded and as cold to his children as he was charming to his customers. I have seen him at table with fat mayors and muscle-gutted squatters, laughing, telling jokes, playing them as sweetly as if they were his own violin, warming them up, getting their pores wide open before he hit them with the icy blast of fear that was his specialty.

It was from my father that I learned about the Chinese and he painted pictures of such depravity that when I met my first Chinaman I expected him to kill me.

God knows what I learned from my mother. I did not have her for long. I cannot tell you what she looked like, although, of course, I thought her pretty. I can remember sitting beside her on the limber -she is nothing more than a shape, but warm and soft, quite different to my two brothers and father who rode postilion on those huge Walers -they were as hard as the iron leg guards they wore on their right legs.

My father dispensed with my mother when I was still very young and I always assumed that he sent her away, but it is more likely that she died. Only two things are certain. The first is that he would not discuss it. The second is that I blamed him. I was left alone on the bench seat with only the rounds of ammunition to keep me company. The limber was unsprung and iron-wheeled. They steered a course over logs and pot-holes just to jar me. And although I saw a lot of country it was not much of a childhood, moving as we did through threatening visions of Russians, Lascars, Jews, Asiatics, Niggers and other threats to our safety.

My father was always very mean with his ammunition, and it was because of this that we finally parted. There was never a group of men, or an individual man, who did not like to see the cannon fired and there was nothing guaranteed to get him into a fury more than firing off a salvo for someone who did not buy a machine. He never showed his anger to the men who caused it ("A sale", he said, "is never lost, only to expect.

My brothers seemed to accept their beatings but then they spent their day on horseback and shared their task, their understanding of life, with my father, while I sat alone on the limber with my thoughts which were only interrupted by my father hollering "brake". There was such weight in that cannon that the brake must be applied at the top of hills, and I was meant to know without being told, to jump down off the moving limber and turn the big wheel at the back of the cannon; this applied wooden blocks directly to the cannon wheels and, making a God Almighty scream, prevented disaster on steep hills.

My father did not normally beat me badly, but there was an incident during the shearers' strike that resulted in a bloody beating. It was his fault, not mine. He got carried away with some wool cockies in Terang, and although I was only ten years old at the time, I could see that he wouldn't get the sale. These were fellows who wanted some fireworks, but my father missed the signs. He drew them pictures of mad-eyed shearers coming down to rape their wives and burn down their sheds. He let off ten shells and demolished a stand of iron-barks, leaving nothing but bleeding sap and torn splinters as soft as flesh. When it was over I could see the look on the men's faces – you see the same look outside brothels as they put on their hats and hurry away – a flaccid, shamed, satiated look.

These squatters told my father: "We'll think about it."

Well, he was nice as pie to them, but I felt the skin around my little testicles go hard and leathery and I sweated around my bum-hole and I will not describe for you the beating he gave me on account of this, but rather paint you the picture of my revenge, for it is this that I count as the day of my birth, just as it is from 1919, from the day I landed at Balliang East, that I count the days of my adult life.

My revenge did not take place immediately, but I did have an idea. I imagined, as I sat alone on the limber with my bruises, that I lacked the courage to carry it out. But the idea would not go away. It grew inside me. At night it comforted me. Soaked to the skin on the road to Melbourne – we were covering about twenty miles a day – the idea made me smile, but I remained dutiful, applying the brake and letting it off as required.

In Melbourne he had some work for a Grand Tattoo. He was paid for releasing showy blasts above the river Yarra; I don't know the occasion.

But on the 15th June 1895 – when the squatters had defeated the shearers without the use of cannon – we came down the Punt Road hill towards the Yarra as part of a procession. My father had a uniform on, and my two brothers were also dressed up with leggings and hats like officers. My father had promised me a uniform too, but at the last moment he decided it wasn't worth the money.

I did not honestly think I had the courage, but courage is a funny thing.

"Brake!" called my father. "Brake!"

Well, I jumped out. He turned and saw me. Have you ever seen the Punt Road hill where it comes down past Domain Street towards the Yarra? By God, it's steep. Well, I put the brake on at the top. The blocks of wood screamed against the steel, but as we came down the hill, I did it. It was such a well-oiled wheel. It moved so swiftly, so easily. Even a boy of ten could make it come whizzing back.

I had not planned to destroy whatever home I had and it only occurred to me in that moment, that moment when I had released the brake, when the screaming wheel suddenly went free and silent, that instant before the other screaming began, it only occurred to me then as my father's eyes, panicked by the sudden silence, found mine, it only occurred to me then, as I said, that I now had no home. Yet the only thing I regretted afterwards was the damage to the horses. They were gentle creatures. I meant them no harm.

"Poor little fellow," said drunk and sentimental Jack, releasing a tear or two which he smeared across his furry cheek. "Poor little chap."

Thus encouraged I could not stop. I spewed out the rest of my story, which is not as harsh as it might sound today. In the Great Depression of the 1890s there were plenty of street urchins and plenty who did it harder than I did, plenty more who worked in factories where the air was so foul it would make your stomach turn just to stand in the doorway.