Peter Carey - Illywhacker

Neither did she understand the old ladies in the compartment and although she recognized the squashed lamington cakes they produced (wrapped in wrinkled greaseproof paper) and could give them a name, they produced no echoes in her own experience. She listened to their long conversation about the dryness of the country from which seemingly poor material they were able to knit a conversation, or, if not exactly a conversation, a series of calls and answering calls like crows will do just before sunset. The word "dry" repeated itself, joined itself to other words and then fell away into silence to be replaced by the about. On the panel behind their heads the railways had framed photographs of ferny glades and cool green places on the other side of Melbourne where the Goldstein family had once motored in search of walks, single-filed, silent walks where they had all moved and stopped with a single mind, to listen to a bellbird, to hasten to a clearing, to taste the clean spring water.

She felt lonely, no longer joined to anything.

She took out her writing pad – never, ever, did she travel without one – and began the first of many letters in a long and complicated correspondence: My darling Herbert, it began.

I had never been addressed by her so tenderly.

She was surprised that her mother had not come, and startled to see Wysbraum at her father's side, grinning widely and stamping his big feet while Sid Goldstein held out the parcel to his daughter. So intent was he on offering this parcel, so triumphant was he, so inexplicably delighted by the poor state of the thin bare cotton dress his daughter wore, that the embrace was awkward and became a defence of the parcel rather than anything else. Too many things were said at once, questions about bags and journeys, platform tickets (Wysbraum had lost them), concern for Izzie, all orchestrated with a triumphal note regarding the parcel and the dress.

"You see, Wysbraum," said Sid Goldstein, "you see, I told you. I told you she would arrive with nothing, Try it, try," he said to his daughter. "You are as thin as I imagined. Isn't it true, Wysbraum, didn't I tell you?"

Wysbraum nodded and smiled at Leah. He had become fat. His belly bulged against his shirt ungracefully. "Try it," he nodded and she was shocked, again, to see how monstrously ugly poor Wysbraum was and her heart went out to him. He was so ugly that people stopped to look, even the dusty old women from her carriage had paused for an open-mouthed moment to consider the spectacle of Wysbraum as he took the parcel from Sid and, there, right on Platform 1 at Spencer Street, undid the string and held a grey silk dress out towards Leah. He pressed it against her shoulder and made her- she was laughing and embarrassed – look at herself in the Nestle's chocolate display case in whose mirrored back wall she saw herself reflected. The dress had fashionably wide shoulders and narrow hips.

"The latest thing," said Wysbraum, parroting what Sid had told him. "Your father knows. It is his business to know. Feel it, feel it."

Leah felt it.

"Silk," he said, as if it was somehow her fault.

"Very nice."

"Silk, from silkworms," he said, almost angrily, nodding his big head and making funny blinking signals with his eyes.

It occurred to Leah, quite suddenly, that he was signalling her to kiss her father and when she had tested the validity of this theory and discovered – what a beaming smile she received from Wysbraum – its correctness, she was shocked that he should take such a proprietorial attitude.

"Change," instructed Wysbraum, attempting to bustle through the gates without showing a ticket. The ticket attendant tried to stop him but he bustled through (rudely, Leah thought) with calls of "Come, come, you can change here."

There was a small fuss about Sid's ticket, but it was eventually found, together with Wysbraum's, in Wysbraum's pocket.

"There is a good ladies' here, right in the station," Wysbraum said (stamping away, coming back). "I have a friend from Colac, she comes up here often and she tells me the ones in Flinders Street are bad, disgusting, you would not ask a dog to use them, but for the country people they take trouble and the ladies' toilet here is always clean, no problems with paper and it is mopped out four times a day, so she tells me. The cleaning woman has a sister in Colac, this is how my friend knows. I said to your father that if you wished to change this was the best place because it is better you go into the Savoy dressed in your new dress. You can make the correct entry. Very smart," he said, rubbing the silk in his grubby fingers. "Real silk."

Leah escaped into the ladies' toilet. She sat there longer than necessary, trying to still her irritation. She liked Wysbraum, of course, but she wished to see her mother. She wished to see her sisters. It was three years since she had seen them, and that was the Christmas she was in love with Izzie and had hidden in her room. And now that she was here it was because Izzie had been hurt, badly hurt, in Albury, and it was not correct that the two men should be jostling each other and talking loudly and being like schoolboys on holidays when the occasion of her visit was something so terrible.

She emerged to receive praise, and indeed she knew she looked attractive in the dress and that it suited her well. As she mounted the steps of the Savoy Plaza she walked with a dancer's walk and felt the eyes of the doorman on her. She had no make-up and her eyes were sunken a little but she knew she was a striking figure. She walked as if she were famous. And, although one part of her was guilty and irritated, there was another part that thirsted for something as rich as the Savoy – after years of counting pennies, eating Bungaree trout and lard and golden syrup on stale bread, she was anticipating the white tablecloths, the long menus, the American cocktails with sugar around the rim of the glass. It was a big event not just for her, but for her father who would not normally have eaten in such splendour.

"Anything you want," he whispered in her ear as they walked towards the dining room, "anything, just order. Beef, chicken, whatever you want."

Men in black suits were attentive to them, although she thought she saw the maitre d. look askance at Wysbraum whose suit wore the marks of less illustrious meals.

They were seated at a table overlooking Spencer Street where, as Wysbraum pointed out, they would be able to view the arrival of Leah's train in three hours' time. He ordered a Corio whisky although Sid urged him to have a Scotch. Sid then also ordered a Corio whisky. Wysbraum urged him to have a Scotch and not to deny himself on Wysbraum's account, that Wysbraum drank Corio whisky because that was what he preferred, not because it was cheaper and that if Sid – the drink waiter shifted weight from one leg to the other – if Sid preferred Scotch then that was what he should order because he did not have his daughter, the famous dancer- the drink waiter sighed- to toast every day. Sid weakened and ordered a Scotch. Leah ordered a Brandy Cruster and Wysbraum, as the waiter was leaving, changed his order to Scotch.

"It is true", Wysbraum said to Leah, "that I prefer Corio whisky because I am used to it. One glass each evening and I sit on my balcony and watch the lights of the city. It is a taste I am used to.

And yet if I drink Corio whisky and your father drinks Scotch then, you see, it will not give him the pleasure it should. All the time he will be worrying about me. He will imagine that the Corio whisky will burn my throat while the Scotch is soothing his, and there will be no pleasure because instead of the smoothness of the Scotch he will taste what he imagines is the roughness of the Corio, not rough at all, but he imagines it is. Now, tell me Leah, you are finished with this fellow?"