Illywhacker

You could say I was obsessed with houses, but I was not abnormal. My only abnormality was that I did not have one. I had been forced to leave my houses behind me, evicted from them, disappointed in them, fleeing them because of various events. I left them to rot and rust and be shat on by cattle on the land of the so-called legal owners who were called squatters because they'd done exactly what I'd done.

While a house was always my aim, it wasn't always possible in the short term. I was an expert, however, at getting "put up". I was not just an expert. I was an ace. I never had to be formally invited and I always left them before my welcome was worn out. Don't think I cheated the legal owners, because I never did. I delivered value in whatever way it was required.

I applied this principle to the McGraths.

I was an Aviator. That was my value to them. I set to work to reinforce this value. I propped it up and embellished it a little. God damn, I danced around it like a bloody bower-bird putting on a display. I added silver to it. I put small blue stones around it.

By the time I swung the headlights of the Hispano Suiza on to the McGrath house in Western Avenue, Jack McGrath could see the factory I said – it was a pleasant whim – I was going to establish, a factory that was going to build Australian-designed aircraft. It was splendid. Everyone in the car could see it, shimmering in the moonlight.

You call it a lie. I call it a gift.

When I saw the size of the house, I was pleased I had taken so much trouble with my story. It was the equal of the lace-decorated Victorian mansion I saw in the headlights. It was capped with a splendid tower and the tower was capped with a crown of wrought-iron lace. For a building with a tower I could not have taken too much trouble.

In an instant, it seemed, they had the mansion blazing with electric light. It poured forth in luxury from every window, washed across the flower beds and flooded the lawn. Even the yellow-brick garage had its own set of lights and as I garaged the Hispano Suiza I could hear the voices of the two women as they called to the maid who fluttered like a moth inside the kitchen windows and threw fleeting shadows out across the lawn.

I liked the electricity. I liked the sheer quantity of it. It was right that a house like this, grander than any I had ever stayed in, should be so enthusiastically illuminated.

The cicadas, as if they were wired on the same circuit, suddenly filled the garden with a loud burst of celebration. If fireworks had now illuminated the summer sky they would not have been out of keeping with my emotions. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen anything approaching it. There was a ballroom, a music room, a library, a tower. Don't worry that there was no dancing in the ballroom, no music in the music room, and not a single book in the library. To dwell on those empty shelves would be to miss the point. There were stained-glass windows made by M. Ives of Melbourne. There were carpets, wall to wall, made in Lancashire from Western District wool. There were ice chests, music machines, and electric wiring everywhere.

Jack had introduced the electricity himself. He hadn't messed around. He ran the wires like streamers across the ceiling, tacked them on to wooden architraves, hung them from a picture rail and looped them around the curtain rods. The neighbours in Western Avenue might not have cared for this frank approach, but I liked it. It made me comfortable. It was a house where you could put your feet up and drink French champagne or Ballarat bitter according to your mood.

The other remarkable thing about the house was chairs. There were so many of them waiting to be sat on that you could see, immediately, that the McGraths were hospitable people and they'd never pass up a chance to buy an extra chair if it took their fancy. Their taste was catholic, although that is a term they would not have used themselves. Was there Chippendale? Perhaps. And Louis-Quatorze? Probably, but the Herbert Badgery who looked on that array did not even know such names. They were all chairs to him, some old, some new, some tatty, some gilt, some comfortable, some overstuffed, some bursting with horsehair which would prickle the back of your legs and make you itch. I got the feeling that my hosts expected, at any moment, a hundred people with weary legs to walk in off the street.

I could hear the women making supper. Jack showed me to a room. He opened up the big French doors on to the veranda and the room filled with the smell of flowers, salt from the bay, the humming generators of cicada engines. The cupboard was full of clothes that Molly had collected to sell for the Wyuna Nursing Home appeal.

"Help yourself," said Jack. "There's some first-rate stuff in here, I warrant you."

I got myself a new wardrobe that night, selecting carefully, thinking of the winter ahead.