Illywhacker

There were, as yet, no shades of grey in Leah's mental menagerie, and Mervyn Sullivan was summonsed up to be the Evil Man. She could not bring herself to say exactly what she meant, but made herself so clear that I could feel I was lying in bed with him too, looking at his false watery mask while his prick gave odd vibrations to my perfect hatred and I grew breasts to press against his broad hair-matted chest and sharp nails to dig into his buttocks. She had Good and Evil, Strength and Weakness, had them paired and opposed in such a tangle that I grew giddy following her.

I paraded Jack and Molly, and displayed the Parrot Poem. I listened, light-headed, while she demolished Phoebe before my eyes, pulled her to pieces like a cheap celluloid doll, flung her arms into the blackberries and her hair into the fire.

"She made the cage," I was informed. "She was a spoiled brat."

The smoke from the fire was pleasantly intoxicating. I hastened to find a few favourable things to present in favour of my missing wife. I made a few fast lies, jerry-built things with bright colours and badly fitting lids. I talked aeroplanes and motor cars, all the Australian products that had begun so brightly. When I talked about these failures, Leah told me later, they sounded like little swallows that had fallen from their nests and died.

She showed me her father's suit, Wysbraum'

's red lips and broad bum, the white scalp beneath Rosa's hair, and that splendid canvas, that huge complicated composition of moulded grey forms that Marx made, which she at once admired but could not bring herself to enter.

I was not quite so frank. I was (as Leah said later) "secretive". I made no confessions of electric belts although the battery hung heavily on my leg; nor did I talk of ghosts and snakes.

"I did not like you, Mr Badgery," Leah said, beneath the vast star-powdered sky, "until you did your act."

"I did not like you, Miss Goldstein, until you finished yours."

"God, you were funny, Mr Badgery." She snapped a gum twig happily and threw it on the fire. "You should have seen yourself."

I made a mud map in the dark.

She said: "I thought you were a spiv, excuse me; but when I saw you on the stage I changed my mind."

I asked her why, and for once she was not interested in teasing the greasy hairs of reality apart to find The Truth.

"I dunno," she said. "I did. Excuse me, I can't see your face. Come and sit over here."

I went and sat beside her on the log. She grinned at me in the dark. "I was nearly a doctor," she said.

"Fair dinkum?"

"Dinky-die. Pass the bottle. I'm very partial to this stuff. It's not good for you. Nothing's good for you, nothing nice," getting down to the core of her problem. "How old are you, Mr Badgery?"

"Forty," I lied.

"I'm twenty-four," she lied.

And yes, I know I promised there would be no hanky-panky, but that was a lie as well.

"I'm partial to a number of things," she whispered, on the log, by the camp fire, at Crab Apple Creek.

"I'm a bit partial myself," I said.

"I'm very partial," she said, "but for God's sake, be careful."

34

Dear Izzie, she wrote, I love you and miss you. I have done it, again, and I detest myself. There is no point in my lying about it. I must tell you and you must forgive me if you can. I have also said things about you to strangers which I should not have said and did not mean. You are the only man I ever cared about or respected. You believe what I believe. You stand for what I stand for. You are brave and good and I send you letters that cause you pain.

I dreamed about you two nights ago. You were in an odd black suit with belled cuffs and you were weeping. When I tried to comfort you, you did not know who I was and I woke up crying myself.

Anyway, here is a money order. It is less than it should be because I wasted four shillings on wine. Izzie, one day we will be like ordinary people. We will have a house and a baby with big black eyes and Rosa and Lenny will play with it. I am frightened of everything. Everything seems dark and ignorant. I try to read the Gramsci but am so tired. My mind is rusted and full of rubbish. Please be careful. I am sending you a map of the camp site as usual so if your work calls you this way, you could find me. do not make a special trip. It is only in case you are doing Party work in the area. Will be in Bendigo some days yet I imagine. Your loving wife, Leah 35 The flesh of the morning was pink and tasted of mud like a rainbow trout, and I was the Prince of the Bedroom, the King of Liars. The urge to build was on me already and I looked at the world through imaginary windows and possible doorways. Leah snored in her palace and I hardly saw my children, although I must have dressed them, inspected their shoes, their socks, their nails, parted Charles's hair and retied the ribbons on Sonia's plaits.