Illywhacker

It occurred to Charles that he had fallen amongst mad people and he would be wise to escape. Still, he did not rush at it, and when he did make a move it was in exactly the opposite direction to what you'd expect, not down the drive and past the mailbox, but up the back and into the scrub. He poked around amongst the tussocked grasses and stunted trees. He found a couple of mallee fowl who opened their mound each morning to let the autumn sun warm their eggs, but he did not study them. The mallee fowl is too depressing and lifeless a bird to have any commercial value and my boy's mind was occupied with the idea of the pet shop in Sydney. Had he already decided it would be the Best Pet Shop in the World? Probably. It would not matter that he had seen no more of the world's pet shops than those cramped cages in Campbell Street. He suffered from the Badgery conceit and was not concerned by what competition he would have to face. He knew only what he needed to know, which was that the Splendid Wrens he could see around him were worth five bob in Sydney. There were Golden Whistlers at half a crown. And, best of all (he could see the ticket-writing already): Blue Bonnets, 1 guinea.

Charles was feeling belligerent towards the Chaffeys and, having lost his motor cycle, did not feel inclined to ask permission to use their binding twine for nets or fencing wire for net frames. He made his nets (badly) from two sprung halves, like big netted oyster shells. He took the garden spade and did not own up when it was missed. He dug holes in the red sandy soil in the scrub, and in these holes, amidst the amputated wattle roots, he placed stolen pudding bowls of water -the only bait necessary for the job.

He was soon, on paper anyway, a rich man.

And yet I must not make my son's motives appear solely mercenary and you must see how gently he handles the birds when he traps them, and how those big clumsy hands suddenly reveal themselves as instruments of affection. He worries excessively about their diet, their comfort, the size of their improvised chicken-wire cages, separates the meek from the aggressive, finds company for the gregarious. And when he at last succeeds in trapping a one-guinea blue bonnet he can sit happily for hours marvelling at the beauty of its feathers, the rich blue around its parrot's beak, the yellow of its lower breast in which lovely sea you find a softedged island of rich blood red.

He did not feel the need to explain his growing menagerie to anyone. Marjorie Chaffey saw him using their seed wheat to feed galahs and, as was her habit when angry, said nothing. Her mood was not helped by her husband who, having passed the birds every day for a week as he walked to the dunny and back, finally noticed them, became excited and started feeding them himself.

It was then that Marjorie Chaffey began to dig the hole. Perhaps it was for compost. Perhaps it was for something else. She didn't care. She was so angry she made it four feet deep while her thick-skinned husband squandered his intelligence and enthusiasm devising a more efficient bird-catching net. She heard his excited voice coming from the shed. She flung down the mattock and took up the crowbar. He came and showed her what he'd done. She dropped the crowbar and picked up the spade and he waited patiently for her to finish removing the loose dirt.

Then he explained the bird net, pointing out the simplicity of the spring which he had made from an old inner tube, and the trigger release which was as sensitive as a mousetrap. He did not notice that she had been crying and when she made no comment about his invention it did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm for it.

That night she cooked him curried lamb, a meal he hated. He ate the lot without commenting, talking to the silly boy about a pet shop.

"Fix up his bike", she said, "so he can go."

Charles heard her, but he was so frightened of her he could not look her in the eye.

"Fix it," she said, pulling her knitting out of a brown-paper bag.

But Les Chaffey did not seem to hear, or perhaps he did hear and decided that there was no point in addressing the question until the present matter was settled. He was making some clever shipping cages. Using no more than galvanized iron and solder he was constructing a feed dispenser and a tiny water cistern that would not spill no matter how roughly the cage was handled by the railways.

He also spent a lot of time (now he was privy to Charles's ambitions) giving advice. Half of the advice was about banks and the other half about wives. Marjorie Chaffey's knitting needles clicked as fast as a telegraph key.