Illywhacker

It would never have occurred to Charles that the King of England had no more importance to Emma than a brass hook or a butcher's calendar. The colour rose from beneath his collar and washed upwards like spilt ink on blotting paper. And it is no good trying to decide whether his reaction owes more to Herbert Badgery or Leah Goldstein or his own reading on the subject inSmith's Weekly and the Bulletin, but react he did, as instantly and instinctively as if he'd been punched in the nose; he struck straight back and his wife, big-bellied, weary-legged, did not recognize the monster who took possession of the man she loved. She felt a fear grip her guts and the baby kicked back against it, panicking inside her. She saw the tendons on his neck go tight as fencing wire one notch before it snaps. He put his wide-brimmed hat down – too slowly – on the table and leaned across – his arms seemed horribly strong and far too long (he could reach the picture rail without the aid of either chair or ladder) and pulled at the bearded King of England who, refusing to abandon his position, finally brought the whole picture rail springing after him. The rail bounced on the table, knocked Emma's teacup, broke its handle, and while the handleless cup rolled smoothly across the table on its way to destruction, Charles carried the picture of the King to the kitchen sink, opened the window behind it, and dropped it into the moss-covered concrete lane below.

Charles had the family temper: the fast flare-up, the instant die-away, nothing left but ashes, contrition, embarrassment. So when he turned and saw her crumpling face, the monster left him. Now he knelt beside his shaking wife and tried to explain. He kissed her eyes. He was sorry. He nuzzled her neck. She was his little lamb. She was a precious, a pet, a possum, a mouse.

But she, it turned out, was as ready to deny the King of England as he was to criticize his own childish temper. She no longer cared that the monarch had been an important man in her father's house. She despised him. Would never say his name again. She felt safer than ever in her husband's arms and her extraordinary kisses, those tropical blooms, were dark and heavy with fear-born adrenalin, cups of it, enough to make them both quite drunk.

24

Father Moran told me he had seen a fairy on a mushroom. It was a very small little gentleman, with tiny boots and laces. He was very specific. He could describe those little boots, brown with metal eyelets like his own, and laces that – although necessarily fine -were made from real hide – you could see by the fall of the bow. It had a pair of short trousers, a tailored jacket, a brown tam-o'-shanter. Father Moran had been only a boy when he saw it but he could now recall the most minute details. It had been at the end of the day. He had been with his brother Reginald and his father and they had gone out on the road by the Clarence looking for mushrooms. It was hot and steamy and the light was all hazy and golden and he had bent with his knife, an old bone-handled one gone yellow from being dropped in boiling water, and was about to cut the mushroom when he saw the fairy sitting on it.

While he was telling me this I was looking at those round shining pop eyes of his and I had the oddest feeling that I had known him before. Yet he had a very distinctive manner and you would not easily forget him. He was a square-headed fellow with curly grey hair and a florid face. He was a size too, with broad shoulders and a chest bursting out of his priestly black. But it was his eyes, big and bulging, and filled with all sorts of demanding emotions, his eyes that put me on edge.

He was in the habit of staying for hours. I couldn't ask him to leave. For God's sake, I was in gaol. I had all sorts come to look at me. Doctors from America detoured via Sydney to meet me and then talked about me as if I was not there. Rankin Downs was like that. They told you how lucky you were to be in such a place and then they wrote your name on index cards, folders, assembled pieces of blue paper you might occasionally glimpse peeking from a stained manila folder on the Boss's desk. Your door could open at any time, for any reason. They did not need a key to do it. Anyone could walk in. Someone from Poland? Why not? I had a man from Poland. He was there to look at my gums, but when he was left alone with me he measured my head with callipers.

So Father Moran was no more trouble than the rest. I did not mind him poking around in my bookshelves, but he worried me. It was not that he saw a fairy. I did not mind that he had seen a fairy. What upset me was the way his grey eyes bulged when he told me. He gave me a smile, neat and white as a wooden doll. By itself the smile was nothing. A display of teeth. But marry it up with the eyes in that big square head and you have what I would call a spectre.