Illywhacker

The Americans, however, saved his arse. They arrived just when he needed them and although everyone remembers them for nylons and candy bars, they also paid big money for rosellas and lorikeets, blue bonnets and golden whistlers, all varieties of cockatoos, king parrots and western parrots, finches, warblers, even a pair of dancing brolgas courtesy of Harry the rabbitoh. The GIs handed their money across the counter like children sent shopping by their mothers. You took what you wanted and you handed the rest back to them. Charles did not cheat them, but he did put his prices up until he reached the delicate point where they no longer said they were low.

Gang-gangs cost a fiver. Australians came to stare at the mug Yanks wasting their money. They put Charles in a temper. He thought them ignorant and illeducated and would have liked to give them a piece of his mind. But being a nonessential coward in a boiler suit he could only bump into them belligerently as they stood in front of the pretty white cages.

Normally he tried to keep away from customers. He was happier in the fetid room where he bred his fly pupae, or away on the lakes around Kempsey collecting stock. Petrol was rationed but he had an old Essex with a gas producer and he went hunting in this.

So when Nathan Schick did arrive he was lucky to find the boss home. Charles had a termite nest in a hessian bag. He had his head down and there was something in the walk, the suggestion of a limp, that gave the impression of someone old and smelly although he was only twenty-four.

"Charlie Badgery," said the Yank, blocking his access to the stairs.

Charles may or may not have heard him; he tried to push past.

"Charlie." The Major had a bony hand on the round fleshy shoulder. "Don't say you don't recognize me."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

The Yank removed his cap and revealed a bald head. Nathan was now ten years older, but there was no denying the crooked regretful gold-toothed smile.

"How nice to see you, Mr Schick."

Charles did not feel nice at all. He felt ill. This face before him was the face of his nightmares. His sister was skun and this was a face licked by camp fire. There were American baubles on the end of a fishing line, hooks, razors, blades, balloons, feathers, knives. Soon his ear would go dull and fill with blood.

"God damn, Charlie. I read about your shop last year and I wondered…"

Charles lowered his bag. "That was a different shop."

"And I've been wondering if this is the same boy I knew."

Charles could not help himself – he smiled. He liked Americans. He liked the careful round way they spoke and the way they never hesitated to give an opinion. He liked the smart lines of the Major's jacket and the floppy officer's cap. Most of all he liked the sense of cleanliness that emanated from Nathan Schick. The real Nathan Schick had little to do with the grotesque figure in his recurring dream.

It was lunchtime, and the shop was busy with browsers. Charles wanted to get out of the stair entrance but Nathan, oblivious to the pushing people, wanted to talk. "Remember the corellas," he said, releasing Charles's shoulder and holding his upper arm instead. "The corellas you got for the show in Ballarat. And the first one shit on Shirlene Maguire."

"Don't talk about Sonia," Charles said.

Nathan blinked.

"I know you weren't going to, but… don't…"

There was a soft part to Nathan Schick. It was as mushy as marshmallow, all sweet and sentimental. And when Charles said that to him it was almost enough to bring him undone. Charles backed off the entrance to the stairs, dragging his termite sack with him. Nathan followed him and began to pat him, comfortingly, on his shoulder but when he saw the look on the boy's face, he stopped.

"Hell's bells," he laughed, a silly false laugh. He tapped out a battered Lucky Strike and lit it. "I'm not here to talk about the past, Charlie Badgery. It's business. The U. S. of A. requires your services."

It is difficult to convey the impact of this simple slogan on Charles Badgery. He was like a man struck by love for whom all the world – a minute ago so clear, delineated by crisp lines and sharp colours – now runs at the edges until it is nothing more than a blurred velvet frame for the object of its affections. It did not matter that the saleswoman with the bruise on her throat wished a confirmation of the price of a children's python or that, having smiled and excused herself to the Yank, she shouted in the direction of his hearing aid. Not two feet away an old man was stuffing breadcrumbs through the bars of a mynah bird's cage, although there were signs forbidding it. And even when Henry's slipper fell four levels and landed – dead on target – at his father's feet, Charles did not react, and his children, leaning over the rail, got no fun.

"What services?" Charles put down his bag of termites.

"Professional services, what else?"

"How?"

"General MacArthur", said Nathan Schick, "has asked me to buy him a mascot."