Illywhacker

"Toads, frogs. It is not the point. Laura, you must listen and stop eating. Eating will not fix the problem. The swagman was given money at the back door."

19

I too was sorry about the first delivery of frogs. The swagman had been too enthusiastic. He had not contented himself with two or three frogs but had kept on collecting until his sack was half full. When he arrived at Western Avenue he entered the kitchen without introducing himself to Bridget who was nervous. Then he began to show her frogs and was misunderstood. Then when yours truly at last arrived, bare-torsoed with my trousers half done up, the swagman, overcome with excitement, emptied the whole lot on to the floor. It took me some time to sort out the mess, educate the swagman, mollify Bridget and retrieve most of the frogs. For days afterwards my hostess's scream would alert me tothe presence of a hitherto hidden frog in some corner of the mansion.

I had been expelled from houses for smaller upsets, and I waited for a little note slid under my bedroom door, the quiet chat after dinner, an eruption of anger on the lawn. My hosts surprised me. They laughed. They repeated the story and derived pleasure from telling it. When I accompanied Jack on his daily round of what he was pleased to call "interests" the story had often preceded me and I was forced to take another step closer to becoming a herpetologist by discoursing on the dietary habits of the brown snake.

I had never been in a situation before where my lies looked so likely to become true. I did not achieve this alone. So many people contributed creamy coats of credibility to my untruth that the nasty speck of grit was fast becoming a beautiful thing, a lustrous pearl it was impossible not to covet.

The aircraft factory began to achieve a life of its own. Letters were despatched to various suppliers in Melbourne and Sydney and Jack, who loved the telephone with a passion, was chasing timber suppliers in Queensland and waking up squatters in the middle of the night to talk about investing in a wonderful new enterprise.

I can still hear his giant deaf "Helios" echoing through the house.

We had meetings with solicitors to draw up the company for "Barwon Aeros". We looked at a piece of land at Belmont which Jack already owned. I engaged a draughtsman in Geelong to draw up my plans which incorporated an Avro engine, although we later planned a totally Australian motor. I engaged the services of a stenographer and began to dictate my series on aviation for theGeelong Advertiser. I began to think of marrying Phoebe. I gave back Jack the money he had lent me. And even while all this was happening I still continued selling T Models.

I sold T Models with such ease that the local agent could not understand why a man who could acquit himself like this on the ground could contemplate risking his life and his capital by taking to the air. He made this opinion known to me on one stinking February afternoon while the blustering northerly brought red dust down into Ryrie Street and rattled a loose sheet of corrugated iron on the top of the dark hot garage. I flicked flies away from my mouth and, without really trying to, made the agent uneasy. What the agent could not have guessed, what prompted the slight madness in my cold-eyed stare, the ambiguous movement of my lips, was that I loathed Fords on principle, that I was eaten up with selling them, that I did it from laziness because the Ford had the name, because it was American and people were more easily persuaded to buy a foreign product than a local one.

There was another factor in all this, and one I would not have admitted to myself in 1919, and it was that the Tin Lizzie was a better car for the money. It wasn't much to look at but it was deceptively strong and very reliable. This, however, did not suit my idea of how things should be. And if there was a suggestion of arrogance in my lips as I talked to the Ford agent it was prompted by my thought that if there had been an agent for an Australian-made car (like the Summit) in Geelong I would have taken great pleasure in out-selling the Ford agent. It would not have been easy, but I could have done it. I would have applied myself to it, not done it like I now sold Fords which was in a sloppy, showy sort of style, like an expert tennis player disdainfully defeating novices, only deriving pleasure from a loose-limbed flashness and not from any great demands on his skill or any pride in the final victory.

"Any mug can sell a T Model," I told the agent, and was not liked any better for the comment which was not only untrue but also unflattering to the man himself who watched me drive away with feelings, I warrant you, identical to the ones I had every time I put the snake back in his hessian bag.

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