Illywhacker

Young Hissao, of course, thought the whole thing great fun. He marched up and downstairs with me (whoops-a-daisy) hand in hand. But young Henry and George were not my sort of people. I had looked forward to their friendship but they stood at a distance with their arms pressed against their sides and stared at me with an expression that -had you not known the innocent nature of my work- you could have mistaken for terror. You could already see that their great passion in life would be normality and they would seek out the tiled roof, the small window, the locked door, the clipped hedge, the wife who never farted, lacy pillows on the marital bed. They were frightened by my opening out. They did not see the beauty of the process – how the great four-storey space was filled with dust like an old cathedral and motes of light came slicing into the canyon, as if Jesus Christ himself was standing above the skylight and you might as well know it – it was the skylight I was really interested in, not the kitchen wall. I am not saying that the kitchen wall was not best removed. It was vital. It was, if you like, the Overture. The point is this – that the best approach to opening out is to begin cautiously – you do not, not ever, leap straight to the main performance. A patient man would be wise to begin with a small window and enlarge it a fraction at a time. A less patient man does best to content himself with a wall. This will give the occupants some confidence. They will appreciate that they have previously lived their lives inside a coffin and now they may begin to stretch and breathe. When you have them at this stage you can safely begin to discuss the roof. A roof is a much more emotional matter than a wall, and in Nambucca, for instance, I was just starting to hint at it when Rooney finally won his battle and I was handed my bicycle clips.

So I told no one, not even Goldstein, that I had a plan for the skylight. What I had in mind was to rip off the roof completely and set up a system which would open and shut like an eyelid above us. This sort of idea tends to strike the uneducated as impractical, possibly dangerous, so for the time being I kept it to myself and pottered around with my sledge-hammer.

The wall did not appear to be structural. I went down to Nock amp; Kirby's and bought a wrecking bar and took out the window without much effort. I took the door off its hinges and took out the frame. It was pleasant to do things with my hands after all those years of M. V. Anderson-type activity. I took another stroll down to Nock amp; Kirby's and bought a new hacksaw. Then I came back and took out the old kitchen sink and closed off the water pipes. It was a warm day, so I did not rush at it. I strolled at my grandson's pace. I carried my hat in my hand and my various pieces of shopping under my arm. I nodded to the staff and smiled at those members of my new family whose eyes I could catch. When it was time to get stuck into the wall I took off my jacket and folded it and put it inside Goldstein's apartment. It was dim in there. I did not notice any redness around the eyes. I warned her of impending dust and she looked up and, I thought, smiled. I did not know she was an author. If she had told me, it must have slipped my mind.

It was eleven a. m. precisely when I began my attack. I did not rush at it like a young fool. I opened out from the existing window. The bricks were old and handmade, soft and pink and very crumbly. I took them out slowly, working at it so there was a natural stepped arch left in the wall. By noon I had a space twelve foot wide and I had just decided to leave it at that for the day, to see how it settled, when Goldstein crept up and shouted in my ear.

"Fool," she said. "You impossible fool."

49

Leah had become like the old-maid aunt in a Victorian story, forever puffing up the stairs and down, first awake, last asleep, a repository of patience and kindness, taken for granted, never arousing curiosity except of the most perfunctory sort about her ambitions and her hopes because she showed the world so little sign that she had any.

But she was, of course, beneath her river-smooth exterior, full of the tumbling currents of ambitions that she had been rash enough, gambler enough, to postpone ten years.

She felt, that morning while I consulted about the wall, like a runner who has paced herself to a certain distance and when the distance is extended, cannot run another step. She was exhausted.

I asked her about the wall.

"Oh yes," she said. "What a lovely idea."

She went into her latticed room. She had a mattress there, along one wall, and a desk along the other. It was cramped, but she was used to it. She sat at the desk and arranged her papers as she would on any other morning. She took out yesterday's work and placed it at her left elbow. The tears began to drop and she rubbed them with her finger, as if they were errors to be erased.