Illywhacker

At home there was a special room for me, to compensate, I suppose, for my disappointment. When I say special, I mean it was the same room they put me into in the beginning, but they let me put a window in the wall so that I could look out into Pitt Street. I chose a modern window, steel-framed, and when they put the neon sign out on the front of the building – only a month later – Charles made them design it around my window although Claude Neon, the manufacturers, wanted him to brick it up.

They were so nice to me. They bought me a bed with a drawer under it for my underpants and socks. They built in a cupboard, and then they left me alone. They all had lives of their own, worries, occupations, hobbies, whatever. The bed they bought me was only two foot wide. There was no question of me sharing with Goldstein, not if it was ten foot wide.

Yes, I blamed her for having my scheme stopped. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, I knew at the time. Yes, I was a cranky, bad-tempered old man. All that much would be clear to you anyway. Goldstein, to top it all, had problems of her own and very shortly afterwards she moved out to be an independent woman on her ten pounds a week. As to whether she got leeches on her legs or frostbite on her hands, I have no idea.

I, for my part, sat on my chair. It was a brand-new one (Danish Deluxe was the brand) and I could look out at the signs in the sky. They put up a big blue one a block or two away, alcoa Australia it said. It did not go on or off but it was both beautiful and enigmatic hanging there in the sky, not bothering to explain how it could be both Alcoa and Australia at the same time. It was the first of many. I pretended to myself that they amused me, these visions as fantastic as flying saucers.

When I was bored I would go to Randwick and lose my pension to the bookies and then I would come back and stand in the street and look up at my window. Not so much my window, but rather the neon sign that surrounded it. Everyone said it was the best neon sign in Sydney. People came from interstate to look at it. It had a flight of king parrots whizzing in a circle round my window, red, green, red, green, you could see their wings flap and their genuine parrot flight pattern, up down, wings out, wings flat. All around the edges were little lights representing golden wattle and the wattle blossoms fell in the electric breeze. It was a beautiful thing – a hundred per cent pure Australiana – and you would never guess that the emporium it advertised was owned thirty-three per cent by Gulf amp; Western and twenty-five per cent by Schick amp; Co.

Once I persuaded Charles to stand in my window while I went downstairs to look at him, framed by it. He would only do it once. He was busy with government departments who kept banning the export of his birds. I would have asked his wife to stand there but we were not on speaking terms. So it was Hissao whom I persuaded to stand there instead. I would have him stand on my Danish Deluxe. He would jump up and down on it -I didn't mind that – and I would make that interminable journey down the stairs -I always forgot what floor I was on – and go and stand and look at him.

I was using him, of course, but not in any way that was harmful to him. I was looking at him, but imagining myself as a passer-by and looking up to see me in there. The question is: how would you take me, sitting there in my chair, neon lit, surrounded by these swirling signs? Am I a prisoner in the midst of a sign or am 1 a spider at its centre?

Hissao and I had a natural affinity. We had lots more to do than pose in windows and I suppose Charles was pleased to see his father get on with at least one member of his family. The truth was that we both had time on our hands.

So while Mr Lo played his imaginary baseball and Emma occupied herself with her courtesan arts, my grandson and I explored the city of Sydney. We ate waffles at the Quay and raspberry lemonade at the Astor in Bondi. We walked miles at a time and he did not complain when his sturdy little legs were tired. He did not grumble or want drinks when there was nothing but sea water available. We visited Phoebe for dry biscuits and mouldy cheese. We went, hand in hand, round the winding paths of Taronga Park Zoo, through the deep drifts of sand at Cronulla.