Illywhacker

I did not, if I am honest, intend to sell the O'Hagens a Ford. Had I really meant to make a sale I would not have called so early in the day when a salesman is a nuisance to a farmer, but at the end of the day when he is coming in from the paddocks. I would have helped him unharness his horses and then joined the family for dinner. At the end of the meal I could have helped the farmer clear the table, and if he assisted with the washing up (and many did) then I'd have done my share.

As I motored along the Bacchus Marsh Road it was about ten in the morning and the hot blustering wind suddenly fell away and I could feel, before I saw it, the storm building up in the south. I swore softly. The farmers did not want rain yet – they were busy ploughing in the stubble of the last harvest. I did not want rain either. I wanted the O'Hagens to stay outside so I could have a chat with Mrs O'Hagen. It was because of Mrs O'Hagen, I admit it now, that I was arriving early on this day. I had seen a light in her young eyes that I recognized.

I shifted the position of my balls in my underpants, adjusted a penis I imagined had a life of its own, and drove north towards the O'Hagens with my erect member pointing optimistically upwards.

21

I could hear the ring of axes. The air was still and heavy and smelt of dust and treacle. I guessed, correctly, that Stu O'Hagen and his sons were clearing new land in the scrub to the north.

I knocked on the wooden frame of the flapping fly-wire door at the back of the house while a yellow dog flung itself against its chain in fury.

"Anyone home?"

But even before I entered I knew that Mrs O'Hagen was not inside and had not been inside for many days. It was a man's kitchen. Flies crawled across the unwashed dishes. An open can of bully beef occupied pride of place amongst the crumbs on the oil-cloth table. It stank of depression, like unwashed sheets on unmade beds.

Mrs O'Hagen, stone sober, had danced like a woman drunk on city dreams. I did not doubt that she had left and I knew I would never savour her as I had imagined in all the miles that led here: my mouth at her breast, buried between her sturdy legs, my nostrils filled with warm wet perfumes.

I would have to sell a Ford after all.

I took off my coat and undid my tie. I hung the coat on the back of a chair and placed studs and cufflinks and collar in the inside pocket.

I did not hurry across the stubble-slippery paddocks. I strolled with my hands in my pockets and when the axes became silent I knew the O'Hagens were watching me.

I would have walked properly, but I had come in city shoes, and it is almost impossible to walk across slippery stubble in smooth-soled shoes without moving like a draper's assistant. To walk correctly in a paddock you need boots, and heavy boots at that.

The O'Hagens, having paused to examine me, went back to work. As I listened to the axes I had a sympathy for them and what drove them on. I had hacked at life like the O'Hagens hacked at the bush, ring-barking, chopping, blistering my hands to bring it to heel, always imagining a perfect green kikuyu pasture where life would be benevolent and gentle. But where the bush had been bracken and thistles always appeared and then these had to be conquered as well.

I walked sideways down an eroded gully and when I reached the other side I could make out the three O'Hagens on the slope ahead. Two saplings dropped and three rosellas danced a pretty path across the thunder-ink sky. Black cockatoos screeched and scratched at the bark of a big old manna gum as if they couldn't wait to see it done for.

When I climbed the last fence I could see their faces. I remembered, with a shock, how ugly they were. They had heads like toby jugs. They had large square heads with ruddy complexions. Their hair was fair and thin. There was a meanness in their faces that conveyed an unaccountable sense of superiority. They were not easy to like.

The father had ears that stuck out from the side of his head and the youngest boy, who was as tall as me and only fifteen, had inherited his father's ears. They were ugly, of course, but they were quite at home with those square red heads, high, bent noses, and small pale blue eyes. They were faces squeezed from the one lump of clay.

But the eldest son, who was eighteen, had different ears. He had his mother's tiny delicate ears. They sat, flat and lonely, on the side of his great head like beautiful objects stolen by an ignoramus. Although you wouldn't have looked twice at him in the street in Geelong, out here, beside his brother and father, his head was as embarrassing to look at as a withered hand or an ex-soldier with his chin shot off. If the O'Hagens had been butterflies this one would be valuable – a rare exception to countless generations of O'Hagens with big ears.