Illywhacker

"I can feel my hands wanting to go round her neck like you want to put your arms to hold someone and…" He stopped suddenly, blushing. He hid his confusion by picking up a pile of papers, vets' reports for the month of August. "Pneumonia and trauma," he read out, as if this was something to do with it. "Trauma, Air Sacculitis, Too Decomposed, Trauma." He read belligerently, as if these were Emma's fault.

"We can imagine all sorts of things, sausage," Leah said gently. "That's why we're not living in the trees any more."

Charles flicked through the pages, and then placed them roughly in a manila envelope from a drawer. He wrote something on an envelope.

"One day I'll do it." He placed the envelope in a wire basket. "I'm sure that's how murders happen."

There was something rather prim and self-conscious about this. Leah did not believe it and she did not like it. She put out her cigarette and lit another one. The phone on the desk gave a small "ding" as the switchboard operator began work.

"Will you please ask Emma to tidy up?"

"Work is already in progress," said Leah Goldstein, grinning widely. "Your father is supervising."

"Supervising. How can he supervise? He can't even wipe his bottom properly."

"He's supervising."

"She can't stand him. She won't do a thing he says."

"She's co-operating. She listens to him very carefully."

"I can never hear a word he says."

"Charlie, are you listening? We are making you look ultra-respectable for tomorrow."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I wanted you to appreciate how clever I am."

They laughed then. They enjoyed each other's company. They always had. And I will not, in demonstrating this, discuss the first night that Leah Goldstein lived in the emporium, when she had taken up residence in the flat itself, was made a bed, had a proper room, etc. All I know is what anyone else knows which is that someone drank a bottle of whisky that night and on the following night Leah took up residence out on the gallery next to Emma.

Charles picked up the telephone and ordered tea. He pushed back his chair and put his feet up on the desk. Leah smiled to see that he had white tennis socks showing between his navy suit and black shoes.

"I'll tell you what I'm worried about."

"Your socks, I hope."

He sighted along his legs, frowned. "Maybe they're doing a story on bird smuggling. They might think that's what I'm up to."

"Are you?"

"Ha ha, Leah. Very funny."

The girl brought the tea in and they watched her pour it. She was thin and fair with almost no eyebrows. She could not have been more than sixteen. Leah was shocked to see that she was nervous of bringing tea into the "boss's office" and also to see that Charles hardly noticed it, that she did not even exist for him.

When she had gone, Charles said, "Nathan wants me to. He won't say it on the phone or put it in writing, but that's what he wants."

"Wants what?"

"He calls it expediting, but he means smuggling. I think the bloody government wants me to as well. Every week they ban the export of something and they wonder why the economy is in a mess."

"What's the girl's name?"

"What girl?" he looked up, blinking irritably. He still had his legs on the desk but he leaned forward, put sugar in her tea, stirred it for her and pushed her cup and saucer as far as he could.

"The fair girl."

Charles understood. He looked towards the door, staring, it seemed, at the diffused images of suspended neon lights, and then he shrugged. "Maybe it would be better not to do it. I don't have to be interviewed. They can't make me." And then, seeing the expression on Leah's face -"Glenda. Her name is Glenda."

Leah drank her tea silently. Her view about the interview was complicated, even contradictory. She was as suspicious of it as Charles was, although for different reasons. She knew that Gulf amp; Western and Schick wished to buy out their Australian partner and she suspected this was, somehow, part of the ploy. She was wrong, but the mistake is understandable. It was a time when the Americans were making their first big push into Australian industry.

Her second thought was that it was rather pathetic to need to be well thought of by Time magazine, to tidy your life, to sanitize it enough to be acceptable to Henry Luce.

But when she had finished her tea and placed the cup carefully in its saucer she knew that she would say neither of these things to him, that it would not only be cruel but also fruitless. And it was to compensate for her secret unkindness in thinking such thoughts that she let her other feelings, her simple love for Charlie Badgery, dominate.

"Maybe", she said, "it would help if Hissao was here. He could talk to them first and if there was going to be trouble, you wouldn't need to talk to them at all." She did not really trust Hissao, but she judged him perfect for this job.

"Do you think he would?"