Illywhacker

"It would appear", he told us, "that Mr Ford is strapped for cash, and now wishes me to pay cash in advance for every car I order. In short, he wishes me to finance his venture and I find I am unable to raise the money he requires. I have informed the Ford company of my position and they have cabled me to say that I may no longer be an agent for the company's vehicles. I have therefore decided to close down the business and retire to Rosebud. I am sorry to have let you down."

It was quiet and still inside that dusty space. Outside we could hear the Chinese children bouncing a ball against the wall. Barret hated that noise but today he sent no one to chase them off.

"I will pay you all your week's wages and a small bonus," he said. "It's the best I can do."

Then he shook hands with all of us. I did not, like the other fellows did, go to the pub and get drunk. I handed in the key of my demonstration model, shook Colonel Barret by the hand, wished him well in his retirement, and caught the tram out to Haymarket. As far as I am concerned that day was the first of the Great Depression.

I was walking down the little lane beside the stockyards when I ran into Horace who was walking the other way, banging a heavy suitcase against his chubby thigh. He was embarrassed to see me.

I told him I had been dismissed and asked him where he was off to.

"I'm sorry," he said, "you have been very kind to me."

I understood that he was leaving. I assumed it was because of Annette whom I imagined he did not like.

"Sonia will miss you."

"Yes."

"And Charles."

"Yes. I'll miss him."

"Where are you off to?" I pushed my hand into my pocket, in search of jiggling keys which were not there.

Horace shifted uncomfortably and kicked at a stone.

"Sydney," he said.

"I hear it's a beautiful city."

I should have known that something odd was happening. He wanted to make a speech, but he could not get the words together.

"I want to thank you," he said, "and to say I never bore you any ill will or did anything I was ashamed of either."

"Thank you, Horace, but if you're leaving because of Annette, she'll be gone soon."

"Oh no," he said, "not Annette. Just time to be pushing on."

We shook hands. He picked up his suitcase. He opened his little red mouth, closed it, hesitated, and then went out of my life, trudging up the pot-holed track towards the Haymarket terminus.

I was still three hundred yards from the house. Phoebe and Annette were at the Morris Farman. The motor was turning, running rough with too much choke. The craft was straining at the chocks.

As I watched, Annette threw a bag into the passenger compartment and pulled out the chocks. Charles came trundling towards her like a little wombat, dense, solid, screaming. My wife opened the throttle. She took a course downwind, away from her bellowing son who tripped and fell. She was lucky the wind was only blowing a knot or two – ten yards from the boundary fence she got the craft into the air.

She left me with two children and a savage poem.

86

I learned a lot about poets and poetry that day and it is my contention that poets are weak shy people who will not look you in the eye. They are like Horace, scribbling spidery things in dark corners, frightened of their fathers, the law, and everything else. They are women who expect their husbands to be mind-readers. They are resentful and cruel. They spend sunny days planning dark revenges where they will punish those who wish them well. They sit like spiders in the centre of their pretty webs. They are harsh judges with wigs and buckled shoes. They place black caps upon their heads but let others attend the executions for them.

The poem that taught me so much is not the set of rhyming words I found clasped to the king parrots' cage, skewered with a pin from Sonia's dirty napkin. This was just the mud-map, just enough to make sure I did not miss the turning to the Scenic View. While Charles tugged at my trouser legs and bellowed I stared at this crumpled paper as if I could take in its meaning by the sheer force of my will. It would not reveal itself. It contained nothing I recognized, neither the word Badgery or Ford, and it was two hours before Molly arrived to read it to me.

No, this was not the poem. She had no talent for poetry, never did.

Witness: King Parrot

Then beauty were declared a crime King Parrot locked with key Barred and caged on wasted land Oh angry jewel. Desolate. Ennui.

Do not rush to your bookshop for more of the same. There is none. Phoebe's great poem was not built from words, but from corrugated iron and chicken wire. She did not even build it herself but had me, her labourer, saw and hammer and make it for her. She had me rhyme a cage with a room, a bird with a person, feathers with skin, my home with a gaol, myself with a warder, herself with the splendid guileless creatures who had preened themselves so lovingly on the roof on one sad, lost, blue-skied day.