51

While all other directions afforded great security, that eggshell roof, even when intact, sometimes made Emma giddy with anxiety. When she heard the bullwhip crack and saw the sky fall in, she felt a terror so great that it was necessary for her to crawl -she could not stand -down the stairs to find her husband.

Her arrival was heralded by the staff, and Charles, already in a panic about his building, ran up the stairs to meet her.

I knew none of this. I did not understand Emma's requirements in terms of shelter, sustenance and protection. I did not know about the meeting on the stairs. She had defeated me, but I was not yet aware of it.

I sat, that night, on the rubble in the middle of the kitchen trying to work out a way to get the broken bricks down to the ground floor. The tarpaulin flapped like a spinnaker above the skylight and although the wind came through the missing section it was not unpleasant to me -no more than sea air and spray – and I never thought it would be to anyone else. I sat there on the pile of bricks with a leashed lightglobe circling above my head, an echo, if you like, of the old goanna who lay beneath its similarly moving ultraviolet light elsewhere in the gallery.

My view of the gallery, and the goanna's swinging light – a necessary medication to prevent the onset of rickets – was nicely framed by the stepped edges of the high brick arch and, within that, the hard black lines of the RSJs. On the right-hand side I could see, through the lattice, Goldstein at work at her desk. She had a moon-warm light beside her and, as I watched, I saw her stop writing and run her hands through her tangled blue-black hair. I was still under the impression that she was writing a letter, and that, of course, is the trouble with schemes, that they begin as a celebration of happiness and end up leaving you blind to the people on whom your happiness depends.

I could not see Emma, but I knew she had locked herself up in her cage and would not talk to her husband. I had seen him pacing up and down around the bars and pleading with her. She had the children in there with her and I could make them out, could see Henry's dark unhappy eyes as he stared out into the gallery. He would not wave when I waved to him.

Mr Lo was at his drawing-board.

I sat on my pile of bricks and tried to work out a simple lift. I picked up a brick and started to scratch a plan on to it with a nail. It was then I noticed the thumb print in the corner. This is common enough with bricks of this age, produced by convicts down at Brickfields, but I had never been so struck with it before.

I was looking at this, considering a man's thumb print baked into a clay brick, when Charles came up the stairs he had exited so furiously an hour before and, rather than going grovelling to his wife, he came to me.

I was pleased to see him. I made room for him on my pile of broken bricks.

"You see this brick," I said. "You see the thumb print. You know how that got there? Some poor bugger working at Brickfields a hundred-and-fifty years ago did that. He turned the brick out of the mould and, as he did it, he had to give the wet clay a little shove with his thumbs, see. This one, and this one. They've all got it. So there you are. All around you, in your walls, you've got the thumb prints of convicts. How do you reckon that affects you?"

We, both of us, looked around. It was a big building. It was a lot of thumb prints to consider.

"Father," he said, "do you know how much money you've spent today?"

I was very tired, but I did my best to be polite. I explained that once you start a job there is no going back. Then, to get us back on a peaceful plane, I started to talk to him about bricks. I told him how some of them have special marks, the shape of clubs or spades for instance, pressed into them.

"For God's sake," he shouted in my ear, "at least have the grace to say you're sorry."

"I'm not," and, by Christ, I wasn't. I looked out from where I sat. Anyone could see I'd improved it out of sight.

"Not sorry?"

"Charlie, look what I've done."

"It's a mess."

"I'll clean it up. All I need is…" I was going to tell him about the cables, but he wouldn't let me.

"There's no water."

"I'll connect it."

"Don't touch it." He moved himself off the rubble and stood over me. I stood up too. "I'll get a tradesman."

"Why pay a tradesman?"

"You're retired, Father. You're on the pension."

"I've got to do something."

"Go to the beach."

"I'm too old for the beach. No one wants to look at an old man on the beach. I'll trap birds for you."

"I already employ people to trap for me."

"Then let me finish this." My voice went a little strange. I didn't realize I felt so emotional about it.

He came and put two hands on my shoulder. "Father…"

Then I saw her. She was out of her cage. She was standing in the corridor between Leah's lattice and the gallery rail. She had my Vegemite jar in her hand, but if there was a time for getting it back, it was past.

"Father… it's the money."

Emma was smiling at me, but the smile was not friendly.

"Have the grace to admit the truth."

"What truth?"

But we never got into it, because Emma came past me and embraced her husband. There, right in front of me, she hugged and kissed him. She gobbled his nose and licked his ear. I had to go away. I could not stand it. It was not the kissing and cooing. It was the bloody words.

"Oh, Emmie," I heard my son say – a big man, fifteen stones – "Oh, Emmie, Emmie, I'm sorry."

52

Rosellas fucked, fertilized their eggs, laid them, hatched their young and did all the hard work feeding them. Fish, marsupials, and snakes all reproduced themselves for our benefit. We were, it seemed, sitting on a gold mine. There was no shortage of anything. My son bought me shirts and suits. Anything I wanted I could sign for at Hordern's or Grace Brothers'. A Parker pen? Yes, sir. Crocodile-skin shoes? Please be seated. A blue dress for the little girl? Fifth floor, sir.

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.