Every step jolted her. She ran with a pitiful "oh, oh, oh" which she said to herself for comfort, a soft cotton-wool bandage of sound around the pain.

For a second he believed he had speared the girl with his umbrella.

41

Molly McGrath remained in the parlour while the men carried in her wounded daughter. People afterwards remarked to themselves on the curious stillness of the mother who would normally have darted about the room in hysterical activity, billing, cooing, ooohing, and making far too much noise and flutter for most people's taste.

She remained seated by the electric fire with the flex wound round her ankle (a tangle so odd that no one dared point it out to her) and smiled a fixed smile at Mr Oakes who had a small brandy to settle himself down.

She smiled the same smile at the doctor who arrived at short notice with his luncheon gravy still wet on his tie.

She smiled the same fixed smile at the pale, brave-chinned daughter who, lying in state on rugs and pillows in the parlour, shuddered a little before such icy radiance, imagining that her mother had seen through her deception.

She need not have worried. It was the sort of smile you save for the Devil, an attempt at sarcasm in the face of provocative coincidence.

42

It was not even Easter and winter had come to Ryrie Street. The owners of T Models put up their side curtains. The vendors in Anderson's Fruit and Produce Markets held cauliflowers in large red hands and the bottle-oh with the cleft tongue rode his wagon wrapped tight in an old grey blanket and had his bottle-oh cries blown westwards before the icy gusts of wind. The big houses on the coast at Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads had been closed down. The jazz bands had returned, to Melbourne and the summer's flappers were safely subdued (on weekdays at least) inside the heavy uniforms of The Hermitage, Morongo, Merton Hall and MLC.

I dressed in my suit and walked along Ryrie Street like a gentleman, picking out the puddles with the point of my Shaftesbury Patented Umbrella. A connoisseur of walks might have detected that although my walk was indeed the walk of a gentleman, it also exhibited subtle but obvious signs of depression. What had changed in the walk was not easy to detect, may have been nothing more than a slight scrape of the sole on every third stride, a refusal to pick up the feet properly, a tendency to stumble on uneven paving.

I was in love, and although I had used the term a hundred times before (would have said that I was in love with Mrs O'Hagen had you asked) had, in short, misunderstood, misused, and abused the term, confused it with lust or friendship or the simple pleasures of a warm breast, or a wild whooping fuck on a river bank, I had not known what I was talking about.

For two weeks I had groaned in my sleep and tossed and turned. I was denied the roof.1 was denied the merest civility as my plaster-armed beloved affected normality.

Did she blame me for her fall? Did she hate me for jeopardizing her life? I did not know, could get no answer, merely watch her as she took up occupations she had previously rejected. She had taken to socializing with the sons of squatters once again. She had gone, with high hemlines, to "At Homes" and balls, and left me jealous, half mad, to cluck with her parents who were concerned she might be mixing with a fast crowd. I shared their concern. I made it worse. I rubbed at it until it was red and blistered. I wished them to order her to cease, not just the squatters but also the history lessons. I knew what those history lessons were about. But Jack was indulgent, and Molly distracted, and I could get no commitment from them to do anything.

I tried to corner Phoebe in hall or music room, but I could get no reassurance. She hissed caution and passion all at once and did nothing to calm my fears. I attempted dangerous embraces in the bathroom and was savagely repelled. I tried to catch her eyes between spoons of porridge but she refused the very possibility and smiled dutifully at her father and asked serious questions about capital, loans, the structure of companies and the future of an aircraft factory in Geelong.

Her dedication to this deception was remarkable, and was so thoroughly undertaken that, hisses notwithstanding, I felt no hope.

I lost my appetite and could not summon up sufficient interest in the aircraft factory I had so carelessly set in motion. I was forced to imitate my former self, counterfeit an enthusiasm to match that of my host who, in anticipation of our backer's visit, wanted me to tramp around the bush looking at timbers. He had the hang of this aspect very well. We would want mountain ash or white ash for spars; blue fig for struts; cudgerie for the fuselage. He was becoming quite knowledgeable on the subject and telephoned a man at the Forest Commission who promised to conduct tests on our timbers to see they met British Aeronautical Standards. He wanted to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s but he did not tell me it was because Cocky Abbot had his doubts. He did not wish to offend me.

"What is it, Badgery?" he would ask. "Cat got your tongue?"

"I'm down," I admitted, "there is no denying it."

"you'll see," Jack cried, clapping his hands against his knees, not worrying that his spilt Scotch was lifting polish from the table, not noticing that his wife was sitting alone in the parlour with electric flex wound absently around her wrists, encircled by electricity travelling to and fro from the crackling wireless. "My word, you'll see."

I wished to Christ he would leave me alone, because I had other things on my mind which had no room for Great Plans, or Vision, which in the end have never been worth a tinker's fart in comparison with a woman.

I was busy trying to establish what the papers call A Love Nest.

Indeed, the only thing that kept me from shuffling my feet like a tramp as I walked down Ryrie Street was that I had arranged a room above a Chinese laundry. The room had a bed and a washbasin and was three shillings a week with laundry thrown in. The Chinaman knew what I was up to, and I would say he did not approve, but he let me have the room none the less, and it gave me the strength to get on with other matters. I bought a new jute sack for the snake. I stopped at Griffith's for theGeelong Advertiser which contained my third article on the future of the aeroplane in the Western District of Victoria. Although my story contained such attractive fancies as the transport of wool by air, it was remarkable for its dullness, a lack of enthusiasm that set it apart from its two predecessors which had, if I say so myself, shone forth with a luminosity of style that even the editor's meddling could not diminish.

I passed the post office as Mr Jonathon Oakes scurried down the front steps, tucking a large white envelope into his waistcoat pocket. I crossed the street, stepping carefully across a pile of steaming horse dung which lay between the two shining tramtracks.

The draughtsman's office was in an alleyway off Ryrie Street. As I mounted the steel fireescape I was already at war with the man. I entered the office without knocking, slapping the newspaper briskly against my leg.

It was a poky office divided by a large counter. The draughtsman, with unfounded optimism in regard to his future prospects, had left far more room for his customers than for himself. He huddled at his desk. He was like a thin spider with his web on a dusty window. He squinted at his plans through small steel spectacles.

"Shop."

"I saw you, Mr Badgery," the draughtsman said, spacing his words to coincide with four thin-ruled lines of graphite.

There is an arrogance that seems to come naturally to a certain type of Englishman and this one had it. There was nothing in his gloomy little office above the alley that justified it. There was nothing in his bearing, his physique or his dress that could explain it. He picked up a roll of plans from the desk and brought them to the counter. The undersides of his pale wrists were dirty and his cuffs were frayed.