Illywhacker

Charles did not know what he had just done. His temper left him on the stairs. He went to the kitchen and fussed over the second chop, cutting it even more finely than the first. He placed the meat in a cereal bowl together with some mashed-up vegetables. He brought the offering downstairs and placed it in front of his wife's cage.

When she saw the bowl, Emma knew that she was stronger than the men in the tent. Her big straight toes curled and stretched. She murmured her thanks, but did not eat, letting him guess that she would prefer a drink first. He fetched milk and poured it into another bowl. This she drank, not like an animal, but like a two-handed primate.

"Fork," she said and Charles was so pleased to hear a clear word from her that he pounded up the stairs and down again. Emma felt the heavy footsteps. They set up reverberations which lasted much longer than the simple journey upstairs. She felt the eggshell edges of a pure white ping-pong ball that would not stop bouncing.

She became languorous and heavy-lidded. She accepted soap and water. She had no objection to fresh napkins and pins, but she had no inclination to abandon such a pleasant place.

"Emma," Charles said. "Emma, it's going to be a big day." His calf muscles were weary and so he kneeled beside her. "Come on, fair's fair. We have a shop to open."

Charles did not, at that moment, give a damn about the shop. He wished only for everything to be as it had been before. He was not saying what he really felt, and this did not matter, because Emma was not listening to the words themselves, only the emotions behind them.

"I can't open the shop and stay here with you, Honeybunch. Honeybunch, are you listening? I can't do business with my wife in a cage. Why don't I help you upstairs? Do you want a cage? I'll carry it upstairs for you. Would you like that?"

He knelt before her in his dressing gown. It was a rich diet for anyone brought up in Henry Underhill's house.

28

There were already people at the door who wished to be admitted. Charles was in his dressing gown and he had not shaved. The customers rattled the door handle and poked their fingers through the brass letterflap and although he did not wish them to come into his shop he was like a man who is incapable of leaving a telephone ringing – he opened the door.

In order to distract them from his wife he told them many facts about cockatoos, e. g. that the pink cockatoo is just another name for the Major Mitchell, that its scientific name is Catcua leadbetteri, that it is less popular as a pet than you might expect because it cannot learn English or (ha ha) Spanish either.

He succeeded in getting rid of customers almost as soon as they arrived. Only the jeweller's nephew would not be easily put off. He went straight to the cage and was surprised to find Emma where he had last seen her.

The young man made Charles feel both uncouth and guilty. He could think of nothing to say in his own defence.

The fox-faced fruiterer came next. He also handed Charles a sealed envelope with a signed petition inside it. Charles was, by then, so distracted that he did not even realize that the fruiterer was angry with him, and when the man left he locked the door behind him and hung up the "closed" sign. He sat behind the counter. Emma blew him goldfish kisses. He was frightened.

29

Leah slept on an old couch in the wide passage that led from the front door to the living room. She was careful not to be seen there by visitors but anyone passing down that echoing passage could hardly miss the evidence that the couch was occupied. There were folded rugs and pillows stacked neatly. Beneath the bed there were glasses of water (usually two, sometimes three), an ashtray, a writing pad, a pen, a Westclox alarm clock with a cracked glass and a loud tick.

It would be misleading to say that she slept here, because she slept so little. She napped, on and off, with the light always on. If those comrades who thought themselves her friends could have seen her they would doubtless have been shocked – all this insomnia and secret note-making. Sometimes she was shocked herself. She was a light living on its own reserves, a snake devouring its own tail. She could not see where the nourishment came for her feverish imagination. She had never thought herself inventive or clever. Yet now she had a nicotine-stained callus on her writer's finger and spent her night making orange groves and children, views from windows and waving fields of talk.