'Don't worry. I'll supply them.'
'You'd have to have a permit from the council.'
'You like to dance?' I asked her.
'Don't mind.'
'There's a dance down at Port tonight.'
'Oh yes.'
'You want to go?'
She pursed her lips and looked at me. 'How would we get there?'
'I got a bike.'
She laughed. I laughed too. Any mug could see we were not discussing bicycles.
'You're going to double-dink me,' she said. I always liked women with lines around their eyes. 'Put me in my ball gown on your bar.'
'I'll double-dink you,' I said. 'It'd be a pleasure.'
'You think you're capable?'
'More than.'
I was too, and by three o'clock we'd made a mess of her clean sheets and I was lying on my back with her hair in my nose, thinking how much nicer the room would be if we could lift the roof like the hatch on a ferret box.
Shirl was a good woman. She had a great appetite for life and would have a go at anything. We went rabbit shooting, fishing at night, swimming, dancing. We won a silver cup for mixed doubles at Taree. She liked to play the piano and sing.
She wasn't much of a cook but neither was I. We ate meat pies and baked beans and fried eggs. She used to fart in her sleep.
I got a job at Bobby Nelson's garage, working the pumps when he was away driving the school bus. This gave me enough cash to buy materials and I soon had the front of the shop pulled out and I put a big steel RSJ right across the front of it. Then I built the sliding doors myself, modelling them on the ones at Nelson's garage. This was more expensive than I thought, but Shirl made up the difference. I felt happy ripping open that bloody coffin of a shop. I rigged up a clever canvas canopy to go out the front for the summer mornings, and we started to buy in fruits and vegetables and I would stack these out there.
I put signs up and down the highway, 'shirl the girl for FRUIT amp; VEG', 'SHIRL THE GIRL FOR ICE COLD DRINKS', 'SHIRL THE GIRL FOR A CUPPA TEA'.
Naturally it wasn't long before she wanted to marry me. I was not averse to the idea at all, although there were a couple of previous arrangements I would have to sort out, and I think I went as far as to write off for my old wedding certificates. I was under the impression, I think, that they might have lost the old ones, but this was not so.
But the impediment to marriage was nothing technical. It was a dog.
If the dog had been there on my first day, I would not have spent my money buying lemonades and spiders. I would have doffed my hat and off up the road. But little Rooney (that's right, and yes, named after Mickey) was in the care of the vet at the time, suffering from mange, being shaved and painted with some violet-coloured tincture.
Now I have never liked corgies. So you can imagine how I felt, a week after having got myself a woman, a house, a scheme, to see her cuddling a purple one to her bosom.
I was prepared to be friends with Rooney but Rooney did not feel the same way about me. He would growl and bare his teeth if I went near him. He would lie across doorways and snarl as I stepped over him. He did not bite me once, but he managed to take the edge off my happiness. He would lie in a corner and watch me. He had mad eyes, and when we made love he would lie under the dresser growling.
We were so well suited, Shirl and I. We had arguments about nothing else but Rooney, and the worst ones were about the chocolate logs she gave the little rat. It was disgusting to watch.
'Dogs don't eat chocolate.'
'Rooney does. Don't you, Rooney?'
'It'll rot his teeth.'
'It's a reward.'
'What for?'
'It encourages him to eat his dinner.'
'You don't need to encourage a dog to eat. He'll eat anything. Look at him.'
'Rooney needs to be encouraged.'
'How does he know? Jesus, Shirley, how does he know why you're giving him chocolate?'
'He knows, don't you, darling?'
Rooney turned and looked at me. He tried to stare me down, and I would have won if I had not had more important things to do.
I made inquiries. I learned that corgies lived to ten or twelve. There was only eight years to go, and I should have been patient and waited him out, but I was a young man with a young man's ignorance about time, so I tried to hurry it up. I did not actually do anything, but I discussed it with Bobby Nelson. I gave him to understand that I would not mind if someone put Rooney in a sugar bag and dropped him in the estuary. This was a very stupid thing to do, because it got back to Shirl who came flying at me with red nails and bared teeth.
'I was only joking, Shirl. I was just joking with him.'
'Get out.'
I had been there exactly six months. I got my bicycle clips off the mantelpiece and put them on. I hadn't had breakfast so I took a cold pie. I got on the Malvern Star and I expected her to say to me to come back, but she didn't. She stood there in the shade of the canvas awning. It was a lovely place, cool and breezy and you could smell water and dust in it. She stood there with her arms folded and Rooney sitting at her feet. I don't remember what expression she had on her face, but I remember the dog's eyes. I never expected to find eyes like that in a human being, but that is another story and we will come to it in a moment.
48
There is nothing like a bit of opening out to get people to declare their position. You'll find that this does not happen until the bricks are actually falling and you have your handkerchief wrapped around your nose to keep the mortar dust out of your lungs and, with your twelve-pound hammer making that lovely soft noise as it gets in amongst the bricks, you will find people all around you, each one expressing a point of view about what you are doing, some saying it is dangerous, some illegal, others beautiful, and there is always someone else who will be concerned about the temporary and trivial inconveniences, e. g. the problems of mortar dust which they insist is poisonous to certain fishes.
And you can say that I should have left well enough alone, that I should have been grateful to have a roof over my head and not be some poor wretch shuffling along the passage of a Darlinghurst boarding house. Of course I was grateful, but what do you want me to do? Put up a cordon, take out an injunction, call the National Trust to make sure no one changed so much as a window and that the smell of old socks, bad apples, stale horse meat, minced liver, that this rich brew would be embalmed forever just the way it was? Would you have me sit on my arse and die – in the midst of my new happiness – of boredom?
Of course not.
You would have me go ahead, but cautiously. You would advise me to be democratic, to consult those who lived here before I arrived. This, you would imagine, would prevent the onset of blind enthusiasm and monomania.
I imagined so myself. I did consult. But there are many difficulties with consultation. The first of these is that it relies on people having an eye for what you are talking about. They can say yes but not understand. It also presupposes that they have some idea of why they are living the way they are. So you can hold all the discussions you like and the truth is that it will make no difference – you will only get your final yes or no when the bricks are
