starting to gust as I brought the Morris Farman around into it. I was cursing Mr Farman for only putting one magneto on an eight-cylinder engine when he should have used two. I cursed myself for buying the damn thing. I cursed the damn public who would no longer pay the sort of money they had for a joy ride. I used to get five pounds for half an hour above Melbourne, and then it dropped to two quid in Ballarat. And now the best I could get was four and tuppence ha'penny from a lanky cyclist who wanted to look at the gravel pits at Commaida from the air. Four and tuppence bloody ha'penny. It was all I had, that four and two pence ha'penny, including the four threepences with old plum pudding still stuck to them. I flew him for half an hour and he complained about the bumps. Bumps!
I had just enough benzine to make it to Barwon Common in Geelong. God knows what I was going to do. I forget. I would have had a scheme. I always had a scheme. But when the magneto went I was in a mess.
I owed the RAAF five hundred pounds for the plane and parts.
I owed the publican in Darnham over twenty pounds.
I owed Anderson's in Bacchus Marsh another fifty pounds for building materials for the house I was building for me and that girl from the Co-op. It was a nice little house. It was one of the nicest little houses I ever built but she wouldn't even walk in the front door when she saw how I used the wire netting and mud.
'It's mud,' she said.
'It'll outlast you,' I said.
'It's not your land,' she said. 'It's Theo Craigie's and you're trespassing.'
I was thirty-three years old and nothing was working out. I built a lovely kitchen table for that girl. She was broad and strong and she had a nice laugh. We were going to have babies but she thought I was a liar and I found the cyclist and got his four and tuppence ha'penny.
I knew the land around Balliang East. I had sold plenty of T Models and Dodges round that area, to the Blowbells, the McDonalds, the Jenszes, the Dugdales. So I knew the rocks.
When I saw the shining new roof of Vogelnest's new house I decided to put it down in his front paddock. I was a bit high for it. I really should have put it down in O'Hagen's. But no matter what theBallarat Courier Mail wrote about me frightening cattle and causing them to break their legs, a cocky liked to have an aeroplane just like anybody else did. A cocky liked to have an aeroplane in his front paddock. It added distinction. I probably had a plan to stay there a while and sell them a car.
I was still thirty feet up and doing thirty knots when I was over his cow bails. I shoved the stick down and landed so hard I half winded myself. There would, just the same, have been no problem, but as I came to the fence the left wing skid hit a pile of small rocks and stopped it dead. I heard the skid tear off. The plane swung and the lower right wing hit the fence. The wing struts crumpled and the fabric ripped.
'You cow,' I said. I could have cried.
I sat there for a minute. When I jumped down I nearly landed on a snake. He was a long king brown, sliding through the grass as silky as 50 SAE motor oil as it pours from the can.
The snake was lucky, and I don't mean that in the sense that snakes are said to be symbols of good fortune. I didn't even know what a symbol was. It was lucky because it was worth five bob to Mr Chin – who rightly belongs in a later part of the story – he was a herbalist with a practice in Exhibition Street, Melbourne.
The snake stopped. It felt my admiration. It raised its head to look around and I stood stock still. Just as it lowered its head again, I pounced. I never picked up a snake the correct way. I always did it wrong. But I was fast. I fancied I was as fast as any snake. I grabbed him behind the head and held him tight and before Mr Joe Blake knew what was what, I was carrying him back to the plane where I had some hessian bags I used as cushions for my passengers.
Two different sets of eyes were already looking at me.
7
Phoebe did not stop to read the 'Kaiser Bill' sign, but the heady scent of turpentine rose from the hot bitumen where Ernie Vogelnest had been battling with the insult. She stood in the middle of the Bacchus Marsh-Geelong Road enveloped in a shimmer of turps, her feet bridging 'Kaiser' and 'Bill' as I jumped from the cockpit.
She could hear me breathing as I concentrated on the snake. She could hear her mother crying.
As I walked back to find a hessian bag with no holes in it, she was climbing the fence.
I heard the twang of wire and turned.
I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. She was sailing through the air about level with the top wire of the fence.
Phoebe landed lightly on the summer-hard ground (only when darkness came did she realize she had twisted her ankle) and smiled.
Herbert Badgery stood there staring at her. I can see him. He is almost as much a stranger to me as he is to her. He is tall, slim-hipped, broad-shouldered. He has bowed legs which he is ashamed of and which she finds attractive. He has an Irish mouth, like a squiggle of a pen, which is sensuous and attractive. He has all his teeth and the skin that will later become as fragile and powdery as an old kerosene-lamp mantle, is brown and smooth. He has taken off his leather helmet and goggles and there are marks around his eyes: The eyes are stunning. They are the clearest, coldest blue.
Later, when she was in a different frame of mind, she said the eyes made her shiver. A lie. She also, later still, told her son that I had used the eyes to hypnotize the snake. If you could see the eyes you might grant it possible.
She was close to the Farman. She could smell the oil and petrol. The smell would always, from that day, be a perfume to her as heady as musk. This weakness would be used against her, later, later.
She did not see the man as good-looking, or handsome, but something better. She saw the strength and smelt the oil. She longed to make him smile. 'Like hard woody cases ofeucalypts', she wrote, 'that burst open to reveal the most delicate flowers.'
No one noticed little Ernie Vogelnest who was nervously hovering around the edge of his front paddock.
'What's the snake for?' Phoebe said.
The tin flapped again. The ewe resumed its bleating.
'It's a pet,'' I said. I did not wish to admit I needed the five bob so badly. In any case, it was no trouble to lie. I always lied about snakes. I always lied about women. It was a habit. I did it, in both cases, charmingly. I was so enthusiastic that I could convince myself in half a sentence.
'Did your plane crash?'
'No,' I said. 'It didn't. I am surveying.' I paused. 'For airstrips.'
'This will not be suitable then?' She smiled.
'No,' I said.
'Is he really your pet?'
'Yes. He escaped when I landed. He bounced out of the cockpit.'
'Isn't he dangerous?'
There is no doubting the power of a snake, which is something I've proved time and time again. 'Not if you know how to handle him,' I said. 'A snake can smell your fear. If you feel fear it will attack you. If you show no fear you can be its friend and it will protect you', I said, 'from enemies.'
Listen to the bullshitter. If snakes could smell fear this one would know that I was soaked with it. I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. The snake and girl both demanded my attention. The nor'easterly blew against her and pressed her extraordinary dress against her legs. It was a 'flapper's' dress, made far away from Balliang East. I had never seen such skin, such creamy skin. I spewed out words about snakes, like muslin out of a medium's mouth, but all my thoughts were full of Phoebe's skin. I wondered if she thought I was old.
'You hold that snake', she said, hardly moving her lovely lips, 'as if you are frightened it will bite you. I don't think', she smiled, 'that it is a pet at all.'
In those days I would have done anything to get written up in the papers and anything for the admiration of a woman. If it hadn't have been for those two factors I would probably, by 1919, have been the Summit agent in Ballarat. I would have had a lot more than four and tuppence ha'penny in my pocket.
