curlers and her husband's dressing gown.
'You mongrel,' said the woman to the clever goat. 'Lovely day,' she said to Leah and did not even seem to see that Izzie, the source of Leah's happiness, was busy being a chook, not just any chook, but a chook belonging to Lenny and Rosa's new tenants.
Last night, on the platform at Central, he had tried to kiss her and she had found herself, involuntarily, shrinking from him. She had felt a flinch of disappointment exactly equal to the gap between her ivory-smooth idea of Izzie and Izzie himself, this little scarecrow with rag-doll sleeves, bad skin and hair (she wrinkled her nose) that badly needed washing.
But she had forgotten: Izzie was funny. And now, as he thrust out his bantam's chest and drew his hands into his flapping wings, she laughed in delight. God, what a chook he was. He clucked and chortled and scratched amongst the clover. He had feathers and a comb. He clicked along the paving stones on his pointed shoes.
'Teddy's chooks', he whispered, 'do not stand on pavement cracks.'
'Teddy's chooks', he leaped on to a low brick wall, 'riding on the tram to Bondi.'
The chook was so well behaved on the tram seat. It tucked its head in and snoozed absently. And this (it was now history) was how the tenants' chooks had travelled to Bondi after their eviction from Newtown, their right to free travel defended by three militant members of the Tramways Union, one of whom -the famous Arthur McKay – insisted on paying full fare for the rooster.
'I cannot wait', Leah said – and felt how pleased Izzie was when she took his arm – 'to meet your famous chooks.'
She could not have avoided them. The new tenants' chooks had taken possession like a conquering army. The front fence -never a pretty sight – was now ugly with chicken wire. The chooks scratched and pecked at the remains of the front lawn. Their droppings marked the concrete path around the side of the house and – in the ravaged back garden, between house and caravan – she walked into a scene of execution: a headless Rhode Island Red spurted its last spasms of bright red blood beneath the picnic sky and then fell, drunkenly, and lay twitching in the dust.
A man in a woollen round-necked singlet and serge trousers stood watching the bird with an air of puzzled curiosity. He had a big boozer's nose, tender with fragile capillaries, and – as he saw Izzie and tucked his lower lip beneath his upper – a manner that was at once self-effacing and sly. He pushed the dead bird with the head of his axe.
Izzie introduced Leah. Teddy called her 'missus'. He squatted and poked at the small fire he had lit beneath Lenny's copper cauldron. The bottom of the cauldron was streaked with black and it was full of dark steaming water.
'Hang on,' Teddy said. 'Got a prezzie for you.' He rose and disappeared into the house and they could hear a woman's voice shouting at him in anger.
'Nice bloke,' Izzie said.
'Where are Sid and Rosa?'
Izzie nodded his head towards the caravan and, seeing Leah's confusion, explained: 'Teddy's got a wife and four kids.'
'Oh,' said Leah, looking at the dead chook and wondering how it was possible to be evicted in Jack Lang's state.
'Here ya are,' Teddy said. He had returned with a chipped bowl full of hen's eggs. 'Nice fresh cackleberries for your mum and dad.'
As they walked the few steps to the caravan, Teddy dunked the headless chook into the cauldron and the rank smell of its steaming feathers filled Leah's nostrils.
21
One expected discord amongst the Kaletskys, but nothing had prepared Leah for the dull air of misery she found inside that caravan on whose floor the sand of lost holidays, sand that had once stuck between Izzie's toes or clung to Rosa's brown calves, still lingered, cold, hardedged, abrasive.
Rosa looked ill. Her face was sallow. Those lovely lines around her eyes and mouth had deepened and set into unhappy patterns, and although she embraced Leah and made a fuss of her, her eyes stayed as dull as the windows of that gloomy space. They crammed in together around a tiny table, oppressed by the weight of uncomfortably placed cupboards.
Leah had returned to Sydney vowing to work hard at her studies, to give up her picnics and her dancing, but she had not been in the caravan five minutes before she found herself resolving to get Rosa out on a picnic.
'So,' she said, bright as a nurse, 'you have tenants, Rosa.'
'I hate them,' Rosa hissed. 'I want my house back.'
Lenny sighed and screwed his eyes shut. 'If you want them to go,' he said, 'all you have to do is tell them.' He lit a cigarette, made a face, then put it out.
'Why should I tell them? He,' Rosa pointed a finger at her son who stared, ostentatiously, at the metal ceiling, 'he is the one who asked them here.'
'You have a short memory, Rosa,' Izzie said. 'Who offered them the house?'
'How could they live in the caravan? It is hard enough for two people.'
Lenny was trying to catch Leah's eye. He was making secret fun of his wife. Leah was embarrassed. She took Rosa's hand and stroked it but Rosa did not seem connected to her hand. 'I am a prisoner in this nasty box,' she said, but to no one in particular. 'I cannot go into my garden, I have to ask them if I might please use the shower. The shower is filthy. The walls in the kitchen are covered with grease…'
'Whose grease?' said Lenny.
'It smells. I hate it.'
'Rosa,' Lenny said, 'you are being selfish,' but he put out his hand to her, to touch her shoulder. Rosa shrugged his hand off.
'Of course I am selfish,' she yelled, suddenly very angry. 'I have always been selfish.'
'You gave them the house,' Izzie said and Leah, who had begun to feel physically ill, found a strong shiver of dislike pass through her.
'What else could I do? You make it impossible for me to do anything else with your stupid charity. You are a wishy-washy. You know you are.'
Izzie's face tightened and his pretty mouth became a slit. 'Who owned stocks and shares? Some Marxist!'
'I did,' Rosa shouted. Leah wanted to block her ears, to run away and hide from this nightmare. 'I did.'
'You are making Leah embarrassed,' Lenny said, but Rosa was staring at her son and something nasty was happening between them.
'Joseph would never have done this to me,' she said. 'A real communist would do nothing so sentimental.'
Izzie stood up, his face quite pallid. 'Shut up,' he screamed. He looked ugly with hate. 'Shut your damn mouth.'
Lenny began to rise. Leah put her hands across her ears. The caravan rocked and swayed as Izzie ran from it. They heard his feet on the path and the squeak of the gate.
'Go and find him, Leah,' Rosa said wearily. 'Go and find him. Tell him you love him.'
When she had gone, husband and wife went back to the matter that they had been discussing for two days. They circled round and around it, talking, talking, but in the centre of their talk there was nothing, a hole – the scrap-metal business was bankrupt.
22
