He drank half a bottle in one go. ‘So then you got a couple of mallee parrots. Don’t want ’em, let ’em go. Wait a bit longer. We were there most of the night, but we got a nice selection, eh?’

‘I reckon.’ Once you got the taste, it slipped down the throat. I kept checking, but there was no way Mum could see.

‘That how you get all your birds?’ I asked.

‘Yep.’ He finished, went in and returned with another two bottles. He cracked his and said, ‘My brother loves his birds. He’s got an aviary the size of our house. Hundreds of ’em. Sells ’em to the shops.’

‘I didn’t know you had a brother.’

‘He never moved to the city. See, smart. I shoulda stayed there.’

The scratching of small feet.

‘That’s what we did when we were kids,’ he said.

‘Trapped birds?’

‘Go out for days at a time.’ He was remembering. Two boys, bare feet, thorny acacia and frogmouth. ‘We had to, Clem.’

‘How’s that?’

He held up his beer. ‘The old man was permanently pissed, so Mum relied on us. No school past ten. That’s why I’m always on at you to keep going.’

‘I will.’ I drank. I could feel the happy numbing, as slow as test cricket.

‘He’d clobber her, so we preferred it out camping and trapping.’ He seemed to lose interest in the birds, and studied the ground beneath his feet. ‘Anyway, it was a bita money, so it helped.’

I finished the first and cracked the second. I could feel my head loosening on my shoulders, and felt sentimental, but had little to feel sentimental about.

‘Family’s what matters,’ he said.

‘It is.’

‘But I buggered that up, eh?’

‘No.’

‘Can’t blame her. She’s living next door.’

‘She is?’

‘Seen her in the yard a few times. Don’t think she knows I know. But when she’s ready …’

‘Why don’t you go in and talk to her?’

‘Na, that wouldn’t work.’

It seemed like a different Les talking. Some old, fat-bellied Buddha. With infinite patience, and wisdom. But this wasn’t the man Mum or Wendy had described.

‘Do you want me to say something?’ I asked.

But he was still in the mallee, with his brother, and their scratched legs. ‘Waiting’s good too. Just lying there, lookin’ up at the stars. That’s the best part. Gets to the stage you don’t care if no birds come. Eventually, Harry, my brother, would fall asleep and I’d cover him with a rug, and the birds’d come and eat all our grain, but I wouldn’t pull the pin, cos that’d spoil it … you know, being out there together.’

As their mum stood on the porch, calling, Harry! Les! Where are yers?

‘Long as she’s got enough to eat,’ Les said. ‘Your mum’s been cookin’ her decent stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll fix her up for it, after. Don’t expect her to pay.’

‘She doesn’t care.’