was six . . . when it really started, Daddy, when the engines that eventually pulled him to Oatley and beyond began to chug away. There had been loud saxophone music. Six. Jacky was six. At first his attention had been entirely on the toy his father had given him, a scale model of a London taxi - the toy car was heavy as a brick, and on the smooth wooden floors of the new office a good push sent it rumbling straight across the room. Late afternoon, first grade all the way on the other side of August, a neat new car that rolled like a tank on the strip of bare wood behind the couch, a contented, relaxed feeling in the air-conditioned office . . . no more work to do, no more phone calls that couldn't wait until the next day. Jack pushed the heavy toy taxi down the strip of bare wood, barely able to hear the rumbling of the solid rubber tires under the soloing of a saxophone. The black car struck one of the legs of the couch, spun sideways, and stopped. Jack crawled down and Uncle Morgan had parked himself in one of the chairs on the other side of the couch. Each man nursed a drink; soon they would put down their glasses, switch off the turntable and the amplifier, and go downstairs to their cars.
when we were all six and nobody was anything else and it was California
'Who's playing that sax?' he heard Uncle Morgan ask, and, half in a reverie, heard that familiar voice in a new way: something whispery and hidden in Morgan Sloat's voice coiled into Jacky's ear. He touched the top of the toy taxi and his fingers were as cold as if it were of ice, not English steel.
'That's Dexter Gordon, is who that is,' his father answered. His voice was as lazy and friendly as it always was, and Jack slipped his hand around the heavy taxi.
'Good record.'
'Daddy Plays the Horn. It is a nice old record, isn't it?'
'I'll have to look for it.' And then Jack thought he knew what that strangeness in Uncle Morgan's voice was all about - Uncle Morgan didn't really like jazz at all, he just pretended to in front of Jack's father. Jack had known this fact about Morgan Sloat for most of his childhood, and he thought it was silly that his father couldn't see it too. Uncle Morgan was never going to look for a record called Daddy Plays the Horn, he was just flattering Phil Sawyer - and maybe the reason Phil Sawyer didn't see it was that like everyone else he never paid quite enough attention to Morgan Sloat. Uncle Morgan, smart and ambitious ('smart as a wolverine, sneaky as a courthouse lawyer,' Lily said), good old Uncle Morgan deflected observation - your eye just sort of naturally slid off him. When he was a kid, Jacky would have bet, his teachers would have had trouble even remembering his name.
'Imagine what this guy would be like over there,' Uncle Morgan said, for once fully claiming Jack's attention. That falsity still played through his voice, but it was not Sloat's hypocrisy that jerked up Jacky's head and tightened his fingers on his heavy toy - the words over there had sailed straight into his brain and now were gonging like chimes. Because over there was the country of Jack's Daydreams. He had known that immediately. His father and Uncle Morgan had forgotten that he was behind the couch, and they were going to talk about the Daydreams.
His father knew about the Daydream-country. Jack could never have mentioned the Daydreams to either his father or his mother, but his father knew about the Daydreams because he had to - simple as that. And the next step, felt along Jack's emotions more than consciously expressed, was that his dad helped keep the Daydreams safe.
But for some reason, equally difficult to translate from emotion into language, the conjunction of Morgan Sloat and the Daydreams made the boy uneasy.
'Hey?' Uncle Morgan said. 'This guy would really turn em around, wouldn't he? They'd probably make him Duke of the Blasted Lands, or something.'
'Well, probably not that,' Phil Sawyer said. 'Not if they liked him as much as we do.'
But Uncle Morgan doesn't like him, Dad, Jacky thought, suddenly clear that this was important. He doesn't like him at all, not really, he thinks that music is too loud, he thinks it takes something from him
'Oh, you know a lot more about it than I do,' Uncle Morgan said in a voice that sounded easy and relaxed.
'Well, I've been there more often. But you're doing a good job of catching up.' Jacky heard that his father was smiling.
'Oh, I've learned a few things, Phil. But really, you know - I'll never get over being grateful to you for showing all that to me.' The two syllables of grateful filled with smoke and the sound of breaking glass.
But all of these little warnings could not do more than dent Jack's intense, almost blissful satisfaction. They were talking about the Daydreams. It was magical, that such a thing was possible. What they said was beyond him, their terms and vocabulary were too adult, but six-year-old Jack experienced again the wonder and joy of the Daydreams, and was at least old enough to understand the direction of their conversation. The Daydreams were real, and Jacky somehow shared them with his father. That was half his joy.
2
'Let me just get some things straight,' Uncle Morgan said, and Jacky saw the word straight as a pair of lines knotting around each other like snakes. 'They have magic like we have physics, right? We're talking about an agrarian monarchy, using magic instead of science.'
'Sure,' Phil Sawyer said.
'And presumably they've gone on like that for centuries. Their lives have never changed very much.'
'Except for political upheavals, that's right.'
Then Uncle Morgan's voice tightened, and the excitement he tried to conceal cracked little whips within his consonants. 'Well, forget about the political stuff. Suppose we think about us for a change. You'll say - and I'd agree with you, Phil - that we've done pretty well out of the Territories already, and that we'd have to be careful about how we introduce changes there. I have no problems at all with that position. I feel the same way myself.'