The Name on the Door is Not Mine by C.K. Stead

Author:C.K. Stead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2016-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

Then the police arrived and began clearing a path for the Governor-general’s Rolls and I persuaded Julian to come in and close the window.

By now he was in a mood for Anzac celebrations and we followed the crowd up to the cenotaph and listened to the speeches and sang the hymns. After the service we wandered about in the Domain. Julian kept chanting El Alamein, Minqar Qaim, Tobruk, Cassino and all the other places the Governor-general had talked about in his speech until I got sick of hearing them and I turned up my transistor to drown him out. He wandered away from me across the football fields and kept frightening a flock of seagulls into the air every time they came down. When he came back to where I was sitting he was quiet and rather solemn. We walked on and it was then we came to the place where the workmen are putting in the statue and right on that spot Julian stopped and stared in front of him and began slowly waving one arm up and down at his side. I asked him what was the matter and he said quick come and have a look at this and he ran down the slope and lay flat on his stomach on one of those park benches that have no backs and began flapping his arms. When I got down to the bench he asked me did his arms look anything like a bird’s wings. I said no but when he asked me why I couldn’t think of the answer. Then he turned over on his back and began flapping his arms again and asked me did they look anything like a bird’s wings now. At first I said no but when I looked properly I had to admit they did. His forearms were moving up and down almost parallel with his body and the part of his arms from the shoulders to the elbows stayed out at right angles from him. So I said yes they did look more like a bird’s wings now because a bird’s wings bent forward to the elbows and then back along the body and that was why his arms hadn’t looked like wings when he lay on his stomach. As soon as I said that he jumped up and kissed me on both cheeks and said I was a bright girl, I had seen the point, he would have to fly upside down.

It wasn’t long before I began to notice sketches of wings lying about the house and soon there were little models in balsa wood and paper. One of the things that annoys me every time I read about Julian’s flight is that it’s not treated as a proper scientific achievement. People talk as if he flew by magic or just willed himself to stay in the air. They seem to think if no one in human history, not even Leonardo da Vinci, could make wings that would carry a man, Julian Harp can’t have been human or his flight must have been a miracle.

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