Under the Influence

by Jacqueline Lunn

  Not wanting to put a foot wrong on the first day, parents clutched the morning’s timetable and kept themselves occupied scanning down the schedule of events. A few mums took a second look at Bill. Standing tenderly next to his daughter, big and handsome, grey flecks through thick hair, a tight physique, broad shoulders and those hands, he made butterflies sneak into their bored bodies. One woman with a perfect bob, clucking around her daughter, emitted an involuntary shiver as he walked past.

  First up, greetings from the principal and head boarder: 9 to 9.30 am. Boarding-house tour: 9.30 to 10 am. Meet and greet with boarding-house mistresses: 10 to 10.30 am. Parents and new girls settle into dorm rooms: 10.30 to 11.30 am. Farewell: 11.30 to 12 pm. Lunch in dining hall for new boarders: 12 pm.

  Bill carried Meg’s two suitcases up one flight of stairs to the Year Seven dormitory. There in front of him, in one big room, stood seven bunk beds in a row, with double wardrobes sporting darker patches from old stickers that had been removed. The wardrobes also served as room dividers between the bunks. He set down Meg’s luggage beside the bed that had a sticky label saying ‘Meghan Patterson’ on it and took a deep breath in. He had to think about exhaling.

  Fathers hoisted suitcases onto beds, mothers helped unpack them, girls sat on top or bottom bunks busily organising what to put on and in their small bedside tables. Framed pictures of family and diaries and notepads and pens and brushes fell between laps and knees. Before goodbyes, mothers tried to pair up their daughters in instant friendships.

  ‘That’s a lovely bedspread you have.’

  ‘Look at all those books.’

  ‘Lucy has those shoes, but in red.’

  ‘Look who you’ll be sharing a bunk with. How old are you, eleven or twelve? I can see you like horses. What’s his name? Dusty? What a clever name for a horse of that colour. Katherine likes horses. Well, you do. And she likes Janet Jackson. You have a Walkman. Katherine, maybe you can lend Sally some of your tapes to play on her Walkman. Ohh, you two are going to have fun.’

  It was happening right in front of his face, but Bill didn’t see any of it – mothers partnering up their daughters with someone, anyone, aware there was safety in numbers. He stood by Meg’s bottom bunk, helping her put her short-sleeve shirts and shorts into some drawers instead. They worked silently side by side, Meg furious at her dad and full of love for him at the same time. Feelings were spinning around in her stomach, making her want to go to the toilet, but she couldn’t remember where the toilets were and didn’t want to leave her dad when there wasn’t much time left. She looked at the clock on the end wall: 11.50 am.

  ‘Okay, Meggie, I have to go. I’ll be back in four weekends to see you, so it’s four weeks, okay?’ For some reason, Bill put four fingers up to emphasise four. Four weeks was the recommended time between drop-off and first visit. The girls needed time to settle in, the note had said. His voice was soft, but he had to raise it slightly as parents around him began their separation speeches.

  Meg said nothing. She could feel a knot tugging at the inside of her throat and her eyes were beginning that sting she felt when she sometimes had a fight with her dad and went to her room and wished her mum was still there and could tell Dad that eleven-year-old girls didn’t have to wear pretty dresses to some stupid cousin’s wedding.

  ‘Meg, come here.’ He stretched his arms towards her and pulled her into his chest, squeezing her against his new shirt. She was lost against him. Lost and safe. ‘Meg,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘I love you, Meg. Let’s give this a go.’ His body was wrapped tight around her tiny frame, his head still buried in her hair. ‘C’mon,’ he said, pleading, squeezing again. ‘C’mon.’

  Meg looked up at him. Their foreheads touched. Meg could see a sliver of light on a bed by the wall out of the corner of her eye and right in front of her the tiny red spot on his chin where he had cut himself. She hugged him back. ‘I love you, Dad.’

  He knew she would be okay. The silence between them wrapped around his last hard squeeze. He was going to make a joke about her needing to get some muscles, but his voice was not to be trusted.

  ‘Bye, darling. I’ll call tomorrow. Love you,’ he whispered.

  He walked out the dormitory doorway and down the stairs and didn’t look back. Looking back was pointless.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A particular darkness was always a comfort to Meg. Just before the first pink skittish light of dawn, in the darkest and coldest part of the night, Meg would hear her dad roll from side to side under his sheets in his room down the hall, rearrange his pillow, kick off the covers or pull them up, scratch something. Sometimes, she could hear the call of a lone bird that, even by the most rigorous standards, was an early one. Then her thoughts would return to the movement inside the house. Soon, she would hear his footsteps down the hallway and him lifting up the toilet seat, followed by a crack when the seat hit the porcelain cistern and the sound of his pee hitting the water. The trickle lasted for an eternity. After that came first light. As soon as he shut the bathroom door and padded towards the kitchen to make himself a black coffee, she would fall back to sleep. He would be back for breakfast.

  The sounds were different now, in this place with the high walls and even rows of bunk beds, the developing bodies and many windows. The trees outside changed the sound of the wind. It was thicker, more contained, forcing its way through leaves and branches, around bricks and tiled roofs. At home, when the wind came across, it was lucky to find a tree and a single-storey house. When it came, it was all or nothing. A great roar or a lost sigh.

  After the bell for bed went on the first night, there were whispers – ‘Are you awake?’ – coughing, laughing, a soft sobbing under a pillow a few bunks down, the footsteps of a stranger in sensible shoes walking past beds and every now and then stopping to pick something off the ground or straighten the bottom of a blanket, toilets flushing, girls’ voices passing the door outside, the patter of delicate little feet.

  As Meg lay in the dark, the sounds changed. There was more space between each noise: the distant hum of cars, a beep, a motorbike, then nothing; doors closing, a strange creaking in the roof, then silence.

  When everyone was asleep, Meg put her hand out in front of her and counted to four. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she could see her long fingers stretched out towards the ceiling.

  She went over and over her father’s conversations, searching for a loophole. Surely there was someone who went on to university in the last few years from the local high school? What about her uses as unpaid help on the farm, a money saver? How could Dad say it was what her mother wanted? People changed their minds all the time – who knew what her mother would say now? She died eight years ago.

  She had thought her dad was going off the idea of boarding school. He had stopped talking about it. She’d thought she would stay home with him and cook him his bloody breakfasts of chops and eggs in the morning. Sit on his lap just as he was finishing and let him drop crumbs of toast on her head and say ‘When did you get so clever, Meggie? That was perfect’ or ‘Better be careful or the birds might want to eat your hair for lunch’. He would be lonely all by himself. Serve him right.

  A face appeared above Meg as her thoughts gained momentum and malice. Upside down, it said, ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Jesus … What? … Yes,’ Meg said, trying unsuccessfully not to sound startled.

  ‘What about that dorm mistress today, the one who gave us a talk and kept pronouncing the word “diary” wrong,’ said the voice that was attached to the swinging, out-of-focus, upside-down head.

  In a short talk about privacy and hygiene when living with a group of eleven-and twelve-year-old girls, Emily Nettle, a fifty-six-year-old dorm mistress with three grown-up children and a husband who ‘went’ gay twelve years before, had the unfortunate problem of being unable to get her tongue around ‘r’s. They became ‘w’s, and as a result ‘diary’ became ‘diawee’. ‘Privacy’, a word she used often in the ten and a hal
f minutes, became ‘pwivacy’. The topic – hygiene etiquette– coupled with her weak ‘r’s had every girl examining her feet after five minutes. Words such as ‘tampons’ and ‘bwas’ and ‘nudity’ lit the communal giggle that was crawling through the sensible grey carpet across the rows of shaking shoulders. Mrs Nettle was saved by one thing: newness. The girls didn’t know each other. The laughter could not yet become contagious, as the twelve new boarders were strangers. Today. Mrs Nettle unwittingly had presided over their first ever bonding session.

  ‘Wascally Wabbit.’

  The girl giggled. ‘As if you’re going to tell someone they pong by saying, “Hey, Susan, do you want to try some of my deodorant? It smells like roses and feels great to wear.” What planet was she from?’

  ‘Uwanus,’ Meg said, before she could stop herself. The girl’s giggle became a laugh. Someone down the row of bunk beds towards the far wall said shush. ‘Can I come down there?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Meg didn’t know what was happening: it was late; it was the strangest day of her life; everything smelt different; someone who she thought was called Sarah, or maybe Elizabeth, was pulling back her sheet and jumping into bed next to her.

  ‘I’ve never slept with this many people. Some are making so much noise in their sleep. Did you hear, I think it was Elizabeth, talking in her sleep before?’ It was Sarah next to her. ‘I couldn’t make out what she was saying. All I could hear were the words “eyes” and “no”. God, I hope I don’t talk in my sleep or snore and don’t know it. That would be so embarrassing.’

  The girls readjusted themselves in the single bed, wordlessly making sure there was enough pillow and sheet for the two of them. Sarah’s thick little body lay firmly in place. Strands of her long red hair had somehow managed to creep across Meg’s face. Meg decided, after thinking way too long about it, that she should brush them off.

  Five down along the neat rows of bunks and dividing cupboards, Eve Hardy was dreaming; she never had much trouble sleeping at night. Even at twelve years old, she could feel herself actually ‘fall’ to sleep. It was like diving into warm marshmallow. It was the other end where she wasn’t so good. Eve was an early riser. At home, she would lie in bed for a while listening to the sounds – birds, insects, the occasional car – pretending she was falling back to sleep until she could stand it no longer, and then she would put her pink-fringed bedside light on and read.

  Her sixth-grade teacher had encouraged her to join the Scone public library because she had read everything in the school library. She would spend hours on the weekend choosing books, placing her hands all over their sensible plastic-covered spines and back covers and reading the summaries of the stories within. She would read about the authors. She would read who had borrowed the books before her. Sometimes, she knew the names. There were friends’ parents, the man who owned the pizza takeaway three doors down from her parents’ chemist shop, local police, a doctor, a handful of teachers.

  She imagined where these people had read them. In bed? On the lounge? At the kitchen table? Had some read them when they were meant to be working? Then she would imagine them flicking the pages with their suits or uniforms off. Maybe they were in pyjamas and you could see their legs up to their white, hairless thighs, or in singlets with the side bits of the boob that you could see through the armhole, like with her mum. Maybe they wore sarongs. A sarong in Scone – that would be cool.

  It was in these early hours, with a book resting on her pillow, before movement started infecting the house and her dad would start muttering about ironed shirts and clean socks, that she would read about a girl with red lipstick falling in love with a man who didn’t know she existed. Or a precocious orphan girl called May in Atlanta, Georgia, surviving an attack by killer bees. She read about teenagers going to school in New York and eating lunch in cafeterias, about an Aboriginal boy from the city who went walkabout, about nurses tending to the injured in the First World War. One day, she would have a story of her own better than ‘The Afternoon Eve Hardy Bowled Her Brother Out at Cricket’. Something with some drama and action, where she did something extraordinary that no one could believe.

  She had worried about the morning here. She knew she would wake early. She had packed a torch because she had seen kids in the movies read under their covers like this. Her mum had given her extra batteries. Eve was on a bottom bunk and, before she’d fallen asleep, had placed a book securely under the mattress and tucked her torch into the bottom of the bed, held snug by the sheet. This way, she wouldn’t have to get out of bed and make too much noise retrieving her torch and her book about a girl locked in an attic with her brothers and sisters by her evil grandmother.

  Going to bed last night and not going out into the lounge room and saying goodnight to Mum and Dad while they watched TV was not as weird as she thought it would be. Her older brother, Tom, was a boarder at Hetherington’s brother school, Mitchell College, and told plenty of stories when he returned home for holidays about what went on. At least they didn’t have anyone in the showers on ‘cock watch’ here. A senior, Tom said, would stand and watch all the boys in the showers, which were communal, unlike the individual cubicles at Hetherington. This boy would make sure no one looked at anyone else’s penis. If someone did, the senior would scream ‘Cock watcher!’ at him. Tom said you never ever wanted to be called a cock watcher. The best way to shower was to pick a tile on the wall in front and watch it the entire time. One tile. Never move your eyes off the tile and shower as quickly as possible. The ones who stumbled and fumbled for soap and weren’t organised were going to cop it, he said.

  Her mother had boarded too, at Hetherington. That’s how she went on to university, studied pharmacy and became a chemist, she would remind Eve often. Boarding had given her a good education, opportunities and lifelong friends.

  Eve had always known boarding school was coming. She’d never thought to fight or question her departure. Maybe her acceptance was part inevitability and part due to the fact that she was no fuss. All the other mothers would say she was such a pleasure to have over for a sleepover or to take to the movies. She was the girls’ school captain at Scone Public School. Admittedly, that year there were only six girls. Once, she did pull her pants down with her friend Chloe Preston, and they took pictures of each other’s vaginas. They didn’t really think the pictures out, considering Chloe’s mum got the film developed at Eve’s chemist shop. Eve got a talk from her mum about how it was natural to be curious, but that’s not what she should be doing with a camera. Try taking pictures of flowers.

  Before Eve fell through the warm marshmallows on her first night at Hetherington, she knew. She knew in the still heat, among the rustling sounds coming from everywhere, with a crisp sheet over her body. She knew this would take time to get used to. She didn’t cry. When Cynthia Albertese cried, she gave her a tissue and a squeeze on the shoulder and said it would be fine. Then she climbed into her own bed, felt her torch with her toes and said to herself it would just take time.

  ‘Do you think we are the only two not asleep?’ Sarah whispered to Meg.

  ‘I can’t hear anyone else,’ Meg whispered.

  Sarah lowered her voice as far as it would go. She had a tone that was hard to subdue into a whisper. ‘I’m lucky. I get to go home on a few weekends each term, so I don’t have to wait for months like some girls. Mum says it might only be this year that I have to board while she sorts out her new schedule, her new job. She says it’s a win–win.’

  Meg had never heard a kid say ‘win–win’ and turned to look the carrot-top in the face. She had noticed Sarah’s parents in the foyer downstairs earlier in the day. Her mum was tall and graceful, wearing high heels and a red blazer with gold buttons. She looked a lot younger than her husband, who had a head like one of those toads you find floating in the horse troughs. Bathed in that red blazer against the dark, groaning wood of the walls and staircase, she looked like something out of a painting in an art gallery. Meg also thought sh
e looked a bit up herself.

  Meg’s dad had taken her to the art gallery of New South Wales the year before, when they came to Sydney for a treat. At a cafe afterwards, he told her he didn’t want her to just know about sheep dips and how to ride a motorbike. He had a cup of tea, she had a lemonade and they shared some chocolate cake. The cake was the best part. There were some very unhappy-looking people in those paintings, and she didn’t get the ones that were all dots and slashes. She could do that at home. In a second.

  ‘Mum’s new job is full-on, and they thought this way I’ll get to do all my activities and have my homework supervised and it will be a really stable environment,’ Sarah said, word-perfect. ‘You can come home with me sometimes, if you want. I’ll show you it tomorrow – I can see my roof from the window above the stairs. It’s a red-tiled one. Where do you live?’

  Meg made a mental note to check the next day whether it was true about the roof. What were Sarah’s parents doing there right now? Watching TV? Brushing their teeth? ‘It’s near Bourke,’ Meg said. ‘Ten hours’ drive away. Drive north and west and you’ll hit it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sarah said, attempting to conjure up a mental map of New South Wales and coming up completely blank after Newcastle in the north and Gerringong in the south. ‘I bet your mum and dad have a present for you when they see you next. That’s what the senior girls were saying today. They were saying one girl got a ski trip at the end of the year. In France.’