This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  ‘Sheep.’

  ‘I know that, but what sorta sheep?’

  ‘Merino.’

  ‘Yes, best sort. Spanish. Fought a civil war over sheep … Down among the dead men let him lie!’

  ‘You reckon you should get home?’ Ron asked.

  ‘What’s the rush? Then you got the missus on at yer. Yours go on at yer, Ron?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You watch that, Miss Stephens. Nice new seat covers, you don’t want some drunken old bastard …’

  It was unusual to see him this gone, this early. The Windsor only opened at ten. I knew he could get tanked in under an hour, but not in perfect dog-walking weather. Fi-Fi pulled on her lead, but he held her back. ‘While the lads of the village slept.’ Burped. ‘You run your hands through that wool, missus. Merino. Spanish Civil War. Fascism. And it was all a prelude to Hitler. The communists were against Franco … you heard of Franco?’

  ‘Ernie!’ Ron said. ‘What are you goin’ on about?’

  ‘It’s a public place, isn’t it? I’m entitled to sit on this fence. Aren’t I, Clem?’

  I had to stop myself.

  ‘Clem?’

  The girl Stephens was sitting on the bonnet, grinning.

  ‘You give a guarantee on those, Ron?’

  ‘You’re an embarrassment to the street, Ernie.’

  ‘At least I talk to my neighbours.’

  Ron turned to the girl and said, ‘If you want to park in my driveway? It might be quicker.’

  She nodded to Ernie and said, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr …?’

  ‘Comrade Sharpe.’

  She got in, started her car and pulled into number 30. Got out, and Ron followed, and continued his fitting.

  ‘Little bitch,’ Ernie muttered, standing, continuing.

  You can’t know where you’re going, when you run through menswear. This is the world, as you swing from tree to tree, wiping your nose on someone’s new slacks. The idea of buying something, wearing, altering, are all irrelevant. The clothes are rough-skinned bark you can rub your back on. You can stand inside jackets, and put your arms in the sleeves, although your fingers mightn’t reach the elbows.

  Down among the dead men …

  Someone sounded their horn for Mr Glasson to hurry up. Hester ran out and spoke to them and told them to be patient (I guessed).

  Lacewings, fairy dust, and a trail. As the bell rang. I closed my eyes to hear. Yes, a bell. Then Ernie and David and something about cats. Then, louder, a frantic ring. You wait and see what I’ll do … Unmistakable. So drunk so early.

  I half-ran to the front door. Mum said, ‘What is it?’ but she was busy with the Brasso, so there was no point. Down the drive, to see David and Ernie going their hardest.

  Ernie: ‘You don’t think I will?’

  David: ‘Mum?’ Ringing his bell, until Ernie tore it from his hand and flung it to the ground.

  I walked around. There was a man in a Valiant, waiting, watching from his uncovered seat.

  Ernie pointed to a cat, and her litter of seven or eight kittens, playing in the grass. ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, stepping forward.

  ‘I could get ’em and …’ Ernie moved towards the kittens and David tried to block him with his hand, then moved his wheelchair.

  ‘Mr Sharpe?’ I said.

  ‘Stay out of it, Clem.’ He approached the kittens, leaned down, but they darted under the house. ‘Little shits.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘No point stressing David,’ I said to Ernie, ‘it’s not his—’

  He moved his face a few inches from mine. ‘You oughta seen it. Dozens of them, out in the sun, crawling all over his lap and …’ He stopped, noticed the man in the Valiant and said, ‘What are you lookin’ at?’

  The muffled voice. ‘Go easy, mate.’

  ‘Not your fuckin’ mate. Who are you anyway, parked out the front of my house? He hasn’t got a licence to operate a business.’

  I picked up the bell, placed it on David’s tray, but he didn’t touch it. Ernie just stood, tottering, studying the ground.

  ‘Is your mum home?’ I asked David.

  ‘Shops.’

  ‘When will she get back?’

  David was watching Ernie, unsure. ‘Mum’s tried to get rid of them. She gave some to Miss Davis, but they came back.’

  Ernie noticed the kittens re-emerging and ran at them again, caught one and threw it across the yard.

  The Valiant man got out and said, ‘Oi!’

  ‘Fuck off. She’s got hundreds. They piss on everything.’

  Val and Peter approached from Lanark III with their bags of groceries. Ernie saw them and drunk-jogged towards them. ‘Another litter. You said you were gonna do something.’

  Val looked around: me, the Valiant man, a terrified David. She hurried over to him, straightened his hair and asked, ‘What’s he done?’

  Ernie seemed to have sobered, or perhaps it was the grog talking. ‘You got at least three tabbies, and they’ve got litters, and then there’s the older ones.’

  ‘Ernie?’ I said.

  ‘Bloody catfights outside my winder every night. And that smell, when they mark their territory. Then they chase Fi-Fi round the yard, I seen it!’

  ‘No,’ Val said.

  Ernie moved closer to her; Peter put down his groceries and moved between them.

  ‘I tried to grow a few vegies, but they dug ’em up. And they’re into our bins. You wanna come and clean that mess up?’

  ‘Mr Sharpe,’ Peter said, pleading his case.

  ‘And you can move, you little faggot.’ He pushed him aside. The Valiant man stepped forward; I stepped forward; Mr Sharpe was a few inches from Val. She shielded her face, lowered her head. David said, ‘Leave her,’ but no one could hear him over the voices, the chaos.

  I took three steps, and was between them. ‘Quiet!’

  The noise stopped.

  ‘Me and Curtis,’ I said. ‘We’ve got an idea.’

  Ernie wasn’t worried about me—just the cats, running around the garden; Val, covering her face and mouth, like someone had died; David, helpless in his chair.

  ‘It’ll work,’ I said.

  Ernie turned. ‘What will?’

  And I explained.

  A few minutes later, Ernie went inside.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Val.

  I waited in the hallway as Val and Peter helped David onto his bed to rest. The door was ajar, but I didn’t look. I heard Peter plug in the radio, and soon there was Chopin, and the blind was drawn and I felt that this room—bare-threaded and fibro, awkward corners with ill-fitting furniture—was much the same as mine: a place to go when everything else failed.

  I studied photos: the brothers in a rowboat, life-jacketed and buck-toothed, waving to Val on the shore. Sitting in the kitchen, studying, and I could see the clumsy Indian’s grave marked in upper- and lower-case serif. Funny, really, how it all came down to a photo. Mr Bulljaw, flying through suburban air, admiring the house he’d built. Completing circuits circumscribed by the main road, the primary school, the substation at the end of the road. And next to this, the only photo of the man who was probably dad.

  Gone.

  Val came out and saw the problem. ‘Ssh, he needs a nap.’ Beside his brother, in a wicker chair, reading about Stephen Hero.

  She took me into the kitchen, closed the door and said, ‘Cuppa?’

  Always the cuppa. But I agreed, and as she filled the kettle she said, ‘It’s not gone.’

  ‘No?’

  She reached up to the bill box, opened it and produced the yellowing photo. ‘You keep it.’

  ‘But why …?’

  She shovelled tea into the pot. ‘I’m the one who keeps the peace.’

  I waited.

  ‘Your mother, sitting there, and she says, Clem’s been looking at that photo in the hall. What was I gonna say?’

  I studied the fat face, the brown eyes, the black ha
ir that burst out of his head, down his cheeks; the small lips and little dent in his chin that, I supposed, I’d inherit.

  ‘Put it in a book,’ Val said. ‘Somewhere she won’t find it.’

  ‘She can’t tell you what to do.’

  But she just filled the pot with hot water, sat and waited. ‘She was adamant. Said you’d been asking questions, and it was best you didn’t know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can’t unknow things, can you? Then you’ve got seventy years of it.’

  She said this like she knew it better than anyone.

  ‘That’s all your mum’s thinking. It wasn’t that he was a horror.’

  She poured the tea, silent. With Val, silence only meant one thing. She was deciding. Then she touched the photo and said, ‘In a book, or under a cupboard?’

  Tea, hot, brown and photographic, like all the tea she’d ever poured, and drunk, all the days, the ticking Tower of London on the wall. Then she said, ‘Firstly, he built that house, and he did a pretty good job.’

  ‘I knew that,’ I said, as a way of telling her she’d have to start the story closer to the end.

  ‘We all helped where we could, whether it was painting, or planting the garden. Until it was real decent-looking and your mum, and dad, they were happy.’

  I settled in for the tea.

  ‘Then came Jen, and you, and he was the proudest dad alive. He, he was the one who’d walk you … around the block, stopping to show everyone. You, especially, cos you were the blondie, with the blue eyes, and handsome … still are, eh?’ She stopped to think. ‘It’s not my place to tell you.’

  ‘I’ll never say.’

  She had to be sure I’d put this, too, under my wardrobe. ‘Whatever anyone might say about him, he was a hard worker, at the start at least. He laid bricks.’

  ‘A bricklayer?’

  ‘For about year. Bit longer. Up at six, off on his motorbike.’

  I’d seen the handlebars hanging from the shed roof.

  ‘Home at four. Did his back in, but kept at it. Hated it, but kept at it. He had these babies, and wanted to support them. That’s what he was like, no matter what anyone says, he wanted to do the right thing.’

  It sounded hopeful. Bricklaying. You’d have to be determined. Building other people’s houses. People who could afford to build in brick.

  ‘Maybe that’s all you need to know,’ she said.

  I waited. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Not a word?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The company he worked for went broke, and he lost his job. Your mother said he stole from them and they sacked him, but he told me that wasn’t the case. Then he couldn’t find work. Sat at home, days on end. He got frustrated and you’d hear him shouting. David and Peter went in a few times but …’

  She didn’t seem to want to continue. ‘It’s not my place to tell you.’

  ‘I know, but it’d be good if you did.’

  ‘I think things were tough, money-wise, and your dad had some mates, and they’d always be over, and he’d be off with them till all hours. Then came the police …’

  Now it seemed clear.

  ‘He was locked up for a while, but came home, then there was more shouting and we’d sit here and worry about your mum and you kids. Can you imagine?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘The one good thing your mum did, with a bita help from Doug, was tell him to leave. And when he came back she got a court order to keep him away. And one day, when she tells you that, you gotta thank her. She wanted you and Jen safe, so she got rid of him, and it wasn’t an easy thing for her to do.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Him out the front at four in the morning, throwing bottles on yer roof, until Doug went out and shouted at him. You can’t remember, but one day she’ll tell you, and you gotta say thanks, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Cos that …’ But she stopped, like she’d run out of batteries. ‘You’re not upset?’

  ‘I guessed it must’ve been something like that. For mum to hide the photos.’

  ‘Now you understand why.’

  ‘I suppose. But she coulda told me. I woulda been okay.’

  ‘You were just a kid. Still are.’

  I went home. Past the open door, Peter asleep beside his brother. Down the drive, stopping to search our roof for broken glass. I went into the shed and took down the handlebars, but they told me no more than Val. My dad was a sort of John Burrell, and maybe Pop was trying to help him, still.

  I knocked on Ernie’s door. ‘Mr Sharpe?’ And a muffled voice. ‘Get that, will yer?’ Mrs Sharpe replying, ‘I’m on the toilet.’ Then silence, as every man and woman stood and shat his ground. Then Ernie called, ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me, Clem.’

  Silence, again.

  ‘Mum reckons you got a net?’

  Ernie and Ida, still communicating (just) after forty years. Ernie didn’t seem to care about what he did, wore or said. He’d smoked his life down to the butt. Once, Mum had said to Ida, I’ve got a few tickets to a nice restaurant, and Ida had asked Ernie, and of course he’d said no. Mum had told him you had to keep working at a relationship, and he’d said something like, Within limits, invoking a coal mine that had been worked clean. Ida had cried (I heard) and told Ernie she hated him and he’d said he couldn’t give a shit, and that’d ended that.

  So, that was my view of married couples.

  ‘Mr Sharpe … should I come back later?’

  ‘No, what is it?’ He opened the fly door.

  ‘A net.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Me and Curtis … the cats.’

  ‘Follow me.’ He walked out to the shed, switched on a light and went in. ‘It’s here somewhere.’

  I waited as he searched a dark corner.

  ‘What, she complaining about me, I suppose?’ he said.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘I was entitled to say what I did, Clem.’

  ‘You upset David.’

  ‘I can’t be responsible …’ He checked the rafters. ‘Maybe I got a bit worked up, but that doesn’t change things.’ Clearing his throat, he spat into the darkness. ‘They’re wild. Sisters rootin’ brothers, and their mum. One instinct: kill. All the birds I see lyin’ on the lawn.’

  ‘They were pretty upset.’

  He found a torch, turned it on, and moved around.

  ‘That David, he’s …’ But thought better of it. ‘And as for that horse’s hoof.’

  ‘Peter?’

  ‘You ever seen him with a girl? Woulda been one, surely, after all these years.’

  ‘I don’t reckon. I think he just likes his own company.’

  ‘Perhaps. Although they keep it well hidden, Clem.’

  I couldn’t believe it. There were a lot of other explanations, but that one made the least sense. ‘Woulda had a boyfriend, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t be parading him down Lanark Avenue. They meet in clandestine places.’

  It was a funny thought. Peter paying the rent. ‘He told me he was engaged once.’

  ‘He never was.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I started searching piles of tools that hadn’t been used in decades, metal offcuts, courtesy of Gary. ‘But he never talks about her.’

  ‘I never heard nothin’ and I’ve been livin’ next door to him for years.’

  ‘You should ask him.’

  But he just made his you-don’t-know-the-half-of-it face. ‘Well, maybe not a poof, but strange.’

  ‘But you called him one.’

  ‘I never did.’

  ‘You did, I heard.’ It wasn’t my job to lecture Ernie, but he seemed to want to hear. Perhaps he trusted my opinion.

  ‘I shouldn’ta said that, I suppose.’ He sat down to rest, and think. ‘He’s not a bad fella, as such.’

  I sat next to him. ‘And Val’s okay?’

  ‘Well … She did a bloody good job, bringing them up. Not too many
women …’ He turned to me, half-worried. ‘I didn’t say anything too bad, did I?’

  ‘You pushed her.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You did.’

  He dropped his head and studied the concrete. ‘I should say sorry. But she’s the one with the cats.’

  ‘And she’s agreed to my plan.’

  ‘I wasn’t too nasty?’

  ‘You called her a few names.’

  ‘Well … she’s never been the sort to come in with a cake. But she’s always in your place, and that upsets Ida.’

  ‘Maybe she’s scared of you?’

  ‘You scared of me, Clem?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you go. Ida’s tried to be friendly, but no, hardly a word.’

  ‘You should take her a cake. Change your ways.’

  He sat staring into the shadows. ‘Not at my age. It’s just, Ida. Still, I shouldn’ta pushed her.’

  ‘She wanted to talk but you …’

  ‘Just goes to show, young Whelan, stay off the grog. You sneak one in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you have a smoke, don’t yer?’

  ‘Don’t tell Mum.’

  ‘Stay off them, too. Look at Yul Brenner.’

  ‘Who?’

  He read the side of a box in front of us. ‘Musta been years.’

  Soapbox Speeches. In texta. He opened the box, retrieved a pile of papers, and sat. ‘I thought I’d chucked them.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘These,’ he said, blowing dust from the sheets, ‘were my Kapital.’ Then he read. ‘Comrades, gather round and hear what they have in store for you.’ He waited, eager for an opinion.

  ‘For who?’

  ‘The workers. Even as we speak, managers are counting beans, working out how many jobs they can shed, and where these jobs will go.’

  I didn’t get it.

  ‘See, the date, 1973. The managers at Alcott’s were already deciding how they could send work overseas. Be sure, comrades, each of your jobs will be sold down the river.’

  Maybe he could hear the applause.

  ‘You cost too much. Foreigners work cheap. Be assured: this country will have no manufacturing by 1990.’

  He was in full flight: a factory of eager ears, raised voices, red flags.

  ‘First, the machinists will go. We know that’s coming. I’ve seen the tenders. Hong Kong. That’s where they’ll make your children’s pants.’