This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  ‘What are the chances of that? It’s a two-way split: me and you, and yer mum, perhaps. Not him or Ernie, or anyone.’

  He stormed out, shaking the floorboards, going out the back to his shed, and map, and dreams of Providence.

  Mum had the esky loaded: milk, cold chops and coleslaw—enough for another day. The curry was bubbling on the stove. ‘I thought Peter was helping?’ she said.

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Well, you mustn’t have been listening.’

  My fifty-six per cent Modern History exam. I’d explained: waking with a headache, thoughts drifting around the room as I tried to work, a couple of electricians fucking around in the hallway. ‘It’s just a trial,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the worst you ever done.’

  ‘No … well, perhaps, but he’s a hard marker.’

  ‘Excuses.’

  Hill Street Blues from the lounge room. Mum said, ‘Dad, turn it down!’ As she stirred. ‘Fifty-six per cent?’ And tasted. ‘Dad!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re not deaf.’

  ‘I’d learnt the Russian Revolution, but the questions were all about France and Vietnam.’ Trying to spread a small amount of knowledge on a big piece of toast.

  ‘What if that was the real thing? You wanna go to university …’

  ‘When did I say that?’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘You want me to.’

  ‘So? What are you gonna do? Fix cars? Kmart? You gotta good head, or I thought you did.’

  She tasted the curry, but wasn’t happy.

  ‘I could get a job in a bank. Look at Barbara what’s-her-name.’

  ‘She studied.’

  ‘Year Ten, teller at a bank, then she’s managing it, then an executive.’

  ‘It’s not so easy these days.’

  ‘Why not? I could be a copper.’

  ‘Coppers don’t write novels about vaginas.’

  ‘A detective?’

  Dozens of them, busy in our lounge room, with Pop calling, ‘Go on, get him. He’s behind you.’

  ‘Let’s be careful out there,’ I called.

  ‘Yes, Sarge,’ he replied.

  ‘The point is,’ Mum said, ‘you’d be the first in the family with a degree. We’d always thought that.’

  ‘Who had?’

  ‘Yer father, me, Pop.’

  ‘Should I be worried about what he wanted?’

  ‘Yes, you should. It’d be nice if Jen could but …’

  And what she wanted to say: three years of Ds for high school maths. All the comments had said she’d been working hard. Before she’d seen the ad in the paper for hairdressing apprenticeships and said to Mum, ‘How’s about this?’ and Mum had said, ‘You should give ’em a ring.’

  She emptied the curry into a Tupperware container and rinsed the pot. ‘Even if it’s just arts,’ she said. ‘What d’you need for that?’

  ‘Seventy-eight.’

  ‘You could get seventy-eight. You used to get straight As.’

  ‘That’s when it was easy.’

  ‘If you worked hard you could get into law. Imagine how proud Pop’d be, wouldn’t you, Pop?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘If Clem got inta law?’

  ‘When’s tea?’

  I tasted the curry. ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer.’

  ‘They make good money.’

  ‘They’re all crooks.’

  ‘Or a doctor?’

  ‘That’s ninety-seven.’

  ‘All I’m saying’s buckle down. It’s not too late.’

  I didn’t think it was, but I didn’t care. It seemed stupid to reduce life to a tertiary entrance ranking, but that’s how it was. Your brain produced a number, the number got you into university, this got you a good or boring job. There were more of the latter than the former, so you had to work hard and take advantage of every opportunity. Like Peter. He’d conquered law, but only through hard work.

  Mum said, ‘I’m no good, Pop isn’t. Ask Peter, he knows what it takes.’

  ‘It was easier in his day.’

  ‘There you go again. Val made them boys work. I’d go in at night and they’d be studying. Go into your room and yer listening to John Lennon, playing your guitar.’

  ‘Cos I’ve finished for the night.’

  ‘Obviously not. If yer gettin’ fifty-six.’

  ‘He’s behind yer!’ Pop said.

  Mum packed the curry in the esky. We checked to make sure Les hadn’t come home, then set off without Pop noticing. As we went, I said, ‘I could do journalism.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Seventy-one.’

  ‘Any idiot can be a journalist.’

  ‘Plenty of authors started out like that: Hemingway, Steinbeck.’

  ‘You bring the sauce?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t say anything to upset her. She’s been a bit delicate.’

  ‘She could come stay with us.’

  ‘Doesn’t want to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I dunno. People got their pride.’

  This seemed silly. It wasn’t like we didn’t know, or care. ‘Or even if she stayed in our shed. At least she’d have power and—’

  ‘Don’t talk about what you don’t know.’

  Although the back door was missing, Mum knocked, and waited. It was getting dark and we could see candlelight from what had been the master bedroom. It was at the back, on the opposite side, so Les wouldn’t be able to see.

  ‘You there?’ Mum called.

  ‘Come in.’

  Wendy was sitting on the mattress, covered in the rugs we’d supplied, surrounded by plates of half-eaten food (we’d supplied), listening to a battery radio (Pop had donated). Mum said, ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Good.’

  Wendy half-smiled at me and said, ‘Not to worry, Clem. It’ll all be sorted soon.’

  Mum opened the esky and showed her what we’d brought. ‘This curry’s just come off the stove, so careful.’

  ‘I appreciate it, Fay.’

  ‘That’s alright. You’d do the same.’

  I wondered if she ever had, in the Dad days. Mum and me and Jen, perhaps, sitting around the telly, as Les and Wendy came over with their esky.

  Mum gathered the plates and put them in a plastic bag. ‘I’ll give ’em a clean.’

  ‘What’s he up to?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘He’s been out since four, wasn’t it, Clem?’

  Me with my telescope, and log book. ‘Half four.’

  ‘Probably down the pub. He’s been doin’ that of late. Was a time he’d never go.’

  I didn’t know whether to go or stay. Mum had told me to hang about. She didn’t fancy the dramas, or waterworks, and there was safety in numbers. So I slipped down against the wall, and half-knelt in the corner.

  Wendy said, ‘It’s a pity, what’s happened to this place.’

  ‘Can all be fixed,’ Mum said, smiling. It was important to keep smiling.

  ‘I’d come in when Vicky was little and help out. They had it nice. This room was all wooden furniture. But even then, Oswald was a moper, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Gloomy, but nice enough. Dad says he saw it coming, years before.’

  The word was never mentioned. Not even the rope, or tree, or coroner’s van in the drive; or the funeral (that me and Jen were kept away from), or any mention of it since. When things died you just buried them and got on with life.

  ‘I think he could’ve been helped,’ Wendy said, and she was really saying she could be (with curries, perhaps). ‘If someone had sought help.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said, ‘what can you say? Listen, Tina, your husband’s not likely to …’

  ‘Kill himself?’ I asked.

  Mum couldn’t really deny it. ‘Clem.’

  ‘That’s what he did.’

  There were piles of clothes in the corner. I’d watched, and when Les had gone out I’d told Mum and she’d told Wendy and t
hey’d gone into number 28, gathering clothes, toiletries and the seventeen jumpers. Wendy noticed my interest and said, ‘Gotta put ’em somewhere soon or the rats’ll get ’em.’

  ‘They’re inside?’ I asked.

  ‘Too right. I woke last night with one lookin’ me in the face.’

  ‘Wendy, you can’t stay here,’ Mum said. ‘Come with us, we’ll sort it. Shouldn’t be no need for this.’

  ‘Patience.’

  Mum knew there was no point. ‘I’ll take the jumpers and put ’em in the press. Got some mothballs.’

  ‘No, they’ll be right for now. I like having them around.’ Then she looked at me, her eyes asking if I knew about the child.

  I said, ‘Mum told me.’

  ‘Clem!’

  ‘That’s alright,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s not like I’m hiding it.’

  ‘I wasn’t gonna tell him, Wendy …’

  But Wendy said, ‘I’m a mad woman, Clem.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘It musta been a shit.’

  ‘Yeah, it was a shit.’ She sighed again, like all the bits didn’t add up. ‘You’d have to be nuts to keep knitting them. That’s what Les thinks.’

  ‘If it helps,’ I said.

  Wendy forced herself to look away from whoever I was. ‘These things take time,’ she said, turning to Mum. ‘All that wool, but I’m willing to wait. I know he’ll wonder, one day, and come looking, eh, Clem?’

  ‘You can find out about him,’ I said.

  ‘I tried that.’

  ‘There’s a government department does it. I could help you fill in the paperwork, if you like.’

  Mum said, ‘He could. He’s gonna be a lawyer.’

  Wendy examined the jumpers, stacked neatly. ‘Even if I knew, but didn’t say anything.’

  Mum was about to say (believe me, I could tell), Might be best if you didn’t.

  I wondered what was worse: a kid not having a dad, or a mum not having a kid, but then realised it was the same thing.

  ‘Gotta have an interest,’ Mum said.

  ‘I have,’ Pop replied.

  ‘What?’

  He had to think. ‘Place doesn’t run itself.’

  ‘Yeah, I run it.’ She squeezed lemon on the chips.

  ‘Man my age oughta expect a bita rest, considering.’

  ‘But you’ve gotta have an interest now you’ve stopped fixin’ cars.’

  We’d already had this conversation, days before, and it had finished with Pop saying, Well, I’d like to get out a bit more.

  Like?

  You know, places we used to go. Port Stevens.

  We’ll go on the weekend.

  Port Stevens, on the coast, an hour from Gleneagles. We’d bought fish and chips from Soto’s and were sitting in the middle of the road on the grassy verge.

  Curtis said, ‘You want that dim sim, Doug?’

  ‘Na.’

  He checked with us before eating it. ‘Not as good as Don’s.’

  ‘He’s got special dim sims,’ Pop said. ‘Wog ones.’

  ‘How can you have wog dim sims?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Course you can. Wogs like ’em too.’

  ‘Don’s got the best fish,’ I said. He had a fridge for fish fillets, prawns and dim sims, butter for the hamburger rolls, the chocolate bars (on hot days), pineapple fritters and patties.

  ‘It’s not butterfish, it’s flake,’ Pop said.

  ‘What?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Don the Greek. He sells it as butterfish, but it’s flake. Someone should tell the government.’

  ‘The government?’ Mum asked.

  ‘The government. Weights and Measures.’

  ‘They haven’t had that since the Depression.’

  Curtis said, ‘I wouldn’t eat there.’

  ‘Why?’ Mum asked.

  ‘You can see his arse crack. When he’s cookin’ he scratches it, picks up a loada chips, dumps them in the basket and puts them in the oil.’

  ‘That’ll kill anything,’ Pop said. ‘Anyway, he’s a good man.’

  ‘But he’s not clean,’ Mum said.

  ‘There’s a lotta clean arseholes in the world. But Don, he’s decent.’

  ‘Why’d you say that?’

  ‘He had a rough trot.’

  Mum didn’t want to buy into it. He was the fish shop man, and Greek, so what did it matter? But she knew Pop talked to Don for hours.

  ‘Germans took his wife and son.’

  ‘He told you that?’ Mum said.

  ‘Then she come back, minus the kiddy, and never told him where he was.’

  ‘Where was he?’ Curtis asked.

  ‘She never told him.’

  Quiet. Just cars, seagulls, gathered in a toothpaste-coloured flock, waiting for a stray chip.

  Mum said, ‘I’ve seen his wife a few times, but she doesn’t talk either.’

  It wasn’t hot, but there were plenty of kids in T-shirts and bathers headed down to the beach. Pop said, ‘Shoulda brought mine.’

  ‘What?’ Mum asked, hoping there might be progress.

  ‘Bathers. Used to like a swim.’

  ‘You can go in yer undies.’

  ‘Get arrested.’

  ‘Worse than you along the beach.’

  Curtis had worn his, with a loose shirt, and thongs. ‘I’ll go in with you, Doug.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Mum said.

  Pop glared at her. ‘I dare not.’

  ‘That’s why we come.’

  ‘Why? Why did we come?’

  ‘So you could …’ But she couldn’t say it.

  I ate Soto’s chips. ‘Not as good as Don’s.’

  Curtis: ‘If only you’d seen what I’d seen.’

  And Pop barked, ‘Not doin’ so bad for a man who doesn’t know what happened to his …’ He sat, with a chip in his hand, staring at the grass. Lost. Like he was watching television.

  ‘I used to like it when you’d bring me down,’ Curtis said.

  ‘Good company for Clem,’ Mum explained.

  ‘Dad never brought us. Maybe once, with John.’ As he tried to remember. He turned to me. ‘Jetty jumping?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I smiled.

  Off the end, which wasn’t all that deep, but deep enough. Into the mire, bathers forced up your crack, barnacle cuts where you’d climb the pylons, over, up, for hours, as your ears filled but you shook your head like an old St Bernard to get it out.

  Fishing lines, too. Curtis said, ‘Remember, Clem? Pullin’ the rods in the water?’

  ‘I never did.’

  ‘That was fun.’ Reminding us how he used to swim up the beach to get away from the old fellas who’d come after him.

  And all this time, Pop, with the same chip in his hand.

  ‘You okay?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He ate it. ‘It used to be nicer.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, the old fellas would walk along in a shirt and tie, and their wives in frocks. Now it’s just boob tubes, and everyone’s fat hanging out. People today got no bloody class.’

  ‘You and Mum used to come?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Yes. When there was a train runnin’ down the middle, right here. Then it was a big day. The whole family. Now it’s just big arses and soggy chips.’

  It was like he was trying to convince us. I pointed out a girl with a very small bikini. ‘Is that what you mean, Pop?’

  ‘Exactly. How could you hold up yer head? Imagine Nan wearing that?’

  Mum smiled.

  ‘What?’ Pop said.

  ‘She’d topple over.’

  We walked down to the sideshows on the esplanade. Passing the lolly shop, where Curtis had pocketed his first fags. He said, ‘What d’you reckon?’

  ‘Not now.’

  He conceded. But it seemed easy: one old girl behind the counter reading the Weekly, a free pocket and, if you were good, you’d buy something cheap to divert suspicion. As we went I said, ‘You’re
just like your dad.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  He had to think. ‘He’s got it down to an art. Like dickbrain.’

  ‘What’s he up to?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I saw the cops at your place the other day.’

  He searched for answers on the hot, gummy footpath. ‘They were asking Mum about … stuff.’

  I didn’t push it. There was never any point.

  ‘Stuff John’d stolen.’

  ‘But they were talking to your dad.’

  ‘So?’

  I remembered the two officers searching Gary’s car, talking to him for half an hour, writing down what he was saying. It seemed strange—Gary was always out when the cops came round. Then I said, ‘He oughta be careful.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know, stuff that fell off the back of his truck.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Another of Curtis’s gifts: the art of the backwards-walking chicken. You had a story, you stuck with it.

  ‘They were there about dickbrain,’ he said.

  We waited at the lights, then crossed. The music was tinny, the rides empty, except for a few stick legs in centrifugal motion.

  ‘Long as he’s got receipts,’ I dared.

  ‘You’re so full of shit.’

  Curtis was the real Winston, excising and replacing the daily facts. The cubby: steel legs, steel frame, iron roof, wood panelling. And, to quote him (though the words were rusty), ‘Didn’t cost us a cent.’

  ‘The cops were looking for that grog?’ Pop said to Curtis.

  ‘I guess,’ he replied.

  ‘Looks like he’s back in the shit.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Harry’s got someone else.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’

  We sat on a bench. There was an empty ghost ride, and a ferris wheel which had featured in an Elvis movie. Mum noticed Pop, watching his shoes, shuffling them in a box pattern to arrange the sand on the concrete. She said, ‘Having fun?’

  ‘That breeze keeps it nice.’ As we guessed his thoughts: Nan in a frock, men in ties, girls in bathing suits. Or maybe who had the best chips, or what the Germans had done with Don’s boy.

  I guessed Mum was getting worried. He was leaving us, but quicker than she’d hoped. She’d bought him a 1:72 model of an EH Holden, sat with him, with the instructions, before she’d lost interest and gone off to cook tea and he’d stuck all the wrong bits together, so she’d put them all in the bin.