by John Larkin
‘No way.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cumming’s bigger than my dad. I don’t want to see him get hurt.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? Are you kidding? That guy should not be teaching. Did you hear what happened at the seniors’ dance last month?’
‘No.’
‘He got busted in the back of his car with two year eleven girls.’
‘Who busted him?’
‘Mr Davidson.’
‘The sports master? Did he report him?’
‘No, he joined in. But then a year twelve guy, who was going out with one of the girls, found them. Cumming threatened to punch him out if he told anybody. The guy’s bad news. He’s got to go.’
‘Don’t worry, what goes around comes around. You reap what you sow in this life,’ said Eric, quoting Iggy.
‘That’s all very deep and meaningful, Eric, but meanwhile kids are getting slapped around and naive girls are getting felt up and probably worse. You reckon you reap what you sow? Well, isn’t it time Cumming got a combine harvester dropped on him?’
‘He’ll get his. One day he’s going to get some pretty heavy karma coming back at him.’
‘Well, I bet that’s got him worried,’ said Stephen sarcastically. ‘Look, will you stop talking like a hippy and get real?’
‘What do you expect me to do? Bash him with a hockey stick?’
‘No, not really.’
‘I’m not going to fight fire with fire. I wonder what Gandhi would have done?’ Eric drifted off into deep thought.
‘Gandhi? Oh no, I can feel another Iggy Suede quote coming on.’
‘Gandhi led the passive resistance movement against the invaders from Great Britain. The enemy had guns; they had roses. The roses won.’
‘Hey, that sounds like a good name for a band.’
‘I think I’ve got a plan, Stephen.’
‘What are you going to do? Stick a rose bush up his backside and hit him over the head with a gun?’
‘No. When’s the next seniors’ dance?’
‘This Friday night I think.’
‘Good. I’m going to need help from you, your sister and my sister. We’ll also need a piece of paper and a crayon.’
And with Stephen looking spaced, Eric started work on the hang-glider he was sandpapering into shape. By the end of the lesson a plot was hatched and the room was thick with sawdust.
The following Monday morning Eric and Stephen sat in class with a look of complete satisfaction on their faces.
‘Good morning, class. My name is Miss Hardy and I will be your teacher until the end of term.’ 7.A4 were going through English teachers like nothing else.
It was a great relief to a lot of students at Pendle Hill High School when Mr Cumming was dismissed following the second seniors’ dance of the year.
He had been caught in the back of his car with another girl, only this time it wasn’t Mr Davidson who discovered him but the principal, who was at the dance, not to score, but purely to supervise and hand out lime cordial.
Jenny Underwood had led him out to the car park, where he caught Mr Cumming red-handed and red-faced.
Just before they got out of the car to face the music, Clare Brown handed Mr Cumming a note and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
‘What’s this? Your phone number?’
‘Good effort!’ said Clare Brown, Stephen’s sister. ‘The kiss wasn’t from me and the note isn’t either. They’re from Eric Underwood.’
‘What’s that little creep doing sending me notes?’
Mr Cumming opened the note. It simply read: ‘Gandhi got you.’
Mr Cumming got out of his car and tried in vain to fend off a tirade of abuse from the principal. If that wasn’t bad enough he caught a glimpse of something bright out of the corner of his eye. He glanced over to where Eric and Stephen stood by their bikes. He couldn’t see their faces though. All he could make out were a couple of white backsides mooning him through the darkness.
Eric and Stephen rode home, yelping all the way. Because it was Friday, Stephen was allowed to sleep over. Apart from getting English teachers kicked out of school, they spent the evening playing computer games and telling ghost stories until they drifted of to a peaceful sleep on a crystal clear night at two in the morning.
‘Hey, Underwood!’ whispered Billy Nelson, breaking into Eric’s thoughts.
‘What do you want, Nelson?’
‘You’re dead.’
‘You two up the back: be quiet!’ said Miss Hardy.
Billy hurriedly scribbled out a note and passed it over to Eric via Noel Stevenson.
Eric unfolded the note, which had a bit of Vegemite and he didn’t like to think what else stuck to it: ‘I found out that Iggy Swade moved. This arvo down the bottom field your on.’
Eric scrawled out a reply and passed it back. And as a look of anger was spreading across Billy’s face, a smug one was making itself at home on Eric’s. The note read: ‘Swade is spelt Suede you moron, and it’s not “your” on but “you’re” on. Don’t you pay attention during lessons? Or are you too busy playing with your girlfriend Ferntree under the desk? As for being on this arvo, bring Fern-tree too, I’ll take you both on.’
Eric knew that he was taking a huge risk. He couldn’t fight for peanuts and had no desire to learn either. But after what Mr Cumming had done to him he knew he could take a couple of hits, which was all he reckoned they’d be able to get in before the crowd attracted the attention of a teacher. This would be better than being cornered by them in the change rooms or dragged into the toilets during a break.
The day fairly flew by and as Eric sat vigorously sandpapering in the back room during the last lesson, he started to get butterflies in his stomach.
‘So Gandhi’s taking on the two toughest guys in class, is he?’ said Stephen sarcastically.
‘They found out Iggy’s gone. They are going to get me eventually. I might as well get it over with.’
‘But you’re going to fight them. What happened to Gandhi?’
‘Gandhi will be there, you wait and see.’
‘No, I won’t be there. I’m going to tell Mr McManus or somebody.’
‘Good, I was going to ask you to do that anyway. But let them get a few hits in first.’
‘Why? You’ll get hurt.’
‘They’re thirteen. Cumming smacked me in the mouth and that didn’t hurt too much. How much damage can they do?’
The bell rang for the end of school and Billy Nelson poked his head into the back room. ‘You’re not going to chicken out are you, Underwood?’
‘I’m not scared of a cry baby like you, Nelson. I’ll see you down there.’
Eric looked a lonely figure as he made his way down to the bottom oval. An expectant crowd had already begun to yell for blood as the preliminary fight between two year eight girls got underway.
Some of Eric’s classmates were dead against the fight and made a strong protest by not showing up. Idealism only went so far at Pendle Hill High.
Eric caught sight of Veronica Roberts out of the corner of his eye. He hoped she was there as a nurse.
The girls’ fight came to an abrupt end when one of them had to break off to go to her ballet lesson. The crowd had not yet had its blood lust satisfied so it came over, surrounded Eric, and only parted to let Billy Nelson and Greg Fern through.
Eric stood in the centre of the circle and faced Billy Nelson, while Greg Fern lurked behind him like some sort of landlocked shark. Eric tried to think what Gandhi might have done when faced with a similar situation, but he drew nothing but blanks. He wondered who would start the mouthing off which usually preceded the bottom oval fights. He suddenly heard himself yell, ‘Your type always think you can get the better of little wimps like me, Nelson.’ He couldn’t believe that he had said it and if Billy Nelson and Greg Fern weren’t already waiting in line to punch him in the mouth, he would have gla
dly done it for them.
‘Oh yeah,’ offered Billy Nelson.
‘Is that the best you can do, you half-wit: “Oh yeah”?’
‘We didn’t come here to talk, Underwood. We came to beat the living crap out of you.’
‘Oh yeah,’ offered Eric and the crowd cracked up. It was thoroughly enjoying itself.
Billy Nelson came charging towards Eric like a demented bull. He grabbed him by the jumper and hurled him backwards into the waiting arms of Greg Fern. Greg spun Eric round, slapped him across his left cheek and hurled him back towards Billy.
‘Don’t fight them,’ whispered Eric to himself. ‘Don’t fight them. Gandhi wouldn’t.’
Billy grabbed him, twisted him round and punched him in the face. As Eric hurtled back towards Fern-tree he realised that he barely felt Billy’s punch. ‘Don’t fight, don’t fight them unless you really have to. That’s what Gandhi would do.’
Greg turned Eric around in a full circle and pushed him hard in the back and he flew towards Billy. Again it didn’t hurt when Billy punched him in the face and he tumbled back towards Greg.
Greg twisted Eric round again and let him have it. The crowd gave a loud ‘Oooooooooo’ as Greg’s kick to Eric’s balls made him slump to the ground.
‘Stop it! You’re hurting him,’ yelled Veronica Roberts, who burst into tears and ran off.
Eric would have preferred her to stick around and get stuck into Billy and Greg and then come and give him the kiss of life. Even in agony he was the ultimate optimist.
He stumbled to his feet just in time to see a brown shoe planted in Greg Fern’s gut. He turned round and saw Billy Nelson charging. Eric stuck out his arm as Billy ran past. It was like a giraffe running into a clothesline. Billy went down in a heap. Eric looked back at Greg Fern and saw the brown shoe connect with Greg’s face. ‘Ooooooooo.’ He went down like a cordless bungy jumper and screamed, ‘I give in, I give in.’
‘You wimp, Fern,’ yelled Billy, getting to his feet. ‘We can handle them.’
Eric’s partner came running towards Billy but Eric held up his hand. ‘This one’s mine.’
Billy’s reputation as a tough guy was simply that, a reputation. Because he was so much bigger than everybody else, nobody had ever stood up to him before, so he’d never actually been in any fights.
Forgetting Gandhi and the fact that he thought fighting was for idiots, Eric exploded into a fury of arms and legs and threw about a thousand punches and kicks, and while he only managed to land a couple it was too much for Billy, who fell to the ground, yelling that he’d had enough.
Some of Eric’s classmates came over and hoisted him high on their shoulders. But it was a hollow victory. He knew that they’d have been just as happy to cart Billy and Greg on a lap of honour around the oval had the victory gone the other way.
The crowd dispersed when Mr McManus came limping down to the bottom oval and yelled a lot of ‘what’s-going-on-here’s’ at people. By this time Eric and his accomplice were halfway home.
‘You’ve got some blood on your nose, Eric.’
‘And you’ve got some on your shoe.’
‘Here, let me wipe it off before Mum and Dad see it,’ said Jenny, reaching for a tissue.
‘Thanks for your help. I’m glad the oldies made you take those karate lessons.’
‘They were supposed to keep me out of trouble on the train, not the training field, but Stephen came and told me what was happening. I wasn’t going to let my little bro get hurt. You should take some lessons yourself.’
‘No thanks, you know I’m…’
‘Yeah,’ interrupted Jenny, ‘yeah I know. You’re a pacifist. But let me tell you this: it’s a lot easier to play the role of a pacifist if you’ve got some force to back you up.’
Eric felt Jenny had missed the point, but he let it ride. He was just so grateful for her help. If she hadn’t turned up, they would have probably started using him for footy practice, as the ball.
‘That’s two favours I owe you. Cumming and now this.’
‘Families don’t owe, Eric.’
Eric looked at his sister in a new light. He had always been too blinded by Iggy’s brilliance to realise that he had a sister who was pretty together as well.
Eric hobbled the rest of the way home with Jenny’s help. The mixture of pleasure and pain caused strange sensations in his mind and groin. Veronica Roberts had cried for him. And if that wasn’t worth being kicked in the balls for, he didn’t know what was.
When Jenny and Eric arrived home they found their father mowing the lawn with a lot more vigour than usual.
‘What’s up with Dad?’ asked Jenny when they got inside.
‘We’ve had a bit of bad news from England. Your grandmother has had a fall and broken her hip.’
‘Is she okay?’ Eric was trying to find something sympathetic to say.
‘Well, if you exclude broken hips, she’s fine. We are having a house meeting after dinner though to let you know what we’ve decided to do about it.’
Eric went into his bedroom and tried in vain to search for an emotion that covered the broken bones of grandmothers 19,000 kilometres away. In the end he decided to play computer games instead. He felt a bit guilty about not having any feelings for his English grandmother, but he had only met her once and that was when his parents had taken him and Jenny back to the UK when he was two. They always said that he was too young to remember the trip, but Eric was convinced that his first memories consisted of vomiting over somebody in a floral dress whose breath smelled heavily of tea and scones.
But that had been eleven years ago. All he really knew about his grandmother was that she had a lot of trouble remaining vertical and she sent him an embarrassing hand-knitted jumper each year. The pastoral scenes in his grandmother’s knitwear had given way in recent years to more volatile settings. The last jumper he received had a flock of starlings on it dive bombing a farmer while a vicious gang of blind mice annoyed his wife. Eric’s father said that she was getting either creative or strange.
Despite Eric’s lack of sadness over his grandmother’s injuries, his father was clearly very upset. He was Whipper Snippering up a storm outside. Eric realised that he never really thought about his father being somebody’s son. He never really thought much about his father at all. Oh sure, he was always cracking jokes and he was extremely accident prone. His most famous car accident was when he got the family up at five in the morning to drive to the beach in order to usher in the new year. When they got to Newport Beach there was only one other car in the whole car park, and it was about a kilometre away. Somehow Eric’s father managed to hit it, and to make matters worse the owner of the car was innocently reading the papers inside. He leapt out and yelled, ‘You’ve got the whole bloody car park, about two point five million spots, and you’ve got to come and run into me.’
‘There’s not much damage,’ offered Mr Underwood.
‘That’s not the point. The fact is there are empty parking spots as far as the eye can see.’
‘Yeah but for safety’s sake I wanted to…’
‘Look, I don’t want to discuss it. I come down here every year to welcome the sun and to relieve a bit of stress. I don’t need this.’
‘Let me pay for the damage.’
‘No, forget it. Just promise me you won’t come back next year.’
‘We were thinking of coming here every year.’
‘I’ve been coming here on New Year’s Day for the past twenty years and this is the worst start to a year I’ve ever had. Can’t you go to another beach, preferably on the west coast?’ He jumped into his car and drove off, dragging his bumper bar behind.
The sound of breaking glass brought Eric back to the present with shock.
‘Bollocks! Are you okay, Eric?’ Mr Underwood poked his head in through Eric’s freshly smashed bedroom window.
‘Yeah.’
‘I must have caught a small rock with the Whipper Snipper. Be a good boy and get me
the brush, the vacuum cleaner and a sheet of black plastic from the shed. I’ll cover the window until I can get a glazier in.’
Eric realised that he was forced to stop thinking about one of his father’s more famous accidents in order to help him clear up another one. And if ever an incident summed up a person, that was it.
At dinner Eric was a little nervous about attending the house meeting that was scheduled after dessert. The last house meeting that his father called was to let everybody know that he’d backed the car out over the cat.
Before dinner Eric had gone looking for the family’s current cat to make sure she hadn’t suffered a similar fate. He was relieved to find Kitty sunning herself on the pool cover, and to make sure that she was still alive and purring he threw a handful of water over her. He was delighted to see her leap to life and tear off in about eight different directions.
‘As you all know by now, your grandmother is in hospital,’ said Mr Underwood trying, from the head of the table, to project the image of the great patriarch but failing dismally because he had a bit of fried egg stuck to his chin. ‘Your mother and I have decided to go and visit her.’
‘What about us?’ asked Jenny.
‘You and Paul are coming with us. We’ve checked with your teachers, Jenny, and they said that you are doing very well. So as long as you take your textbooks you should be okay. We are only going for four weeks, but you are not to fall behind! Understood?’
‘Yeah. No probs.’
‘What about me?’ asked Eric not unreasonably.
‘Look, Eric, this is my mother we are talking about. If we can’t get her to come out here to live this may be the last time we see her. Now, Jenny remembers her from our last visit and she’s never seen Paul, and besides, if you came you’d want to go and see Iggy right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well he’s in London. We are not going anywhere near London. We will be flying to Manchester and then taking a train to Yorkshire…’
‘I’d still like to go,’ said Eric.
‘Don’t whine, Eric! You haven’t let me finish yet. We want you to stay with Auntie Dot and come up and feed Kitty and Basil and keep an eye on the place at the weekend. If you do a good job and get good grades at school we’ll pay for you to spend the summer holidays with the Suedes in London. How does that sound?’
