Second Childhood

by Morris Gleitzman

  Mark watched her untangle her reddy-brown hair from her glasses.

  He’d thought all along she was a bit of a snob and now he’d seen her car he was sure of it.

  He noticed the woman sitting in the driver’s seat. She was wearing a bright yellow sailing jacket and her hair was tied up with a strip of gold cloth and she had dark red nail polish on.

  Mark tried to imagine Mum driving a Saab wearing a sailing jacket and nail polish.

  He couldn’t.

  Upton was pleading with the woman.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘please. I’ll just read quietly, I won’t be any trouble.’

  Mark saw Upton’s mum glance at an impressive-looking sailor’s watch, one of the ones that was probably also a compass and a sextant and a depth-finder.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you know we can’t concentrate with you hanging around on the boat. Anyway, you like excursions. Have fun.’

  She pulled the door shut, smiled, waved, and drove off.

  Upton stood and watched the Saab disappear and looked so unhappy that Mark found himself thinking that perhaps he’d been a bit unfair to her. He’d hardly spoken a word to her all year either.

  He went over.

  ‘Parents can be real pains,’ he said, ‘eh?’

  Upton turned and looked at him.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘almost as much as boys.’

  She walked into school.

  An empty flavoured milk carton hit him in the side of the neck and Pino and Rufus came over.

  ‘Don’t talk to her,’ said Pino, ‘she’s up herself.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mark, ‘I know.’

  Mark struggled to concentrate as Mr Cruickshank wrote the topic for the new project on the board. It wasn’t easy because Mr Cruickshank’s chalk was squeaking painfully and most of the other kids were mucking up.

  Mark almost told them to shut up.

  Suddenly, with a theatrical gesture, Mr Cruickshank scrunched up the piece of paper he was copying from.

  ‘Okay,’ he shouted, ‘if you’re not interested . . .’

  He pulled out a cigarette lighter and set fire to the scrunched-up piece of paper, holding it above his head like a burning torch.

  The class stared at him.

  Great, thought Mark, the big project of the year, my last chance to get a good grade, and Cruickshank goes loony and burns the school down.

  Mr Cruickshank smiled a weary smile and dropped the burning paper into the waste bin.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got your attention, everyone copy this down.’ He turned to the board and read out what he’d written. ‘You are a famous person in history. Write a letter to a friend or relative telling them about your life.’

  As he copied this into his folder, Mark groaned to himself. Another one of Mr Cruickshank’s complicated projects. Why couldn’t he give them something simple, like Do A Project About Bushrangers?

  He glanced over to see what Pino and Rufus thought of the new project. Pino was frowning, tongue sticking out as he wrote. Rufus was shaking his pen and banging it on the desk. Mark could see he hadn’t written anything.

  When, thought Mark, is Rufus’s mum going to stop buying him those crook pens?

  Mark took a spare pen from his pencil case. He looked up and saw that Mr Cruickshank was facing the board, tidying up a couple of his f’s.

  ‘Today’s excursion to the National Treasures Exhibition,’ Mr Cruickshank was saying, ‘is to help you choose your famous person.’

  Mark crouched low and crept over to Rufus’s desk. He noticed Upton looking at him as he went, and stuck his tongue out at her.

  ‘This project,’ Mr Cruickshank went on, ‘carries marks in English and Social Studies as well as History. It is, as I’ve said several times, the big one.’

  Mark gave Rufus the pen and didn’t wait for Rufus’s relieved grin of thanks. He was halfway back to his desk when he realised Mr Cruickshank was staring at him.

  ‘I hope,’ said Mr Cruickshank grimly, ‘that little conversation was about history, Smalley.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  Mark was about to explain about Rufus’s pen when he remembered that Mr Cruickshank had warned Rufus several times about bringing substandard pens to school.

  ‘Smalley,’ said Mr Cruickshank, raising his voice, ‘was that conversation about history?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Mark.

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Cruickshank, ‘then you can share it with the rest of us.’

  Mark’s brain went like the telly when a big truck was going past. He tried to remember something they’d done in history, anything, but all he could think of was pens and bushrangers, and bushrangers was primary.

  He looked desperately around the room.

  On the wall next to his desk was the poster Mr Cruickshank had put up earlier. ‘See Phar Lap,’ it said, ‘At The National Treasures Exhibition, Limited Season Only, State Museum.’ There was a picture of the famous racehorse and a newspaper headline saying ‘1929 Melbourne Cup’.

  Mark heard himself speaking.

  ‘I was telling Wainwright who won the 1929 Melbourne Cup, sir.’

  He glanced round and saw that Rufus was looking puzzled.

  Mr Cruickshank looked at Mark. ‘I hope you told him correctly,’ he said, ‘because if you didn’t you can spend today picking up litter on the oval. Both of you.’

  Mark’s heart was pounding.

  ‘Phar Lap, sir,’ he said.

  Mr Cruickshank gave a weary sigh. ‘Off you go, Smalley. And you, Wainwright. Take this to Mr Savage.’ He sat at his desk and started scribbling a note.

  Mark felt hot and angry. His last chance for a decent grade down the dunny because the stupid poster was wrong.

  Then he felt someone poking him in the back.

  He spun round.

  Upton was holding something out to him. A piece of paper.

  He took it and looked at it. ‘1929 Nightmarch,’ it said, ‘1930 Phar Lap.’

  He stared at her. She nodded.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Mark, turning to Mr Cruickshank who was still scribbling, ‘I’m thinking of 1930. The winner of the 1929 Melbourne Cup was Nightmarch.’

  Mr Cruickshank stopped and looked hard at Mark.

  Then, with another weary sigh, he screwed up what he’d been writing and dropped it into the bin.

  As the class filed across the playground towards the bus, Mark realised Annie Upton wasn’t with them. He went to find her.

  She was still at her locker. Mark came up behind her and cleared his throat.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘How do you know all that stuff?’

  She spun round, startled, and slammed her locker door. As she did, Mark saw the inside was plastered with pictures of horses.

  She looked at him steadily.

  ‘I read a lot,’ she said.

  Mr Cruickshank’s voice floated in from outside. ‘Straight to the bus, everyone. Wainwright, put that boy down.’

  ‘You’ll miss the excursion,’ said Annie.

  ‘What about you?’ said Mark. ‘Aren’t you going?’

  Annie shook her head and turned away.

  ‘Do you chuck on buses?’ asked Mark. Daryl chucked on buses sometimes.

  Annie looked at him.

  ‘There’s something at the museum I don’t want to see,’ she said quietly.

  Mark nodded. He knew how she felt. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I don’t much like the guts in bottles either.’

  Annie gave a small smile but Mark could tell there was something more than guts in bottles bothering her.

  The door to the playground flew open and Mr Cruickshank burst in, hot and breathless. He glared at them.

  ‘Smalley. Upton. On the bus.’

  Annie’s shoulders sagged as she walked past Mark towards the bus.

  4

  ‘What about Batman?’ said Rufus as they straggled into the museum. ‘He’s a famous figure from history.’

  ‘He’s not real, dum
my,’ said Pino. ‘He’s just Bruce Wayne dressed up.’

  ‘He’s not dead,’ said Mark. ‘Shanksie wants us to choose someone who’s dead.’

  Mr Cruickshank, who was in the middle of explaining to the class that he wanted each of them to choose someone who was dead, stopped and glared at Mark.

  ‘Smalley,’ he said, ‘I would have thought you of all people would have been paying attention seeing as this project is your last chance for a decent grade this year. Or would you rather gossip with Wainwright and Abrozetti and end up a nobody?’

  ‘No sir,’ said Mark.

  ‘It’s a jungle out there, Smalley,’ said Mr Cruickshank, ‘and nobodies get gobbled up.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Mark.

  Behind Mr Cruickshank was a glass case full of large stuffed animals with small stuffed animals in their mouths.

  ‘Yuk,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Okay, this way,’ said Mr Cruickshank, leading them past a big sign saying ‘National Treasures Exhibition’. ‘Stay together and I’ll point out famous people from history. Abrozetti, you won’t get inspired with your finger up your nose.’

  Mark didn’t get inspired either.

  As he wandered around the exhibition he realised that most of the national treasures on display were bits of old-fashioned farm machinery.

  With a sinking feeling Mark stared up at a portrait of the grim, black-bearded inventor of a plough that could jump over tree stumps. How could he do a project on someone that grumpy?

  He was going to fail this one too.

  Pino and Rufus came over and from their faces Mark could tell they were feeling the same.

  ‘What about Dracula?’ said Rufus.

  ‘He’s not dead, he’s just sleeping,’ said Pino.

  ‘I reckon it’s sick,’ said Mark, ‘making us write letters from dead people. It could warp our minds. We could end up working in a cemetery.’

  Pino and Rufus nodded glumly. Then jumped as Mr Cruickshank’s face appeared next to Mark’s.

  ‘I take it from all this talk you’ve chosen your famous person from history?’

  ‘No sir,’ said Mark.

  ‘Well, Smalley, I can’t make you do well on this project but I can ask you to stop distracting members of the class who do want to use their imagination.’

  Mr Cruickshank turned back to the rest of the class and pointed to a painting of some eighteenth century sailors landing on a beach.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘who’s decided to be Captain Cook? Anyone?’

  Half the class put their hands up. Pino and Rufus looked at each other and raised their hands as well.

  Mr Cruickshank sighed wearily and, for the ninth time that week, wished he’d become a dentist like his grandfather.

  Mark walked slowly away from the others. This is hopeless, he thought. How can I be expected to get back the top of the class and be a somebody with dumb projects like this?

  He started thinking about running away from home and getting a job in television and becoming a somebody that way.

  Then he stopped.

  Annie Upton was standing in the next room, frozen, staring at something Mark couldn’t see because there was a pillar in the way. Her face was pale and expressionless.

  As Mark moved closer he saw something glistening on her cheeks. Tears.

  Concerned, he moved closer still, past the pillar, until he could see what she was looking at.

  The body of a horse. A huge reddy-brown horse, perfectly preserved, standing on a raised platform. With a sign saying ‘Phar Lap. On Loan From The Victorian Museum’.

  That’s a bit crook, thought Mark, having a dead horse where kids who like horses can see it and get upset.

  He stood next to Annie.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked softly.

  Annie didn’t answer, didn’t take her eyes off Phar Lap.

  Gawking tourists were leaning over the security rope, peering at the horse’s massive body.

  A woman pointed to the veins bulging on Phar Lap’s legs.

  ‘Bit like me before I had mine done,’ she said to her friend.

  A little boy pointed to Phar Lap’s groin.

  ‘Look, Mummy,’ he said loudly, ‘big willy.’

  Mark looked at Annie again. She was still expressionless, but another tear was running down her cheek.

  Mark was just wondering what he should do when Pino and Rufus emerged from behind a bale of wool and stared at Annie.

  ‘Hey, Upton,’ said Pino, ‘it’s okay, it won’t bite you.’

  ‘It’s only a horse,’ said Rufus.

  Annie turned to them, her bottom lip quivering.

  ‘It’s not just a horse,’ she said. ‘It’s the best racehorse in the history of Australia. The whole of Australia loved this horse. The whole world did.’

  She was yelling now, and Pino and Rufus were staring at her. So were the tourists.

  ‘Fifty-one races, thirty-seven wins,’ shouted Annie. ‘Fourteen wins in a row from September the thirteenth, 1930, to March the fourth, 1931.’

  Mr Cruickshank strode over.

  ‘Upton, what’s the matter? Are you sick?’

  ‘Reckon,’ said Pino.

  Panting and tearful, Annie glared at Pino and Mr Cruickshank, then ran towards the door.

  Mr Cruickshank started to go after her.

  Mark grabbed his arm.

  ‘Sir . . . sir . . . it’s okay,’ he said, thinking frantically. ‘Her . . . um . . . grandmother was bitten by a horse. And she died. At the races.’ He looked up anxiously to see if Mr Cruickshank was buying it. He seemed to be.

  ‘I’ll go outside with her,’ said Mark.

  Mr Cruickshank looked at him darkly.

  ‘I think you’d better,’ he said.

  Mark ran out of the museum and saw Annie standing near the bus. He went over.

  ‘He was dead when they stuffed him,’ said Mark gently. ‘Phar Lap can’t feel a thing.’

  Annie stared at the ground.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she said, so softly Mark wasn’t even sure he’d heard right.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  Annie still didn’t look up.

  ‘Forget it,’ she muttered. ‘You and your numbskull mates’d just think it’s a big joke.’

  Mark wondered what she was on about.

  ‘No, we wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Not if you tell us what’s going on.’

  Annie breathed in and breathed out and looked up at the sky.

  Mark had an eerie thought.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’re not, you know, mental and stuff? It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.’

  Annie spun round to face him, suddenly angry and tearful again.

  ‘I’m Phar Lap,’ she yelled. ‘It’s my body.’

  Mark stared at her.

  He couldn’t have heard that right.

  Annie took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m the reincarnation of Phar Lap,’ she said quietly.

  There was a silence while Mark tried to work out exactly what she meant.

  ‘Reincarnation means when you die you come back as someone else,’ said Annie.

  Mark looked at her, wondering if she was joking.

  He could see she wasn’t.

  He remembered the video he’d seen at Pino’s where some radioactive chemicals were spilled in a graveyard and all the dead bodies came to life and went to McDonald’s.

  ‘Is that why some people have really bad skin?’ he said.

  Annie sighed.

  ‘You leave your old body behind,’ she said. ‘You’re born with a new body and your old spirit.’

  Mark wondered how he could get back into the museum without looking rude.

  ‘Everyone’s a reincarnation,’ said Annie. She pointed to the people walking past on the street. ‘All these people have been something else in a past life. Kings. Explorers . . .’

  ‘Hey, Smalley,’ called a voice. It was a couple of the kids from class peeking out of the museum door. ‘
You going to be a male nurse?’

  ‘ . . . Burrowing reptiles,’ continued Annie, glaring at them. ‘Everyone’s been someone else before. Including you.’

  Mark was still admiring the ‘burrowing reptiles’ reply, so it took him a moment to realise what she’d said after that.

  ‘Me?’ said Mark.

  This was getting crazier by the minute.

  ‘Perhaps that’s why I like carrots so much,’ he heard himself saying. ‘’Cause I was a rabbit.’

  Annie glared at him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said, ‘big joke, ha ha.’

  She walked away angrily.

  Mark decided not to go after her.

  5

  That night Mark sat at the kitchen table trying to get started on the new project.

  He read the topic for the forty-eighth time: ‘You Are A Famous Person In History. Write A Letter To A Friend Or Relative Telling Them About Your Life’.

  For the nineteenth time he flipped through the encyclopaedia.

  It was hopeless.

  How could he be a famous person in history when he couldn’t even be a famous person in school any more?

  Mark closed the encyclopaedia and sighed.

  Daryl looked over from the open door of the freezer, where he was standing eating ice cream straight out of the container.

  ‘You could tell Dad you banged your head on the wardrobe door and got brain damage,’ he said.

  Mark looked at Daryl wearily, making a mental note that it was a mistake to tell younger brothers when you got a D.

  Daryl shrugged. ‘That’s what I told Dad when I came fourth last year,’ he said and went back to the ice cream.

  Joy came in.

  ‘Daryl!’ she shouted. ‘Out of there. I don’t know what this obsession is with ice cream lately.’

  ‘I need the calcium,’ said Daryl.

  Joy slammed the freezer door and tossed Daryl’s spoon into the sink with a clatter.

  Bob came in.

  ‘Hey, keep it down,’ he said. ‘There’s a bloke in here knocking together a prize-winning project.’

  Joy resisted the temptation to yell at Bob. He was right, Mark was trying to work. She let Bob steer her and Daryl out of the kitchen.