The Indigo Sky

by Alison Booth

  ‘That’s what you tell all the boys,’ said Eric Hall, gold hair glinting in the sunlight, freckled fair skin reddened by exertion and sixteen years of sunshine.

  O’Brien laughed. Jim knew he’d forgive you anything at all as long as you were good at sport.

  Afterwards, back at school, Jim had a quick shower to sluice off all the sweat and salt, with his body feeling so alive he felt he could do anything, fly if he wanted to. He’d dreamt of that plenty of times. Feet firmly on the grass, he would start sprinting, more and more rapidly he would pound, and soon his running feet would lift him off the ground, his legs pumping the air as if at bicycle pedals, and before long he was thrusting himself off trees and up into the sky. In these dreams he could do anything he wanted to, anything.

  At Stambroke College he could do anything he wanted to, as well, except to walk out the front gate of school. That was an expellable offence.

  Walking to the school chapel for prayers before lessons began, Jim could see the glittering harbour through the tall trees bordering the damp green lawn. As always, he was sitting next to Eric, his best friend. He’d met him on the day of the scholarship exam, when he’d never imagined he would see the boy from Walgett again, let alone that they would become close. Although Eric professed his stupidity, he had a natural cunning and an extraordinarily good memory that served him well academically. Jim opened his hymnbook and began, with the others, to sing Psalm 23. The Lord is my Shepherd belted out by a thousand voices – there was something rousing about this, however agnostic you might be feeling. The sense of wellbeing Jim had experienced after that morning’s exercise returned and began to expand, so that he now felt almost that he was floating above the chapel floor.

  That afternoon after lessons had finished, Jim found two envelopes in his pigeonhole at Barton House, one of the four boarding houses arranged in a row not far from the dining hall. He took them outside to read. A few boys were idling around at the far end of the verandah. Ignoring them, Jim sat on the sandstone balustrade and opened the fat envelope from Jingera first. It contained a page from his mother and two from his father. His mother wouldn’t be coming to Speech Day, but his father would. Hopefully that meant Andy would be coming too. It had been good last year when they’d gone to Bondi Beach after Speech Day, and Andy had been as excited as if he was seeing a beach for the first time, instead of just about living on one. There wasn’t much information in his parents’ letters. Dad wrote loving descriptions of the weather and Cadwallader’s Quality Meats, and his plans for a new type of sausage with herbs in it. That sort of stuff didn’t appear in Mum’s letter, which was mainly about how the hens weren’t laying and that their yard needed attention. The chookyard was his responsibility, and he could see right away where her thoughts were heading. That would be a nice little job for him when he returned – not that he minded.

  The second letter was from Andy and had a Burford postmark. Posted on a weekday, it bore evidence of being written on the bus; Jim smiled at the sight of the untidy handwriting lurching across the page, the occasional word scrawled through and others whose meaning he’d have to guess at.

  Dear Jimmo,

  Can’t wait for you to come home. Only two weeks to go now. I got top marks for my woodwork project. It’s a coffee table that I thought of giving to Mum and Dad for Christmas. They haven’t seen it yet, although they know I came first. Maybe I’ll do an apprenticeship in woodwork or joinery or something. I’d like to do something with my hands. Mum says I have to stay on at school for my Leaving Certificate but I’m not so sure that I even want to sit for the Intermediate Certificate next year. I’m a manual sort of guy and not much good at the academic stuff. You’re a hard act to follow, Jimmo. It might have been better for all of us if I’d been the firstborn and you second, then I wouldn’t have to live up to you!

  Suppressing a sigh, Jim looked up from the letter. The late afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees cast long shadows over the lawn in front of the boarding house. Everything seemed so peaceful, but surface appearances were deceptive. He’d been looking forward to news from home but when it arrived it was unsettling. He continued reading:

  It was rash of you to invite Eric to stay without first squaring it with Mum and Dad. It worked out all right in the end, although not before they had an argument. Seems they thought they’d have to buy Eric’s plane ticket from Walgett the way the Halls bought yours and as usual, there’s no money. All the more reason for me to start an apprenticeship. But all resistance vanished once they got Mrs Hall’s letter saying that Eric was coming south anyway, to visit some relatives near Eden. They’ll be dropping him off at our place afterwards so you can return to school together. But I expect you know all about that. Mum said I’ve got to shift into the sleepout on the back verandah so that you and Eric can share our bedroom. I’d already decided that in any case. It’s only for a week and we’ll have lots of fun.

  See you soon. Andy

  Jim couldn’t believe his crassness in not checking with his parents first before suggesting the trip to his friend. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that they might feel honour-bound to provide Eric with a plane ticket. He glowered at the pages of Andy’s letter as if it was himself he was glaring at.

  ‘Not forgetting dinner, are you? The bell’s just gone and you didn’t budge an inch,’ Eric said. ‘Billets doux or just the oldies?’

  ‘The oldies and Andy,’ Jim said, stuffing his brother’s letter back into its envelope.

  ‘Better get a move on or we’ll be last served. There’s nothing worse than cold mutton. Ask the boy from Walgett, he’s an expert.’

  ‘It’s Tuesday so it’s going to be sausages and mash,’ said Jim, laughing. ‘The boy from Walgett should know that after all these years.’

  They joined the others in the procession to the dining hall. As they walked past the music rooms, Jim thought he heard the sound of a piano, although practice time was long over. The sound abruptly ceased as the second bell rang for dinner.

  Chapter 6

  Philip Chapman’s practice time had ended half an hour ago but there’d been no one else waiting to use the piano so he’d just carried on. Earlier he’d noticed someone in the room next door stumbling over scales and five-finger exercises but mostly he’d heard nothing of what was going on elsewhere at Stambroke College. This was the only time of the day when he felt at peace, isolated in a cell in the row of music rooms. Sometimes he thought that music was the only reality and the rest was a dream, and a bad dream at that. If he could escape for even an hour each day he could pull himself together enough to survive the rest of the time.

  Evening prep might have given him some peace if he didn’t always find the homework so dull, though at least there was no one taunting him then. The younger boarders were the worst, the boys who were only a year or two older than him, like Keith Macready. Now, after shutting the music book, Philip stared out of the open window, trying to decide what to play next. Maybe the Chopin sonata that he’d started learning some months ago. The third movement brilliantly expressed the yearning he was feeling. The funeral march, his piano teacher called it. But for a moment he allowed himself to be distracted by the view. Through the row of dense trees bordering the lawn he could see the late afternoon sunlight illuminating Barton House. If you didn’t know better, you might think it beautiful, built of that warm red brick with a wide verandah edged by a stone balustrade.

  Life would be more bearable if he were a day boy here and not a boarder. The day students were friendly enough. He’d struck up a friendship with one of them, Giles Mellor, who’d invited him home for a free weekend not long ago. That had been the highlight of the term, being in someone else’s home with a father and mother and sister who were all nice to him and didn’t mock his stutter.

  Though he sat next to Giles in the classroom, and this insulated him from the unpleasantness of Stambroke life as a boar
der, Giles went home once lessons were over. Philip often imagined him making that journey. Through the leafy streets of Vaucluse, around the park at Neilsen Park, maybe stopping for a few moments to look at the waves lapping against the sandy beach as they had on the walk that Giles had taken him on that free weekend. Then up a steep hill and through the wrought iron gate and into his home, with a welcoming mother and a sister who, although occasionally argumentative, was never nasty. There would be hugs and kisses for Giles, and freedom to do what he wanted, to play with toys, read a book, do his homework when he felt like it and not in some regimented prep time.

  It couldn’t always be that good, though. Giles was lucky with his parents, and that was another reason to envy him. Philip’s mother was never to be called Mum. Her name was Mummy. When he’d called her that at school the day he first arrived the other boys had laughed. Only it wasn’t Mummy that he’d said but M-m-m-m-mummy. And they had taken this up and exaggerated it to M-m-m-mum-m-m-m-my. Until he couldn’t bear to hear it, until they’d moved onto the next taunt. The latest was p-p-pretty b-b-b-boy, and he hated that even more. Boys were not pretty, they were handsome. It was his blond curls that made them say that. He ran his fingers through what was left of his hair, before resting them again on the edge of the piano.

  A few days before, Macready and some of the other juniors had dressed him in a frock raided from the properties box in the drama room, and had forcibly made him up, using a bright red lipstick that had come from God knows where. Only when Dave Lloyd had given the warning that the housemaster was coming had Philip been able to escape. After that he’d chopped off his curls, though he knew his mother would hate this new look.When both his parents collected him from school at the end of term – which happened only infrequently, for it was usually only his father and Mr Jones the chauffeur who came – everyone paid Mummy special attention. He’d observed the headmaster, Dr Barker, transform himself from a frightening figure into a rather fawning one, or at least that’s how his father had described him afterwards. ‘Your glamorous mother,’ the headmaster had said about her once, forgetting the need to keep a distance between head and pupil. ‘Always in the social pages and on so many charity boards. You must be in a real social whirl over the holidays.’

  As he was, of course, at least to begin with. If she collected him, she would take him around for the first week of the holidays, exhibiting him like a poodle. Then she would grow tired of him and send him back to Woodlands with his father who got restless after a few days in Sydney and as desperate as Philip to head south. Once Mummy had even summoned Mr Jones all the way from Woodlands to take him home, after Daddy had decided to fly to Queensland to view a stud bull he’d heard was for sale. She would stay on a few days more, partying in Sydney, until eventually even she grew fatigued by her Eastern Suburbs’ friends and returned home.

  Sighing loudly as he recalled what his mother would say, Philip abandoned all thought of playing the Chopin piece. ‘Such a frantic social life, darling, but all for such good causes. I’ve raised thousands, literally thousands. But I just had to come home to spend some time with my darling boy before he goes back to school again. So have you been learning how to run the place? Your father’s showing you the ropes? But not every day I hope! Maybe just between practising.’ Laughing as if this was a joke, although he knew she was proud of his playing and would listen to him for hours. He loved that about her, the way she would lie back on the green brocade chaise longue with her eyes shut and listen to him play. Then he would be in a bubble of happiness, just him and his mother, far away from the outside world.

  At this point Philip started to play some scales. Up and down the piano his fingers tripped, faster and faster, as if they had a life of their own quite distinct from the thoughts whirling through his head. His mother never would pay attention when he tried to say he hated farming. He h-h-h-hated b-b-boarding but he would hate f-f-f-farming even more. He’d struggled to spit out the words but she was too impatient to listen. His stuttering made him slow and she couldn’t stand slow people. They were boring, and that was the worst thing she could say about anyone. So she took in nothing of what he was trying to tell her.

  When the second dinner bell rang Philip stopped playing, but he stayed for a moment longer in front of the piano. Only after hearing the sound of boys’ voices, as they thronged into the dining hall, did he shut the instrument lid. Yesterday he’d written his father a letter, which he’d drafted and re-drafted over the past few days. Tomorrow he would send it. The words were stuck in his head and he kept going over and over them. He hoped he’d got the spelling right, his father was a stickler for that. No point sending you to Stambroke College if they’re not teaching you reading, writing and arithmetic, he’d say. But he was also as likely to add, you’re going to have to stay on at Stambroke until they do teach you how to read and write.

  Near the top table in the dining hall he saw the friendly face of Jim Cadwallader, who waved. Between that table and the door was a sea of juniors. He was glad that no one else took any notice of him; he would sit near the door with a few of the nicer Barton House boarders. He knew the juniors in Coombs House would never forgive him for getting transferred to Barton a week ago, even though they hadn’t been expelled for what they’d done to him.

  He thought of it as a tarring-and-feathering, what people did in the old days, they’d read about it in history. But that would have left marks and someone would have been blamed. It was only a bit of fun, one of them said afterwards. Just a bit of glue and some feathers that they’d pulled from a dead currawong found on the lawn of Coombs House. The house-mistress had seen Philip afterwards as he’d crept along the corridor to the showers. He wouldn’t tell her what had happened but she was kind and took him into her own bathroom and left him to have a soak there. Not long afterwards he’d been moved to Barton House.

  Now he sat down next to a junior he hardly knew, a fair-haired boy called Charlie Madden who was in the year ahead at Barton House. Madden smiled and offered him a glass of water. Philip took it, examining it closely but in a way that Madden wouldn’t notice, to see if there was anything unpleasant in it like spit. There didn’t seem to be, so he took a cautious sip.

  ‘Sorry about what happened to you last night. They do that to nearly everyone who starts at Barton. Everyone smaller than them, that is.’ Philip didn’t point out that this was the second time in a week that he’d been routed out at night. This last time had been a disgusting experience. Keith Macready and his friends had made Philip take off all his clothes, and he’d known that was to shame him. Afterwards Macready had taken down his own trousers and pants, and Philip had nearly wet himself in fear, and to his astonishment Macready had put potato chips in his clenched bum crack. How the other boys had laughed at that. After this, Macready’s friends made Philip squat down behind Keith and eat the chips, one by one. Philip had felt so sick he could hardly chew, and at the end Keith had farted noisily in his face and he’d thought he was going to throw up. Arse-licker, they’d called him after that. Arse-licker, you tell anyone what we’ve done to you and you’re dead. Or worse. As soon as they let him go, he’d gone into one of the bathrooms and rinsed his mouth out with water, and brushed his teeth for several minutes, and even after this he’d felt dirtied.

  As Philip was taking another sip of water, a latecomer lurched by the bench on which they were sitting and knocked Philip’s elbow hard. The glass tilted and the water spilled down the front of his shirt and onto his shorts.

  ‘Sorry, pretty boy. Oh, look, you’ve wet your pants!’ It was Keith Macready. ‘Arse-licker,’ he added, and grinned before carrying on to the next table.

  ‘Here, use this handkerchief,’ Madden said, tugging at the pocket of his shorts.

  Although Philip had a perfectly good handkerchief of his own, he took what was offered and mopped up the water with it. Keith Macready had deliberately bumped into him, he knew, but with Madden next
to him he began to feel slightly less alone than he had when first entering the dining room.

  After taking back his handkerchief, Madden began to talk about where he came from, a sheep station west of Charters Towers up in Queensland, and miles from anywhere. While he’d never attended school until starting at Stambroke when he was nine, he’d had a few years of School of the Air so he hadn’t come completely unprepared. Though the School of the Air hadn’t equipped him for some of the things that went on here. Philip gratefully absorbed these words and the kindness that was being offered. Finally Madden said, ‘Too bad we’re the first bunch of kids in the Wyndham system.’

  ‘W-w-what’s . . .?’

  ‘When they make us do six years before the final exams instead of five. I’m in the first intake and you’ll be in the second. Older boys still only have to do five years.’

  Six years of torture instead of five. Both seemed far too long. Though he wouldn’t be going into secondary school for another year, he shuddered at the prospect.

  That evening, in the prep period after dinner, Philip opened his English exercise book. ‘An Evening at a Restaurant’ was a stupid title for a composition; the teacher was running out of ideas again. Slowly Philip began a story of a couple dining out. Two sentences located the restaurant in Double Bay and his characters within it, and now he felt free to devote the rest of the essay to a catalogue of what they were eating. It was safer to record the menu than to attempt to describe what might really be going on; those thoughts and looks that words could never express. He concluded the meal and the composition with ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

  With nearly half an hour to spare, he took a quick look out the window. Nothing to see but the reflection of rows of boys sitting at desks, heads down, pens scribbling. He’d never forget the last time he’d gone to a restaurant; he wouldn’t want to put that into a composition. It had been in the Easter holidays, just after his parents had collected him from school in the new Bentley and taken him to the Hotel Australia for a few days. The Woodlands’ best Hereford bull, called Hamish after a distant cousin to whom the animal bore a faint resemblance, had won second prize in the Easter Show. To celebrate, his father had taken him and Mummy to a special restaurant. His father had drunk so much wine and talked at such length about cattle that soon Mummy had started yawning and trying to change the subject. When she’d finally said, ‘Don’t be so boring, darling,’ Philip had caught his breath and glanced at his father. His face had changed shape so it looked distorted, almost as if a veil had come down over it. On the way back to the Hotel Australia afterwards, his parents had quarrelled. Not much, they were too well mannered for that, but it was the closest thing to a proper argument that he’d ever heard from them. He couldn’t bear them to have differences. Seated in the back of the car, he’d stuck his forefingers in his ears and wiggled them about so that the rasp of skin against skin would be a distraction from their voices. It was true that his father could be tedious when he talked about cattle but it wasn’t every day that Hamish won a prize. Mummy could be hard to take too when she put on that frightful gushing tone that he hated so much and which turned her into another person.