by Alison Booth
Ilona took his arm and rested her head for a moment on his shoulder. ‘How happy I am, Peter!’
‘I know,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘So am I. And I’ll be even happier if you carry on driving us home to Ferndale.’
Chapter 26
Philip rolled over once more. He was awake far too early. It wasn’t even six o’clock, but how could you possibly go back to sleep when there was this terrible dread pressing down on you at the thought of being back at Stambroke College in just a few more hours? For several minutes more he lay in bed listening to the sounds drifting up from the street below: a truck collecting garbage, the screaming of an ambulance, some voices raised in anger before trailing off again, and the cooing of the pigeon that landed briefly on the windowsill.
Tiring of this, he got up and began to pace restlessly around the hotel suite. Through the closed door of his parents’ bedroom came the noise of his father snoring – or it might even have been his mother, who was getting over a slight cold, but not bad enough to stop her travelling, she’d said last night. In the hallway was their luggage, or most of it. The old girl is travelling light, his father had said. When she’d replied that everything was essential, he’d grinned and said it was lucky they’d be able to leave most of their bags at the Savoy when they ventured into continental Europe, otherwise the porters’ fees would be even greater than the cost of their flights.
On the hallstand in the small lobby lay the box of chocolates that Philip had bought his mother in Burford. She must have left them out so she wouldn’t forget to take them to the airport today. They had cherry liqueur centres and perhaps that was why she hadn’t opened them last night. She would’ve had to offer him one and they were alcoholic. She’d been awfully pleased when he’d given the box to her though. Never arrive empty-handed, he’d said, quoting her, and she’d laughed and given him an enormous hug. Next to the chocolates were the keys to the hotel suite. His father always made a great fuss of leaving them out, in case the Hotel Australia caught on fire. He had a bit of a thing about fires ever since the Jingera pub had burnt down. That and the fact that he was a reformed smoker.
In the bathroom, Philip washed, not all that quietly, in the hope his parents might wake up and want their breakfast early too, but by the time he’d dressed there was still only the sound of regular breathing from their room. He couldn’t bear to hang about any longer waiting for them; he’d have to go out on his own. It was now just after six o’clock. If he walked very fast down to the Quay and back again, maybe he could shed some of this misery. Maybe he’d be distracted by something else apart from his own unhappiness.
Would it have been better if his parents were leaving tomorrow rather than today? Then his return to Stambroke College and their departure wouldn’t be so linked. Then they might have had a bit more time for him last night. While his mother had rather reluctantly agreed to play Canasta, she’d let him win. How he hated that, not the winning but that she’d let him. He could tell she’d rather be doing other things. Phoning her friends or fussing about her clothes. She didn’t need to worry about the passports and money and tickets, though; those were in Daddy’s charge.
Next Philip put on his school blazer. All his other things were packed and the boys were not allowed to wear only part of the school uniform. It was all or nothing and it certainly wasn’t going to be nothing. Yet what would the penalty be if he were caught without his cap? He stared at his reflection in the mirror in the hall stand. The cap looked silly and so did the tie. He took them off. That was better; now he seemed normal. Anyway, the worst that could happen if he was caught was expulsion. Imagine how wonderful it would be, never having to go back to Stambroke again. Yet how disappointed his mother would be. Instead of the overseas trip, she’d have to look after him. She wouldn’t like that one bit and would start to hate him for it, and he couldn’t bear the thought of this; it would be worse even than being back in Barton House. Reluctantly he put on the school tie again, knotting it awkwardly, but that didn’t matter, that wasn’t an expellable offence. On went the cap as well, this time at a rakish angle. If you were going to look a nong, you might as well go the whole hog.
After this, he removed one of the keys from the hall stand and crept out of the suite, quietly closing the door behind him. He took the lift down to the lobby and strode straight out the front entrance. No one took the slightest notice of him. There weren’t too many people in the street, only a few adults who looked like sleepwalkers. He marched down to Circular Quay, following the same route that he’d taken with his father the very first day of the school holidays nearly two months ago. The Valencia Street ferry was just pulling out of the wharf as he arrived. It was a twenty-minute ferry ride at most to his aunt and uncle’s place at Hunters Hill. If he’d been five minutes earlier, would he have run away? No, he’d never have the courage, not as long as he had his mother to worry about. It wasn’t only that he loved her but also that he was frightened of her anger. An anger that was never savage. There would be no shouting, no raised voices. Just an icy coldness that was far, far worse.
He didn’t know how he was going to get through the days, the weeks, the months that lay ahead. The time would never pass. It seemed like forever until the first free weekend even. Then he was to go to his aunt and uncle’s place at Hunters Hill, it was all arranged. At least they were kind people. He thought of the Sculthorpe sonatina his aunt had given him, and this led naturally to the Talivaldis pieces. These reminded him of Mrs Vincent and her understanding. At this moment he noticed that the newspaper kiosk in front of the Quay was open. He would buy a postcard for Mrs Vincent and maybe she’d write back. He could do with some letters.
A few days before, he’d posted a letter to himself from Burford. Just so something would arrive for him soon. Sooner than his parents’ letters would, although his mother had declared that the airmail post from Europe would take at most a week to get to Sydney. He’d disguised his writing on the envelope. It would be terrible if Keith or one of the other boys discovered he was writing to himself. Inside the envelope were some cuttings from the Burford Advertiser, more to fill the envelope than to remind him of life at home.
At the kiosk, he selected a postcard with a picture of the Harbour Bridge for Mrs Vincent and a Violet Crumble bar for himself. You were never so depressed that you couldn’t eat a Crumble bar before breakfast. In fact being sad sometimes seemed to make you want to eat more.
The woman behind the counter put the card into an envelope printed with yellow wattle blossom. ‘Local stamp?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘What’s a young man like yourself doing up so early?’ she asked. ‘Not going off to work yet, are you?’
This was one of the better sort of questions that didn’t require an answer. You could get away with just a smile and not have to expose yourself.
Still, once he’d handed over his pennies, he hurried away as fast as possible in case she made further enquiries. He went to the nearest wharf and sat on a bench to eat the Violet Crumble bar. Staring at the green water of the harbour, he thought of that ferry ride two months before with his father. He’d said he should learn to stand up for himself against the other boys. It’s all for your own good . . . You’ve got to learn to stick up for yourself in life and this is as good a training as any.
His anxiety at this prospect made him feel sick and staring at the choppy harbour water made the nausea even worse. Dark green water, oily-looking and opaque. What would it be like to dive deep into that water and never come up again? He could put an end to everything in just a few minutes. Or seconds. He stood up. Feeling the pull of the water, as if he were a pin being drawn towards a magnet, he took a few tentative steps towards the edge.
‘Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing? The ferry’s due shortly.’
He felt a firm grip on his shoulder as he was pushed back from the water’s edge. The man
was old, as old as his father, and he was wearing a cap that made him look official.
‘You’d better get well back from the edge,’ he said, ‘and take that rubbish with you. There’s a bin over there. What do you think that’s for, eh? Now be off with you.’
Be off with you. That’s what everyone thought when they saw him. He wasn’t wanted anywhere. He was a nothing and a nobody. Of no value to anyone.
After trudging back to the hotel, he let himself into the suite. His parents were awake now; he could hear them talking to one another in the bedroom. Not the words though, just Mummy’s musical voice and Daddy’s gruff one, in some contrapuntal duet. They hadn’t even noticed he’d gone out.
‘Oh, there you are, darling!’ his mother said, coming out of the bedroom. She was already dressed in a smart navy suit with white piping round the edges. As she turned her head, he noticed she’d forgotten to check the back of her hair. There was a flattened bit on her crown that someone should tell her about. But not him, not now. Not when tears might come at any minute. The squashed down hair was what moved him, her only physical flaw, and he could have wept for her.
‘There you are, son.’ Daddy too was dressed, though only in his uniform, those moleskin trousers and blue shirt – he had dozens of them – that he always wore. ‘Wondered where you’d got to. Having a spot of breakfast, were you?’
‘N-n-no.’
‘Good, good. We can all go down together. You do look smart in your school togs. Your mother and I are so proud of you, aren’t we, Jude?’
‘So proud,’ she said, embracing him and he smelled her wonderful scent that he would always remember, that would always invoke his love for her.
Later, when the porter had arrived to take their luggage downstairs, Philip dashed back into his parents’ bedroom to collect his cap from where he’d left it on the dressing table. At once he saw the box of chocolates he’d given his mother the day before lying unopened on the bed. She must have forgotten them in the rush to leave. He picked them up and carried them with him.
Only in the lobby, waiting for Jones to arrive with the car, did she notice what he was holding. ‘Oh darling, you remembered my chocolates. How terribly sweet of you!’ She took them from him and ruffled his hair.
‘Here’s Jones with the car now,’ his father said.
If Philip hadn’t shifted his eyes to his mother’s lovely face at that point, he wouldn’t have seen the wink his parents exchanged. Then he understood that she’d intended to leave the chocolates behind. A gift for the maid. Mummy didn’t want his cherry liqueur chocolates. How silly of him to think she’d take them with her on the plane rather than discard them as soon as she decently could.
None of them spoke much on the drive to Vaucluse. Although his mother held Philip’s hand very tightly in her own gloved one all the way there, he’d never before felt so alone.
It was either a coincidence or somehow the headmaster had got wind of her arrival and was waiting at Barton House to make a fuss of her. This was witnessed by half-a-dozen boys and their parents but blessedly too early for the busloads of students who’d soon arrive from Central Station.
‘Chap wants a donation, no doubt,’ his father said as he lifted Philip’s suitcase and overnight bag out of the boot. ‘On top of the fees.’
‘Goodbye, darling!’ Philip’s mother held out her arms as if to embrace the entire group but only Philip stepped forward. He rested his head for a moment against her soft breast, inhaling her scent. Once again he thought that he might never see her again. She didn’t appear to be troubled by such anxieties, although she did whisper to him alone and not to the audience, ‘I’ll miss you, hugely, dearest boy. Have courage, and don’t take any notice of those horrid boys who tease you. Daddy told me all about them. Be strong, darling, and we’ll be back again so soon that you’ll barely notice we’ve gone.’
So she’d known all along, and hadn’t said anything to him about it! Although he kissed her, and even managed a smile, inside he was seething.
Next he shook his father’s hand and listened to him saying, ‘Have a good term and be brave, son.’
Afterwards they climbed into the Bentley and Jones chauffeured them off. It was a relief to have the farewell over and done with. For so long he’d been dreading his parents’ departure, but now there was this new information to digest: that his mother had known all along about those horrid boys who tease you, and hadn’t thought to say a word until just now.
Quickly Philip unpacked in his dormitory, before going outside and heading towards the line of trees beyond the oval. This was out of bounds, but he really didn’t care. There was one tree in particular that was easy to climb. It had a flattish branch that you could stretch out on, and from here you could watch the street running up the hill to the main entrance gates to the college. Keith Macready would be one of the last to arrive back, flying in from somewhere near Emerald in Queensland. Until that time at least, he’d be left alone.
Jim, sitting in the coach next to Eric, happened to glance out of the window as they approached the gates to Stambroke College and caught sight of a boy perched in the branches of one of the camphor laurel trees. It was just a fleeting glimpse but the face was unmistakably Philip’s. Jim remembered Zidra’s words the day they went out in the canoe: You will look out for him, won’t you, at Stambroke? Perhaps this was why the image stuck in his mind as the boys alighted from the coach and sorted themselves into their respective boarding houses.
Yet perhaps it was also Philip’s expression. There was something haunting about it, poignant even, and it struck Jim that the look was almost of desperation. He would have to watch Philip this term, just as he would have to keep an eye on all the juniors in Barton House. This wasn’t only because he hated the initiation practices that went on in the first few weeks of the new year, but also because he’d been made a prefect, and so too had Eric. It wasn’t a task Jim especially wanted. It was a bit of a standover job and he hated that thought. Pulling together as a team was all very well and it certainly made the boarders easier to control, but he felt that it allowed the development of cultures of bullying as well. You were in a team and one of us, or out of a team and not one of us, and therefore a legitimate target for abuse.
But maybe this was human nature and a boarding school was just a microcosm in which it was easier to observe such behaviour. He would see in the coming term the clever ways that Keith Macready and his acolytes had of making miserable lives of boys like Philip. Boys who were different. Musical or individualistic boys who were not team players. The cleverness of Keith Macready and his ilk lay in presenting their persecutions as practical jokes, and in knowing just when to stop short to avoid expulsion.
Later he would wonder if he should have taken some action then, when he’d seen Philip’s expression. Later he’d come to understand what it had meant.
Perched in the tree, Philip couldn’t stop thinking of his mother. She’d allowed him to return to Stambroke even though she’d known how he was treated. Have courage . . . Daddy told me . . . Be strong, darling . . . Those horrid boys who tease you. Her words spun round and round in his head. She’d known, and yet been willing to leave him here.
That was unforgivable.
He was on his own now, with no backup. No support. He could do what he damned well wanted except get out of this place.
He thought again of the attraction he’d felt that morning to the harbour water. Drowning would surely be a good way to die.
He’d heard it was better not to know how to swim if you were going to drown. It was faster. You didn’t struggle so much.
Chapter 27
The house seemed too quiet, George thought. Andy wasn’t home yet and Jim and Eric had left only that morning, so it was just Eileen and George in the kitchen. It still hurt George to think that Jim had gone off in the bus from Burford with scarcely a backward gla
nce or wave. He’d put the two boys on the bus after the usual early start from home. Eric hadn’t seemed to mind a bit being ferried to Burford squeezed into the front of the van that had Cadwallader’s Quality Meats emblazoned on the side. Indeed, before leaving he’d even taken a photograph of it, with the whole family standing there. Eileen hadn’t liked that much, no doubt about it, though she did like Eric. Everyone liked Eric.
‘It’s not as if we even saw all that much of Jim these past ten days,’ Eileen said. ‘It’s as if he’d already left before Eric came to visit. Not that I’m complaining.’
George knew she was feeling low. But he was too, and perhaps that explained why he flared up when she asked him to feed the chooks. Only she didn’t say chooks like everyone else, she said hens.
‘No!’ he shouted, surprising them both. ‘I won’t feed the bloody chooks! That Andy’s job.’
It didn’t take her long to recover though. ‘Andy’s got to do his homework when he gets back,’ she said, leaning on the table the better to hiss at him. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was too much of an imposition to ask you to do it.’
‘Too much to ask? It’s the last bloody straw.’
‘Please don’t swear at me, George. Not in my own house.’
‘It is my bloody house too! Can’t you even give a man a bit of peace when he comes home from a day’s work? I’m fed up with it all.’ Glaring at her, he focused only on the anger he saw on her face, ignoring the hurt that he knew lay behind this.
‘Don’t shout, George. The neighbours will hear.’
‘The neighbours can damned well hear what they like,’ he said. How typical of her that she should care more about what other people thought than about what her husband was feeling.
But he was unable to maintain his annoyance. Slowly, his exasperation ebbed away and was replaced by a deep sadness. Sadness or loneliness, it was hard to say which. Shouting at her couldn’t disguise the fact that Jim had gone. How tempting was the thought of heading off to the pub for a drink before tea.
