Cannily, Cannily

by Simon French

  “Were you here yesterday, when the father turned up and started causing trouble?”

  “Yes, wasn’t it terrible? As for the hair and beard on him …”

  “Looked like something out of the stone age.”

  “And the child doesn’t look much better either. Hard to tell whether he was a boy or a girl at first. And the things he wears at school!”

  With rising indignation, Trevor kept listening.

  “… no school uniform apparently. The parents probably can’t afford it.”

  “Yes, from what I’ve heard they’re seasonal workers, you know, no fixed address …”

  “Terrible.”

  “The husband’s bricklaying on the extensions down at the club.”

  “Have you seen the mother, though?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, she’s in town a fair bit. Dresses like a gypsy. Couldn’t begin to imagine when she’s washed her hair last.”

  “Well, they don’t seem to these days anyway, do they?”

  “Oh, this lot are living down in the caravan park. Seems that all they do is move from place to place. Very unsettling for the child. He’s bound to end up illiterate like the parents probably are.”

  “But I can’t get over how the boy got into the team in the first place. It’s very bad for the other boys. We’re hoping to come through undefeated again this year.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The next comment identified one of the women as Martin Grace’s mum.

  “… yes. I’m still angry about Martin missing today’s game.”

  “Yes, he is a good player.”

  “Mr Fuller’s put him on reserve. It seems to be because of the Huon boy.”

  At this point, Mrs Grace turned around. Unprepared for whom she came face to face with, her mouth opened to say something more, but she abruptly turned away, the words unsaid. Trevor glowered at them both, longing to say something appropriately abusive, but nothing suitable would come to mind. He could see Mrs Grace murmuring quickly to the other mother, who likewise turned around to give Trevor a brief, shocked stare.

  Trevor’s mind was an angry confusion and he stood there for a moment longer, trying to think of something to say. At last he didn’t say anything, instead giving the mothers a rude hand signal that they didn’t see, before heading back to where he had been sitting with Martin and Jason.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Martin asked when he saw the obvious anger on Trevor’s face.

  “Nothing,” Trevor answered sullenly.

  “Sure looks like something’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Trevor repeated loudly and impatiently. “Why don’t you shut up and leave me alone?”

  Martin’s offhand concern ground to a halt. Surprised at the outburst, he said nothing more for the time being.

  Things on the football field didn’t seem to be progressing too well, either. When the half-time whistle blew, the team trooped tiredly from the field, to be immediately berated by Fuller.

  “What’s wrong with you guys?” the coach demanded. The team offered no response and concentrated grimly on eating oranges and getting their collective breath back before the second half.

  “Those blokes over there think they’ve got you beat.” Fuller continued, “What a joke! I want you all moving up much quicker when they play the ball. Knock them over and put them on the ground, hard. Let them know when they’re tackled. I want them scared of you and only half watching what they’re doing so that they start making mistakes. That’s when we start scoring the points. You, O’Leary – have you fallen in love with the football or something?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, pass it out, then!” the coach shouted angrily. “You’re in a team, son, there’s more than one of you …”

  The parents stood around and listened approvingly. Afterwards, they would offer their own tactical advice on how to immobilise the kids in the opposing team. Fuller’s mid-match tirade continued unabated.

  “… and I want you back on that field playing like champs. I want to see that ball being passed out. I want to see quick, aggressive tackling and I want to see points scored. Is that clear?”

  Subdued, the team nodded.

  “I couldn’t hear you,” Fuller said at a half-shout. “Is that clear?”

  “YES!” they shouted back.

  “Right,” Fuller went on, “because I’ve a bargain to put to you.”

  The kids all stopped to listen.

  “If you can win this game with at least a five-point margin, you’ve got yourselves a free night at the movies in town this evening.”

  This was greeted by shrill cheers.

  “But only if you win!” shouted Fuller emphatically. “Right?”

  “RIGHT!”

  They had been bargained with before, and it had almost always proved to be a successful tactic of encouragement. Today, it looked like succeeding again. As the game progressed into the second half, Fuller’s team slowly improved their hold over the opposing side. They scored, converted, scored again. Each set of gained points was nicely accounted for by bursts of cheering from the sidelines and Fuller, striding backwards and forwards, spearheaded the applause with his continual shouted advice.

  The three reserves watched in relative silence.

  “They’re gonna win this,” said Jason Evans at last, “I can tell.”

  Martin nodded. “Yeah. For sure.”

  Trevor said nothing.

  Martin looked at him. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked again.

  Trevor grimaced. “Nothing.”

  “Well, you’ve got the poohs about something.”

  Seeing that Trevor seemed to be in no mood for talk, Martin stopped to think about something for a few moments. Eventually he stood up.

  “I’m just going for a walk,” he announced.

  Ever cautious, Jason reminded him, “You’ll get it off Fuller if he sees you walking around.”

  “Aw, Fuller can go jump!” replied Martin, and walked off.

  He was gone for a good ten minutes, leaving Jason to worry about the consequences and Trevor to recall again the conversation he’d overheard. The two mothers’ remarks were still fresh in his mind, the insinuations that Buckley and Kath were no-hopers, and worse. He was glad his parents hadn’t heard it all.

  Martin came back. “Hey, Trev!”

  “What?”

  “You want to come round to my place this arvo?”

  Trevor was incredulous. “What was that?”

  “I said, do you want to come round to my place this arvo? After the game?”

  “What for?”

  “For a visit of course, stupid,” replied Martin impatiently, “and then to stay for dinner, and for the night, you know! Looks like we’ll be going to the pictures tonight. We’re gonna win this game for sure.”

  “Whose idea was this?” Trevor asked suspiciously, immediately thinking of the talkative Mrs Grace.

  “Mine, of course,” said Martin. “Whose did you think?”

  Trevor shrugged.

  “Well?” insisted Martin. “D’you want to come around. Will your parents mind?”

  Trevor shook his head. “No, it’ll be all right …” He couldn’t see any polite way to get out of the visit, and quickly decided to endure whatever might eventuate as far as Mrs Grace and her opinions of him were concerned. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll come around. What time?”

  “Come round at four,” said Martin, and satisfied, sat down once more to watch the concluding stages of the football match.

  TEN

  Came four o’clock.

  Apprehensively, Trevor walked the distance from the caravan park to Martin Grace’s house in the middle of the town. The Saturday afternoon was concluding quietly, and he savoured the stillness around him, felt the movement only of the slightly stirring breeze against his face. He walked past shops empty of people save for the travelling population that haunted the takeaway counter of the milkbar.
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br />   “You’d better pretend to be civilised,” Kath had told him before he’d left, instructing him to take pyjamas if he was still intending staying the night at Martin’s. These were in the patchwork bag he had hitched over one shoulder, along with his toothbrush. In the pocket of his homemade overalls was some spending money from his father.

  “For ice-cream and lollies,” Buckley had said generously, determined that the free evening at the movies was to be enjoyed by Trevor.

  For himself, Trevor felt nothing but determination to prove Mrs Grace wrong.

  He found the house in one of the streets behind the shopping centre. Momentarily he hesitated at the front gate, long enough to survey the meticulously tidy garden that surrounded the ageing but equally meticulous house. It was a world away from the kombi and the caravan. Slowly he entered the gateway.

  Martin lurked behind a screen door. “You’re here at last!” he said with a note of impatience. “I thought your parents would’ve given you a lift or something.”

  “No,” Trevor said, “I wanted to walk, anyway.”

  Martin shrugged. “Oh well … wipe your feet. Mum’ll go off her brain if you walk dirt into the house.”

  He followed Martin up a shadowy carpeted hallway.

  She was in the kitchen cooking, and stopped to regard him uncomfortably. She was tall and stocky like Martin. Trying to control the sense of hostility in him, Trevor looked expressionlessly at her face, shiny with cosmetics. “Hello, Mrs Grace,” he said in a monotone.

  “Hello, Trevor,” she said with equal flatness. “Glad to have you around.”

  He stared around at the crisply renovated kitchen, the bright cafe-window curtains above the sink, the matching cupboards, the monolithic refrigerator, the seemingly endless array of plastic and china knick-knacks and tourist souvenirs that occupied window sills and cupboard tops.

  “A bit different to a caravan, I would imagine,” she said pointedly.

  “Yes,” Trevor answered, “a bit bigger.”

  Manners satisfied, the two boys went back up the hall, heading for the safety of Martin’s bedroom. Carpet – there was carpet everywhere. Half of what he saw looked too sacred to tread on, and he began to feel as though he was in a museum and not somebody’s house. The lounge room furniture was starkly modern. It was the sort of furniture Kath and Buckley would probably have said rude things about. Trevor tried to imagine their reaction to all this: to the size, brightness and sheer look of affluence about the house.

  “Those’re my sisters,” Martin said, pointing to a row of wedding photos hanging on a wall. “They’ve all got kids now.” Then he added proudly, “I’m an uncle.”

  “Are you the youngest?” Trevor asked tentatively, looking up also at the prints of galloping horses that hung on the same wall.

  “Yeah,” Martin answered. “Are you?”

  “There’s only me.”

  “Oh. What about cousins?”

  “Most of them live around Sydney. We usually go to visit them at Christmas time.”

  “Jeez, that’d be good. Most of mine live round here, and you see them all year long. Gets a bit boring. You know Michael O’Leary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s one of my cousins. Didn’t know that, eh?”

  Martin’s room was a menagerie of objects. Model planes were displayed along cupboard tops and window sills. Football team posters hung around the walls, photos of cars and motorcycles, and there was a religious picture above the bed. And spread along another wall, sports pennants. 200 metres freestyle, Martin Grace. 200 metres backstroke, Martin Grace. Best and fairest, Martin Grace. Most improved player, Martin Grace. On a wooden chest of drawers, there was a row of sporting trophies. Under 8s finalists, Under 10s undefeated, Under 11s undefeated.

  A sort of clinical tidiness governed the room. One corner was occupied by a folding bed that was obviously for Trevor.

  “What d’you think?” Martin asked, indicating the entire room.

  “It’s great,” Trevor said, comparing it unfavourably with his own bedroom. “D’you have a room of your own in the caravan …?” Martin started to ask, but then corrected himself. “No, wait. You’ve got your bedroom in the kombi.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “It’s okay. Bit cramped.”

  “I reckon it’d be great.”

  Every so often, Trevor was aware of Mrs Grace’s presence and several times looked to see her hovering in the background or peering around doorways, seemingly checking up on things. He waited till she was out of earshot. Interested in how Martin would react, Trevor asked bluntly, “Your mother doesn’t like me, does she?”

  Martin appeared surprised. “She thinks you’re all right, I guess. She always goes a bit off her head when other kids are around, you know, in case they break something. Don’t worry about it.”

  Trevor, who knew otherwise, wasn’t convinced. He could picture Mrs Grace in her kitchen, frowning about his being in the same house. The disapproval was not going to change in the course of one afternoon, and he knew it.

  “Hey, what about winning the match eighteen to seven. Pretty good, eh?”

  “Yeah,” Trevor answered. “Great.”

  “Just as long as Fuller lets me play next week.”

  “Has he shouted the team to the movies before?”

  “Yeah. Not very often, but. The club pays for it anyway, not Fuller, so it’s not as though he’s being super-generous to us.”

  “What happens when he sees me at the cinema too, though?”

  Martin shrugged. “What can he say? You’re still in the team, even if you are a measly reserve. And besides, he knows if he says anything that your dad’ll tell him off.”

  A room at the back of the house contained a pool table.

  “You know how to play?” Martin asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” replied Trevor, starting to extract the coloured balls from the corner pockets and arranging them on the table’s felt surface.

  Martin did the same. “Where’d you learn?”

  “Ages ago, when I was little.”

  “You are now.”

  “When I was younger,” Trevor said reproachfully.

  “But where?”

  “All over the place …” Ages ago that had been, Buckley teaching him the rudiments of pool and snooker in the back rooms of rural hotels. So long ago it was, that he remembered being barely able to see over the top of the table. “My dad taught me.”

  “Yeah, so’d mine.”

  “What does your dad do?”

  “Runs the real estate place in town. He’s off somewhere working this arvo. What about your dad?”

  “Everything. Fruit picking, welding–”

  “Bricklaying.”

  “Bricklaying, fixes cars and all that.”

  “Jeez, he knows a lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s it like, but? Moving around all the time?”

  “It’s good.”

  “I reckon I’d hate it.”

  “You get used to it.”

  “But have you always been doing that?”

  Trevor shook his head. “Not always. We used to live in a house.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s my grandmother’s house. We used to all live there. Then my grandmother decided to move to the city and once she’d gone and didn’t need us for company any more, my parents thought they’d take the chance to do what they’d always wanted, and do a bit of travelling.”

  “Is there anyone living there now?”

  “People rent it, sometimes for holidays.”

  “Oh,” Martin said, and gave Trevor a cue stick. “Let’s see how good you can play.”

  They played pool, several times over. Trevor was trying to engross himself in what he was doing, but his thoughts were very much elsewhere. Being inside a house such as this awoke distant images of the house he had once lived in himself, and morosely he felt out of place. Occasionally
he considered with some surprise how friendly Martin was being, but even this extraordinary circumstance didn’t help much. He started to wish he was back home in the caravan, so he could put aside the facade of enjoying himself and of being resilient to the critical glances of Mrs Grace.

  He sat uncomfortably at the dinner table that evening with Martin next to him and Mr and Mrs Grace facing him from the opposite side of the tablecloth. Sombrely, he employed his best table manners and refrained from commenting that he wasn’t all that keen on eating meat. Mr Grace, in business shirt and nightmare tie, asked him lots of questions.

  “So what does your father do, Trevor?”

  Trevor told him more or less what he’d told Martin.

  “And what about your mother?”

  “She used to be a teacher.”

  “Oh?”

  “She gave it away when I was born, though. Sometimes she fruit picks with Dad and sometimes she makes clothes to sell. Like the ones I’m wearing.” He looked at Mrs Grace.

  She returned the look and replied, “Yes, I thought they might have been.”

  Mr Grace’s talking and questioning continued relentlessly. “Yes, we’ve seen your kombivan around town. Smart machine; it looks as though it’s been to a fair few places.”

  “Yes it has,” Trevor replied.

  “And how do you like moving about from town to town?”

  Trevor groaned inwardly.

  “I mean, do you mind going to a new school every few months?” The man’s questions were politely earnest but pointless.

  “No,” Trevor replied obstinately, “I don’t mind moving around. I like it.”

  “And how are you finding football? Enjoying it?”

  “Yeah. It’s great.”

  “Yes,” continued Mr Grace with a smile, “Martin’s going to keep playing for the club. We’re rather hoping he’ll take it up professionally one day. Right, Martin?”

  “Yeah,” Martin said, without much enthusiasm.

  Apart from the more or less compulsory replies he had to make, Trevor said nothing. He was aware of Martin’s mum’s steady gaze that seemed to be evaluating his every move. She seemed to be waiting for him to commit some breach of etiquette that for her would have typified his caravan park origins. Carefully, he avoided replying with his mouth full and dropping food on the shag pile carpet. They watched the usual smattering of news-time television until it was time to leave for the movies.