Holden's Performance

by Murray Bail

  The houses were spacious and set back. Instead of jacarandas, clumps of obnoxious lantana decorated the footpaths. Holden kept glancing left and right. One of these posh places could easily have an unknown Anson or Mosquito on the front lawn.

  From behind, a familiar rattle of tappets entered the street and accelerated towards him. Holden swerved into the gutter. Already he had his knowing grin ready. But Frank McBee had twisted around to his pillion passenger, yelling something, before crouching and mounting the footpath opposite, and in an all too familiar hail of gravel and mud, spraying the hedges and a parked Buick, did his old slalom routine through the islands of lantana.

  Above it all Holden heard the shrill notes of the squealing passenger. A peroxide blonde, she had pleasure-loving teeth. With her cheek glued to the curve of McBee's spine she managed to give the boy facing her a spontaneous little wave. Then, one leg extended in exaggerated speedway-style and giving the throttle a violent blip, which produced a fart of blue flame, McBee skidded sideways through a wrought-iron gate.

  The trundle of trams and the gear-changing of evening traffic climbing Magill Road seemed to interfere with the boy's thinking.

  For a good ten minutes he contemplated the toe of one of his dented shoes. Whenever he looked up he still saw the tail of the AJS parked at the end of the drive.

  What could be going on in there? Holden wanted to pass through the wall of bricks—mottled, manganese which had been fired twenty years ago at Bennett's factory, only a few streets away—and enter the rooms, one by one, until he located McBee. But the house standing there not only remained bland, it appeared to be gazing blandly back at him.

  Quickly he imagined how he'd greet his friend when he emerged. And what would McBee say, surprised to see him there?

  A vague stain of uncertainty made Holden uncomfortable. He thought of his mother, waiting in the kitchen. It was enough to make him fiddle with a pedal. For the first time he wondered what he was doing there.

  It was past six o'clock. Without looking again at the house Holden followed the sensible course and rode slowly home.

  No one had met any of McBee's friends. Leaving the house early he'd be out all day and return after dark. Associates left digital messages over the telephone. It was all matter-of-fact.

  It became a mystery: how could a man who clearly knew his way about town, a man with a future out of this world (i.e. beyond Adelaide), a man alert, and always ready with an impractical joke—how was it he never introduced a good friend, not one, not even in conversation? It bothered the Shadbolts. Even their Uncle Vern, Holden pointed out, had at least two good best-friends.

  ‘Of course Frank's very popular,’ their mother explained, ‘with other men in particular. He's that type of man.’ Though she immediately coughed and contradicted, ‘I know him better than anybody.’

  Gradually this conspicuously vacant side of the man who came and went was accepted as part of his isolated make-up.

  So that when Frank McBee announced from behind the paper he'd be bringing home a friend on Friday night, if that's OK by everybody, it sent the Shadbolts, after a moment's pause, running around in circles.

  Holden, who regularly experienced McBee's ratbaggery, turned the colour of Bennett's brick. The peroxide blonde. Surely he wouldn't—.

  ‘Tell us. Who is he?’

  They pleaded.

  ‘What's his name?’

  ‘But that's tomorrow night. What am I going to cook? Does he eat fish?’

  At last McBee lowered the paper.

  ‘Stone the crows’—rural terms had penetrated the urban vocabulary in South Australia, along with mining slang—‘anyone would think I was bringing Jane Russell into the house.’

  A private joke, it went down like a ‘lead balloon’—an aeronautical term, McBee was the first in the state to use it regularly, just as when giving the thumbs down he said, ‘That's a real no-no.’ To Holden now he raised one shoulder and flashed one of Jane's cheesy smiles. The last of their American Liberators at Parafield had her symmetrical statistics curvaceously cartooned on the fuselage, spilling out of one-piece bathers.

  ‘Say, what's eating Holden-boy?’

  ‘Perhaps he's in the dark,’ muttered Mrs Shadbolt, ‘like the rest of us.’

  ‘Friday nights are our special nights,’ Karen reminded. ‘But I'm glad you're bringing him.’

  ‘Who said it's a him?’ bellowed McBee, and laughed like a maniac from Parkside.

  There he goes again, Holden frowned. And although he began smiling, something about McBee troubled him.

  ‘Don't you think I'm attracted to local sheilas?’

  The newspaper sliding from his knees (‘RAIN-SEEDING PLANS SHELVED’), McBee scrambled after filly-legged Karen, giving their mother an affectionate pinch in passing.

  As it happened, McBee's friend turned out to be a flight sergeant from Warragul, a good foot shorter than Holden, and sporting the pukka tooth-brush moustache of his superior officers. Natty little chap. When he grinned, which was every few seconds, he blinked vigorously. Originally a signal to show his prowess as a listener his blinking had developed into a Pavlovian tic.

  ‘How do you do?’ their mother had offered her hand.

  Standing to attention he remained at a slight Pisa-angle.

  ‘Sit down, sit down!’ shouted McBee. ‘For Christsake, everybody sit down.’

  It was then as the airman tried crossing legs under the table that Holden winced and realised he had only one leg.

  ‘Sorry, old boy,’ said the airman. ‘My fault entirely.’

  The evening advanced rapidly on several fronts: monologues shouted, froth and slops, and other repetitions. Two glasses were broken, as soon were laws of courtesy and commonsense.

  Did the family always create such a deafening racket on Friday? Holden observed their behaviour through the eyes of the stranger. At the head of the table, and acting as headwaiter (‘Wait, don't get ahead of yourself’), McBee took on the complex tasks of chief toast-maker, bottle-opener, orator, joker. The last came easily to him. He told elongated stories. He repeated himself. (He was speaking to the ceiling.) A bang of the fist brought the table to order and a smile of indulgence from Mrs S. The success spread to his head. As Holden watched it expanded, squeezing transparent moisture from the pores, ballooning melon-round, and flushing into the blood of the rare steak he had insisted upon. After offering a glimpse of an inflated future McBee's face subsided into its familiar bright-eyed countenance. Patience meanwhile took its toll on Holden's mother. Drained to the colour of pearl she looked to be bored, definitely.

  Mrs Shadbolt, and even Karen, began to wonder why the one-legged flight sergeant had been invited. McBee took no notice of him. Whenever he tentatively parted his purple Ups, which immediately activated the eyelids, McBee shouted the man down. To Holden it was not at all how he imagined a best-friend to be.

  Ten-thirty, and Karen had nodded off in her chair.

  The way the lonely airman surveyed his panatella between each puff showed he had been seeing too many American good-guy films. Now his way of half-smiling down at his lung-coloured smoke began attracting attention. The airman was getting too big for his boots (only officers were allowed shoes); and he seemed to be unaware of it. Between talking McBee was staring at him.

  ‘That looks like,’ he suddenly pointed, ‘you're holding someone's prick in your hand.’

  ‘I say,’ the flight sergeant reddened, and glanced at Mrs Shadbolt.

  ‘Don't mind us,’ she yawned. ‘And Karen, she's off to bed.’

  Holden stood up.

  Grabbing his elbow McBee knocked a bottle over.

  ‘Before you go, what does this remind you of?’

  Taking their visitor's chin he turned the face this way and that. Funny little chap—to put up with that. Well? McBee glanced around the table. Toulouse-Lautrec? No specs. How about Group Captain Douglas Bader? The legs more or less matched, but there was the problem of the charcoal moustache, all the r
age in the forties. Why wasn't he original?

  ‘I know!’ Holden's mother put her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Cut it out,’ the airman blinked. ‘There's been a difficult war on.’

  ‘Shhh, let the drip have his go.’

  Holden stood there like a post. His photographic memory had swung into place. Rough suggestion of Hitler—Adolf Hitler.

  ‘Right!’ Whack on the shoulder-blades. ‘For zat, you vin vun hun-dered pounds and a free veek in Berlin.’

  ‘I said, that'll do. That's not funny. It's beyond control how a person looks.’

  Frank McBee drowned him out with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’.

  ‘You're a bully,’ Holden's mother turned to him. ‘Why are you always a bully?’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ the sergeant interrupted. And he whispered, ‘I say, that boy of yours, if he is yours, gives me the ruddy creeps.’

  ‘Oh shut up.’

  The ex-corporal didn't seem to be listening. Studying Holden's face he kept the elbow in a pincer-grip; Holden felt the man's strength. In his coarse shirt, and perspiring, he looked as if he'd come straight from a factory.

  Holden's mother now had one of Adolf's panatellas in her mouth and the flight sergeant grinning encouragement slowly began disappearing behind reams of newspaper-coloured smoke.

  Suddenly pitying her, and not knowing why, Holden felt ashamed.

  ‘Go to bed,’ she coughed. ‘Frank, tell him to go.’

  ‘What's happening?’ Karen asked.

  Fumbling in the dark for his pyjamas Holden shook his head.

  ‘Nothing.’

  And lying down the swirling impressions simply smothered his thoughts. The pillow's softness entered his ears and throat, filling the space behind his eyes, as water finds its own level. The adult murmuring from the kitchen rose and fell, a further blurring, edging higher, settling back, which served to upholster his disquiet; or so he thought.

  Barely had memory and feeling departed when he was woken by a scream. As he sat up voices began overlapping, shouting. Another scream, higher still. That was their mother. In the bed opposite Karen began crying.

  The shapes of things were still imprecise. In the soldier's room among the hat boxes and cartons of electrical appliances Holden crouching in his bare hocks found the .303. Its tremendous vertical weight pointed to the immensity of the task. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

  Its weight briefly invited caution. So did its narrow precision-fitting length. But Holden had hardly thought about his action. ‘It happened like a dream.’ Orchestrated by the floorboards his career started on schedule.

  In the 100-watt kitchen he saw the moustachioed flight sergeant seated as before, his hands folded almost primly on his lap. His mother was partly obscured by McBee: bending over, he had her by the shoulders. On the exposed side of her dress a long glass of something had stained the shapes of India and Ceylon.

  ‘What is it you want? What's gotten into you?’

  Shaking her head she sniffled, ‘I don't know.’

  The throttling shadows on the wall above may have grossly exaggerated; yes, but—

  ‘She doesn't know,’ the flight sergeant intercepted.

  ‘I'll tell you what,’ McBee straightened and revealed all of Holden's mother. ‘Tell you what I'm going to do.’

  She raised her head in partial hope. It was then they saw Holden almost together,

  ‘What are you doing?’ she stared. ‘My God, what's that he's got?’

  The flight sergeant stuka-dived under the table, his DSO and Bar forming a brief rainbow.

  ‘Put that thing away!’ Holden's mother shouted. ‘I'll brain you.’

  McBee restrained her with a slight head movement.

  Stepping forward he held out his hand and laughed, ‘That's my rifle. Come on, boy.’

  But Holden followed him in an arc. That did it: daylight of release widened between his mother and him.

  And yet her face contorted, ‘What are you doing this to me for?’

  From under the table came the cramped voice, ‘Tell him someone could get killed…’

  McBee had not taken his eyes off Holden. Now the former corporal stiffened, his face, neck and shoulders expanded into a sterner remote force.

  ‘Atten-shun!’ He went cross-eyed with the effort. ‘Pre—zent…ARMS!’

  McBee turned from Holden with contempt. Phew! The airman crawled out from under the table, lucky to be alive. ‘A fat lot of good you were,’ McBee said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You RAAF types are all the bloody same.’

  Mrs Shadbolt pushed forward; Holden had never seen eyes so wide.

  Without a word she slapped him hard across the face.

  In the congested kitchen the never-before-heard blaze of noise reverberated, and it was that as much as the loosely held war rifle which threw Holden backwards. The weapon fell from his hands. But too late for the copper bullet to alter its busy trajectory through local history: first collapsing the nearest table leg, before driving the smallest of McBee's toes clean through the pine floorboards (where it gradually decomposed into opal and dust), cartwheeling McBee backwards in a spurt of blood, upsetting the cotton reels in the mending basket, then ricocheting off the concrete back step, shattering louvres and exploding the myth of the flyscreen door, perforating two perfect piss-holes in the corrugated tank, and so touched upon the cardinal points of the South Australian house, deflating the front tyre of McBee's motorbike and clipping the wing of the Medleys' notorious Black Orpington.

  McBee lay on the lino, clutching his foot. Pale and trembling he raised himself, and steadying against the sideboard, aimed a tremendous boot at Holden's behind with his undamaged size 8, corporal punishment, the force of which sent him sprawling again and torpedoed the bewildered boy through the doorway into the arms of his sister, Karen.

  Those were the days when the appearance on the streets of a new car attracted curious crowds. No sooner had one pulled into the kerb and the driver casually stepped out hurdling the door if it was a roadster—than men would be drawn from across the street, from passing trams, men from all walks, and couldn't-be-less-interested wives would turn in mid-sentence to find themselves temporarily abandoned, as if the latest in cars had magnets fitted under their fenders and bonnets, exerting an irresistible pull within a short radius, causing in the process jaws to drop, eyes to glaze and hands to thrust deep in the pockets of trousers. Within minutes it would be two or three deep around the car. From splayed legs underneath came muffled reports to the nodding bystanders on the type of front suspension, depth of sump and other specifications, and just about everyone perfected the technique of craning in through the side window to read the instruments, briefly experiencing amid the odour of genuine leather the technical sensation of a framed view of the road, without once laying a finger on the duco.

  Parallels with the lunch-hour crowds which also surrounded the excavations for Adelaide's first skyscrapers are superficial; for those men were merely ‘filling in time’. Car crowds were knowledgeable, definitely. They had statisticians and ‘car maniacs’ among them. As they stood there letting the aesthetic and mechanical details sink in, an alert, concentrated hunger distracted their faces: mix, socio-biological of course, of mechanical appraisal, envy, power-lust.

  Those same men (hands in pockets, eyes glazed) who might have been all at sea in judging the right shade of curtains, who would not bother looking twice at Drysdale's Woman in Landscape hanging in the local museum, had an almost instinctive feel for the proper rise and fall of mudguards, the proportions of a radiator grille, angle of windscreen, the right or wrong quantity and placement of chrome (always a sore point that), and so on; and they wore this innate knowledge with the usual quiet certitude of the connoisseur.

  The magnetism of cars was not restricted to the fully imported experience of Jaguars, Bristols, Lancias. It was more widespread than that. The first locally manufactured product from GM in 1948, which featured six cylin
ders in line and a pink tail light, was accorded front-page treatment in the Advertiser. No wonder its grille had been pre-set in a wide grin of victory. Each successive model proved a crowd-stopper, causing minor traffic jams, at least for the first few weeks, and scored page one regularly into the sixties, the American PR-man's dream, only retreating onto page four in the seventies. And year after year the population voted in a slow-moving Premier for the state who chauffeured himself into the office and whose surname was a play on (i.e., a subliminal reminder of) a mass-produced American car: enough to activate every man's dream for modernity and stability; no accident that he eventually shattered the world record for the longest serving parliamentary leader in the entire British Empire.

  The town plan of Adelaide, the remoteness and emptiness of the old continent itself, and the post-war prosperity fuelled by the occasional copies of Life and Saturday Evening Post lying opened on the benches in barbers' shops (boy, those Americans always looked happy): yes, these undoubtedly encouraged a car-culture. It entered all aspects of daily life, from all directions, replacing, or rather, emotionally interfering with, the invasion of khaki grasses, for the metallic spread of cars never managed to replace the cancer of the grasses, not entirely.

  As for the post-war reconstruction, its gathering momentum could be measured aurally by the narrowing interval between the explosions from the roadmaker's quarry visible in the Hills from any point in the city. Another, possibly more accurate index: the number of side-valve British motorcycles equipped with sidecars and eyesore canvas-and-celluloid hoods declined in inverse ratio to the increasing number of blessed prams, pushers and strollers, each fitted with a canvas canopy, once again on a smaller scale. There also appeared to be fewer war-surplus trousers, belts, shirts and boots seen on weekends in front gardens; all things wear out, needless to say. Only the trams retained their original shape.

  Of Vern's two best-friends, Les Flies wore his tram-driver's black trousers which featured the vertical maroon piping normally associated with the trousers of bandleaders, whether he was on the job or not, while their joint friend, Gordon Wheel-right, went about in shorts even in thunderstorms or at midnight or in the middle of winter. Arriving at Vern's house together they were an odd pair, visually diametrically opposed, not only in the region of legs.