by Gee, Maurice
‘I think he’s got a great ability for learning things. I think he should be taught properly.’
‘I saw the book you gave him. It’s a bit of a funny book to lend a boy.’
‘Oh, that was really just to try him out. The accident changed him, I don’t have to tell you that. But it didn’t, well, put a stop to him.’
‘Tom thinks so.’
‘Well Tom doesn’t get a vote. I told Duncan to come and see me again. Is that all right?’
‘Of course. If you can do something … anything. You’ve no idea how grateful … Sometimes I think I’m going mad. Sometimes I think there is God and he’s having fun with Duncan and me. How’s that for an old card-carrying atheist?’
‘Considering what happened I think you’re doing well.’
‘Ta very much. Well, I’d better go and feed him or he’ll fill himself up with water biscuits. See you, Norma. Don’t let the bastards get you down.’ She banged the car roof and ran back to her little brand-new Japanese bug and zipped past, tooting goodbye, before Norma had her car in gear.
Norma drove slowly, feeling the camber of the road. Way ahead the bright metallic lid covering Josie sped like a ground-hopping aeroplane. It flashed blue to silver, butterfly wing, and made a cruel right-angle turn on to the pink-shell road leading up the hill to Tom Round’s house on its terraced lawn. It was hard, Norma thought, to imagine Josie and Tom, with their bank accounts, investments, careers, their waterfall house, suffering as other people suffered. Yet without the accumulated worries and defeats that weighed on others – on the Birtleses – how huge and bare their tragedy must seem. One would have expected it to give them dignity. But instead Tom squealed and hid himself and Josie started in a dozen ways and followed none. The only ones with dignity, she thought, were Duncan himself and Belinda.
She crossed the bridge over the tributary creek that gave Tom his private water supply and kept his lawns green in summer droughts, and drove in willow shade, with golfers across the swimming holes on her right – a woman in a red hat putting, and a man in twenties clobber, knickerbockers and pudding-bag cap, holding himself in fractured stance as though for a photograph.
Lex’s house came into view. It stood on a narrow ledge on the hillside, with patches of bracken like quilted place-mats all about, and tea-tree, broom, gorse, a froth of green and yellow, tumbling to the road. The plane of the ledge was tipped towards her and she saw Lex’s ute standing there; and Sandra’s car pull into place beside it. She felt an irritation that this affair, if it was affair, should be taking place in school time; wondered if she would find Lex and Sandra ‘playing games’. It did not stop her, made her grim, and she turned into his drive, ground up in low gear with the car rocking in clay ruts and foliage scraping its sides. On one corner a tethered goat watched her go by with a nose-in-air look. It would not have been out of place at a royal garden party. An old bath quarter full of scummy water stood on the next bend, with a plastic duck, lopsided and green with slime, but jaunty still, sitting in it. It must have belonged to – she could not remember the child’s name and was not even sure of its sex.
There was no place for her car on the lawn. She stopped in front of the shed and climbed out and smoothed down her skirt. The house seemed crumbling to its elements, as dry and fractured as the hill above, with bits sliding off and others suffering breakdown or decay. A broken window had a piece of hardboard nailed across it. Knives of glass gleamed in the weeds. She went across and gathered them up and slid them under the porch. Sandra came out of the house and watched.
‘Waste of time,’ she said.
‘Is Lex at home?’
‘He’s not inside. He’s probably up the hill. I only came to see he hadn’t broken his neck or something.’
‘Has he been sick do you know?’
‘Not yesterday. Unless you count sick in the head.’ She shook herself, trying to shake her hardness off, and her bells made a sweet tinny tinkle. ‘Listen Mrs Sangster, I don’t know how much you care about Lex. I guess you’re just worried about him doing his job. But I’m not sure he can any more. He’s not in touch with real things, that’s what I think. You might as well know he’s giving notice. But if you ask me he should stop now and see a doctor. Because he needs someone to grab hold. Before he gets too far away.’
‘When’s he giving notice?’
‘At the end of the year.’ She saw a movement high on the hill and jumped down from the porch to the lawn. ‘Lex,’ she yelled; and turned to Norma again. ‘Stop worrying about your school. You can get a replacement. I’m trying to tell you about Lex.’
‘What do you think’s the matter with him?’
‘I don’t know. He’s in some fantasy world with his goats. They’re like some kind of lost tribe and he wants to lead them to the promised land.
‘Lex, come down,’ she shouted. ‘We can see you.’
Norma could not see him. She saw goats in the bracken, all with their heads pointing down the hill, but no sign of Lex. Huge white slung-belly clouds sat above the pine-row and the world seemed tilted over and the ground beneath her feet on a slant instead of flat.
‘Come on, Lex. We haven’t got all day. The boss is here.’
‘Where is he?’
Sandra pointed. ‘Over by the fence.’
She saw him then, with just his head poking from the bracken. He looked like a grub in a hole. She knew, with certainty, that Sandra was right, Lex was sick, and felt at once she must protect her girls. School was not a world without sin, but large sins, large sicknesses, must be kept out. She realized she had never seen Lex clearly, that a cloud of darkness hung about him and she had tried to dissipate it by laughing at him and pitying him, and lost sight of the damage he might do. She was filled with a retrospective fear and felt her eyes glitter like swords as she prepared to cut him down.
Lex unfolded, stood in the bracken waist deep. He held a small goat in his arms and turned to lay it down out of sight.
Sandra made a hard sound of amusement. ‘Enkidu before the harlot got him. Well, I’m off. Tell him I’ll come up tonight. Or maybe not. Flesh and blood can only stand so much.’
She got into her car, reversed in an arc, drove swishing through the grass round Norma’s car, and set off down the drive with thin dust smoking behind her.
Lex slid and leaped down the hill. He too left a trail, as though he scorched the ground in passing. He braked by grabbing handfuls of tea-tree. She thought he would run through the fence, but he pushed out his sole against a post, making it give a loud crack. His other foot skidded through shale and sent a spray of stones against the stile. ‘Gidday,’ he said, climbing over.
‘Hello, Lex. I thought I might find you sick in bed.’
‘I’ve got a sick goat.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Pneumonia.’
‘Is that serious?’ She smelt him as he came close: fresh and stale sweat mixed. There was a smear of something like mucus on his shirt.
‘She’ll die,’ he said, and shrugged.
‘Shouldn’t you get the vet?’
‘Don’t like vets. They’ve got to die of something. Where’d Sandra go?’
‘Back to school. She does have classes, Lex. I came up to see why you hadn’t telephoned. We managed to get someone to fill in but what we really need is reasonable notice if you’re sick – or one of your goats.’
‘Yeah. I got stuck up there. I didn’t want to leave her.’
‘Well Lex, that’s as may be, –’ Norma frowned, not liking the phrase, ‘– but the fact is, teaching can’t take second place. We have to know you’re where you’re meant to be – barring major emergencies of course. And I can’t see …’ A goat dying of pneumonia – how much would that measure on her scale? She had a glimpse of vastly different places in Lex. Margins of familiar ground running into shadow.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I guess I wasn’t thinking too clear.’ He smiled at her and a slight goofiness, his overlapping front
teeth, reassured her.
‘Is everything all right, Lex? Are you sure you’re well? Sandra’s worried.’
‘I’m OK. Sometimes I guess I don’t eat enough. I forget to go to the shop.’
‘Have you got any food in the house now?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Here then, take these.’ She brought the plates of muffins and cakes from her car and put them on the porch steps. ‘It’s all right. I bought them at a stall. I wasn’t sure what to do with them.’
‘Hey, that’s great.’ He took a muffin in each hand. ‘Fact is, Norma,’ chewing, ‘I’ve quit. I’m not coming back any more. I was going to ring you up but I forgot.’
‘You’re supposed to give more notice than that.’
He put half a muffin in his mouth. There was nothing goofy in his eyes. ‘But you don’t care, eh? You’re glad to have me out of the place. It’s not as if I’m doing a good job.’
‘Well, I don’t know.’ Once she had walked in on a sixth-form class where he was explaining history and legend and myth. King Alfred (Lex said), though he may not have burned the cakes, was historical. Robin Hood was legendary – no large meanings there – and King Arthur a step to the side, between the legendary and the mythical. Something changes in our way of seeing, need comes in and Arthur becomes more than a man. Then there’s the myth with religion in it, Orpheus and Persephone, Adam and Eve – attempts to answer questions about why and who. And folk-myth is different again – trolls and green men and leprechauns.
Norma was fascinated. It was, she supposed (she hoped), the standard exposition, but Lex – was it his voice, his manner, his way of seeming, put himself back there? – made it thrilling. ‘And what were we like even further back?’ he had asked. ‘When we had no why or when or until or because? When things just happened? A time when we weren’t what we call human, still part ape?’ (Norma was alarmed. This could lead to trouble with Mr Stanley.) ‘All we had was now. Now was it. We didn’t speculate on things but were locked up in our self. And what we touched and ate and saw were part of me.’ He banged his chest (and couldn’t help looking a bit like Tarzan). ‘Long before me was an idea.’
‘If it was so long ago?’ a girl said.
‘Yes?’
‘How come you know all this stuff?’
‘Well, I don’t,’ Lex grinned. ‘I’m only guessing.’ He let them down. ‘How and why and when, eh? It can be a disease.’
‘You were a good teacher, Lex. At least I thought so. Until you split up with Ros. Not that I’ve got any right … What will you do?’ She was anxious not to let him change his mind. She felt that a sore place in her school was suddenly healed.
‘Stay here and look after my goats.’
‘Can you make a living from that?’
‘I’ve got a bit of money in the bank.’ He was vague, and he took a pink cake and looked at it as though he did not understand the colour. Her sense of his vast strangeness returned. How had he moved so far from normal concerns without her hearing signals of danger and setting herself between him and the girls? She looked for signs of sickness in his face, but, though three-day whiskered, it seemed simply thoughtful, a bit neglected. His dirty tartan shirt and dirty jeans were quite usual for a goat farmer, she supposed. As for the house and property, one must not fit everything to that little wheel of hers that went round and round with even clicks. Other people were happy with other things. But the goats; it was the goats, browsing on the hill, unconcerned, primeval, that shifted Lex and made him unacceptable. Goats as partners, goats as friends, who made a kind of sympathetic goatness in him? She wanted to shake him; cry at him that he must not go along that way or he would lose himself. Was this what Sandra felt? Was this why Sandra played woman to him on the lawn?
‘Lex –’
He spoke at the same time: ‘There’s no problem, is there? Getting someone to take my place? Plenty of out-of-work teachers in this town.’
‘That’s no problem. But Lex –’
‘What I want to do is, come and say goodbye to 4CI. I’ve got them last period today. That OK? I’ve got some work to give back.’
‘I can take it, Lex. There’s no need –’
‘They’re good kids. I’d like to say goodbye.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be there?’ She did not want him in the school again. ‘I’ll have to look in. They’ll be confused otherwise.’
‘Sure, no trouble. Then I’ll be gone. You can stop worrying, eh? Get some nice lady to take my place.’ He was making easy fun of her, and she smiled: ‘Don’t eat too many of those cakes, otherwise you will be sick in bed.’
Their conversation wound its way down. Lex climbed the hill to look at his goat, while Norma turned her car on the lawn. She drove slowly down the rutted drive, and stopped by the golf course and looked back. He was coming down again, holding the goat under one arm. That probably meant it was dead. He would dig a grave and bury it and forget. That, she was sure, would be his way. She could not see what else might be added, yet somehow it did not seem enough.
Norma saw Duncan Round on the shell road. She waved at him and sped back to her school.
8
When he walked in the class made a hiss, then started to talk all at once.
‘Sir, sir, we thought you were sick, sir.’
‘We thought you’d got the sack.’
‘We thought you’d run away with Miss Duff, sir.’
‘How’s your goats, sir?’
‘Sir, you’re not supposed to wear jeans at school.’
Mrs Sangster came in the door as he reached the table. Everyone stood up and after the scraping of chairs it was so quiet, laughter in the next room sounded as if it came from the book cupboard.
‘Thank you, girls. Sit down,’ Mrs Sangster said. ‘I want to apologize for intruding. I’ll go away in a moment but I wanted to look in because – you don’t mind if I tell them, Mr Clearwater? – Mr Clearwater is leaving us.’ She waited until the noise died down. ‘This is the last time you’ll be seeing him. And as I won’t have the chance of saying thank you at assembly and telling him how very much we’re all going to miss him I thought I’d take the opportunity now …’
Hayley did not believe a word of it. What had happened, Lex had got the sack. It wasn’t hard to see why when you looked at him alongside Mrs Sangster. She was like one of the Golden Girls. Lexie looked as if he’d been lost in the bush. Hayley liked his beard, it was kind of blue and made him look like a crim, but the stuff like dried snot on his shirt was real yukky. From where she was sitting by the window she could see a bit of red underpants where the seam of his jeans had come unstuck and his sneakers had holes in them at his big toes. One of his toes went up and down like he couldn’t wait for Mrs Sangster to get finished. Real neat. Mrs Sangster was trying hard to look like everything was OK, but you could tell she had ants in her knickers. Hayley felt a bit sorry for her.
‘Well, I’ll leave you now to say goodbye. I’m not quite sure yet who your new form teacher will be but we’ll get that sorted out later on. Thanks, Mr Clearwater. Thank you, girls.’ She did not want to go, that stuck out. She probably thought Lexie would start giving sex lessons. Sheryl Thomas said, ‘Mrs Sangster, we didn’t have time to buy a present.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. We only found out this afternoon.’
‘We could collect some money now.’
‘I’ve got a dollar,’ Michelle Hunter said.
‘I’ve got fifty cents.’
‘No, no. Well,’ Mrs Sangster said, ‘it’s up to your form leader to organize. I’m sure Mr Clearwater –’
‘I don’t want a present. I really just came to say goodbye.’
‘What school are you going to, sir?’
‘Are you going to keep on farming goats?’
‘I’ll leave it to you, Mr Clearwater, now. Perhaps you could look in at my office as you go?’ Mrs Sangster left, with a hesitation at the door and a nervous blink round the room. She would probably sneak ba
ck and listen in the corridor, Hayley thought.
‘OK, pipe down,’ Lex said.
‘Why are you really leaving, sir?’
‘Did you get the sack?’
‘I would have if I hadn’t got in first. You might be in luck and get a real teacher when I’m gone.’
‘You were neat, sir.’
‘You didn’t yell at us anyhow.’
‘Or keep on telling us off about our hair. You haven’t had a shave today, sir.’
‘I mightn’t ever have a shave again.’
‘Hey, your beard would grow down to your feet.’
‘You wouldn’t have to wear trousers, sir.’
‘Everyone shut up.’
Hayley thought he looked tired, sick of things. He looked as if he might walk out. ‘Yeah, shut up,’ she said. ‘Let Mr Clearwater say something.’
‘Thank you, Hayley. There’s not much I want to say. Mainly, I’m sorry for wasting your time. I can get out but you’re stuck here for a while, most of you. There’s nothing for you to do except keep on and learn what you can and not butt your heads against the wall, not too hard. There’s some not bad teachers in this school. Mrs Sangster’s OK, So’s Miss Duff.’
‘Miss Duff’s your girlfriend, sir.’
‘So?’ He looked out of the window at Stovepipe Hill, and was gone so long questions started flying again and died away. He said, ‘You girls are in a machine and it’s processing you. That’s not good, but it’s not all bad. If you keep your eyes open and chuck out the phoney stuff and keep what’s real …’
He really was tired and he didn’t care about this. Part, he was telling lies, and part, just opening his mouth and letting it talk. It scared Hayley, he was so far away. Her mother was like that most of the time. She couldn’t see why Lex had come in. The rest of the class felt something wrong too and kept quiet until he stopped. Then Donna Gethin, who would say anything and was so tough some girls said she fucked Korean sailors for money at the port, Donna said a thing no one could believe. ‘Sir, what say you were screwing your nanny goats sir, would the babies have people’s heads or what?’
