by Gee, Maurice
She hid her bike off the road in case of Gary Baxter and had a swim in Freaks’ Hole by herself. Soon Belinda Round came along the path on the other side. She dived in and came up alongside Hayley.
‘Gidday.’
‘I thought you had a swimming pool up there.’
‘We do. Mum’s friends are using it. Anyway, I like the river better.’
They swam a while, paying no attention to each other, then sat on the shingle side by side.
‘Haven’t got a fag, have you?’
‘No,’ Belinda said.
‘What’s your Mum and them doing, drinking fancy drinks?’
‘They’re supposed to be planning a book. But what they’re doing is lying in the sun and swimming nuddy. There’s too many white boobs for me.’
Hayley snickered. ‘What sort of book?’ She didn’t know you had to plan for books.
‘About weaving and feminism. Stuff like that.’
‘It sounds dead boring.’
‘Probably will be. If you have to be fit for softball why do you smoke?’
‘I thought you’d say that and you did.’ She grinned at Belinda, thinking she was OK all the same. ‘I saw your brother yesterday.’
‘Where?’
‘In Space World. He’s neat on those games. He got the highest score in “1942” I’ve ever seen.’
‘Mum told him not to go there.’
‘Why?’
‘The kids pick on him. They call him Yuk.’
‘He should belt them.’
‘The intermediates are the worst. One of them stuck a notice on his back. Walking Wounded.’
‘If I was there I’d sort them out.’
‘Me too.’
‘I’ve got a sister –’ Hayley stopped. She had meant to say that Shelley, like Duncan Round, was a sort of cripple and had to be helped, but that wasn’t true, and it seemed like giving in. ‘You remember Shelley?’
‘She used to run. She broke all the school records when I was in the preps.’
‘She’s in court today. She’s going to prison.’
‘Is that about Mrs Sangster’s father?’
‘It wasn’t her fault,’ Hayley said. ‘She’s got a boyfriend called Neil Chote.’ She told Belinda about Neil; then how she’d broken Gary Baxter’s arm.
‘I saw him,’ Belinda cried. ‘I was riding home. They were helping him over the fence and he was crying.’ She looked at Hayley with awe. Later, after another swim, she talked about Golden Hills.
‘One lunch-time Mrs Kirby was fighting Mrs Satchell, whacking her on the side with her walking-stick, and when I got them apart the sister told me why. I’d put Mrs Kirby’s feeder on Mrs Satchell. They all have their own feeders and you can’t get them mixed up. Miss Freed cries when she doesn’t get hers.’
‘Do you have to feed them?’
‘Yes. Like babies. Open wider, Miss Freed.’
‘Jesus, I couldn’t do that.’
‘I didn’t think I could at first. But now I love them. I have to take Miss Freed for walks and one of her legs won’t work. So I tie a stocking round her foot and hold the other end and lift it up each step. We go right round the lawn. She likes to put her hand on my cheek so she can feel what young skin feels like.’
‘How did you get that job?’
‘I just went in and asked.’
‘If I tried they’d say no.’ Because, she thought, of how I look and talk, ‘anythink’ and ‘youse’, just to get up the teachers’ noses most of the time. Who wants to feed old ladies anyway? She turned her head the other way because tears had come into her eyes. Belinda Round was stuck-up without knowing it. If her own friends or Belinda’s were here today they’d never talk; they’d probably never talk to each other again.
She looked at her watch. ‘I gotta see Dad.’
‘I hope your sister will be all right.’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’ She pulled on her jeans and T-shirt over her togs. ‘See ya.’
Along the bank she stopped and called, ‘Hey, Belinda. I told your brother not to talk about Wayne. But tell him it’s OK. He can if he wants to.’
Ken Birtles sat in the front row of chairs and watched her bare neck and the white scar on her elbow where she’d skinned it to the bone falling off her trike. He wished he could see her face but guessed she had set it in a mask. Only her feet, shifting weight, showed that she was more than just a dummy set up to give the appearance of listening.
That’s my daughter, he wanted to cry. Don’t you talk to her like that.
He wanted to get up and lift his chair over the rail and put it in the box. The judge was sitting, everyone was sitting now the lawyer had had his say. For God’s sake, she’s a woman, let her sit.
The reporter was writing in her pad; a girl not much older than Shelley. All this would be in the paper.
Her long legs in their jeans were beautiful. Her ankles were thin and beautiful. How can they talk about her as though she’s just a thing? He felt they were trying to strip her down – take away the times that were past, the time she’d spent growing, the things they’d done, all the days and years, the arguments and good times and the love they felt, take it all away, say it meant nothing, and make her just a dummy in a dock for half an hour, with nothing more to her than they could see, nothing more than they had written on their sheets of paper.
Plenty of paper, hundreds of sheets, but Shelley was more than that. Why didn’t they ask him who she was?
Birtles, the judge was calling her; as though what she’d done had cut her down to a single name? He wouldn’t talk to other women that way. He was saying, what was he saying? – judge with sandy hair and jug ears and raw face – he accepted that she was sorry now, accepted too that she had been subjected to physical abuse and hadn’t meant … But it was all something he’d said before, thousands of times, and Shell was Shell and could only be spoken to in words for her. And no one could say them, not even him. A turning point … chance to pull herself together … Her feet shifted weight. If she really had a chance now, it was not because of what they said to her, but what went on inside her head.
He made himself calm. You can do it, Shell. And when the judge’s weighing was all done and she would go for six weeks’ corrective training, he thought, Yes, that’s all right, she can do it; and felt she was back from the place they’d put her in, and this court the worst that was going to happen, and prison would be bad but she was Shelley still at the end of it.
She turned and came out of the three-sided box and he stood and hugged her over the rail, and she went away out of court.
He turned when she was through the door – policeman’s hand an inch behind her back – and side-stepped past knees all turning as though a wind had hit them. The exit door whack-whacked. He crossed a room of second-class young, down-staring, elbows on knees. Green tree-heads stood at window height. They looked as if you could walk on them like little hills. He went down the stairs into open air, then ran to the side of the building to see her taken over the lawn to the station cells. But either they had got her out fast or were keeping her in a courthouse room until a batch was ready to ferry across.
Waiting broke his promise not to see her. He went to his car and drove away. Town was overflowing with shoppers and schoolchildren. Touring cycles with foreign flags on their panniers moved in the streets. There wouldn’t be an end to them, and the campervans and backpackers and tour-buses, for three months now. Shelley would miss them. The tourists were the best thing about Saxton, she said, they reminded you there was a world out there. He did not like the tourists himself. They made holes in Saxton his daughters might fall through.
He drove towards home but the empty house turned him away and he went up the port hills and the long hill to the lookout and sat in his car looking at the bay. Miles of pale blue sea with currents running through it, silver white. The land around the edges looked dried out and used up. The two huge yellow cliffs across by Darwood were a kind of sliding away and giving up.
It seemed as if strength had failed and part of the land been lost. It all fitted in with Shelley and Wayne.
He got out and looked at the sighting plaque; identified the mountains one by one. Imrie. Corkie. Mt Misery. He supposed some early settler had been miserable there – got lost in a blizzard, died in the snow. And Cannonball, named because it was round and smooth. The knobby one was Devil’s Toe. New Zealand was full of toes and thumbs and elbows, boots and forks and dining-tables, the devil’s. Anything crooked or unusual got his name. That seemed a tiredness in people new to a land.
I’m new and I’m tired, he thought. Go somewhere else. A flat land would be better. He’d been climbing up and down ever since he came here. No smooth places. No straight lines except the edge of the sea. He looked out there and wanted to round his family up and go.
I don’t belong any place, he thought. So it doesn’t matter where I am, any place will do.
He went home and found Hayley putting out plates for lunch. She had baked beans heating in a pot and she dropped an egg on top the way he liked. He told her about Shelley and said six weeks wasn’t long. Joanie would be back in six weeks too.
‘I want you to suss things out in Melbourne. You can post me the house-for-sale ads. And the situations vacant as well. And go and look at some suburbs you’d like to live. Get Beth to take you. Ask her about small places too. Towns on the coast, with beaches, eh? But there’s got to be a place where I can work.’
‘Sure. OK.’
‘Cheer up, love. There’s places as good as Saxton.’
‘I know.’
‘Go and look at some softball matches. See if they come up to our standard.’
Hayley had been in Saxton all her life. He knew it would be hard for her to leave.
15
Norma telephoned the Round house and asked for Duncan. ‘I just wondered how you were getting on.’
‘Good. Everything’s good.’ She heard him crackle like a voice from space.
‘You haven’t been to see me for a while.’
‘No. I’ve been busy.’
‘Your mother told me you’ve bought a telescope.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And do you like looking at the stars?’
‘Yeah. It’s fun.’
She could keep going for a long time with girls, wear them down, but had no energy for it with Duncan.
‘All right, Duncan. I rang because I’m going out to see Mr Toft today. I wondered if you’d like to come.’
‘Can’t, I’m sorry. There’s lots of things I’ve got to do.’
She thought of asking what, but gave it up.
‘Well, as long as you’re busy. Goodbye, Duncan.’
‘Bye. Hey, Mrs Sangster.’
‘Yes? What?’
‘Next time you come round to see Mum, if it’s night, you can have a look in my telescope. If you like.’
‘Yes. I’d like. Very much. Thank you, Duncan.’
Tears of gratitude sprang in her eyes. She wiped them away. What a state I’m in, weeping because a boy of sixteen drops me a crumb. She put through a wash and hung it out, cut the used-up flea collar off the cat, walked around the house and straightened the pictures (had there been an earthquake in the night?), read two pages of The Blind Watchmaker and thought, old arguments, how they keep on. There was beauty, though, in cellular splitting and she was calmed. Time and chance murder and save. Two billion years as saviour and judge, a lovely idea, though it did not let one off the hook of individual being.
She drove out to the berry farm for lunch. The glassed-in porch had become her mother’s retreat and Daphne was nervous of going there. Norma felt sorry for her, robbed of part of her house, but admired the way her mother had found strength and cleverness with her husband gone.
‘She’s such a fusser,’ Mrs Schwass said. ‘I can’t bear her pulling and straightening things. She even counts the flowers in the vase for even numbers. And she nearly choked me with a scarf this morning. Who needs a scarf with weather like this? I’m going back to my house after Christmas.’
‘Yes Mum, I think you should.’ For Clive and Daphne’s sake. Daphne would need nursing if this went on.
‘And when I can’t look after myself I’ll go into a home. You’re not to think of looking after me.’
‘No Mum, I won’t.’
‘When I die I want to be cremated, not buried like Ken. You can throw the ashes over the hedge to annoy the neighbours.’ She had taken her husband’s aggressiveness. Perhaps it was loyalty or sympathetic saving. There would be no peanut brownies from now on.
‘I see the girl got six weeks.’
‘Yes.’
‘They should have given her six weeks with Daphne, that would straighten her out. Do you think she’ll go back to that fellow?’
‘He got two years.’
‘What was his face like, Norma?’
‘Oh, empty. Like – nothing.’
‘Don’t be silly, dear. He’s under the same rules as you and me.’
‘Well, he’s, I don’t know, spoiled.’
‘His mother’s fault, is that what you mean?’
‘Not that sort of spoiled. Pushed on an angle. Not facing the same way as everyone else.’
Her mother lost interest. ‘I’m going to write to that girl, Shelley whatever, and tell her she’s not to blame for Ken. She’s not, you know. But I’ll tell her what I think of her choice of boyfriends.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
‘Can you find her address for me? I don’t mean prison. I suppose someone can send it on?’
Norma walked with Clive in the boysenberries after lunch. They talked about their mother. Her change was contrariness to Clive. ‘You’re going to have to take a share of her. She’s too much for Daphne. After Christmas she can come to you.’
‘She’s going home,’ Norma said. ‘That’s the proper place for her.’
‘I’ve got tenants for that house. She can get three hundred a week in the holiday season. Three fifty.’
‘She doesn’t need three fifty, she needs to be in her own place by herself. I’ll be close, I’ll keep an eye on her.’ And if she has an accident and dies that’s in the natural course of things. But she did not say that to Clive. She let him sputter on, then heard his complaint about his pickers – slowness, absenteeism, bad language, berry fights, short shorts, no bras, picking green, dropped trays. Most were college girls and Norma was to blame.
‘I’m on holiday,’ she answered, ‘I’m keeping out of it.’
She turned away before the packing tent and went by irrigation ponds into a strawberry field. Picking was finished there, but small berries lay hidden in the leaves. She walked along, eating the smallest – they were sweetest too – and dropping the rest into her basin. The plants were mulched on black polythene instead of straw and the berries were robbed of part of their name – and their flavour too? Every now and then one left a tinny taste.
She filled her basin, made a hill on top, some for John, and walked back, sweating lightly, through the boysenberries.
‘Norma,’ a voice called.
For a moment she did not recognize the woman: zinc on her nose, baseball cap shading her eyes.
‘Sandra? Yes, it is.’
‘I didn’t know you either in your garden-party hat.’
‘Are you working here?’
‘Yes, I pick every year. It’s my holiday. I’m one of those people who can’t sit still. Worms in my head.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘This place? I came because it’s closest to town. Never again.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s a mean bastard. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s born again.’
‘He’s my brother,’ Norma said.
‘Jesus, put my foot in it.’
‘From what I hear he’s got cause for complaint with some of our girls.’
‘They’re on holiday. You can’t blame them.’
‘But they’re taking money.’
>
‘They still get plenty done. The sun heats them up.’ She grinned. ‘So do the boys. I look the other way.’
‘You’ve been eating his boysenberries.’
‘Yeah, purple-stained mouth. It’s legitimate perks.’
‘Have a strawberry.’
‘Thanks.’ She took a handful. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about your brother.’
‘That’s all right. He wouldn’t approve of life if it wasn’t a battle. Sandra –’ she looked at the girl (wasn’t she a woman though, thirty-five at least?), pretty, hard, confident, quick-eyed, and did not think what she had to say would spoil her day – ‘there’s a poem called “Prize-giving Speech”.’
‘I was waiting for this.’
‘Was it only seventh-formers you read it to?’
‘Yes. We had some spare time. I thought of sending Julie Stanley out, but what the hell! It was her, I suppose?’
‘Yes, it was. Her father’s sent copies to the Board. There’s one word in particular that he doesn’t like.’
‘Sodomy, I can guess.’
‘I think it was rather poor judgement, Sandra –’
‘Look,’ she flared up, ‘I didn’t give it to them as a programme for revolt. Just an alternative view. It’s a kind of dramatic monologue, a bit like Browning. I wanted them to consider it as literature.’
‘And an alternative view.’
‘Yeah, sure. Why not? They’re hardly going to go out and rob banks.’
Norma ate a strawberry. The position was difficult. She did not know what to do and was angry with Sandra for making trouble; did not like her, liked her very much.
‘They’re going to want to get rid of you.’
‘That’s nothing new.’
‘I don’t want to get rid of you.’
‘Tha-anks. Gre-eat.’
‘Though I wonder why.’
Sandra looked savage, then suddenly grinned. ‘Stroppy bitches make the best schoolteachers.’
‘That’s debatable.’
‘Well, I’m one. And I’m the best English teacher you’ve got.’ Grinned again. ‘If you fire me you’ve struck a blow for mediocrity.’
