Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 13, Issue 2

by Graeme Simsion

  Review of Australian Fiction

  Volume Thirteen: Issue Two

  Zutiste, Inc.

  Review of Australian Fiction Copyright © 2015 by Authors.

  Contents

  Imprint

  Like it Was Yesterday Graeme Simsion

  Cigarettes and a Blue-eyed Doll Susannah Petty

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “Like it Was Yesterday” Copyright © 2015 by Graeme Simsion

  “Cigarettes and a Blue-eyed Doll” Copyright © 2015 by Susannah Petty

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  Like it Was Yesterday

  Graeme Simsion

  I

  I met Robert Smith on the day I returned to school from summer holidays.

  My memories of those years have, for the most part, consolidated themselves into summaries, generalities no longer rooted in time or place. My friends Bryan and Robert T, Cuisenaire rods, kids chanting Moriarty did a farty. Learning to count in Maori: tahi, rua, toru, whā.

  Our Standard Four teacher used to play Beethoven’s Fifth while we worked, and taught us binary arithmetic, preparing us for the age of computers. If I ever had a charismatic teacher, it was Mr Lorne. But I cannot conjure a specific image of him lowering the needle onto the record or demonstrating the Churchill salute to accompany the Morse code vee that opens the symphony. I know he did it, many times, but I can’t see him.

  I came second in the public speaking competition. I can remember that. I had expected to win. There were surely other individual moments of achievement, enlightenment and joy in my time at Te Paka Primary, but I have lost them. It was more than fifty years ago.

  But I remember the day I met Robert Smith. I remember the classroom I shared with him. I remember his trial and his punishment.

  Prior to Standard One, we were exempt from corporal punishment. But now, regardless of age, our academic level qualified us for the strap, and the discussion before the first assembly centred on who might find themselves in Miss Rutiti’s class. Miss Rutiti’s reputation for frequent and merciless dispensation of justice preceded her.

  Those of us who attended schools that employed the strap and cane can still cite the arcane regulations: only a female teacher could strap a girl; a student sentenced to a strapping on one hand could choose the hand; if you were strapped on both hands, you could not be strapped again the following day. And from England to Australia to the Colony of Southern Rhodesia, the limit was six. You might receive six on each hand, or on alternating hands for a week, they might be six of the very best, but no one in history had ever been sentenced to seven. The laws of physical pain and public humiliation were more compelling than anything we might learn about music or mathematics.

  Miss Rutiti only strapped boys. She sent girls to the headmistress, who, it was rumoured, often commuted the sentence to a verbal warning. The previous year, Sharon Schneidermann and Tui Te Kamo had made regular journeys from her room to the school office. Tui was Maori, and it seemed odd to us that Miss Rutiti would pick on her. We noticed colour. Sharon’s surname meant nothing to us.

  That first school day of 1963 was all about names. When the classes were called out at assembly, there was no mention of Miss Rutiti. I was assigned to Mrs Crick’s class, and one of my new classmates disgraced himself by crying with relief. It was short-lived. Miss Rutiti had married during the holidays and taken her husband’s name.

  ‘Good morning Standard One.’

  ‘Good morning Mrs Crick.’

  Where was the strap? It must be in the drawer. She didn’t carry it with her, like a gun in a holster, as the deputy headmaster did.

  ‘I need to know your names.’

  Did she feel our fear? Did she try to allay it? Or feed it? Who knows? But even the simple business of identification triggered a crisis.

  Middle row, halfway down. Mrs Crick’s ruler pointed to a bespectacled boy with black curly hair.

  ‘Robert,’ he said.

  ‘Robert?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘We already have a Robert.’

  Two Lindas had slipped by without comment. But apparently a class with more than one Robert was a problem.

  ‘What’s your surname, Robert?’

  ‘Moriarty, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘Good, we’ll call you Moriarty.’

  Except for the rhyming potential, which was discovered later, it wasn’t too bad a name. Which was fortunate, as I knew him for six more years and never heard him called Robert again. But there was worse to come. Last kid. Back row. The ruler progressed inexorably towards him. He was the third man in a parable, the punch line in a three-part joke. The kid who had cried with relief.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘Robert what?’

  ‘Robert Smith.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘Robert, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘All right, Robert Smith.’ She paused for a few moments, then: ‘You will be Smithy.’

  Smithy did not sound pretty, but it sounded right. A better fit than the Rob or Bob or Bobby that a less creative soul than Mrs Crick might have come up with. Smithy was an undersized, snotty, shoeless kid without friends. Dickens couldn’t have named him better.

  As the year progressed, we learned that the reality of Mrs Crick was less frightening than her reputation. It was possible to stay on the right side of her, and I personally felt reasonably safe. She may or may not have been a good teacher; I have no recollection of what we studied that year.

  But Smithy became, literally, her whipping boy.

  ‘Smithy, you’re a thief. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘Are you sorry?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘Speak up, Smithy. What’s the punishment for stealing?’

  ‘Six, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘Come out the front.’

  And we would watch, with a mixture of horror and relief that we were not in his place, as Mrs Crick clinically reduced Smithy to a blubbering mess. I recall him wetting himself once but can’t remember whether it was before or during the punishment.

  He would roll into a ball on the floor after a few blows, but always got up. We never wondered why, though staying on the floor would have frustrated Mrs Crick’s efforts. I can’t imagine her hauling him to his feet, then trying to hold him in position with one hand while wielding the strap with the other. Teachers seldom took any physical action outside the formality of the strapping. No raps over the knuckles with rulers, no pulling by the ears. It wasn’t necessary.

  I don’t know how many occasions I am remembering. Perhaps Smithy was strapped twenty times, perhaps only three or four.

  Mrs Crick was right: Smithy was a thief. What he stole was packed lunches. In fact, the only stealing I can recall at the school was of lunches, and Smithy was not the sole offender. But the school rules made no fine distinctions. Nor did we. Smithy smelled and was stupid and attracted trouble. Eating the contents of someone else’s lunchbox was gross. We stayed away from him.

  Then it stopped. Perhaps Mrs Crick’s punishment had succeeded as a deterrent, or maybe his parents or parent had found the wherewithal to feed their son. Mrs Crick did not choose another target. Unlike the deputy headmaster who carried the strap on his rounds and would share his relish for its use with the privileged and exempted group that made up his own class, she seemed to have no interest in punishment for its own sake. Was her victimisation of the marginalised meant to prepare them for the unfairness they would find in the wider wo
rld? Did she see herself as doing a favour to the Maori and the Jew and the poor boy?

  Then it happened again.

  A prissy girl who did not usually have much to say put her hand up. ‘Mrs Crick, someone stole my lunch.’

  ‘Smithy, did you steal Raewyn’s lunch?’

  ‘No, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘If you lie to me, it will be six on both hands. Did you steal her lunch? Own up and it will only be one hand.’

  ‘No, Mrs Crick.’ It was surely the reflexive denial of a child trying to avoid punishment. In the past he had been caught red handed. Maybe he thought he could get away with it this time.

  ‘Can anyone else tell me anything about what happened to Raewyn’s lunch?’

  Silence. Tension. Relief. In the absence of evidence linking the crime to Smith, his recent good behaviour and the uncharacteristic not-guilty plea, it seemed that Mrs Crick was going to let it go. Then:

  ‘I saw Smithy by the bags.’ The girl’s name was Pamela. She sat in front of me on the left side of the room and was one of a clique of girls who told tales. I think the rest of us would have protected Smithy. We didn’t like him, but watching him being punished was shocking, in the true sense of the word.

  We kept our bags in a common area or beside our desks. At playtime and lunchtime they were there for the pillaging.

  Miss Crick performed a creditable cross-examination. ‘Did you actually see him take anything?’

  Pause. ‘No.’ In her role as barrister, Mrs Crick could not have been expecting any other answer, nor, as judge, could she have given it any credence. Pamela had said she saw Smithy near the bags—if she had seen him in the act of stealing the lunch, she would surely have said so in the first place. But someone else had.

  ‘I saw him. I saw him stealing Raewyn’s lunch.’ Susan. Fat Susan. One of the clique.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw him open Raewyn’s bag. He took her lunch.’

  ‘Are you sure, Susan?’

  ‘I’m sure, Mrs Crick.’

  ‘You know what will happen to Smithy?’

  ‘He stole Raewyn’s lunch.’

  ‘Can anyone else help?’

  Ngaire could help. And she wasn’t one of the clique. ‘I saw Smithy eating a sandwich. At playtime.’

  ‘Smithy, I’m asking you again. Did you steal Raewyn’s lunch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you get the sandwich?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Who made it for you, then?’

  ‘My auntie.’

  ‘Not your mother?’

  ‘No. My auntie.’

  Someone laughed and the class followed. Smithy had blown a big hole in his story. Mothers made lunches, not aunties. Mrs Crick didn’t laugh.

  ‘I have to choose between two honest girls and Smithy. Who do you think is telling the truth?’

  I don’t remember us responding. Anyway, the question was rhetorical. We were not the jury, just the gallery. With Susan’s evidence and Smithy’s record, the verdict was inevitable.

  ‘Smithy, I’m giving you one last chance to own up and say you’re sorry. Otherwise I’m going to have to give you six more for lying.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Did you steal Raewyn’s lunch?’

  Smithy was crying but he managed to get it out. ‘Yes, Mrs Crick.’

  Guilty on both charges. Mrs Crick honoured the plea bargain and spared his right hand. If someone got six, they took them on their non-preferred hand. Not that Smithy was known as a writer or artist or sportsman. He wasn’t known for anything except his name and stealing lunches.

  I don’t recall the strapping. Smithy’s punishments are all one in my mind.

  Smithy returned to his place at the single desk in the back corner, crying as he always did. Mrs Crick put the strap away. Smithy was still sobbing loudly, to Mrs Crick’s annoyance, when Raewyn’s mother arrived. She was holding a paper bag.

  ‘Raewyn forgot her lunch.’

  Our world was turned on its head. I don’t think any of us had believed Smithy innocent. Even now, the memory of that moment shocks me, affects me viscerally, like no other from my childhood.

  Mrs Crick waited until Raewyn’s mother had left.

  ‘Stand up, Susan.’ Fat Susan stood. She was blubbering. ‘Apologise to the class. And to me. And Smithy.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Crick.’

  She sat down. That was it.

  Or would have been. In what I would later realise was a life-defining decision, I put my hand up. No deliberation; just a clever pick-up without consideration of the consequences. Objection, your Honour.

  ‘Mrs Crick, shouldn’t Susan get the strap?’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky.’ ‘Cheeky’ was, in those days and in that world, a strong reprimand, a message that one had stepped out of line. There was no suggestion of cuteness. I persisted anyway. As much as I could be at that age, I was outraged. I was one of the smart kids in the class, and I also sensed I had the mob on my side.

  ‘She lied. You said Smithy would get six for lying.’

  ‘That’s enough.’ I had never before incurred Mrs Crick’s wrath, but I was in trouble now. I shut up. My suggestion was hardly sophisticated or Christian and Mrs Crick may well have made the best of a bad situation. Susan was a first offender.

  Memory is, of course, fallible, and, over time, we shape events into a narrative that reflects well on us. But there is a reason that I am sure my recollection of confronting Mrs Crick is real. Later that week, she left the room for a few minutes. On her return, Pamela presented her with a piece of paper.

  ‘Susan and I made a list of everybody who spoke while you were out of the room.’

  Mrs Crick took the list, looked at it, and called out a single name.

  ‘I’m disappointed. You used to be one of the best-behaved boys in the class. Come out the front.’

  So, at seven years old, I was initiated into the tradition of corporal punishment with three strokes on my left hand. The second and third hurt quite a bit. I still remember those three strokes, as I remember Smithy being given his name and his much more severe and totally undeserved punishment. I remember them better than friendship, better than knowledge, better than Beethoven.

  II

  There’s a Bruce Springsteen song: ‘Glory Days’. I first heard it driving in France in 1984. I’d picked up an American hitchhiker for company, and he had a cassette of Born in the USA. By the time we got to Italy, I knew every word of the album. A few years later, a woman I was dating played ‘I’m on Fire’ to set the mood that the song title suggested, and transported me straight back to the French Alps with Chuck pulling at my arm to stop the car so he could throw up.

  But, ‘Glory Days’: there’s a verse about the girl at school who could turn all the boys’ heads. Out of reach to the singer, back then. But times change and now she’s a single mother, happy to share a drink with our man after she’s put the kids to bed.

  When I was in high school or, more precisely, intermediate school—a thousand pubescent New-Zealand-born British subjects thrown together to sing Kipling’s ‘Recessional’ to the old soldiers; learn woodwork or home economics, according to gender; and, if they were lucky, make their first sexual forays—Maddie Perfect was that girl. Now I’m sitting in a bar in Wellington waiting for her to join me for a drink.

  It’s a date, absolutely a date, in the sense that we are both hoping it might lead to something more. Whatever the emails said, neither of us believes I’ve flown from Melbourne only because ‘we should catch up sometime’. She’s booked dinner upstairs.

  I found her on OldFriends, a website for connecting with schoolmates. More exactly, and flatteringly, she found me. I hung out my shingle—Lawyer,Recently Single—and a week later, Maddie was in touch. Recently single too (if you count four years as ‘recently’). Doctor Madeleine Perfect. Employed by Healthcare NZ. Her profile photo looked like it had been taken at a conference: she was at a lectern and it wa
s hard to make out much beyond an impression of professionalism and elegance.

  The obvious question: if I wanted a date, why not use a dating site, perhaps even one in my own country? The simple answer: shared memories. When Caroline left, she took all the photos. It was more symbolic than anything: I was not in the habit of thumbing through photo albums, and it was months before I realised they had gone. But then I was acutely conscious that I had no physical souvenirs of half of my life. On reflection, I’d rather she’d followed tradition and scissored my suits.

  More importantly, she took my friends. Our friends turned out to be primarily her friends. Or they chose to side with the innocent party. When Maddie emailed, it was more than a chance to revisit an unrequited desire, to let the adult man take the place of the clumsy adolescent; it was a chance to talk to someone who shared a past, however distant.

  ‘Can I get you a wee appetiser while you wait?’

  My server has a kiwi accent you could cut with a knife. Get comes out as git, appetiser as epputiser. I talked like that once.

  I don’t have a chance to answer about the epputiser, because Maddie walks in, surveys the room, and makes straight for me. She’s tall, taller than me; heels; pencil skirt and …

  ‘Don’t say it,’ she says.

  I stand up. ‘Say what?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. You can’t believe how old I look.’ It’s exactly what I’m thinking. At least her accent isn’t as thick as our server’s. And she has a huge smile.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You look—’

  ‘As soon as I saw you, I thought, God, he looks so old. So I guess you must be thinking the same about me.’ She laughed. ‘We’ll get used to it. It’s been forty-five years, for God’s sake. All at once.’ She’s laughing as we sit. ‘So, now we’re going to look at each other until we see the person we remember. How long were you married?’

  ‘Twenty-eight years.’

  ‘So your ex can’t have been much younger than me. You just had time to get used to it as it happened. Unless you didn’t. But, I figure if you were looking for a younger woman, you wouldn’t be here, right?’