Every other year Jed went back to visit relatives in South Africa, and that meant a holiday for Jonty and his mum. His mother hardly spoke when her husband was around. She was just there: ironing the great man’s shirts, doing up his shoelaces and looking flustered when he complained about some small thing that was wrong with her cooking.
‘How long has he been gone?’
‘About eighteen months.’ Jonty’s voice remains flat. ‘He pissed off not long after I finished my course. Didn’t come back.’
Tom has no idea what to say to any of this. ‘You hear from him?’
‘A bit. Sometimes. Hardly ever.’
‘Who looks after the farm?’
‘We leased it out to neighbours.’
Tom is glad of that, too. Jonty’s father had inherited a good little farm from an uncle but within a few years had managed to run it right down through over-stocking and neglecting the fences and animals. He was more interested in local politics and, in spite of his unpopularity, had got himself voted onto the local council a few times.
‘So, what street do you and your mum live in?’
‘Hobson Crescent.’
Tom shudders. Lillian used to live in a cottage only a few streets from there. Jonty would have to pass that house to get to work at Thistles.
‘You work long hours?’ Tom hopes Jonty can hear the question that he really wants to ask. How do you feel when you pass her house, you sick fucker?
‘It’s okay,’ Jonty replies. ‘Suits me okay.’
There is a few moments pause.
‘So we’ll catch up?’ Jonty asks.
‘Sure,’ Tom replies shortly.
‘Be good to see you, Mulla.’
‘Yeah, okay . . . Jonty.’
Tom puts the phone down and goes straight for the bathroom. He turns on the taps and pulls off his clothes, his brain chopping from one possible scenario to another like an axe through a dead branch. Jonty and me in the same town again? No way. Can’t do it. Absolutely not on. So, back to uni? Nah. Overseas could be good? No money. Stay here in town living with Mum? No. So what will I do? What can I do?
The hot water sloshes over his head and shoulders, and he lifts his face into its steady stream. Nothing. He can think of nothing. Photography positions are hard to get, and this one has been teed up for months. Apart from that, he’s been looking forward to spending time with his old man. Since the split, he’s only seen his dad for a quick meal or movie when he’s been in the city for a court appearance, or when he dropped by to pick up Nellie and Ned. They talked on the phone, of course, but it’s not the same. The truth is, Tom misses him.
Okay, he’d let Jonty down, no question. No matter how mad or stupid or down right bad a person is, they should be able to count on their friends. But did that mean that he, Tom, had to pay for the rest of his life? It was three years on for Christ’s sake! He was just a kid then. Way out of his depth. Shocked, scared, confused. He didn’t know shit.
So why should he put off his plans now? Let that drug-crazed jerk affect his life? No way. There were over thirty thousand people in Warrnambool. It had to be big enough for him and Jonty van der Weihl to miss each other. If they met by chance he’d give him the message. Anyway, by next week Tom would be working in a busy newspaper-office. There won’t be time to think. All this shit will have taken care of itself.
He turns the taps off and vigorously rubs himself dry with the towel. In some weird way the phone conversation has energised him. His dull mood has given way to something sharper. He is in tune again: keen to get on with his day. This is good.
Tom met Jonty on the first day of Grade Six at Wattle Street Primary. Tom was bouncing a basketball on the grey concrete, about to join the other boys shooting baskets, when his attention was caught by a skinny blonde kid about his own age. The kid was standing over near the fence talking to two tradesmen in overalls who were putting in a new gas pipe. Tom moved closer for a better look.
Wattle Street Primary didn’t have a school uniform, but this kid was dressed in the full rig-out of a private school: short, grey, well-pressed pants; a grey short-sleeved shirt; long socks; black lace-up shoes and even a little yellow-and-grey striped tie. Part of Tom almost felt sorry for him. The poor geek didn’t realise that the other kids were going to eat him alive.
Tom couldn’t write him off completely though, because he was talking so easily to the workmen. Tom couldn’t hear what the boy was saying but could see that the men were taken with him. He was making them laugh. How come this new boy wasn’t behaving like a new boy? How come he wasn’t slinking around the fence feeling shy and awkward, waiting for someone to be friendly to him? The workers had stopped for a smoke and were looking him up and down as he talked, as though they found him mightily amusing. Tom moved in closer still, curious to find out what he was saying. Too late. The bell went and the men waved the kid off to class. When the strange kid didn’t seem inclined to move, one of workmen reached out and tousled his hair.
‘Time for school, matey,’ he said kindly.
‘Okay,’ Tom heard the kid say back in a weird posh accent, ‘but at least think about it.’ This made both the men burst into hoots of laughter.
‘Okay! We’ll think about it!’ one of them said. ‘Now, off you go.’
By this stage everyone was streaming over to the main building to form lines, and although Tom was on the point of joining them – wanted to join them, in fact – he found that he was still standing there watching the new kid.
‘Off you go, professor,’ the younger workman said.
‘Very well.’ The kid shrugged, then he turned around and saw Tom looking at him. ‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ he said, pointing at the pipeline. ‘That thing can hold eighty megawatts of gas at any one time.’
Tom didn’t answer. For a start, he didn’t like the weird accent, and he certainly had no idea what the kid was talking about. The strange boy stared at Tom thoughtfully for a moment or two. Then he held out his hands for Tom’s ball, as though they were already mates and he was completely confident that Tom would oblige. Bloody cheek! Tom almost turned away. Didn’t he know he looked like a total loser in that get up?
But now that he was up close, Tom saw that the kid’s tie was loose and his socks were down around his ankles, his hair was all messed-up and he was chewing gum. The uniform clearly wasn’t his idea. So Tom threw the ball to him, and the boy had it back so fast that Tom missed it. That had him on his toes! Only the year before, Tom had been voted Wattlebank’s Sportsman of the Year. Having to go after a ball thrown from only two metres away was humiliating in the extreme. But there was no victory in the newcomer’s eyes, nor any smart-arsed expression on his face. They moved off towards where the others were lining up, throwing the ball between them.
‘I’m Jonty van der Weihl, by the way.’ The boy stopped suddenly and stuck out his hand. ‘And you are?’
What? Tom looked down at the outstretched hand. He’d never shaken hands with someone his own age before and he wanted to tell this sissy little dork where he could stick his hand and his stupid name. Jonty?
‘As in Jonty Rhodes!’ the boy said with a proud grin, and then, incredulously, when Tom made no reply, ‘Great fielder. You don’t like cricket?’ The kid shrugged and took his hand away. ‘Anyway, no matter.’
This was maddening. Tom loved cricket. He and his dad used to drive the rest of the family mad watching the tests all through the summer. He put his mind into overdrive. Jonty Rhodes? Of course! Damn it!
They were coming up behind all the other kids who were milling around trying to find their class groups. When Tom saw no one was looking, against all his better judgement, he decided to risk it.
‘Tom,’ he muttered, holding out his hand.
‘All very well, Tom!’ Jonty grinned as he took Tom’s hand and shook it firmly, eyes blazing with good humour. ‘But which one are you? My bet is there are probably a dozen Toms in this school!’
What? ‘I’m the only one i
n my class,’ Tom replied sourly. You dickhead.
Jonty sighed, as though Tom’s surly attitude was some tedious business that they both had to endure before they could get onto more important things.
‘Mullaney,’ Tom said, deciding then and there to give him the flick as soon as possible. Here was a head case of the first order! Had to be. Better go find some old mates. But since his best mate, Pete, had gone back to the UK with his family, and his next-best mate, Henry Rosen, had broken his leg over the holidays, Tom didn’t feel quite as confident as usual about who he’d be mucking around with. He moved off to where Jason Searly and Murray Peters were teasing some poor girl about her plaits. Maybe they wouldn’t be as boring as he thought they were going to be when he’d woken up that morning.
But when Tom went into class he found he was sitting next to Jonty van der Weihl and by morning recess he felt lucky. It was refreshing being with someone who didn’t feel any need to hide the fact that they read history books for fun and knew every capital city of every country in the world. (At that stage Tom liked to study hard, too, although he didn’t broadcast it.) Not only was Jonty a wealth of knowledge on any number of school subjects, but he could also rattle off Melbourne Cup winners back to 1975 and AFL premiership sides back to the sixties, and he seemed to be an authority on cricket scores and personalities.
On top of his cleverness, Jonty had a devilish sense of fun about him. What’s more, his sense of humour didn’t rely on belittling anyone else. Not even the truly pathetic Grade Six teacher, Miss Sue. Within the first two hours of school that day, it was obvious that Jonty had read more than she had, knew more geography and general knowledge, and could beat her at maths problems and crossword puzzles. In fact, the eleven-year-old ran rings around the teacher in every possible way, and yet . . . he didn’t even bother to make her feel bad about it.
There was no one-upmanship in Jonty. He even made Jenny part of things in the most natural way. Jenny was the fat, disabled kid in the wheelchair who everyone ignored and who had trouble articulating her words clearly. Jonty chose her when they had to pick partners for the spelling bee. At recess he pushed her wheelchair up through the crowd of kids, right to the sideline of the basketball court so she could see all the action of the game the staff were playing against the Grade Sixers.
Within half a day of Jonty being there, Jenny was a person you could crack jokes with and say hello to without fear that anyone would think the worse of you for it. By the end of lunchtime, Jonty van der Weihl had become Jonno, and by the end of that first day everyone loved him. By the end of the week, he and Tom were best mates.
Tom throws his stuff – computer, clothes, phone – into his trusty backpack and tosses it, along with his camera case, into the back of the station wagon. He hurries back inside, writes a note to his mum reminding her to send on his mail, locks the windows and doors, crashes back outside onto the wet, quiet street and slumps into his car. The front seat looks, as usual, like a bombsite. He peers out the windscreen. The people walking by and the occasional passing car seem somehow unreal, distant, and as beside the point as some badly-rendered charcoal sketch. Nothing for it then. All systems go. Tom slams shut the door, throws an apple core and two empty soft-drink bottles into the back seat, and starts the engine. Why did it take me so long to get away? He’d been piss-farting around for hours getting ready. Not hard to figure out that some part of him still didn’t want to go. But now that he is in the car he can’t wait to be away. He needs to drive and drive and . . . drive.
Within an hour he’s past Geelong, travelling down the Princes Highway to Colac, keeping to the speed limit and obeying all the rules. Seeing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling like an extension of the car: chugging forward, burning fuel, filling up space. He tries not to think of the conversation with Jonty. When odd snatches come back he refuses to let them take hold. Jonty is in the past. He has nothing to do with anything in Tom’s life anymore.
Mostly he manages. But coming into Colac, Tom looks down at his hands. Even after two hours of driving, they are still gripping the wheel like claws, the knuckles almost white. He shakes one and then the other, willing himself to loosen up. Shit but he is glad to be out of that trendy plush Carlton pad! Everything from the walls to the curtains and furnishings are in muted shades of cream and white, with the occasional splash of charcoal. Jeez, Mum, you swallow a copy of Home Beautiful or something? He has a sudden image of the inside of his own head: big mounds of white dust, salt or sand, a never-ending desert just sitting there waiting to be blown away.
Three hours into his journey, almost out of petrol and starving, Tom stops to fill up in Camperdown and buys a pie, a jumbo, extra-strong coffee and a big custard bun from a nearby café. He leans his bum against the car and wolfs down the food. When the hot meat and pastry hit his stomach he begins to feel easier.
Apart from a steady trickle of women coming and going from the supermarket, a few men rolling to and from the corner pub and the ubiquitous half-dozen kids tooling around on their bikes, nothing much is happening. A group of chattering teenage girls wanders past, eying him up and down like he is something from Mars, before resuming their chatter. They are practising, no doubt, for the guys who’ll roar up and down the street later doing their burnouts. Nothing changes. These places are all the same, so what am I doing here?
Tom drains his coffee, crushes up his paper bags and chucks them in the bin. Three years before, he’d left in a panic, a black cloud hanging over him. Not sure if people despised him or felt sorry for him. He’s heading straight back into that. Tom pulls open the car door. Nothing will be different. What if he can’t hack it?
He is belting out the other side of town when he catches sight of the Old Cemetery sign. The shock registers as a sudden lurch in his guts and his right foot goes for the brake, then eases off again almost as quickly. What would be the point?
This trip is about seeing his old man and furthering his professional experience. He can’t afford to be distracted by anything else. Anyway, the radio said it was going to piss down sometime soon and big dark clouds have been building along the horizon since Geelong. His 1992 Commodore is a rust bucket; from a purely practical point of view it would be stupid to push his luck.
Even so, it seems somehow offensive, to just pass by. Tom sighs, flips the indicator, brakes onto the gravel and waits for the road to clear.
The cemetery, about a kilometre up the dirt track, is just a couple of acres of land fenced off from the surrounding sheep farming country. He pulls up beside the only other car and gets out. The breeze has turned into a rush of bitter wind, so he buttons up his coat and winds his scarf tight around his neck. Absurdly nervous now, he takes himself through the big new silver gate, past the elaborate nineteenth and early twentieth century headstones, into the modern section.
A line of pencil pines shelters one edge of the cemetery from the wind. They stand up sharply against the deepening green of the surrounding hills. A few other droopy black wattles and she-oaks are dotted amongst the graves, like sad relatives who have no idea of how to dress for a formal occasion. Tom stuffs his hands into his pockets and makes his way down the weed-lined path towards the far eastern corner.
Somewhere here. Gradually, his ears become attuned to the small sounds: the rustle of leaves in the wind, the tiny birds flittering about, far-off trucks on the highway and sheep and lambs baaing for each other.
At last he reaches it. Lillian Joy Wishart (nee Hickey). Right next to her father, Douglas John Hickey, who died thirty years before. They are lying side by side – a father and his daughter – under simple, polished-granite headstones that give only the basic facts: full name, the years of birth and death and Rest in Peace. She must have been about twelve when he died.
Tom stops hearing or even thinking. He is aware of a hollow space opening up right down inside: airy, spacious and slightly scary. He squats down, a rush of tears rising in his throat, and reaches out to touch the granite where her name has be
en gouged out so neatly. Gone. This is all that is left of her.
The first time Tom saw Lillian Wishart she was settling herself down in the back row of old Alan Murch’s VCE history class, looking nervous. The class had been told the week before that an older woman was going to join them for the Friday morning double in European History and then for Literature in the afternoon. It was explained that this person couldn’t take night classes because of work commitments, and that the class should do their best to make her welcome. No one thought anything of it until she arrived.
She was wearing a long black dress, embroidered with colourful flowers around the neck and sleeves. Her dark hair was all over the place. Curls sprang out from the clips and combs that were pushed in all over her head to keep them in place. Up to that point, Tom had never really seen an older woman. His mum was nice-looking he supposed. But she was normal and dressed in a pretty standard way for someone her age – straight skirts, pants and shirts from ordinary shops like David Jones and Myer, with well-cut, neat hair and subtle make-up. The other mothers were like that, too, and so were the female teachers.
But Lillian Wishart was something else. Every Friday she wore dresses that were flowing and frilled and sometimes old-fashioned. She wrapped herself in long shawls and bright belts and wore lace-up, chunky, black nurses shoes almost always, unless it was very hot and then it was white rubber thongs with brightly painted toenails. She wore stuff in her hair: little combs, scarves, even weird bits of lace. No make-up except dark lipstick that made her mouth look as though she’d been eating beetroot. She carried her books around in an old scuffed-about leather briefcase that Tom secretly thought was very cool. There was something defiant about the very look of her, and something playful, too. She was using her clothes to say something about herself. But what exactly? Tom didn’t know, but it interested him. He found himself wondering what her opinions might be about all kinds of different issues.
Somebody's Crying Page 2
