by John Marsden
Half way through the afternoon he lay on his bed and cried a little into his pillow. His thoughts were for himself; his misery was his own. He did not know that his tears were the only tears shed by anyone as a result of Mr Woodforde’s death.
Later, as he hung out of his window, he heard two Americans talking in the square below.
‘. . . yeah, I heard some guy hit the eject button, out in one of the old laboratories.’
‘Yeah, Woodfull, some name like that. Big star once, according to Gary. Child prodigy, you know? Could spell physics when he was six years old.’
‘Hell, I still can’t spell it. So what was he doing out there? Was he working on anything?’
‘Just playing around, I think. They let him have one of the old labs, out of respect. Gary said there was nothing in there, just books, and piles of papers, calculations. But the numbers didn’t add up to anything.’
‘I heard he was dead three days before they found him.’
‘Not three days. A day and a half maybe. Yeah, pretty sad. That’s how we’ll all end up.’
They walked across to the canteen, unconscious of the boy in the leaves above them. James, precisely and sharply, peeled a leaf from a twig and sat, twirling it in his fingers. Then he dropped it and watched it fall, spinning, knocked into new alignments by branches and air pockets and other leaves. At last it landed on the ground where it lay still and lifeless. A moment later a security officer walking to Building H crushed it under his unfeeling boot.
*
A LONG TIME AGO their parents had gone out, James wasn’t sure where, but he remembered them saying, ‘Be good kids, we won’t be long.’ James was too absorbed in a game he was playing with a long thin string of ants to take much notice. He was trying to build a zigzag highway for the ants, trying to train them to take a new route.
While he was doing that, Ellie was giving her parents a nice surprise by cleaning the house. At the age of three, her idea of cleaning the house quickly and efficiently was to drag the garden hose in, turn on the tap, and wash down all the furniture.
She’d been at it some time when their parents came home, so the house was pretty waterlogged. They’d had to throw a lot of stuff out. The carpet had grown mouldy and the budgie, which had been soaked, got pneumonia and died. It had been a long time before things were back to normal. The funny thing was that James had got in more trouble than Ellie. That didn’t seem fair to him. He’d never been able to figure it out.
And there were other times, too. Like in Grade Four when he had a teacher called Mrs Kittenmaster, who at home he always referred to as Kitty, or Pussy. When Ellie came to the school fete James took her to meet Mrs Kittenmaster. He said to Mrs Kittenmaster, proudly, This is my sister, Ellie,’ and to Ellie he said, This is my teacher,’ and Ellie shyly, innocently whispered, ‘Hello Mrs Pussy.’
It had been a while before he could laugh about that one.
She was a good kid though. He’d been sick with scarlet fever and she’d been terribly upset, hanging round his room all the time and sending in her Teddies and cooking things for him and lending him everything she could think of. She was OK.
THE TELEVISION NEWS was coming to an end. James sat on his windowsill, languidly watching the small set on the white cupboard. The sports news was over, and the sharp-looking man who read the main stories filled the screen again. ‘This week,’ he was saying, ‘is Missing Persons’ Week. All week we’ll be featuring case histories supplied to us by the Missing Persons Bureau and the Red Cross. If you have any information about these people, or anyone else whom you know to be on Police files, we’ll be giving you a number to call. In many of these cases, grave fears are held for the person’s safety.
This morning we have Carla Robinson.’ A photograph of an attractive smiling teenager appeared. The newsreader’s voice went on: ‘Carla disappeared twenty months ago on August 2nd at 3.50 pm near her home in Krogmann. She was thirteen years old. Carla was last seen waiting to cross the road at Krogmann Post Office. She was on her way to post some letters for her mother. The letters were never posted, and neither Carla nor the letters have been seen since. Police believe she may still be alive, but have no clue as to her present whereabouts. If you can help, please ring 008 42 3444. You need not give your name, and all information will be treated as confidential.
James was hunched forward, watching the set. His hands were clasped around his knees and his mouth was open. It was several minutes after the program ended before he broke his concentration. Then he got up and went to his desk, where he added the name ‘Carla Robinson’ to a list on the wall. The name immediately above Carla’s was that of Benjamin S. Briggs. There was a note beside his name: 38° 20’ 15”, 17° 15’ 25”, December 5, 1972, 3 pm.
Picking up his schoolbag James went swiftly out of his room and down the stairs in a mathematical progression, jumping first one step, then two, then three, and finally four, with a resounding leap. The front door was open but he went out the side door instead. He leapt off the verandah, steered a course in and out of a series of shrubs, then squeezed through a gap in the fence. The Director was walking decisively across the square, face set towards the Computer Centre. He did not see James but James saw him. He crouched behind a tree until the Director was gone, then continued on his meandering journey towards school.
When he arrived in class, lessons had already started. He slipped into the room and sat in a corner, half obscured by a filing cabinet and a pot plant. The students were engaged in discussion of a novel they had been studying, Displaced Person. The first question James heard asked by the teacher was, ‘Why does Graeme have a poster of Mars, the surface of Mars, on his bedroom wall?’
‘Because the world he’s living in is equally grey and bare,’ James thought.
A hand went up and a girl answered, ‘Because it’s as alien as the world that he’s living in.’
Yes, that’s right,’ the teacher agreed. ‘And what about the movie, Beauty and the Beast! Why does the author have Graeme going to a cinema to see that?’
‘Graeme is like the Beast,’ James thought. ‘For a time, he becomes a beast himself.’ As he was thinking that, a boy over the other side of the room was explaining, ‘Graeme goes through a time where he knows what it’s like to be a beast. He’s a sort of beast in the modern world.’
James idly plucked a leaf from the pot plant. The plant was about a metre tall, with shiny green leaves that looked artificial. He flicked the leaf at the soil from which the plant grew. Then he stripped off another leaf, and planted it in the soil, stalk first, so it stood there like a tiny green noticeboard. He planted another leaf beside it, then scattered a few more randomly around the base of the plant. Within a few moments, rather to his surprise, he realised he had come to the last leaf. With only a flicker of hesitation he removed it too and dropped it on the floor. The plant stood, bare and ugly. Was it still alive? James did not know. It looked like an oil rig, or a rocket launching tower. James had thought that by stripping away its leaves he would reveal its secrets. But it had no secrets. Under all its coverings it was just an old stick. The leaves were part of the plant, not just a covering. In stripping its protection to reveal its mystery, he had stripped away its mystery. The implications of this shocked him. He turned away.
‘James! Oh, James. How could you do that? What have you done?’ The teacher was swelling in size as she came towards him. Oh, you’re hopeless. Get away from there. Marie! Marie!’
The teacher’s aide hurried across the room, ‘Sorry, Mrs Chalmers. I was checking Errol’s homework.’
‘Take him over to the language lab. He can listen to a tape. Oh, my poor plant. It just makes you want to give up.’
TO GET BACK from school James tried to take a new route each day. 1f he could not go by different streets he at least varied the way he walked, or the place where he crossed the road, or the side of the street he used. But as the months passed it became harder and harder to make meaningful changes. So he was delig
hted one afternoon when he noticed that the gates to the football oval were unlocked. This meant he could take a short cut to Wilson Street. He walked through the gates and entered a narrow gap between two grandstands. He emerged into the sun again and clambered across a low fence on to the playing area.
There were about ten boys kicking a football but they were far enough away for James to ignore them. He set out across the oval, a vast plain of green. He took a semi-circular path, to avoid the cricket pitch. As he walked he looked down, watching the way his feet slurred through the wet grass. He did not notice one of the boys who, with a laugh to his friends, was rubbing the football in a patch of mud until it was well coated. He did however hear the boy call out ‘Hey, you!’ Startled, James looked up. As soon as he did the boy, with a huge kick, booted the ball high towards him. James was trapped by it as surely as a horse on a halter. He could not, and did not move. Instead he stood with mouth open and watched the ball drop. It landed about five metres away from him and began bouncing vigorously, with high adolescent hops. But James still made no move. The ball’s energy faded; the bounces became limp and weak.
There was something so pathetic about the ball’s wasted contortions that even the boys on the other side of the oval did not move until it finally stopped. But a moment later the boy who had kicked it suddenly began screaming, as though a string had been snapped.
‘Pick it up, you little veg!’
James did not respond. He seemed not to understand what was expected of him. His passivity enraged the boy further.
‘Pick it up!’ he yelled, starting to walk towards James. He received no answer. The boy himself did not speak again, but continued walking, purposefully and silently. The other boys lounged and watched. Some were smiling, some looked bored, a couple seemed concerned, annoyed. Although James trembled as the boy approached he did not move; indeed he did not take his eyes off his face. Time had become stagnant; the boy, without walking faster, continued to stride towards James, pressing the space between them. Then he reached James and with a swing of a clenched forearm knocked him down. James was astounded to find himself lying on the grass. The sky seemed shaken and so did the ground. He looked away from the boy, towards the goalposts at the end of the field. The boy stood over him for a moment, then, frustrated, swore and stamped away to the ball. He had to wipe it clean before he could pick it up but, that done, he gathered it and kicked it to his friends. He ran back to them without another glance at James.
James lay in the grass for some minutes. After a while the ball rolled near him again, this time accidentally. A younger boy collected it then came over and looked curiously at him.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
James did not reply and the boy ran off to his friends, calling, ‘I think he’s retarded or something.’
James got up suddenly and walked away. He came to the fence again and doggedly climbed over it. As he crossed Wilson Street he decided that he would walk down the street in huge zigzags, left to right then right to left, then left to right. . .
SOMETIMES I LIKE it like this, and sometimes I don’t. Some days are peaceful, some days are bad. On the peaceful days I think the bad days don’t matter but on the bad days nothing could be worse. Those are the days I can’t sleep and I can’t wake. I think about dying and every time I hear and see a word about death I lose my breath and my heart gets heavy and wants to stop. It happens when I hear an ambulance or see a TV show where someone dies or see an advertisement like ‘Deadly to Insects’ or hear a song or catch someone talking about death. I lie in bed and watch the clock and time never passes so slowly while I think about how long it’ll be before my turn comes and how bad it’ll be.
Once I went into a church. It was so cool and quiet in there. It was like they’d caught Nature inside stone. The light fell across the floor in squares of life and death. High above, a fan slowly turned. I walked along the sides, scared to go in the middle or near the front. All along the wall were small sad stories. ‘Aged 19.’ ‘Aged 23.’ ‘Aged 8.’ A man dressed in black came out of one doorway and walked slowly to another. He opened the door there but, changing his mind, closed it and went back out through the first one. I held my breath but he didn’t see me.
I slipped along one of the seats, then cut across the central aisle and slid onto a seat on the right hand side. On the board in front of me, but higher than me, were some numbers. I closed my eyes and sat there, wondering when it’d happen to me.
IN THE MURKY grey of a Melbourne twilight Tiffany found she could not rely on others to keep out of her way. She had to concentrate more than she wanted on the people and obstacles that crowded the footpath. It left little time to think about her client, even though his name flared from every newspaper poster and was shouted by every newsboy’s voice. It was not until she was on the tram and able to sink gratefully into an offered seat that she could concentrate on him, and his limited, inevitable future.
‘Inevitable,’ she thought grimly, ‘if only for political reasons’. Americans had become so unpopular with civilians. She had already been told unofficially by powerful friends that there would be no reprieve. There was no sympathy for him as a man and no special circumstances to plead on his behalf.
Funny, she had not expected to be moved herself by any sympathy for him. As the only woman at the Bar she was used to getting unpopular cases. She remembered untying the pink ribbon, in her still, silent chambers, with a sense of hopelessness. Perhaps if she had approached it more positively he might have fared better. . . with this thought she put her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t take any more clients on capital charges. It was too hard to leave the cases behind when you went home at nights.
A voice interrupted her: ‘Excuse me miss, me and me friend were wondering. . .’ She opened her eyes. A middle-aged woman with an old coat and shapeless hat was peering into her face. ‘Were you the lady we saw in court today? With that American fellow, the murderer?’
She nodded and gave a little smile. This happened occasionally.
‘My word, you did speak well for him. But the jury didn’t take long did they? Fancy you being on the same tram!’ Tiffany nodded her head again and closed her eyes, but the voice went on: ‘Me and me friend, we think he must have been one of them deserters. They do say there’s a lot of them up in the bush.’ Tiffany did not respond. She could not be bothered saying to the woman, as she had already said to her friends, to her colleagues, to the Court, that the American Army had done thorough checks and had no record of him. Whoever he was, he was not one of theirs. But people believed what they wanted to believe. Calling him a deserter was a convenient explanation. And the alternative. . . well, what was the alternative? A confusing, frustrating, clouded riddle.
From the first he had made no effort to assist her. He had not even instructed her how to plead, just shrugged when she asked him. The evidence had been overwhelming of course. Largely circumstantial, but still overwhelming. The only thing to be said on his behalf was that his victim wasn’t much of a loss to society. A string of convictions for sex offences, and drug importations. . . all small time, but still. . . of course the law, quite rightly, didn’t take the moral character of the victim into account. . . as Mr Justice Adler had said:
‘There are circumstances under which the law recognises that a victim may have contributed to his own fate. But you have chosen to remain silent on this possibility, as you have on a good many other matters. In the absence of any evidence on motive the Court cannot speculate as to mitigating circumstances. Despite learned counsel’s eloquent strivings on your behalf, my statutory duty is clear.’ And he had donned the black cap.
Afterwards, at Simpson’s request, and ignoring her usual rules, she had visited him in the cell under the courtroom, where he was being held until the crowds dispersed. To her own surprise, she had felt relaxed with him, as though they were suddenly old friends.
‘Won’t you tell me a little more?’ she had asked. He too
seemed to have changed; for the first time she saw him smile.
‘John Simpson,’ he said, and shrugged.
‘No you’re not,’ she answered. ‘Who are you really?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to ask you one thing: are there grounds for an appeal?’
She hesitated, then looked at him levelly. ‘No,’ she answered.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I expected that. But I wasn’t sure about Australian law. Thank you for being straight with me.’ He paused and then went on, ‘Ma’am, I do want to thank you for your efforts. I guess I’ve been a frustrating client, but that’s the way it goes.’ There had been a few more sentences in the same vein, before she made her excuses and left, but he had remained as controlled, as calm, as enigmatic as ever. Now she was unlikely to see him again; now there were only traces left; the memory of his flat New England voice and the cries of the newsboys: ‘Mystery killer to hang! Mystery killer to hang!’
The sentence was carried out three weeks later: it was 1942 and there was no time for protracted legal affairs. He became a footnote in a dusty law book, quickly forgotten by a public which was becoming sated with headlines of spectacular catastrophes, triumphant victories, appalling disasters. Tiffany Guinness remembered him, but naturally enough her memories faded as the years went by.
