Checkers

by John Marsden

  So I can sympathise with Emine. Funny really, I sympathise with everyone in here, even Cindy.

  Everyone except one person.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The more Checkers grew, the funnier his coat looked. The black and white squares got more conspicuous, and because none of them matched up, he looked like a weird moving chess game. People laughed at them, at him, but he didn’t mind. He trotted self-importantly down the street, taking no notice of people, intent on the lampposts and garden walls and footpaths. He could have been mistaken for a piece of paving that escaped from a driveway and went feral.

  Normally I hate to stand out. I don’t like being conspicuous. I was conspicuous when I was walking Checkers, but it wasn’t the same, because the attention was directed at him, not me. Anyway I liked him so much I wouldn’t have cared if he looked like the Abominable Snowman.

  We got pretty conspicuous when the Advocate broke its story, of course. Over the years I’d become used to being envied by some girls. I hadn’t noticed it when I was little, but by about Grade 4 I knew what was going on. I’d worked out what counted. You had to have the big house, the right car, the glamorous-looking mum. And by Grade 4, I knew our house and our cars and my mum were good enough.

  In those days, even when Rider Group got negative publicity, it never altered the main things. Rider Group was so big, so powerful, that nothing really touched it. But this story was different. It was too big to go away. The papers, TV, radio, they all ran with it. Reporters started calling the house, even turning up at odd times of day looking for a story. Dad and Mum kept warning us not to talk to them: not that we needed much warning. Like I said, we’d been taught from our cradles to be discreet, not to repeat things that we heard from Jack or Dad.

  I got into a routine when a reporter came to the house. Mark usually left it to me to answer the bell. I’d open the door and there’d be this smooth-looking man or woman, sometimes with a photographer, sometimes not.

  ‘Yes?’ I’d go.

  ‘Uh, is Mr Warner home?’

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘Do you know what time he’ll be back?’

  ‘Yes, but he doesn’t give interviews at home. You’ll have to call his office.’

  ‘Are you his daughter?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not allowed to talk to you guys.’

  ‘Well, could I just ask you . . .’

  ‘Sorry, I think the washing machine’s flooding again.’ And I’d close the door.

  As time went on, my excuses for shutting the door got more and more bizarre, till Mark used to listen from the dining room, his hand over his mouth to stop himself laughing. ‘Sorry, I think the oven’s just exploded . . . Sorry, I’m missing “Wheel of Fortune” . . . my baby needs its nappies changing . . . my brother’ll escape if I don’t get in there and tie him up properly . . .’

  I didn’t make those jokes when TV cameras were there, of course. I didn’t want to see myself on the evening news saying dumb things. But it was nice to be able to shut the door in people’s faces and not get in trouble for it.

  There was a lull for a few days after the Advocate’s triple-header story, when they didn’t seem to come up with anything new. I thought the whole thing would die a natural death, which is what Dad always said would happen. No such luck. The next shock came about a week later, when the TV show ‘Day’s End’ fired a whole new blast. It was the lead story, at six o’clock, and they’d been advertising it all afternoon, so we knew it was coming. Mark and I were the only ones home. Mark stood in the doorway watching, but kind of half-hidden behind the door. I lounged in the big red armchair with Checkers’ head on my lap. I was scratching his ear as I started watching, but I soon stopped doing that and concentrated on the screen.

  It was pretty bad. Somehow, probably illegally, they’d got hold of telephone records from Mr Koneckny’s private number. They’d found eight overseas phone calls to American hotels and, by a strange coincidence, they were the same hotels where members of the Casino Commission were staying on their tour of overseas casinos. The dates matched exactly. Most of the conversations were around five to ten minutes, but the longest was an hour and a half.

  As if that wasn’t enough they’d traced a whole lot of payments, that they said were secret, from Rider Group to overseas. One of them was to a company in the Bahamas, but at least it wasn’t the one that bought the shares. None of the companies looked too good, though. They were all funny shadowy little ones in overseas countries, companies that had untraceable directors and paid-up capitals of anything from two dollars to a thousand. Not good. The payments came to about four and a half million dollars in eight months and, according to ‘Day’s End’, they didn’t show up in Rider Group accounts.

  The Opposition, with Mrs O’Shea in full flight, was calling for a Royal Commission. Mrs O’Shea said the scandal had now come right into the Premier’s office and the only way for people to be satisfied was to have a full inquiry. It was the first time I’d heard it called a scandal. The Deputy Chairman was under huge pressure, because he’d issued a statement after the Advocate story to say they’d only had a few, official, contacts with Mr Koneckny.

  The one piece of good news so far was that there was no connection between the Premier, Koneckny, the Commission, and Dad and Jack. Mark and I knew there must be a connection, because how else would we have known we’d got the contract way back in March? The secret was safe with us, but how many other people were in the know?

  As soon as the story ended, Mark disappeared to his bedroom. I had no-one I could talk to. I went to bed early and slept badly.

  Next morning on the radio came the news of the first victim. Or sacrifice, as some people called him. The Premier announced that Mr Koneckny had been sacked for misleading him. He said Mr Koneckny had had contacts with the Commission on his own initiative, without telling the Premier. His motives were good but he couldn’t be allowed to have his own agenda, and so he had reluctantly asked for Mr Koneckny’s resignation. I stayed home, partly because I couldn’t face school, partly because I wanted to see what else would happen. By lunchtime the Commission’s Deputy Chairman had resigned, denying wrongdoing but admitting that he had ‘forgotten’ some ‘inconsequential’ chats with Mr Koneckny.

  By three o’clock Jack had issued a statement that any conversations between Koneckny and anyone else were none of Rider Group’s business, and it shouldn’t get in the way of their job, which was to build and operate the casino. At 3.25 p.m. the Premier was interviewed on the ‘George Polaris Show’: he said that nothing had changed. The best tender had won the contract and no review was needed.

  On the evening news Dad was interviewed. He said that Rider Group had done nothing improper with its transfers of money around the world. It was normal business practice, but the details had to remain confidential. They couldn’t let their competitors know everything they were doing.

  Dad looked tired and irritated. To my surprise he walked in the door about five minutes after the interview ended. He looked even worse than he had on TV.

  ‘I just saw you,’ I said.

  ‘Saw me? Oh, you mean on TV. They taped that this afternoon.’ He sorted through the mail. ‘So, how’d I look?’

  ‘Tired.’

  ‘Oh well. That figures. How’d I sound?’

  ‘Convincing.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’

  ‘Typical business problems. We’re not worried. We’ve been through worse.’

  ‘No you haven’t,’ I thought. Out loud, I said, ‘There’ve been more reporters calling. I took a few messages. They’re on the pad at the hall phone.’

  ‘OK, thanks honey,’ he said, but I don’t think he’d really heard me.

  He went through to the kitchen and I followed, watching as he started to make a sandwich. ‘What’s in the fridge?’ he asked, as he spread the bread.

  I opened the door and reported. ‘Couple of slices of ham, turning up at
the edges. Half a tomato. Bit of lettuce. Lots of cheese. Pâté, but I don’t like the colour of it.’

  ‘OK, I’ll have the tomato, and you pick me a cheese that looks interesting.’

  ‘So are you going to get out of all this?’ I asked, as I sliced some cheese for him.

  He shrugged. ‘Sure. It’ll blow over.’

  ‘But it’s getting so serious, with the Premier and everything.’

  He was about to take his first bite of sandwich, but he stopped and looked down at a stain on the table.

  ‘That’s the biggest thing,’ he said, almost to himself, then to me he said: ‘We’ll be OK as long as there’s no connection between us and the Premier. Koneckny, he’s an idiot. He nearly screwed the whole thing up. I warned Jack, but he wouldn’t listen. But I think the damage can be stopped now. The Premier’s big enough and powerful enough to do anything at the moment.’ He shook his head, almost in admiration, and took the first bite. ‘He’s amazing,’ he said, through the sandwich, smiling at me. ‘He just does what he wants. No-one’s strong enough to stand up to him. The press, the Opposition, least of all his own party. They’re pretty pathetic really.’

  My father always seemed to have too much respect for strong people, people like Jack.

  ‘Do you know him?’ I asked, trying to look cool, but holding my breath as I waited for the answer.

  ‘The Premier? No, never met him before in my life.’

  I knew he was lying. Or else why’d he say ‘before’?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Daniel got really twitchy in Group today and Marj noticed, as she notices everything. Group can be a kind of game sometimes, when someone decides she wants a bit of attention. It’s usually Cindy. She sits there looking so sad and depressed, head down, ignoring people when they try to talk to her, till Marj finally says, ‘I think we have one person in Group today who’s feeling particularly upset,’ and we all look at Cindy and make sympathetic noises and wait for her to spill her guts.

  When Marj is away, as she is often, like every second day—I don’t know how she has the cheek to collect her pay some weeks—her replacement, Lesley, is almost exactly the same but not quite. It’s like a cardboard cut-out of Marj, or a Marj doll, because the words are the same but they come out of Lesley’s mouth at a slightly different speed, and she says some words differently.

  Anyway today it was Marj and, instead of Cindy being the drama queen, it was Daniel. Whoops, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Even if Daniel would have been the first to laugh.

  He wouldn’t have laughed today, though. He wasn’t in laughter mode. He wouldn’t say anything for quite a while, but finally, with Marj prodding away, he whispered, ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘I think it’s something to do with Noel,’ Cindy said.

  ‘Noel the patient in F11?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Noel’s one of the adult patients. I’ve never been quite sure what I think about him. He’s fat and jolly, cheerful with the other adults, and impossible to beat at table tennis. He’s got the most vicious serve I’ve ever seen, and for a big guy he’s quick on his feet. But with us kids he’s a bit, I don’t know, there’s something a bit nasty about him. He hangs around us quite a lot, and I think he feels we should look up to him, treat him with respect. He gets a little pissed off when we laugh at him. So all the jolliness stuff—sometimes I wonder if it’s just a front.

  Daniel still wouldn’t say anything so Cindy told her story. ‘Last night I saw Daniel sitting outside having a durry and I thought I’d have one too, so I went to get some money from my room for the cigarette machine. Noel was just coming past and he asked me for a smoke but I said I didn’t have any, which was true. He went outside and I went down to the machine. When I got outside Daniel asked me for a cigarette and I gave him one, then Noel asked me for one again, but he’s always botting smokes, so I wouldn’t give him one. Then I went inside to get a jumper, cos it was so cold last night, and when I came out again I couldn’t find Daniel. I couldn’t figure it out, because he’d been there two minutes earlier, about to light his smoke, and now he’d gone. So I went up to his room to look for him, but he wasn’t there either: like, the room was empty. But just as I was going out I thought I heard a noise from the cupboard so I opened it and there was Daniel, all scrunched up and crying. I got such a shock, because the cupboard wouldn’t be the cleanest place in the world and you know what Daniel’s like about dirt. Anyway, he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but after a while he asked me to take him down to the boys’ bathroom. And on the way there he said if we saw Noel not to stop, just keep walking. Well, we didn’t see him, but that’s why I think it had something to do with Noel.’

  ‘You had a long shower last night, Daniel,’ Ben said.

  Lately Daniel’s cut his shower times down to only an hour a day, most days, so a long one was bad news. I figured Marj would know all about that, though. The staff know everything that happens, everything we do. It’s enough to make you paranoid, which means you’d stay here forever then. Catch-22.

  So Marj started in on Daniel. She might have already known what upset him anyway, because if the night staff knew, they’d have put it down in the case notes and talked about it when they had their little change-of-shifts ceremony. If you asked for a smaller helping of apple pie at tea time that was a symptom of something and they wrote it down.

  ‘Daniel, you seem to have had a bad night?’

  No response.

  ‘Have you talked to anyone about it?’

  No response.

  ‘Did something specific happen to upset you?’

  Long, long pause, then a tiny nod.

  ‘Something last night?’

  Ditto long pause, tiny nod.

  ‘Is Cindy right about Noel being involved?’

  Daniel didn’t respond to that at all, so Marj tried again.

  In Marj’s book, any reaction is a good reaction. They don’t care if you cry, scream, yell with rage, attack them—verbally, anyway. The only thing they can’t stand is what I give them. Silence. Passivity. Nothing.

  So she must have been pleased with what she suddenly got from Daniel. He burst into a flood of tears, crying noisily, rocking himself backwards and forwards. I moved over and put my arm around him. I hate seeing anyone unhappy. But it was about five minutes before he calmed down.

  ‘How’re you feeling, Daniel?’ Marj asked.

  That’s their standard question. I wish I had a gold medal for every time I heard it. My trophy cabinet would be full. You’d think it’d be obvious how Daniel was feeling. He was gulping and sobbing but he finally managed to say, ‘Awful.’

  We were all sitting there, pretty tense. No matter how often you see someone crack up, it’s powerful. We all like Daniel, I think, even Ben, who’s so nervous of him. And although he is an emotional guy, kind of brittle, and he does give the impression that he’s covering up and could easily snap, I’d never seen him like this.

  ‘Do you feel you can talk about it?’ Marj asked.

  ‘He . . . he called me a fairy,’ Daniel hiccuped.

  ‘A fairy?’

  ‘Yeah, a fairy, a poofter, all those names, you know. When Cindy wouldn’t give him a cigarette.’

  ‘But you make jokes like that yourself,’ Oliver said, looking slightly surprised.

  ‘But it’s different then,’ Daniel said. ‘I do it to stop other people doing it.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I sort of beat them to it,’ Daniel explained. ‘If I do it, they don’t bother. Or if they do, it doesn’t matter so much.’

  I understood what he meant then. It was a smart tactic.

  ‘So you do mind all that stuff,’ Oliver said.

  ‘Of course I mind,’ Daniel said. He sat up a bit. He was still crying but he was getting angry too. ‘Of course I mind. You think I like it? I can’t help the way I am. I didn’t choose to be this way. But this is the way I am, this is me, I just want people to accept it. But some of t
he kids at school, even people in my own family, and now people here, they can’t leave me alone.’

  ‘No-one in this group gives you a hard time,’ Oliver said.

  ‘Some of you do.’

  There was silence for a bit.

  ‘What are your parents like?’ Cindy asked.

  ‘They’re OK. They’re cool. They just tell me to be myself, not worry what people say. But that doesn’t help much.’

  ‘How can you not worry what people say?’ Emine asked.

  ‘I can’t,’ Daniel said miserably. ‘I just think this is going to keep happening all my life.’

  ‘Do you like the way you are?’ Cindy asked. She was being pretty good today, like she really cared.

  Daniel considered. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes. I think I’ve got some good points.’

  ‘Such as?’ Marj said.

  ‘I try to be nice to people,’ Daniel said. ‘I work pretty hard. I try to do the right things, most of the time.’

  ‘What do you want to be when you leave school?’ Cindy asked.

  ‘I used to think I’d like to be a social worker,’ Daniel said. ‘But I don’t know, I doubt if they’d take me after being in here.’

  ‘Why not?’ Emine asked.

  ‘Well you know, being in a psych hospital, it’s not exactly the perfect background for it, is it? They’d think I’d crack up under pressure.’

  I couldn’t help myself, I had to say something. It was too awful to see Daniel so miserable, tearing himself apart. So I spoke.

  ‘I think you’d be a good social worker, after being in here,’ I whispered.

  Marj just about slid off her chair. But she was too well trained for that. She got red in the face and sat up a bit.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,’ she said. ‘Would you mind repeating it?’