by Thea Astley
Jeans went by. Skirts. More skirts. Palm Beach shirts exposing great bellies. A duffle-coat. More jeans. Duffle-coat? Bright blue? Keith did a re-check—duffle-coat, duffle-coat. And the hair. Something about the hair. Grabbing his bag and thrusting his chair back, he flung out past the till with his four shillings at the ready. It was like baton passing, and then he yelled down the window-fronts at the vanishing coat, “Hey, you! Come back! Hey! Hey, you!”
Growing longer, his sprinting legs stretched like rubber between the receding shops. “Hey!”
Chookie dodged into an arcade and behind an eruption of plastic banana palms and rubber plants slipped into a telephone booth and began flipping the directory over. He thought himself smaller, crouched down stupidly under the shelf with the ear-piece stretched agonizedly out on its cord. Gawd, he breathed. Gawd! And heard the door pant open behind him.
“Okay,” said Keith, “I thought I knew your face. Give me that coat.”
It was the longest shot on the world that they should meet like this in sea-dazzle forty miles from town, so witty, so ghastly, Chookie grinned oafishly, then began to laugh. He had, after all, other problems—“Always in trouble, Chookie,” Sister Philomene had said before she whacked him. “Can’t you ever learn?”—and apparently he could not. “Bless me, Father,” he confessed unsorrowfully in the cubicle, “it was me filled Monsignor’s biretta with ink.”
“Do you know what profanity is, my child?” came the voice from the other side.
“No, Father.”
“It’s treating in a light or joking way anything relating to God.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Now Monsignor is God’s representative on earth and what you did was poke fun at him. There you did wrong.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And I think, if you have real contrition, you will go and tell him you’re sorry—as well as telling God.”
“I can’t, Father.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Well, I’m not really sorry. I mean I thought it was funny.”
There was a sound he could not interpret from the other side of the grille.
“Then why are you confessing?”
“I dunno. I jus’ thought I better.”
“Do you wish you were sorry?”
“Yes. I guess I do, Father.”
And that was how he always felt—wishing he were sorry.
Chookie stepped out of the booth and against the lush plastic background began to peel the coat off, stroking its bright blue lovingly for a minute before he handed it across.
“Thanks,” Keith said, looking hard at freckle-face. All he had on underneath was a dirty check sports shirt and a pair of soiled jeans.
They inspected each other carefully, Keith touching penumbra of some tragedy somewhere some lost time on the other boy’s shadowed cheek.
“Why did you take it?” he asked. “What gives?”
“Dunno,” said Chookie.
“Haven’t you got a coat?”
Chookie began to move away.
“Well, haven’t you?”
“Not here.”
He’s too dumb to get one my way, Keith thought. Dimdumb. I could lift me another while he’s thinking about it. A foreign emotion took Keith by surprise: looking at that dirty shirt and those grubby jeans he was sorry, sorry because he, too . . .
“Here,” he said ungraciously, “I’m lumbered up enough.” He joggled his bag. “You might as well keep it now.”
Ginger paws dangled the coat stupidly, wanting to say no and shove the thing back but not knowing how, so that all he could do was turn away down the arcade, still trailing it, and dreading what it held—the power to shove him quaking and curdling before a broad oak desk and a mean face over a blue uniform. Theft? Rape? He shuddered away from the word. Five years. For youth. He wasn’t that lovable. Ten if he got a day looking as he did, back from the glass fronts like a cheap bum in his ground-down jobless heels with half a note in his pocket. Yeronner, I thought she wanted it I thought I thought I thought she was fed up and miserable and then Yeronner I dunno I thought she seemed sittin there in her under-stuff. . . .
O Gawd, prayed Chookie, sloping out at the far end of the arcade by the garage and trailing snail-wise across the oil streaks and the gravel.
He’d mooched around a bit for a job, but no luck except a three-day break as grease boy at a car-park that set him up for a little cash but still had him sleeping in the dry leaves of the park or along the dunes, huddled under the duffle-coat. He ate Chinese because you seemed to get more; but afterwards, with the gas in his belly and the empty watery feeling of the shredded half-cooked vegetables and the sauce, he ached for a great plate of solid steak. His plan was to hitch a ride, farther down the coast into New South for preference, but he wasn’t fussy. The north was pretty big and the old hunger for the hot dry parts gripped him now and again like the incense of prayer. Odd-job Mumberson, he thought. That’s me. That’s the ole Arch.
“Hey!” Keith called, coming up through unexplainable shame and wishes to atone. “Just a minute.”
Chookie shoved truculent hands into his pockets. In one, his fingers took hold for comfort of his harmonica and the tips of his fingers slid along the reed lips, touching the tenderness of this pal.
“What now?” He was holding the coat out. He never had known anyone who hadn’t changed his mind after a gift. “Here y’are!” Pop had said to his mum. “Got yer somepin’.” He’d tossed the packet on the table and mum had looked up from the ironing, incredulous because fairy-tales had finished twenty years before and pulled the string off without saying a word. It was a new hand-bag, all shiny black with a gold button for a clip and it looked as if it cost the world. “Like it?” sober-for-once pop had asked. And mum had started to cry a bit, not much, but Chook had seen her mouth go funny like she was trying to hold it still. Holding the bag and stroking it. But something seemed to have stopped her talking. “Thought you would,” the old man said. He seemed pretty pleased with himself that day and mum took it to Church on Sunday instead of the beat-up brown thing she’d been carrying for years and hauling hankies out of for their noses and pennies for the collection plate. “Domine non sum dignus,” intoned the priest, and he had seen mum rub at a dull spot on the glossy black skin. She loved that bag, but during the next drunk his old man had hit around on it and just to watch her squirm had shot it out through the window clean into the water trap. Mum had cried half a day and then shut up with her mouth tight and never said a thing for days and the old man was sorry and tried to clean it up. But it was never the same.
“Here,” he said to the other boy. “I don’t want it”
“No, it’s not that,” Keith said uncomfortably. “I thought you might want a coffee or something.”
“I don’t want nothin’, thanks.”
“Don’t be mad. You look as if you could do with one.”
“What’s the gag?”
“No gag. Just that. Would you like a coffee? Would you?”
“Not gunner dub me in, are y’?”
“What for?”
“The coat?”
“Oh, that.” Keith went red. “Forget it. I’ll tell you about that some time. It wasn’t really mine.”
Chookie looked suspicious, but the hot white sun wiped faces clean of secondary intent and the dazzled eyes that blinked regularly against glare could cope with nothing more than light. Any sin might be concealed. They fell into step.
“Don’t like this place much. Nothin’ doin’. And too much, if you know what I mean. Too much to take notice of a nobody and not enough to give us a chance.”
“Been here long?”
“About a week. Just lookin’ around like. Think I’ll push on.
“Don’t you have a home?” Keith demanded enviously.
“Not now. I’ve give that away.”
A possibility here for himself, the pussy-footed possibility that had sneaked in and out of the mind-maze for weeks,
the sly shadow under the shrubbery, the quick form caught between moonlit trees.
“Don’t they care?” he asked curiously, imagining Iris’s tentacles stretching all over the State until they burned themselves on the flaming tropical tip of the Cape.
“Maybe.” Digging his reluctance into the ground, Chookie hoisted a flag that said no questions yet.
They walked out across the bridge towards the surfing beach where Keith bought two parcels of hot chips topped with glistening salt crystals, and, holding the greasy paper in cat-on-hot-brick hands, they mumbled the potato in, their faces trapped in the heat of the chips and the blustering sea-winds across the water.
“I’ve never been to the beach before,” Chookie confided.
“You mean you’ve never seen the sea?”
“Not till this week.”
Keith was silenced, then he began to laugh.
“Sorry,” he said, after a bit. “Sorry. It just seems strange, that’s all. I’ve never met anyone before who . . . I mean . . . I can’t imagine. How did it strike you?”
“You ever bin inland?” Chookie demanded angrily. “Right in, I mean.”
“Well, no.”
“Same thing,” Chookie said. “Guess it is funny never havin’ seen the sea. But I dunno why everybody thinks you gotter see it. You haven’t never seen inside and I don’t think that’s funny. I have. Same thing, really. Just the same thing—only dry. Rollin’ oceans of earth, see? Waves-a hills and no end to it. Just like this. Only brown instead of blue. And still. Terrible still except for the heat shimmer. And just as dangerous.”
Shut up, Leverson! the boy told himself. Shut up before this freckle mug that knows all the answers.
“Chip?” he asked, thrusting over his yellow paper.
“Still got some. Could do with a drink, but.
They looked round by the dressing sheds for a bubbler and found one whose chrome spout dribbled endlessly into the porcelain basin jammed with leaves and sand. While Chookie sucked away busily, he was aware, as one is aware of shadow or light across closed eyes, that the younger boy had moved behind him in some supplicating fashion.
“I’m leaving, too,” Keith said.
“Okay then!” Chookie said, cruel out of embarrassment. “What’s stoppin y’?”
“No. I mean home. I’ve had it.”
“They’ll have the cops out after y’,” Chookie warned. “Y’ too young. Don’t be a mug.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I’m older. Bin workin’ for years. They’ll be glad to see the last of me. Well, mum maybe won’t. But the ole man’ll give three cheers.”
“I thought we could hitch north together,” Keith suggested. “Or south. Though that’s where they’ll think we’ve gone automatically. Maybe that would be a tactical error.”
“What d’y’ mean, tactical error?”
Keith sucked his cheeks in. “Strategy. Plan. Get it?” Dim brain, he thought. “I’ve got a bit of money on me. Not much. A couple of pounds. Enough to buy us meals.”
Sated Mr Mumberson, having been put in his place, picked some fried potato from his front teeth. Cops. That was it. After this kid and they’d land him, too, both of them wriggling in the same trap. No, sir! Coppers! When he replied he felt his voice break suddenly.
“Jesus, no!” he said. “Y’ can’t tag in with me. I’m in real trouble.”
A certain pride then gazed down at his dirty nails, inspecting them without repulsion, nicking them together.
“Why? What have you done?”
“You’d split.”
“Why should I?”
“Well . . .” Chookie hesitated, torn between confession which would unburden and the need for concealment. Watching the lonely blue water he shuddered with the same convulsive wave-sweep. “It was this ole girl I worked for. I done her over.”
“You mean killed?” Keith asked, appalled and excited.
“Gawd, no. Done. You know. Stuffed. Well, how old are you?”
“Raped, you mean.”
“That’s what they call it.”
“Did she make a fuss?”
“Oh Geez! That’s it! She squawked, the mad old geezer, and shot out of the house and all the time I thought that was what she was after, callin’ me in and everything and sittin’ aroun’ with half her clothes on.” Unexpectedly he blubbered because he couldn’t do a thing right “Somethin’ got into me. I just couldn’ stop m’self once I’d started. And I felt sorry for her, too. I liked her. Can you believe that?”
Mournfully he ate his last couple of chips, pushing them one after the other between puffy lips now split and chapped by salt air while he cried without attempting to conceal his face and the tears ran unchecked down his cheeks and onto the jacket at which he swiped with the clumsy palm of his hand.
They were ugly hands, Keith observed, and strangely pitiful with their cracked joints and scaly early-morning-milking surface.
“See that coat,” Keith said, not breaking even, not trying one-upmanship, not doing anything at all except attempt grace. “I stole that”
“Did y’?” The other brightened. “Still”—relapsing—“that’s only petty theft. Y’ notice how well I got me terms. I mean, y’ can’t compare that with—with what I done. They’ll say you done it for kicks and let y’ off if y’ dad pays.”
“So what?”
“So everything. Don’t tell, will y’?” pleaded Chookie, grabbing Keith’s arm. “Don’t tell no one.”
“Oh, cut it out!” Keith shook him impatiently. “Repeating things is for bastards. Don’t tell me. I hate the gossip-monger!”
“If you do,” Chookie threatened, not following the other anyway, “I’ll dub you in proper.”
They walked back, two of a kind, along the front towards the river into the late afternoon.
Bogus is as bogus does. Gay as all-get-out, Leo tried on before his shaving mirror a false bronze moustache, busy as a squirrel’s tail and simply crazy man crazy with the black torpedo. Nevertheless it added a homely something to his too plump lower lip and made nonsense of a scar that ran from the corner of his nose to his mouth.
He fixed it firmly in position with gum arabic, plumped out his green foulard cravat and eased off into the living-room.
“Oh my God!” Tommy Seabrook cried involuntarily. “What’s happened?”
“Change of face, change of heart!” Leo cried. But underneath, his heart, unalterable as diorite, knocked regularly against his ribs.
“Where’s Keithy, lad?” he asked.
“Not back yet. His board’s on the porch, though.”
“Is it? Little bitch, shutting us out like that. I don’t suppose he thought we’d bust in. Well, well!” Leo twiddled his false whiskers reflectively and went back to the dressing-room to do something about the window catch he had forced, a matter of not many moments, after which he gave himself into the wardrobe and nosed around.
“Clothes are gone,” he called, muffled by artificial fibre, “and his bag.” Piqued, but fighting it, he returned to the other room determined not to lose even this false face. “I suppose he’s gone home, silly little bastard. What a temper! Well, we’ll simply have to struggle through without him, Tommy lad, and I suggest we glue up the pieces of our hearts by stepping townward. Razamatazzy taz!”
He did a soft-shoe routine.
“Mad about the boy,” he hummed, winking gaily at Tommy, then took it da capo. “There’s something sad about the boy.” Exaggeratedly pouting, yet not, not. . . .
But Mr Varga couldn’t quite get the kicks out of it, and around ten he decided to put a trunk call through to Leversons to see if the laddie were back. Indeed he would be—and he hummed lightly as he waited for the little number (“Bet she’s got a bouffant!” he had hissed in aside to Tommy) at the exchange to connect his call. And hello there, Bernard, and yes indeedie, it was Leo Varga speaking. Had the prodigal returned. What? He couldn’t quite catch that. Not? Oh, then . . . yes, he realized he was resp
onsible, but there was absolutely nothing at all to be alarmed at and after all the lad was fifteen. Yes. He could see all that. No. They’d simply been for a swim—separately—and on returning. . . . In his annoyance at the silly business Leo pulled his moustache too hard and it hung askew until he managed to gum it back insecurely with absent-minded spittle. Pips sounded. Yes, extension please, said Bernard to bouffant, a faint and furious forty miles distant. Police? What was that, the police? Oh Leverson, dear fellow, surely not necessary at this stage, do you think? Give the lad time. Probably on a spree somewhere. Remember how it—you don’t? Well, never—till eleven then? All right. If not by eleven . . . after all for God’s sake he wouldn’t have rung, would he, if he hadn’t been anxious? Yes, yes. He’d see to it and he’d ring first thing in the morning if there was no sign.
Dear sweet angels, Leo said softly as he hung up and tottered back to the drooping Seabrook fatigued on a post-office bench. Pal-wise, he squeezed the boy’s arm, friend and comforter, and, promenading him back to the car, explained the set-up with the accent in his favour.
“What about my place?” Tommy suggested, not very cleverly.
“Oh, I hardly think so. Remember the situation there, boy. Really!”
Tommy was snuffed out as if some hollow cone had been lowered over this last little spark. Did the sod have to keep reminding him? Did he? In the neon-sparked dark he hated Varga with his phoney voice and false moustache and stinking little objets d’art. Hated his abilities and techniques, his jokes, his superb cooking, his skill on a board, his coaching college where, weekly, one of the minions pumped him full of matriculation maths. Loathed loathed loathed.
Funnily his oblique eye imagined as they cruised back along the tourist-dabbled main street that it glimpsed Keith emerging from a hamburger bar. He wasn’t alone—some sort of ginger lout tailed behind.
