Owen Marshall Selected Stories

by Vincent O'Sullivan

  The group set up with their car rugs, baskets and chilly bins in the lee of the last dune before the beach. Assoc Prof Teems was immediately absorbed in removing the remaining gorse prickles; Dr Fell and Eileen caught each other’s eye and had a long, exclusive smile at the mismatched socks revealed as Dr Podanovich awkwardly sat down and crossed his lanky legs. ‘Just as well we’re not wearing our best mocker,’ he said. ‘Old dungers for the beach I say.’ Prof Glower talked to all, and nobody in particular, about the need to leave their offices occasionally, and Dr Johns rather pointedly yawned and lay back with his hands behind his head.

  Assoc Prof Teems was an intelligent, gentle woman increasingly buffeted by the winds of change through tertiary education. Her passion was the poetry of Robert Herrick, but that was treated with boisterous derision by first-year students, so she proffered it only to the occasional postgraduate, and even more occasional Herrick conference. She was English, and her interest in the New Zealand vernacular was entirely a reflection of the department’s focus. She disliked gorse, lupins and the coastal smell, which made her think some great kipper was rotting out beyond the swell. But she was loyal by nature, and had a strict sense of duty, and so although seventeenth-century English poetry was her spiritual home, she tried to find a place to stand in a new country. No chance of a place of subtlety, of nuanced reflective comment, or classical allusion, she thought wryly, and ran her hand over her skin to check for more thorns and found none. ‘Well, here’s one pommie who’s ready to take a gecko at the friggin’ beach,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, let’s give it a burl,’ said Eileen. ‘Maybe there’s a bronzed life-saver there.’

  ‘More like a cockie with pig-dogs who hates loopies,’ said Dr Johns, but he went with them rather than listen to Prof Glower.

  Dr Podanovich untangled his legs and stood up too, but not to go down to the beach. Already he sensed the familiar rifts and indifferences within the group becoming apparent: at least that sardonic Lucifer, Allis-Montgomery, wasn’t with them, yet the taint of his eternal bitterness seemed impregnated in their congregation, as the fish-splitter carries always some olfactory reminder of his trade. Dr Podanovich retained an idealistic wish for a professional life of mutual support, respect and effervescent enjoyment. ‘I’m going to get a bit of a fire going,’ he said. ‘I reckon you can’t have a dinkum feed without a snarler or two.’ Maybe a fire, that ageless symbol of communal gathering, would bring them together happily. Dr Podanovich went off, stooped even more than usual, as he fossicked in the marram grass for driftwood.

  ‘Good on you, mate,’ announced Prof Glower, and then in a lower voice to Dr Fell, ‘The tight-arse didn’t want to cough up for more than supermarket bangers, and now he thinks he deserves a bloody medal.’

  Dr Fell permitted herself a knowing smile, but said nothing. She considered Dr Podanovich a sweet simpleton who carried far more than his share of the academic load, and he always topped the students’ assessments of their lecturers. On the other hand, she knew she was the professor’s favourite, and although she refused to play on that, neither would she deliberately jeopardise the career advantages that might flow from it. She alone was in his confidence regarding his increasing sense of disillusion, and that knowledge mitigated for her his public and empty pomposity. Dr Fell herself was young, had long legs, and professional prospects of even greater extent.

  ‘I was knocked back by East Anglia for visiting prof again,’ said Prof Glower. ‘No hoper pricks didn’t even bother to tell me until I sent an email giving them a rark-up.’

  ‘That’s bloody crook,’ said Dr Fell. ‘It’s not on.’ The black sand was warm through her fingers, and her bright red toenails glittered in the sunlight. Through a cleavage in the dunes she saw her three colleagues walking the surf line, breaking into a scamper up the beach sometimes to escape the seventh wave. Assoc Prof Teems and Eileen were close together, their heads inclined towards each other. Dr Johns attempted to relax, giving his metallic laugh from time to time, but at a distance his essential self-consciousness and uncertainty were obvious in everything he did. It occurred to Dr Fell that maybe when Allis-Montgomery was present, Dr Johns felt more at ease, because he knew he was then not the most unpopular and isolated person of any group.

  ‘You can bet your arse it was a jack-up anyway,’ said Prof Glower. ‘Some Nigerian Hausa woman wearing curtain material will have been appointed, and rabbit on to packed bloody halls about the poetry of political dissent.’

  ‘You’re not shook on African poetry?’

  ‘Poetry my arse. Everyone’s got too bloody windy to say what they really think about post-colonial literature, that’s for sure.’

  ‘The new dean of humanities —,’ began Dr Fell.

  ‘Effing commel,’ said Prof Glower. He realised he had struck a sour note, and promised himself not to allow his inner melancholy to be so obvious, even to Dr Fell. ‘Need a bit of old man manuka, eh,’ he shouted to Dr Podanovich, who was encouraging the first flames from beneath arabesques of driftwood.

  ‘Nah, she’ll be a bottler,’ said Dr Podanovich. He took a black and greasy skillet from a supermarket bag and began to lay pink sausages in it.

  Walking back towards the picnic spot with Assoc Prof Teems and Dr Johns, Eileen saw a thin wisp wafting from the fire, barely smoke from such dry wood, more a heat distortion like the thermals in boiling water. She knew that Dr Podanovich would be doing all the work, while the other two watched and talked. Eileen had no degree, but often she felt exasperated with the academics she served: their tetchy self-regard and social naïvety coupled with powerful intellects and obsessive interests. During the years most important for learning to relate to others in a diverse society, they had spent their time in libraries, isolated cubicles and, less often, with small intense cabals of people like themselves. Often she felt like an ordinary mother with gifted, but difficult children.

  ‘What’s it like down there?’ asked Dr Podanovich.

  ‘Pretty nippy round the pippy,’ said Eileen, ‘but we’re getting fit.’

  Assoc Prof Teems let herself fall back on the warm slope of the dune. ‘I’m knackered,’ she said.

  Dr Johns came last of the three. He was carrying his black shoes, had rolled his trousers up, and the dark sand clung to his wet legs. He wondered if Dr Allis-Montgomery was working alone at the university, and felt a twinge of guilt. He wished he had brought his own car so that he could have thought of some excuse to go home immediately after the picnic lunch, but then doubted his resolve to carry out something so temerarious. ‘Time for tucker, eh,’ he said. ‘I reckon Paddy’s a real gun with them sausies — you can put a ring round that.’

  ‘Yeah, bog in, mate,’ said Dr Podanovich. He experienced a sudden, poignant moment of déjà vu. The smell of sausages and burning driftwood, and the astringent fragrance of the sea, occasioned a memory that rose like an ache in his heart: his last fishing trip with his father before the latter’s death. Maybe it was an omen that even his father’s fishing skills had been unavailing that day, and he’d cooked sausages on the very same skillet. His father had been emaciated by radiation treatment, and although he laughed with his son, he had tragic, imploring eyes.

  ‘Who’s for plonk?’ said Dr Fell. She took two bottles of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from her chilly bin. She had forgone an afternoon of flagrant hedonism with her personal trainer to be with the department, and thought she deserved at least a single pleasure at the picnic.

  ‘Could I effing ever knock back a gargle of that,’ exclaimed Prof Glower. Alcohol was increasingly a solace for him, though he found double malt whisky a more rapid release than wine.

  So the English department, minus just the physical presence of Allis-Montgomery, settled with somewhat self-conscious bonhomie to their lunch: al fresco academics ill at ease in a shifting landscape without books, or a dais on which to stand. The contribution of each was a significant reflection of character. Dr Fell’s medal-winning white wine and cheese twists;
Assoc Prof Teems’s apricot muffins and Earl Grey tea; the fresh and sensible club sandwiches brought by Eileen; sherbet trumpets fashioned by Dr Johns in his modern and lonely flat; Prof Glower’s salmon and broccoli quiche made by a wife complaisant as to his absence; Dr Podanovich’s supermarket sausages and a six pack of Lion Brown.

  ‘Is this good chow or what,’ said Prof Glower.

  ‘Monty,’ said Assoc Prof Teems. She felt a brief frisson of despair at the thought her life provided no better option than this, and recalled her poet Herrick, driven by lack of congenial company to train a pig to drink wine with him in his vicarage garden.

  ‘Things are cracking up big time,’ said Dr Fell. The weather was in sudden change: scudding clouds driven by a building southerly, and the sea, cut off from the sun, turning leaden. The temperature fell quickly; the driven sand scurried in the lupins and grass; the wind made sad orisons along the arc of black beach; the first large drops splattered on sand and foliage, and the spread picnic of the English department.

  ‘Turning real pear-shaped,’ said Dr Podanovich. ‘I think we’ll have to flag it.’

  All of them hastened to gather possessions as the southerly storm came upon them. They looked to their own welfare, except benign Dr Podanovich, who offered to carry Assoc Prof Teems’s basket and Eileen’s thermos. They straggled back up the entrenched path that wound steeply to the carpark through marram grass, gorse, lupins and the soft flanks of black dunes that flinched beneath the heavy rain. Dr Fell, immediately behind Prof Glower, heard several rain pellets strike his balding head with the sound of a kettle drum. Dr Johns experienced a perverse euphoria, for the picnic was ending in disarray, and he’d be home by early afternoon. ‘Send her down, Hughie,’ he cried, and gave his barking laugh, not noticing one of his shoes fall from his bundle and roll to lie hidden in the lupins. How Dr Allis-Montgomery would enjoy the day recounted with the sardonic delivery of Dr Johns.

  ‘Get your arse into gear up front,’ shouted Eileen, impatient at the academics lack of athleticism. ‘What drongo’s holding us up?’

  Prof Glower at the front refused to be hurried. ‘Shut your trap,’ he said sternly. Eileen was an indispensable secretary, but still a secretary after all. ‘You’re a bunch of sodding sooks. Wankers, the lot of you.’ He strode on, refusing to hunch into the gale, professorial to the last, yet in his heart he felt an irrefutable regret that he had ever abandoned his love of Proust, and taken on the New Zealand vernacular.

  End of Term

  Even before the final bell kids were drifting away from the classrooms, some with special dispensation because they had buses to catch, others just up and off from teachers whose discipline was weak. Paul Broussard could have named those teachers without bothering to check the rooms, but who wanted to make an issue of it on the last day of term. All through the school there was an unclenching, a slackening, a sense that, ah, things were near enough to over. Among the teachers only the zealots took a grim pride in grinding out a last exercise before the chairs went up. And when the bell rang the students burst from the buildings, swirled briefly at the locker rooms and bikesheds, then as a human tide ebbed away, leaving debris, and within the buildings a scent of packed, reluctant congregation.

  Pressure lifted away from the whole institution in a way almost palpable even within Paul’s office. Sure, there would be a final flush of administrative tasks for him as teachers completed end-of-term procedures, but he would come back to the school over several quiet days and deal with those without the constant interruptions of school time. Crisis management was his habitual occupation during term, but frequency made it no easier. The stunted glue sniffer brought to his door for the third time in a fortnight, the fifth form Chinese boy lying behind the fives courts with teeth knocked down his throat, the choral singer who had an epileptic seizure, the skinheads from the street refusing to leave the senior girls’ common room, the male teacher reduced to tears by the brutal insolence of a fourth form class, the boy who had created a large audience by shitting on the bonnet of the counsellor’s car, the shoplifting calls from the supermarket manager, the torching of the twelve, blue outdoor cafeteria tables purchased from school gala funds, the balaclava woman on drugs screaming to see her daughter even though Child, Youth and Family had said it wasn’t allowed, the quiet girl found at the back of keyboard skills cutting her legs with broken glass. Such things took precedence over the routine administration of exam timetables, maintenance returns and sports day, which then had to be done late at night, or over his weekends.

  Paul intended to go through to the staffroom for a while, have a coffee and wish colleagues a good break. Most would be as eager as the kids to get away, but cheerful as they tidied up final paperwork and told each other of their plans.

  It was his custom to have a last walk around the buildings and grounds before leaving the school. Often he found something that needed action before the weekend. He walked down the corridor lined with photographs of laudatory achievement, and the glassed cases of trophies. He passed the open door of Gareth’s office and saw the principal stretched back on his chair with the phone to his ear. Gareth lifted the palm of his free hand towards Paul in acknowledgement, and rolled his eyes up to show his exasperation at a call he wished would end. That was another reason Paul liked to take his tour of duty — it took him beyond his office, even if the cellphone accompanied him.

  Mary-ann Beale had similar intentions perhaps, because she joined him at the large swing doors to the main entrance. Mary-ann was senior mistress and would have had the deputy principal’s job if merit always received its just reward, but she bore Paul no grudge for the male prejudice the majority of the board had exercised in his favour three years before.

  ‘Thank God for the bell,’ Mary-ann said.

  ‘Why is it that with four terms now, they still don’t seem any shorter?’

  ‘We’re getting older,’ she said, as they moved out into the main quad which had a showpiece rose garden at its centre. As always she carried her big-format, blue diary with her to record her tasks as they arose. She was a stickler for efficiency, and famous for it. Kids knew that whatever went into Beale’s book would in due time have consequence. Her dark hair was always in a page-boy cut, and her lipstick smudged on her soft, shifting face. It was the face of a fat woman, but by discipline she had kept her body from achieving its predilection. ‘I’ve had a cow of a day,’ she said. ‘One thing after another.’

  Paul admired Mary-ann although he never thought to tell her so directly. She fronted up to tough decisions day after day and was slagged off a good deal because of it, but more ex-pupils came back to see her than returned for any other teacher. ‘Oh, everybody’s twitchy by end of term,’ he told her. ‘Docky came to me again this morning and said he’s resigning. He does it once or twice a year.’

  ‘Accept it, for God’s sake. Wouldn’t it be a mercy for the kids as well as us.’

  ‘I did, but he never puts it in writing, and withdraws it later anyway. He just wants the satisfaction of telling Gareth and me where we can stick the job. It’s a therapy for him, but it winds us up, of course.’

  ‘Docky knows he’s not up to it any more, but won’t admit it,’ said Mary-ann. She felt better for hearing that Paul had been put through Docky’s rant. There’s more humour to be had in the predicament of others than in your own. She and Paul knew that within the next year they’d have to find some way of easing Docky out.

  As Paul and Mary-ann walked past the manual block he thought that she was right, that getting older was as much a reason for their disillusion as anything else. What had amused him about the kids when he was in his twenties and thirties brought only impatience now he was fifty. Year after year they came on with unbounded energy and a sense of their own novelty, constantly renewed, while his finite resources were sapped just that much more by each intake. He could still remember most of the individuals of his first classes, but of later ones just the very best and worst, the majority scarcely r
egistering at all. And from that grey majority a pleasant adult might return and expect to be remembered. Someone for whom there had ever been only one 6B Geography, and who never considered it as one of a long series for Paul.

  ‘I think I’ll check the girls’ common rooms,’ said Mary-ann. ‘I had some classes detailed for clean up, but who knows.’

  ‘I’ll look in on the boys’ ones,’ said Paul.

  ‘If you find a mess you might be able to get some of the kids from the final detention. There’s a few hardcore still with an hour today, I think.’ And that wouldn’t be the easiest of jobs — detention supervision on the last day of term. All sorts of possibilities for things to go wrong. Paul tried to remember which staff member had drawn that short straw. And there’d be those kids who didn’t show up, obeying that juvenile consciousness of time which considered two weeks an eternity between them and retribution. And when eternity ended, Mary-ann, or Paul, would be waiting.

  The senior common room wasn’t too bad: attempts had been made, although there were still plenty of textbooks that should have been away in lockers. At least the litter had been taken to the rubbish drums by the cafeteria, leaving just the heavy smell of socks and pastry and hooliganism. The ceiling bore a dark, hachured pattern from the impact of a thousand muddy rugby balls, and the old furniture had been gutted as if in a desperate search for treasure. Everything had been worn back to a fundamental communal minimalism.

  Paul walked on through the corridors until he reached the fifth form boys’ common room, but even as he went in he heard someone running behind him, and a junior girl with frizzy, pale hair and the tartan school skirt almost to her ankles skidded in the doorway. ‘Mrs Beale wants you to come to the main gym, Mr Broussard.’ As she spoke she looked not at him, but at the common room, which was foreign ground to her.