All the Green Year

by Don Charlwood

  “Known f’ years,” said Squid easily. “There’s nothink to it once you’ve learnt.”

  As we walked farther Johnno said gloomily, “I really stole my old man’s money—he hasn’t got much, either.”

  “Stole it?” said Squid. “That wasn’t stealing. You saved the haircut money, so if you saved it, he wouldn’t hardly reckon it wasn’t yours.”

  “You don’t know my old man,” said Johnno darkly.

  Squid admitted that at his place his mother believed in philosophy and trusted him to see the best thing to do.

  Johnno and I were silent at this. The three of us went slowly up the hill past the park. Cheering and hooting came from the football ground, and the wet thump of a football. The prospect of the haircut was beginning to weigh heavily even on me. If Squid made a mess, Johnno would be half killed.

  When we reached the house Squid led us underneath it into the Den and we waited there while he got the clippers. The Den was a rough sort of place with about six feet of head-room at its highest end, a sand floor and bag walls. A light-bulb glowed over a couple of old chairs and a table. A bullock’s head painted green was in one corner; in another was a drum marked poisen. On a nail hung an A.I.F. hat complete with authentic bullet holes.

  Squid came back with the clippers and a towel. “What style d’ y’ want it done?”

  “Oh hell!” Johnno burst out. “Do it the same way it’s always done.”

  Squid pulled one of the decrepit chairs under the light and waved Johnno into it. Johnno glanced at us as if he were a victim for electrocution. He sank into it and Squid tucked in the towel.

  “Been wet, don’t you reckon, sir?”

  “For gawd’s sake just hurry!” begged Johnno.

  He had his head bowed and Squid was ploughing an experimental furrow. Certainly he seemed to have the art, even to the flourishes of the clippers. “Nothink to it,” he murmured.

  It was when he went over the furrow a second time that my heart faltered. It was so deep now that I knew there would be no way of fixing it. It was no use saying anything. I sank into a chair and looked at the ground between my feet, hardly able to bear what was happening.

  I don’t think Squid realized what he had done till three or four furrows lay side by side and a heap of ginger hair was scattered on the ground.

  “Trouble is,” he said, standing back, “trouble is you’ve had it the wrong style before.”

  “Just leave it the way it was,” said Johnno dis­tractedly.

  It was too late for this. Squid began examining Johnno’s head more frequently. After each examination he gave a clip here and a clip there. Johnno was beginning to look like a parrot with a large crest.

  “Well,” said Squid a little uneasily, “I reckon a bit off the front will about fix it.”

  He took out the scissors and clicked them a few times in the air and held the comb with one finger nicely raised. I turned away again and looked at the bag walls and began wishing we had never met Johnno at all. Next time I looked I could hardly believe it was Johnno’s head. Squid had fixed it, all right. In fact he himself was standing back with his mouth open.

  “Is it finished?”

  “Well,” said Squid, recovering himself, “it needs a sort of—smoothing over, that’s about all.”

  Johnno ran his hand over it. “Oh gawd,” he cried, “it’s all up and down!” He turned to me desperately. “Charlie, it’s hacked about, isn’t it?”

  I felt half sick for him. “A bit,” I admitted, “but not too bad—”

  “Will my old man notice it?”

  “No,” said Squid hurriedly.

  “But Charlie, do you reckon he’ll notice it?”

  I was casting about for an answer when we heard Mrs Peters coming into the house. Squid said urgently, “We better go up and you better go, Johnno.”

  “I’m clearing out, all right,” said Johnno, feeling his head again. “I—I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  From upstairs Mrs Peters cried, “Bird-ie.”

  “Just getting the wood,” yelled Squid.

  Outside it was dusk and fog was rising over the sea. Through the trees I could see the lights at “Thermopylae”, yellow-looking in the damp air.

  “I’ll be late home, too,” said Johnno hoarsely.

  “It’s only a quarter to six,” I told him.

  “Ah, well,” he said resignedly. “So long.”

  “So long,” I said.

  But Squid said nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to have you,” said Mrs Peters when we had gone inside. She was looking less like a film actress now. “I often tell Birdie how nice it is that he has such a friend next door.” Squid was concentrating on the contents of various paper bags his mother had brought home. “And how is poor old Captain McDonald?”

  “The doctor says he’s a lot better,” I told her.

  “A dear old man. They don’t make them like that any more. My old father was the same. Kept his interlect till the end.”

  “What are we having for tea?” asked Squid.

  “Toasted crumpets,” said Mrs Peters.

  “They give me indergestion,” said Squid frowning. “Can I have that cold pie from last night?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  We sat down presently under the large portrait of Lance-Corporal Peters who stared down with a determinedly mournful expression on the small gathering. It was definitely an advantage to have lost a father in the war, I thought.

  “I suppose, Charlie, you’ll remain at ‘Thermopylae’ while the Captain holds to life?”

  With my mouth full of crumpet I supposed we would.

  “Of course, one is lucky to get a tenant in one’s own home during such an emergency period, isn’t one?”

  I agreed that one was. Mrs Peters sighed over the whole situation and lowered her mascara’d eyelids.

  “Old age is so sad. That at least they were spared,” she added, raising her eyes to the Lance-Corporal. “‘At the going down of the sun and at the rising thereof—’”

  “Any more pie?” asked Squid.

  “Dear boy, I’m sorry,” said Mrs Peters. “But I have a special treat for you if you can wait till Charlie and I have finished our crumpets.”

  Squid supposed aggrievedly that he could wait.

  “Such a poor eater,” said Mrs Peters. She returned quickly to the subject of our house. “The Harrises have your place?”

  “Yes,” I said, my mouth full of crumpet again.

  “Of course, folk in a position such as theirs could pay comparatively little, one would suppose, in rent?”

  I supposed not.

  “When do we get the surprise?” asked Squid.

  “Patience is a virtue—” began Mrs Peters.

  She was interrupted by a knocking on the front door.

  “Do excuse me a moment, boys. It might be Mr Glossop come to consult me on tonight’s music.”

  But it wasn’t Mr Glossop, it was my mother, a scarf round her head and her face white.

  “Charlie,” she said, looking past Mrs Peters, “it’s Grandfather—he got out of bed and we don’t know where he is.”

  As I stood up I could see through the open door into the fog. I don’t remember any further words. In a moment we were outside under invisible dripping trees.

  “I fell asleep; oh dear, I fell asleep.”

  “Where’s dad?”

  “Looking in the garden.”

  The garden was submerged, but the house itself stood above the fog looking like the ship Grandfather imagined it to be. Soon the tide would cover it altogether.

  “I was afraid this would happen; that I would fall asleep—”

  My father called from somewhere ahead, “It’s getting worse. We’d better g
et Charlie to go for Gouvane. We need a number of men with torches. He can’t be out long in this sort of weather.”

  I was starting up the side of the house to go for Gouvane when I thought suddenly of Gyp. I stopped and called him and began whistling.

  “Listen now,” called my father from the other side of the house.

  I stood there and presently heard a scrambling up the cliff path. I shouted then, “The boatshed! He may be in the boatshed.”

  I turned back and we started down between the wet tea-tree, Gyp disappearing again before us.

  My father stepped on to the sand ahead of me. I heard him say, “You may have to go for the doctor.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I felt suddenly that the familiar world was forsaking us, the old sure world of Grandfather’s “Thermopylae”.

  From ahead of me again my father called, “The door’s open. He’s been trying to pull the boat out.” He was silent then, and I could only hear the lapping of the water. Then I heard him exclaim, “Good God!”

  I stopped walking.

  “Call Gyp.”

  I whistled to him and when he came I held him, glad to have him near me.

  “Go up and get your mother, then go for Dr Stuart.”

  I knew then the way it was. “Yes,” I said. So I climbed up the cliff path and helped my mother down, then went along the beach towards the town.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ian was sent away till Grandfather’s funeral was over.

  An oppressive silence fell over the old house and everywhere I went I was conscious that Grandfather lay at the centre of it, lifeless yet still dominating. A succession of people came to “see him”. They moved on soft feet about the house and spoke in whispers and some of the women came out of the mysterious bedroom dabbing their eyes.

  Mrs Peters was one. “Ah, what dignity, Mrs Reeve! Somethink about him reminds one of the epistles of old. Has Charlie seen him?”

  My mother said no, she didn’t think it necessary.

  I began to feel I was being protected from something a man would face. When an opportunity came I went in alone.

  The experience shocked me. Everyone had said how peaceful Grandfather looked and how young and how you could see family resemblances in his features. But to me his body looked like something discarded, something to be got quickly out of the way. It wasn’t him any more. I went down to the beach and sat by the boatshed for a long time before I went back inside.

  The funeral was a relief, but even it could not be a normal funeral. For one thing Aunt Ruby came, but instead of coming into the house for the service she stood outside the gate weeping bitterly. My mother went out and asked her to come in, but between loud sobs she declared that she knew when she wasn’t wanted.

  I heard my father say, “If that woman will neither come in nor go, I’ll set the dog on her.”

  Aunt Ruby was probably the only person Gyp might have bitten.

  My mother whispered urgently, “You shall do nothing of the sort.”

  So Aunt Ruby was left there, her head bowed and her tears falling like rain. Once she cried aloud, “Neglected! neglected! Oh, my poor dear Pops!”

  The service was conducted by the Reverend Mr Wetherby—that minister whose horse had shied at our camel. We all packed into the old pine lounge, causing the floors to squeak rebelliously. From Grandfather’s bedroom drifted the heavy scent of flowers, but out through the open door the sun shone reassuringly on a calm sea.

  Mr Wetherby was a colourless man. He wore pince-nez and everything he said he read. He read “I am the resurrection and the life”; he read “Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live;” he read that Grandfather had come to Victoria as a small boy, that he had been twenty years a ships’ master and twenty years in the pilot service. Turning himself to my mother he read “words of comfort” to her, all in a monotone.

  Behind him I could see old Mr Matthias fidgeting impatiently. Finally, when Mr Wetherby had uttered his last amen, Mr Matthias said in a low, resonant voice, “True; but not enough. By no means enough. Here was a noble man, a noble and courageous man; a man not given to the petty bickerings of this age. He can be numbered among the generation of pioneers who now, alas, are falling from among us.” I glanced at my father and at Mr Wetherby to see what they would do, but they hadn’t moved. Mr Wetherby was looking in a surprised way over the top of his glasses; my father’s eyes were cast down and he was biting his lower lip. The people must have thought the address pre-arranged, for they listened intently. Mr Matthias’s sonorous voice filled the room and his beard protruded aggressively. “He was a man unafraid to express his opinions even when these were contrary to the opinions of those who happened to be in authority over him; a man who would not deign to live by the sweat of another’s brow.” There was an uneasy shuffling at this—after all, Theo Matthias was supposed to be a Bolshevik. “And now”—more quietly—“his voice is stilled. No more shall we see him looking seawards from this old home; no more will we hear him in debate. But it is your hope and it is my hope—as a Christian it is my hope, Mr Wetherby—that this is not the end.”

  At this moment the rapid striking of Grand­father’s old clock interrupted him. Whether he intended continuing, I don’t know. My father hastily said “Amen,” and at this the people muttered “Amen,” and the service was over.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When I went back to school even old Moloney regarded me as a person apart, as if I had brought with me the atmosphere of Grandfather McDonald’s last hours. “A sad loss,” he said, then avoided speaking to me for the rest of the day.

  My own attention was taken from the past few days by the sight of Johnno. He sat alone and his head was clipped as close as a criminal’s. I couldn’t see him on his own until lunch-time. Then, when we had climbed the post-and-rail fence and had gone into the bush and were lying on the damp turf, I said to him, looking at his head, “Was that because of the haircut?”

  He felt it gingerly. “Yes—the old man did it.” He looked at me accusingly. “Hell, Charlie, you shouldn’t have let Squid make it like he did!”

  I turned away from him. “No, I shouldn’t have,” I admitted. “But what could I do? It was the first cut that did it. Then I didn’t know what to say.”

  “It would have been worse but for Eileen. The old man was all for half killing me, but she got between us and calmed him down. Then he went and borrowed clippers and did this.” He felt it again. “Old Moloney said he didn’t want a convict sitting with the rest, so he put me alone. I was going to take it out on Squid, but he hardly moved away from the classroom all day.”

  After this mournful recital we ate our sandwiches moodily. It was a windy day and all the surrounding bushes swayed against a cold sky.

  “There’s something else,” said Johnno, frowning.

  I looked at him again.

  “It’s Eileen. She was pretty good to me. Afterwards she asked if I’d take her to another dance.”

  So this was it!

  “After what you did last time?” I exclaimed.

  “Well—she’s sort of forgotten that—”

  “You’re not reckoning on asking me again?”

  “Hell, Charlie, it was partly your fault I got into trouble with the old man! You told me Squid could cut hair—”

  “Anyhow, you couldn’t go looking like that.”

  He felt his head again. “Eileen reckons it’ll grow well enough in a couple of weeks. Listen, Charlie, you wouldn’t—”

  “Anyhow, we’ve had a death in the family.” I felt suddenly grateful to Grandfather. “I don’t see that I could ask to go to a dance—especially when Grand­father didn’t believe in them.”

  I could see he thought this was taking a mean advantage of him. He sat tugging absently at a tuft of grass. “Okay then,” he murmured despondently. “O
kay.”

  I began to feel sorry for him, but then the bell went and we got up and walked without a word back to school.

  He took Eileen alone to the second dance. As it turned out this made a big difference to us. To start with, Johnno came back from the dance looking almost happy. Alone at lunch-time again I said, “Well, what was it like?”

  “The supper wasn’t as good as last time,” he said.

  “Yes—but did you dance?”

  “I did the foxtrot with Eileen to start her off—” He paused as if there were more to mention.

  “What else?”

  “Nothing,” he replied quickly. “Listen, what about boxing practice?”

  “You didn’t dance with anyone else, did you?”

  “No,” he said loudly, “of course I didn’t. Listen, if we don’t start soon it won’t be worth having a practice.”

  Boxing practice had been going on for weeks, in fact, ever since the cold weather had begun. I looked at him closely. Unlike Squid, he couldn’t lie successfully. I knew he was certainly lying now.

  “All right,” I said carelessly, “you have first go.”

  He took a cord from his pocket and tied my wrists behind my back. I said nothing while this was going on. I knew there was something he was ashamed to admit. Eileen had probably talked him into dancing with someone else.

  “Right?”

  “Right,” I said indifferently.

  He began punching at me, quickly but with pulled punches, while I dodged and ducked. I began to forget about the dance and only kept my eyes on his. The worried look wasn’t in them any longer. He watched me from under his brows. Had he liked, he could have killed me, but his blows seldom hurt. We changed over and I bound his wrists. He stepped lightly, as if the ground were hot, and while I punched he rolled and bobbed so well that I scarcely landed a blow.

  “You want to get in,” he said. “You’re fair enough at defence, but you’ve got to punch as if you want to kill a bloke.” When I untied him he demonstrated with a straight left and a right hook.

  “About the dance—” I began.