The Good Teacher

by Richard Anderson

  So soon she was on the highway again, sitting up straight and holding the wheel firmly, adopting the strong, resolute guise she had crafted for herself. She was returning home as a no-nonsense woman who held no truck with falsehood or adultery and could handle any reality. At least that’s what she kept re-affirming to herself, hour after hour. She ate a whole pack of squishy lollies on the way, while the children repeatedly asked ‘What are you eating, Mummy?’, and felt queasy and justified in that queasiness. Nothing would ever be the same.

  As she came over the rise and looked down across that plain, she felt like she hadn’t seen it for months. The meeting and the interruptus seemed so long ago, she wondered if everything mightn’t have changed. But as she neared her home she realised the few hours that had turned her life upside down hadn’t really affected anything. The crops had advanced and the landscape had dried out, but the distant trees and skyline of hills were unchanged. It was comforting to return to the familiar, but unnerving to face up to indifference.

  As she neared her turn-off there was a white sedan parked on the side of the road. She guessed someone had stopped where the signal was strongest for their mobile phone. But as she went past, a large man got out and put up his hand for her to stop. He was out of place in his thinning town suit but he had a pleasant face. He came up to the window, apologising for stopping her: ‘I’m trying to find old Mack Booth’s place. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?’

  She gave him directions and idly asked if he was family of Mack’s.

  ‘No. My father knew him. I thought I’d drop in. I’m doing the investigation on the school fire. Detective Johnson. How are you?’ He reached a pillowy hand through the window.

  ‘Sarah Howard. We’ve been away. I only just heard about the fire. Terrible. Do you know what happened?’

  ‘Not yet. Won’t take long. Sorry about your school. Least no one was hurt.’ He returned to his car and she waved him off.

  Her house was the same, except the garden was very neat, neat to the point of repressed. It reminded her of a conference centre. The garden beds were removed of weeds as well as the salvia and the phlox she’d planted last year. The apricot had been so severely pruned it looked, well, punk.

  Panic rattled a stick in the bucket of her ribcage. What if she had got it wrong and she couldn’t bear to be near him or in the same house as him? What if the sight of him made her physically ill? What if she wanted to scream at him in front of the kids?

  She stopped and got out, all the time looking at the kids, not yet ready to see if Ian was nearby. Head down and hand out to Julia, who was squealing to get out of her seat, she peered over the car for a sign of him. He came striding down the garden, straight to the car and to her, smiling broadly despite a purply lump on the side of his face. He hugged her whether she liked it or not and stuck his head in the car to say hello to the children. It felt good. Thankfully, it felt good.

  He carried the bags and the kids inside, proudly pointing out the neat garden beds and the mown lawn and the meal he’d cooked and the spotless carpets and the shiny bathrooms. She was impressed but didn’t show it. She would be damned if his only punishment was going to be three weeks without his family. She nodded and smiled a horizontal, thin-lipped smile, but said nothing.

  When he carried her bag into their bedroom she saw that he hadn’t been sleeping there and some of his clothes had been moved out.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m in the spare room.’ He was almost proud.

  As she stood in the doorway, looking into the room, her recollections of that night assaulted her.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘You take this bed. I’ll sleep in the spare room for a while.’

  He nodded and she began to wonder how long she could stand him being this compliant.

  After the kids had been fed and Ian had read them a book in bed, Sarah found herself standing with her husband in the kitchen, just the two of them. It was a moment she hadn’t been looking forward to.

  ‘I’m so sorry. It’ll never happen again. I’m really glad you came home.’

  He had to say that, didn’t he? Her husband, marooned in the middle of the timber floor, his only ally the fridge behind him, papered in kids’ drawings and colourful reminders. An unwitting reinforcement, Julia called out his name.

  ‘You see to her. I’m going to bed to read.’

  In bed she wondered again what others would do in her situation. What would someone like Jennifer do if she caught Andy in the act? Indeed, what would Andy do if he found out about Jennifer? Was Sarah being soft, returning after only three weeks to live in the same house as Ian? Maybe she should kick him out to sleep in the cottage the contract harvesters stayed in? His crime was not an insignificant one. Others would have divorced him on the spot. She was sure of that. If she got half the farm in the settlement she could set up a nice life for herself. But her children were happy, that was the ultimate justification. This was the nice life she had chosen.

  At breakfast he was still hanging around when he would normally have been long gone. She was about to tell him to go but the children were still sponging him up, so she queried him about the lump on his jaw instead. He said something about a gate in the cattle yards swinging back into his face, but while it was a believable story, the rendition was unconvincing. She wasn’t really listening to the answer, having only asked the question because it was something safe to talk about, but she was sucked back in when she noticed the twisted look on his face: it usually broadcast that he was lying.

  ‘What really happened?’ Did she want to know?

  He sighed like a schoolboy whose dog hadn’t actually eaten his homework. ‘Andy punched me. It was a good one.’

  She was suddenly, strangely, very angry and didn’t know why. Ian might deserve a smack in the mouth but giving him one felt wrong. Like Andy had taken his own disappointment out on Ian. And if Ian should have controlled himself around Madison, then Andy not showing self-control didn’t help anything. This was not how adults behaved.

  Jennifer and Brock, and then Ian and Madison, and then violence and now … A rapid progression of logic pushed another startling idea into her head. It made her genuinely frightened, sick in the stomach. She turned to check on the children in the next room, as if the idea might come after them. There was a question that had to be asked.

  ‘Did you force her?’ Her voice was weak.

  ‘No.’ His face was resolute and convincing.

  ‘Are you positive?’

  ‘I promise you that.’

  Her hands went limp in relief. She hadn’t ever considered rape. The split second of action she’d seen didn’t hint at coercion. But she knew better than anyone how the mind and the eyes could play tricks. She was supposed to be strong, no-nonsense and have faith in her own responses. That was what she had decided and after only one night at home she was losing faith.

  ‘Does Andy think it was rape?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that.’ He was telling the truth.

  ‘We need to talk to him.’ The idea of talking to Andy about it was scary.

  ‘He’s not going to listen to me.’

  Once again it was down to her to be the grown-up in the relationship. But she couldn’t let Andy Booth stomp around on the moral high ground as if his family was faultless.

  ‘All right. I’ll talk to him.’

  IAN

  All in all, things had gone pretty well for him. It could have been the biggest disaster, the end of everything, and after Sarah had just up and gone, he thought it might have been. He pictured himself living alone in a tiny house in town, making his own meals, eating at the club or the pub for company and doing harvest work, contracting or other piecemeal stuff. He knew men it had happened to. They were disoriented and confused, looked like they needed street signs to find their way out of their home town.

  He had cried in that first week (he’d never tell anyone that), in heaving, squealing sobs like he
was trying to give birth to something. It had happened while he was cleaning the house, caught him out with a rag in his hand, wiping windows. But it didn’t stop him. The house was vacuumed and dusted, the sheets washed, the windows worried into crystal transparency and the garden harassed every day, all in her honour.

  She’d gone to her sister’s, there was no prize for guessing that, and the response to his phone calls was no more than he had expected. The nights were long and uninteresting, the TV unbearable, and he found himself either drinking too much or going to bed as soon as dinner was digested.

  But after a while he realised the odds were stacked in his favour: Sarah would never want the kids to be without him. That kids needed a father, a male role model, was one of her cherished beliefs. She would be coming home. She mightn’t be happy with him, but she would return. So, after the blackness of immovable negativity, he suddenly felt light and bright. Things were looking up. Truth be known, he was a smooth operator.

  Sarah did come home with the kids and she was civil, sometimes even friendly, and he knew he was right. You could get sick of the coldness, the clipped words, the barked orders, but for the time being it was enough. He could talk to the kids, or through the kids, because they bore him no grudge. Only once did they ask: ‘Can Madison babysit us?’ and Sarah had deflected them lightning fast. Madison was ‘too busy studying’, as well as having ‘so many other husbands to look after’. Laughing was not permitted.

  He was sure he loved Sarah, but she had become so focused on the children nothing else seemed to get a look-in. Everything he and Sarah did was for them, and nothing couldn’t be happily sacrificed so the children could be fed, taught, transported, indulged, watched, doctored and fussed over. It was probably a good approach but it made him feel like a bit part in the family story and he knew that was childish. The thing was, Sarah identified so closely with the children that their wants and needs had become hers. So, by default, her wants and needs were being answered while his were swept aside. She would have thought that was ridiculous—that he wanted to be mothered too. Didn’t she already make his meals, wash his clothes, clean his house? He could hear her saying it. And he didn’t want to be mothered, but some attention wouldn’t have gone astray. So, he had gone astray.

  His own mother would have told him there were consequences for that. He understood that he deserved Andy’s punch and accepted that he had done the wrong thing on several counts, to several people. But the humiliation of Andy knocking him to the ground persisted like a cold sore. The more he told himself he was a bad man who had done a bad thing, the more he enjoyed the memory of Madison and prickled at the thought of Andy’s retribution. As the days went past, he began to cook up justifications. Madison had been a willing participant (god, she had been willing). There was even a moment, a tiny moment, when Sarah had turned the light on, when he had thought he might just keep at it. He’d been sprung and Sarah wouldn’t be forgiving him any time soon so why not finish the job? Of course he hadn’t, but, you know …

  Andy going onto a man’s property for a king hit was not fair play. Ian could just have easily gone after him with a piece of timber or a bit of steel and claimed trespass or self defence, maybe even shot him. Ian had been made to feel small and he wasn’t small, he was as good as any man. Andy had overstepped the mark.

  Ian could hold off such thoughts while he was working on something—repairing machinery, rigging up pumps, loading trucks—but when he got into a machine to drive for a few hours, thoughts of vengeance spun hot in his head. He could see himself in Andy’s garden, surprising Andy and punching him in the head.

  But when he cooled down he realised that there was something more than his desire for vengeance—his need for Madison. He wanted to be with her again.

  The fear of Sarah taking the kids, destroying the farm and leaving him bereft had softened to a mild anxiety but who knew what she’d do if she caught him again. But how unlucky would he have to be to get caught again? That first time was the worst fluke. No one would ever expect Sarah to leave a P&C meeting early. Not on the only night they’d had a half-decent babysitter. You couldn’t get odds for that.

  MADISON

  Zumba took a while to give in to her. He’d had a long break with good feed and not much work and wasn’t ready for the holiday to be over. Gradually she smoothed out his tiptoeing and spooking and taking any squeeze as a suggestion to bolt. It was only a couple of kilometres down to Mack’s place but it gave her plenty of space to remind Zumba of his old skills and to stretch her own muscles into his movements. It was Sunday and she was back at school. She had done some maths and geography in the morning, then suggested she might ride over to Mack’s. All her mother said was: ‘Helmet, Madison’, and gave her a look to bolster the suggestion.

  Zumba stood to be caught in the paddock, but his neck quivered as if to tell her he was only being caught in theory. Once on, she was quickly reminded of his awesome power. The way he sprang from foot to foot, it felt like she was sitting on a muscular bomb, one kick to ignite him.

  The dry grass was short, revealing every danger as she moved him through his gaits, collected him, arched him and let him jump small logs and even give chase after a skinny, unconcerned fox for a short distance.

  The ride helped her stop thinking. For the past few days, she hadn’t been able to erase the image of Sarah and those little kids leaving that house. She was part of the reason but she hadn’t meant to be. She’d only been doing what she’d always done: seeking thrills and cheap adventure. It hadn’t occurred to her that little children might be affected by what she did. Adults were fair game. If they were unhappy or unconvinced or, heaven forbid, disappointed, that was their issue. But little kids? A family? It nagged at her. The more time passed the worse she felt.

  Mack was on his verandah, his face all pleasure when he realised who she was. He insisted on making her a cup of tea and bringing a chair out next to his. Zumba was impressed with his lush lawn.

  ‘You in trouble?’ he said after they’d settled in and he’d managed to get the teapot to the cup.

  ‘Not today. Why?’

  ‘I don’t see you as much when you’re not in trouble.’

  ‘Sorry. Got heaps of work to do. I don’t get much time for going out.’

  ‘That’s fine. So how come you’ve got time now?’

  ‘I’m gated.’

  Mack nodded out at the paddock. She could tell he liked this game: asking questions he knew the answer to.

  ‘What’d you do?’

  What to tell your grandfather? He might have thought the boarding school thing was funny, but this? Sex was different for girls, as far as some men were concerned anyway.

  ‘I don’t think I want to tell you.’

  ‘Okay.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Nothing to do with coming home early from babysitting a couple of weeks ago?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She had a sudden compulsion to tell him. He would probably find out anyway. He might already know. And if she didn’t tell him, she’d be treating him like an unimportant old man, when he hadn’t treated her like a silly girl when it really counted.

  ‘I did something selfish. Something I’m not proud of. I didn’t realise it at the time. I kind of thought it was exciting.’ She bit her lip and proceeded. ‘I slept with a married man.’

  She could hear his breathing, regular and unlaboured.

  ‘Just the once.’

  He put a hand overs hers. It sat like a replica of the mountain range in the distance. ‘The wife knows?’

  ‘Yeah. She left.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s not good.’

  ‘She’s back.’

  ‘We all make mistakes.’

  For a while there was nothing to say. Leo barked at something imaginary in the garden bed.

  ‘I’d love to give you some wise platitude about this, but I’m a bit low on all-encompassing wisdom. How about: selfish people don’t know they’re selfish?’

  He smiled at her. He wa
s pretty cool for a grandfather. They both watched Leo in his imaginary pursuit.

  ‘Did you have people staying then?’

  It was an odd question and she guessed it was an attempt to move away from the hot topic.

  ‘Nope. Just Mum, Dad and me. Same old, same old.’

  ‘I thought your mother had someone in the car with her that night.’

  ‘If she did they weren’t staying with us.’ How did he know the things he knew? He wouldn’t be able to see that far in the daylight let alone after dark.

  ‘I smelt something like a cigarette coming from the car so I guessed she had a passenger. Must have just been the smell of the car.’ He shook his head as if he didn’t believe it.

  ‘You could smell that from here?’

  He gave a little shrug. ‘Not much else going on. The southerly blows across the road towards me. I can smell it when someone’s having a barbie in Stony Creek. I can tell when Mrs Plumpton goes past, if she goes slowly with the window open. It would surprise you what I can smell.’

  It certainly did. ‘It probably was Mum’s cigarette. She sometimes sneaks one when she’s worked up. It was a pretty big night for her—apparently.’

  ‘Jennifer smokes?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She had a vision of her mother, late at night, drawing on a cigarette like a film star in a black-and-white movie.