Tom Houghton

by Todd Alexander

  Perhaps if Lana had simply cried out, ‘You’re ugly! You’re ugly!’, I might have been able to find a smidgin of glee.

  The nice nurse watching me from behind her station said in soothing tones, ‘You know this is all completely normal, try not to take it personally . . .’

  To which I sniggered.

  ‘She’s sick, Mr Houghton. It’s quite common for the most loved to be on the receiving end of the most hurtful abuse inside here, you have to try to see the funny side if you can.’

  Then it was my turn to cry. As the lift doors closed in front of me, pathetic taunted gay-boy tears rolled and I wished they could cut into my flesh as punishment. Oh man-up, Houghton, I said under my breath. Mummy’s never been one for baby talk.

   Sixteen

  Spencer returned to school. A crude, makeshift sling his mother had fashioned out of an old scarf held up his right arm. It was fastened by an over-sized nappy pin. The other kids huddled around him and made a fuss but I kept some distance. I wondered what the next move might be in the strange power play we seemed to be in. When the bell rang and we meandered into class, I got close enough to see Spencer’s face. His left eye was swollen and purple; a cut marked the top of his lip. He gave me a look, but its meaning was lost on me. I thought perhaps it was Spencer conceding I had won the latest round. I settled at my desk quickly, as always, and before Mrs Nguyen could calm the class, Spencer threw an envelope down in front of me. Mrs Horton was written on its front.

  Before I could speak to Spencer, Mrs Nguyen told everyone to sit down and be quiet. I opened the envelope to see a fifty-dollar note inside, and a brief note from Mrs Michaels explaining how sorry Spencer was for stealing it, and how out of character it had been for him.

  The morning’s lesson was singing. It was one of my most dreaded. Mrs Nguyen said I had a beautiful singing voice and should be in the choir, but I knew what that could do to a boy’s reputation, so I’d declined. Now when we sang as a class, she kept a close ear out for my voice among a few others, and if I didn’t sing, she would ask me to be louder. But if I sang loudly in my soprano when the boys at the back of the room were mumbling through with their caustic-edged voices, there would only be more ammunition against me.

  Mrs Nguyen asked Simon Harlen to come to the front of the class to keep watch on the children as she turned her back to us to play her piano. It made no sense to me that the most disrespectful student had been given the honour of such a task. She trilled her introduction, added some flurry to it, and then encouraged us all to sing.

  ‘. . . Three, four, and –’

  As we sang, Simon Harlen acted out the words of the song. Pointed a finger down, brought his hand to his eye to peer along the way, pretended to be asleep for night, bent his hand severely at the wrist for gay . . . The class giggled as he acted out his own brand of eurhythmics. Mrs Nguyen stopped playing and turned around. Simon Harlen was a picture of concentration.

  ‘Honestly, 6N! If you can’t get through a simple song, we’ll stay in to do it at lunch. Stop the rot, please. Now, from the top. Three, four and –’

  And Simon Harlen would begin and the class would again dissolve into giggles as his actions grew more and more grotesque. Though I tried hard to resist, even I laughed along as Mrs Nguyen kept turning around to the class, missing out on catching Simon Harlen in the act by seconds.

  When the bell announced recess, Mrs Nguyen asked Spencer to stay behind a moment. I feared she might blame me for the shenanigans and thought maybe I should stay behind to make sure, and dob in the real culprit if need be. As I lingered in the hat room, however, Mrs Nguyen leant in close to Spencer, whispering something I couldn’t catch, to which Spencer shook his head. After a few minutes, she let him go.

  Spencer looked through me as he walked past. It was an eerie sensation, as though I didn’t even exist. I watched as he struggled to get his play lunch out of his bag.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’ I asked timidly.

  ‘I’m not paralysed,’ he barked back. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Spencer, listen, this is –’

  ‘When are you gonna leave me alone?’

  ‘I’m sorry about what I said to your mum.’ I told myself not to cry, anything but let him see me cry.

  ‘You should be, too. My old man went off the deep end.’

  Things made sense to me then, the cut and the bruising. The realisation struck me in the gut. ‘Spencer . . .’

  ‘I don’t wanna talk to you no more,’ Spencer said. ‘You got your fifty bucks, now leave me alone before I start wanting to hurt you too.’

  ‘Here,’ I said, handing him the envelope. ‘I never wanted the stupid money.’

  Spencer snatched it from me and walked out without uttering another word.

  Later, at lunch, Spencer shouted Fitz, Simon Harlen, and the other goons their lunch at the canteen. Children swarmed around him, asking if they could get a lolly or an ice cream, and he bought just about everyone in the class something. I watched it all from a distance and knew how deliberately I was being excluded. Eventually the excitement around Spencer subsided and he was left with just the boys. He appeared to be regaling them with some fascinating tale. Whenever I looked up to check on its progress, one or more of the boys were looking at me, and a couple of times they shook their heads in disbelief. I knew what was happening, and it made me fear for my life. If things were barely tolerable before, now they would be catastrophic. My time was running out, I had to find a way to emerge from this dung heap with my dignity intact.

  When the school bell signalled the end of lunch, I packed away my movie magazines and looked up to see Simon Harlen marching towards me, anger plastered across his face. He came right up to me, hoicked way down in the back of his throat, and then spat a thick, slimy golly right into my face. I was so scared, a small trace of urine again leaked into my shorts. Now things were getting physical and I had no way of fighting a boy with aggression.

  The afternoon’s lesson was interrupted by a visit from the principal and Mrs Knopke, the canteen lady. Her face was moulded into a picture of worry. Together they whispered with Mrs Nguyen and she nodded seriously.

  ‘Spencer Michaels? Please come to the front of the class.’

  Spencer walked very slowly to the front of the room.

  ‘Face the class.’ He turned. ‘Principal?’

  ‘Mister Michaels,’ our bald, round-faced principal began. ‘I believe you were very generous at lunch time today?’

  ‘Sir?’ I found it miraculous that Spencer was showing no fear.

  ‘Bought a lot of garbage for a lot of rodents?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘With a fifty-dollar note?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  I froze in my seat. This was it, Spencer’s chance to turn the tables, explain my lies and deception, get Mum down here and I would never, ever hear the end of it. What has become of my boy, why would you ever do such a thing? I was ready to stand, guilty as charged. My legs were trembling with fright, tears already welling before the judge had even made a sound.

  ‘Home, sir.’ Spencer’s voice stayed firm, resolute.

  ‘Don’t play smart with me, mate, it won’t get you anywhere. The fifty bucks came from where?’

  ‘My dad gave it to me.’

  ‘Fifty dollars?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ll ask again. Where did you get the money?’

  ‘My dad gave it to me.’ By now there was a slight glint in Spencer’s eye as he looked at his new mates. They, in turn, were looking directly at me. One kicked the back of my seat. Own up, he may have whispered, but I was deaf to it all.

  ‘Get out!’ The principal yelled, making some of the kids in the class jump, and Mrs Knopke’s face wince. ‘Let this be a lesson to all of you. Thieving will not be permitted, especially from one’s own parents. Mrs Nguyen, as you were.’

  Few of the kids could concentrate for the rest of the afternoon. No
tes were being passed; there were more requested visits to the bathroom than usual. Some of the boys sneered at me, one or two of them hissed. If I hadn’t lied about him stealing, Spencer never would have had the money! I wanted to scream. Why do you hate me when I’m the one who paid for your stupid lunch? The rumour mill was unstoppable – Spencer’s father had been called, and sighted, his mother had shown up crying, all three Michaels boys had been removed from class, Spencer had gotten the cane, he’d been suspended. Or worse yet – he was expelled.

  I was consumed with guilt. All of this was my fault. The manly thing to do, if Mal had been in my shoes, would be to go straight to Spencer’s house after school, explain there had been a gross misunderstanding, stop him getting another beating from his father. I was anxious and scared, but I made my mind up. I would confess everything to the Michaelses, then ask Mal to help me explain it to Mum.

  As I walked through the school gate, the fear in my heart intensified. Simon Harlen and some of his mates were standing there, as if waiting for me.

  ‘Spencer’s in deep shit thanks to you, Tom-girl.’

  ‘I’m going there now to explain everything,’ I said, hoping to avoid further confrontation.

  Simon mimicked me by turning his head side-to-side in an effete way. ‘What’d he ever do to you?’

  ‘I’ll sort it out, Simon.’

  ‘Or more like – what didn’t he do to you?’

  ‘Hey, Tom-girl,’ another of them said this time, behind me. ‘What are you dressing up as for the Hollywood thing?’

  I ignored him; I knew my surprise was secret from everyone except Mrs B. I kept walking, picking up my pace.

  ‘You coming as Barbie? Like one of your dollies?’

  I was two paces shy of jogging. If I just kept going they would eventually leave me alone.

  ‘Spencer told us about your dollies, Tom-girl. About your doll collection!’

  ‘Running home to play dress-ups with your dollies, are you?’

  ‘Dolly!’

  ‘Hey, Dolly!’

  ‘Dolly! Dolly!’

  I wanted to be strong, was desperate to show I was better than them, but despite my best intentions, the blasted tears did not take long to sting my eyes and I couldn’t see properly without wiping them away. Never in my life had I felt as relieved as when I saw the familiar brand on the side of Mal’s delivery van. But as I approached, I saw Fitz leaning in the passenger window, talking to Mal.

  ‘Yeah, catch ya,’ I heard Fitz say.

  As he walked close to me, a look of malice nailed to his face, he whispered hotly in my ear: ‘My mum says your mum’s a slut!’

  I ignored him and climbed into the van, trembling. I didn’t even know what a slut was – I could have gathered, I suppose, but what was one insult atop so many others?

  ‘Hey, bro!’ Mal said with his unerring joviality. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Aren’t you ever sad? I wanted to scream at him. Can’t you see what they’re all doing to me? Can’t you look for once and see what’s wrong with me? But instead I mumbled, ‘Nothin’.’

  ‘What were them boys saying to you?’

  ‘What boys?’

  ‘Tom, you’ve been crying, eh mate? Want me to go sort them out or something? Young Fitz’ll listen to me, eh?’

  ‘It’s just . . .’ I thought about it for a few seconds. I wanted to trust Mal, I loved him in my own way and knew he cared deeply enough for me. But confessing to their taunts would raise so many questions – about the dolls, about the magazines, about what had happened with Spencer. I couldn’t go through that trauma, not there and then in Mal’s cramped delivery van. It was bigger than the bullying; the scars ran deeper than a few choice words or gob of spit. I thought fast. ‘I’ve never ever had anyone pick me up after school, that’s all.’

  ‘Tom?’

  I looked at him and forced a desperate smile. I was in a film – that was it, plain and simple. I needed to act my way out of this. Thomas Houghton would have been able to do it and I was nothing if I couldn’t do the same.

  ‘It’s crazy, I know. But it just means a lot.’

   Seventeen

  Spencer did not make it to school the following day. My remorse was only supplanted by my disappointment that Spencer had told those fools about my Hollywood collection. They weren’t pathetic dolls; these boys would never understand how much they were worth. But now they had the ammunition they’d been longing for, something from my private life they could sink their sharp hungry teeth into.

  Mrs Nguyen’s hearing had never been the best, so she was not alert to the constant whispers of Dolly that made their way from the back of the room towards me. Small pieces of saliva-glued paper were shot into the back of my head through emptied pen chambers. Heavier, unknown things were thrown at me whenever her back was to the class. Each direct hit was followed by a series of stifled laughs and each one, it seemed, was trying to outdo what had come before it.

  I did not acknowledge any of the missiles. I figured if I made moves to avoid them, or remove them from my hair, I would only egg the boys on further. By now there must have been fifteen or twenty spitballs stuck in my hair. I sat bolt upright, trying desperately to concentrate on the basic algebra Mrs Nguyen was teaching. Thomas Houghton would act his way out of this, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction. Never show your tic.

  At lunch I lingered in the classroom until I was hurried on by Mrs Nguyen and in the hat room I removed the balls from my hair with disgust, shaking them into the bin. I found my usual hiding place and tried my best to concentrate on the latest movie magazines Mum had brought home. But when that bell tolled, it called me back to face another round from the firing line. If I just let it all wash over me without reaction, surely they would soon give up?

  The more I ignored, however, the harder things were thrown, and the more things were spat. I morphed the scene once again into celluloid: I was the victimised smart kid and two scenes into the film I would graduate from school and while the thugs struggled to make ends meet with their small-town minds and laborious jobs, I’d be a success, wealthy and famous. These visions were the only things that got me through the day.

  I advised Mrs Nguyen that I would not be coming to class tomorrow. My mother and her new boyfriend were taking me away for the weekend. I said sorry that I had forgotten my note, but promised to bring it to her on Monday. She was flippant, and wished me a happy weekend.

  At home I showered the teasing from my hair and skin, scrubbed away until my scalp and flesh hurt. I raced about completing my chores, plucking unripe fruit from the citrus trees, pulling under-grown carrots from the sanctuary of their beds. I barely tidied the chicken coop at all, scraping up their shit and scattering it over the vegetable garden with none of my usual methodical precision. I pelted the angry bird with one of its eggs, narrowly missing her. Her would-be baby chick exploded against the wall of the garage. I filled three more bags with rubbish, barely giving any thought to what was being kept or discarded. I was void of sentiment; it was just another chore begging to be completed. I called in to Mrs B’s, who informed me that she needed nothing today, thank you, so I returned home and pulled the salad plate from the fridge to pick at over dinner. As soon as I cleared up after myself, I went to my room and shut the door, put on a cassette of the soundtrack to a movie and threw myself into my cards.

  Busy, that was it. I needed to keep busy to distance myself from the day, and what I would be returning to on Monday. Not long now until the end of term and then I would be free for weeks, back to just me and Mum . . . and now Mal as well. I worked quickly and efficiently, adding notes and titles, clipping and pasting portraits from waiting piles of magazines. My fingers were sticky with glue, my forefinger had developed a temporary callus from where the pencils had pressed, my eyesight was getting blurry from too much concentration. But on I worked, creating a new card for another actor showing promise: Joan Cusack, sister of John. I added another: Holly Hunter. Every movie ad was
scoured for names; every list of credits was picked over for another piece of meat. In this task, I could think of little else.

   Eighteen

  I was nervous to be seeing my daughter for the first time in eighteen months. Would we have anything to say? The scariest thing for me was fearing how she would judge me. I wanted to be liked by Lexi, I wanted us to be friends and, I suppose, above and beyond all of that, I was desperate for forgiveness. Her words echoed around my head as I walked the streets of Edinburgh: that my rants about her mother only served to negatively impact Lexi’s feelings towards me. This was indicative, wasn’t it, of so many facets of my life. How many others were ignoring the substance of what I said and peering beneath to try to make sense of the man spewing forth? Damon, certainly. Hanna no doubt felt she knew me better than I knew myself. I was scared, I had to face it. Not only of the play and this Scottish audience robbed of a native star, but scared for my future. Funny how a foreign environment can sometimes make one shit one’s pants, proverbially speaking.

  I was ill-prepared for a Scottish winter and unimpressed by the number of daylight hours. A last-minute change meant I was forced to fly out of Sydney three days earlier than originally agreed, abandoning plans to spend two days with Lexi in London. I was coerced instead to spend them hobnobbing with the production and festival companies. Victor knew I hated doing it, and had often commented on how badly I executed it, but nevertheless had insisted because they had. Lexi showed no disappointment at all, probably because it meant no longer having her father crash on the couch in the lounge room of her shared house – Lexi and a bunch of straight muscle boys she’d befriended at the local gym.

  Victor knew I liked my privacy, so found me a room in a hotel that was a converted mansion on the Royal Mile. It was a ten-minute walk from the small theatre we were playing at and about the same distance from the hotel where some of the other cast and crew were staying. I spent my first few hours in the gloomy city searching for more suitable winter wear, the few warm clothes I’d brought proving unsuitable both because they were intended for a Sydney winter, and had fitted me better last year. I spent the equivalent of my first two weeks’ pay on a jacket, undergarments, thick woolly socks and a new pair of shiny black boots that I did not need but had to have. Throw in a few scarves, gloves and beanies and before you knew it, the entire run was nearly accounted for. Hey ho.