Datsunland

by Stephen Orr

  Again, she’d said, ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ And he’d just shrugged, and she’d taken this to mean he did care, sort of, but not really enough to act. That was a good sign. It meant he was compassionate, and maybe one day he’d want to help out: Vinnies, or teaching in Africa. But now, now she suspected she’d misread him completely. Compassion, or a forensic fascination? A desire to pin every man onto a foam backing board, watch him wriggle, die, and dry out, write a label that said, ‘Can man’, ‘Aborigine’, ‘Dwarf’. To close the box and forget, knowing he’d made some attempt to understand, but really just to observe, to know, to control.

  5.00: Dance troupe

  Back in the main street, the same thirteen (perhaps, Mark couldn’t tell) appeared dressed as Morris dancers. Frilly pants, boaters, bells, ribbons and vests with sequins. They formed a circle, raised their hands and waited. One of the fish-shop girls started a tape player and they were off. Up and down, jiggle-jiggle, around, linking arms, separating, executing their tightly choreographed moves. Susan was impressed, but Mark was grinning, again. ‘They’re actually quite good,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ He studied their faces. There was no mucking around. This was serious stuff. ‘Their little legs …’ He loved how stumpy they were; how the very short ones had to run to keep up; how their arms weren’t long enough to make a daisy chain, and how the links kept breaking. One stumbled, rolled, and got up. Mark laughed, but Susan poked him again.

  She could remember the look on his face. From when they’d slowed to twenty-five, driven past the road crew gardening in Parkville Acres, a dozen or so retards (yes, he’d used the word) mowing, line-trimming, weeding beside the highway. The look on his face: how his forehead compressed, his cheeks bulged, his eye-slits narrowed, his tongue wet his lips, his head jutted forward. ‘Do you think they pay them?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For gardening. Do you think?’

  ‘Of course they pay them.’

  ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That they have a job. Something to do all day. What else would they do?’

  She’d just looked at him, as he’d studied them, the way they held their power-tools, interacted, just got on with the job, despite the need to keep stopping and scratching their faces and arms and legs and arse and biting at the air and spitting, all of which made them less efficient, but at least they were doing something useful.

  ‘It would’ve taken hours to learn this dance,’ Susan said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You gotta hand it to them, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble.’ But despite saying this, she didn’t feel any easier about the idea of the dwarf town, or coming to visit, which, by definition, was some sort of validation of something that seemed quite wrong.

  Another dwarf tumbled, and Mark laughed again, and this time the little man looked at him angrily. He stopped. The man returned to his spot and turned little circles that made him dizzy and he nearly stumbled again. Mark managed to keep a straight face.

  5.30: Aviary

  It was a big aviary, with perhaps a hundred birds lined up on branches, arguing on the poppy-seed floor. A man stepped inside, closed the gate and said, ‘Hi everyone, my name is Irwin.’ Then he pointed out the hardhead, the brown songlark, the robust whistler.

  Mark hated birds, but admired the way Irwin moved, spoke softly, allowed a bar-tailed godwit to land on his head. How he caught an eastern spinebill, stepped out of the cage and passed it around. Told them about its call, preferred habitat, life span. Shared his knowledge, and affection, which (Mark thought) seemed different from, more than, the Shearwater way.

  Mark took the bird. Waited. Realised it wasn’t about to fly into the unwired sky. Let it sit in his hands. Still warm and soft and heavier than its size might suggest. After a few moments he returned it, and watched how Irwin stroked its head. Like a baby he’d just adopted, and fetched from the hospital.

  Mark moved into a world of small, satisfying things. Fingers on beaks, warm breath, little tubby heads that were no longer tubby. No dwarves or looms or Chiko Rolls. ‘How far north does it live?’ he asked.

  Irwin told him. He explained how its habitat had shrunk, mainly because of deforestation, but how that applied to all the birds, and their struggle to survive, find food, a place to breed.

  Mark turned to his new wife and said, ‘It’s getting late, we should go.’

  ‘Give me five minutes. I need the toilet.’

  He waited on a log. Remembered. Holding a slingshot, attacking seagulls, as the kids in his class egged him on. Whack! Straight to the leg, dangling as it took off, falling onto the oval, as everyone applauded, and he felt good, and bad, at the same time. Felt the need to take up his slingshot and try again, but the necessity of making sure he missed. After all, it was unlikely a seagull could survive long without a leg. It’d land, stand, and fall over. Like a dwarf. Just fall over. And that wasn’t terribly helpful, or good to think about. Especially if you’d caused it.

  Thwack! Again and again, but his marbles didn’t hit the seagulls. So that the other boys lost interest, and ran off to kick the footy, and he sat, on some other log, and felt bad. And wondered how he could be these two people. One good; one rotten. One decent; the other unknown to him, but always there. He just didn’t understand. Wanted to get in his car and drive home.

  It wasn’t like Susan needed impressing. Quite the opposite. Still, something had brought him here, and something was driving him away.

  Standing, he walked back towards the aviary. Irwin was still inside, sprinkling seed. The birds were quieter now, as if they sensed it was safe, the performance over. He studied the bird-keeper. He wore shorts, and his legs were like sides of beef. Little sides of beef. He could see his mum holding him, and squeezing his leg, and pulling on pants, and socks, and getting him ready for school. Lowering a singlet over his body, which was compact and meaty but still childish. And he could see her holding him close and saying, Just another day. If you can get through it … He knew for a fact she rubbed his chest with Vicks, and tied coins in a hanky so he wouldn’t lose them before lunch. Just another day …

  He knew why she was saying this. It was what every mother had said to every child since the beginning of time. And Irwin was listening, but not happy to go to school, where other boys shot at birds, and said things, and laughed, and seemed to be glad that he was the one in the opportunity class.

  Mark could remember Irwin. The boy who liked birds. Who’d scolded him about the slingshot. He’d pushed him and said, ‘Fuck off you little oompa-loompa’, and felt good and bad again, all the time sensing it was necessary.

  Irwin had said, ‘You better stop that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It can’t look out for itself.’

  And he’d said, ‘It can’t look out for itself.’

  Laughter.

  ‘You’re only doing it to yourself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not the bird. Yourself.’

  This had so angered Mark that he’d picked Irwin up, approached a chain-link fence, and hung him up by a loose wire. Irwin had squirmed, kicked, called for help, before falling, tearing his jacket, and cutting his calf on a wire.

  Everyone had scattered, including him. But he’d hidden beside the sport shed, and listened when Irwin said to a teacher, ‘I might need a doctor.’

  The teacher had said, ‘Who did this?’

  He’d replied, ‘Me.’

  She’d waited for the truth.

  ‘I was climbing. I slipped.’

  Back in his aviary, Irwin knelt, and the birds ate from his hand, and Mark knew why he’d come. He approached him, and stood looking. Noticed the long scar on his leg and said, ‘That looks nasty.’

  Irwin noticed. He looked at him strangely. ‘It’s old.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘A fence. I wasn’t looking what I was doing.’ He stood, exited, closed the door and walked away.

&
nbsp; Then the birds settled, ignoring the last of the seed on the ground. Until it was almost silent. Just his mother, shielding him from his father, who was shouting, still, about the government, and his boss, Reynolds, who wanted him gone. His father, who leaned forward, and squeezed his chin, so much that it hurt. So that he could feel it now. His father, holding a shard of Easter egg in the air, high enough that he couldn’t reach, and saying, ‘Go on, jump’. Which he did, as the chocolate got higher, and higher, before it was given to the dog. Press-ups. Three bricks on his back. Which would do him good. Thrown into the water. The best way to learn how to swim. Until his mum came in after him (‘Let him be, he’ll learn!’).

  He noticed that Irwin had left a book behind. A Descriptive List of the Birds Native to Shearwater, Australia. He picked it up, flicked through, recognised a few from the aviary. Then turned and walked off.

  They drove home in silence. Susan guessed he’d had his lot for the day. He was happy with what he’d seen. This couldn’t make her happy, as the Shearwater Dwarf Village had left her feeling flat, deflated, depressed.

  He’d bought a book (or so he’d told her). She looked through. It was old, and she recognised it, but couldn’t see how he’d understand it.

  The Keeping of Miss Mary

  BROTHER PHILIP VELLACOTT lived in a small cottage across the road from Lindisfarne College. Most of the students had worked out where he lived, and on their way home of an afternoon would slow past his gate and look in the windows, hoping they might see him semi-clad before a mirror, lifting weights, or maybe even living up to the stories their lapsed Catholic uncles had told them about Brothers caught in flagrante delicto. Yes, there were scraps of mostly imagined folklore, but the most anyone had seen was Vellacott in a singlet out fertilising his roses. Generally he kept his blinds drawn, except, perhaps, on a Sunday afternoon when he’d let in some light as he prepared his homily for the boarders’ mass.

  Brother Vellacott was a frugal man. Some of the ladies from the local parish shopped for him, leaving his groceries at his back door. But if Brother Vellacott found himself hungry on, say, a Saturday afternoon, he’d walk across the road to the college, and the canteen, and use his master key to help himself to a pack of barbecue chips or a few frozen kranskies he’d take home and warm up for himself and Miss Mary.

  Brother Vellacott had shared his cottage with Miss Mary for seventeen years. No one at Lindisfarne knew, of course. It wasn’t so much deceit as an error of omission. He’d consulted God and He’d given him permission, and that was good enough for him. There was no point telling the big boss at Lindisfarne, or the little ones, wrapped up in their climate-controlled offices. No point telling the kids, or his brother, or the bishop or archbishop. Miss Mary was his little secret. She had her own life and her own room. They ate and watched MasterChef together, but they’d never kissed, or touched in a romantic way, or even squeezed hands at the end of a sad movie (the sort she was always making him watch).

  Miss Mary was his trial, his test, and for this he thanked God and promised to work, to struggle, to overcome. She was bedridden. Had lost the use of both legs in a car accident, aged twelve. Her father had stopped at a T-junction. Indicated to turn right. Looked left, and right, and left again, then pulled out. But a gravel truck from the local quarry had collected them anyway.

  Afterwards, after they’d buried her father and sister, her mother had sat at her bedside and said, ‘We are lucky.’

  ‘Why?’ she’d asked.

  ‘The truck only clipped us. A quarter of a second earlier we’d all be dead.’

  ‘Or,’ she replied, ‘a second later and we’d all be alive.’

  ‘There’s no point thinking like that,’ her mother had said, shaking her head. ‘Just be thankful God saved us.’

  She’d stared at her mother with disgust. ‘If God saved us then he must have killed Dad and Joan.’

  Which was the beginning of Miss Mary’s God versus Doubt wrestling match, still going on fifty years later, with Brother Vellacott in one corner and a life of wasted opportunities in the other.

  Brother Vellacott’s day would start early. He’d wake at five, shower, dress in black slacks, a shirt and tie, and slip on one of a dozen light jumpers he’d bought at Kmart. Then, every second day, he’d shave. There wasn’t enough to bother about every day, he thought, although one of the boys had called him Brother Michael. The class had laughed and he’d just asked, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘A singer, Brother.’

  ‘Like Sinatra?’

  ‘Yes, Brother, like Sinatra.’ And they’d laughed again.

  At six he’d make a cup of tea and two slices of toast. Watch the early news, trying, all the time, to see world events from a Catholic perspective. Planes didn’t crash because God willed them to, he believed. God was too busy for all that. Planes crashed because nuts and bolts fell off, because the weather turned bad or the pilot had entered the wrong coordinates on the flight computer. The rest, the making the best of it, was what we had to do with God’s help. That’s what he’d told Miss Mary a thousand times. Life is for the living, and God will smooth our way when he can. That’s the most we can hope for, Miss Mary: love, understanding and a helping hand.

  After rinsing his dishes he’d go into Miss Mary’s room, open the blinds (letting in dappled light from an old jacaranda) and say her name a few times. ‘Miss Mary, it’s time. Look, what a beautiful day.’ He’d sit beside her, and smile, and their eyes would meet. ‘Good morning, sleepyhead,’ he’d say, and she’d smile, the same smile every morning, revealing the teeth he helped her clean every evening after the late news. Then he’d ask if she was decent, pull back her sheets, help her out of bed and into her wheelchair. He’d find her cardigan, wrap it around her shoulders and ask, ‘Ready for another day?’

  Some days she’d just lift her eyebrows, and frown, and he’d say, ‘Come on, there’s a movie with Farrah Fawcett later.’ Other days she’d smile, look out of the window and say, ‘I think Dad’s already out on his tractor.’

  ‘Your dad’s dead,’ he’d reply, refusing to indulge her.

  She’d look at him, shocked. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes, you remember, in that car accident?’

  And she’d stop to think. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I can hear him, on his tractor.’

  He’d try to smile, remembering his promise to God. ‘No, that’s Mr White mowing his lawn.’

  ‘Dead?’

  He’d wheel Miss Mary to the lounge room. Park her in front of the television and make her breakfast. If he spied bare skin through her unbuttoned nightie he’d look away and think of that morning’s lesson: Year Eight Pythagoras, the sum of the square of two sides is equal to … Eventually, returning with her tea and toast, he’d lean over and button her nightie. Then there was no need for Pythagoras, or other forms of self-correction.

  He’d wheel her to the bathroom. Turn on the water, adjust the temperature, close his eyes and lift the nightie from her shoulders as she held her arms in the air and wiggled her body. Then, with his eyes still closed, he’d push her over the lip of the shower and under the water. ‘You’re okay for a moment?’

  But there’d seldom be a reply. Such was her state of mind.

  He’d return to the early news, checking his lesson plans, rolls, correspondence from the Catholic Education Office. Every minute or so he’d call out, ‘Miss Mary, how goes it?’ When he was satisfied he’d continue reading about requests for canned food for Nigerians, clothes for the poor and his availability to perform an extra mass at St Kevin’s.

  Brother Vellacott hardly ever said no. If there was someone, anyone, who wanted to hear about God and the amazing adventures of Jesus of Nazareth (which is how he sold the biopic to his Grade Sevens), then he was more than ready, willing and Abel (although no one got the joke) to tell them.

  He’d started off teaching at a small outback school. Badjaling was a hundred kilometres west of Whyalla. Three pubs, a
post office and a row of shops that clung desperately to the highway. There was a small church attached to an even smaller hall. He had anywhere between four and six students, depending on the harvest. After September he was often by himself in his vestry-storeroom-cum-school, passing his days writing reports to his Catholic overlords about how the children were prospering and learning, growing in the Lord as they fumbled their rosary beads between bouts of Lawson and little lunch. On Sundays he said mass. Four-and-a-half years; one worshipper. Worship, in the broadest sense, for like Miss Mary, the old dear only sat and stared at him, unblinkingly, for the thirty or so minutes it took him to get through an express Eucharist. He’d look at her, and then at the back wall, at the host, the back of his hand, the worn carpet (that he vacuumed every Saturday morning), the broken clock, the crack in the wall, her (again!). Then he’d see the old girl to the door, ask about her gout, almost push her down the front steps and lock the door, secretly praying she might die before the following Sunday.

  Lindisfarne College, in comparison, was Paradise regained. There was hot soup and salami-and-alfalfa baguettes in the Gold Room at five past one every day. He had a glass-walled office in the new administration wing and there was a swimming pool and spa he had to himself on Saturday afternoons. Classrooms with smartboards and projectors and a gym where he dared to reveal his legs to the Year Nines.

  As Assistant Principal (Religious Education) Brother Vellacott was one of the small big fish at Lindisfarne College. As he sat on his lounge, every weekday morning, calling to Miss Mary, he was aware of the weight on his shoulders: eleven hundred boys, one hundred staff, a sprawling school that cost seven million dollars a year to run, and Miss Mary.

  ‘Miss Mary, are you finished?’ he’d call.

  No reply.

  ‘Miss Mary?’

  ‘Yes, Philip.’

  He’d return to the bathroom, enter, close his eyes and wheel Miss Mary out of the shower. Hand her a towel and wait. ‘Done,’ she’d say, and he’d return her to her bedroom, open a drawer, take out a clean set of clothes and lay them on the bed. Then he’d wait outside as she got dressed. When called he’d return her to the lounge room, place the remote control on her lap and say, ‘Must be off.’ She’d smile at him, and sometimes he’d touch her arm or shoulder.