State Ward

by Duff, Alan

  Charlie wiped at his mouth. Blood. He looked at the blood, then up and into the eyes of Mr Davis. They were brown circles inside a perfectly white surround, wide with anger though. Charlie looked at the blood smear on his hand again, thinking — or feeling — in that flash of concept the mind embraces in a milli-second: I been bleeding my whole life. Hasn’t every boy here? So what’s a few more drops?

  So when Mr Davis slapped him again, and Charlie fell against a wall, and something came crashing down behind him sounding like broken glass, he was neither alarmed nor afraid. Not now. (Boy, I been getting slapped and punched, and I been hearing breaking glass my whole damned life.) He just felt like grinning. Though he didn’t dare. Though when he heard the words of the man towering over him after he’d felled Charlie with a punch, not a slap, Charlie was smiling inwardly, without really knowing why, as he heard Mr Davis as if in need of justifying his assault, saying over him,

  “How dare you! How dare you speak to me — ME — like that!”

  A knowing coming over Charlie then. A knowing.

  Back confined to the Home whilst the school headmaster and a committee considered Charlie’s suspension. Two days of being separated from the other at-home boys on cleaning duties, Charlie with the worst jobs: clearing out the grease traps back of the kitchen. Down inside the concrete hole up to his waist in stinking grease and slime, feeling with his unshod toes for the plug hole, then prodding it for ages with a special steel rod till it suddenly cleared with a galuuuuuump as a bubble shot to the surface and burst at his navel. And he watched as the grease-line fast disappeared down to his bare feet, left a boy as if he’d been dipped into a sewer. One down two to go. With the toilets to follow. And then every outside drainage sump. To remind a boy, so Mr Dekka kept reminding him, of who he was so he wouldn’t think he was something else.

  The decision came back from Riverton Boys’ High in a written report giving the reasons why Charles Wilson’s suspension was now an expulsion. Not that Mr Davis showed the report to Charlie, he just had him summoned to his office, addressed him as if not only a stranger but an enemy, that he was to continue home confinement until further notice, and that “after considerable thought, to save other boys taking the wrong signals from your inexcusable behaviour, I’ve decided you are to be confined to the cellblock for a period of seven days. Furthermore, you shall be on reduced food rations, to be decided once you have been inspected by our visiting doctor, and upon his recommendations …” blah-blah-blah, Charlie just thinking of it, focusing it in his mind as: just a few more drops of blood. What matter.

  The cell again. Hello cell. Walking straight up to the first etching of the name GEORGE he could see and smiling at it. Hello, George. As he pondered next on what sharp object he could use to add his name to his best friend’s.

  The end of a shoelace. He tried it on the paint, it made no impression. So he went under the bed, lay on his back and carved his name right beside yet another of George’s trademarks: AND CHARLIE. 26.10.6— The end splayed out uselessly before Charlie could add the 7. He did that with his other shoelace. So now he and George were, he felt, like blood brothers. Soul mates.

  Pacing. Sitting on the bed edge. Pacing again. Trying to keep down the bitterness as more and more the pictures swarmed his mind; of being two lousy weeks at a school after the psychologist had told him his I.Q. test marks were remarkable and he could be proud of them, and he was, and Mr Davis next telling him he could be proud of himself for being only the second boy to be chosen for the highly regarded Riverton Boys’ High School, and so a boy hardly sleeping a wink for excitement — and pride — that night, as he dared to think he might just have some hope in this life after all. Trying to hold off the swarming of pictures, to shut down the pictures in his head, sounding as they looked, like angrily buzzing insects trying to invade him.

  And then sweat broke out all over him, it fell in heavy drops on his knees where he was slumped, looking at the concrete floor, sat on his bed. A certain collapse coming as though right at the door in his mind, when he heard a key turning. So he jolted his head up. The door opened. It was Tommy with his food tray, and Charlie could see there wasn’t much. But he gained the tiniest of hopes at Tommy winking at him. And Miss Eccles, too, giving him the saddest of smiles, her eyes filmy. Then they left. And he took up his plate about to eat when he saw the scrap of paper on the brown plastic tray. He took it up. It read:

  Be OK soon.

  Your best friend, George.

  And Charlie smiled. Then he laughed. Then he wept. And the stripes of light on the ceiling, of steel-barred window, snuffed out like a light.

  8

  RUN, BOYS! RUN!

  The week dragged by. But it went. And the reduced food rations Charlie was on proved to be one of the reasons why the time dragged: because a kid could think of hardly anything but food. Starving. Every minute of the endless days he was starving.

  (But I survived.)

  Getting out it wasn’t like the last time, when he was first in this hellhole, and freedom was experienced as a relative thing. Not something fixed in your mind as meaning being back home, after school, messing around with your mates. Relative. It was a relative thing. And so was the food. For Charlie discovered that he could hold himself back when it came time to eat; unlike the other boys who were always getting told off for being “animals!” by a housemaster at meal times. Not Charlie. Not any longer. He felt above that.

  He was in the punishment squad for an unspecified period. As if the cell confinement wasn’t enough. Right then, Charlie feeling this strength in his mind he didn’t know, or wasn’t quite sure existed.

  (I can take it.)

  Morning started with him being got up with the two kitchen workers. They got to have a shower, he didn’t; for him it was straight to work in the kitchen peeling spuds for the evening meal, buttering piles of bread for school sandwiches, with Mrs Rosser in his ear at every turn, shrieking, “Faster! Butter that bread faster!” Wiping the drops of her spit from his face, hating her, but still knowing she wasn’t going to break him. Or he hoped not.

  After breakfast it was out in the gardens with Mr Weston. The big bull of a man roaring his every command as if a boy was deaf, do this do that, and being told the day long he was a “confounded, blithering idiot!”.

  Maybe I am, Charlie thinking. But’d rather be what I am than what you are: I can see you’re not happy with the world, that you don’t feel your life has gone as you wanted. Or why else’d you be always yelling at boys who’d secretly like to know you, to hear your cop stories, if only you’d relax?

  Digging. It was always digging with Mr Weston. Hands sore and bleeding, back killing a boy, every muscle aching at the end of a day. And still punishment squad duties didn’t finish.

  Dishes every night. You’re the drier, was Mrs Rosser’s command. And she watched his every move, waiting for one small bubble of soap to be missed on a plate and she was grabbing a pile of dried and stacked plates dumping them back into the water — “Again.” Looking at him through those thick-lensed glasses that made her look even uglier. And Charlie wondering about all of them, the Home staff, why so many seemed unhappy. Wondering, too, if it wasn’t just him, his eyes not seeing them straight because of what was happening, what had happened. Getting the chance one evening when Miss Eccles was on duty to ask about his observations.

  She did not look surprised.

  “Charlie,” she said, “Your eyes tell you too much. Truth, that is. But it’s part of being an adult. Part of being of the times, I don’t honestly know. For Mr Davis, for example, he had — well, he has problems just like you or I. Mr Weston, he’s from another era when kids were seen and definitely not heard. Also, he was once a policeman, and from the days when a policeman was a big man in the community. That’s why he finds working here as just a gardener so difficult.”

  “Fair enough on Mr Weston,” Charlie agreeing. “But why does he have to yell at everyone?”

  “Power, my dear.
He misses having power.”

  “So what’s he like with you, Miss Eccles?”

  “Very nice.” She took a boy by surprise.

  “What, all the time?”

  “Yes, all the time. You see, it’s a different face he feels he has to give to children, or young men as you almost are. Nor has he ever been able to understand why you went wrong in the first place. Discipline. He thinks if you’d had discipline you’d not be here to begin with.”

  “So tell that to our parents.”

  “Exactly, Charlie. But Mr Weston, maybe because of his own past, refuses to believe a child can’t find his own discipline when it’s missing from his home life.”

  Charlie went through the staff: Mr Wakefield, the only Maori housemaster, and the nicest of them all. Mrs Gladstone, mean and nasty to those not on her “pet” list.

  “How about her then, what makes her tick?”

  Miss Eccles’ eyes clouding over at that, just a shrug in reply. Leave that one, Charlie not blind.

  “And Mr Dekka?”

  “Mr Dekka is hiding behind his Christianity. As so many of them do.”

  “You’re not a Christian, Miss Eccles?”

  “No. But don’t tell anyone. I hardly tell a soul, Charlie. It is not considered a good thing to have a housemistress not believing in God. But I don’t. And nor do I believe for a moment that what is shoved down your throats here is either Christianity or in your best interests. How can it possibly be, when they throw this Jesus and God loves you stuff at you as if that is the only thing that shall save you, yet hardly a one of them can show you love by example? Now, off with you before I tell you every one of my colleagues’ secrets.”

  “But what about you, Miss?” (And why aren’t you married?) Charlie dying to ask of such a nice lady, grey and wrinkled though she was.

  “What about me, Charlie?”

  “I was, uh, wondering why you’re a Miss, Miss Eccles?” For some reason watching her face more intently than when he’d asked about her colleagues.

  “I — my fiancé was killed in the war. I never got over it. Or, when I did, it was too late. That answer your question?”

  “Miss Eccles, I think you’d’ve been a neat mother.”

  “I’m sure I would, Charlie.” She paused then. “And I’m certain an equally good wife. Now, off with you. And not a word to anyone. Not even,” she pointed knowingly, “George.”

  The day ended at nine o’clock when he was through with washing the supper dishes from the evening cup of hot chocolate and biscuit. Yet still a boy did not sleep. And still he did not know why he felt so troubled. As if something needed doing. A task, a great act of somehow making up for something, but what …? What, for God’s sake?

  As if life wasn’t confusing and hard driven enough, George hardly stopped and talked to Charlie any more. Tommy was one of the few people that treated him as before, but it was George’s distance that sent Charlie into a deep gloom. Nor did confronting George about it bring any reason. Just a shrug, and a fleeing of those dark brown eyes, sometimes happy, yet always kind of haunted. Charlie knew them like his own. Or so he thought, till George stopped speaking to him.

  “George, what’s wrong, mate?” Charlie several times tried to get to the problem. But only the shrug in reply. Or else a sullen, “Nothink.” As if he didn’t belong to this world, to nineteen sixty-seven. Not to the time, nor the mostly white-skinned people who ordered his life.

  As if … as if … as if, Charlie every night in bed troubling over. As if George is carrying something. Like guilt. Or deep, deep worry. When Charlie was just released off the punishment squad and enjoying his first free weekend in ages, George suddenly approached Charlie out in the table-tennis room.

  “Talk to you, Charlie. Round by the tramp. No one there now.”

  Out on the trampoline, Charlie so pleased to be tandem bouncing with his best friend once more, giving George time to come out with what’d been bothering him. Charlie understood. I understand everything! His heart so happy it felt every bounce was going to soar onwards into the very sky.

  Then George told him, “The kehua, Charlie. The kehua come back.”

  And Charlie’s blood ran cold. Goosepimples broke out. He brought the bouncing to an instant halt with a knee bend on hitting the canvas. A breeze had sprung up, or maybe it’d been there all the while. It was making no impression on George’s thick locks, yet blowing strands into Charlie’s eyes which he had to keep flicking away. The breeze was warm, yet Charlie felt cold.

  He stared at George. George looked away. He grabbed George by the shoulder.

  “What do you mean, it’s come back. So what happens now?”

  “I go.” George’s eyes nowhere near Charlie.

  And Charlie getting a sudden mental message derived from Mr Dekka, which he told George: “You can’t look the world in the eye, George …”

  Then George swung on him. And his eyes burned hatred. His jaw trembled. And when he spoke it was with an ugly sneer.

  “He bloody bastard teach you that shit. Look in the eye, look in the eye — bugger the eye. You like him, Dekka, now?”

  Charlie felt as if he’d been punched. He heard an “Oh!” escape him. He wanted to hit George. Or else hug him, tell him he was his best friend and why was he looking like that at his best mate? But Charlie could but take his eyes away from the piercing gaze of George and numbly shake his head.

  “He your fugging friend?”

  “No. I hate him.”

  “Liar! Dekka your fuggin’ friend, why you talk about look in the eye, look in the eye. Who fuggin’ care about look in the eye when my kehua come? You like Dekka his own son talk like that.”

  That’s when Charlie hit George. Just threw a right at him which knocked George off his feet, and he bounced on the canvas. And Charlie was upon him, punching and choking, and punching. Next Charlie felt himself in the air. George had somehow used the underneath springiness to lift Charlie off him and then hoist him skyward. Then he was sailing through the air and thumping into the grass. George’s turn then to be all over him, or so Charlie expected. Except George was face to face, he could smell George’s breath.

  “You and me, we go together this time, eh?”

  Charlie looking up at the face he knew so well; seeing the trust George had in him.

  “Boy, I’ll go right now,” Charlie deadly serious.

  Neither boy smiled. Yet Charlie knew his own excitement, as well as fear of everything, the escape itself, the journey to George’s village. The consequences back here.

  “Why do you always get caught, George?”

  “Dunno. Maybe not, if you come. So why you want to come?”

  Charlie taken aback. “Cos you asked me to.”

  George grinned. “I like to get you in trouble, eh? More trouble for Charlie, ne?”

  Charlie grinning back. “Trouble. And a bit of fun, too, eh?”

  George shook his head. “No fun. Hard work to find new way of going Ruapotiki. Get there, and more — harder work for me. You, you watch.”

  “Watch what — the warrior ghost?” Charlie joking even as he felt the seriousness of the situation coming over him. The consequences, it’s always the consequences in this goddam life. But who cares. Now George is my best friend as he always was, who cares about consequences?

  “No, place where warrior ghost live.”

  “Eh?”

  “Uncle and aunty, their home. Understand?”

  “Nope. What, ya gonna do something to ’em?”

  “Not them. To curse on me. You come watch. Stick up for me to court. Not like last time in court, no one believe me. Cops tell lie. This time, my best mate say reason. Eh, Charlie?”

  “Sure, George. Long as they believe me!”

  Both laughing at that. George hauling Charlie to his feet. “You punch pretty hard, Charlie.”

  “That right?” Charlie flattered.

  “But left punch like pussycat, yeh?”

  “I doubt it! Wanna t
ry it again?”

  For some reason George stopped seeing the joke, for his eyes hardened, and he said in a quiet voice, “You try pussycat lefts on him, Dekka. Then me, I give him rights — plenty. I hit him till he die. You know? He a bad man.” Then he seemed to pull himself together.

  “Sorry I say you like his son. Not like that. You Charlie. My best mate. Going to get in trouble for me. But George needs you, Charlie. Sick of kehua in dreams all the time telling me same thing, run, Hori, run. Trouble. Every time trouble. And soon I am fifteen. Then borstal, Mr Davis say. Harder to run there. Sick of running anyway. Dreams make me crazy I hear them and can’t run. This time, Charlie, you come with me. Watch what I do. Then everything be all right — I hope.”

  “Ready when you are, George.”

  “Thank you, best friend. My koro Arawhiti, he tell me life not as long as young full a think. Tell me, Hori, only deeds a long time. Life deeds. No deeds, life short. My English, aeee … No good.”

  “It’ll do me, George.” Charlie’s heart singing. Just singing. And the smell of freedom in the air. And I’m only fourteen.

  Life, eh, like George was trying to say: it’s about deeds. Good deeds, Charlie guessed. Good deeds making for a longer life. Just like, Charlie got a sudden realisation, like being in the cellblock: seemed to take for ever, yet when it was passed it hardly seemed anything at all. Only what you took of it. And what, a boy figured, it took of you — if you let it.

  “Let’s go!” Charlie with spring in his step as he threw an arm round George’s muscle-hard shoulders. Not even wishing to ask just what his role would be in this plan of George’s.

  9

  FREEDOM

  George had no plan, and Charlie was astonished.

  “We have to have a plan, George. Or we’ll get caught like you always have before.” But George said it didn’t work like that, not for him it didn’t; the Maori warrior with the tattooed face would just appear in his dreams, and no matter how hard George resisted, it always won.