Everything in its right place

by Tobias McCorkell

  In a certain light, one had to credit the man: he’d gone to a terrific amount of trouble. He’d cut a hole into his threadbare trackie daks, and from there protruded the nastiest, most purple-headed mother on which I, the businesswoman and Ellie had ever cast our eyes; one big, veiny meat-cucumber that was now being waggled for effect.

  The businesswoman didn’t scream or nothing, she just took it in for what it was before turning her head to look back out the window. But Mr Tracksuit didn’t like that, not one bit, and began emitting another whistle for her attention.

  Ellie’s face drooped a little when I looked back at her. She seemed a bit fed up, and nudged me. ‘Do something,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I whispered.

  Behind me, the King Kong of pervo madmen was slobbering over himself, whistling wildly with cucumber in hand, gripped like a baton, with intent.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.

  ‘I dunno. But you’re the bloke, you should do something.’

  I was the bloke. Well, a bloke. I should do something. But what? Cut his head off? Cut his purple head off?

  I realised that this – right now! – was real life and that Ellie was right, somebody had to take action before this morning’s freakshow wound up damaging the next unsuspecting passenger. So, I stood up and walked toward the man, candy-stripped blazer and red fro and polished Clarks and all. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Ya gotta stop, sir.’

  Mr Tracksuit locked eyes with me and gave his willy a defiant tug. ‘

  Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Put your dick away, buddy! Ya gotta get out of here! Ya gotta get moving, man!’

  At that, Mr Tracksuit got to his feet and popped his cock back through the hole in his trackies. He picked his newspaper up from the seat, folded it neatly and tucked it under an arm before moving to an exit. I rang the bell and stood glaring at him.

  When we stopped, he got off, and the tram pulled away down Lygon Street.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ the businesswoman said.

  ‘No worries, madam. You’re welcome.’ Suddenly I was doing an impression of a black-and-white movie star. I’d never said ‘madam’ before in my life.

  I walked back to my seat beside Ellie, who was giggling and giving me a pretend round of applause. ‘That was great.’

  ‘Don’t forget, that’ll be me one day,’ I said dryly, meaning Mr Tracksuit.

  ‘Oh, yuck! Don’t say that.’ She shoved me, smiling all the while. We laughed about it until we were in the city and she was getting off to go to David Jones. ‘See ya round,’ she said, waving a goodbye.

  ‘Yeah. See ya, Ellie.’

  Only when I lost sight of her in the throng of bodies in the Bourke Street Mall did it occur to me that I was still on my way into school. There was a maths exam I’d cheated on, and if I got caught or didn’t show to fess up, I’d be spending my summer resitting it in detention.

  A Fair and Happy Compromise

  At school I’d made only the one friend – Will Gaston. At some point in his young life Will had gotten the notion that he would speak his mind with a guitar, and to that end he seemed to have a lot to say. His unhandsome features, freckles and big hands gave him a spidery, odd look, but he’d been good to me since I’d been shipped across and we bonded through a shared loathing of our school’s culture, and over many unsaid things.

  Will was waiting for me in the locker bays. When the bell went for second period, we headed to the science wing for our maths class.

  The St Anthony’s senior campus was divided into four houses, each one assigned a colour – red, blue, green or yellow – that corresponded with a founding member of the college. Will and I had been placed in Blue House, named for Brother J.D. MacArthur.

  I would not have admitted it at the time, but while I didn’t especially like school, I did enjoy being there. School was dull and orderly in a way that life at home and life with Dad had traditionally not been, and I could shut my mind off and give my body over to bells and assemblies and seven-periods-per-day and recess and lunch and being told when to speak, when to stand, when to shut up or fuck off or attend Chapel Mass. I didn’t have to think about anything – not what I was doing or where I was going or where I needed to be – and this, in its way, was deeply soothing; deeply, genuinely reassuring.

  As we walked from our lockers down the long hallway, House Master Daniels barked at Will to tuck in the back of his shirt and hitch up his grey long-socks, and Will complied while I held his maths textbooks.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Daniels,’ Will said.

  ‘Get moving, lads. For goodness sake, the bell has already rung.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘What a wanker,’ Will whispered as I passed him back his books. We jogged to class. ‘So, did you cheat or what?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘Well, just as long as you didn’t make the score too high, you should be right. Harkins’ll never know.’

  ‘Probably not, I guess.’

  I always made sure to make plenty of mistakes when I cheated, so as not to make the mark too high. It was a difficult thing to do. When you knew the answers, it was far too tempting to write them down. But I was a practiced bullshit artist, and you had to endure this little pain in order to pull off the long con.

  As we got into class and took up our seats, however, it became apparent I may have made a pretty big fucking error after all. What I hadn’t understood, because all maths looked the same to me, was that the difficulty of this particular exam was ten times greater than what we’d been doing in class all year. The test had been in itself a test, a bit of a (maths) joke that our teacher, Mr Harkins, had supplied us with to herald the end of the year. And so, when he distributed the marked exams, he made sure to hold on to mine until last. ‘Well, I’m proud to announce,’ he said, ‘that Mr McCullen has earned the highest score of the lot of you. Shall we give him a round of applause?’

  They did.

  ‘Yes, well done indeed,’ said Harkins.

  I’d scored well, but in my estimation not too well, with 73 per cent. It turned out the next highest score in the class had gone to Daniel Smit, an A+ average. But even old Dan had tripped up on this one, with just 27 per cent.

  ‘Pretty amazing stuff,’ said Harkins, ‘seeing as we never even went through the algebra needed to complete some of these equations. Mr McCullen has demonstrated a commitment to learning above and beyond what I could ever have anticipated. Why, he has even provided the exact workings to solve each of problem nine and problem eleven …’ Harkins looked down at me seated behind my desk, pointedly trying to provoke a response. What could I do?

  ‘Well, what can I say,’ I announced to the class, swivelling around in my chair to face the room, grinning, still puffed up from my encounter with Mr Tracksuit and Ellie. ‘Ya either know it or ya don’t, ya know. Ya either got it or ya ain’t.’

  Will, stifling his laughter, had just about chewed through his HB pencil.

  I flexed my fingers, feigning cool. Everyone knew what was up, Harkins especially. But Daniel Smit being Daniel Smit, a pisspants swot who’d puddled his chair during a study session the year before, kept flicking through his paper, confused. How the fuck could Ford beat me?

  ‘Mmm, very impressive indeed,’ said Harkins, dropping the marked exam onto my desk. ‘See me after class.’

  When class ended, Will reminded me I was fucked, slapped me on the back and left the room. When the class had cleared, I approached Mr Harkins with my test rolled up like a cone in my hands. I couldn’t help myself; I started to smile.

  So did he. ‘In all honesty, I couldn’t care less,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m happy to pass you. But! Just tell me, please, that you are not taking any maths subjects next year, when it starts to count. You won’t be able to get by then.’

  ‘No way, sir. I’m quitting. Trust me, sir, the last thing I want to do is another year of this stuff. No offence.’

  He smiled again, nodding
. Mr Harkins was a pretty good bloke. He couldn’t be arsed coming back to school over summer to see me sit the retests, nor for the detention time I’d accrued for all the past exams I’d cheated on. So long as I promised to stay away from his final-year subject, to steer clear of his precious numbers, we were sweet. It was a fair and happy compromise.

  Afterwards, during lunchtime, so burned up by my beating him on the test, and still confused by this turn of events, Daniel Smit approached me in the quadrangle. I was sitting next to Will and powering down a Prima and a Vegemite sandwich. Daniel wanted to know how I could possibly have gotten the exact workings to equations nine and eleven.

  I looked at Will and then to Daniel. ‘I cheated,’ I told him, flatly.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t do that,’ he informed me. ‘That’s so unfair.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ I said. ‘But why don’t ya fuck off now.’

  Daniel turned and walked away.

  ‘Hey, Smitie,’ Will yelled after him, ‘try not to piss yourself today.’ Will laughed before filling his mouth with a handful of Cheetos, the yellow powder clinging to his teeth. He asked me, ‘Are your family going to Ceremony?’

  ‘Go? Are you kidding? Of course. Plus, I have to play.’

  Ceremony was the graduation night St Anthony’s hosted at Hamer Hall, and the school orchestra played a concert during intermission. The thing went for hours with each and every year level awarded various academic prizes and certificates, the better ones coming with honour badges and insignias that boys had sewn to the breast pockets of their blazers. You could tell any boy’s rank in our school by his breast pocket, as well as his academic, sporting or musical affiliations. What mattered most within the St Anthony’s hierarchy was to have a pair of crossed golden oars beneath the school crest, which meant not only that you were a member of the rowing team but that likely you were not the first generation within your lineage to attend the college, and that your parents were probably school benefactors also.

  My family had been talking about Ceremony for the best part of two months, their excitement incomprehensible to me. For them, St Anthony’s College was much more than a school. Despite its parodic imitation of the pomp and circumstance you might associate with an Oxbridge-like institution, Noonie, Pop and Mum were sold hook, line and sinker.

  To fit in amongst the sons of those wealthy families I was attending classes with, they insisted on buying every textbook and item of my school clothing first-hand, refusing outright to shop at any of the op shops out of pride. But what they didn’t understand was that the rich kids didn’t care about their books or their clothes; their parents were comfortable buying a second-hand blazer because ‘He’s just going to grow out of it anyway’. My classmates’ parents certainly didn’t stay up half the night before term one wrapping each of their son’s textbooks in contact, either. Nor did they use a specially ordered stamp and ink pad to print a message on the inside of each book’s cover:

  This book is the property of: Ford Robert McCullen

  What my family never got was that it was their insistence on blending in that caused them to stand out.

  When the bell sounded at the end of lunch, Will and I stood up and marched in with the horde of other boys, past the food hall and back to our locker bay, where House Master Daniels was combing us all for signs of tardiness.

  ‘You know,’ Will said, ‘you’ve really got to quit that violin shit.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

  I watched as he walked off to English. I had Revolutions History to attend. I wished we had all our classes together.

  A Bonding Exercise

  Before Ceremony, I stood at the centre of the living room in Unit One, dressed in my school tie and blazer, the German violin in its case by the door. There was a lot of hubbub about the night ahead. Noonie was fussing over my uniform and my hair, attempting to part it with her spit and a plastic comb. I could see my reflection in my black, rubber-soled Clarks, because Pop had polished them extra-specially; he polished my shoes every night before he went to sleep, but for this occasion he’d tried out a new product and had given me a wink when he told me. ‘Thanks,’ I’d said and given him the thumbs up, his favourite gesture between us.

  Almost every item of my uniform had been tailored to the requirements of my family. This included an elastic strip sewn into the waistline of my trousers by Noonie to give me room to grow (which schoolmates took pleasure in snapping); elastic garters, also sewn by Noonie, to ensure my knee-high grey socks stayed up (they cut off my circulation); a handkerchief in my pocket; and a white Bonds singlet visible beneath my near-translucent shirt. Yes, I was one of those kids. And because at school I appeared to have just marched out of the Depression era, I’d developed a form of self-deprecating humour and perfected a nonchalant shrug that warded off bullies.

  After a round of port, and after many photographs of me in my uniform had been taken in the living room of Unit One, I picked up the violin and we piled into the car. We were leaving two hours before Ceremony commenced, and Pop was bringing the Handycam.

  *

  In my first year at St Anthony’s, I was fifteen years old. The school had deemed Year 9 the ‘trouble year’ for adolescents. In addition to providing the classical education Queenie was procuring for me, the college was also intent on engaging us in light-hearted yet illuminating activities that year: old films were sometimes screened in place of classes, we went on a lot of excursions, we dissected rats and frogs, our camp lasted three weeks, and there was a focus on group assignments and team-building exercises, plus a Christian Living Camp in which we went to the bush with our sister school – a private all-girls college – and were encouraged to pray quite a lot and to share our feelings.

  But to me, the most inconvenient extracurricular activity we did that year was when we were asked to record a ‘cooking show’ at home with our families. A ‘bonding exercise’, my teacher called it; some ‘fun’ for the ‘weekend’. The horror show of Saturday and Sunday with my father had been replaced by an as-yet-unveiled kind of terror. My typical mission for those rare weekends I spent at The Compound, whenever school or work or some emergency disrupted our scheduled visitations, was to avoid my family at all costs by riding round the streets with Dougie.

  The news of the assignment was a bandaid that I tore off in one motion, when my family was gathered in Unit One before tea.

  ‘I just love the assumption they make in believing we’re all supposed to have these – what is it, Ford, a Handycam? – on hand at home,’ Pop said.

  ‘Mmm, indeed,’ said Mum.

  ‘Well, that might be the case for those in their leafy green eastern suburbs, driving about in their fucken Toorak Tractors … they have to record themselves, don’t ya know, when they go off to their holiday houses in Torquay.’ Pop was putting on his posh, girly voice.

  ‘Well, actually,’ I said, ‘the school has provided some video recorders for anyone who doesn’t have one at home. So, I can just go pick one up in the morning and borrow it over the weekend.’

  ‘We’re not doing that,’ said Noonie.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll buy one.’

  ‘They’re expensive. I can just borrow one.’

  ‘And be the only boy who does?’

  ‘I’m sure there are other boys who —’

  ‘How much can one cost, anyway? And you might need it in future,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t. This is ridiculous.’

  ‘Your grandmother’s right. We’ll go to Harvey Norman tomorrow,’ said Pop.

  ‘But they’re expensive,’ I protested. ‘It’s a waste of money.’

  I could see that nobody was going to allow reason to stand in the way of pride. And what would happen after they’d shelled out for the camera and it was never used again? Either I’d cop the blame or, worse, they’d start carrying it everywhere, recording me during all my most glorious moments.

  In the morning Pop woke me up as usu
al, but not for swimming at the YMCA. We drove out to the Harvey Norman on Bell, over near Northland shopping centre.

  ‘So, what are we looking for, Ford?’ he asked as we walked into the store.

  ‘Pop, I don’t actually know, yeah? This is why I said we should just borrow one from the school.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish. We’ll just talk to one of the gentlemen who works here.’

  ‘The people who work here are trying to sell you things. They probably get a commission.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve gotta think more positively about people.’

  Where in fuck did that come from? People? Positive? You’re the same bloke who last night torched my school for using Handycams as an act of class warfare.

  When we returned home, Pop was hundreds of dollars out of pocket and weak at the knees both from the expense and the sales assistant’s thirty-minute tech lecture. Pop hadn’t understood a word, but he insisted that because I was young, I probably got it. I didn’t fucking get it.

  The day was lost to Mum and Pop trying to comprehend the manual, a task made increasingly difficult in direct correlation to the glasses of port they consumed to ease their frustrations. They were sitting on the living-room floor, while Noonie and I sat in opposing corners, me in what was typically Pop’s armchair and Noonie in her green leather recliner, occasionally offering useless pointers like ‘Maybe that goes in there’ or ‘No, Deidre, plug that thing in over here’, while pointing vaguely at the many pieces of black plastic arranged on the technicolour carpet. Noonie, who did not know what a computer did and had never even pressed the keyboard of the Atari that Pop still had set up in his study, was the person least likely to help, yet the most vocal in proffering advice.

  When she grew tired of watching her husband and daughter make fools of themselves – as a teetotaller, she was getting pissy about the port – she turned her attention to me. ‘So, Ford, what will we cook for the assignment?’

  There’s an awful lot of this ‘we’ talk, I thought.