‘I blame myself. I’ve haven’t given him the time. I bet he’s got my talent in him. Let me work and get him primed.’
She crept towards the stairs to check Ollie was not listening. Her black slacks were loose where her bum normally overfilled them. Her white blouse was short-sleeved and I saw that her upper-arm skin was not sagging as usual. It had firmed up and didn’t wobble as she raised her arms to sweep her hands over her hair.
‘Have you joined a gym?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer. She stood in front of me and took a deep breath, her sign for giving lectures.
‘I’ll be straight about this. I do not want my son doing what you do. I do not want him being a journalist or wordsmith or whatever it is you call yourself. I do not want him growing up to have that look you get in your eyes, like you’re only half-human. I’m sorry if that insults you. There are dozens of ways he can earn a living.’
I blinked at her, then lowered my head. ‘You’re right.’
She probably was right but I was saying it as strategy. I wanted to say, ‘Look around you. This is what my half-human work bought.’ But ‘You’re right’ was more disarming. Gentle. Humble. As if I had reformed.
‘You’re not doing that thing you do, are you?’
She knew me too well—all the techniques she called my ‘fakes’.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘Truly, you’re right in what you said.’
She tilted her head to the side, sighed one of her sceptical sighs.
‘I wish I could believe you.’
‘I wish you could too. I’m sorry that my life has been so distasteful to you. So repellent despite having provided for us well. You should have said this years ago. I could have done something else for a living. Found something you approved of. It seems unfair to say it now, especially when I’m really getting somewhere and can’t turn back. I’d love you to be proud of me.’
‘Callum, please. Listen, I am proud of you, to a degree.’
‘But repulsed.’
‘Not repulsed.’
‘Disapproving, then. For fifteen years you were happy to have the benefit, share my wages, and now you’re saying that all this time you’ve looked down your nose.’
‘Not all this time. It used to be you never had that half-human look.’
‘I’m sorry. You’re right.’
‘You’re doing it again.’
I was. But I could not, would not, stop. I remembered Pockets, and that word he used—counselling. A ‘defeat’ word in my book, or so I’d always scoffed to Emma: If you need it, your marriage is probably over. Who wants some stranger meddling in your intimate strife?
‘Sweetheart, bear with me. I want to put something to you. Counselling.’
I half meant it. Hubris did not allow more than half.
Emma turned her back to me. Let go another of her ‘Christ, Callum’ sighs.
‘I’m open to it, is all I’m saying. I know I’ve not been its advocate.’
‘Advocate? Contemptuous, more like.’
I decided to take a risk, a whispered claim on her heart.
‘Unless you’ve given up on us. In which case, if you want to see someone else…If you’ve found someone better, I understand. It isn’t easy for me, because our fifteen years and Ollie, this son we made, it’s like the faith I belong to. And I can’t give that up like giving up citizenship. But if you’ve found someone better.’
She turned to me; the skin puckered on the point of her chin and twitched.
‘You broke my heart, Callum. It is still broken. Things don’t simply return to normal like that’—she snapped her fingers—‘with a “sorry” or a nice, sensitive phrase.’
‘I understand. You’re saying you want time for that to unbreak.’
‘No. I don’t know what I’m saying. I think I’m saying that it’s a relief to know someone who is good company, who’s not always on the make.’
‘You’re referring to this Gordon. Are you sure he’s not on the make?’
‘He’s kind and wise.’
‘What do you mean, wise? He’s advising you in some capacity?’
‘You make it sound like a business transaction.’
‘I don’t want some old man, some guy who’s probably trying to get his leg over, interfering in our problems.’
‘For Christ’s sake. Can I not have a friend?’
‘He’s rather old, isn’t he? Is this a father-figure phase you’re going through?’
‘You really can be a bastard. You’re not listening. You just have to be a smart-arse.’
‘So that’s a no to the counselling?’
‘Even if I thought you meant it, do you think I’m ready to relive what happened all over again? Do you think I want to hear you explain yourself, excuse yourself, be sorry for yourself? You’re an escape artist, Callum. You’d put the whole thing on to me. You’d even have me believing you.’
Ollie called out ‘Words!’ from the top of the staircase.
He usually called me Dad, which I savoured for its kin meaning. Hearing ‘Words’ from him was impersonal from a son. Emma shook her head as if the name meant ‘violation’ and belonged outside and not for use inside the home.
‘I haven’t been brainwashing him,’ I said. ‘It’s nice how he looks up to me. But a father should be “Dad” to his son, not called by sobriquets. I’ll tell him that and try to discourage his hopes for the future.’
‘I’m not suggesting you do that. I’m not saying he shouldn’t admire you or want to please you. I’m merely asking, is this the right path for him?’
‘First things first. Let’s see what comes of tutoring. If nothing comes I’ll defer to you and he can be a plumber or something.’
‘And if he were? You are such a snob, Callum.’
‘I’ve a right to be.’
‘No, you don’t. You’re a muckraker, not the governor-general.’
I hate being rendered speechless but Emma is the master at doing it.
She was only the daughter of a country-town doctor, and here is what shits me about the daughters of doctors. They think they’ve got blue blood and never need to rise higher. Their father could be a drunkard GP like Emma’s but they’ve got permanent blue blood, prefer do-gooder work in the welfare field to soiling their hands with vulgar commerce. Superior beings who fall in love with the likes of me, Mr Opposite to their Miss Twee.
Emma used to adore my particular occupation as if she’d broken taboos and married across species. I swooned at how she spoke, so refined and no swearing. No yeahs where a yes should be—immaculate elocution. Now here she was, happy her son might be a plumber. I didn’t believe her for a second. It was phony déclassé. She probably blamed me: thought my genes were at fault here. A strain that sneaked through from my shoe-seller line, diminished our son with impurities. Her dad died of liver rot with less money than I’d made. I’d remind her if she ever brought up impurities.
10
I told Ollie, ‘One day we might work together. Have a collegial bond, not just father and son. But for now I’d like my Dad-name on your lips, please. You don’t know what it means to me. Sometimes I think you’re the only person in the world I trust.’
His desk was disorderly, hardly my aesthetic, though I did not want to begin our session by being critical. There was a rule in my view about tidiness and talent. Leave your possessions lying around and your mind will play copycat. Your thoughts won’t have structure. They’ll be scattergun and wild. You’ll write and you’ll rewrite when you should be word perfect. You meet deadlines the neat way. Fast but with calmness. Set a good rhythm and it disciplines the mind.
Let’s get this pile of socks out of the road, I said. Put your school bag on the floor or hang it up somewhere. Place the Fowler and Fowler I gave you on your right side near your elbow. The Strunk and White too. Wipe your computer screen clean with a tissue and knock the dust off your dictionary.
I was irritable because of Emma’s summing-up of me. I did not want a s
on whose eyes turn half-human but I did not want a son who slipped below his level in life. A professional level, not tradesman expectations. My shoe-selling parents were proud that I’d risen above smelling feet.
It’s like failing nature to reverse the generations and say a wordsmith is no higher than manual labourers.
Nor did she understand the weird joy I felt: this pure boy, my son, his innocence so fresh and warm, validating me by wishing to be me.
I would get him a job that required no half-humanness, no dead glitter. If pry was successful he could go straight into management. I was part-owner, I’d pull strings, that was my privilege, that was my right.
I dragged his wooden locker over to his desk. It was heavy with winter woollens and old toys—Transformers and a stock-car set we used to thread down the hall. I sat on it beside him, patted his neck and prefaced my tutoring with a little talk.
‘Your mother worries that the job I’ve done, my career, my life… Well, the truth is, I’ve had to make compromises and do things I’ve not liked. She worries that it’s an unsavoury occupation for someone like you who’s young and starting out in life and has a clean slate.’
‘But I want to. Haven’t I done good enough, you know, with Mum’s purse and stuff?’
‘Keep your voice down. You should aim higher, that’s all I’m saying. All sons want to do better than their old man. That’s the normal process. I can give you a leg up to something better than what I do. Wouldn’t you like that?’
He nodded without a smile as if merely doing what he was told.
‘You’ll still need to do better at school than you’re doing. You’ll have to do better than ever. I’m here to help you.’
Show me your last school essay, I said. He brought the file up and brightened the screen for my viewing. His fingers had lumpiness at the same knuckles as mine. They spread across the keypad as mine spread, thumbs touching like two spouts with scimitar bends in them. They crawled on the keypad more than tapped, wrinkleless versions of my typing rhythm. I told him to sit straight and not slouch or he’d get backache.
His essay was about Lord of the Flies. It was not on the syllabus but what high-achieving kids could take to engage them. Ollie was certainly not high-achieving, that’s why I was so keen to push him. Lord of the Flies was standard reading when I was his age. But in my day we were also drilled in the metaphysical poets and Hopkins. They were way beyond Ollie, but not the Golding. I remembered the bile of the book: all people are savages, even the children. Ollie’s few hundred words explained the book as follows: civilisation breaks down the moment the laws and rules go. ‘Boys have been released into a primitive world,’ he’d written. ‘It is not the world they think of as normal. They have civilised backgrounds and that is normal. They start to believe in beasts and evil. They dance around fires, which is not normal. They have sacrifices and beat drums. They used to be harmless but that was appearances.’
The essay plodded on and I smiled as I read and he watched me.
‘There’s, yes, there’s a sort of, a basic structure. Good. I think we can improve it with a bit of fine-tuning.’
‘No point,’ he said. ‘The teacher just marked it.’
He showed me the mark on the other side of the page. From a Mr Gumm, who’d awarded a C with the comment, ‘Rather too shallow.’
I was offended by the mark on behalf of my son, though I couldn’t fault the judgment.
‘What a pompous twit with his Rather too shallow. He’s used the degree adverb and added the too for snide mockery.’
I made Ollie look up adverbs in Fowler and Fowler. He said he couldn’t make sense of the book’s old language.
We read more of his essays, about commerce and agriculture. ‘The meaning of rural economics are in more than one meaning a temporary disarray and means the rural or farming finance or economics is running very low.’
What the hell did that mean? I didn’t say this. I was desperate to say it but held my tongue.
This time it was an F for failure. A Mr Budge had written, ‘Incoherent. A nonsensical jumble.’
Mr Gumm gave a C again for Ollie’s thoughts on ‘Ozymandias’. His Merchant of Venice Q&A got a piddling D-plus: ‘Is Shakespeare’s play a tragedy or a comedy?’
‘It’s a bit of both,’ Ollie had answered. ‘It has marriage as a theme and moneylending.’
‘Show me another essay,’ I said. ‘One you haven’t finished and handed in yet.’
Animal Farm. The very smart students could take on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Animal Farm with its pigs and barnyard was the compromise.
I told Ollie to stand and switch places—‘Watch what I do. Concentrate your mind.’
I read his opening paragraph: ‘At first glance to me the book could be interpreted as a book of very little meaning towards anything but fantasy.’
I wanted to be encouraging yet point out the flaws, the infelicities.
‘Firstly, meaning towards…that’s a no-no. It makes no sense. And you’ve used book twice in a long-winded sentence. I’ll show how to write it. Let me demonstrate how it’s done.’
Call it satire, call it fantasy about what the world has become. This book has hidden meaning beneath the writer’s bland prose and sly puns.
I recited it as I typed. Waved my hand to the words like a baton. I used Ollie’s notes, his uninspired views on the book’s creature characters, how tyrants become controlling and begin to do wrong to their comrades. But mainly I let my head have the rein. I wanted Ollie to see me flagrante.
When he started yawning I made him read out what I’d written and suggest a word to begin the next par.
I praised his suggestions but didn’t use them.
‘This will impress your teachers,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell them I wrote it. Say it’s my tutoring that’s helped.’
We arranged to do it again next week.
I went downstairs to Emma and assured her: ‘Your son is no plumber. He has ability.’
11
I’ve heard it said your flesh crawls meeting Peeko Mellich: ‘Female equivalent of a huge date scone.’ Not just men say it either. Women are nastiest of all: ‘Those moles stuck in her face,’ they mock. ‘Neck skin like yellowy dough.’
I’ve known Peeko many years and I’m inclined to be more forgiving. Yes, her eyes do peek out through fat eye folds, hence the ‘Peeko’ name people pinned to her. But that name also suits her occupation—private detective, a peeker through windows. For years she specialised in divorces—bare-arsed photos of cheating spouses in motels—but the work dried up when she got too heavy to climb ladders. She diversified into ‘researching’ lewd stories for clueless scribes. I’d never used her—I trusted my own snooping, not outsiders. Since I’d been at pry she’d rung twice and offered her services. I thanked her and said no, an unequivocal you’re not wanted here. So what was she doing in the courtyard smoking while Pockets stood beside her staring at slats of the wooden deck? When she laughed her eyes closed over with merriment. Her black dress quaked and she sat down from the exertion with one hand pressing on her knee.
It was 8 a.m. and I needed to draft news lists, not worry about Peeko circulating the premises. And now Pockets was waving. He pushed the courtyard door open and said, ‘Words, got a minute?’ He was excited, his eyebrows arched high, his breath panting peppermint. He held my elbow, tugged me towards him so he could whisper. ‘I think I may get my stoning happening. This woman here, she’s like some mongrel-type cop.’
He tugged me into the courtyard, his hand on my shoulder.
‘Peeko, meet Words.’
‘We’ve met,’ I said.
‘You have?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That’s great. She called to see if we need her.’
‘I’ve already said no thanks.’
‘You have?’
Peeko pressed her knee to stand. I admit I did have to say to myself: How does she see when she smiles, all skin and no eyeballs?
‘My apologie
s, Words,’ she said. ‘I went over your head. Just trying to drum up work. No hard feelings?’
I ignored her and picked Pockets’ hand from my arm. ‘Can we speak in your office?’
We stepped out of the courtyard while Peeko crouched and leant on her knee for sitting.
‘You don’t think you’ve been rude to her?’ said Pockets.
‘Her kind don’t care about rudeness.’
I closed his office door behind us. Put my chin on my fingertips like worried praying. ‘With due respect, why are you talking to Peeko Mellich? What have you said exactly? You didn’t tell her you wanted to do stonings?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Well, in passing.
‘Fuck.’
‘Just in terms of what you told me, about the good old days.’
‘You didn’t go into details?’
‘No. Well, in passing.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Just in terms of how we could shame a mayor or a judge or somebody. She said she’d put her thinking cap on. For a small fee she’d help us. No formal agreement. Just a handshake plan.’
‘Things such as stonings need discretion, not telling the whole wide world.’
‘It’s just one person.’
‘It’s Peeko. A professional untrustworthy mouth. Think of her as a double agent. She’s been known to take ideas from one journo and sell them to another and double her money. Instead of exclusives our stories get written by everyone.’
‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I’m too eager. I thought you’d approve of it. I told Peeko you’re no angel and you’d approve.’
‘How do you mean, no angel?’
‘You know: You don’t fuck with this guy’s wife, that’s all. I didn’t tell her you rang the tax department. I just said don’t worry about Words, he’s up for anything.’
‘I am not up for everything. If we do a stoning we do it the right way, in secret, efficiently.’
Off the Record Page 7