Other Facts of Life

by Morris Gleitzman

  7

  Dripping

  Ron steered the Motor Vessel Cutlet Queen into the secluded, tree-shaded inlet and breathed a sigh of relief. His precious cargo was safely at its destination.

  Not that the Harbour had been choppy, but you couldn’t be too careful when your precious cargo was the manager of the second largest abattoir in New South Wales and his charming wife.

  ‘What an utterly superb spot,’ said the Abattoir Manager’s charming wife.

  ‘Utterly,’ said Di, just a shade too loudly. ‘The first time we saw it we said, “This is utterly, utterly superb.” ’

  Ron flashed her a warning look, which he changed to a warm smile as he turned to face his guests.

  ‘We always picnic here when we’re on the boat,’ he said with what he hoped was exactly the right amount of casual self-confidence for a soon-to-be successful wholesaler.

  While Ron steered the cruiser towards the little sandy beach and dropped anchor, Di topped up the Abattoir Manager’s champagne and his wife’s gin and low calorie tonic.

  She opened the big hamper and handed round seafood canapes.

  ‘Oh goody,’ said the Abattoir Manager’s wife, ‘I love little bits of prawn on biscuit.’

  Di fleetingly weighed Ron’s business future against the pleasure of pushing the Abattoir Manager’s wife overboard and ramming her.

  She told herself to calm down. It was just this thing she’d always had about women with huge sunhats and mouths big enough to store them in.

  The Abattoir Manager ate, drank, smacked his lips and looked around with the deep feeling of excitement felt by all folk born west of Dubbo when confronted by more than three litres of water in the one place at the one time.

  He slapped Ron on the back expansively. Ron glowed, partly because he sensed his business future falling into place, partly because he’d caught the sun.

  ‘Well, Ron,’ said the Abattoir Manager, ‘if you can promise doing business with Guthrie Wholesale Meats will always be this enjoyable, I think my abattoir can come up with the right goods at the right price.’

  Ron squeezed Di’s hand without the others seeing.

  The Abattoir Manager’s wife licked prawn juice from her ring-encrusted fingers.

  ‘But only if you promise not to tell another soul about this divine spot,’ she said, swinging her arm vaguely around and slopping gin and low calorie tonic onto her husband’s Hawaiian shirt. ‘Two minutes and it’d be swarming with grotty little families in rowboats.’

  Ron squeezed Di’s hand again, this time harder to warn her against carrying the Abattoir Manager’s wife below decks and chopping her up for bait.

  ‘We’ve been all over the world,’ continued the Abattoir Manager’s wife, ‘inspecting abattoirs, Greek Islands, Fiji, The Bahamas – this beats the lot. So utterly cut off from all the cares of the arggghhhhhhh!’

  She gave a long, horrible, bloodcurdling scream, dropping her gin and tonic and bit of prawn on biscuit and pointing to the water near the boat.

  Floating there was what looked like a bale of cloth, roughly human-sized.

  ‘My God,’ said the Abattoir Manager, ‘it looks like a body.’

  It was a body.

  Face down, head submerged, it was clad in some sort of rough cotton. It bobbed gently next to the boat.

  ‘Quick Clarrie, that hook on a pole there.’

  The Abattoir Manager’s wife wrestled the boathook out of its clamps. Her husband helped her.

  The wash from the rocking Cutlet Queen caused the body to half roll in the water. Ron and Di caught a glimpse of a scuba tank strapped to the body’s chest, then a flash of something else round and smooth.

  Di felt all the blood in her body run into her feet.

  Ron felt a flash of pain behind his eyes. For a moment he thought his guests had accidently swung the boathook through the back of his skull. The something round and smooth was Ben’s bald head.

  ‘I’ll kill that kid,’ he muttered under his breath.

  The Abattoir Manager and his wife leant over the side of the boat and lunged at the body with the boathook. The boat rocked wildly and the wash turned the body over.

  Ben’s pink domed face looked up at them. His eyes quickly closed.

  The Abattoir Manager and his wife managed to get the hook through the thick cloth wrapped around Ben and started hauling him aboard.

  ‘He’s still alive!’ screamed the Abattoir Manager’s wife.

  Ron grabbed at the boathook.

  ‘Leave him in there,’ he yelled.

  Di buried her face in her hands.

  The Abattoir Manager and his wife looked at each other in horror.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ mouthed the Abattoir Manager’s wife.

  The Abattoir Manager pushed Ron away and hauled Ben onto the deck with the hook.

  Ben slid off the hook and flopped down on his back, dripping. A large soggy hessian poncho covered most of his body. The bulge of the air tank made him look like a wet monk.

  The Abattoir Manager tore the air valve out of Ben’s mouth. Ben spluttered and coughed and opened his eyes and looked at them.

  ‘He’s alive. Thank God,’ said the Abattoir Manager.

  His wife turned angrily to Ron and Di.

  ‘No thanks to you,’ she said. ‘You’d have left him in there to die. The fish had already eaten his hair.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Di. ‘He’s our son.’

  The Abattoir Manager stared at Ron in horror. He struggled to find words.

  ‘I … I … I …’

  Ron struggled to find words to explain.

  ‘He … we … I …’

  The Abattoir Manager’s wife exploded with righteous anger.

  ‘I don’t believe it! I just do not believe it!’

  Di buried her face in her hands again.

  Ben sat up and tried to address the assembly. He’d swallowed what felt like several litres of seawater and it kept bubbling out of his mouth as he tried to speak.

  ‘In the time it took you to haul me in …’

  ‘I … I … I …’

  ‘He … we … I …’

  ‘Incredible. Absolutely incredible.’

  ‘… the mutilated bodies of eight political prisoners …’

  ‘You … you … you …’

  ‘We … he … we …’

  ‘Of all the selfish, irresponsible …’

  ‘… were found floating in South American rivers.’

  ‘He … we … he …’

  ‘In South American rivers,’ repeated Ben.

  No one was looking at him.

  ‘… heartless, callous, brutish …’

  The Abattoir Manager finally found the words. He fixed Ron with a thunderous brow.

  ‘Some people are not fit to be parents,’ he growled, adding darkly, ‘or businessmen.’

  8

  Not Much Chop

  Ben sat on the edge of the bath while Di wrapped him in a big, warm, soft, fluffy towel and bawled at him.

  ‘… you could have drowned, you could have caught pneumonia, you could have drifted into the propeller and …’

  She stopped and turned away.

  Ben felt a surge of elation. They’d got the message. All this pneumonia stuff was just Mum trying to cope with it.

  He remembered when he’d first read about political torture in South America. He hadn’t been able to stop eating waffles and icecream for two days.

  Ron came in to the bathroom and started washing the winch grease off his hands.

  Di looked at him in exasperation.

  ‘Well, say something,’ she said.

  ‘Forty cents a kilo extra I had to offer him,’ said Ron, ‘and half a gallon of Chanel for his wife. I was that close to losing the contract.’

  Di closed her eyes for a moment, then spoke softly.

  ‘Okay Ben, this has gone far enough.’

  She pointed to her sewing-room curtains lying in a heap in the bath lo
oking less than happy in their new role as a soggy poncho.

  ‘Those’ll come out of your pocket money.’

  What pocket money? thought Ben.

  ‘We’ve stopped his pocket money,’ said Ron.

  ‘Well, we’ll start it again,’ said Di. ‘And these are going under lock and key.’

  She snatched the His’n’Hers Electric Shavers from their wall-rack.

  ‘And starting tomorrow,’ she said, crouching down in front of Ben, ‘I drive you to school, I pick you up, and the rest of the time you spend in your room.’

  She pulled the towel tightly around Ben’s shoulders.

  Ben looked up at his grim-faced parents, a small, pink, bald, bespectacled face peering happily out from the folds of the towel.

  ‘You can chain my body,’ he said, ‘but you can’t chain my mind.’

  On the TV screen Hiroshima lay in ruins, the once-thriving Japanese city looking to Ben like a team of men with sledgehammers had smashed every upright object into rubble and dust and splinters and then carted away most of the debris.

  And all the people.

  ‘They do that with models,’ said Jason cheerfully. He was sitting on Ben’s bed staring at the screen in fascination and rhythmically transferring the contents of a box of chips into his mouth.

  ‘I saw it on “The Making of Star Wars”,’ he crunched.

  A sombre voice narrated over the scenes of bleak devastation.

  ‘… within two kilometres of the nuclear blast people are vapourised instantly. It is beyond two kilometres that the true horror begins …’

  Jason stared at the hideously burned people with their misshapen features and huge open sores.

  ‘That makeup’s lousy,’ he said. ‘Indiana Jones was heaps better. Anyway I’m sick of Making Ofs. It never looks as good as the actual movie.’

  He hit ‘off’ on the remote control and turned to where Ben was shaving his head with an electric razor.

  ‘What’s it like?’ he asked.

  Ben blew expertly across the rotating heads of the razor.

  ‘It works fine. You’re sure your dad won’t miss it?’

  ‘No way,’ said Jason, ‘he’s got millions. I mean what’s it like being mental?’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Ben matter of factly.

  ‘That’s one of the first signs,’ said Jason seriously, ‘thinking you’re not. That and people making you stay in your room.’

  Ben knew it wasn’t Jason’s fault. He had problem parents. They didn’t have a clue. Brains like woodwork teachers.

  Not like Mum and Dad. They were coming along very nicely. Okay, they weren’t saving the world but at least they were worrying about it a bit.

  ‘We’ve taken him to see people, we’ve tried punishment, discipline … I don’t know what to do.’

  Ron rubbed his hand wearily over his face.

  ‘I’ve got to get security clearance to have a shave,’ he said plaintively.

  Wal brought his cleaver smashing down through the lamb carcass, removing a leg. Fortunately from the carcass.

  ‘I’m no psychiatrist, Ron,’ said Wal. He waggled his bloody cleaver and flashed an evil grin. ‘Be a bit of a worry if I was … but I reckon he’s doing it for the attention.’

  He deprived the lamb of another leg.

  ‘It’s the age,’ he said. ‘When I was his age I used to walk into lamp-posts, just so’s people’d look at me.’

  ‘So what do I do?’ asked Ron.

  ‘Ignore it.’ Wal put down his cleaver and wiped his hands on his apron. ‘That’s what we did with my sister’s youngest. Kid went round claiming she could fly. We just ignored her.’

  Ron felt a tinge of relief that he wasn’t the only bloke with a weird kid.

  ‘Did she stop?’ he asked.

  Wal looked at his old mate and employer.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said reassuringly. Then he remembered something.

  ‘Now she reckons she’s invisible.’

  Di and Jean sat by the tennis court waiting for their doubles opponents to arrive.

  Di stared at the hard green surface of the court. She’d just told her friend all about the boat incident but it hadn’t made her feel any better.

  Jean was deep in thought. She reached her verdict.

  ‘He’s just doing it for the attention,’ she said, fluffing her hair and smiling at a good-looking young coach walking past.

  ‘That’s not like Ben,’ said Di doubtfully.

  ‘It’s the age,’ sighed Jean, watching the coach’s bottom in its tight white shorts receding into the distance.

  ‘Bit of hair they can sit on and they think they’re Sylvester Stallone.’

  Jean stared at the net.

  ‘I just wish I knew the right way of handling it.’ She thumped Jean even as her friend’s suggestive smirk crossed her face.

  ‘There is only one way,’ said Jean, serious again. ‘Ignore them. We’ve been ignoring Jason for ages now and it’s worked like a dream. Not a peep out of him for months. Some of the performances we used to have. All that rigmarole about his tongue turning black after Barry had the garden sprayed … take it from me Di, ignore him.’

  ‘At this stage I’ll try anything,’ said Di desperately. ‘Okay, from now on we’ll ignore him.’

  9

  Cold Shoulder

  Ron and Di sat at the dining table ignoring Ben.

  It wasn’t easy.

  While they picked at T-bone steaks the size of doormats Ben, naked except for his loincloth and tanning lotion, stared at them steadily from under his bald dome and slowly ate a small pile of rice from a wooden bowl.

  Ron stared at the carpet, the sideboard and the ceiling.

  ‘Ceiling’s holding its colour well,’ he said.

  Inside Ben was holding his breath. He knew all this staring at the carpet, sideboard and ceiling was just a last desperate bid for escape before Dad broke down and sobbed about the state of the world.

  Di stared at the ceiling, the sideboard and the carpet.

  ‘So’s the carpet,’ she said.

  Claire looked at them both as if they were stark raving mad.

  ‘Have you two been hitting the bottle?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Di, ‘and chew your lettuce properly.’

  Di, Jean and a couple of their friends floated languidly in the pool on their inflatable chairs.

  Above them an azure sky stretched away for ever, the sun caressed their bronzed bodies and the warm, fragrant air rustled the palms next to the patio.

  Di trailed her hand through the cool water and sipped her drink. She needed just one thing to make this paradise.

  No son floating face down among them wearing her sewing-room curtains, that’s what she needed.

  Not long now, thought Ben, hoping Mum wouldn’t be up the deep end when the grief about the state of the world finally hit.

  The other women studied their nails and bikini tops and pretended they couldn’t hear the little bubbles from Ben’s scuba tank popping at the surface.

  Except for Jean.

  She gave a big yawn, stretched, and nonchalantly put her glass on Ben’s back as he floated past.

  But then, thought Ben, she’s done this sort of thing before.

  ‘Just ignore him.’

  The harassed mother pulled her child away from the ghastly apparition next to the Italian slingbacks on special.

  The shoe shop was buzzing as the other customers whispered and shot disapproving glances at Di and Ben.

  Di sat and stared straight ahead as if bringing a bald, loinclothed boy in to be fitted with football boots was the most normal thing in the world.

  Her heart was pounding.

  So was Ben’s. How much longer could she keep this up?

  The hapless sales assistant, who’d almost died at birth and now wished he had, crouched in front of them with a football boot in one hand and Ben’s bare brown foot in the other.

  ‘Football socks’d be be
st,’ he said unhappily.

  Di looked down with a air of vague surprise.

  ‘Isn’t he wearing them?’ she said mildly. ‘Oh, no, he’s not.’

  She reached into her bag and dropped a pair of Ben’s football socks into the sales assistant’s lap. She did a Jean yawn and stretch and smiled sweetly at the other women in the shop, who all quickly looked away. She felt sick.

  The assistant slid the socks onto Ben’s brown legs.

  ‘St George supporter, eh?’ he said doubtfully, wondering if they played footy in India.

  He put a football boot on Ben’s foot.

  ‘Comfortable?’ he asked.

  Ben looked down at him.

  ‘With forty thousand kids starving to death every day?’ said Ben. ‘Are you?’

  The sales assistant looked at the gaping women.

  He looked at Di, who was studying in minute detail the Italian slingbacks on special.

  He wondered how she could be so calm.

  Ben looked at her and wondered the same thing.

  Di leapt for one of Jean’s famed forehand returns and hammered it back over the net.

  Sometimes she preferred playing singles. You didn’t have to talk. Which made it easier not to think. Which when you were trying to ignore someone was a big help.

  Except by thinking that she wasn’t ignoring him. Bum.

  She swept Jean’s return back over the net.

  She’d read in a magazine once that the world’s top women players emptied their minds totally on the court.

  Di tried to empty her mind totally.

  Jean’s lob bounced high in front of her and she swung and connected with the perfect centre of her racquet. The ball touched down just inside Jean’s base line and cannoned into the fence, giving Di game and set.

  Or would have done if it hadn’t hit a large placard showing an orange nuclear explosion about a metre above the net.

  Di turned away.

  It was easy for the world’s top players, they didn’t have a son wearing a rubber joke-shop skull mask and one of their best sheets daubed with ‘Nuclear Madness’ in luminous paint chained to the net holding up placards in the middle of the court.

  She kept her back to Ben.