This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  ‘Nice.’ A herby taste in the mouth. ‘Is one enough?’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  Back and forth, but it was such good quality, it lasted. Then, the sound of the gate between drive and yard. We knelt, looked out the window and saw Gary walking with a roll of aluminium over his shoulder. He stopped, checked no one was watching and continued towards the shed. Arrived, put down the roll and fiddled with a padlock. Removed it, took the roll inside.

  Curtis smiled. ‘Foreignies.’

  ‘Are you high yet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Although you never really knew with Curtis. I couldn’t feel a thing. I watched the shed. ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘His stash …’ And he inhaled a gain. ‘Stash …’ Almost eating the word, rolling it in his mouth, salivating.

  I didn’t need an explanation. Gary Burrell worked for a steel supplier. There was always a bit left over, and it was a shame to waste it. Like excess nectarines left in a wheelbarrow on the footpath. Like the gear in John’s drawer. John himself had learned the lesson early, and made the logical extension. Unfortunately, not as successfully as his dad. In a whole-street sense, no one really made the connection. Crime was in the eye of the beholder. What went around came around (if you waited till after closing).

  ‘He’ll smell it,’ I said, returning the smoke.

  ‘No, he won’t.’

  I watched over the ledge as Gary came out, locked the shed and walked towards his back door. He stopped again, sniffing the air. I grabbed the joint from Curtis, snubbed it out and whispered, ‘Ssh!’

  Gary went inside, happy with his day’s work.

  ‘I got others,’ Curtis said, shaking the box.

  ‘Clem!’

  I saw Pop standing on our back porch. ‘Come on, yer mother needs a hand.’

  ‘Gotta go,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll save ’em,’ he replied. ‘Our stash, eh?’

  Oh, and acting, that’s another thing he was good at.

  We are defined by walking. Movement, away from the familiar, towards the unknown. As if there’s some promised land, or wizard, or Hardy Boy adventure; 31, 33, 35, and on, past the basketball stadium car park and the flats on the corner of Lanark III. This walk, I sensed—still do—is one I took before I was born. Always alone. There’s a destination, but I’m not aware of it. Vaguely, paddocky, with streams and stone ruins from some Walks of England documentary.

  So I keep going, towards Holden Hill, to buy a replacement D-string for my guitar. Mum bought it for my sixteenth birthday, but regretted it now. It’d come with a crappy music stand and Daily Exercises for Guitar Beginners. Not that I was interested in that; I only needed three chords, and attitude. Elvis under the sheets, until I mastered E and A formations, then the world was my oyster. Minor chords and an expanded repertoire that lasted well into the night, at which point Mum would call out, If you don’t stop—! Followed by Jen, He can’t even play it. Followed by Pop, grumbling something about an arse-up Segovia.

  Lanark Avenue was cut short by the mound that ran beside Delhi Avenue. My theory: all of the dirt they’d piled up when they’d graded the suburb. So much of it that one day someone had said, That’d make a nice feature, wouldn’t it? Then someone had planted grass, but that had died, a few trees, and they were still struggling, a blue metal path with more cracks within cracks. It did serve a purpose, though.

  Brawls.

  Scene: Barry Davis taking a screamer on Stephen Prawer, who goes down, feels his back, stands, takes a swing at Barry and connects with his cheek. Along comes Mr Gottl, pulls them apart and sends them to the office. Followed by the cane, or detention. Then, left alone, Stephen says to Barry, ‘Three-thirty, on the mound.’

  School bell, a tidal surge through the gates, a hundred kids on the mound, Stephen and Barry throwing down their bags, and straight into it. Fists, kicks, bodies held down, released, thrown around. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a part of everyone’s primary education in Gleneagles. For some, the highlight.

  It was always over quickly. One of the neighbours would come out and the crowd would disperse, but Stephen and Barry would keep going, loose teeth and sore ribs, scratched faces, black eyes. The neighbour would take them by the scruff, but they’d kick, seeking flesh, until they were delivered to the front office. Then we’d go home.

  ‘Hey.’

  I turned to see Ernie Sharpe (35), walking his poodle, Fi-Fi. ‘Weather,’ he said, nodding towards the dark clouds, off to the east.

  ‘Good, eh?’ I asked.

  ‘Her place’ll stink like piss.’

  Her being Mrs Donnellan, the cat lady of Gleneagles. She had a dozen, maybe more, and Ernie was always on about them.

  ‘Think it’ll rain?’

  But he never answered stupid questions, or bothered with small talk. ‘I told yer mum we should call the council.’

  ‘About her cats?’

  ‘You’re only allowed two.’ He stopped and waited for Fi-Fi to dry-piss.

  ‘Pop hates them. Says she doesn’t get them fixed.’

  ‘Course not.’ He pulled her on. We turned another corner and passed Gleneagles Primary, a pebblecrete monument to a Sunburnt Country. Centenarian pine trees and the car park of Mr Gottl’s moment of grace. ‘Always rootin’ each other. And I found a load of kittens in me shed.’

  I felt a few spots of rain. ‘What did you do with them?’

  He wasn’t about to say. There was some chance I’d tell Val, and then he’d be in trouble. ‘Back to school, eh?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘How much longer you got?’

  ‘Last year. Matric.’

  But he wasn’t interested in that. ‘Government wants to sack them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The teachers. They hate teachers. I know they’re a lazy pack of bastards, but you need ’em, I s’pose.’

  ‘Good if they sacked all ours.’

  Ernie had the bone. ‘They reckon if they sack a few thousand, make the classes bigger, they can save ten million. That’s the sort of people we got running the place.’

  He seemed to be enjoying his afternoon soapbox. Thirty years a unionist had left him with a simple world view: workers worked, bosses screwed them, politicians couldn’t give a shit, as long as they kept their jobs.

  ‘At least yer mum didn’t send you to St Paul’s. That’d be even worse.’

  Like Pop, he hated the Catholics.

  ‘Ten million, and we’ll have a bunch of boneheads, but they can’t see that.’

  Soon it would be Marx, and the red flag, and that bitch Thatcher needs stringing up. Tripping over words, spitting, shaking his head in disgust.

  ‘What you gonna do with yourself after that?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Work in a bank.’

  ‘Ha!’

  I knew what this meant: banks were evil. The reason workers couldn’t get ahead.

  ‘I thought you was gonna be a mechanic, like yer pop.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Fi-Fi stopped, looked up at him, and he knew. He picked her up and we continued walking. ‘Anyway,’ he said, resting his hand on my shoulder, ‘you got your whole life ahead of you, so don’t be in a rush.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘My dad expected me to be a boilermaker, but my mum said, let him choose. But you couldn’t choose, not back then. At fifteen I was already welding boilers. I don’t think I enjoyed a single day.’ He put Fi-Fi down, but she refused to walk, so he picked her up, and we continued. ‘Every day I’d think, give it another six months …’ He faded, lost in another world, another life. ‘Your mum says you got a good brain.’

  ‘Did physics, but dropped out. I didn’t get it. I like history.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘European.’

  I could hear his smile creaking. ‘I could help you with that.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Marx and Engels. It’s what they saw in the mills. Kids, half your age, losing hands. N
o education, nothing. That’s what you wanna study. I got some books on it.’

  ‘Maybe you could help me.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I can help you. Look at that place …’ He indicated the infant school of Gleneagles Primary: an old, wooden building with the gutters falling off, the roof rusted away. ‘Main thing is, use your eyes and your brain. See things for what they are.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  But, I guessed, if you had to tell someone …

  ‘See you, then,’ he said, carrying Fi-Fi home.

  I’d never trained my spyglass on the Sharpes. But I’d started a file on them.

  3/v/82 Ernie and Val Doonican. Walk Tall. He has the lot. Twenty or more records. He showed me, asked if I’d like to listen, or borrow one. Now I can hear them of a night from my window.

  I walked the kilometre or so along North East Road: Toyotas, the side entrance to the school, the deli (soft porn and Sterling 25s), Savings Bank, and chicken shop. Camelot Motors, with its yard full of clapped-out Datsuns. Then Holden Hill Music. ‘D-string, please.’

  And more of the same as I walked home: four lanes of traffic, arteries pulsing with Sunny four-doors and King Cab utilities. The sky cracked and flashed and it rained and I just walked. Always walked. Light; heavy, a downpour that laid itself thick and syrupy on the hot footpath and road. Steaming under my feet.

  12/iii/79 Pop reckons Ernie’s gone mad. He can’t handle the heat. Reckons he saw him running in his undies down Dragon Street. Mental instability? Ida was chasing him, calling for him to come home. But it doesn’t sound like Ernie.

  It got heavier. I could feel it on my arms, through my T-shirt and on my legs. I was saturated, but it didn’t matter. Wet sneakers, spongy with every step.

  I waited in the kitchen as Mum dissected the cakes, laid them in Tupperware and sprinkled them with cinnamon. ‘Pre-reading,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pardon. Pre-reading: biology, cells, animal groups—’

  ‘I know, but what is it, exactly, I should be doing?’

  ‘Gwen’s son, Ted, he—’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  She indicated the crucifix above the door, but it was only there for bad language. ‘She says he’s been lookin’ over his books for weeks.’

  ‘He’s an idiot.’

  ‘He’s trying.’

  ‘He failed every test.’

  ‘He’s trying.’ And she glanced at Jesus, obviously more pleased with Ted. She sealed one of the containers. ‘Take that in to Val, will you?’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘And then help Pop. He’s having problems.’

  ‘He took the whole thing apart.’

  ‘Well, help him put it back together.’

  Mum had reached a crisis point. Long ago, she’d decided all men were unreliable. There was Dad, of course, scissored from the pages of family history, but (as she pointed out) you didn’t have to look far to see who was running the world. Ida Sharpe, tipping Ernie’s whiskey down the sink; Val, with one in a wheelchair and the other too lazy to scratch his arse; Anne Burrell, with a pair of little crims and a light-fingered husband; even Wendy Champness. See, she’d say, it’s us women holding the world together. The world being Lanark Avenue. What about Hester Glasson? I’d ask. Well, who knows about her? But I’m sure if you could see over that fence you’d find her cutting and sewing while he counted the money.

  I jumped the fence and headed for Val Donnellan’s front door. Cats, everywhere, including a big tabby with a missing eye where Ernie had thrown a rock at it. Gravel, part desiccated weed mat, two narrow tracks where David came and went every morning and afternoon. The porch where me and Jen had tackled Hamlet. Peter Donnellan was up a ladder, covering a fruitless mandarin tree with a net, itself full of holes. ‘Hey,’ I called, and he replied, ‘Hello to you, Clem.’ The lawyer in search of plump mandies, and other things. His Catweazle beard and Christ-like hair tied up with a band; his Vinnies pants and dad’s old work shirt. A budget sage, in the shade of his own ambitions.

  I knocked and heard Val calling, ‘Someone get that.’

  I waited, and waited. Then the door opened, and Val stood smiling. ‘Clem. What cha got there?’

  ‘A cake. Mum made it for you. Said she had too much mixture.’

  But it was never too much mixture. If you were making one you might as well make two. I handed it over and stood back, trying to think of an excuse.

  ‘Come in for a cuppa?’

  ‘She wants me to help Pop.’

  But that never worked. So, a few minutes later I was sitting in her kitchen—more Jesus, more melamine—waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘White with two, wasn’t it?’ she said. Apparently she still couldn’t remember. More likely, it was part of the routine, the tea ceremony: the warming of the cup, the clockwise stirrings of the pot, the drawing-out of conversation. I watched her old hand with its tremor (although she never spilt the tea). The spot where the pot went; the same chipped plate for the biscuits; the same biscuits; the Cornish Seascapes tablecloth with its permanent stains. ‘School soon?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘Looking forward to it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Just in case it got back to Mum.

  ‘Fay says you got a good brain.’

  She’d been saying that for years, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. I’d been clever in primary school; made beautiful macaroni murals, had a spotless speed and accuracy record, and what was true then was true now.

  ‘David left with honours,’ she said, looking across at her son.

  He just nodded and smiled and jiggled a bit so the wheels on his chair scraped on the lino floor.

  ‘He used to study all night … all hours. You were determined, weren’t you, darling?’

  David twisted his head. You could see how the muscles wanted to do one thing, him another. He strained, released, but managed to look me in the eyes. ‘Go over everything, twice, thrice,’ he said. ‘I can help.’

  ‘That’d be good.’

  Val was admiring her damaged son; her scrunched-up boy-man. She was beaming, proud of the second lawyer in the family. The degrees hung in the hallway, close to her second Jesus. Yellow parchments with crests and copperplate signatures proclaiming Peter and David Donnellan bachelors of law, 1969. David, still waiting for his first case; Peter, doing what he needed to do to be called a lawyer, although everyone agreed, he was no Perry Mason.

  ‘I always told your mum,’ she said. ‘He’ll do something creative. Remember those plays you used to write?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s something you could do. That one with the sock puppet … you had us all laughing.’

  I feigned some sort of look, mouth open, lost, as if I had no recall, no memory of sock puppets and Alf Garnett-inspired rants on the porch of number 33. Val knew me as a seven-year-old, and always would. Size didn’t matter.

  ‘Your hands were so small …’ She put down her cup and examined each of my fingers. ‘Remember when you tried the piano?’

  ‘For a while.’

  ‘We thought you’d go good on that with yer long fingers. They’re still long, aren’t they?’ She stared at them, but seemed to be moving beyond digits. ‘Fay reckons you’ve got a guitar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Reckons yer not half-bad.’

  Although Mum would never say that to me. ‘I was thinking of starting a band.’

  David moved in his chair, as if this idea excited him. I turned to him and said, ‘You were in a band, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes … folk band. I played the drums.’

  They were still in his room, but you couldn’t mention them. Mum reckoned it would’ve been better for Val to sell them instead of leaving them where he could see them every day. ‘Pretty hard, eh?’ I said. ‘To play the drums?’

  He managed to nod. ‘If you wanna get good … it takes forever.’ Then his head dropped, and he was gone.

/>   ‘Your dad …’ Val said.

  I waited. ‘Did he play something?’

  She picked up her tea, and drank. ‘I think Fay said something about it.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ But her face suggested she did. I knew, she knew, she had no right talking about him. If it got back to Mum there might be all sorts of trouble. Instead: ‘Pop still gettin’ plenty of work?’

  ‘Still does a few, but it takes him forever. I think people get sick of waiting and go other places.’

  ‘Likes his cars?’

  ‘I help him when I can, but there’s not much work. Not enough to make it worthwhile. But if he wasn’t doing it …’

  ‘Yes.’

  That’s all. One word, which was hundreds. Yes. Val thinking perhaps: He’d go downhill even quicker. ‘He used to have five or six lined up out the front. People knew him, and they came, and paid him good too.’ She wrapped her hands around her cup again. I took a few gulps, to move things along as quickly as possible. But then thought, Why? Where am I going?

  ‘Good man, your pop.’ Her head dropped; she was off, again, holding the tea and cinnamon cake, but not eating. Stopping, refilling her cup before smiling at me. ‘More?’

  I had to say yes.

  Despite what Mum said, Lanark Avenue had had many good men. Pop had told me about Mr Donnellan, gathering his wife, his two beaming boys, and setting off for Australia. Leaving behind the broken bricks and grey, exhausted hours; the small tobacco shop that had never turned a profit.

  A plot in Lanark Avenue. A few new mates, copper-topped stumps, a floor, walls, roof, and hi-ho, off we go. Gleneagles Primary (in the years before Mr Gottl) and High, and university and LL.B. Sun, rosemary, and a single cat. A gravel path and a porch with a blind, so it could be made into a stage for the neighbours’ kids. And Mr Donnellan, sitting before his PVC Penzance, drinking tea with his wife and saying, If I went tomorrow, I’d be happy.

  Why’s that?

  Cos I bought those tickets.

  Val had told me this story over and over, as I sat in her kitchen drinking tea, imagining Mr Donnellan coming home, embracing his stiff-muscled son, saying how bloody beautiful life was in Lanark Avenue. She’d told me all about him. A bow tie on Sundays. Braces that pulled his pants up his bum (as she and the boys laughed). How he helped Pop build his shed of many Datsuns. How he mowed his lawn every Saturday morning, in praise of the Australian way; pruned the roses in the first week of July; brewed beer that always went bad; told his sons how, one day, with a bit of hard work, they could be running the country.