This Excellent Machine

by Stephen Orr

  Arnold sat on his bed, looking out his window, watching Mr Lawrence feeding his birds.

  I stopped. What if it did get published, and Mum told all the neighbours, and they bought a copy (unlikely) and read it and came storming down the drive? ‘Is your son there, Fay?’

  Lawrence removed a pigeon, stroked it and released it. It flew about but then returned to him.

  I had to write about something else. That seemed easy. But what? I’d spent hours dreaming up spy plots, crime stories, dysfunctional detectives roaming the wheatbelt in search of kidnappers. Cheap, nasty stuff. No, I had to aim high. Literature. And all good literature was autobiographical: Dickens, Salinger, even the Brontës, transcribing their own churchyard dramas.

  But then, suddenly, Lawrence wrung the bird’s neck, watched it kick, and then dropped it on the ground.

  What was that? Why was he killing it, and what would Mr Champness say? (He wouldn’t read it, but Ron’d probably tell him.)

  I’d already thrown one novel in the bin. Made a hundred pages, and the characters had emerged, strutted their stuff, but one day I’d given in to doubt. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. The Vagina Cooling Machine had been my Stephen Hero. A tormented man (stolen from Kafka) employed by a large corporation to operate a machine that cooled the nether regions of artificial prostitutes. In time, the man had become the machine. He’d started blowing, fainting, sitting up, but, of course, the propylene vaginas were no cooler. So he’d been taken to a wasteland, shot, and dumped beside a dead dog.

  Mum had found it while I was at school. When I’d got home she’d pulled me aside and said, ‘What’s that story you’re writing?’

  ‘It’s set in the future. People are no longer required for real jobs, so the government invents pretend jobs to keep them busy so they don’t get organised and revolt.’

  ‘But what’s all that about vaginas?’

  ‘That’s the job they give the main character. They have artificial prostitutes, so real women don’t have to do it, which sorta makes sense.’

  She’d stared at me. ‘So he has to operate a machine?’

  ‘Yes. Like the Industrial Revolution. See, it makes some important social and political points.’

  ‘Vaginas?’ She’d stared at me, unsure how anything she’d produced could come up with that. Maybe, I guessed she guessed, I needed help. The stress of growing up without a father had taken its toll.

  ‘And what does this man do at night?’

  ‘Like us. Goes home, cooks tea and fiddles around in the shed. Maybe he’s making his own machines.’

  ‘For cooling vaginas?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  But she’d left it there, guessing it was another one of my phases: like collecting snails and painting them orange and watching them crawl up the toilet bowl, fall in, get out, crawl up … But This Excellent was nothing like The Vagina Cooling.

  There was only one thing for it. I gathered the pages, flew out the door, down the drive and into the Donnellans’ yard. ‘Hey, David. Much happening?’

  ‘It’s quiet without the cats.’

  ‘Is yer mum gettin’ more?’

  ‘Says never again. She’s pretty crook about it, Clem.’

  ‘She’ll come good. Is Peter around?’

  ‘In the shed, I reckon.’

  There he was, in their never-opened shed, standing beside his old E-Type Jag, pulling weeds that’d grown from the dirt floor. ‘Hiya, Peter,’ I said.

  ‘Clem.’

  Pop had started fixing it once, before Val had told him they didn’t have money for parts. In the years since, Jen and I had played in it, pretending to be delivery drivers and Datsun-lovers. We’d shooed the cats (that had built beds out of clothes that had dropped from washing lines), cleaned out the rat droppings and the piles of old newspapers and books that the brothers had stored inside, and pretended.

  But it’d gone to seed. Clogged with the dust and dirt that filled the Donnellans’ shed. In the spots where the floor had fallen through, the weeds had survived, pale and trembling, inside a car inside a shed.

  Peter was at work. Clearing weeds and depositing them in a pile outside the shed, beside rubbish he’d cleared from the boot, under seats, all over. There were a few rat skeletons, and a cat mummy, ready for worship.

  ‘What you doin’?’ I asked.

  ‘Cleanin’ up.’

  ‘Why?’

  But he just ignored me, taking a hoe and chipping at the weeds around the car.

  ‘You know what you said about me writing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘D’you remember that other story I showed you?’

  ‘The penis one?’

  ‘Vagina.’

  He noticed the pages in my hand. ‘You havin’ another go?’

  ‘Thought I might.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘This Excellent Machine.’

  ‘Good title.’ He put his hoe down, took my novel, sat on the Jag’s bonnet and started reading.

  I sat beside him, told him what it was about, and how I wanted to be honest, and tell the world about Lanark Avenue. He looked from page to person and said, ‘What makes you think anyone would be interested?’

  ‘Just guessing. We gotta lot of funny people. Ernie, Ida, John … you and Davo and Val.’

  ‘We’re gonna be in it?’

  ‘Nothing mean. Just, you know, loosely.’

  ‘I see.’ He continued reading.

  ‘Should I come back?’

  No reply.

  ‘Assuming you wanna read it.’

  ‘I will, if you want. But maybe it’d be best to write it first?’

  ‘What’s the point if it’s crap?’

  After a few minutes he returned the pages. ‘Not bad. Bit clunky, but I can help you with that.’

  ‘So I should continue?’

  ‘Of course. Like I said, Lanark Avenue needs a poet.’

  That was enough. Now, I thought—believed—I was a writer.

  Peter returned to the hoe, and the weeds around his car. He said, ‘I’ll do you a deal. You write me a novel, I’ll give you my Jag.’

  I wasn’t sure.

  ‘It’s been sittin’ here so long. I was thinking of selling it for scrap. But you could do it up, eh?’

  Cobwebs and rust and shit. But somewhere beneath it all, I knew, was a Jag. ‘So, I finish the novel …?’

  ‘You get my Jag. Good deal, eh? You don’t have to get it published. I don’t even care if it’s any good. But you gotta finish it.’

  ‘You’ll help?’

  ‘Course. Show me every coupla chapters.’

  He took a broom and swept the dirt from the bonnet, the roof. Maybe he was thinking of me, maybe Pop, maybe John, but what did it matter?

  I walked into what had been Vicky’s room, the screen kicked out, the last of the window glass smashed. She was still there, calling out, Clem, get home this instant! Then hiding.

  And me arriving home from school, at the top of my voice: That you, Vicky?

  Not, it’s not Vicky, it’s Mrs Whelan.

  Did you want to come over?

  And showing herself. No, I gotta clean me room.

  Tomorrow?

  Is yer mum making scones?

  I guess.

  Okay then.

  Into the old bathroom, the Rosies’ cracked toilet bowl, and a lump of shit on the floor. Graffiti, tags, cartoon cocks in action. We’d called the police at 11 pm and they’d eventually arrived at midnight. We’d wandered over and Pop had said, ‘No, they’re long gone,’ and the constable had said, ‘Unless they’re gonna put a fence around the place there’s not a lot we can do.’ So, they’d just poked around, filled in some paperwork and left.

  Morning, and you could see the extent of the damage. It seemed a shame, because Oswald had been houseproud, vacuuming his carpet and mowing his lawns every Sunday morning, before retiring to his books. A sort of domestic Prospero, avoiding his suburban void. He
was still there, in his ruined house, caught up in Conrad as the smell of wisteria drew him out of his shell. Saying, Clem, what’s all this about vaginas?

  It’s a metaphor.

  For what?

  How willing we are to … give everything up.

  How do you mean?

  Sell out. If the price is right.

  Like the telly show?

  I walked into his bedroom, again, and hoped I’d find his Conrad. Instead, there was a pile of rubbish where someone had tried to start a fire.

  They’re gonna burn this place down, I said.

  It won’t worry me.

  What about Tina and Vicky?

  No reply.

  He’d left fertiliser in the shed, and they’d brought that inside and scattered it around.

  I gotta go now.

  He didn’t look up from his book. Good-o, Clem. Take care of yerself.

  I went down the back steps into the yard. I could see Les sitting in front of his aviary, watching his birds. Singlet, shorts and thongs. He was listening, then writing something on a sheet of paper. He didn’t look up or seem to care where he was or what was happening. Wendy came out with a basket of washing. ‘Sun’s out,’ she said.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Na.’

  ‘You gonna enter them this year?’

  Again, nothing.

  Wendy started hanging out the washing. First, a baby blue jumper (you’d often see her on the porch, knitting), big enough for an old child, or young man.

  Les said, ‘Why you doin’ that?’

  ‘Just am.’

  ‘Stupid.’ But returned to his birds.

  Another jumper, baby blue, same size, or a bit smaller. It seemed strange. They wouldn’t fit anyone at number 28.

  ‘What would people think?’ Les asked, as he made marks on his sheet.

  ‘Don’t care.’

  ‘Doesn’t help no one.’

  ‘Helps me.’

  More jumpers, gradually becoming smaller, paler, but always blue.

  Les said, ‘It’s morbid. I reckon you need a psychologist.’

  ‘Perhaps I do.’

  ‘Why’d you gotta keep washin’ ’em, anyway? What’s that prove?’

  ‘Keep ’em in good nick.’

  The last few were small, the very last, baby-sized, like it’d been knitted for a doll. When she was finished she stood back and said, ‘Nice bita sun, should get them dry.’ Turned, and went in.

  I counted seventeen jumpers. Maybe they were for some sort of charity, or refugees, or starving kids in Africa.

  I walked down the drive, and home. Mum and Pop were sitting on the verandah, Pop in overalls with his spray-pack, surveying the few weeds that dared grow in his garden. I sat beside him and he said, ‘Go on, tell your mother what I scored.’

  ‘What?’

  He took some folded papers from his overall pocket, opened them and showed me. Fighting Dementia.

  ‘I thought we’d get some information,’ I said.

  Mum read the pages, returned them to me and said to Pop, ‘He’s just concerned.’

  ‘That’s not gonna help, is it?’

  I dared not speak.

  ‘So?’ Pop asked, bending over, pulling a weed.

  ‘Twenty-eight out of forty-nine,’ I replied.

  ‘Clem,’ Mum said.

  ‘You weren’t meant to notice, Pop.’

  ‘What if it’s not that bad?’ he said. ‘I’m an old bastard, and something else will probably get me first.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Mum said.

  ‘See, Clem? You’re thinkin’ I’m gonna be wandering down North East Road starkers and people’ll be laughing. If you go through life worrying about things …’

  They both looked at me.

  ‘Twenty-eight,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck.’ Pop reclaimed the pages, tore them into pieces and scattered them to the wind. ‘If I hada done it to you, would you have done any better?’

  ‘No, but …’ I stopped, realising I was burying myself.

  ‘Instead of studying me, you could help me.’ He handed me the weed-wand, and pushed the spray-pack in my direction. ‘Off you go.’

  I checked. ‘There aren’t any weeds.’

  ‘There are plenty.’

  So I started, walking the yard, searching for weeds, hitting the few he’d missed the fortnight before. Then I saw the jumpers again. ‘Seventeen of them,’ I said.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Mum said, noticing them.

  I kept working. Pop said, ‘It’s very strange.’ He took out a smoke and lit it.

  ‘People cope differently,’ Mum said.

  ‘With what?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s none of our business.’

  ‘It is if she’s gonna hang them out,’ Pop said. He stood, approached his roses and started plucking spent flowers.

  ‘If it helps her,’ Mum said, ‘then good. If I’d had to go through that.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, giving up on the weeds.

  ‘None of your business.’

  Pop said, ‘Cosa the kiddy she gave up.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘It’s no bloody secret. He’s not stupid, are you, Clem?’

  ‘She wouldn’t want people knowing.’

  ‘Rubbish. She told you. She knew you’d blabber.’

  I sat down, and worked on Mum. ‘Told you what?’

  She fought to keep it in, but couldn’t. ‘She had a bubba and gave it up for adoption.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She told me once, but …’

  We waited. Pop sat and said, ‘She’s not quite right in the head.’

  ‘No one is,’ Mum said.

  ‘Don’t see me hanging seventeen jumpers on a line.’

  Mum glared at him. ‘If she knew I went around telling people …’

  ‘I’m not people,’ I said.

  ‘She was only young. Back then things were different, weren’t they, Dad? Her mum, who was Catholic, and terribly decent, said, You’re not having … an abortion.’

  ‘I know what an abortion is.’

  ‘Well, this mother made her have it and give it up for adoption.’

  ‘Did she want to keep it?’ I asked.

  ‘She told me she did, but this mother, she was worried about her Catholic mates.’

  ‘Fuckin’ Catholics,’ Pop growled.

  ‘She had to do what this woman said. No job, no money, no prospects.’

  ‘Any normal person would’ve let her keep it,’ Pop said. ‘That’s the human thing to do.’

  ‘Catholics aren’t human?’

  ‘No. What about when Wilf …?’ He stopped.

  Wilf. I’d suspected. Mum waited, unsure, but decided the story was the best contraceptive. ‘The nuns took the boy and gave him to a family, and that was that.’

  Pop said, ‘Family’s gotta stick together no matter what happens. But that evil woman … It’s always the religious ones.’

  Mum slapped his knee. ‘Wendy’s never got over it. And then to have married him. You gotta feel sorry for the woman.’

  As I did. Plenty of them in Lanark Avenue.

  ‘But the jumpers?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s her way,’ Mum said. ‘Every year she knits one for him. The size she reckons he might be. Once I asked her why she did it and she said if he ever comes back he’ll know she never forgot him, or stopped loving him.’

  ‘Not much chance he’d come back.’

  ‘Worst thing of all,’ Mum said, ‘was what happened next. A week after she got out of hospital she thought, No, I’m not gonna do it. She stood up to her mum and walked out on her, returned to the hospital and asked for him back.’ She was imagining this, I guessed. The stark ward, the nuns, with the smugness Pop told us he wanted to wipe from each of their faces.

  ‘What?’ I asked, watching the jumpers move in the breeze.

  ‘They said, They’ve already taken him. So she had to go home to he
r mum, and welcome Les into the house, and get married, and all that. But she just keeps knitting, and luckily, Les doesn’t say nothin’.’

  ‘Keep off!’ Val’s voice, from next door. She stood opposite Ernie beside the fallen fence with its rusted wire. He said, ‘Get yer facts straight.’

  David twisted to see. ‘No closer, Ernie.’

  ‘Was a time,’ Val said, ‘people looked out for each other.’

  ‘What, spreading tetanus?’ Ernie asked.

  ‘They never hurt you.’

  Pop spread his hands on his legs, studied his fingers.

  ‘Don’t you lecture me,’ Ernie said. ‘I helped with that roof.’ And he indicated. ‘Nailed every sheet on.’

  ‘You killed them. The lot of them.’

  Pop stood and hobbled towards the borderlands. ‘Don’t you reckon people are sick of hearin’ it?’

  Silence. Except David’s murmuring, as he tried to turn to see.

  ‘It’s done. Let’s get on with it. I could complain, we all could, but …’

  Ernie said, ‘She thinks I called the council.’ Turning to Val. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Ring ’em, ask ’em, just stop goin’ on about it.’

  I waited, watched, as Pop decided.

  ‘Christ, Val, if he says he didn’t …’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Could’ve been a hundred people.’

  ‘Why would I have waited all these years?’ said Ernie. ‘If I don’t like something I deal with it, but I don’t scab on anyone. Anyone.’

  Val stared at him, unsure. She turned to Pop. ‘Who then?’

  He indicated Ron’s place. ‘Someone who’d had enough, I guess.’

  Val went in, and Ernie waited, and said to Pop, ‘God knows I woulda been entitled to.’

  I’ve never been able to resist supermarkets. As a child I perfected the art of the Friday sickie. Warming Mum up on a Thursday night, a few coughs (as Jen said, Faker!), slow walk, red eyes (plenty of rubbing). Then, on the morning: I can’t get out of bed … I think I’m gonna chuck (Jen: That’s the worst acting ever!). But it usually worked.

  And why all the effort? Simple: shopping. Every aisle a world of possibilities: meals you’d never thought of, new lines of cream biscuits, prawns, and a thousand other things we couldn’t afford. And here I was, years later (no point faking a gut ache in Year Twelve), walking the same aisles, smelling the same fake citrus, feeling safe. But maybe it wasn’t the promise of virus-free chopping boards. Maybe it was the memory of Mum, who’d let me push the trolley, or sit in it, like Blackbeard in search of treasure.