by Derek Hansen
I could hardly walk up to Mack and tell him I wouldn’t know for another four weeks whether anyone could help him or not. And he’d hardly be impressed if I told him his fate would be determined by the result of an eighth-grade soccer match.
I finished polishing my shoes just as Dad arrived home and Mum called out to tell us to wash our hands for dinner. Typically, that’s when Nigel came rushing out to the back step with his shoes in hand. He always left things to the absolute last minute but in this instance it didn’t really matter. His shoes were way beyond salvation. He’d kicked the shine right off them and not even a truckload of Kiwi Polish could put it back on. One of the things I most dreaded was growing out of my shoes and inheriting his.
As I began to wash my hands the ramifications of my earlier thoughts began to dawn on me. Mum always said I lived too much inside my head and it was starting to look as if she was right. I realised all of Mack’s hopes rested on me and on my team. What if I had a bad game? What if we lost? I’d thought catching fish for dinner was a big enough burden of responsibility but it paled into insignificance. I was beginning to wish I’d never gone and spoken to Mr Holterman. I wished I could turn back the clock and start Monday all over again. Mr Holterman hadn’t helped me. All he’d done was complicate things and raise the stakes. Mack was no better off, and instead of looking forward to the knockout final I was beginning to dread it. I dragged myself to the dining table, head spinning, wondering how things could possibly get worse.
It turned out to be one of those nights when Mum could only afford to give us macaroni cheese with tiny pieces of ham hidden in it. Dad stormed away from the table when he’d finished. Then later that night at club, Bobby Holterman was made vice-captain instead of me. Just when you think life can’t get any worse it always does.
Bobby Holterman had been born in England in December 1943, shortly after his father was shot down. (Even though he was born in England and his mother was English, his father was a Kiwi so he was never thought of as a Pommy.) While that meant Bobby was six months older than me, as far as the club was concerned, I had seniority. I’d joined the club a year before Bobby. In fact I’d introduced him to the club, which only made matters worse. I had more badges than him for everything from reciting The Creed to fire lighting and knot-tying skills. I had more points for attendance and for correct dress. I outranked Bobby in every way you could think of. But now Bobby outranked me.
Ronnie Cammell, my brother Rod’s best friend, had just turned sixteen. One of the club rules was that once you turned sixteen you were too old and had to leave. He was vice-captain to Rod, who was captain of the squad I was in. Club was divided into two teams, which competed against each other in games. We were also tested on religious knowledge and issues of personal hygiene. In every game and test the winning team was awarded one point and the team with the most points at the end of the year won the pennant. The competition was fierce, let me tell you, even though the pennant remained pinned on the wall and all the winning team got for winning was bragging rights. I loved being part of a team. It was another form of acceptance.
That night at parade Captain Biggs farewelled Ronnie with a speech and we all applauded him for the contributions he’d made to the success of club nights. Then came the magic moment when Captain Biggs was supposed to anoint me the new vice-captain of blue squad. For all the reasons I’ve given, everybody assumed it was a foregone conclusion. As Captain Biggs walked along the line of assembled boys my chest puffed out like a rooster’s and I had a grin on my face I thought only surgery could remove.
Ha, ha.
Captain Biggs walked right by me as though I was invisible and announced Bobby was the new vicecaptain. If Jesus Christ had suddenly appeared in flowing robes in front of us you wouldn’t have heard a louder gasp of surprise. I was stunned. Then embarrassed. Then humiliated. Then outraged. Then mortally ashamed. All this took less than half a second.
‘Me?’ I heard Bobby say. He sounded as stunned as I was.
‘Me?’ I heard him say again. He sounded as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
‘Me?’ I’d never heard any kid sound as happy. Or as triumphant. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me.
Shame and disappointment burned on my face. Tears weren’t far off either. If I’d been home I would’ve stormed off to the bathroom for a major sulk. Nigel and Maxie were pointing at me and sniggering. Eric put his arm around my shoulders and that was even worse. We were all supposed to congratulate Bobby but I was still coming to terms with the disaster. I was the certainty beaten, the heir apparent axed. Bobby, not me, was going to wear the blue, single bar epaulette on his shoulder tab, have a blue, single stripe tacked onto the sleeve of his shirt and wear the badge on his cap. Bobby, who I’d introduced to club, now outranked me. My fall was complete.
I managed to turn to Bobby who, as fate would have it, was standing right beside me and give him my congratulations. Back then it was important to be a good loser. It showed you had character. Bobby’s mates were crowding around him so it was easy to slip to the back of the pack and try to pull my thoughts together. Somehow it seemed to me that Bobby’s elevation and my conversation with his dad were connected. They had to be. Mr Holterman and Captain Biggs had to be in it together. Mr Holterman must’ve persuaded Captain Biggs to promote Bobby to teach me a lesson and demonstrate to me exactly how unfair life could be. It seemed plausible. More than that, it seemed the only possible reason. Why else would Captain Biggs bypass me?
Resentment mushroomed and I shuddered at the thought of the fallout. How could I hold my head up once news had spread through school? Now I had another reason to curse the fact that I’d chosen to talk to Mr Holterman. It was clearly the worst thing I could’ve done. I also cursed the fact that I’d read my essay to Mack in the first place and set everything off. I even cursed Mack. And do you know something? I began to hope we’d lose the knockout final so I’d never have to see Mack again.
If I was embarrassed about being bypassed so were a lot of the other kids, especially my closest pals, Eric and Gary. It was a really weird night. Nobody quite knew what to say to me. They felt my humiliation and my disappointment. It was as if I was there but not there, a shell just going through the motions. When club was finally over, I didn’t hang around with the other kids but bolted straight home, tail between my legs like a pig dog sent packing by a foxie.
I crept in through the back door hoping to make it to the bedroom unnoticed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an only child or come from a big family with lots of brothers and sisters, or whether you’ve been sent away to boarding school, bed is where you find sanctuary. If you want to be alone with your thoughts or cry without anyone noticing, that’s the place to do it. Bed isn’t neutral territory, it’s private territory and every kid quickly learns how to protect it by becoming good at pretending to be asleep. I planned to do a lot of pretending, a bit of thinking and a fair bit of secret crying. But Mum heard me come in and called out to me to put the kettle on.
How could I refuse? Dad belonged to a Masonic Lodge and often went out at nights leaving Mum with little to do but plough through the ironing, read a book or listen to the radio while she knitted. Drama of Medicine was about to start and quite often I listened to it with her. She enjoyed the company and I loved having her all to myself. I would’ve preferred bed but you can’t always have what you want. I stayed in the kitchen making tea until things settled down inside my head. I didn’t want my humiliation to show. It was far too early to talk about it without bringing on tears.
‘How’d you go?’ she asked when I carried out the tea. She was sitting on the sofa reading the Australian Women’s Weekly. ‘Did Captain Biggs make you vice-captain tonight or is he going to do it next week?’
This was typical of Mum. Nothing slipped by her radar. I don’t know, maybe all mothers are the same. I thought I’d managed to look nonchalant as though I didn’t have a care in the world. Clearly my nonchalance needed working on.
My bottom lip began to tremble and Mum got that concerned look on her face that couldn’t be denied. What could I do but bare my humiliation?
‘He made Bobby Holterman vice-captain,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Mum. Her surprise was matched by indignation. ‘Bobby Holterman? You told me you had seniority.’
‘I do.’
‘So why weren’t you made vice-captain?’ Mum sat bolt upright. Concern had been replaced by a thunderous look that promised trouble. Mum was adamant we were a cut above the rest and to even hint otherwise was heresy. She expected us to deliver on her expectations and to be rewarded accordingly. Whenever I came home from soccer her first question was always ‘Well, did you win?’ This was followed by ‘How many goals did you score?’ Nigel and I were always expected to win and to score. Rod was just expected to win because he played fullback and fullbacks usually only scored own-goals. If we got beaten it was always ‘Why did you let the other team win?’ We couldn’t lose without it somehow being our fault, a failure on our part. When I came home from fishing it was never ‘Catch anything?’ but ‘What did you catch?’ She managed to look more disgusted than disappointed when I failed to provide.
Mum’s ambitions were centred on us but it wasn’t selfish ambition. It was fuelled by love. Mum’s fierce love propelled us to perform wherever competition was involved. We had to win at athletics, win at cricket, win, win, win, no matter what. Winning proclaimed us above the pack and was a point of family pride. When I once asked Rod why we had to win all the time he said winning was the only thing our family could afford. At the time I thought it was just a funny line, another example of his dry wit, but in truth it summed us up perfectly. Without success we had nothing.
Drama of Medicine might have been playing on the radio but it was nothing compared to the drama building up in our lounge.
‘I’m going to have a word with Captain Biggs,’ Mum said. ‘First thing tomorrow. I’m not going to stand for it.’
‘No, Mum, don’t,’ I said, although I knew I had no chance of dissuading her. People talk about the calm in the eye of hurricanes but there was no evidence of calm in Mum’s eyes and plenty of evidence of the impending storm. When Captain Biggs decided to bypass me for promotion he’d committed a grievous error; he’d done the unthinkable, the absolutely, totally unforgivable. He’d affronted family pride. I don’t think he had a clue what he’d let himself in for.
Strangely enough this didn’t cheer me up. I knew what Mum was like when she had a bee in her bonnet and I still thought Mr Holterman was probably to blame rather than Captain Biggs. As I said earlier, I liked Captain Biggs. Eric’s parents thought enough of him to make him godfather to Eric, Maxie and all five of their sisters. He christened them all one Sunday in a job lot. Captain Biggs was special. I liked him more than Mack and that was saying something. The last thing I wanted was Mum going up to the Church Army and bawling him out.
Rodney and Nigel came home and got the third degree from Mum. Rod was as mystified as I was. It has to be said that until that evening we had no complaints about Captain Biggs. He was nothing if not fair, which made his actions all the harder to understand. Rod said he also felt embarrassed and slighted when Bobby was made vice-captain.
Nigel on the other hand couldn’t have cared less. He had no wish to be made vice-captain or captain and there was no chance of that happening anyway. Not only were his shoes a disgrace, he could never remember The Creed. As often as not he’d worn a hole in his pants and, as Mum used to say, you could grow potatoes under his fingernails. Neither Eric nor Maxie wanted to be vice-captains either. They didn’t want to lead or be in a position of telling other kids what to do. A lot of my pals were like that and didn’t want to be leaders or have authority. Maybe it was a Kiwi thing. Nigel never understood why anybody would want to be vice-captain. If you were vice-captain or captain you were charged with the responsibility of helping Captain Biggs maintain order and discipline when the name of the game was seeing how much mischief you could get away with. It seemed natural that Rod was a captain because of his role as de facto parent but Nigel could never understand why I’d want the job. We had our own word for goody-goodies who crawled to authority back in those days—greaser. That’s what Nigel called me.
Mum gave Nigel a clip over the ear for not standing up for me. She was also disappointed in Rod for not having had it out with Captain Biggs then and there. That was what big brothers were for. Mum and Rod went to bed blaming Captain Biggs for their anger. Nigel went to bed blaming me for his burning ear. I went to bed blaming Mack and Mr Holterman for ruining my life, convinced life was unfair, we’d lose the knockout final and Mack was doomed to bear the burden of his disgrace to the day they laid him in his grave.
Secret tears flowed but, in this instance, nobody could say they weren’t justified.
CHAPTER NINE
Sister Gloria is the most popular of all the Sisters at the Church Army. She is closest to our age and laughs at the same things we laugh at. All of my pals want to be the monitor in her Bible classes because of her personality. She is just nice to be around.
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘THE PERSON I MOST ADMIRE’
Bobby’s promotion was big news up until morning playtime. After that I don’t think anybody even mentioned it. I have to say I was a terrific sport about it. I was extremely gracious, while all the time plotting revenge on Captain Biggs. Yes, some time before falling asleep I’d decided to go over to the dark side and join Nigel, Maxie and the rougher kids like Graham Collitt in making trouble.
If Nigel was mischief, Collitt was genuine trouble. There was only one gang in our neighbourhood that ever amounted to much and Collitt was at the head of it. Somehow he sounded tougher being called by his surname rather than by his Christian name. None of us ever called him Graham and it’s a fair bet we would’ve copped a thump from him if we did. I copped more than enough thumps from him as it was for being ‘a little Pommy smart arse’. That was one of the nicer things he called me. Collitt was two years ahead of me in Standard 5B. We reckoned B stood for brainless. From time to time Collitt also made Captain Biggs’s life a misery.
Some months earlier Captain Biggs had partitioned off one corner of the clubhouse to make a mini shop. His big idea was to raise money by selling sweets and chocolate bars. Just how he intended to raise money by selling sweets to kids who had no money was beyond me, but you have to give him points for trying. He built a small door into the side of the mini shop and installed a heavy Yale lock. The front of the shop had a hatch that was raised to reveal the counter. Captain Biggs opened the hatch by unlocking a padlock. This might sound like a lot of locks for a tiny excuse for a shop that sold only sweets and chocolate bars but Captain Biggs was under no illusions as to the true nature of some of the kids he was dealing with, Graham Collitt especially. As it happened he made two mistakes.
Captain Biggs always lectured us on trust and responsibility and liked to back his words with actions. For example, Eric and I were often asked to tally up the money in the collection plate after the Sunday service. We weren’t the only ones asked and I have to say his trust was never misplaced. Mind you, none of us would have dared steal from the collection. That would’ve been stealing from God and the consequences of that were too terrible to even think about. After a month of having our little shop, Captain Biggs decided to trust Steve Cooper, one of the older boys, with the door key. Steve was a nice kid but soft and a bit slow. Nigel liked to say he knitted with only one needle. He was hopeless at sport and a liability in any games and maybe Captain Biggs thought the responsibility might do something for his self-esteem. He could hardly have made a worse choice.
As soon as Captain Biggs was behind the counter, Collitt and a couple of his cronies nailed Steve Cooper, took the key off him and locked Captain Biggs in. They then raced around to the hatch and pulled it closed. This was the captain’s second mistake. The padlock was always left open on the hasp when the hatch was up. Poor Captain Biggs knew immediatel
y what was about to happen and used all his strength to try to keep the hatch open. But one adult can’t hold back a baying pack of hooligans and he was soon locked in, but not before Nigel, Maxie and some others seized the opportunity to knock all the chocolate bars on the counter onto the floor. Forget any lolly scrambles you’ve ever seen. The frenzy that followed would’ve done justice to a feeding school of piranha. Anyone who’d managed to grab even a single chocolate bar quickly made off into the night.
Rod, Ronnie Cammell and I chased Collitt for the key and finally got it back. When we let Captain Biggs out of the mini shop he looked crushed. Beaten, defeated, betrayed but, above all, crushed. He could hardly speak to us. Any chance of the shop ever turning a profit had also disappeared out into the night and probably a large proportion of whatever stipend the Church Army gave him. I knew how shops worked and guessed most of the chocolate bars and sweets were on credit to be paid back from sales. I felt really sorry for Captain Biggs.
But that was then. Before going to sleep I decided that if it happened again I wouldn’t go chasing Collitt to get the key back. No chance. I’d throw all my weight against the hatch and make sure I got my share of the chocolate bars. Furthermore, when kids used rubber bands to fire paperclips at Captain Biggs in church while he was kneeling and had his back to us, I wasn’t going to try to stop them. I no longer wanted to be captain or vicecaptain of blue squad. Damned if I’d help keep order. If Captain Biggs couldn’t show loyalty to me, damned if I’d show any back. Just so God would also know my displeasure I fell asleep dreaming of Sister Glorious in the nude, despite all the earlier, solemn promises to the contrary.