The Pencil Case

by Lorraine Cobcroft

  The days seemed to go on endlessly, but finally, the appointed day came and I dressed carefully, asked her to wish me luck, and, characteristically, left early.

  Anguish burnt in my chest watching the brass minute hand edge towards the half–hour, but when the interview finally commenced, a full 15 minutes late, the knot in my stomach became a clenching fist of ice and fire. A dark– murderous rage boiled inside me. I think I called the man Simms, bidding him a terse goodbye.

  “Paul? What’s wrong?” Fran’s hopeful glow dissolved to a look of haggard, wretched astonishment as I slammed the fridge door, tore at the stubby cap, and crumpled on to a chair, face working in a contortion of angry frustration. “Intelligence test! How long is the fucking Tigres Euphrates River? What’s the name of the highest mountain in the Himalayas and how high is it? How many people could answer fucking questions like that?”

  “What? Why would they ask questions like that? Surely that was only a small part of it? What else did they ask?” Her voice was fishwife shrill and she was shaking.

  “Oh, plenty.” I said in a tone iced with contempt. “All along the same lines. And then they interviewed me. What a fucking joke! Arrogant sneers at every word I spoke, but oh so fucking polite when explaining they would have to consider what jobs I might be capable of doing, given that I had no education.”

  “But you did courses in the army.”

  “I told them. Maths and English to Intermediate equivalent, and music to a level that matched the Trinity School of Music final exams. Apparently fucking army education certificates aren’t worth the fucking paper they are written on outside of the army. And then there’s my age to consider. Apparently the brain cells die when you pass your 25th birthday!”

  “Surely they are going to offer you some sort of retraining?”

  “I have to go back next Thursday. A pencil–pusher named Wicks is handling my case. He drives a black sedan.”

  She made a puzzled frown. “Government issue, Paul. They all drive black cars.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, my tone vague and distant. “They all do.”

  #

  Escaping from that office the following Thursday afternoon, dark clouds wrapped about me and a relentless fist pounded at my brain, screaming reminders of demons’ warnings and branding me a fool for forgetting lessons from my past. The strain of holding back a thirst for blood left me spent. I headed for the pub, but the beer was vile and its chill had no effect on the savage fire in my gut. I swallowed one after another, gulping them down and slamming glass and coin on the bar, glaring impatiently at the barman until he planted a filled glass on the coaster. Slowly, rage gave way to that familiar hollow feeling of having all the life sucked out of me and everything I cared for snatched away. The ale made my gut churn. When I finally staggered out, muddy–headed and choking on vomit, I was no more than a walking corpse, waiting for my body to recognise that my mind had died.

  My responses to Fran’s questions were rambling and incoherent, but terse and resentful. I was violently sick, ate nothing, and went to bed in my underwear without showering or washing my teeth. I was always fanatical about personal hygiene. Even on bush camp–outs, I was religious about bathing, shaving and cleaning my teeth. Fran had seen me drunk and depressed often, but I had never gone to bed unclean before.

  I left for work the next morning without a word, and stayed out late drinking again. On Saturday, I slept until 11. Then I went outside and sat on the back step, brooding. I felt as though I’d been swallowed by a black monster and I was swimming about in its belly. Dark hopelessness surrounded and consumed me. When Fran called me in for lunch, I didn’t answer. She came and sat beside me.

  “OK, Paul. Enough. Spit it out. What happened?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” My tone was dead. Rage had dissolved to a grudging concession of black defeat. Her face was etched with pain and fear and she was drawing ragged little breaths, but I had no strength to care.

  “Something upset you terribly. What did they say?”

  “That the tests evidenced that I lack the intelligence to do anything other than dig fucking ditches. I lack aptitude to be eligible for retraining. And, in any case, I’m two fucking months too old.”

  Her shoulders slumped as shocked confusion gave way to tears. For a heartbeat of time, I wanted to reach out and smother her; put an end to her tiresome questions and her nagging challenges; shed the intolerable weighty burden of having to provide for her and the children. But my heart turned over at her sorrow.

  “Prison inmates can do all sorts of courses --- even get university degrees --- as part of programs aimed at ‘rehabilitation’,” I said in a voice as sour as green lemons. “Men who serve their country for a decade are thrown on the trash heap the day they shed the uniform.”

  She choked on her reply. What came out was a series of unintelligible grunts, but her tears spoke for her. She put her arm around me and rested her head on my shoulder. I shoved her away.

  “God I hate myself sometimes. Why am I so bloody stupid?” “You’re not stupid, Paul. They are. You –”

  “I’m fucking stupid all right. I let myself trust the fucking system.” “Come inside and eat Paul.”

  “Fuck off, Fran. Just leave me alone.”

  I was still sitting there when she went to bed that night, and she asked me how long it would be before I would wash or eat or do something to reassure her I was going to be OK. How could I answer? Year after dark pain–filled year of incarceration had locked me in a prison of hopelessness and despair.

  As a jailed child, and in a stifling uniform, I counted the years to freedom. I planned and schemed and hoped. Weak rays of sunshine piercing the darkness had assured me that, one day, I would be ‘OK’. But there was not the faintest glimmer of light in this cavern.

  I was certain, at that moment, that unless I found and murdered my tormentor, I could never be ‘OK’ again.

  ~~~~

  33: REUNITED

  MARCH 1974

  Friday morning, I left for work as usual at 6:45 am. Two weeks before Easter, with the start of winter at least six weeks away, the early morning departures were still tolerable. The house pipes didn’t freeze and the windscreen fog cleared with just a swish of the wiper blades. Two months from now I’d have to rise 10 minutes earlier to take hot water from the house to clear the ice from the windscreen. If the house pipes were frozen, I’d have to fetch water from buckets filled the night before, first cracking the thin layer of ice on top, then boiling it in the kettle. But this was the best time of year here. The fiercely dry, hot summer was over. For the next few weeks the frosts would be light and the days would be sunny and still.

  Fran lifted my pyjama–clad toddler son out of the high chair, wiped his mouth and hands, and hugged him to her chest, taking Nicki’s hand to lead the children to the door to kiss me goodbye. Another nine hours of monotony and frustration before two glorious days of respite. The bosses had extended our work days and introduced a nine–day fortnight. I could have taken the day off, but I’d chosen to extend my Easter break. Eight glorious days; my first real break since I started this job.

  What to do with it? An opportunity to search for Simms? Search for my family? Ultimately, I supposed I would sleep late, mow the lawn, paint the dining room and spend time playing with my kids. Desire burnt strongly enough, but somehow the pressures of daily living seemed always to make responding too difficult. Fran suggested I had a subconscious desire to avoid the confrontation I feared possible if I returned home, and perhaps I did cling to the safe and familiar. My revenge plans were a closely guarded secret, and it was definitely not desire to avoid confrontation that delayed action towards that goal. I was in no hurry. Anticipation only served to make revenge sweeter.

  “Wilson. Phone message. Your wife called,” a clerk yelled as I walked past his office to the lunchroom. The message alarmed. Fran never called me at work, but the clerk assured me all was well as he handed me a note asking me to come ho
me early. It pissed me off. There had better be a good reason for her asking me to forfeit my usual Friday afternoon drinking session.

  Throughout the afternoon, I puzzled over what could possibly prompt such a request. Although she objected vehemently to my drinking, and complained endlessly, she rarely actually tried to stop my pub sessions.

  She met me at the door that evening glowing with childlike anticipation, but there was an anxious tremor in her voice and she was slow to answer my questioning stare.

  “I had a visitor early this morning. He startled me. For a minute I thought it was you, back for something you forgot, but the clothes were wrong and his hair was darker and straighter. He was well tanned, and a little leaner than you, and he had a distinctive from–the–bush accent.”

  “Are you going to tell me who it was?”

  “He said he was your brother.”

  She seemed to lurch towards me and my gut lurched in response. I swayed on my feet like a drunk after a long binge. My vision blurred. Memories I’d fought down for nearly two decades surfaced to besiege and threaten, tearing at my heart and screaming warnings. Her eyes probed, but my throat locked.

  “I told him you didn’t have any brothers, but he seemed quite certain, and he was so uncannily like you. Had that distinctive Wilson chin, too.”

  “I have brothers. Two,” I mumbled. Icy fingers squeezed my heart, quenching raging flames of desire.

  “He said you had five… and four sisters.” Frown lines sliced Fran’s forehead and her eyes accused. “You never told me you had brothers.”

  “Why should I? They ceased to be part of my life when they were barely toddlers. I never expected I’d ever see or hear from them again.”

  “His name’s Ian. He said he’d be back to see you at about seven, so we should eat before he gets here.”

  She went to the kitchen and turned her attention to a simmering pot. I sought refuge in the toilet and begged my stomach to be still and my head to stop spinning. I needed a drink. I wanted to run. Elation, terror, hope, despair and disbelief battled for dominance, and a voice in my head pleaded for some clarity of what I was supposed to feel.

  My little brother. 18 years. He’d be 23, maybe. He was about four when I last saw him…

  No more pretence. No more excuses. I had to face it now. I had to decide, truthfully, if I really wanted to go home. The demons from my past had caught up with me and wrapped me in a shroud of fear. Fear of disappointment. Fear of rejection. Fear of discovery. Fear of climbing, again, to dizzy heights of hope and joyful anticipation, then crashing again into the dark depths of despair.

  I was on a roller coaster, climbing at breakneck speed in a carriage that threatened to break free of the track, and staring ahead in terror at a sheer drop its orbit. No gravitational forces held me. If I loosened my grip, I might drift into oblivion or be sucked into the blazing heart of the sun and spat back as a pile of ashes.

  I ate my meal in silence, conscious of Fran’s questioning gaze and thankful that she asked nothing; said nothing.

  First an uncle. Now a brother. Never my mother or my father. Why had they never come? Had they simply forgotten me? Were they too busy with younger kids to care? No letters. 18 years of silence.

  I had long since stopped waiting; stopped believing. Deep inside, the hope for a sign they cared never died. I hoped somehow, some day, the emptiness and confusion would end and there would be answers and the answers would be acceptable. I hoped bitterness, rage, mourning and yearning would give way to understanding, and somehow the world would make sense.

  Ian Wilson was close to my height, rough skinned and darkly tanned. He was lean, but muscled, like Dad. A wave of oily black hair flopped over his forehead. He flicked it back with a work–toughened hand, just like Dad’s. He half–grinned as he introduced himself, then he shook my hand heartily and thumped my shoulder, but he had little to say. I passed him a can, and he sat down opposite me to pop it and suck from it.

  I don’t know how long we sat in silence, staring. What should brothers say to one another after 18 years apart? A million questions pounded my temples, demanding response, but I couldn’t bring myself to mouth any of them. I was spinning out of control, yet I knew I appeared completely calm --- cold and unfeeling. Eyes vacant.

  At last, he broke the tense silence. His words seemed to float like a bubble that burst without leaving a trace. They echoed in my head, muzzled and vague. I opened my mouth to answer, but the sound died in my throat.

  He stayed only minutes that evening, but he returned two nights later. This time we talked a little, recalling the day he had hammered spilt bullets and one exploded under my big toe. Dad wrapped it in bandages, doused it with Dettol and said it probably should be stitched, but it’d mend OK. It did.

  We laughed over the memory of Rob falling out of a cart on the way to town and spending a few days in hospital with concussion, then falling out again on the way home. As a toddler, Rob never could sit still.

  Neither of us mentioned my leaving. We gave Fran no clues as to when we parted or why we’d been so long apart. Neither of us spoke of the life we’d lived while apart.

  “Rob is getting married on Easter Saturday,” Ian said, preparing to leave after his second visit. “Come to the weddin’, bro. Real casual affair. Rob’d be stoked to have you there.”

  Dark stillness. Only the vexing tick-tock of the clock and the faint, shallow sound of sleeping children’s breathing disturbed the silence. Ian was watching me intently, eyes wide and pleading.

  I stared into white froth on my beer. Fran watched my reaction, temples knotted with anxiety.

  I’d talked about going home and I’d said I wanted to see my parents again, but after 18 years of separation, talk is easy. I’d made no serious move to try to find them and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted my family to find me.

  “You can stay with Carly and me,” Ian said at last. “There’s plenty of room at our place for all four of you.”

  I considered the offer, still staring intently into my beer, afraid my expression would tell more than I wanted to reveal. I was painfully aware of Ian’s discomfort. My voice, when I finally answered, was low and hesitant.

  “What about Mum and Dad? Would they welcome me? I wouldn’t want to make the event uncomfortable for anyone.”

  “Come, Paul,” Ian said. “I’ll tell Mum and Dad.” After a moment of reflection, he added “You’ve got brothers and sisters you’ve never met. Kevin, Michael, Brian, Sandra, Helen and Julie. It’s time you got to know all of them. It’ll be great, a wedding and family reunion in one. It’ll be quite a party.”

  He extended a hand, then changed his mind and placed it affectionately on my shoulder. “It was good to see you, bro. I’ll see you Good Friday, 22 Laurel Ave. Ask at any service station if you forget or need directions. Everyone in town knows us.”

  “I might come. I’ll think about it.” My response was flat, disinterested. If it disappointed Ian, he showed no sign. He waved happily from the car and gave a short ‘beep beep’ as he drove off.

  “If I’m finally going to meet your parents, perhaps you should tell me enough about your past so I don’t put my foot in my mouth,” Fran said nervously when Ian had gone. Despite my noncommittal reply, she was obviously certain I would decide to go. I stared into my beer to avoid her gaze, not at all sure I would.

  “Paul, I know you struggle to trust me, but we’ve been through a lot together. Don’t you think I have a right to know what makes you like you are?”

  “Like what? What are you talking about?”

  She couldn’t answer, so she pretended to busy herself folding washing. Later, she tried again. “What should I expect when I meet your parents? Is there anything I should know about them.”

  “What? Like I haven’t seen or heard from them in 18 years? I probably don’t know any more about them than you do.”

  “Surely you have some memories?”

  “Yeah, I have memories.” Crystal–clear memor
ies. As vivid as if it all happened yesterday. Trauma stamps impressions indelibly on the brain and heightens the senses.

  “But you never talk about your past.”

  “I swore the day I joined the army that no–one would ever know about my past. I buried it the day I put the uniform on. Until then I was a ‘home kid’, unwanted, unloved, society’s trash. I was determined no–one would ever call me that again.”

  She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my cheek, but I shrugged her away.

  “Paul, you were never society’s trash. You were a victim of society’s failure.”

  “My parents were very poor. I was a bush kid, feral. The Government said they weren’t taking proper care of Jen and I, so they took us away because we were supposedly neglected.”

  “But they left two younger kids behind? They couldn’t have thought there was any danger of harm.”

  “Who knows what they thought? All I know is that a social worker took us into a courtroom and charged us and I remember my dad swearing at the judge and storming out in a rage. Then they put us in a black car and took us away.

  “They were the days of ‘the reds under the beds’. Remember, Fran? People were scared stiff of commos. We’d heard stories about what the Nazis did during the war, taking families into concentration camps. And there we were being carted off to God knows where in a black car driven by a stranger in a suit. Dad had stumbled away raging mad, but frightened, obviously unable to control what was happening. There are no words to describe the terror.

  “They told us it was for a little holiday. They said we would be going back home soon. I suppose they told our parents the same lie. They put us in a horrible place where nuns beat us and cursed us and told us every day that we were scum and we had bad blood in us. We never went home again. My parents went on to have heaps more kids, it seems, and I guess maybe two less to care for was a bonus. They probably never gave us much thought ever again.” I took a swig of beer and stood up. “End of story. Nothing else to tell. I went from an orphanage to the army, very much against my will, and you know the rest.”