by Simon French
Trevor stood on the verandah alone, wishing it could all be over and done with. Behind him in the classroom was a hum of voices, and every so often his ears heard murmurs of “new kid …”
He thought for a moment of Buckley, who today had started at the bricklaying job. First thing that morning his father had bounced around the caravan like an excited child, dressed in his best work clothes and itching to start at a job he hadn’t worked at for a long time.
“Do I look like a good bricklayer?” Buckley had asked, and Trevor momentarily grinned, remembering his and Kath’s chorused reply of “Yuk!”
Kath was next to him again. “See you later, huh!” she said, climbing down the stairs. “Have a good day.”
“Yeah, see you,” Trevor managed to reply, watching her go.
The teacher was next to him then, Mr Fuller with his efficient voice. “You can go inside, Trevor,” he said, indicating the nearby classroom. “I’ll be in in just a moment.”
He walked slowly inside. The hum of conversation abruptly stopped, and fleetingly he saw the groups of faces turned towards his own. He switched his gaze to the floorboards and stood motionless next to the doorway, the soccer ball in one hand, the shoulder bag in the other. Twenty or more of them, boys and girls with sharp country faces, sat frozen behind their desks, watching him in silence.
Trevor was acutely aware of the sea of eyes fixed on him, and vainly tried to focus his mind elsewhere. The teacher still hadn’t entered the room, and slowly the hum of conversation resumed.
“Hey, mate,” said a voice, “how old are you?”
“He’s pretty small.”
Ripples of laughter. Trevor remained silent.
“Reckon you’re in the wrong class, mate. Kindergarten’s the other side of the playground.”
More laughter.
“Jeez, he’s quiet. Say something.”
“What’s the soccer ball for?”
“You got hair like a girl, mate.”
“Maybe he is …”
The talk stopped as the teacher walked into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. “I don’t believe I asked anyone to make a noise,” he said loudly, glaring at the class. “We have a newcomer, as you may have noticed. Trevor Huon starts here today, and he’ll be with us for the next few months.” He turned to Trevor. “Luckily for you, we have a vacant desk.”
Trevor managed to look up then, self-consciously scanning the neat lines of desks, two rows for boys, two rows for girls. He looked long enough at the class to recognise a few of the faces he’d seen on the Saturday morning, and they looked back at him, smirking.
“Up there at the back, next to Martin Grace.”
Martin Grace obligingly wrinkled his nose in dislike as Trevor started towards the vacant desk. There was another murmur of giggles.
“Some people here seem intent on getting extra homework to do!” the teacher thundered suddenly. There was immediate silence. Mr Fuller indicated to Trevor to stay where he was at the front of the room.
“Before you go anywhere, Trevor Huon,” the teacher said, “perhaps you’d like to tell us a bit about yourself.”
Oh no, Trevor thought, but shrugged indifferently. In such imposing company, he didn’t feel safe refusing. The class was waiting expectantly for him to say something.
“Well,” said Mr Fuller, “whereabouts in town are you living?”
“The caravan park.”
“The caravan park?” the teacher exclaimed, feigning surprise. “Have your parents bought the caravan park?”
“No,” Trevor sighed, “we’re just staying there.”
“Do you stay in caravan parks all the time?” the teacher continued.
Trevor moved restlessly. To himself he thought, stop making fun of me, but sensed that explanation was the only way to conclude this inquisition and escape to the vacant desk. “We live in caravan parks all the time,” he said flatly, looking at the floor. “We move around all the time depending on where my parents get work.”
The teacher looked back at the class then and said stiffly, “Thank you, Trevor, you can go and sit down now. Up the back, next to Martin. Good morning, everybody.”
“Good morning, sir,” the class chorused back, more intent on Trevor’s progress to the vacant desk than on the teacher and the blackboard covered in chalked exercises behind him.
Trevor sat down awkwardly, glancing quickly at Martin Grace, who was still wrinkling his nose.
“Right,” Mr Fuller said, regaining the class’s attention once again, “if I could have everybody facing the front, we’ll revise the spelling list.”
Trevor gazed ahead blankly, swept into the confusion of people and work he didn’t know. The teacher and the class had a definite routine and they ploughed on relentlessly through spelling lists and exercises, through mathematics that threatened to take all morning to perform and complete. They gave answers in rehearsed unison, they responded briskly to Mr Fuller’s rapid-fire questioning and left Trevor to hastily scribble down guessed answers and half-hearted sentences.
“Brad Clark,” said the teacher, “how many tenths in two?”
“Twenty, sir.”
“Tracy Campbell, how many fifths in five?”
“Um, twenty-five, sir.”
“Michael O’Leary, how many eighths in three?”
“Um …”
“Come on,” Mr Fuller shouted, “you learned this back in fourth class!”
For a while at least, Trevor found himself excluded from the teacher’s attention, and he almost ceased concentrating as the repetitive chanting of mathematical tables filled his ears. His vision was numbed by the dullness of the classroom, at the sight of a few token maps on the bare grey walls, at the boredom of desks in rows. Everything was neat down to a detail, cupboards and shelves were labelled and not a thing seemed out of place. He had been in schools not unlike this before, but somehow this all seemed worse than anything he’d previously experienced.
Beside him, Martin Grace had eased himself as far away from Trevor as was possible, and occasionally muttered audibly, “You’re a sissy, mate.” Away from the teacher’s sight, the other boys in the class stole looks at Trevor, copying Martin’s nose-wrinkled expressions.
Every so often Trevor glanced sideways at Martin, and Martin always managed a subtle look of disgust as a reply. He was much bigger than Trevor, an arrogant sort of kid with a trail of freckles across his face and close-cropped blond hair. He was obviously not pleased at having a newcomer sitting next to him.
The teacher was beside him. “You’re here to work, Trevor Huon, not to dream. Where are all these maths exercises you’re supposed to be doing?”
“Here.” Trevor pointed.
“Here, sir!”
“Here, sir.”
“Is this the only book you’ve got?” the teacher asked with some distaste, flicking through the grubby exercise book Trevor had brought along.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll give you a new one. Your writing’s awful.”
“My mum says it’s good for a left-hander.”
“I want it to improve. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir!”
Trevor sighed. “Yes, sir.”
Mercifully, the morning reached an end. Somewhere outside a bell rang and Mr Fuller systematically allowed the kids out, girls first, row by row, and then the boys, led by a kid bouncing a football.
“I’ll confiscate that next time, David Briggs.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hesitantly, Trevor scooped up his soccer ball from the floor under the desk and followed the class outside into the playground. The boys had gone over to a far corner of the playground, to an open gravelled space between the school buildings where they stood in a broad circle, passing the football around. Clutching the soccer ball in one hand, Trevor walked over to where they stood. Usually, bringing the soccer ball to school worked. But not this time.
One of the kids caught sig
ht of him. “Hey, this guy plays soccer.”
“Check him out! What a nerd …”
“What’re you, mate? Only wogs play soccer!”
“Isn’t that what he is?”
“Hey, Grace! Your boyfriend here plays soccer.”
“Rack off, Evans! He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Well, he sits next to you …”
“D’you play league, Trevor whoever you are – Huon?”
“Does he even know how to play?”
Trevor shrugged. “Not–”
“Aaaah, he doesn’t know. Soccer freak.”
“The new kid’s a soccer freak.”
“C’mon, let’s go.” And they ran off to their game of league.
Trevor watched them go, embarrassed and defeated. Some other kids, mostly the girls from his class, had been watching it all happen and were now giggling and talking between themselves. Trevor swore in anger.
Eventually he went and sat down. The sun was shining warmly on to him, and in bemused silence he hugged the useless soccer ball between his feet.
The playground was filled with children, active with their games and their talk. I hate this place, he thought. From the seats at the asphalt’s edge he watched the boys from his class as they shouted friendly abuse between themselves, kicking their football around and making mad dashes towards imaginary goalposts.
“Don’t worry about them,” said a voice beside him. He looked up and saw a group of girls – Tracy Campbell, plus a few other faces he had heard Mr Fuller put names to that morning. He almost started feeling like an animal in a zoo then, but they started talking to him, conveying towards him a rough, self-conscious sort of sympathy.
“Don’t take any notice of them, Trevor.”
“They’re always like that. Think they’re smart …”
“Where d’you come from, Trevor?”
“How many schools have you been to this year?”
“This is the third one,” he managed to answer, with little enthusiasm.
“Jeez, but it’s only July!”
“I like your shirt.” Laughter. “What’s it made from? You can see right through it!”
“My mum made it,” he answered.
“Boy, she’s clever.”
“Do you like Mr Fuller?”
“Neither do we, don’t worry.”
“Your hair’s long …”
“Mr Fuller likes the boys better, anyway.”
Trevor looked up. “Why?”
“Because they’re all in his football team.”
“He’ll probably ask you to join too, Trevor.”
“Fat chance,” Trevor said, looking up at them again. “He doesn’t like me much.”
“That’s just Mr Fuller.”
“He’s like that.”
“Just don’t take any notice.”
He looked down again then, and said nothing. The girls watched him for a moment more, at a loss as to what more to say, and then walked off together, talking between themselves.
He did a lot of thinking that night.
“So how was school?” Kath asked him when he got home.
“All right,” he managed to answer.
“Just all right?”
“Yeah, just all right.”
He escaped to the caravan park’s amenities block later, and for ages stood under one of the showers. Barbs of hot water rained on his head and back until the cubicle was filled with thick, warm mist.
School puzzled and dismayed him. So the teacher had knocked him about living in the caravan park. That wasn’t so bad, because he was fairly used to that. But in the other schools he’d been to, in the orchard and crop towns, there hadn’t been just him, but a whole group of pickers’ kids. Every year they arrived at the same schools at more or less the same time. The teachers usually considered them nuisances and dunces and sat them in a group, separate from the rest of the class. For all it was annoying to be branded as just another fruit picker’s dumb kid, Trevor decided that it wasn’t all that bad, really. At least in those other schools there had been other kids to mix and identify with, to remain fairly anonymous with.
But here, in this town and this school, he was alone and he was different.
Afterwards, he looked critically at himself in the mirror, at the face that seemed too young for eleven years old and the eyes that weren’t aggressive enough. His hair was all wrong too, tawny and dangling in wisps on to his shoulders. But that was an individuality he clung to, because he’d worn it that long ever since he could remember.
“And I’m short for my age, too,” he said aloud to the mirror.
Buckley had come home that afternoon with his boots covered in dirt and concrete dust, his face grimy with perspiration, smelling of bricks. He filled the caravan with the mood of a day’s work, helping Kath cook dinner as he usually did. They worked as a hectic team, chopping up vegetables and manoeuvring saucepans and frypans around on the caravan’s inadequate bench space. Evenings in the caravan were like this, a well-timed confusion. Kath and Buckley dodged around each other, laughing and joking.
And there would inevitably be music playing on the little sound system, either loudly or softly depending on everybody’s mood. Trevor often found that he knew almost every tune, melody and instrumental solo, because his parents’ music was more or less the soundtrack to Trevor’s entire life. He also remembered lots of song lyrics, but usually left the singing along to his parents.
Sometimes the TV would be on, too, with the news or re-runs of American shows interspersed with rural commercials for sheep drench and cattle sales.
“So how was school?” Buckley asked, as the three of them sat around the table eating dinner and half watching the TV. And Trevor offered the same answer he’d given Kath.
He didn’t feel like talking much, and afterwards retreated to the privacy of the kombivan. Once there, he sat on the bunk and gazed in hurt confusion at his makeshift bedroom.
School. Day one finished.
He could hear tentative musical sounds as Kath and Buckley started to play their guitars, and as the darkness of night cloaked the caravan, familiar songs reached Trevor’s ears. Briefly reassured, he started to hum along, but there were other things crowding his mind.
Tomorrow would be different. After today, he thought grimly, it would have to be.
FOUR
He didn’t take the soccer ball to school again. He threw it back into the cupboard under his bunk and there it stayed, along with all the other toys he rarely played with.
“I like your bag, mate. It’s really pretty.”
They confronted him in the playground the next day, before school started. He glanced at them long enough to see most of the boys from his class, plus a few extras who were younger. This cohesive, mocking group followed him most of the way to the classroom, delivering various insults as they went. At one point someone made a grab for the patchwork shoulder bag, but Trevor snatched it back and kept walking.
“Hey, he fights back. The new kid’s not docile.”
“Where’s your soccer ball, Shorty?”
“Yeah, where’s your soccer ball?”
“How come your mother isn’t here today?”
“My dad reckons only fairies have long hair and play soccer.”
Finally they left him alone, and somehow he made it through the rest of the day. Mr Fuller gave Trevor a set of new, unused exercise books, confiscating the grubby, much-used one brought to school the day before. Dutifully, Trevor wrote down maths exercises and comprehension lessons with the rest of the children in the dim starkness of the classroom. Mutely he sat through the teacher’s questioning sessions and afterwards ate alone in the welcome escape of the playground.
The girls came up and talked to him again, offering the same helpful advice.
“Don’t take any notice of the boys …”
“They just think they’re smart.”
“Fuller’s a creep, isn’t he?”
The advice was inter
rupted with giggles.
“Hey, Trevor. Angela Simmons loves you.”
“Aw, shut up, I do not!”
“You do so–”
“I don’t–”
And they walked off in a giggling embarrassed huddle.
In class, he mulled over what to do. For a few minutes at least he cut himself off from the teacher’s deadpan social studies lesson and decided that his initial dislike of Mr Fuller was well founded. Then he cast a furtive eye over the rest of the class, mainly the boys, not fully understanding the reason for his alienation. In some ways it was obvious; he was the newcomer and they were a staunch group of kids who had probably grown up together, bonded by years of common friendship and united against outsiders. But even understanding this Trevor still hotly resented the situation and the treatment he’d received.
It isn’t fair, he thought again and again. It was only the second day at this school, yet a lifetime seemed to have dragged by.
He looked sideways at Martin Grace, expecting to see the usual expression of contempt, but for once Martin merely stared back, his freckled face mimicking Trevor’s own nonchalant expression.
So far, Martin had saved his talking for the times when he sided with the other kids against Trevor. But now he opened his mouth to speak, only to be silenced as Mr Fuller issued loud instructions from the front of the classroom.
“… using your atlas, fill out the work sheet I gave you all yesterday …”
As the class sank into a hum of activity, Martin took the opportunity to speak, or rather, whisper, loudly: “What’re you staring at, Huon?”
Trevor hesitated, and then whispered back irrelevantly, “How come you sit by yourself?”
“I don’t.”
“You did before I arrived.”
“Well, I felt like it, didn’t I! You girl.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“How come you wear funny clothes then?”
“I don’t.”
“You do. Weird shirts and things. And that lady’s bag you carry around …”
“It’s a shoulder bag. Lots of people have them.”
“Lots of people where? Queer people like you, maybe. My dad says you must be …”
“Who must be?” Trevor interrupted.