Cannily, Cannily

by Simon French

  From their rows of desks, the class paused to regard his presence. And from his usual position beside the blackboard, Mr Fuller looked at Trevor coldly before ordering the class back to their maths work.

  “Come in!” he commanded, in a half-shout.

  Trevor quietly walked in, struggling to control his nervousness.

  “Have you,” the teacher demanded aggressively, “any sort of civilised excuse for this lateness?”

  Trevor nodded, rummaged around in the shoulder bag and pulled out Kath’s handwritten note. Mr Fuller took the note and impatiently waved Trevor to his seat. Once at his desk, Trevor got out his maths book and wrote a few intent lines of sums, aware of the furtive glances being directed at him from the occupants of the surrounding desks. He and Martin exchanged rudimentary good morning expressions, and Martin surreptitiously pushed a piece of paper across the desk for Trevor’s inspection. On it was a blue biro drawing of a skull and crossbones, plus a helpful scrawled comment that read, “You’re in the pooh today, mate.”

  Mr Fuller, meanwhile, was embarking on another exercise in classroom embarrassment. For the benefit of the class, he held up Trevor’s excuse note and read aloud what Kath had written.

  Dear Mr Fuller,

  Please excuse Trevor’s slight lateness this morning, as he slept in some forty-five minutes. This was probably due to the exhilarating game of football played yesterday afternoon, a physically and intellectually taxing affair at the best of times. As a coach and teacher, I’m sure you’re well aware of such things.

  Yours faithfully,

  Katherine Huon.

  Trevor kept his head lowered, trying to concentrate on the maths. For a moment, he felt nothing but mild hostility as the other kids giggled appreciatively. But his mother’s offbeat sense of humour suddenly dawned on him, and he grinned.

  Mr Fuller caught his smirk. “I’m not amused,” the teacher retorted angrily, screwing the note up. “And you, Huon, are one of several people I intend talking to at tomorrow afternoon’s training. Until then, I have no desire to talk about football, or the weekend’s game. Consider yourself in trouble, son. You and fifteen other members of this class.”

  An orderly hush once more filled the room, as everyone huddled dutifully over exercise books. Trevor and Martin exchanged glances again, Martin as much as to say, “I told you so.”

  Trevor sighed inaudibly, hoping that the worst had passed. He was wrong.

  Not five minutes later, Mr Fuller’s voice boomed out.

  “Your written expression book. Huon!”

  Trevor looked up.

  “Your written expression book,” the teacher repeated.

  “You’ve got it with you, of course?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sir!”

  “Yes, sir,” Trevor replied, pulling the book from shoulder bag and holding it up.

  “I’m not your servant, son. Bring it here!”

  Face set, Trevor walked rigidly to the teacher’s desk and handed the book over.

  “You’ve finished your new story?” Mr Fuller flicked through the book, ignoring Trevor’s anxious nod. “How long is your story, Huon?”

  “Twelve pages. Sir.”

  “Then perhaps,” Mr Fuller said slowly, “you’d like to read it to us.”

  Trevor looked back, expressionless, until the request registered. He shook his head.

  The teacher’s attention was elsewhere. “Pens down, everybody,” he said to the class. “We are about to hear Trevor Huon’s story.” There was an obedient clatter of biros being placed on desks as the class turned its collective but bewildered attention to Trevor, who was still shaking his head.

  “What’s the matter?” the teacher asked with mock concern.

  “I don’t want to read it. Sir.”

  “You’ll do as you’re told! Now read us your story. We’re all waiting.” Ready to enjoy the whole procedure, the teacher sat back in his chair, arms folded.

  The class watched with a mixture of anticipation and controlled pity, because most of them knew what it was Trevor had written in the book he now unwillingly held.

  Slowly he opened the book at the first page, stared blankly at his words and sentences.

  “We’re waiting, Huon,” said Mr Fuller evenly.

  Trevor felt giddy, sick, angry.

  “Once …” he started with an effort.

  “Louder!”

  He stood on the vacant stretch of floorboards between the blackboard and the rows of desks, the deathly silence all around him. His mind wrestled with a dozen different urges and feelings for a moment more, and then dully, he began to read.

  “Once, there was a beach. That’s the place I remember best, and I often seem to dream about it when I’m asleep in the kombi, and we’re moving …”

  He read the first few sentences nervously. When he looked up at the other kids, he saw with surprise that their faces were neither judging nor critical. With mute intensity they waited for him to continue, and resisting the urge to check Mr Fuller’s expression, Trevor went on.

  “The house we lived in was old and rambling …”

  He read about himself, a little child of three or four – skin tanned, hair as white as the sand where he stood. Waves lapped lazily at his feet and he could feel the heat of the sun on his back. The beach – it stretched as far as he could see. And home was a maze of dim, cool rooms, a clutter of wooden furniture and a jungle of pot plants.

  “And one day, this all changed. We bought the caravan, and left the house behind. Suddenly, there was the moving from town to town, the living in caravan parks and beside orchards …” He read about the inconvenience and the travel, the journeying across far-flung countryside. He read about the pear picking at Tatura, the orange orchards at Boundary Bend, places called Bathurst, Griffith and Young.

  “… because sometimes, it’s not an easy life. It’s hard to make friends or stay friends with someone for long, because you go to maybe six different schools a year. Sometimes, people look down on us, call us gypsies and no-hopers, which is knocking what they don’t understand. Teachers often think the children of fruit pickers are all stupid, and treat us that way. For some kids that’s true, because it’s often hard to learn much, but it can also be unfair …”

  The words were getting hard to read again. In his own terms, they were about being the outsider and being alone. They were about the present time, but also about the past and all the friendships that had lasted for six or eight weeks of a year, but no longer. They were about the notion of wanting to belong somewhere. But permeating his carefully written sentences was hope too, the optimism he’d inherited from Kath and Buckley.

  With relief, he came to the last page.

  “… all the time spent moving has had its bad points, but there are good things too. I have met lots of people, young and old, and have probably learned a lot from them. I have seen more of Australia than most kids my age – the cities and the country towns, the arid plains of the outback, the green hills of the coast, and the thousands of miles of roads and highways that have taken me to these places.”

  He paused.

  “But sometimes, I still think about the beach and the old house I was born in. That’s my real home. Someday I’ll go back there.”

  Slowly he closed the book.

  “That’s the end,” he said softly, looking down.

  At first, no one said anything. The other kids returned his expressionless gaze, as if they expected more of the story to follow. Mr Fuller maintained the uncharacteristic silence that had left the story oddly uninterrupted. Tentatively, Trevor held the exercise book out for him to take.

  “I don’t want it,” the teacher said suddenly. “Sit down where you belong, and take your book with you.”

  Trevor walked back to his seat, placed the exercise book carefully back in the shoulder bag, and sat down. As he did so, he distantly heard Mr Fuller’s voice. “Right. Who has not yet finished the maths work on the blackboard?”

>   The football match post-mortem came later.

  Midmorning break had the kids grouped in the playground, voices raised in debate and disagreement.

  “It was your fault, O’Leary. Kept hogging the ball.”

  “Yeah. If you’d passed it out instead of–”

  “Aw come on! There I was up near the tryline with a bunch of the opposition coming towards me. Where were you lot – halfway up the other bloody end!”

  “Were not!”

  “Were so.”

  “Every time we had the ball we lost it because no one was up there with it.”

  “How about the opposition, but? Twice the size of us, prob’ly twice the weight.”

  “Twice as fast, too.”

  “And you and your stupid ideas, Grace,” Brad Clark said to Martin with contempt. “Getting half the team off the field just so bloody Huon could get on.”

  “Shut up, or Fuller’ll find out.”

  “He’ll find out, anyway. We’ll all get into trouble, then. Huon was no good, like I said.”

  “Rack off, Brad. He was okay. Weren’t you, Trev?”

  Trevor shrugged.

  “He was okay for a beginner.”

  “Okay for a little guy,” added Scott McKay generously.

  “Fat lot of good it did, anyway,” Bradley continued mockingly. “He got the ball twice, which proves he can’t play, and never could. Bull artist, Huon. Now we get into trouble off Fuller.”

  “First game we lost in two seasons.”

  “You’ll never get to play again, Huon,” Bradley added.

  “Give up now, while you can.”

  “Fuller won’t do anything,” Martin said.

  “Why not?”

  “What about this morning? He told Trev last week to write a different story or else, and what happens? Fuller doesn’t do anything. And he won’t.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “Trev’s got it all over Fuller.”

  “Only because he’s weak–”

  “Rack off, Brad. Never seen you stand up to Fuller.”

  “Aw crap …” Bradley responded, but for the time being said no more.

  “How come he didn’t do anything, Trevor?”

  “Don’t know,” Trevor said, puzzled. “I really thought he would.”

  “He didn’t even say anything.”

  “Prob’ly thinking up a punishment for you.”

  “One million lines: I must do as I’m told.”

  “Two months picking up papers in the playground.”

  “Letter home to your parents.”

  “Yeah, you know – get your mum and dad up to school for an interview.”

  “They’d stick up for me, anyway,” Trevor said.

  “Your story was good.”

  “Yeah, better than mine.”

  “Was most of it true?”

  “All of it was,” Trevor replied, not really wanting to talk about it.

  “That’s what it’s really like in a caravan?”

  “Did you really write it?”

  “Course I did.”

  “Huh! Your parents probably helped you.”

  “I did it by myself.”

  “Bull. Bet your parents helped you write it.”

  “I did it by myself,” Trevor repeated.

  “It was pretty good, anyway.”

  “You’re better at writing than you are at footy.”

  “Bet you’re the one Fuller’s gonna blow up at training tomorrow, Trevor.”

  “I reckon. He’ll probably tell you to leave the team.”

  “Worse than that. You haven’t seen him really mad, yet.”

  “He goes off his brain!”

  “You coming to training tomorrow?”

  Trevor shook his head.

  “Yeah,” Bradley said mockingly, “you’re just a chicken, Huon.”

  “How come you’re not coming to training?”

  Trevor looked distantly at the assembled group, feeling almost as though he had already left.

  “Because,” he answered, “I’m leaving on Thursday.”

  FOURTEEN

  The very last morning, he felt a strange sort of immunity.

  Eyes closed and half-dreaming, he marvelled at the strength, of sorts, that he’d found in himself. All of a sudden this had happened, in a few weeks, in the time it had taken to live in this town. Over and over again, he pictured himself standing in the classroom, reading his story – left-handed scribble in an exercise book. The words and phrases came back to him now, mingled with all the other thoughts, memories and descriptions he hadn’t had the time or patience to write.

  And Fuller didn’t like it, he marvelled. The best thing that I’ve ever done. But he listened all the same. Here Trevor paused, because the teacher’s attitude was still beyond understanding.

  Why did he listen?

  When Trevor eventually opened his eyes, it was to squint grumpily around the familiar interior of the kombivan. Grumpily, because he hadn’t had enough sleep. Squinting, because the sunlight seemed to have found his tired face through the window. The blankets barely covered him now and lay in heaped disarray at the bottom of the bunk. That left only the sleeping-bag between him and the chilly early morning. As usual, it was hopelessly twisted around so that the zipper was somewhere underneath him instead of being on top and down the front where he could reach it.

  Anyway, it was a good excuse to remain horizontal and so for another half hour or so, he did, until Kath’s voice called him from the caravan.

  “You’ll be late for school, Trevor.”

  Today is Wednesday.

  Things were coming to an end. Buckley dressed in his bricklaying clothes and left early for his last day at the club. The caravan that morning rang with the sound of his enthusiastic voice, his obvious happiness at the approaching change of scenery.

  “You haven’t changed your mind?” he asked Trevor yet again.

  “No,” Trevor answered with resolve, “I haven’t changed my mind.” His mind in fact was already working overtime, trying to unravel the mystery of where they might be going to next. Several times he had asked Kath and Buckley, but the answer remained the same.

  “We still haven’t decided.”

  By the afternoon, Kath would have the tent annexe dismantled and stored away. Everything would be packed once more, the caravan would be hitched to the kombi, and tomorrow at dawn they would set off.

  Kath was writing another note to Mr Fuller.

  “Writing anything funny, Mum?”

  “No, not this time. Just telling him you’re leaving.”

  He stepped outside into the reluctant August sunshine, hitched the patchwork shoulder bag over one arm, and set off. A short distance from the kombi and caravan, however, he stopped, turned and headed back. Inside the kombi, he rummaged through the cupboards under his bunk.

  “Forget something?” Kath called from the caravan. He stepped out of the kombi. “Yeah. This,” he replied, and held up the soccer ball.

  The town’s morning stillness gradually diminished as the sunlight took its hold. Sporadic traffic littered the orderly streets, the last of the dawn’s patchy mists cleared from the treetops, and as a familiar background noise came the hum and clatter of the timber mill at work.

  Trevor walked the length of the sprawling main street, taking in for the last time the faded rural shopfronts, his own shuffling reflection in the plate glass, the cold stateliness of the war memorial. He kicked over the debris from the towering Norfolk pines, leaving his footprints as dust-bare patches in the carpet of fallen brown needles. And as he came closer and closer to the school, the ambling procession of children increased around him, a noisy, energetic array of grey school uniforms.

  “Look, you guys!”

  “Hey, check Huon out!”

  “He’s brought his soccer ball.”

  “Taking up your wog’s game again, huh?”

  He passed the kids in the playground, walked on to the classroom and entered
, putting Kath’s note in a prominent position on Mr Fuller’s desk. He left the soccer ball in relative safety on the floor beside his own desk.

  Outside in the playground once more, he strolled over to the fringes of the group of boys, who by now had found something else to talk and argue about.

  Martin Grace gave Trevor a quick nudge.

  “How come you brought your soccer ball?”

  Trevor made a face. “I don’t know,” he said, still mildly wondering about it himself. “I just did.”

  Martin shook his head in disbelief. “Jeez you’re mad. You really are.”

  “I know,” Trev replied with a half grin.

  “What’re you going to do with it, then?” Martin demanded critically. “Play soccer by yourself all day?”

  “Might as well,” Trevor said.

  “Nut case, Huon,” Martin said, rolling his eyes. “Nut case.”

  “What happened at training?”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh. Heaps.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Like …” Martin paused for a comparison, “like the time Fuller sprung you. First, he ran us into the ground and then he told us off. You know, two hundred laps of the oval, one thousand push-ups and touch-toes, jogging on the spot till our legs dropped off–”

  “Aw, come on. What happened then?”

  “Then he threw his usual mental, telling us what pansies we were, and all that. Just for losing a game. Reckons the premiership’s as good as lost, now. He just doesn’t want to admit the other team were better than us.”

  “Did he say anything about me?”

  Martin laughed. “Did he what! As much as blamed you for everything, and doesn’t want you on the team any more. Does he know you’re leaving?”

  “Left a note from my mum on his desk, so he’ll know soon.”

  “You should join a footy team where you’re going next. If you practised, you’d be an all right player.”