by John Clanchy
This is totally weird because it’s actually my school uniform, even though it’s a bit old and faded – but what’s the use, Mum said, of getting a new one in Year 12? – and it’s too small for me now and the skirt’s about as short as Toni’s and the top’s too tight in the bust, but maybe that’s the point.
‘Quite,’ says Mr Jackson. ‘Now, Miss Vassilopoulos, you know Mr Kovacs, obviously, but this other gentleman who’s been kind enough to give up his time to be with us today –’
Kind enough to give up his time. I bet nobody went round to his house or wherever he works and put a megaphone up against his ear and yelled at him to come up to the Front Office immediately while everyone else in the firm went Ooo-ah and sucked up all the paper-clips on their desk.
‘His name,’ Mr Jackson says, ‘is Mr Mumble-Mumble.’
Or that’s what it sounds like to me.
‘Mr Mumble-Mumble,’ he says, ‘is from the Department of Education and he’s here to observe and to make sure we follow the right procedures.’
‘That’s right. I’m just here to make sure that whatever we decide is fair to everyone. Fair to Mr Prescott, who’s got a lot at stake in this matter, fair to the School, and fair – above all – to the student concerned.’
Which, I work out, must be Toni.
‘This is not a formal inquiry, Miss Vassilopoulos,’ Mr Jackson says. ‘We’re merely trying to find out whether there’s a need for an inquiry. Do you understand?’
I nod. With a bit of luck, Mr Jackson is saying, there won’t be a need for any formal inquiry. So for once Mr Jackson and I are on the same side.
‘Now,’ he says, ‘perhaps we can let Miss Vassilopoulos get on with her story?’
Which is weird, because I haven’t said a single word yet, not even Thank you when Mr Jackson asked me to come in and sit down, because why would you when you never asked to be here in the first place.
‘You must have guessed,’ he says, ‘what this is about.’
I look at him.
‘Various statements have been made to me alleging misconduct between a teacher and a student on the school trip to Alice Springs. You must have heard such rumours.’
‘Some,’ I admit. ‘But that doesn’t mean –’
‘Of course it doesn’t. That’s what we’re here to try to establish. Now you’re Miss Darling’s closest friend, you were sharing a tent with her throughout the trip. If anyone knows of any possible misconduct involving Miss Darling, then it would be you. Am I right?’
‘I suppose so, Mr Jackson,’ I say. Because he is right. And suddenly all the neat plans I’d run through in my head to prepare for this seem silly and irrelevant, and I realize all I’ve been thinking about is saving Toni from getting into trouble and there’s a lot more than that involved. I almost wish now I had asked Mum to come with me. But I still won’t do anything that hurts Toni.
‘So,’ Mr Jackson says, ‘just take your time and tell us – in your own words – what happened.’
And I’m so worried and panicky by this stage, I just stall for time.
‘Well, we got to Alice Springs and that –’
‘And what, Miss Vassilopoulos? Please try to be more explicit.’ Which is the one thing I’m trying not to be. Though I can, if I want to be. In debating, where I’m the school captain, I can talk for ten minutes and never say a single um or and that because you lose points every time you do. So when Mr Jackson starts raving about relevance and being explicit and not saying and that and that, and says:
‘Take us back to the beginning and tell us what happened from the time the bus left the School to the time you got back.’
I say: ‘Do you mean what happened, Mr Jackson – because that’d be everything – or what happened that was of relevance to the issue under discussion?’
And I can see Mr Jackson’s getting distracted and angry and forgetting the point of the whole meeting, and Mr Mumble-Mumble is smiling but pretending not to.
‘You can safely leave it to us to decide what’s relevant and what’s not, Miss Vassilopoulos,’ Mr Jackson says. ‘All you need to do is present an account of what took place on the bus trip. Not every single event, of course, but the major events.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘the first place we stopped was Cowra, and they have this huge Japanese garden that used to be a prisoner of war and internment camp for Japanese during the Second World War. And it’s not just gardens and bamboo and tea houses and water features, they have this museum as well with Japanese dolls and pottery and costumes and calligraphy …’
Mr Jackson had his own pen up ready to write when I started speaking, but now he’s put it down on the desk again and is turning it round and round under his white fingers. And somehow you get the feeling that what he’d really like to do is throw it.
But he doesn’t because just then Mr Mumble-Mumble says very quietly:
‘Laura, I wonder if you realize how serious this is?’
And I look at him properly for the first time and even though he’s old and bald and a bit fat and has glasses and looks like everyone’s Dad on our street, I realize that behind all that he’s actually a person. And could even be nice.
‘This thing’s gone too far to make a game of it.’
‘It might even,’ Mr Jackson butts in, ‘become a police matter.’
‘Police?’ I say. ‘But what’s it got to do with the police, Mr Jackson? No one was really hurt.’
‘We don’t know that, Laura,’ Mr Mumble-Mumble says. ‘We don’t know, for example, whether any coercion was involved.’
‘But it’s all stupid,’ I say. ‘And I’m not even sure anything happened at all.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Mr Mumble-Mumble says, ‘you’re going to have to leave us to decide that.’
‘But I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ I hear the whine in my voice and despise myself for wanting to crawl out of things like this. And I think of how alone Toni is.
‘I know you didn’t have anything to do with it,’ he says. ‘Or I believe you didn’t. But you do know a great deal.’
‘Not a great deal.’ And I feel much calmer saying this because I’m speaking directly to him now and not just to a table with three heads.
‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘But still a lot more than any of us, don’t you think?’
And what I do start to think is that he’s not so bad, after all, and he’s trying to do the right thing and be fair to everyone, and actually he’s got very kind blue-grey eyes in a smiley face, and might even have been handsome once. It’s funny how that can happen, how you can turn someone from a faceless bureaucrat which everyone on the radio’s always saying public servants are, into real people just by looking at them in a different way. And it can be something quite small, like a calm voice when everyone else is squawking and tense, that does it.
‘I suppose so,’ I say. And then I see his name on a box file on the desk near his elbow, and it’s Murchison, and not even Mr, but Greg – Greg Murchison and not Mr Mumble-Mumble at all.
‘I suppose so, Mr Murchison,’ I say again, because he’s the only one being friendly and I want him to like me and think I’m mature and can remember people’s names even when they’re introduced by someone as hopeless as Mr Jackson.
‘Well, the point is, Laura,’ he says, ‘we now have to get to the bottom of this, for Mr Prescott’s sake, and for Toni’s.’
And I like him even more, then, for using Toni’s real name, instead of just going Miss Darling or Miss Vassilopoulos and police matter and alleged misconduct and all that jargon like Mr Jackson. But he frightens me a bit as well when he looks at me and says in a very quiet voice:
‘And be sure about this, Laura. One way or the other, we will get at the truth.’
And I wonder how he can be so sure about that. Even I’m not sure, and I was the one who was there after all.
3
The first shock of the trip comes even before we leave the school yard. It h
appens so quickly I almost miss it, and a moment later – when everything’s normal again – I begin to wonder whether it happened at all. But I know it did, and it changes everything that happens later on.
Three buses have been organized for the trip, three huge Greyhound coaches with deep recliner seats – so deep that some of the tiny Year 7 girls already look lost in them – plus toilets and air-conditioning and overhead monitors for films. ‘Better than home,’ Toni says.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but what if we get Forrest Gump or Little House on the Prairie all the way there and back?’
‘God yes,’ she says. ‘Who did you get on your bus?’
‘Miss Temple. And Mr Jasmyne.’
‘Sucks you.’
‘I don’t mind them,’ I tell her. ‘You’re with Dreamboat, I suppose?’
‘Ye-es,’ she says, and rolls her eyes and drapes herself over the back of one of the seats to stop from swooning in the aisle. Dreamboat lover / Wont you be mi-ine…' she sings. The children in the seats around her look on bug-eyed, then start to clap along with her. They love Toni.
‘Who else?’ I say.
‘Guess.’
‘Miss Plummer.’
‘No! Guess!’
‘Well, the only one left is Mrs Harvey.’
‘Horrible Harvey, can you believe it?’
The children around her can. They mimic Toni, holding their noses between their thumbs and forefingers. ‘Mrs Har-vey!’ they chorus after her. ‘Oh, no.’
‘And you’ll never guess what her real name is,’ she whispers to me. ‘Florence! Florence Harvey. Whoever heard of anyone called Florence?’
‘You’d better go back to your own bus,’ I say. ‘You’re supposed to be helping get your kids settled.’
The motors of the buses have been running for twenty minutes now while the kids have been counted on and off a dozen times, but with all the excitement and swapping about and the boys wrestling and pushing and pulling and leaping to the windows to shout at their friends in the other buses, we’ve never reached the same total twice. Lots of parents – mostly mothers – are still here, waiting to wave the buses off. They’re standing around in small knots and circles, talking sideways out of the corners of their mouths but still keeping their eyes on the buses and the kids getting off and running back to them for things they’ve forgotten or a final hug and the mothers are saying, ‘Don’t worry about that now, for goodness sake, just get on the bus, they’ll leave you behind,’ and you wonder whether they’re saying it because they’re embarrassed their kid’s such a sook or whether they’re worried the kid will be left behind after all the money they’ve just paid out to get rid of them for nine days and get a bit of peace for the first time in their lives.
I’m on the third bus and I’m by myself because they could only get five senior students to put their names down in the end to go with the six teachers. And I’m glad I’m alone and that the two teachers on my bus are Mr Jasmyne and Miss Temple because I like them both, even though Miss Temple is so strict and demanding. ‘I’m simply trying to stretch you,’ she says if you ever complain about how hard she makes you work, and she forgets you’re just teenagers and not made of elastic or rubber or something and can bust if you’re stretched too hard.
The parents think Miss Temple’s good, though, because she never uses simple words like talk or speak like anyone normal but says states or utters or declares and on parent-teacher nights she’s always telling your parents how your marks are bad but it’s not really your fault but is a consequence of prevailing cultural formations, and some of the parents look at their kids then and wonder if it’s dangerous, but Miss Temple laughs and says, ‘No, no,’ that’s not what she meant and explains it again in words of one syllable like discourse and dialectics and social constructionism, and the parents sit there and go, ‘I see, I see,’ and don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. So they know she must be smart, especially when their own kids refuse to set the table at home for tea and when their mother says, ‘And why not, young Miss?’ they can say it’s because setting the table is only an empty formalism and a form of discourse they’re reluctant to engage in, and their mother can only say, ‘Oh’ back, and has to set the table herself. But she doesn’t mind too much because she realizes that if she can’t understand it, then employers won’t either and it’s sure to get her kids a good job because even if they’re only sales clerks or on the check-out, it’s better to have someone who can talk with the customers and explain how weather is a form of discourse, instead of just saying it’s raining or sunny or concentrating on getting things in the right bags and giving people the right change and that. Toni disagrees, of course, and says Miss Temple will never get herself a husband if she goes on like she does, because men won’t want to listen to discourse when they could be talking about sex or football instead.
And the other teacher on my bus who’s nice but a total nerd and a walking encyclopaedia is Mr Jasmyne, who’s about forty and teaches Physics and Computing but knows all about plants and animals and politics and everything and ought to be on a quiz show. He’d have to win it – the amount he knows – except he’d never get on it because they interview you beforehand to see if you pass certain standards, like do you have a personality and are you photogenic and that, so Mr Jasmyne wouldn’t stand a chance.
Mr Jasmyne’s one of those people who’s strange for being so smart because his head’s smaller than normal and it’s only a tiny bit bigger than his Adam’s apple, which is the thing that fascinates you when you talk to him. It travels up and down his throat while he talks, like a mouse trapped in a Christmas stocking. It’s actually useless asking him anything in class because as soon as he starts answering, you find you’re not listening – you can’t – cos you can’t drag your eyes off his throat. It gets so embarrassing all you can do is say, ‘Thank you, Mr Jasmyne’ and go back to your seat while he’s still talking and just getting to the vital bit of the answer.
On the other hand, all this does make you like him more, because he is so hopeless and shy and always tries to answer your questions before he starts stammering and going scarlet because he knows what you’re looking at instead of listening. And some kids do it deliberately, of course, just to see him change colour. Toni’s the worst. He can’t help it, I tell her sometimes, but she just pokes her tongue out and says, ‘Oh, so maturrrre.’ And Mum takes Toni’s side and says, ‘Of course he can help it. Why doesn’t he wear a skivvy or polo-necked jumper if he’s so sensitive?’ But Toni goes, ‘You mean camouflage and that? But the thing is, you’d still see it, it’s so huge, it’d be like a ferret in a wool overcoat,’ and Mum just laughs and tells her not to be so stupid.
We do get along all right, though, Mum and Toni and me, because we laugh so much together. Toni’s at our house more than her own these days and Mum understands her and bosses her and treats her like she does me, and sometimes I think Toni regards Mum as her real mother – but the weird thing is, Toni calls her Miriam instead of Mrs Trent-Harcourt, as if they were sisters. And I suppose I’ve got used to it, but it still shocks me sometimes to hear her saying it, and one time it must have really shown because later, after Toni has gone, Mum looks at me sideways and says:
‘Do you resent it?’
‘What?’ I say. Knowing what.
‘Toni calling me Miriam.’
‘No. Why should I?’
‘I just wondered.’
We don’t talk for a few minutes after that. She just keeps humming to herself and doing whatever she’s doing at the sink. I want to leave then, but I don’t.
‘Would you like to?’ she says.
And I think of saying, Would I like to – what? but I realize how fake that’d be, so instead I say, ‘Do you want me to?’
‘It doesn’t affect me one way or the other. Miriam or Mum, it’s what you prefer that matters.’
‘No, then,’ I say. ‘I don’t.’
‘Good. I’m glad.’
‘Besides, y
ou’re too old to change your name again.’
‘Thank you, darling.’
Mum’s Trent-Harcourt now. Her maiden name was Harcourt, the same as Grandma Vera’s, and she changed it back to that for a while when she left Dad and brought me home from Greece. But it’s Trent-Harcourt now because she married Philip, who’s Trent, and who’s mostly okay but can be a total fake as well. And that’s why Katie, my little sister, is Trent-Harcourt, and Thomas, my baby brother, as well, and why I’m the only one left who’s still Vassilopoulos. Apart from my Dad.
And blah.
Anyway I don’t much feel like talking to anyone – even Toni – at the moment, and when the kids are finally all on their right buses and we’re ready to get started, about seventeen hours late, I’m happy just to go down to the back to the last seat by myself and think about me and Philip – my Philip, I mean – and maunder. And that’s when the thing happens, and if I hadn’t just sat down that second, I would have fallen down with the shock.
The last kids are just climbing over one another to get into their seats and the driver’s slammed the baggage doors shut along the side of the bus, and one of the other buses is already rolling towards the school gate and the mothers are waving and clapping and looking delighted, and for one second I stop looking out at all this and reach over into the aisle to pull my bag up onto the empty seat beside me. As I do, I glance sideways down the aisle towards the front of the bus, and that’s when I see it. I see these two hands swing and brush past one another, and then – just for the briefest moment, so that if I’d blinked at that second I’d have missed it completely – the hands swing back, then lock and squeeze, one little finger on one hand caught in the index finger of the other, and then they part.
As if they’d snagged by accident.
And my breath stops, and I feel the blood in my head and wonder if I’ve just got dizzy with bending and I’m seeing things, but I know I’m not.
When I straighten, everything swings back into normal again. Miss Temple and Mr Jasmyne are the only ones still standing, and they’re smiling and nodding, and everyone on the bus can see they’re both so relieved to have got everything sorted out at last and are just happy to be going on a holiday and hoping everyone will have a good time. Except me, that is. Because now I understand their smiles aren’t for us at all but for each other, and they’re in love, and they’re lovers. And that’s what’s making them happy – that, and the fact that no one else in the world knows. And, looking at them, I find I have this awful pain in my chest – a real pain – and I want to burst into tears because I’m happy for them and that and I’d never tell anyone, but I hate them as well. They look so smug and ugly with happiness and think they have the whole world to themselves and share this amazing secret, when all the time they’re only Miss Temple and Mr Jasmyne, and hardly the World’s Greatest Lovers, after all. And Miss Temple in particular looks so happy and sure of herself, it’s lucky I’m at the back because if I was nearer I’d want to slap her in the face.