by Joy Dettman
For Arthur, bed had long been an abomination. As a bloated seven year old, he’d first crept with his blankets to the lounge room. The television volume turned low, he’d watched midnight movies while his parents snored. As the years passed, Arthur sat longer before the silent television, watching the late show, then the late, late show, putting off the inevitable bed, eating supper and a late night supper until, exhausted by lip-reading third-rate movies, satiated by unrelenting mastication, he waddled down the passage and fell into his bed where he slept like one of the dead, until –
‘Arthur! Arthur!’
‘Yes, Mother. I’m awake.’ He loathed the mornings, loathed a new day of aimless existence.
‘You get out of that bed now, there’s washing to put on the line and those European wasps are out there again this morning, and me with my allergies, and if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times to find their nest and get rid of it . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with the younger generation, lying in bed all day, not caring if I’m stung to death or not. Don’t you go back to sleep now, Arthur. Get out of that bed.’
‘Coming, Mother.’
Each Saturday, while eating his giant bowl of cereal, Arthur studied the racing guide, making phantom bets at the TAB. His phantom bank account had now hit the forty thousand mark and he’d only opened it with twenty dollars. He studied the television guide while tucking into half a dozen slices of toast, then hung the washing, made his bed and turned on the television. He was on track to eating himself into a heart attack and the peace of an early grave.
Then, Mr Graham from number eighty died and his house, only a paling fence away from Arthur’s bedroom, was sold to an irate Social Services Department underling who, on one of his bad Mondays, keyed into the computer, A-r-t-h-u-r-b-l-o-o-d-y-f-a-t-T-h-o-m-s-o-n. The end result of his meddling was an official letter delivered to number eighty-two.
Mother opened it. It demanded that Arthur Brendan Frederick Thomson present himself at the above address for a medical.
This was bureaucratic intrusion at its worst. It took three days of nine to five phone calls before Mother conceded, though she accompanied her boy to the medical centre. Her presence could override most resistance, but the doctor, younger than Arthur, closed the door on her.
He prodded rolls of milk-white fat while prying into Arthur’s past. He measured his 184 centimetres and weighed his 198 kilograms, then said: ‘You’re fitter than you ought to be, Mr Thomson.’
‘Well, what did he say then, Arthur? What did he say?’ Mother asked when the blushing Arthur escaped back to the waiting room.
‘He said to get a job, Mother.’
‘I’ll give him “get a job” . . . and who does he think is going to give you a job? And didn’t you tell him about your excitable heart, and your glandular trouble? I’ll let him know soon enough what’s what.’
That was the day Arthur learned that Mother’s power was not absolute. In due course, the computer transferred A-r-t-h-u-r-b-l-o-o-d-y-f-a-t-T-h-o-m-s-o-n from the disability pension file to the Job Search file, where he came to the attention of a case manager who talked subsidy until he found an employer prepared to give Arthur a go, on the night-shift, at a biscuit factory.
Arthur’s hands trembled as he studied his bus timetable. The orange bus at the bottom of the hill would get him to the station. Then the blue bus –
‘No.’ He shook his close-cropped head. The green bus that stopped at the – ‘No.’ Then the blue bus that stopped at the top of the hill, which would connect with a green bus that would take him to the corner of – Up! He’d have to walk up! The only logical way was up.
On that first night of work, Arthur urged his bulk up while his lungs, wrapped in their cage of fat, worked overtime to feed him oxygen, but he caught the blue bus, transferred to the green and rode off into the unknown.
A cold night, a strange dark corner. As he walked those last three blocks, terror leached the marrow from his bones, sucked rationality from his mind. And there it was, hell in the shape of a biscuit factory. Big. Bright. Busy. He wandered in through the car park, cowering, his head low, and he had a near miss with a forklift.
‘Looking for something, mate?’
‘Job. In loading.’ The driver pointed a thumb to the underworld and Arthur entered into a nightmare of fear, noise, white light, people and boxes of Tim-Tams. Biscuits everywhere. They had to be lifted and he was supposed to lift them. Ten minutes into lifting and his muscles wanted to go home. Each time he stooped to take up a box, his tracksuit pants slid down and he hitched. He lifted and he hitched, he panted and lifted, he sweated and hitched. The nightmare ended at dawn.
Mother had told him to take a taxi home. She’d written the number on a piece of paper he’d placed in his wallet, but in his night of hitching and lifting, his wallet had disappeared. He stood before the phone, wanting mother, helpless without her. Teetering on the rim of blind panic, he was near to collapse when Martha, who looked twenty-five from a distance but forty-five up close, came close enough and placed a hand on his arm.
‘Having a bit of trouble are you, Artie love?’ she asked.
Artie? No one had ever called him Artie. ‘Lost my wallet,’ he panted. ‘Can’t get home.’
A red minibus had been the major part of Martha’s divorce settlement, that and two thousand dollars she’d spent on a commercial diet plan, determined to show her philandering ex what he’d tossed onto the scrap heap. Her figure was uplifted and streamlined now, but she recognised a shadow of her former self in Arthur. Compassion saw her offering to drop him off on Lower Road at the bottom of Hill Street; thus, as the early birds began to hunt the worms, and Mrs Wilson’s cat perched on a gatepost, licking feathers from a Cheshire grin, Arthur dragged his weary bulk up the hill and home, where he fell into bed just as his father stumbled from his, a wall away.
Arthur heard no more, until at ten am –
‘Arthur. Arthur.’ That voice entered into his dream of swimming through an ocean of Tim-Tams, a shark approaching, calling his name. He cowered in his blankets, his arms lifting boxes, or swimming.
At twelve, Mother’s voice haunted desolate dream-world streets. At one pm, she was still calling, but Arthur was down, down below dreaming, down for the count.
At ten past three, he caught the orange bus at the bottom of his hill, and barely had time to buy a ready made hamburger and chips before the green bus pulled in.
‘No-food’n’drinks-onna-bus,’ a strange driver snarled.
Arthur jammed the hamburger in his pocket, stuffed a fistful of chips into his mouth, tossed the rest into a bin and heaved his starving belly on board. No time to browse in the supermarket. He snatched a packet of Tim-Tams and had to run for the blue bus. When it dropped him off at the top of his hill and he removed the flattened hamburger from his pocket to take a belated bite, he made the mistake of looking at his watch.
‘Six ten,’ he wailed, throwing the hamburger at Murphy’s man-eating dog at number 164 then waddling fast down the hill and home to –
‘Arthur. Arthur. So you’ve finally decided to come home then, have you? And me thinking you were lying dead somewhere of a heart attack . . . get in here . . . ’
‘Sorry, Mother.’
‘ . . . and set the table, and don’t you go . . . ’
‘No time, Mother. Work.’
Work. A word alien to his tongue. A word belonging to other tongues. Work! A place to go. Escape from the nightly duet?
And so it began again. Up the hill to the blue bus, the green to the corner, on foot to the factory, where he hitched his pants and stacked boxes of biscuits until Martha dropped him off down the bottom of his hill. He was riding a roller coaster that slammed into the brick wall of Saturday, flinging him backwards into nights of the snoring duet, and days of the ongoing ‘Arthur? Arthur!’
Monday dawned like a small beacon of hope for Arthur BF Thomson.
During his second week on the night-shift, he gave up his a
fternoons of riding on the buses and gorging. Sleep, long, deep sleep, knitted unravelling muscles and mind. Halfway through the third week, Arthur gave up his daily shave to study the racing guide. No time for the television guide. By the end of the fourth week, he was eating his evening meal on the run and using two safety pins in the waistband of his tracksuit trousers. Six weeks of work saw him delving into the rear of his wardrobe, jammed full of tracksuits he’d outgrown but squirrelled away for one fine day. That day had arrived, and though he rarely got to see it, the sun was surely shining over his head.
Twelve weeks after commencing work, Arthur couldn’t look a Tim-Tam in the face. He’d shed thirty-six kilograms, according to the scales out front of the chemist’s shop, and he’d worked his way down to his hoarded 1987 oversized jeans.
Jeans? Work? Wonderful words, they rolled from his tongue now. ‘Mother, did you put my jeans through the wash? I need them for work.’ He loved those words, loved fitting them into sentences.
Then Martha added a new and much finer word to his collection. ‘Uniform.’ Three shirts, two pair of trousers and a sweater with the factory’s name on it were given into his possession. Arthur Thomson had at last become a part of the greater something. He stood taller in his navy uniform, he held his head higher, his shoulders straighter.
Sixteen weeks of walking uphill, in possession of a ginger beard, and corn silk hair in need of a trim, Arthur was beginning to draw the eyes of female workers, and also attract the interest of the males.
His memory for detail was superhuman. He could remember the name of every old movie ever made and the actors who starred in them. He could memorise every number of every biscuit variety in the storeroom. He could lip-read what the truck driver said to Martha at twenty paces, but it was his knowledge of racehorses that made his workmates sit up and beg. Not only did Arthur know when a horse last ran, and how many wins he’d had over a given period, he could pick to the day when that horse was due to win again.
Martha invited him to put fifty dollars into a bankrupt racing syndicate. Although Mother would not approve, on pay day Arthur handed over his fifty; he had not yet learned to say no to a woman. They tripled that fifty on the first Saturday, then placed their winnings on Arthur’s tips for the Caulfield Cup. They got the winner and third place getter. Syndicate of the mixed and matched, it had found its good luck charm in Artie. The group refused to make a move without him.
‘Pick you up at nine, Artie. We’re all going to the Cup.’
Not since primary school had someone come by his house to pick him up. Now a red minibus called for him, beeped its horn, seven voices urged him on board while his mother –
‘We’ll eat out, Mother.’
He was a bud, opening up to spring.
They backed four winners, and the last one came in at twenty-five to one with five hundred dollars on his nose. Happy is . . . happy is . . . happy is having to drive the red minibus home because everyone else is too drunk to drive it. Happy is being able to say: ‘I got my licence in Dad’s Kingswood on my eighteenth birthday. Happy is adding his own chortle to the raucous laughter when blotto Mick says, ‘Not the bloody Kingswood.’ Happy is a weekend of celebrating, it’s drinking that first stubby of beer, it’s walking into Jayson’s Menswear, buying a pair of stretch, stone-washed jeans and a suede jacket. Happy is . . . it’s just happy.
The factory closed down for Christmas, and the minibus headed off for a wild week in New South Wales. A minor hitch with motel bookings, made by Martha, found Arthur sharing a room with her. She was a woman. He couldn’t say no – didn’t want to say no, really, and she had enough experience for two.
He returned to number eighty-two slimmer, stronger, wearing a loud t-shirt proclaiming Been There, Done That, and a pair of sunglasses – to hide his guilty eyes from Mother. She was in the garden, hanging out the clothes.
‘Arthur. Arthur. You’re giving up that job . . . do you hear me, Arthur? It’s as clear as the nose on your face that they’ve done something to you . . . you’re not the same boy you used to be.’
‘I suggest you place your bets on that one, Mother,’ he said.
‘You’re heading straight for hell, Arthur.’
‘And loving it,’ he agreed, but silently.
‘You take that filthy shirt off right now, and wipe that self-satisfied grin off your face before I wipe it off for . . . ’
Out of breath, Mother inhaled. Inhaled deeply. A European wasp, seeking a dark moist cavern in which to set up house, was sucked in. Mother closed her dentures on it, determined to crush it, but the wasp sought a rear exit, stinging as it went – which proved to be a fatal encounter for both combatants.
Silence at number eighty-two, and of course some sadness. Arthur had three days off, compassionate leave. Martha suggested he take the time off.
In the hour before dawn on the day of Mother’s funeral, he lay on his back listening to Father’s solo snore. No more that apologetic sip of stolen air, his snore sucked on free air until it quavered around high C, like the cry of a bird mourning its lost mate. Arthur held his breath, waiting for the pop, for the whistle, but the frequency altered. The snore faltered, died half sung. Sweet silence.
Arthur slept until ten forty-five and awoke to find the undertaker’s car at his door and Father dead. He’d overdosed on oxygen.
Number eighty-two was willed to Arthur. He had the telephone connected, painted the walls white and the roof red, painted the kitchen green, and his bedroom in three shades of lilac. On permanent staff now, when Martha’s robust health gave a little hiccup, he was made acting supervisor. Two months later, the position became permanent. And a fine supervisor he made, methodical, patient – until a box of Tim-Tams felled him. It toppled off the upper conveyor belt and landed on his head. He was in a neck-brace for two months and on work-care for two more.
And so the circle interrupted may have rejoined, if not for Martha’s little hiccup, which, for three months, she’d put down to premature menopause.
From Monday to Friday, and every third weekend, Arthur walks down the hill where he catches the seven twenty-five orange bus to the depot. Here he dons his cap and his smile, and boards a green bus which he drives around suburban streets until four.
‘Morning, Mrs Martin. How’s that leg today?’
‘Getting better every day, thank you, dear.’
‘Want a hand with that trolley, Mrs Jones?’
‘Ta, Arthur. You’re a gem among bus drivers, you are.’
At four thirty Arthur catches the blue bus to the top of Hill Street and walks briskly home to number eighty-two where a fat cat waits on the letterbox, and Martha Thomson calls from the front door.
‘Artie. Did you remember to get the nappies and the cat food, love?’
Two Gifts for Annie
Today is Monday. The sun is red, a strong north wind carries smoke on its breath and I am late for school. On Monday and Friday I am always late, for on these days I carry the basket of eggs to the grocer and wait at his door until he comes with the key. He takes the basket and the note from my mother, then I run the two blocks to school.
This morning I arrive in time to join the line of sixth graders marching onto the veranda. I march behind Marlene. She is older than me by ten months, but I am a head taller, taller even than most of the boys.
I am wearing my red cardigan; it draws many glances. And my hair – long, thick, black – draws the early heat to my head. I look with envy at Marlene’s straw hat and her freckled bare arms as I slip into the shade of the classroom where the wooden desk will be smooth and cool against my legs.
The stranger is here. I lift the lid of my desk then, hiding behind it, study a small man seated in front of the fireplace. I think his features are pinching him, tight as shoes saved for God on Sunday. I know he is here to observe and assess me, but he is staring at Robby West. Robby is thirteen, older, taller than me. He fears neither man, God, nor school inspector, but lolls in grade four, determined not to
learn – and succeeding.
The stranger sniffs, turns, stares at Jenna King, then at the other shiny black faces our headmaster scatters amongst the whites. Mrs Macy sits the Aboriginals in a group, close to the door. This man will approve of Mrs Macy. He doesn’t like my Mr Fletcher.
I like him. He is as fat as this stranger is thin, his face round and pink. His throat is uncommonly dry this morning, he swallows often. The green thermos of brandy, always at home beneath his table, will be missing today. It is he who passes me the examination paper. His dull green shirt is clean, but perspiration soaked already. It smells of brandy. He always smells of brandy.
‘Would you like me to light the fire, Burton?’ he asks. My cardigan is a red rag waved before an angry bull. ‘Go to the cloakroam now, remove that sweater and get that hair off your face before you pick up your pen.’
‘No thank you.’ I make the words with my hands. Three brief things. Only inside my head do words run free.
The stranger sniffs. Twice. It is a habit of his. I watch him. He repeats his twin sniff every minute, on the minute. I smile as I watch the hands of the clock try to race his sniff to the quarter-hour. Too mean to perspire, he sits unmoving, his narrow nostrils closed, conserving bodily fluids. His skin is dry, a patchy red, a flaky grey; he is a malnourished rat ready to pounce on me.
‘Take up your pens.’ He sniffs and the hands of the clock jump to the quarter-hour. ‘Start now.’ He sniffs.
I look at the paper placed before me. Careful not to blot the page, I write the answers in my best script, but midway through I steal a glance at the stranger. He is staring at me now, but his eyes slide to the side like fat on a hot frypan as they meet with my own. Quickly I drop my chin and return my attention to the history paper.