Honour & Other People's Children

by Helen Garner

  ‘Oh, I’m sick of talking about it,’ said Alex. ‘I’m going into my room to have a little practice.’

  *

  People were setting up a fair on the scrubby football oval at the northern end of the gardens. Scotty pedalled across the lumpy grass and propped in front of a display board at which a girl with her back turned was struggling to pin some flapping posters to the caneite. Scotty, still holding on to one side of her handlebars, leaned across to help the girl restrain the poster. The girl glanced at her.

  ‘Miss,’ she said in a very soft voice. ‘Remember me, Miss?’

  Scotty stared. The girl was young, only about nineteen. Scotty remembered something . . . faces and desks flicked past like pictures in a book, a fine dust of chalk entered her nostrils and fizzed there, chalk dust packed the whorls of her fingertips. A faint effort throbbed. The girl was dressed anonymously in jeans, a dark blue wind-cheater and cheap running shoes. She looked Greek. Not one of the beauties. A blunt face, lips permanently parted, a mouth breather. Eyebrows clumsily plucked and half grown back. Back row on the right, under the map. Not Effi. Effi’s friend.

  ‘Soula, Miss.’

  A great, rare smile broke over Scotty’s face. ‘Soula.’

  They were both laughing silently, looking right into each other’s eyes. Then they stood still and studied each other.

  ‘Miss. If anyone ever asks me about teachers, I say, Miss Scott was the best one I ever had.’

  ‘Oh Soula.’

  ‘Really Miss! I loved your class. I learned stuff.’

  ‘We had a lot of laughs, anyway.’

  ‘Miss! Seriously!’ A shadow of earnestness passed over her face.

  ‘It must be seven years ago,’ said Scotty.

  ‘Long time, Miss.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Miss. Do you remember when you took us to see The Summer of ’42?’

  ‘Yes. And remember when we went on the excursion to the tombstone maker and Vito dropped the big block of marble on his toe?’

  Soula turned aside to laugh, covering her mouth with her hand.

  ‘What’s everyone doing down here in the park?’ said Scotty.

  ‘It’s the Tribune fair, Miss.’

  ‘You can call me Scotty, you know.’

  ‘Sorry, Miss – I mean –’

  They laughed.

  ‘It’s the Tribune fair, Miss. I work for the Party.’

  ‘Oh yeah? How long?’

  ‘Three years.’

  ‘How did you get involved?’

  ‘My parents.’

  Scotty stood over her bike and nodded. Soula’s plain, direct, un-ironic gaze took in Scotty’s pink trousers, the black shirt, the frivolous New York badges, the sparkling combs that held the hair back over her ears, the ears themselves pierced in several places with rings and studs. Scotty, at this casual mention of the Party, felt the beginnings of the same envy she swallowed every Friday night when Alex went home to his parents for dinner, to be present at the ritualistic lighting of certain candles in ways mysterious to her, exclusive.

  ‘Do you ever see any of the old grade?’ said Soula.

  ‘I ran into Vito, actually, at the market, just before Christmas,’ said Scotty. ‘He told me he had to leave when he was in second form. Because some kids beat him up, or something.’

  ‘He dobbed someone, Miss,’ said Soula severely.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Miss, do you remember Tony Petridis?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well he’s a junkie now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s a junkie.’

  ‘You mean a bad junkie, a real one, or just the odd . . .’

  ‘Real one. He’s a pusher.’

  ‘But I only saw him –’

  She had seen him a year before, loafing on the footpath outside Johnny’s Green Room at two o’clock in the morning. She was drunk, staggering home after some gig or other, on her own and fearless with whisky. She would have walked straight past without recognising him had he not stepped forward and called to her, ‘Miss!’ He was huge, strong as an ox, a muscle builder, bursting out of his white T-shirt, but in his face still shone a calm seriousness, the courtesy and intelligence of the strictly brought-up Greek boy. His three friends stood quietly behind him in the shadow, watching. Exactly as she and Soula had done, laughing and then soberly curious, Scotty and Tony Petridis examined one another quietly and without haste, up and down. Each of them echoed with oblique shafts of memory, with the pleasant ache of old sexual imaginings, always contained by decorum and long ago forgotten. She had watched him from the high staff-room window. His soccer player’s body – the triangular torso, low hips, short powerful legs – wove and swayed, graceful as a slow dancer, down in the rainy yard. Oh Tony. He reached out hisarms to her that night: he took hold of her tenderly in his huge arms under the sickly neon of the poolroom, he held her firmly against his great chest and kissed her on the mouth. A perfume of hash and sweat hung about him.

  ‘You should see his hair,’ Soula was saying. ‘It’s right down to here. And you know how he was always big? Well now he’s fat. Do you remember Effi? She’s a junkie. She’s got a baby, even. The doctor reckons it might have been born with an addiction. It’s like a cat, real skinny, sort of deformed. She can’t get off it, Effi. We try to help her. She doesn’t want to stop. But we won’t let her go.’

  Stupid with shock, Scotty listened to this litany, spoken with the same dull, gleaming-eyed fervour with which Ruth told her bad news. Who was this we?There was no we with power to prevent the rot.

  ‘Do you think the posters look good, Miss?’

  She tried to look. The posters, firmly attached now to the vertical board, showed what might have been expected – forests of fists raised, a banner-crowded sky, a suckling mother brandishing a machine gun: the whole panoply of worn-out symbols from which Scotty, like the rest, had learned to hope.

  ‘Do you like it, Miss? Is it all right?’ Soula’s damaged eyebrows made an inverted V of anxiety.

  ‘Yes, it looks great.’ The teacher’s tone of mechanical encouragement rolled smoothly off her tongue. Soula’s face relaxed and she stepped back from the board.

  ‘Thanks, Miss.’ She was smiling. She was content.

  When Scotty got home she climbed the narrow stairs to her room and lay on the bed. The air was as grey and dirty as if she had been told of a death. Some birds were singing unnaturally loudly on the tiles outside the window. She tried to cry; but she had talked herself out of that, too.

  *

  The beer glass was empty. No need for Madigan to feel in his pockets: that was it.

  I like them, at home. Of course. I like them naturally of course. No one’s ever allowed to dislike anybody these days. I do like them. I do, I do! But not when they play. They don’t know how to build up a feel. It goes sloppy on them. God sometimes I feel old. I’m too old for dope, that’s certain. Thank goodness. I must make a list. A list. I hereby resolve till further notice to avoid having lots of options. OK. A list. I wonder if I can get that old bloke down Gertrude Street to sell me the guitar case without the guitar in it. The neck is bent as any fool can see. If I practise more. Two hours every morning. Before breakfast.

  He printed PRACTISE 10-12 DAILY on the first page of the exercise book. He crossed out 10-12 and replaced it with 11-1. Under that he wrote BE REALISTIC. Then GET SLIPPERS, PILLOW. He scribbled out SLIPPERS and printed THONGS.

  Might be a couple that match in one of the boxes. VACUUM ROOM. Vacuun roon. Moon. Loon. Tune. buy rhyming dictionary. They say they’ve never managed to find a rhyme for silver, or orange. Funny. Both colours. Oh well, substances too. Objects. Objects? Mister Otis regrets. That he won’t be around. Unnggggggg. I didn’t like to just not turn up or say nothing, but ouch! By the time I’d contacted her I was a nervous wreck. I lost interest. She lost interest. Interest was lost. Hell, I wrote her a funny letter with drawings, surely that’s reasonable enough value. buy stamps.
I try against ingrained habit and prejudice not to talk in riddles. BUY ENVELOPES. DO NOT TALK IN RIDDLES. PULL BED OUT AND LOOK UNDERNEATH. I moved my bed into the middle of the room / Floating like an island in a sea of gloom. Is that corny? Is it hackneyed? A battered ornament? Did I make it up, or did I read it somewhere? Does this happen to Real Artists? PRACTISE THREE HOURS DAILY. What happened to the list. List of songs to do. STAND BY YOUR MAN. Hyuk. That’ll ginger up the feminists. DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND. Steady on. That’s going too far. Next thing’ll be foot-binding. ‘In my profession I have learned that women can bear more pain than men.’ ‘Are you a doctor, sir?’ ‘No. A shoe repairer.’ Hyuk hyuk.

  He underlined THONGS.

  On the colour television, high up on a shelf, two blurs were singing.

  Hey Paul, I wanna marry yew

  Hey hey Paula, I wanna marry yew tew

  A man at the next table called out to the barman. ‘Mate! Hey mate! Turn it up.’ He tried to catch Madigan’s eye. Madigan nodded.

  ‘Swallows Juniors,’ said the man. He raised his glass to the screen. ‘Look at those kids.’

  The barman scrambled up and tuned the set.

  Trew lurve means planneen a life for tew

  Bein’ tewgether the whole day threw

  they harmonised, beaming. The boy had bands on his teeth.

  Madigan cleared his throat. ‘Don’t you think they’re a bit young to be singing that sort of stuff ?’

  ‘No fear!’ protested the man. ‘Have to start early, in show biz.’ He was smiling, as if they were his own children.

  ‘But what would they know about true love?’

  The man stared at him. His smile faded. ‘They’re very talented kids,’ he snapped, and turned reverently back to the screen.

  Madigan was getting that bursting feeling. He seized his pen and in a flowing hand covered the rest of the page with song titles. Madigan was working.

  A fine powder of rain flicked in through the open doorway of the tram; it seemed to spurt out from the bending street lights. He got off at the corner of the gardens and mooched along in the dampness, heading for the only house he knew north of the river. There it stood at the apex of the triangular park, with its protruding attic window beaming light. The big front door was shut and he bashed it with the knocker. A moment passed, then the door opened a crack. A small fair-haired boy stood there with his hand on the lock.

  ‘Good evening!’ said Madigan.

  The boy stared at him.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Ruth’s not here,’ said the boy, looking past him at the darkening street.

  ‘Is anyone else home?’

  ‘I have to go to the shop,’ mumbled the boy.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Scotty said I have to get a tin of peaches.’

  ‘Haven’t you got enough money?’

  The boy dangled by one arm from the latch of the door. ‘Sometimes,’ he said in a conversational tone, ‘when it’s getting dark and cars come along, well it might be too dark for the driver to see a little kid crossing the road, and he might . . .’

  ‘Would you like company?’ said Madigan.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will I come with you?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Haven’t you got any shoes? It’s raining.’

  ‘Come on.’ The boy pushed his hand into Madigan’s and dragged him across the road.

  While Madigan watched, the child bought the peaches and selected for himself a packet of chicken-flavoured chips, which he devoured noisily, not offering to share, on their way back to the house.

  ‘Won’t you spoil your tea?’ said Madigan helplessly.

  The boy up-ended the packet into his gaping mouth, crushed the paper and dropped it in the gutter, and wiped his face on his sleeve as he heaved the front door open with his shoulder. He sprinted away down the hallway, leaving Madigan to make his own way into the house.

  Scotty looked up as Wally flew into the kitchen.

  ‘A bloke’s here,’ he shouted, a vein swelling in his neck. ‘A great big bloke with glasses. Wanna see my drawing, Scotty?’ He shoved the tin of peaches and a sheet of computer print-out under her nose. ‘Guess who it’s of.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Scotty, not really looking. ‘Is it Tom the Cabin Boy?’

  Wally clicked his tongue. ‘Does Tom the Cabin Boy,’ he said with heavy sarcasm, ‘have a red cape with a big S on it?’

  ‘Hullo Scotty!’ said Madigan. He stood just inside the door, knotting his hands, with the self-consciously interested expression of a tourist entering a museum. He was dressed in neat trousers, a tie and a cheap black jacket buttoned up to the neck. His large face looked benevolent, slightly puzzled, as innocent as a farmer’s. ‘Nasty damp weather, isn’t it!’ His manners seemed anachronistic, as if culled from a courtesy manual. Laurel put her finger between the pages of her book and gazed at him from behind.

  ‘Are you looking for someone?’ said Scotty, who was shifting sausages round under the griller with a pair of springy tongs.

  ‘Oh, just a bit of human contact,’ he said. He looked wildly at Scotty standing there in Ruth’s apron, a meaner, musclier Myra, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears of self-pity and homesickness. ‘It’s so cold down here!’ he said in a strangled voice.

  ‘No it’s not!’ Scotty laughed. ‘It’s hardly even the end of summer!’

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ he said. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with a neatly folded handkerchief.

  ‘Is he crying?’ hissed Laurel in a piercing whisper.

  Madigan took no notice, but polished his glasses busily and resettled them in their ungainly position against his eyelids. A dark flush had spread from his cheeks down his neck and inside his collar.

  ‘Want a gin and tonic?’ said Scotty. ‘Get the morale up a bit?’

  At the thread of kindness in her dry voice he sucked in his breath and rolled his fishy eyes in a parody of self-control. Through the pinkish blur of his steamed-up glasses he saw the intent faces of the children. He could hear the cracking of ice, unscrewing of lids, ripple of liquids, a fizz.

  ‘Here. A little mood improver,’ said Scotty, and shoved a cold glass into his hand. It was too late to ask for hot Milo, but for a second he despised her for not having offered it. He grabbed the glass and guzzled at it.

  Laurel, overcome with interest and the desire to draw attention to herself, shoved past Wally and took centre stage in the kitchen. She gave two affected, feathery coughs and threw her chubby limbs into a pose: one arm bent, hand at the waist, the other arm curved up to shoulder height with its wrist sharply bent and fingers pointing downwards at the floor.

  ‘Do I look like a teapot?’ she cried shrilly.

  Dinner was well finished and the children long since sent to play before Madigan had ruminated his way through his plateful. Scotty fidgeted over the empty china.

  ‘Is there any reason why you eat so slowly?’ she said.

  He shrugged, carefully removed a morsel of gristle from between his back teeth and laid it on the edge of his plate. ‘There’s a name for it,’ he said. ‘Fletcherism.’

  ‘Fletcherism?’ She laughed. ‘Is this serious?’

  ‘Some bloke named Fletcher reckoned you should chew each mouthful a hundred times. Actually, he said for a quarter of an hour, but I found that rendered me unfit for human company.’

  ‘You mean you tried it?’

  ‘For a while.’ He placed his knife and fork alongside each other on his plate and sat back.

  Scotty studied him in the remaining daylight. ‘You’re not . . . sick, or anything, are you?’ she said.

  ‘Homesick.’ He tried for a laugh, but could only produce a dismal cackle.

  Scotty was not used to being dumbly asked for comfort. Criticism was more in her line. What would Ruth have done? Ruth knew all about misery and sympathy and hot-water bottles and snacks served up on wooden trays.

  ‘We coul
d make a fire,’ she said at last.

  ‘Does the chimney work?’

  ‘Of course it works! What do you think we do in winter?’

  ‘How would I know,’ he said drearily.

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Scotty, her short patience beginning to fray. ‘Bear it like the bullocks.’

  An anxious voice rang out from the front of the house. ‘Sco – tty!’

  ‘Ye – es! I’m out here!’

  Not loud enough.

  ‘Sco – tty!’

  She got up and went over to the kitchen door and saw Laurel and Wally coming towards her along the dim hall. They were oddly quiet, moving hesitantly and very close together. Then Laurel saw Scotty and gave an exaggerated sigh, hand on heart, knees miming failure. ‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried with a shaky laugh.

  ‘Did you think I’d gone out?’ said Scotty, putting her hand on Laurel’s shoulder.

  ‘We came downstairs, and the kitchen light was off, and I thought –’

  ‘We haven’t even turned the lights on yet!’ said Scotty. ‘We were just talking. I wouldn’t go out and leave you!’

  The children looked up at her silently; even Wally was solemn with relief.

  ‘Come on. I’ll get you two into bed,’ said Scotty. Over her shoulder she said to Madigan, ‘How about you chop some kindling while I get this organised?’

  She disappeared into the hallway.

  Madigan kicked himself for not having confessed immediately that he had never chopped wood in his life. She would come back from the bedroom all bright and ready to start burning things and he’d be standing there like a shag on a rock, no wood cut, and she’d pause for a second as women do and turn on a slightly different smile and pick up the axe and do it all herself with him trailing along behind like a tin tied to her ankle. Everything always moved too fast for him. What a rotten town. It wasn’t even autumn yet. He’d have to buy an electric blanket. Maybe they had secondhand ones down the Brotherhood. Surely a secondhand one couldn’t be safe. How many days might a bloke lie out there in his hovel before someone missed him and came looking for him and discovered his charred remains?

  When Scotty came back she took one look at him and marched straight through the kitchen and out to the shed. He heard a dozen solid, rhythmical blows and back she came with an armful of split kindling, which she dumped neatly on the hearth at the end of the long room. Raindrops had made shiny streaks in her black hair.