Honour & Other People's Children

by Helen Garner

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ he said, settling into a leisurely exposition. ‘The pay’s a bit piddling, but it’s a foot in the door, as it were. I’ve got a couple of things planned – few jokes, few songs – bee-yodle-ay-i-hew!’ he warbled in his sweet, sharp voice. ‘I am a professional, after all.’

  He stood up slowly and combed his hair down with both hands. ‘It’s not very gentlemanly, is it,’ he added politely, ‘keeping you hanging on like this.’

  Scotty pointed the toe of one foot and described a figure of eight on the lino, her hands out of sight inside her jacket. ‘Well, I suppose I ought to push off, then,’ she said.

  ‘You couldn’t give us a lift into town, could you?’ said Madigan, glancing around him on the floor.

  She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. ‘I told you,’ she said in a blank voice. ‘I came on the bus.’

  ‘Oh. Never mind, then. I’ll jump on the tram myself. Better get a move on,’ he said, unconvincingly.

  He buttoned his black corduroy jacket right up to the neck to cover his torn shirt and stood at the foot of the bed, as if on parade.

  Scotty gave a short laugh. ‘You look like a Jew at a funeral.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to come with me, I suppose,’ he said, not looking at her.

  They got off the tram at the Town Hall and walked up Collins Street in the fresh dark. Leaves were coming down here, too: big twisted ones that crackled underfoot on the square pavement blocks, or drifted crabwise with a loud scraping sound.

  In the window of an expensive shop, Scotty noticed a diaphanous flowery dress.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing. ‘If I were that kind of person, that’s the sort of dress I’d love to wear.’

  ‘You’re not, though, are you,’ he said with a gusty laugh. ‘Imagine you! With your big fat body and crabby face.’

  She walked on quickly. He caught up with her on the steps of the Alexandra Club, where she sat between the polished brass handrails, her face expressionless. He took hold of her hand.

  ‘Hey Scotty,’ he said gently. ‘Do you want me to live with you?’

  ‘No!’ she cried, trying to jerk her hand away.

  He kept his grip on it, and gave it a little shake. ‘What aristocratic fingers you have, Scotty,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t even know each other,’ said Scotty.

  ‘But isn’t that why people live together? So they can know each other?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘I thought you people knew all about this kind of thing.’

  ‘I find you extremely . . . disturbing,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! Well . . . I’ll have to think about that,’ he said. He dropped her hand and mooned away towards the top of the street. ‘You have a decent job, of course. And I’m just the king of the dole bludgers.’

  ‘You play for money, don’t you? I thought you said you were a professional.’

  ‘I know,’ he snapped. ‘I know, I know, I know.’

  She shrugged and stood up from the cold step, plucking at the seat of her pants.

  He dawdled more than usual, at the end, and when they left the building and he stood back for her at the door it was as if she were dragging him behind her. A cool wind raced up Collins Street.

  ‘I loved the music,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I loved it in there. I was really surprised. The songs were beautiful. You’ve got a beautiful voice.’

  ‘Don’t flatter me!’ he yelled, almost choking.

  ‘I’m not! I liked the music!’

  ‘They’re only period pieces! I thought you were supposed to be intelligent! Can’t you see that?’

  ‘I just wanted to say I was happy in there!’

  ‘OK! OK! I’m glad you were happy!’ He jerked his big head away from her.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ said Scotty.

  ‘I wish you had a car,’ he said. ‘I feel like being waited on hand and foot.’

  ‘Well I haven’t. We’ll have to get the tram, or walk.’

  He stopped in his tracks and turned on her so suddenly that his shoulder jarred her chin and her teeth clashed. ‘I’d like to be brutally frank with you, Scotty,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’re wasting your time with me.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘I’m a cold fish sometimes,’ he said. ‘Specially after a gig.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ She might have been looking at him from twenty yards away.

  Again that run of expressions passed across his face, like the shuffling of not-quite identical cards: malevolence, dislike, a sarcastic smile. ‘You want to take me

  home with you, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I suppose so. Don’t you want to come?’

  ‘Why did you come to this gig, Scotty?’

  ‘To hear you sing! You invited me!’

  ‘Yes – but I can’t be responsible, see what I mean? It’s work, for me. Work first, women second. I can’t be responsible for you having a good time.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Scotty. ‘And I think that kind of priority system is absolutely pathetic.’

  They faced each other under the trees. The foliage shifted about restlessly, veiling and revealing the street lamp. Stubbornly he pressed on.

  ‘When you go to those rock gigs, like the one I met you at – what do you go for?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He shuffled his feet impatiently and turned his face into the wind: it flattened his hair and he looked smaller, as if standing inside a casing of garments too large for him. ‘Look – before I talked to you, that night you and Alex drove me home, I was standing at the bar in that awful dump, and there was a girl next to me, pretty, but you could hardly see her face, it was so caked with make-up. One of the blokes in Alex’s band walks up to the bar – that thin tall bloke with hair slicked back and trousers hitting the shoe just right, you know? And she turns and says to him in this dead voice, “Do you come here often?” And the bloke goes, “That’s not a very original approach.” And she keeps staring at him and says, “What?” I mean, Scotty, do you get it? She’d never even heard the joke. Oh Jesus!’ he groaned, gnashing his teeth and butting his shoulder against the wall. ‘They were like two corpses. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘What’s all this got to do with me?’

  ‘You go to those gigs, don’t you? Looking for someone to go home with?’

  ‘Where are you getting all this stuff from? I’ve never picked up a bloke in my life!’ She was facing him, four-square.

  He looked shocked, then nonplussed; he spun round, clapped his hands together like a master of ceremonies, and suddenly looked uncannily suave.

  ‘Sex,’ he declared, ‘is a nuisance.’

  ‘But it makes you feel good.’

  ‘So does a Choo-Choo Bar.’

  ‘Not that good.’

  Way down at the bottom of the street appeared the headlights and illuminated number of a tram. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘If you’re about to have a fit of the vapours, I’m going.’

  He seized her arm. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘Lay off, will you?’ She fought free and took two steps back. ‘You make me feel crazy. I don’t understand what you want from me.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, turning humble, ‘I think what I’m looking for is a surrogate mother – someone to cuddle me and tell me there’s no such thing as duty – nothing I have to do.’

  ‘You won’t get that from me!’ The rails were singing shrilly two blocks away. ‘I thought you’d been around,’ she said, talking quickly and feeling for her money. ‘I didn’t think you were one of those junior woodchucks. You told me you were a professional. I thought you’d been around.’

  ‘I’m just a babe in the woods, compared to you!’

  The sign on the tram was visible now. It was the right one. It swayed
up the hill, cord lashing in the wind, the driver black in his cabin.

  ‘You don’t feel comfortable with me, do you,’ he insisted. ‘I wish you did. I wish I could make you feel comfortable.’

  She was halfway across the road to the tramline, flagging the driver down as if afraid she was invisible.

  ‘Why’d you do it, Scotty!’ he cried out wildly. ‘All that stuff.’

  ‘Do what?’ Her incredulous face flashed at him over her shoulder. ‘What are you crying for?’

  His words were drowned in the screeching of the tram’s arrival. Scotty was up the step in one bound and into a seat before it had properly stopped. The conductor grinned at her and dinged the bell so that the tram lurched away again without a pause and went keeling round the corner. Madigan stood there between the silvery tracks staring after her: she hung her head out the open doorway and waved, but she was already too far away for him to see her face. She could have been anyone. And probably was. He clenched his teeth and let out a subdued shriek, rolling his oyster eyes to heaven and punching downwards from the waist with both fists. Then he turned rapidly aside, crossed back to the footpath, and sloped off towards Swanston Street. By the time he had passed Georges he was singing to himself.

  *

  Ruth came home from the movies at midnight. She opened the front door, then went back to the car and carried the sleeping children in to their beds, one at a time. She put out her hand to the knob of her own door, and noticed the folded sheet of paper half in the room and half out, on the floor. She bent down and picked it up.

  It was one of Scotty’s self-portraits: a stumpy figure in baggy pants, a blue and white striped jumper and tiny black sun-glasses. The figure was wearing a penitent expression and holding a white flag. Out of its mouth came a balloon containing the words Let’s bury the hatchet.

  Ruth heaved a slow, quivering sigh, stepped into her room, and shut the door. The note aroused in her such a wave of loathing and disgust that she thought she was going to be sick: she slouched to the fire-place and leaned her forehead against the cold bricks. After a moment she sat down on the bed and pulled her diary out from under the mattress.

  Scotty, lying awake in the dark, her ears sharpened by a kind of dreary hope, heard Ruth unfold the note and sigh.

  In the morning Ruth was already in the yard when Scotty came out to make her breakfast.

  ‘Hey Ruth,’ she called into the yard where Ruth was upending the compost bucket into the enclosure she had built with planks. ‘Want me to make you a cup of camomile tea?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Ruth, without looking up.

  Scotty fiddled with the latch of the wire door. ‘How do you make it?’ This was as close as Scotty would ever come to appeasement.

  Ruth did not give an inch. She turned round in a slow movement, holding the green plastic bucket in her arms, and stared narrowly at Scotty. ‘You’ve made it before.’

  Scotty stood still. Then she shrugged, let the wire door slam loosely shut, and went to the sink where she began to fill a yellow saucepan with water.

  Ruth came into the kitchen from outside.

  ‘Did you get my note?’ said Scotty.

  Ruth raised her eyes. Her mouth was a bitter line.

  ‘Do you really think,’ she said slowly and deliberately, ‘that a little note with a smart drawing is gunna make any difference at all, at this stage?’

  Scotty withdrew, stiff-backed.

  ‘I’ve felt your hatchet too many times to drop mine for a funny drawing,’ said Ruth.

  Scotty pushed past her and out the screen door into the yard. She began to unpeg dry sheets from the line, slinging them over her shoulder. Somewhere inside the house a bell was ringing in a sharp, double rhythm. The pegs dropped into the grass and disappeared. The bell stopped. She elbowed her way in through the door and met Ruth in the middle of the room. Sun laid its bland stripes across the scarred red concrete floor.

  ‘That was Jimmy,’ said Ruth in a queer, faint voice. ‘He’s comin’ back. They let him out. He asked me when he could take –’

  ‘Oh Ruth.’

  For one beat of time there might have been comfort offered, accepted, a quick flooding over the barricades: but Ruth stepped back instead of forward, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes. The air sang in the room.

  ‘Ruth,’ said Scotty in a trembling voice. ‘I’m finding life very difficult at the moment. Can’t we try to be a bit more pleasant to each other, just till you go?’

  Ruth fixed her with a terrible white stare. ‘Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to do.’

  ‘But if we could just make an effort –’

  ‘I don’t feel like being particularly pleasant to you, Scotty,’ said Ruth between her teeth.

  Scotty swallowed. ‘Maybe we could try to be civil to each other.’

  ‘I’m being bloody civil to you! You know what I hate about you, Scotty? You’ve never really been up against it. All your life you’ve just taken what you need. Everything all falls into place for you. You don’t even know what trouble is, or grief.’

  Scotty lashed back. ‘So now there’s a Richter scale of suffering, is there? They’ll have to extend it right up as far as martyrdom and sainthood in your case, won’t they.’

  Ruth’s teeth cut her breath. ‘You fuckin’ cold bitch,’ she whispered.

  ‘Christ, Ruth, you make me feel –’

  What was this?

  They were on opposite sides of the room, the two women, footsoles spreading on stone, backs against walls. Sheets floated like flags or slowly falling banners, a chair sprawled on its side, a plate struck a window-frame and smashed brilliantly, ears roared like oceans, sweat popped out in diamond chips. There was a loud noise. It was a voice screeching ‘Old! Old! Old!’

  There fell a silence. Chooks crooned and clucked drowsily, tapped their silly beaks against the tin fence. A fly laboured.

  So this was why people in real life screamed and broke things and grew violent: because the mind let go, and afterwards your body was as loose and fine as a sleeper’s, a dancer’s, a satisfied lover’s. You were empty, all your molecules were harmoniously re-aligned. You were skinned, liberated, wise. You were out of reach.

  A mouth formed words. ‘Now we can leave each other alone.’

  ‘I can accept that,’ said another, low, a thousand miles away.

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  First published by McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1980

  Published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 1982

  This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2008

  Copyright © Helen Garner 1980

  The moral ri
ght of the author has been asserted

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  Design by Allison Colpoys © Penguin Group (Australia)

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  ISBN: 978-1-74348-113-4

  ALSO BY HELEN GARNER

  Monkey Grip

  Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living, drugs, music and love. In this acclaimed first novel, Helen Garner captures the fluid relationships of a community of friends who are living and loving in new ways. Nora falls in love with Javo the junkie, and together they try to make sense of their lives and the choices they have made. But caught in an increasingly ambiguous relationship, they are unable to let go – and the harder they pull away from each other, the tighter the monkey grip.

  ‘A lyrical, rough-edged novel full of warmth and uncompromising feeling’ Sunday Age

  The Children’s Bach

  Athena and Dexter lead a frumpish, happy family life, sheltered from the tackier aspects of the modern world and bound by duty towards a disturbed child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter’s past. With her three charming, chaotic hangers-on, she draws the couple out into a foreign world. In the upheaval Athena see a way out: it leads into a place whose casual egotism she has dreamed of without being able to imagine its consequences. How can they get home again?

  ‘The Children’s Bach, like the fugue, works its magic most powerfully upon the subconscious mind … it is a celebration of family life in the context of the thousand natural shocks that it is heir to in modern times.’ Book World