After January

by Nick Earls

  Clive and Alma inevitably ask me about school and I have to tell them I’ve finished and I don’t know what I’m doing yet.

  Be another couple of weeks, wouldn’t it? Len says, still working the salad.

  Yeah. Yeah, two weeks. Two weeks tonight actually. That’s when we’ll all be at Newspaper House buying the first of the Courier-Mails.

  So how do you feel about it? Alma says. I hope you’re not letting it get you too worried.

  We’re trying not to dwell on it too much, my mother says. We can’t do anything about it now. It’s pretty tough all this waiting though. Isn’t it, Alex?

  I’m getting used to it.

  Then we briefly have the Arts/Law conversation and I give my standard uninterested explanation of tertiary entrance procedures and Alma and Clive give the standard response that things seemed a lot more straightforward in their day. Of course, not a lot of people went to uni then. Most of us just left school and went to work. But it’s different now, I suppose.

  I think Len can tell that this conversation is killing me and he says, Let’s go outside and get started on the barbecueing.

  We leave the others in the kitchen, and I can hear my mother being drawn into a conversation. The screen door slaps shut behind me.

  We’ve got some of those gourmet sausages from the deli, Len tells me. Thought we’d experiment.

  They cook with a smell of soy and honey mingling with the barbecue smoke and it’s my job to turn them. Len splashes his beer over the steaks and it spits and dims the coals and rises in a cloud of musty steam. He deals with the steaks like a scientist, turning them as though there is only one right moment, as though the slightest hesitation or misjudgment would see them ruined. He has a reputation to uphold.

  So, he says as though it’s nothing, as though it’s part of everything else, how’s your girlfriend?

  Girlfriend?

  Friend of the young female persuasion. Girlfriend. The one who was over yesterday morning. The one who drove away just after we got home this afternoon. That one. Not that I’m being nosey. Far be it from me to take an interest in other people’s business, but Haze was just wondering. You’re not planning to keep her a secret, are you?

  No. No, not at all. Not that she’s my girlfriend, necessarily.

  Not necessarily?

  I just met her.

  Pretty poor timing isn’t it? Meeting a girl and then going back to Brisbane. Unless she’s from Brisbane.

  No, she’s from here.

  I turn a few sausages. Len turns a few steaks.

  I want to stay, I tell him. I don’t know how long, but I want to stay up here a while. I don’t have to go back to Brisbane. Not yet. My mother’s going back to Brisbane though. It’s a problem, maybe.

  He seems as though he’s thinking about this. I’ll have a word with her, if you want, your mother. I’ll talk to her. If it’d help. Not about anything in particular of course, just a casual mention about you staying maybe. And how we’d keep an eye on you, that sort of thing. The sort of thing Tessa would want to hear. Would that be worth a go?

  Yeah, it might.

  Does she know? About the girl?

  No. I haven’t said anything yet. I just met her. I don’t know what to say to my mother yet. I like this girl. I think I really like her, and I just met her yesterday, so I don’t want to go back to Brisbane yet. And that’s maybe not an easy thing to explain to my mother. Remember that story, that one I wrote about the school play? Remember how she handled that? I’m not ready for that yet.

  He laughs.

  I reckon you’re about to charcoal a few snags, mate, he says, looking down at the sausages suffering on the barbecue plate in front of me. We should be heading in.

  I reserve the darker, more damaged ones for myself and tell Alma and Clive I like them that way. My unexpected ally goes to work while my mother is helping herself to seconds of the salad.

  You know, Tessa, Len says as though the idea has just come to him, if young Alex wanted to stay up here a bit longer when you go back to Brisbane, Haze and I’d be happy to keep an eye on him. Wouldn’t we, Haze?

  Of course, love, Haze agrees. Happy to.

  My mother looks at me. She says nothing. I don’t know if she’s just looking for a comment or for signs of a conspiracy.

  That might be good, I say, looking right back at her. There’s no real hurry for me to get back, is there?

  No. No, I don’t think there’s a hurry for any particular reason. I thought you were keen to catch up with your friends though.

  Well, I will, soon. I won’t be up here for ever. I’d want to be back before the offers come out anyway.

  So how would you get back to Brisbane?

  With you if you came back the weekend after next. Or the bus if you didn’t, I suppose.

  The bus. You’ve never been keen to catch the bus before.

  I’m not keen now. It’s an option. I haven’t even really thought about all this yet, the idea of staying. Len just mentioned it. It just sounds like something to think about.

  Sure, we can think about it.

  When we’re at home later I think about it a lot. I lie on my back in the dark looking up at the barely visible pattern on the underside of the top-bunk mattress, and I think about it a lot.

  sixteen

  Once, a few years ago, at school dancing classes I asked a girl for her phone number and she gave it to me. She wrote it on my hand because neither of us had anticipated this moment and we could find a pen but no paper. My friends were impressed and a couple of people at school even came up to have a look at my hand, which I took care not to wash long after I had copied the number onto paper.

  I called her from a public phone on the way home from cricket practice one afternoon.

  She said, I’ll just check with my mother. After the longest pause I’ve ever known I heard her pick up the phone again and she told me, My mother says I’m not ready to go out.

  Okay, I said, quite unprepared for this outcome. Some other time then maybe. And she said, Yeah, well, ’bye then.

  So the next day I told my friends, and they all thought it an unfortunate but quite legitimate outcome. Just one of those things. Mothers.

  I must have missed her emerging readiness by a matter of days, for it was no more than two weeks later that I went to the movies with the same friends to see The Big Steal and she sat a couple of rows in front with some guy with shoulders who took several opportunities to send his tongue well past her tonsils. My friends thought it was a great movie. I thought so too, but not until the second time I watched it on video over a year later, when I decided I should forget the silhouettes that had writhed in front of me and instead try to believe the film’s suggestion that sometimes the none-too-cool guy gets lucky indeed. That day in the dark at Hoyt’s this had seemed a particularly transparent lie.

  The length of the pause should have warned me even though my friends said that all pauses seem longer than they actually are when you’re waiting for something like that, and besides, it probably meant she had had a fight with her mother because she wanted to go out with me. And I had liked that idea the whole two weeks, and I had thought we would meet at a school dance some time soon anyway. My friends told me this was likely.

  But instead all that is likely is that she went to her mother and said, What do I say to this guy? and her mother said, You could tell him I think you’re not ready to go out with just one person yet, something like that.

  This was not a good thing to happen to someone who was already not great at taking the initiative. I don’t think I’ve improved much since.

  I think I just got lucky with F and her need to make a phone call. How is this so easy for her?

  The morning passes. I swim and buy the paper. Gina calls. I hear my mother saying, No, no, not a
t all. I think it’s important to talk about these things. Then a pause while Gina says something. Of course you feel you’re on your own sometimes but we can always talk. We can shop any time. Think of the money I saved. Pause. No, I was only joking. It was only a joke. I go out onto the veranda to read my book.

  Len takes me to the Powerboat Club for lunch and I watch the first hour or so of the cricket on the big screen. He joined the club years ago, when it was starting and life memberships were cheap, but it’s different now, with the poker machines. Every month there’s a flyer in the mailbox promoting upcoming visiting acts and regular events. Tomorrow, the Col Noble duo and soon Greg Doolan for Morning Melodies. Tuesday: Oriental Cuisine Night (Bookings essential). Monday: Bingo (Free cuppa and biscuit). Sunday: Sunday Madness.

  Len’s a lunch-time regular and a big fan of the fisherman’s basket. On some days when there’s cricket on I go with him to sit in the air-conditioning and watch the game while he circulates, telling a few yarns, buying beers at the bar, blowing a few dollars worth of twenty-cent pieces over at the machines and then coming back to me for periodic updates. Today Australia loses two wickets early and scores slowly.

  I swim again at the end of our innings and then I finish my book. Maybe I won’t see her today. I play Frente!’s ‘Lonely’ EP repeatedly and when my mother asks if I’m trying to tell her something I put the headphones on and keep playing. This way it’s even better, as though the voice is in my head. I think I bought the EP after seeing the film clip for ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, Angie Hart with straight short black hair and crimson lips, her pale face and sad-sweet voice. And in this incarnation she doesn’t look much like F, at least not with the hair, but I can still find similarities, still hear what I’m listening for.

  Just as I fall asleep I think I hear my name called, but when I turn off the music there’s only the sound of the sea, waves working their way up the beach again, and the fan turning and clicking on the other side of the room. I open the sliding door as quietly as I can and I walk onto the veranda. It’s cooler out here, and far away there’s a dog barking, maybe at the bright three-quarter moon.

  After this it’s harder to sleep. I didn’t see her today, and usually I would assume the worst. But I don’t with her. What I’m assuming is that I’ll see her again, that she will choose to come to see me again.

  That’s not like me.

  FROM THE FILMCLIP

  These pictures are played

  Again and again

  In sometimes orange light

  Sometimes blue

  Warm then cool

  Mouth red as paint

  Calling a dance

  Looking like slow

  Slow motion

  All like some magic

  Some dream

  Closing like cloud

  And even in rain

  Your eyes are not cold

  seventeen

  On the beach in the morning is a word or, at least, four letters. F O R T, large capitals written in the untouched sand left by the receding tide.

  She calls to me from the trees. Any ideas?

  Fort? You’re telling me Fort now?

  That’s right.

  Fort. Like a military installation. Fort.

  You can say it as many times as you like but it’s not my name until you say some more.

  Fort.

  Consider yourself lucky. I gave you two letters. I meant to come down and give you the R yesterday but I got stung by bees in the afternoon. Just on the right hand so I didn’t think I should drive. So I stayed home.

  She opens her right hand to show me the lumps of stings at the base of the index finger and near the wrist.

  Are they still sore?

  Yeah. Not much though. They’ll be better after a swim.

  So where are we swimming?

  Kings? There’d be better stuff at Kings.

  Okay.

  So what did you do yesterday? she says when we’re on the road.

  Not much.

  Not much?

  No. It will never be recalled as a day of great achievements. Just another one of those holiday days.

  I don’t think I have them. What are they like?

  You hang around, swim, read. If there’s cricket on TV your day has meaning. Otherwise you just hang round. Every few years something different happens, something you don’t expect at all, something totally out of control. For example, your neighbour takes you to the Powerboat Club and instead of ordering the burger like you always do, you order the fisherman’s basket, just like him. And he spends the rest of the day wondering why, looking at you like something’s going on. I didn’t do that yesterday though, I just ordered the burger. My life’s crazy enough already, and besides he knows there’s something going on.

  He knows there’s something going on?

  Oh, yes. He’s seen someone unfamiliar coming and going.

  And has he worked out what’s going on?

  I don’t know. He might have made assumptions, but I’m not in a position to speculate on their accuracy. Not that I’m one for speculating.

  She laughs and she takes a corner. I like the way she drives. She seems very calm, at ease with the process. I notice this since I’m still learning and I am not calm when I drive. Each pedal, each switch, every part of the car is my enemy and hides when I need it. F drives as though each part is an extension of her, as though she and they have a comfortable association. I think her cool would intimidate me if she wanted it to. But she makes things cool without meaning to and carries cool around with her. She wears clothes I could not normally forgive and she makes them cool, surf-hippy influences ending up somewhere near grunge, but not quite, not that aware, not that influenced. A shapeless old shirt and no shoes, old khaki shorts. The waves of her hair held back by elastic. All of it looser than I’ll ever be, more recklessly at ease. Like this old car, open-topped and unsophisticated, kicking out of the pot holes, shaking up and down the hills, bouncing through this summer without a care. Without any idea that other cars might do it differently, with suspension and climate control and a radio with an FM option.

  In this car you have to smell the summer, feel the sun on your skin, feel the wind slipping past you.

  I want to ask her why all this is happening. Why she keeps coming, how long she will keep coming. This is great, but I want to understand it. And I want to know what to do next.

  We swim and all I can say is, So what are you doing this afternoon?

  Working, I suppose. Doing bee-keeper things, and other stuff.

  What are bee-keeper things?

  There are many secrets that can only be handed from bee-keeper to bee-keeper. I’m not sure a potential Arts/Law student should know them.

  But what if I wanted to keep bees some time? What would I have to know?

  It’s not that easy. You’d have to start at the bottom, and the secrets come one by one, and only when the bee-keeper’s ready to tell.

  So tell me about the bottom.

  The bottom. And she thinks. The bottom is probably the jars.

  So what do I do with jars?

  Three things. Scrounge them, clean them, fill them. That’s all you need to know, other than labelling, but that’s separate. More advanced.

  I think I could do the jars now. I think I already have several of the skills required.

  Yeah? So you want to do some jars?

  Sure.

  Okay. This afternoon, unless you’re too busy holidaying. You could do jars while I do the really challenging bee-keeper things.

  Okay.

  Good. So I’ll pick you up at two or so.

  Good.

  I realise then that I will have to tell my mother this. I will have to say something to her if I am planning to b
e away for the afternoon. This would be a good time to tell her, I decide. I just have to tell her not to get too excited about it when I do.

  That would be a start.

  eighteen

  Have you got any plans for this afternoon? I say to my mother.

  No. Why?

  I’m thinking of going out, that’s all.

  Out?

  Yeah.

  Doing anything in particular?

  Yeah, helping someone with bees actually.

  She laughs. That’s very funny. Obscure but funny. What are you really doing, or is it some secret?

  Helping someone with bees. Washing jars for the honey. They have to put the honey in jars to sell it.

  When you’ve washed them?

  Yes. That’s right.

  My mother is finding this highly amusing, and the only thing that in any way tempers her amusement is the thought that her son might have gone mad.

  Could you explain that in a way I could understand? I see you sitting round, being a little tense, doing some reading, watching some cricket, swimming, all things that I understand, and suddenly you have a plan to go somewhere and help someone with bees. Who? And how do you know them so well that you want to go round there and wash jars?

  Okay. First let me just say that it’s fine. That it’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s just fine. I’ll be fine. And it’s no big deal. Okay?

  Okay.

  I happen to have met someone in the last few days who keeps a few bees. I thought I might as well do something useful, so I thought I’d go round and help her.

  Help her. So this is some frail old bee-keeping woman and you’re performing a good deed by going round there and helping?

  Well, no. I have to be honest, no. She is not a frail old woman.

  So tell me more.

  She’s closer to my age, and it’s probably a big job, keeping bees.

  Forget the bees. You’ve met a girl?

  Well, yeah. And she’s got bees.

  Tell me about her. And I don’t mean tell me about her bees.