A Song Only I Can Hear

by Barry Jonsberg

  So, get on the ground or stick your foot out?

  Well, do something.

  Oops! Too late. It’s a goal.

  I remember thinking that I would look like a complete idiot, watching the ball as it slid oh-so-slowly into the goal while I impersonated a statue. So even though it was way too late, I stuck my left foot out. This threw my balance out completely and I fell back hard on my bum, upright, legs splayed. The ball kissed the back of the net, but gently.

  Mr Broadbent put his head into his hands and laughed. But gently. Or he might have been crying. I was too far away to be certain.

  One of the problems with the name ‘Destry’ is that there aren’t too many obvious rhymes.

  ‘Vestry’ springs to mind.

  The first time I saw my love, my Destry

  Was in the vicar’s room, the vestry.

  You see the problem? It’s not even close to the truth. ‘Camberwick’ isn’t much better.

  I’m as happy with my Destry Camberwick

  As a dog is with its doggie stick.

  It’s clear the sensible option would be to forget about rhyme entirely. But I like rhyme.

  There has to be a way.

  ‘Okay,’ said Andrew. ‘You see this ball?’

  I did. We were in my back garden, it was at his feet and round, which was a dead giveaway. I nodded.

  ‘All right,’ he continued. ‘Now listen carefully and use your imagination. I know you have a great imagination because you keep getting straight As in English and annoying everyone.’

  It was true.

  ‘I’m going to kick this ball as hard as I can,’ said Andrew, ‘and do you know why?’

  I didn’t and confessed it.

  ‘Because I hate Destry Camberwick and she is standing behind you—’

  I turned because you never know, but this was an imagination thing.

  ‘—and this ball is going to hit her straight in her stupid, ugly face. There’s only one person who can stop that happening, Rob. Who is it?’

  ‘Well, if we’re being logical, it would be you, Andrew. Because if you choose not to do it …’

  Andrew put his hands on his hips.

  ‘Okay, me,’ I said. ‘I am the guardian, the keeper of her face.’

  ‘Only you.’

  ‘Only me.’

  ‘“I will not let her face suffer!” Say it.’

  ‘I will not let her face suffer!’

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘I WILL NOT LET HER FACE SUFFER.’

  Andrew took a couple of paces back and then kicked the ball. I should say that my best friend is a very good soccer player. (He’s very good at all sports – one of the reasons, he claims, why he’s so successful with girls. If he wasn’t my best friend, I’d probably hate him.) The ball screamed towards me, to my right and at about head height.

  Andrew was right. My imagination is such that English teachers discuss it enthusiastically in staffrooms, which probably only proves they should get out more. I could see the ball hurtling towards Destry’s face – Destry’s poor, sweet, perfect face – and there was no time to think. I had to act. I took off to my right like a springbok or, if not a springbok, then some other animal known for being nifty at jumping. I spread my arms. I might even have shouted, ‘I WILL NOT LET HER FACE SUFFER,’ but I can’t swear to that.

  Someone should have videoed the entire sequence. It would have looked splendid in slow motion.

  The ball hit me in the face, ricocheted off our Hill’s Hoist and crashed through next door’s bathroom window.

  ‘Blankety hell,’ said Andrew. ‘Run.’

  We did, but my head was really hurting and one eye was already closing, so I only ran into the Hill’s Hoist and knocked myself out. I don’t know why I was running anyway. I lived there and Mum was watching us through the kitchen window, so it’s not like I could establish an alibi that would stand up in court.

  Here’s a story for you. Sit cross-legged and put your thumb in your mouth if you want.

  Once upon a time there was a policeman called John Gray and he lived in Scotland. John was an ordinary guy, but he had an extraordinary dog, called Bobby. Bobby was a Skye terrier, a little bundle of fur. He loved John and John loved him, but John died, as everyone must at some time or other. John’s friends buried him in the yard of Greyfriars church. Soon after, the gardener found Bobby sitting on John’s grave. This, everyone agreed, couldn’t be allowed. Churchyards have to be kept neat and tidy and dogs, especially Bobby, were neither. So the gardener chased him off and was quite nasty, because you have to be firm with animals and let them know who’s the boss.

  Bobby didn’t know who the boss was.

  He snuck back in and sat on his master’s grave. He was chased off again. He came back. Again. And again.

  Eventually, the gardener’s heart softened and he stopped chasing him off. The man even started feeding him. Bobby stayed, keeping watch over John’s grave for the next fourteen years until he died himself, as all animals must at some time or other.

  This is a true story and you can look it up if you google ‘Greyfriars Bobby’.

  It’s an example (and there are many) of how love is wonderful and magnificent and mysterious.

  Every Sunday I have to accompany Dad on a round of golf.

  This is non-negotiable.

  Dad argues it’s an opportunity for a lovely stroll in pleasant surroundings, to breathe fresh air and chat. He sees it as a bonding exercise, but I suspect it’s so he doesn’t have to wheel or carry his golf clubs, which are staggeringly heavy. He also hopes I will undergo a miraculous conversion, fall in love with the game and beg for membership at his club.

  There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

  Hitting a small ball great distances into an equally small hole while wearing bad clothing is not my idea of fun. If it’s that important you could just pick the ball up, walk the four hundred metres and place it there manually. And you wouldn’t have to wheel or carry staggeringly heavy golf clubs, which would be a huge bonus.

  Dad stuck his tee into the ground on the first hole and balanced a ball on top of it. ‘Number one wood, please,’ he said.

  I took the club out of the bag (it’s impossible to do eighteen holes every Sunday and not understand which club is which). I even took off its little furry hat. Why do golf clubs need hats? It’s not like they’re liable to catch cold on wintry days. Perhaps it’s a style thing, in which case it would be better to have tiny baseball caps that you could put on your five iron backwards, to give it a gangsta attitude.

  Dad took the club and ‘addressed’ the ball. This has nothing to do with talking to it or even writing down where it lives, but involves him waggling his bottom, looking down at the ball, looking up towards where he’s hoping to hit it, down at the ball again, up again, down again. Sometimes he stops waggling and takes a step back before resuming the position and going through the looking and waggling business again. It takes forever. Finally, he swings the club back and whacks the living daylights out of the ball. I didn’t give him the chance this time.

  ‘Dad?’ I said. This was in the middle of his backswing. I know I shouldn’t talk in the middle of his swing. Golfers get very annoyed when this happens. It’s bad etiquette, like someone taking a poo on the floor in the middle of a crowded restaurant. I’m not sure if this has ever happened, though very little surprises me anymore.

  The ball flew away, way off to our left. This is called a ‘hook’, or it might be a ‘slice’. I can’t remember, but it’s not good. Dad was angry.

  ‘ROB! Never talk to me in the middle of my swing. You know better.’

  I did, but I was in a strange mood. He gave me the golf club and I put its hat back on, tucked it away into the bag and started wheeling the trolley. Dad headed off in the general direction of where the ball had flown. I kept a pace or two behind him.

  ‘Was it love at first sight when you met Mum?’ I asked. ‘Did you hear music? Did your su
rroundings melt away as your vision focused on her across a crowded room and did you bid your fluttering heart be still?’

  Dad didn’t pause and he didn’t look back.

  ‘I heard music,’ he said.

  ‘You did?’ I was thrilled.

  ‘It was in a nightclub,’ he added. ‘You couldn’t hear anything other than music. Heavy metal, I seem to recall.’

  ‘Oh.’ I gave this some thought. There’s something spooky about realising your parents were once young enough to go to nightclubs. A shiver ran up my spine. ‘What about your surroundings? Did they melt?’

  ‘I hadn’t had that much to drink.’

  ‘Dad. I’m serious.’

  It took a while, but I teased the details from him over the course of our eighteen holes, especially since it became obvious that unless he talked I was going to ask him at crucial times, like when he was setting up an important putt.

  This is his story.

  Dad wasn’t always bald and shaped like a hot-air balloon (his description). When he was twenty, he was slim, had a bizarre hairstyle and could ‘bust amazing moves on the dance floor’. This was at a time when people called good dancing ‘busting moves’. Life is better now.

  Anyway, Dad went out with a bunch of his mates to a nightclub in Sydney where busting moves was the main aim, along with drinking alcohol to excess and ‘chatting up birds’. (By the way, I asked for a translation of ‘chatting up birds’, and it refers to impressing women with your conversational skills. Never saying ‘chatting up birds’ or ‘busting moves’ would be a good start, but I didn’t mention this to Dad.)

  To cut a long and disappointingly boring story short, Dad met Mum on the dance floor. She was a bird and he chatted her up. They busted moves together.

  ‘So, no gazing across a crowded floor?’ I asked.

  ‘She bumped into me and I spilled my beer down her dress.’

  ‘Did your heart sing?’

  ‘It sank. I couldn’t afford another beer.’

  ‘Love at first sight?’

  ‘Got her name wrong for a couple of weeks. Kept calling her Sandra.’ Mum’s name is Catherine.

  ‘When you proposed, did you get down on one knee?’

  ‘I sent her a card saying, “Fancy making it legal?”’

  ‘Dad! Where’s the romance in that?’

  ‘It must’ve taken the day off.’

  At some stage Dad saw the expression on my face and realised that what he thought was jokey good fun was upsetting me. He sat me down on a bench close to the fourteenth hole and waved the players behind us through. This was a huge sacrifice and I knew it.

  ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘I’m joking with you. Don’t cry.’

  It was true. I’d started crying and hadn’t even realised it. I’m such a sook. It’s embarrassing.

  ‘So that’s not how you met Mum?’

  ‘That’s exactly how I met your mum,’ he said. He put his arms around my shoulders. ‘And I’m sorry you find it so … disappointing. But I’m telling you the truth. There were no orchestras playing, no rays of light beaming on us, no hearts popping, no … romance. I didn’t love her at first sight. She didn’t love me at first either. In fact, I think she thought I was something of a dill.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But here’s the thing. Once I met your mum I never looked at another woman again. Never felt the need, never got the urge. If she was to leave me or, heaven forbid, die, it would be as if my life lost all meaning, as if … I was living in a dark hole. She’s the first person I think about when I wake up and the last person I think about when I go to sleep.’

  ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘That’s so romantic.’

  ‘I don’t know about romantic, but it’s true,’ he said. ‘Now, can I finish this bloody round of golf please? I am not waving any other players through.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Andrew.

  I resisted the urge to make the obvious joke. But not for long.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ I said.

  ‘What do you actually know about Destry Camberwick?’ We sat on a bench in the canteen area at school. Through a mass of bodies I caught the occasional glimpse of Destry’s form as she sat, with a couple of friends, on a distant bench of her own. It hadn’t taken her long to settle in to Milltown High. To become popular, too, judging by the company she was keeping. That was a good sign in a way, because she obviously wasn’t boring. But also a bad sign. There would doubtless be competition for her affections and I could really do without any competition at all.

  ‘I know she’s gorgeous,’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah. You’ve said. Like a couple of million times.’ Andrew tucked into his burger. I toyed with my chips. Those occasional glimpses of Destry had made me lose my appetite. ‘But you’re not a shallow person, Rob,’ he added.

  ‘I might be.’

  ‘You can’t fall in love with someone just because of their looks.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I’m ignoring you,’ he said, which was a sensible tactic under the circumstances. ‘You know as well as I do that a person is much more than their physical appearance. Take you, for example. No one could say you’re fantastically good-looking …’

  ‘Couldn’t they?’

  ‘… yet when I got to know you, I realised beneath your ugly face …’

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘… lurks a fine and splendid person.’

  ‘My face wasn’t ugly until you starting hitting it with high-speed soccer balls.’

  Andrew started on my chips. He picked one up and pointed it at me, but the effect was ruined because it was soggy and just drooped in a sad fashion.

  ‘Destry could be an airhead. She could be racist or homophobic. You need to find out if the two of you are compatible.’

  I nodded. ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,’ I said.

  Andrew threw the chip at me.

  ‘Are you quoting Shakespeare at me again?’

  ‘Guilty,’ I said. ‘Macbeth.’

  ‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘Just when I think you can’t be any more annoying, you do stuff like that.’

  ‘I thought you said I was a fine and splendid person?’

  ‘I was lying.’

  I thought for a few moments. Andrew was right. I knew that. What’s more, everything that Mum and Dad had said about the nature of love confirmed it. It wasn’t about physical appearance. It was about … what had Mum said? ‘Doing the dishes together, the ordinary stuff of life.’

  ‘What you’re saying, Andrew,’ I said, ‘is that I need to find out if I can do the dishes with Destry Camberwick.’

  ‘Shut up, Rob. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So,’ Andrew continued. ‘I’m going to be your wingman, your research man, the insider, the mole burrowing beneath the surface of the Camberwick. I’ll find out what makes her tick, what music she likes, what TV shows she watches, what her hobbies are. Information is power, my friend, and you need information.’

  This was obviously the best idea in the world. Find out her taste in music? I could download the songs she liked and have them blasting from my earphones as I casually strolled past her. Talk in a loud voice about how I loved … whatever TV show she happened to be into. It was perfect. But then another thought struck me.

  ‘That will mean you’ll spend a lot of time talking to her.’

  ‘Yeah. And her friends. You know I get along well with girls.’

  I threw the soggy (and by now almost disintegrated) chip back at him. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I do. They love you. Destry will love you. And you’ll love Destry.’ I could see it all unfolding in my horrified imagination. Destry and Andrew eloping at the end of term. Andrew sending me a letter from somewhere far away, like Darwin, telling me how sorry he was but that he and Destry were setting up house, even though he was fourteen and she was thirteen and how they would name their first kid after me …

  ‘Are you crazy?’ said Andrew. He looked for
another chip to throw, but we’d run out.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘You’re my best friend,’ he said. ‘I would never do that to you. Anyway, she’s not my type.’

  ‘All girls are your type,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not true. I am not that shallow.’

  I thought about it. If Destry Camberwick fell in love with Andrew, there was almost certainly nothing I could do about it. And if she did, it was probably a good thing if I found out about it sooner rather than later. But if she didn’t and he didn’t, the advantages could be huge. Maybe I should trust my best friend.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘When are you going to start?’

  ‘No time like the present,’ he said, and headed off to the far reaches of the canteen. I watched until my vision was blocked by a stocky form.

  ‘Wanna fight me, Fitzgerald?’ said Daniel. ‘Huh? Cat got yer tongue? Wanna fight? C’mon. Be a man …’

  ‘Is there a problem here?’ said Miss Pritchett, materialising out of thin air.

  ‘My blankety money’s on Agnes,’ said Grandad.

  ‘I am not betting with you on who’s going to die next, Pop,’ I replied. ‘That’s in appallingly bad taste.’

  ‘That’s exactly why I love the game. I’m not sure what your blankety problem is, Rob.’

  We sat in a couple of comfortable armchairs in the old folks’ common room. According to Grandad, this was the social hub of the entire institution. They played bingo, there was a piano (which one of the residents played most evenings – Pop was of the opinion that if someone broke his fingers they’d be doing the community a great service), but they also had guest artists turn up from time to time. A month ago, they’d had a juggler from a travelling circus rock up. Next week they were getting art lessons. The residents might be, in Pop’s poetic phrase, ‘a bunch of old farts waiting to die’, but they were generally having fun while they waited.

  ‘I need to borrow a dog, Pop,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Grandad. ‘Remind me why again.’