These were tiny model people about 2cms high that he had made. Initially they had been created as crews for his model sailing ships, but this had soon evolved to include whole armies. Graham had liked model building as long as he could remember. His first attempt at scratch building a model had been at age 6. His father had built a model of a pearling lugger, carved from a piece of timber, painted with varnish and rigged with bamboo masts, cloth sails and cotton rigging.
Graham had so admired this he had tried to emulate it—with sufficient success to give him pride in his own creation. He had been working slowly at model-making for years. About four years earlier his literary horizons had taken in the Horatio Hornblower books by C. S. Forester. These were a window on a wonderful new world and led him on to several more book series about sailing ships during the Napoleonic Wars: notably those by Patrick O’Brian about Captain Aubrey; and by Dudley Pope about Lord Ramage.
Inspired by these books, Graham had begun building models of 18th Century warships. The urge to play games with them followed. He had built a crude waterline model of a small Sloop of War which he called HMS Investigator (although it bore no real resemblance to the original sailed by Matthew Flinders). But something seemed to be lacking—people. An experiment with HO Scale plastic people was unsatisfactory. They cost money, had to be carefully painted, came in odd poses, and kept falling over and getting lost when he pushed the ship around the lawn.
Next, Graham experimented with plasticine, having watched Kylie make some little people for a school project. His first attempt had a wire skeleton over which he squeezed different coloured plasticine. But he did not like it. The little man kept falling over. Also his bones would show through after he was handled.
Another experiment with plasticine had led to a simple little man of four colours. His head was a tiny ball of orange about 3mm in diameter. The body was a blob of blue with two arms squeezed out sideways and two tiny yellow buttons, each smaller than a pinhead. All this was set on another blob of white plasticine, which represented the lower body and legs. After some trial and error Graham had given up attempts to make the little man stand up on legs and now simply made the lower part a flat bottomed blob. The magic of imagination endowed the little man with life; and allowed the deformity of the legs to be ignored.
Jack, as he was christened, was a success. He was placed at the steering wheel of the Investigator, where he still stood. Experiments quickly added more clothing details to other little people: black, 18th Century sailor hats, tricorn and bicorn hats for officers, finely rolled yellow plasticine for gold lace and gold epaulets.
Research into costumes and uniforms was the next phase. A marine in a red coat with gold lace and white cross-straps had been so impressive Graham had made a dozen more, arming them with pins to represent muskets with fixed bayonets. Some details were not successful and were abandoned: hair on men except for beards or moustaches; eyes, noses and hands.
Soon Graham had hundreds of little people: sailors, soldiers, marines, pirates, smugglers, civilians. Inevitably the French, Spanish and Dutch had to be made to provide enemies. An American Clipper model was included in the game, even though it wasn’t the right scale. Indeed scale had not been a conscious consideration. Graham had not constructed the models from plans but from pictures, using instinct and looks to judge scale.
The next development had been a demand by his brother Alex to play. Alex had insisted on being both the pirates and the Americans. His models were relatively crude and Alex was a sore loser so the games often led to fights.
Inevitably Kylie had been roped in. She then took the bit between her teeth and set up her own country. She had only a few ships but was very good at making people. She made a whole army of soldiers with black shakos, dark green tunics, white trousers and white cross-straps. These were the Lucranians. She made a King, a Queen and a Princess then built a white painted cardboard castle for them to live in.
Alex had responded by making the Prussian army, all black uniforms with silver or white details. Using these he kept invading Lucrania. Graham had become interested in Napoleon and steadily built up a huge French army. But as the others were only intermittently interested in the game he usually fought against himself; using a dice to decide casualties.
Indeed arbitration by the dice was insisted on by their father; in an attempt to prevent arguments becoming fistfights.
This had led them into wargaming, evolving their own rules; or adapting those from books on the subject.
A TV series called Cities of Gold had led to more model construction, of Aztec temples and houses, jungles which were mostly made of two dimensional cardboard trees with trunks stuck in blobs of plasticine; plus hordes of wild Indians, cannibals, head hunters and other savages; as well as both Incas and Aztecs. Graham next made the Conquistadors. Their armour was cut from the thin aluminium foil found in the top of Milo and coffee tins.
Over the years the interest of Alex and Kylie had waxed and waned. Kylie became something of an expert at constructing model buildings to scale (1cm = 1m). Only Graham consistently continued to build model ships and to play with them. Now Graham had seventy-five of them, ranging from huge Ships of the Line nearly a metre long down to tiny schooners and native outriggers. Some were very poorly put together—rush jobs to meet some emergency; but a few were examples of genuine craftsmanship, of which Graham was secretly very proud.
So Graham now withdrew into his private space and sat at the desk in the far corner. For a few minutes he just sat and relived the events of the afternoon. Inevitably his mind moved to thinking about the girls. For a while he brooded over how his intervention to stop the demonstrators might be viewed by Thelma. They are her friends, he thought glumly. So she is not likely to go out with me now.
But despite that he couldn’t help hoping and he fantasized about various scenarios during which he would win her admiration and then her love. But then his gaze wandered to the model sailing ship under construction on the table. Reaching forward he drew the model closer and set to work. He carefully tied a piece of cotton to a pin protruding from the hull of the model. Then he picked up the tube of Tarzan’s Grip, unscrewed the cap, took a gentle sniff; then dabbed a tiny blob of glue on the cotton knot. With deft fingers he replaced the cap on the glue tube, resisting the temptation to take another whiff. He was no glue-sniffer and was well aware of the dangers of such a practice, but for him the smell of model glue was a real pleasure!
Probably because it reminds me of all the enjoyment my models have given me, he mused. He checked that the glue was dry before trimming the loose end of the cotton thread. Then he gently placed the model down on the concrete floor and looked around.
They are a good collection, he thought with satisfaction.
His contemplation was interrupted by his mother’s voice calling him upstairs for tea. Reluctantly he obeyed. Later that night, when he lay in bed, he again fantasized about girls. To his own annoyance he found it hard to hold a firm mental image of Thelma. Images of other girls seemed to slip into his fantasies: Joany from Year 10, Max’s sister Cindy, and even little Margaret. He tried to push these last thoughts out because she was too young but they remained the most accurate and persistent, mainly because she was the only girl he had seen nude and been naked with. This had occurred several times, most recently when they were on a picnic at Kamerunga and he and she had gone swimming together with nothing on. It had been a mixture of dare, wholly normal adolescent curiosity and affectionate exploration.
He fell asleep with his mind full of a mixture of erotic fantasies and vague worries about what might happen at school the next day.
Chapter 4
SCHOOL
As he walked to school on Wednesday morning Graham experienced a mixture of emotions. Chief among them was tingling anticipation and anxiety about how Thelma might view him. I think she knows I exist now, he thought. But after him fighting her friends would that do him any good? Graham could only shrug and hope.
/> The next strongest emotion was worry about possible conflict with Edmonson and any of his friends. He is in Year 10 and he and his mates could make my life pretty miserable, Graham mused.
On arriving at the high school Graham was suitably cautious. He had experienced grief from older bullies before so was wary of just blundering into potential trouble. At each doorway and corner he paused and took a cautious peek before proceeding. To his relief he saw no sign of Edmonson. Nor could he see Jerry Denham, the Year 12 boy who had been with the demonstrators.
The first of his friends he met was Stephen. They went and sat in their usual spot and chatted about the incident on the destroyer. Graham was still a bit put out that Stephen had slipped away but did not want to risk the friendship by making accusations. Steve won’t want to get into trouble with his oldies, he reckoned.
Next to wander by was Andrew Collins. Andrew stopped and said, “Hi Graham. I hear you got into a bit of trouble on the destroyer.”
Graham nodded. He liked Andrew but was jealous of him, partly because he thought him better looking than himself but mainly because he was already a navy cadet. “That’s right. Two of those demonstrators were trying to pull down the ensign and replace it with some peace flag,” he explained.
Andrew grinned. “Good for you!” he said.
That made Graham feel better and they began to discuss the incident. As they talked Max joined them and then Peter. The friends discussed the fight and its aftermath. As they talked about this Graham spotted Edmonson in the distance. There he is! I hope there is no trouble at school, he thought. He had been in trouble too much already this year and had no desire to visit the Deputy Principal’s office again.
Luckily Edmonson did not see him and walked on. Soon after that the bell for classes went and the friends stood up and began moving to their classrooms. As they walked Graham scanned the faces of the other students, hoping to see Thelma.
He did, but only after they reached the classroom. She was on the veranda busy digging books out of her school bag. Nerving himself, Graham approached her. Trying to sound very casual and relaxed, he said, “Hi Thelma!”
Her response was to look up and then give a half smile. “Hello!’ she replied. But it was a very off-hand response and her smile was frozen and perfunctory. Before Graham could speak again she quickly moved away into the room. As she normally sat next to Janet Graham got no other chance to speak to her.
She at least said hello, he told himself hopefully. She knows I exist. But her response had hurt. In his heart he knew she had rejected his advance.
For the next hour Graham sat at his desk and gazed with hurt adoration at Thelma. His seat was in the back row over near the right of the room and she was one row in front, and to the left of him. Thus he could look at her without turning his head, or appearing to stare.
She is wonderful! he thought. For several minutes he admired the delicate lobe of her ear, the gentle curve of her throat, the sparkle of light on her hair, the shape of her neck (She’s got a few freckles there. Hmm, never mind. I’ve got plenty myself). He then focused his adolescent boy’s mind on the way her right breast strained at the cloth. An itch of desire pulsed through him.
“Kirk!”
Graham imagined himself at sea on his gunboat, rescuing Thelma from the clutches of Arab slavers. He had just put the gunboat alongside the Arab Dhow and is poised, pistol in hand to…
“Kirk!”
It was Mr Wilesmith, his teacher, a grumpy man in his 60s. He was bellowing now. Graham jerked back to reality. What did the old coot say? he wondered with a sense of rising alarm.
Mr Wilesmith—‘Old Wily’ to the kids—smiled and said mildly: “Ah! I see you have returned. Did you enjoy your trip?”
Graham blushed. “Yes sir,” he replied, trying not to sound cheeky.
“Oh good! Where were you?”
“Persian Gulf sir, fighting Arab slave traders,” Graham replied.
A titter of giggling ran round the room. Old Wily smiled but he had a kindly gleam in his eye. “Very interesting, but this is maths. Please attend to the problem.”
“Yes sir,” Graham said. He sighed. Nowadays it seemed he was always in trouble like that. Old Wily is OK. He understands that a kid has to escape sometimes, Graham thought. But some of the other teachers weren’t that tolerant. What hurt Graham the most in this case was that Thelma had heard. The class knew him of old as a daydreamer and story teller so that did not bother him, but he did want her to think well of him. I don’t want her to think I am just a little kid, he thought.
To his dismay she half turned to look and then quickly looked away. Graham got only a glimpse of her face and was left worrying that the expression he had seen on it was a sneer of contempt. Oh I hope not! I must be more careful, he told himself.
Graham tried to settle down to work, but maths was his weakest subject and he wrestled miserably with the maths problems for a while, in a fog as to what they were all about. His attention wandered again after 10 minutes and he started to sketch on his notebook. While Old Wily gave a detailed explanation of how to solve a problem Graham quietly drew. A new gunboat took shape on the page.
Maths ended and the German teacher arrived: the much feared Miss Hackenmeyer, an acid-tongued woman in her thirties whom Stephen unkindly said was once Hitler’s mistress. The lesson began: conjugating verbs. Graham quickly lost interest and turned back to his drawing of the gunboat. Refinements were added to the picture: guns blazing; tracer pumping out of the Bofors; a JU87 Stuka dive-bomber crashing in flames with a very satisfying trail of black smoke behind it.
Stephen sat beside him, also drawing. He busied himself with making up a cartoon sequence on the pages of his notebook. On the bottom of each page he drew a tiny motorcycle and rider. On each succeeding page the motorcycle was drawn closer to a ramp, then on the ramp, then in the air, then crashing. By flicking the pages quickly with his thumb it gave the impression of movement as in a movie. When he was finished Stephen polished his glasses, nudged Graham and showed him. They both guffawed.
The result was inevitable. “You two boys will stay in at lunch time and copy out all of pages 56 and 57,” snapped Miss Hackenmeyer.
Graham sighed. Another lunch time detention! I always seem to be in trouble! What really hurt was that he would not be able to see Thelma at lunch time. He was in the process of trying to pluck up courage to ask her for a date and had decided that first he should strike up a casual friendship. If I hardly ever get a chance to see her that plan won’t work, he thought.
But he didn’t stop drawing ships in class. He dreamed of ones that he might build and sketched rough plans for them. And when he and Stephen did get out at the latter half of the lunch break it wasn’t Thelma that Graham met but Edmonson.
They almost collided at the corner of a building. Both stopped and then, as recognition came, Edmonson scowled. “You, you little turd! I should smash you!” he snarled. Then he reached out and grabbed Graham’s shirt front. “You get in our way again and you’ll be sorry!”
Graham stepped back and wrenched his shirt free. He opened his mouth to reply but could think of nothing to say. Edmonson then glanced at Stephen before shouldering Graham aside and continuing on his way.
Stephen pushed his glasses up his freckled nose and grinned. “I see your plan to convert the world to your point of view isn’t working yet!” he jibed.
Graham could only snort and resume walking, pretending he wasn’t upset or scared. A few seconds later they passed Janet and another girl.
Janet is Thelma’s friend. I need her on side, Graham thought. After swallowing with anxiety he plucked up the courage to speak. “Hello Janet,” he said.
Janet turned and looked at him, then curled her upper lip into a sneer, but made no reply. Graham flushed with embarrassment and kept on walking.
Stephen grinned again and said, “You’ll have to polish your technique if you want to have a girl in every port!”
Graham scowled.
“I don’t want that!” he retorted.
Stephen laughed and teased him some more: “Fine words, but what will you do when some scrumptious tart calls out ‘Hello sailor!’?”
Graham again made a face and did not reply. He was a bit hurt by Stephen’s attitude and he told himself he would never go with girls like that. Only with nice girls like… An image of Margaret sprang to mind and he shook his head. Like Thelma, he told himself, deliberately conjuring up her image. Then an image of Cindy swirled provocatively into his mind and he experienced such a surge of lust that he knew he was a hypocrite. The knowledge was followed by more guilt at having such thoughts.
Stephen then hurt Graham’s feeling again by swerving left. “Oh, there’s Lorna. Hi Lorna! See ya Graham.”
Graham was left standing, his emotions reeling from the triple blows to his self-esteem. With resentment and jealousy in his heart he watched Stephen walk over to Lorna, a bubbly, busty brunette in their class. Stephen grabbed her and gave her a kiss on the lips, in blatant defiance of the school rules. Lorna’s response was to giggle and hug him back. Stephen then put an arm around her waist as they strolled off.
Stephen’s easy manner and his obvious success with the girls really rankled with Graham. How does he do it? He’s an ugly bugger with those freckles and glasses and he’s not as good looking as me. So what has he got? Graham wondered.
Feeling quite dejected he went and sat on a bench seat under ‘B’ Block. For a few minutes he sat there, staring moodily into space and wondering how he could win with Thelma. Then he shrugged. I’m probably not going to, he decided.
A girl stopped in front of him and he found himself staring at a very nice pair of legs. Graham looked up. It was Joany. She smiled and said, “Hi Graham! You look like you’ve lost your last penny.”
The Boy and the Battleship Page 4