by Thea Astley
“Did you learn? Take lessons I mean?”
“Don’t be crazy.”
“You taught yourself?”
“Who else? It ain’t hard. Catch mum and dad givin’ me lessons! The ole man was always tryin’ to knock me off it like, but it was me hobby and sometimes I used to get with a mate from school who played the piano a bit by ear and we had terrific times. Used to sneak up to the School of Arts of a Sunday arvo when nobody was around—all at church—and we’d set the joint jumpin’.”
Chookie folded his pants up into a grey jam roll that he wedged under a lump of driftwood and, turning his back abruptly on Keith, sprinted across the loose sand to the rocking coast. He didn’t know what to do with this fierce blueness that played with him gently near the beach, but showed violence and impatience the deeper he went. Shading his eyes he saw that Keith had stripped and was wading through the sand as if it were water. This loneliness was palpable. Miles away, headlands lay under haze that became cloud that became upper sky. There were only the two of them and the world, circular, ultramarine, and lost.
“I’ll show you, if you like,” Keith offered, coming up beside him and panting from the cold of sinewy water. They swain out beyond the shore-break.
“How do you like it?” blond bobbing head asked red.
“Way out!” Chookie trod water madly. He was frightened as well as excited. Keith showed him how to wait for the clean line of the rising wave, how to rise with it, hanging suspended above the trough, how to swim in ahead furiously to be caught just as it broke and then how, swinging his arms flat back by his side, he could take the wave, be absorbed by it and ride it right up the shingle till chest, belly, thighs grated on sand and the sea sucked your legs trying to lug you back.
It took him half a dozen rides to get the hang of it, because he was too tense to offer himself blindly to the waterpull and pluck. But all at once he found himself coming in smoothly as a gull and he staggered to his feet on the beach, rubbing his salt-stung eyes and coughing.
“Geez, it’s marvellous! Marvellous!”
“Boards are better,” Keith said. “That’s what I was down the coast for this week-end, gunning with a couple of pals.”
“Gunning?”
“Riding. It’s just a term.”
“Nothin’ could be much better than that.”
“You’ve never done it.”
“Okay. I believe you. Come on. Let’s try again.”
Keith hesitated. “I’ve had it, a bit,” he said. “Think I’ll rest up by the dunes and get a shirt on my back. I can feel the burn starting.”
This is it, he decided. I’ll slip off and get a ride into the railway. No good telling this character, he’s so naive. He’ll simply tag along like an omen, wanting meals and fares. He lay down for a while to disarm Chookie, but the other was wrestling the surf, was locking flesh-muscle in water-muscle and being flung in and down and drawn back farther and tossed in, in a surge of foam and blind eyes and choking. Keith slipped into his shirt and slumped once more on his stomach, feeling the wet clinging cotton of his underwear gradually dry and loosen its hold. Darkness exploded into millions of microscopic fireworks as the sun split under his closed pressed lids like a gorgeous fruit, and before he knew it he was drowsing steadily, deaf when Chookie came dripping up the beach until the minute of defeat as he flopped on the sand beside him.
The hour lengthened. Skin tautened like rubber of an over-distended toy when, drunk on heat and light, they trudged back through lunch-time and sand-hummocks to the town road. Here Keith suddenly became practical and provident, buying a loaf of bread and dates and a packet of sliced cheese, and sitting by the road they shared sandwiches but not their thoughts.
Across the way was a pub, noisy as a cicada-mad tree. “Hang about a bit,” Chookie said, his mouth bulging with crammed bread and date. “We might get a lift.”
They hung. They slammed more sandwiches roughly together and watched for half an hour, but no one else came and no one went away, and to pass time Chookie told a funny story about an organist until at last Keith, sensing him washed and unsmelling, drawn down the long line of this inevitability and wild doom, stopped hating him. Them, cried the secret voice. Hate them. Bernard. Iris. Registering, he substituted Gerald, Iris, and they were destroyed in mental effigy dragged down the unending chancels of childhood where he threw with them the blood alleys and the Christmas bike and the first pantomime. See, the fat man said, the fat guy with the features all crowded in the middle of his face. See. I put this long long scarf in here. See . . . tapping an urn made of silver . . . and see, everybody, it’s just a straight straight bit of cloth like mum or dad or Bernard or Iris might use. Isn’t it? Isn’t it now? And I pop the lid on and knock like this round and round the bowl. See? Knock knock knock. And then I lift the lid and what do we have? What do we have here? Why! It’s . . . knotted! See. Knot after knot. Just like mum or dad or Bernard or Iris might have tied it. Oh, he clapped and clapped that funny trick and then there was another funny trick with glass balls and then another.
All chromium and zoom, a cream convertible slithered to a vulgar pause in the snapping gravel, wrenching Chookie and Keith from their separate kingdoms to this present which revealed a phoney athlete in trunks racing pubwards and returning with half a dozen bottles that he stacked behind the front seat.
“Excuse,” Keith said, sauntering and putting on the dog, “I wonder if we could trouble you for a lift?”
The athlete had plenty of brachial muscle. His shining breasts were wide as car tyres. His forehead was low. Only dimly did he mistrust them, for the elasticity of his body responses had not failed him yet.
“What way you going?” he asked.
“Next town,” Keith said cunningly, hoping to goodness it was north.
“Brisbane,” the athlete said. “But you’ll have to squeeze in together in the front.”
Chookie was reluctant. His postcard, like a giant flag, would wave him in, no hero, but scoundrel draped across the city. He pulled at Keith’s arm, ineffectually, for the boy was already swinging into the front of the car and grinning back insolently. Okay, bastard, thought Chookie, okay. You got me. No dough. No job. He scowled his hopelessness at them, went back to the grass margin where he had left the duffle-coat and tried to put a happy face on.
“Here’s y’ book,” he called to Keith.
“Okay,” the other said, not glancing, but gluttoning on the complicated dashboard of the car. “Okay.”
Chookie squeezed in beside and the driver gave him a special investigating glance that frightened hell out of him. He decided to disarm.
“What a beaut!” Chookie admired, his eyes running over the car’s form. “Could you let her out a bit?”
The athlete’s simplicity constantly sought these sunny spots and in them expanded and glowed. Madly they squashed together, beside his fag-ad profile and watched his large, confident, and cruel brown hands twiddle about along the dashboard. It had as many gadgets as a computer.
“Music?” the joy-boy asked and did not stay for an answer as they bucketed jazzily back to the highway in a flurry of calypso and small stones. The sudden wind scalped them, the trees became a forty-foot hedge and, “Jeepers! Chookie cried, but the pace forced the word back down his throat as the speedometer registered ninety on the straight strip running north.
“What you kids do?” the driver asked. They could not see his eyes behind protectively dark lenses and waited a little for him to answer his own question. “Holidays?”
They agreed. They’d come up from Sydney, they said, and were on their way home, they explained with touching omission of detail.
“You staying there?” asked the driver. “Whereabouts?”
“Strathfield,” Keith said instantly—who had an aunt there. “We both did. Chook works with my dad.”
“Oh?” The driver managed a side glance. “You haven’t much luggage on you. What’ve you been doing?”
“Sleeping out. Ju
st for fun. My buddy plays the harmonica. We worked the surf pavilions.”
“Izzat so?” Dark eyes was impressed. They were on the fringe of the next town and the car slowed down.
“I’ll take you on a bit,” the driver said. “To my next stop. One hand patted Keith’s plump knee and removed itself before the knee could either respond or withdraw. “How would that be? We could stick around a little.”
The boys’ eyes slid together fraternally while physical comfort softened Keith’s acceptance of the situation.
“Okay,” they said. “Kind of you.”
“Forget it!” said big boy. And, “Zoom zoom!” he cried playfully as they passed the de-restricting sign and roared loutishly north.
They tagged along all afternoon, bumming food and cokes with an expertise that gave them both a thrill until, round about five, the big fellow slung off to the pub, and the boys, in the amity of outcasts, sensed each other’s body-warmth there in the slanting sun. Lean and singular, Chookie rubbed an impractical hand across his nose.
“Chow?” Chookie asked unbelievably.
“You’ve had plenty. It’s too early, anyway.”
“But I’ve got gut-ache. Me belly’s aching like hell.”
“It was the way you gulped that bread down this morning. Too much bread, you great gutser!” And he tapped the other lightly on the stomach. “Let’s have a malted. That’ll fill the spaces and settle your ulcer.”
“What ulcer?”
“Oh, no ulcer. It’s just a phrase. Bernard has one. He’s always sipping the stuff for his ulcer, so he says.”
“Who’s Bernard?”
“My father.”
“You call him by his first name?”
“Yes. Two chocolate malteds, please.” Keith pressed an unexpected surge of feeling against the counter to diminish it and watched a fly crawl lingeringly over a plate of cakes. “They wanted me to, Bernard and Iris. They thought it was treating me like an adult.”
“Cripes,” Chookie said. “Mine woulder walloped me if I’d come that at him.”
I never wanted to, Keith stopped himself from admitting. Not really. I didn’t want to be an adult as fast as that. And not that sort of adult. He thought longingly of the other homes he had visited where there were limitations imposed, where language was minded before children, reading matter vetted, and soft drinks the only ones offering.
“He should learn to drink wine with his dinner,” Iris had announced with maddening suburban liberalism when he turned thirteen. “He must appreciate the normal complements of living.” At least she didn’t say “gracious”! “I don’t like it much,” he complained after the first few mouthfuls of a rather terrible hock. “I’d just as soon not.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Iris reassured him, no longer all mother. But he pined for a big bosom and hips and pumpkin pies and Yorkshire puddings instead of this dried-out version of society hostess who lived it up with bulk liquors (Bernard, bring flagons!), brass costume jewellery and a lot of hair rinse. But he’d persevered. He’d played it along with them. And after he’d got used to the game and the scoring rules, took over and laid down a few rules himself, and appalled them finally with his sudden monstrous unchildishness. If they had peeled away the grotesqueries of the puppet-work they would have found a frightened small boy working the glove and somewhere there would have been tears.
Chookie made disgusting noises as his straw probed the froth dregs. He was recollecting also, not pleasantly, and he was seven—or was it eight? Just after they’d come in from Dirranbandi and there’d been all them rows over some bit the ole man had been chasing after. One evening when they was all in bed he’d heard ‘em goin’ hammer and tongs in the kitchen and suddenly his dad had shoved his mum through the back door and burst its hinges. The police had come and all after that and the ole man had been bound over and his mum had gone about victorious and injured and pop never had a beer for months. But he’d liked his dad in those days, and with a few bob he’d saved working on the paper run he’d managed to give him on Father’s Day a bottle of beer wrapped in paper with blue moustaches and red walking sticks all over.
“Howju get that, Arch?” his dad had asked. “That’s mighty nice of y’. Howju get it, hay?”
Mum had come in. She was like an empress those days, swollen and mighty and about to have her fourth.
“Where did yer get it, Arch?” she asked. “I won’t have no boy of mine going into pubs. Understand that now. I’ll have a word with Grogan about this, see if I don’t.”
But the ole man had been opening the bottle and was rummaging about for a glass. “Real nice of y’, boy,” he had said smiling. “Best present I’ve had in years, savin’ yer mum!”
“No yer don’t!” mum said, lunging across. “He can take it right back. I won’t have no child going into any pub. Just tell me where yer got it, Arch, and I’ll take it meself.” Her voice rose.
“Too late,” dad said, calm like. “I’ve poured meself one!” And he lifted the glass and jerked it upwards at her. Toastin’, he explained later.
But mum ground down like a great tank, grabbed the bottle and poured it into the sink before either of them was properly ready to stop her.
“Why you lousy old bitch!” his dad had roared. “You filthy rotten wowser of a bitch!” And then he had drunk the rest of his glass extra slow and mocking and his mum had slammed into the front bedroom and later, just a little later, they could hear her snivelling and blowing her nose. The ole man had crept up beside the door and hissed through it, “I hope y’ know y’ stink. I’m glad.”
For some unknown reason, the next day Chookie had gone down to an old apple-tree in the back-yard by the fowl run and had spent half an hour carving his initials: AM 1897. It looked beaut. He forgot the tree was only a youngster. Someone, some day, seeing that . . . what? During the year he remembered adding a few other initials and dates and things like DIG HERE, rubbing a chunk of dirt in to take away the newness, to take away the now of it all.
“Finished?” Keith was asking. Delicately he blotted his moustache on a filthy linen square.
“Swank!” sneered Chook good-naturedly. “There useter to be an ole bloke up at Condo who smarmed about in suit and sandshoes and every Fridee he’d come up Fitzherbert Street to the pubs pullin’ on a pair of ole knitted gloves. And his fingers’a stick straight through the ends. He carried a sort of cane, too.”
“Was he mad or something?”
“Yeah. Just a nut. A Queensland nut.” He giggled away.
“One and four, please,” Keith said, holding out a paw.
“Geez! You don’t forget nothin’, do you? Okay, here.” He counted it in threepences and pennies, rattling a lot, taking his mouth-organ out and giving it another shake, a testing happy trill and a scrupulous rewrap.
“Let’s pick up the big boy again,” Keith said. “For kicks. We’ll ride right in to town!”
X
STUBBORNLY BERNARD REFUSED to take any action.
“No,” he said to Iris. “No. He has to work this one out himself. He’s alive, not far away, and in no trouble, thank God. He’ll be home. If anything were wrong we would have heard.”
Iris tantrumed for three insane hours while Bernard, far more anxious than he would for one tremblingly satisfying moment have revealed, made several pots of tea and continued to speak with a quiet reasonableness that only served to stimulate her rage.
“Why?” she screamed. “Why?”
“I simply forbid it,” Bernard explained, exerting moth-eaten authority.
Iris said, “But you hate me, you bastard! You’re only doing this because you hate me. Because it makes me sick with worry. You’re attacking me through him. Don’t you feel anything for your own child?”
After two hours of it, he lost his temper.
“Shut up, you madwoman,” he said, “or I’ll say a few things you won’t like.”
She narrowed her bloodshot eyes and challenged him.
“
Go on! Say your worst. You’ve never been a proper father to him, I mean a normal father, stuck in there with your music, your books.”
“At least I am his father,” Bernard said carefully. “But if we had a child now I wouldn’t be so sure.”
The blood paused in Iris’s face. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. And, my dear Iris, so does Keith. And that is partly the cause of this bother. Oh, don’t cry. If you do that I’ll want to hit you. You entered on your whole little romance dry-eyed—and I knew—yes! Don’t be surprised. I was the willing cuckold. And don’t deny. I thought it might brighten your life. After all, we didn’t seem to be going anywhere. What had I to lose—that I hadn’t already lost?”
Now that he exposed his indifference to her she hated him, perversely, longing for him to want what he gave away so readily.
“No,” he went outrageously on. “You had my blessing for what it was worth. Gerald was a clean, dull bore. But clean, Iris. I did like that clean bit. And I felt sorry for him, too, you know. It’s no good being hurt when I say that. Only another man understands what I mean. After all, what was he depriving me of?”
“You go on about it now quite a lot for a man who didn’t care.”
“But I didn’t, Iris. Rest assured. That was a nice comfy cliché, wasn’t it? But there was someone who did. Keith cared.”
“He never knew.”
“Ah yes. But he did.”
“How do you know?”
“In half a dozen ways that if you had been a more observant mother you might have noticed. The chief clue was his sudden aversion to you. Poor old Keith. He’d always missed out on something parental—father-love, you say. Yes. And then . . . boom! Mother virtue collapses.
“I don’t believe you. You’re only saying it to cover neglect.”
“No? Well, we can always ask him.”
Iris really wept then. “You couldn’t do that.”
“My dear, there is no need. Have you never watched young Seabrook and Keith together? Didn’t you ask yourself why they developed this unexpected attachment? They never used to be great friends, if you recall. Surely you asked yourself. Do you think for a minute that they haven’t spent days talking about it? Perhaps young Tom was speculating on you as a step-mama.”