A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  With her watching him, everything he did at school became important. When he answered a question in class, she waited anxiously to see if he was correct. If he cracked a joke in the corridor and made some fellow laugh, she smiled too and admired his sense of humour. When he rearranged the pens and pencils on his desktop or looked closely at his fingernails or the texture of his shirtsleeves, she studied every move he made and tried to guess its significance. Even when he sat motionless in his seat she tried to decide whether he was tired or puzzled or just saving his energy for a burst of hard work.

  She was learning a thousand little things about him—how his moods changed subtly from minute to minute, odd little habits he indulged in, the postures and gestures he preferred. For her benefit he deliberated over everything he did. Even in the playground he moved gravely and with dignity.

  Of course she couldn’t watch him every single moment of the day. Whenever he approached the toilet block she discreetly withdrew. He wasn’t embarrassed himself—he felt he knew her well enough to have her a few feet behind him while he stood up manfully to the urinal wall. But she was much too shy herself, especially when she saw the crowd of strange boys heading for the toilet block with their hands at their flies.

  It was hardly ever possible for her to watch Adrian in his own home. She hovered above him on his walk home from Accrington station and saw that he lived in a nearly new cream-and-green weatherboard in a swampy street. (She was intrigued to see him choose a different path each night through the lakes and islands in his street—it was one of those teasing little habits that made his personality so fascinating.) But when he stepped over his front gate she melted away so she wouldn’t have to see the dreary life he led with his family.

  He was glad she would never see his bedroom furniture—the wobbly bed he had slept in since he was three years old, the mirror that had once been part of his grandparents’ marble-topped washstand, and the cupboard that came originally from his parents’ room and was always known as the glory box. He would have been ashamed to let her see the patched short trousers and the pair of his father’s sandals that he wore around the house to save his school trousers and his only pair of shoes.

  After tea when his mother made him wash the dishes, he was relieved to think his Earth Angel was safe in her carpeted lounge room on the other side of Accrington, listening to her radiogram while he was up to his elbows in grey dishwater with yellow fatty bubbles clinging to the hairs on his wrists.

  Later at night when he was in trouble with his parents, and his father said that when he had been a warder he used to charge prisoners with an offence called dumb insolence for much less than Adrian was doing, he decided he would never even try to describe to his Earth Angel, even years later, how miserable he had been as a boy. And just before bed, when he stared into the bathroom mirror and pressed a hot washer against his face to ripen his pimples or held a mirror between his legs and tried to calculate how big his sexual organs would be when they were fully grown, he knew there were moments in a man’s life that a woman could never share.

  As soon as he was in bed he was reunited with her—not the girl who watched him all day at St Carthage’s but the twenty-year-old woman who was already his fiancée. He spent a long time each night telling her his life story. She loved to hear about the year when they met on the Coroke train and he was so infatuated that he used to imagine her watching him all day at school.

  While they were still only engaged, he didn’t like to tell her he had thought of her in bed too. But she would hear even that story eventually.

  Just out of Swindon, the Coroke train travelled along a viaduct between plantations of elms. On summer afternoons when the carriage doors were open, shreds of grass and leaves blew against the passengers, and the screech of cicadas drowned out their voices. The dust and noise made Adrian think of journeys across landscapes that were vast and inspiring but definitely not sensual.

  Every day in February his Earth Angel was in the same corner seat. Sometimes she glanced up at him when he stepped into her carriage. When this happened he always looked politely away. He was going to introduce himself to her at the right time, but until then he had no right to force his attentions on her.

  One afternoon on the Swindon station Adrian saw two fellows from his own class watching him from behind the men’s toilet. He suspected they were spies sent by Cornthwaite and the others to find out who the girl was who had turned Sherd away from film stars.

  Adrian edged along the platform before his Earth Angel’s train pulled in. That night he got into a carriage well away from her own. He did the same for the next two nights, just to be safe. During his three days away from her he kept humming the song ‘If You Missed Me Half as Much as I Miss You’.

  When he went back to her compartment again he thought she glanced at him a little more expressively than before. He decided to prove that he really was seriously interested in her and not just trifling with her affections.

  He waited for a night when all the seats in the compartment were filled, and he had to stand. He walked over and stood above her seat. He took out an exercise book and pretended to read from it. He held it so that the front cover was almost in front of her eyes. The writing on the cover was large and bold. He had spent half an hour in school that day going over and over the letters. It read:

  Adrian Maurice Sherd (Age 16)

  Form V

  St Carthage’s College, Swindon.

  She looked at the book almost at once, but then she lowered her eyes. Adrian wanted her to stare at it and learn all she could about him. But he realised her natural feminine modesty would prevent her from seeming too eager to respond to his advances.

  During the next few minutes she glanced at his writing twice more. He was still wondering how much she had read, when he saw her opening her own school case. She took out an exercise book. She pretended to read a few lines from it. Then she held it in front of her with her own name facing him.

  Adrian heard the blood roaring in his ears and wished he could kiss the gloved finger that held the name out naked and exposed for him to stare at. He read the delicate handwriting:

  Denise McNamara

  Form IV

  Academy of Mount Carmel, Richmond.

  When the train reached Accrington Adrian pretended to be in a hurry and dashed off into the crowd ahead of Denise. He did not want to look at her again until he had thought of a way to express the immense love and gratitude he felt for her.

  That night in bed he turned to her and said her name softly.

  ‘Denise.’

  ‘Yes, Adrian?’

  ‘Do you remember the afternoon in the Coroke train when you unfastened your case and took out an exercise book and held it in your dainty gloved hands so I could stare at your name?’

  •

  Adrian got used to calling her Denise instead of Earth Angel. Knowing her name made it much easier to talk to her in bed at night, although he still hadn’t spoken to her on the train.

  Each afternoon he stood or sat in her compartment and practised under his breath some of the ways he might start a conversation when the right time came.

  ‘Excuse me, Denise. I hope you don’t mind me presuming to talk to you like this.’

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Adrian Sherd, and yours, I believe, is Denise McNamara.’

  Whenever he glanced at Denise, she was grave and patient and understanding—just as she was at night when he talked to her for hours about his hopes and plans and dreams. She wasn’t anxious for him to babble some polite introduction. The bond between them did not depend on mere words.

  Their affair was not all peaceful. One night a girl from Canterbury Ladies’ College stood near Adrian on the Swindon station. She was one of the girls he used to see chatting to Eastern Hill boys on the trams. (Adrian wondered why she was waiting for a train to the outer suburbs when she should have lived deep in the shrubbery of a garden suburb.) If she got into his compartment and saw him l
ooking at Denise and guessed that the girl from Mount Carmel was his girlfriend, the Canterbury girls and Eastern Hill boys would laugh for weeks over the story of the Catholic boy and girl who travelled home together but never spoke.

  Adrian was ready to walk up to Denise and say the first thing that came into his head. But the Canterbury girl got into a first-class compartment, and he was free to go on courting Denise without being judged by non-Catholics who didn’t understand.

  Every day Adrian wrote the initials D. McN. on scraps of paper—and then scribbled them out so no one would know his girlfriend’s name. It bothered him that he couldn’t write her address or telephone number and enjoy the sight of them in private places like the back covers of his exercise books.

  One night he stood in a public telephone box and searched through the directory for a McNamara who lived in Accrington. There were two—I. A. and K. J. Adrian knew how to tell Catholic names from non-Catholic. He guessed the K. J. stood for Kevin John and decided that was Denise’s father. Kevin’s address was 24 Cumberland Road.

  Adrian found Cumberland Road in a street directory in a newsagent’s shop and memorised its location. Every night, walking down the ramp from the Accrington station a few paces behind Denise, he looked across the railway line in the direction of Cumberland Road. There was nothing to see except rows of white or cream weatherboard houses, but just knowing that her own house was somewhere among them made his stomach tighten.

  He longed for just one glimpse of her home, and envied the people who could stroll freely past it every day while he had to keep well away. If Denise saw him in her street she would think he was much too forward in his wooing. The only way to see her house was to sneak down Cumberland Road late at night, perhaps in some sort of disguise.

  On Saturday nights Adrian worried about Denise’s safety. He hoped her parents kept her inside the house, out of sight of the gangs of young fellows wandering the streets all over Melbourne. The newspapers called the young fellows bodgies, and every Monday the Argus had a story about a bodgie gang causing trouble. Bodgies didn’t often rape (most gangs had girl members known as widgies) but Adrian knew a bodgie wouldn’t be able to control himself if he met Denise alone on her way to buy the Saturday night newspaper for her father.

  Adrian looked through the racks of pamphlets in the Swindon parish church. He bought one called So Your Daughter Is a Lady Now? The picture on the cover showed a husband and wife with arms linked watching a young man with a bowtie draping a stole over their daughter’s shoulders. They were all Americans, and the girl was obviously going on a date. Denise hadn’t been on a date of course (Adrian himself would be the first and only man to date her) but she was old enough to attract the attention of undesirables.

  Adrian intended to warn her parents of their responsibilities. He sealed the pamphlet in an envelope addressed to Mr K. J. McNamara, 24 Cumberland Road, Accrington. He kept the envelope hidden in his schoolbag overnight. Next morning he could hardly believe he had planned to post it to Denise’s father. He saw Mr McNamara opening the envelope and holding up the pamphlet and saying to his daughter, ‘Got any idea who’d do an idiotic thing like this? Any young fellows been making calf’s eyes at you lately?’

  Denise looked at the young man in the bowtie and thought at once of Adrian Sherd who stood devotedly beside her seat in the train each afternoon. She was so embarrassed that she decided to travel in another carriage for a few weeks until Sherd’s ardour had cooled a little.

  Adrian tore up the pamphlet and burned the pieces. On the back of the envelope he rearranged the letters D-EN-I-S-E M-C-N-A-M-A-R-A, hoping to find a secret message about his and Denise’s future happiness. But all he could compose was nonsense:

  SEND ME IN A CAR, MA

  or SIN NEAR ME, ADAM C.

  or AM I A CAD, MRS NENE?

  He counted the letters in her name and took fourteen as his special number. Every morning at school he hung his cap and coat on the fourteenth peg from the end. Every Sunday in church he walked down the aisle counting the seats and sat in the fourteenth. He looked up the fourteenth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the fourteenth book of the Bible. It described Judah and the Israelites taking rich booty from captured cities. Adrian interpreted the text metaphorically. It meant that God was on his side and he would prosper in his courtship of Denise.

  One night he wrote the names of all the main towns in Tasmania on scraps of paper and shuffled them together. The fourteenth name he turned up was TRIABUNNA. The quiet little fishing port on the east coast was destined to be the place where he and his wife would consummate their marriage.

  The Tasmanian countryside was at its most beautiful in early autumn. In the days when dead elm leaves blew against the windows of the Coroke train, Adrian thought of the first days of his marriage.

  Sherd and his wife spent their wedding night on a ship crossing Bass Strait. The new Mrs Sherd was still shy in her husband’s presence. She went on chattering about the day’s events until nearly midnight. Sherd knew she was worried about undressing in front of him. When she couldn’t put off going to bed any longer he decided to make things easier for her. He took out a book and buried his face in it. He looked up at his wife once or twice, but only when she couldn’t see him.

  Sherd undressed quickly while his wife was kneeling with her face in her hands and saying her night prayers. Then he made her sit beside him on the bed. He kissed her gently and told her to forget all she might have heard from radio programs and films about the wedding night. He said he had never forgotten the story in the Bible about Tobias or someone who told his wife on their wedding night that they were going to pray to God instead of gratifying their passions.

  Sherd said, ‘The whole story of how we first met in Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Church and got to know each other on the Coroke train and then learned to love each other over the years is a wonderful example of how God arranges the destinies of those who serve Him.

  ‘I know you’re tired, darling, after all you’ve been through today, but I want you to kneel down beside the bed with me and say one decade of the Rosary just like Tobias and his bride on their wedding night.

  ‘We’re doing this for two reasons: first to thank God for bringing us together like this, and second’—Adrian hung his head and sighed, and hoped she realised he had been through a lot before he met her—‘because I want to make reparation for some sins of mine long ago and prove to God and you that I married you for love and not lust.’

  Sherd was surprised how easy it was to spend his wedding night like Tobias. While his wife dropped off to sleep beside him in her nightdress (should it have been a style recommended by the National Catholic Girls’ Movement, or was it all right in the privacy of the marriage bed for a Catholic wife to dress a little like an American film star to help her overcome her nervousness?) he lay with his hands crossed on his chest and congratulated himself.

  He remembered the year long before when his passions had been like wild beasts. Night after night he had grunted and slobbered over the suntanned bodies of American women. Nothing could stop him. Prayers, confession, the danger of hell, even the fear that he might ruin his health—they were all useless.

  Then he had met Denise McNamara, and in all the seven years since then he had committed not one sin of impurity, even in thought. Of course, many times during those seven years he had looked forward to marrying Denise. But he had proved on his wedding night that his dreams of marriage were certainly not inspired by any carnal desire.

  His only regret was that Denise herself would never know his story. He could hint to her that she had changed his life and saved him from misery. But in her innocence she could never imagine the filth she had rescued him from.

  Sherd lay awake for a long time thinking over the wonderful story of his life. As the ship neared the pleasant island of Tasmania, his heart overflowed with happiness at the thought of the weeks ahead. His honeymoon was the last chapter of a strange story. And one day he would write t
hat story in the form of an epic poem or a play in three acts or a novel. He would write it under a nom de plume so that he could tell the truth about himself without embarrassment. Even Denise would not know he was the author. But he would leave a copy in the house where she would see it and read it. She could not fail to be moved by it. They would sit down and discuss it together. And then the truth would slowly dawn on her.

  At school Adrian kept away from Cornthwaite and his former friends. He thanked God that they all lived on the Frankston line and never came near his train at night. He could never have faced Denise again if she had seen him with them and imagined they were his friends. He saw them leering at her and heard O’Mullane scoffing at him (almost loud enough for Denise to hear), ‘Christ on a crutch, Sherd, you mean you gave up your American tarts for her?’

  Adrian’s new friends were some of the boys whose names he had once marked with golden rays on a sketch of the classroom. They were obviously in the state of grace. All of them lived in garden suburbs and travelled home on trams. They talked a lot about the Junction. (Adrian eventually discovered that this was Camberwell Junction but he was not much wiser, since he had never been there.) Every night at the Junction, girls from Padua Convent crowded onto the boys’ trams. At St Carthage’s, Adrian’s friends squealed or waved their arms or pushed each other hard on the chest or staggered and reeled and did strange little dances whenever someone mentioned the Padua girls.

  At first Adrian wondered if he had stumbled onto something shocking—a pact of lust between these fresh-faced boys and the Padua girls. Groups of them were meeting in a park somewhere in tree-shaded Camberwell and behaving like young pagans together. But when he had listened closely to his friends for a few weeks and learned to ignore their animal noises and bird squawks, he realised the most they ever did was to talk to some of the Padua girls on the crowded trams (although some of the more daring fellows did play tennis with the girls on Saturday mornings).