I don’t think they minded. They had the money to send me to the school anyway. Although I knew my failure wouldn’t cause hardship, I was disappointed in myself. I had left Opportunity Class believing I was superior. It seemed that I wasn’t.
My mother spent the next few months working on the commission report. After the government was sacked, the commissioners had been ordered to wind up their work, and they had done so, with many of the staff writing their sections from home. Following the report’s leak to the press, and subsequent vilification by the new conservative government, my mother was angry. She told me that the people who had come to speak to the commissioners had been brave. It would have taken a lot of courage. She felt they had been let down.
Half-listening, I would have dismissed her talk as adult. After all, it was only politics, and I was too young to understand.
SARDINES
ON THE BEACH AT TERRIGAL, TWO HOURS NORTH OF Sydney, my brother Jonathan and I are eating water-melon. I am sunburnt and my pigtails are stiff straw, salt white against the sharp blue sea behind me. I still have my floaties on my arms, orange rubber pressing into the pink of my skin. Three years older than me, Jonathan is about seven and does not need any swimming aids. He is tall and lean, his tan dark, delicate rib lines visible in a frame that holds no hint of the man he will become.
We are looking at each other and I can tell we have been laughing. There are still tears in the corners of my eyes, and his smile is wide, revealing two missing front teeth. I don’t want the giggling to stop. I want to do something funny, tell a joke, smash the sandcastle we have built, anything to bring back the wild hysteria of moments before, but it never works like that. You can’t plan that kind of laughter. It just has to happen.
At the time that photograph was taken, Jonathan was my best friend and I had no reason to contemplate it would ever be any different. But, six years later, he was a teenager, and I began to lose him.
By then, my parents’ marriage had unravelled. They still lived together, although they fought most of the time. My father no longer came with us on summer holidays and my mother didn’t have to take his needs into account when she picked our January destinations. Gone was the neat rented shack on a popular family beach; the places to which we travelled became increasingly bizarre.
‘But what is it that we’ll be staying in?’ I would ask. ‘Will it have a roof?’
‘Of course it will,’ she would answer, brushing me aside with a phrase I had learnt to dread: ‘It’ll be fun. I promise.’
She had her current affairs program on radio at the time. Her voice was warm and she had an intelligence and humour that made her audience feel as though she was a friend. So much so that before the show went off air over the Christmas break, people would write to the station and offer her places to stay. Sometimes they would even approach her in the supermarket, talking to her as though they knew her, while we waited in the white cold of a frozen food aisle, and kicked at the trolley wheels, bored with shopping, even more irritated by the delay, as we listened to an unknown adult tell my mother about an old shack. It hadn’t been used for years. It was empty. We were welcome to go there.
My mother loved an adventure and she rarely said no. With a full-time job she also would have had little time to organise the holidays. It was an escape from eight long hot weeks at home, and she took it.
We would pack our yellow station wagon, loading everything into the boot and onto the roof-racks. My father would absent himself from the chaos, coming out to wave as we finally left. I was always glad he didn’t come with us. We all were. His obsession for order and cleanliness had worsened as we had grown. He was not a man who could live with the reality of children and pets bringing dirt and noise into a house he liked to keep immaculate. He, too, would have been grateful for the separation. As soon as we departed, he would begin to clean, not stopping until everything was spotless, the last white smear of wet powdered Ajax wiped away to reveal a perfection he could never attain with us around. Then he could sit in his study and listen to music, or wander the leafy streets of the suburb in which we lived and take photographs: close-ups of flowers, the wide petals of a red hibiscus open to the sun, iron lacework casting Cazneaux shadows across the worn boards of a verandah, or vistas of boats bobbing on pale harbour waters – all printed and carefully mounted on acid-free paper by the time we returned, the pages of the album not to be touched as we dutifully admired the images he had taken while we had been on holidays.
Our destinations were never close to Sydney, the heaviness of the summer night closing in before we reached the general vicinity of the place where we were going to stay.
‘Damn,’ my mother would say as the dirt road she had turned onto petered out into the darkness of scrub.
She would search for the directions she had scribbled onto a piece of paper, only to find that she’d forgotten them after all.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she would insist. ‘I can remember what they said.’ And she would turn the car around, the lights cutting through the black as we headed back to the main road.
The truth was, I didn’t really mind getting lost. The closer we came to the end of our journey, the greater my dread of what we would find on our arrival.
The Christmas before Jonathan started high school, my worst fears were realised. We had ended up at Nimbin, spending four long weeks visiting various drop-outs my mother knew who now lived in communes; naked hippies standing in the long grass and flicking flies away as they watched us pull up. I wanted to go home.
Jonathan, on the other hand, was totally happy. Always the first one to take his clothes off, he would wander into the lushness of the communal gardens or down onto nudist beaches with no inhibitions. Joshua, who was only six, was right behind him.
At almost ten, I was horrified. I probably would have been just as dismayed at seven, fifteen or even thirty. I didn’t want to holiday without my clothes. I had been given a new Brian Rochford bikini for Christmas (ice blue with dark blue leopards on it) and I kept it on for the entire fortnight, insisting on remaining at the house in which we were staying, reclining in a banana lounge under the knotted shade of a mango tree, never looking up from my dog-eared copy of Valley of the Dolls, until they returned from their visits to neighbouring communes.
The holiday was a particular low point, I told my mother on our return, an experience I didn’t want to repeat, and I made her promise that the next year she would take us somewhere better, at the very least somewhere inhabited by people who weren’t naked.
The following Christmas, Jonathan had just finished his first year of high school. I overheard him talking to my mother in the kitchen. He didn’t want to come away, but when she pointed out that staying at home would mean two months alone with my father, he knew he had no choice. Could he bring a friend? he asked. She told him he could.
On the morning of our departure, Steve was dropped off at our house. His long blond fringe covered most of his face. In one hand he clutched a canvas bag; under the other arm, he held a unicycle.
We drove for eight hours before we reached Candelo; a small town that stretched out along a green valley, split in two by a river. Through the heavy rains we saw the sign: Bridge Closed. The house we had borrowed was on the other side, and it seemed it was going to be impossible to get there.
‘Well, I’m not sure what we’ll do,’ my mother confessed, finally admitting that even she was finding this particular adventure a little difficult.
It was late and the only building that had any lights on was the pub.
‘I guess that’s where we’re staying,’ and she pulled up outside the front.
Dripping wet and tired, we waited in the darkness of the hall, the smell of stale beer, cigarettes and damp making me feel ill, while my mother went to find the owner. It had happened again, and I looked at Jonathan for some confirmation that he, too, had expected nothing less than disaster. But he was gone. Standing by the cigarette machine in the front bar, he and
Steve quickly made their selection, the pack hidden under Steve’s T-shirt by the time my mother returned.
We stayed in that pub for two nights. Joshua and I shared a room, Jonathan and Steve shared another. They were getting their first pimples, and they had their own private jokes. They emerged only for meals, stinking of smoke, eyes red and distant, giggling to each other. Steve still managed to talk to us, Jonathan would just look at us and grin inanely at anything we said.
My mother asked them if they were smoking marijuana. She didn’t want them doing it, she said. They were too young.
They both just shook their heads vigorously and collapsed in a fit of laughter.
I spent the days under the shelter of the verandah, trying to get the cockatoo in the cage to talk to me. Squawking at the pounding of the rain on the tin roof, he would hop from perch to perch, never even glancing in my direction. But when Jonathan came out, he cocked his head to the side, his ’ello shrill and startling.
On the third morning, we finally left, driving up a steep dirt road that wound its way through wind-worn country, littered with boulders. Looking out at the broad sweep of hills rolling under the now blue sky, I imagined living there. Lone daughter of farmers, I would ride out, my horse and I at one with the land. Perhaps I would have to go to boarding school? I slipped quickly into a new scenario where I ruled the dormitories, all the girls clamouring to come home to my place over the holidays. And then my vision became grander. Our property was huge, there were tennis courts, swimming pools, stables …
The cattle-grid was signposted with the name of the house, and my mother crossed gingerly, the car’s suspension grating as it scraped metal. Jonathan, tall and gangly, followed Steve up the stony track as they ran ahead to open the gates. I wanted to go too, but they were out the door before I could join them. I watched them both, my brother always slightly behind, always the one who was seeking approval.
In the past year Jonathan had started to get into trouble, stealing sweets from the newsagent and skipping school. He spent most nights in his room, drawing tortured charcoal pictures of Christ on the Cross and listening to Pink Floyd or David Bowie. When I knocked on his door, hoping he would let me in, he just turned the music up. Unwilling to let him go, I tried to be bad. Once I even suggested that we climb out his window for a smoke, and he had looked at me in surprise. I produced my cigarette, rolled up lawn clippings in a sheet of paper. I lit it and it burst into flames, acrid and choking. He just watched me in disgust, and then left me alone trying to put out the sparks of ash that danced across the sunroom roof.
When he wasn’t ignoring me, we fought. He would go into an impenetrable rage, sometimes lifting me up and carrying me out of the room, other times picking up whatever was close to hand (a cup, a plate, once even a hammer) and throwing it at me. No doubt, I had been needling him, doing anything to get a response. The more I tried, the worse it became.
‘I don’t want you telling people I’m your brother,’ he used to say.
I didn’t understand.
‘And you must never walk on the same side of the street as me. No one must know we’re together.’
‘But people know already,’ I protested.
It was the kids at high school he was worried about, not the neighbours. He didn’t want his new friends to see him taking his little sister to the shop.
His friend Steve didn’t seem to find me an embarrassment. I liked him. We all liked him, and in his presence Jonathan relaxed a little. Closing the last gate behind them, they ran ahead, reaching the front verandah as we pulled up at the end of the driveway. Steve took his unicycle off the roof of the car while my mother tried to find the keys. He rode round and round, weaving his way through the overgrown fruit trees, their twisted branches hung with only two or three small tart apples or pears.
‘Want a go?’ he asked me, and I shook my head, still shy when he spoke directly to me.
With the contents of my mother’s bag now spread out across the bonnet, and no keys to be seen, Steve volunteered to break in.
‘Easy,’ he said with the air of a pro, and he pointed out a small open window down the side of the house.
Jonathan and my mother hoisted him up, and he wriggled through the gap, collapsing with a thud on the other side.
‘You all right?’ we called out.
‘Steve?’ My mother’s voice was anxious.
He had made his way to the front and was waiting for us there at the door.
‘Jesus,’ he grinned. ‘What a dump.’
‘We can fix it up,’ my mother said, seeing my face.
‘It’ll be great,’ Steve added, matching her enthusiasm.
‘Bags this room.’ Jonathan opened the door on the largest bedroom.
Although I wanted to sleep with them, he wouldn’t have a bar of it. I was to be excluded, left to hang out with Joshua. And without looking at me, he slammed the door in my face.
When we were little, Jonathan and I knew how to send each other from a sly snicker to uncontrollable laughter within minutes. The game was in fighting it, knowing that you were inevitably going to give in, and it was a game we particularly liked to play at meal times. It began with a certain kind of giggle, and it was always Jonathan who started. I tried not to look at him. But I also couldn’t resist. Glancing across, I would start to smile, sucking my top lip to smother the mirth. It never took long. When he snorted into his food, I, too, would know I was gone, soon snorting in unison, desperately pretending I wasn’t.
After a few minutes, our parents no longer found it amusing.
‘Come on,’ they would say. ‘What’s so funny?’
We would be laughing so hard it was impossible to answer.
‘Enough’s enough,’ my father would tell us, and we would try to stop, but each time one of us looked at the other, we would begin again.
Often we had to be separated. Jonathan would eat his dinner in the dining room while I would finish mine in the kitchen. He would bring his plate in and I would attempt to keep my gaze fixed on my own meal, but the temptation was too much. Eventually I would peek, furtively, in his direction, only to find him also glancing across at me, and we would both collapse again, me spluttering out my mouthful of food, him doubling over.
Being older than I was, Jonathan gave up the game before I did. There was a brief period in which I refused to let go, but any attempt I made to rekindle that hysteria never worked. I had to face it, the laughter at meal times had stopped.
Years later, when he was psychotic, Jonathan took it up again. It was, of course, so very different to the way it used to be, and I would watch him, sad, angry and completely excluded from the strangeness of the joke. As we sat at the table, trying to talk, he would be looking at his plate, grinning to himself and muttering. The muttering would intensify, punctuated by short bursts of manic giggling.
‘What’s so amusing,’ my mother once asked, trying, as she often did, to find some way in to his world.
Lifting his gaze, he smiled, a wide leering distant smile that had no focus. ‘My ice-cream,’ he told her.
‘What about your ice-cream?’
He brushed his thick greasy hair back from his forehead, and leant forward. ‘It’s telling me some very funny things,’ and he pushed the bowl towards her. ‘Here, you should listen.’
At Candelo, my mother told me to give Jonathan ‘some space’.
‘They won’t let me in,’ I complained every time I tried to open their door, only to find that a chair was wedged against the handle. ‘I think they’re smoking again,’ I said, bored and wanting to force her into action.
Locked out in the hall, I could hear Jonathan’s laughter and I hated it. It was fake, I thought; his giggles no more than an attempt to show Steve how out of it he was. But, after a week of rain, they, too, became bored. It was Steve who came out and suggested a game of cards.
‘It stinks in here,’ I said, and it did; the air was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke and unwashed teenage boys
. In the corner were a couple of bottles of beer, hastily covered with old T-shirts. I wondered where they had got them. I wanted to see the marijuana they had been smoking, curious as to what it actually looked like, but it had been hidden.
Poker was the game we played, dividing up matches between the three of us. The rain drummed on the roof and into all the bowls, saucepans and cups put out to catch the leaks that drip-drip-dripped down upon our heads. We bet more and more, the stakes rising so high that we had to go and get two and then three more boxes of matches from the kitchen.
After an hour or so, Steve and I ganged up on Jonathan. Bluffing our way through numerous hands, betting ridiculous amounts, our aim was to send him broke, and we were aided by a fourth and secret box of matches Steve had stashed in his shorts. With all of Steve’s attention on me, I was supremely happy, but Jonathan had had enough.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said.
Steve looked at the pouring rain. ‘It’s pissing down.’
Jonathan just nodded his head towards the corner of the room, mouthing the word ‘smoke’ as he did so.
He didn’t need to say any more. I was dismissed.
But that night they emerged again. Steve wanted to make a ouija board. He’d seen one before. They were excellent, he said. You could speak to the dead. We cleared the dinner table and my mother joined us as we set up the circle of letters.
‘Is there anyone there?’ Steve asked. The glass moved aimlessly for a few minutes and then glided towards the letter ‘Y’. ‘That means yes,’ Steve told us, his enthusiasm rendering him completely unaware that we were capable of guessing that for ourselves.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked the question this time, and I watched as the glass jerked backwards and forwards in the centre, finally moving towards the letters.
This time the word ‘friend’ was spelt out for us, and Steve leant forward, brushing his hair back from his face as he repeated the word over and over again.
Births Deaths Marriages Page 4