Perhaps after all there was going to be a reign of justice.
I didn’t see Johnno again till the next Saturday evening. I was up by then. I limped to Mayfield’s to get the Sporting Globe, and there was Johnno outside the shop, behaving very queerly. Once or twice he nearly went in, but at the last minute he changed his mind and instead read the posters as if they were tremendously important. All they said was MAGPIES FAVOURED FOR PREMIERSHIP and SCULLIN ACCUSES BRUCE, but he must have studied them five times. Then he walked away, but at the last minute changed his mind and came back again, travelling sideways like a crab.
As I crossed the street he saw me and tried to behave naturally, but when he realized I was going into the shop he was hardly able to speak. He followed me in, walking close behind me. I saw then that Noreen Logan had taken a job there and was serving behind the counter. She had only left school at the end of the past year and now was all curves and lipstick and eye-shadow and looked about twenty.
Johnno followed me to the counter and picked up a paper and began to read it as if his life depended on it. Mr Mayfield, who was an elder in the Presbyterian church, said, “Lad, I don’t like to see young fellows reading Beckett’s Budget.”
Johnno dropped it quickly. I doubt that it could have harmed him—he had been holding it upside down.
Noreen turned to us and arched her eyebrows.
“Yes please?” she said to Johnno.
Johnno motioned dumbly towards me.
“Globe,” I said, deliberately omitting “please”. I wanted to show the way I imagined girls should be managed.
She brought it to me and I said carelessly, “Can you change ten bob?”
She frowned—probably because she couldn’t work out the change. Johnno said quickly, “I’ve got threepence. I owe it to you anyhow for that time at the pictures.”
He fumbled in his pockets and managed to bring it out. How he had come by this much money was a mystery. He held it out to Noreen, looking like a dog that has brought back a stick.
“Thank you, Freddie,” she said softly. Freddie!
Johnno’s eyes hardly left her. I trod on his foot, but he didn’t even notice. She leant her elbows on the newspapers and said, “Cold, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Johnno dumbly. It would have been the same had she said hot or windy or anything else. Another customer came in, but Noreen still leant there while Johnno gazed at her.
Mr Mayfield came from the library section and looked at us disapprovingly. “Noreen, a lady is waiting.” Then to us he said, “All right, boys, time to leave.”
“Yes,” said Johnno vaguely, not attempting to move. I caught hold of his arm and led him out of the shop.
I said, “I guessed it must be something like this; something low and sissy.”
He didn’t even hear me. He punched me joyfully in the ribs and pranced along like a racehorse. “Don’t you reckon she’s beaut?”
“She’s a drip,” I said. “She was a drip even in the first grade.”
“—and the dress she had on,” said Johnno, staring straight ahead. “Reminds me of Norma Talmadge—”
“You’re mad, Johnno,” I said.
He still didn’t hear me. I left him abruptly, but I don’t think he even noticed me go. He was still prancing along and was nothing like the real Johnno.
I limped home in low spirits. Johnno’s company was as good as gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Whatever else was wrong, school had improved remarkably. While old Moloney thrashed the sixth grade, Miss Beckenstall had us read David Copperfield in a way that brought the book to life. We had been about half-way through it and until then it had been dull stuff read without pause or explanation. Miss Beckenstall gave us each a part: David for me, Mr Micawber for Squid, Steerforth for Johnno, and so on.
“I don’t like being Steerforth,” said Johnno. “Look what he’s done to Little Emily.”
I wasn’t sure what he had done to Little Emily; in any case Little Emily was being read by Janet Baker, who had nothing to recommend her.
“A chap’s really bad if he’s tough on women,” said Johnno, gazing into the distance.
I looked at his face. It seemed to be looking sillier every day.
I tried to be serious. “It depends who the woman is.”
“Well, Little Emily now—”
“She’s only in a book.”
He hadn’t heard me. “I’d drop Steerforth cold.” He punched the air absent-mindedly.
There was no need for this—Steerforth was drowned next day. “He must have been a hell of a swimmer,” said Johnno afterwards.
With Miss Beckenstall we cleared up simultaneous equations quickly. She taught them so well that I believed I had discovered the art for myself. One day she called Johnno and me in while she was alone in the room eating her lunch. She told us to sit down and kept us waiting a few moments while she folded her serviette.
I looked at her carefully for the first time. Her hair was fair and smooth and was drawn back the way Sappho wore it in the picture over the blackboard. Her eyes were grey, and quick to change expression. It struck me all at once that she was beautiful. Before that moment a woman’s beauty had meant nothing to me. I gazed at her warmly. She glanced up and smiled faintly. I felt my face get hot and turned quickly to see if Johnno had noticed anything, but he was looking absently out of the window.
Miss Beckenstall finished folding her serviette and said in a friendly voice, “You know, I had heard that you boys didn’t work well, but this is something I can scarcely believe. I am very pleased indeed with both of you. I want you to promise me one thing: if you haven’t understood anything, or if you want help, always come to me.”
I felt surprised at the keenness we suddenly showed.
“You both have quite a gift for self-expression. I want to encourage you in your composition writing to express yourselves as freely as possible. I’m sure we can catch up any lost ground in mathematics. You only need to believe in yourselves.”
When we went outside Johnno said, “She’s terrific. She looks a bit like Noreen—”
“No,” I interrupted. “Hell no!”
He shook his head in a puzzled way. “You’re queer about girls, all right.”
I didn’t answer this. I looked at all the others, yelling as they played kick-the-kick out in the school ground. None of them really knew Miss Beckenstall as I did.
After lunch Miss Beckenstall took poetry. Usually we recited together with Moloney standing in front like a conductor, his eyes darting round the room to catch those who didn’t know the piece he had set.
“An’ when the cheery camp-fire
Ex-plores the bush with gleams—”
“Sit up, Gale!”
“The camping grounds were crow-ded
With cara-vansa teams—”
“D’dah, d’dah, d’dah-dah,” from someone behind who didn’t know it.
“Out here, Benson. This is poetry, the finest expression of our language, and you slouch in your desk chewing!”
Miss Beckenstall was not at all like this. She told us she would read a poem called “Ulysses” which was in blank verse. Here was Ulysses living at home after his travels. Even though he was old he was longing to make one more journey.
“Now I want you to listen carefully.”
At first it sounded strange; but later I began to see it all:
“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
I saw the boat launched at evening below “Thermopylae” and Johnno and one or two others bending with me at the oars. In the bows, looking towards the setting sun, stood Miss Beckenstall . . . .
“That poetry was pretty good,” said Johnno afterwards. “That part ‘To strive, to seek, to find; but’—something or other.”
We looked across the sea as we walked home, across to the faint coast on the other side of the bay. Over there somewhere were the Otways, one of those places where Johnno had said he would find a hiding place when he ran away. He hadn’t mentioned running away for some weeks. Perhaps spring had dissuaded him.
Next day he said, “We haven’t climbed Lone Pine for a while.”
We walked to it through the bush and climbed without a word to the board seat at the top. As soon as we had settled there with the town spread below and all the country sunny to the horizon, Johnno pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. He said, “Last night I wrote something—it’s poetry. I’ll read it—no, you’d better read it, but not out loud.”
I leant round the trunk and took it from him. “What’s it called?”
“It hasn’t got a name. It’s not even finished.”
Through a lot of crossing-out I read,
“We stood alone beside the sea,
The girl with honey hair and me
And no one else at all to see
And wind and sea all blowing free—”
It went on like this for three or four more lines till they “came home for tea”.
“Pretty good,” I said.
“No, it’s lousy,” he replied. “I got stuck on ‘ee’ every time I wrote a line. I didn’t know how to stop.”
“‘Honey hair’ sounds messy,” I admitted.
“Well,” he said, looking a long way off, “that’s what it’s like—you know, like sun shining through honey.”
“What’s like honey?”
He didn’t answer and I couldn’t see him for the trunk.
“You’re mad if you think that dumb Logan girl’s got hair like that.”
He said loudly, “If you weren’t my mate I’d dump you fair out of the tree!”
“Mate?” I repeated bitterly. “I only see you at school.”
“Well,” he said sighing to himself. “I don’t know—it’s hard to talk about.”
“Did you meet her at the dance?”
“Yes,” he admitted from behind the trunk.
“You danced with her?”
“In a tap dance I tapped her and no one tapped me, so we had the whole dance.”
I peered round the trunk at him. He looked ridiculous with his carefully brushed hair and his pimples with the tops shaved off and his huge hands.
“I’m sorry for you,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk,” he replied.
We climbed down despondently and even Miss Beckenstall didn’t cheer me.
During the rest of the week Johnno must have been thinking things over. On the Friday he said brightly, “What about walking to Coles Bay tomorrow?”
The suggestion reminded me of old times, but I answered casually, “Not a bad idea. What time?”
“About ten,” he said. “We could take something to grill for lunch.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Coles Bay was about three miles along the coast. A track wound to it along the cliff-top shut in most of the way by dense tea-tree. Here and there through gaps you could look down on the sea, on clear days right to the bottom, to greenish sand and rocks. Once we had swum there, exploring outcrops of rock under the water in a silent world with the sea around like curtains. Near the bottom we had seen something move. The sand had begun to rise like slow smoke and we had shot up together.
“Do you reckon on swimming this time?”
It was September, the month we usually started again.
“Too cold yet,” said Johnno.
“Well, if it’s warm enough when we get to the bay we can go in without togs—there’s never anyone around there.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Johnno. “They say a lot of people walk that way now just to see the view.”
We took no togs. The day was the first really warm one we had had. We took sausages with us, and up above the sea grilled them over a tea-tree fire. Stooped there we grew hotter and hotter.
The sea was making lapping sounds along the bottom of the cliffs and the sun shone brilliantly on its surface.
“I’m going for a swim anyhow,” I said.
Johnno shook his head. “You should wait an hour after a meal—probably an hour and a half after a meal like this.”
I looked at him. “You used to go in any time. When we raided Collins’ orchard, you ate quinces with water up to your neck.”
“I didn’t know then,” he answered evasively. “Not long after that I saw a girl dragged out, just up from the town. They were trying resuscitation, but she was the colour your foot was. She didn’t come round and they said it was because she had gone in after a meal.”
I found this hard to accept from Johnno, but when we lay on a sloping, grassy spot I felt too drowsy to care. Even without sitting up we could see beyond our feet on to the backs of gulls skimming above the water. Their cries came up to us mixed with the lapping sounds. Spring was coming all around us.
I was dozing there, dreaming that Miss Beckenstall was reading to me, when Johnno said, “We’d better get going.”
“You woke me up,” I said irritably. “Anyhow, let’s stay here.”
“All right,” he said, looking around uneasily. He remained sitting while I lay down and slipped back to dreaming. Presently Miss Beckenstall took up her position in the bows and the brown sailors hoisted the sail. Sitting with the sun behind her she began reading above the sound of the sea:
“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags . . . .”
She read slowly. The sailors worked around us without a word. Miss Beckenstall wore a biblical-looking garment, caught by some sort of ancient brooch at her shoulder.
“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round—”
“What d’ you know!” cried a female voice. “Fancy meeting you boys here!”
Miss Beckenstall disappeared into the sea and beside us stood Noreen Logan and a friend of hers, Kitty Bailey, a dumb willowy blonde who had left school about a year ago to work the cash register at the Continental café. The two of them stood in the sunshine in summer frocks, swaying their hips and swinging their beads and making sure their jazz garters were in view. All at once I felt strangled. I looked at Johnno, but he avoided my eye.
“We were just out strolling—such a div-ine day.”
“So ser-lubrious,” added Kitty.
Still I could find nothing to say. The sight of them, so confident, brought a paralysis over me.
“And what are you men doing?” asked Noreen, looking interestedly down on us.
“We’ve just had lunch,” said Johnno hoarsely. “Sausages.”
“Yum, yum! We should of come sooner, Kit.”
Kit rolled her eyes. I burst out to Johnno, “I thought no one came here?”
“Well—” He waved his hand helplessly.
“Some people,” said Noreen, “some people think they own the whole town—and everyone in it, too.”
“You mean me?”
“No, no; not you, sweet boy. Kitty, lend me a cigarette, there’s a dear.”
Kitty produced a packet of Magpies and a box of matches and the two of them began puffing expertly, hand on hip. Johnno looked embarrassed.
“
May we sit down? Gentlemen usually ask ladies to sit down, you know.”
“Yes, yes,” said Johnno quickly.
They held their skirts delicately and sank beside us. Kitty adopted me and Johnno and Noreen began talking in low voices; I remained silent, my face hot.
“The view here is simply gor-geous, don’t you think?” Kitty looked at me over the tip of her cigarette.
“I suppose so,” I said.
I smelt the sea and her perfume and the coming of spring, a blending that was pleasantly disturbing, despite my annoyance.
“Have you been for a swim?”
“No,” I answered.
“I saw you swimming last year—you’re terrifically fast, aren’t you?”
“Not as fast as Johnno.”
“Oh, Freddie’s fast, isn’t he? Just ask Noreen!”
I couldn’t find an answer to this subtlety. I stared down at the ashes of our fire.
Kitty looked sadly out to sea. “You don’t like girls, do you?”
“They’re all right, I suppose.”
She turned towards me so that her bobbed hair blew over her face. “Freddie does,” she said.
“Does what?”
“Well, he likes Noreen.” She butted her cigarette and took out a compact and began operating on her lips. I watched this repair work in a kind of trance.
“Kitty, pet,” said Noreen, interrupting, “me and Fred think we might walk a little way; we want a tat-a-tat, don’t we, Freddie?”
Freddie made an embarrassed sound in his throat.
“Do you and Charlie want to sit here, or will you toddle, too?”
“Oh,” said Kitty, “we might sit a while, don’t you think, Charlie? Perhaps we’ll follow—but not too close, eh?” She smothered a giggle.
Noreen stood up and brushed her frock and turned to see if it had crushed.
“Oh, Freddie, I’ve left my handbag on the ground.”
Freddie picked it up like Gyp picking up the morning paper. Then they went off together. I looked after them and saw Fred take her hand. Here was the worst mark of a sissy, and this was Johnno holding her hand!
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