Fergus McPhail

by David McRobbie

  ‘Um, a flat.’ Senga goes into raptures. ‘It’s wonderful, so light and airy.’

  ‘So’s your old room,’ Mum says, giving Dad a look because the four-by-three is still jammed up through the ceiling. We mounted the television aerial on top of it so now we get better reception. Still no colour, but we suspect Great Aunt Bronny’s television might be a black and white one anyway.

  ‘I forgive you for my room, Dad,’ Senga says kindly.

  ‘More than I do for the piano,’ Jennifer scowls.

  ‘We’ll have to see this place,’ Mum suggests. ‘Maybe we should have checked it out before you moved in.’

  ‘Soon,’ Senga agrees. ‘But I’m so busy.’ She changes the subject. ‘One thing I miss is your cooking, Mum.’

  Which is why I am sent hotfoot through the streets with a plastic container of beef casserole, searching for my sister’s new abode, which she has described to us as ‘the last house in Hunter Street.’ Senga forgot to add that it is the last house left standing in Hunter Street. She also omitted to mention that the entire precinct is condemned, the rest of the houses having already gone the way of the bulldozer and the wrecker’s ball.

  I ease back a sheet of corrugated iron and slide inside. It is gloomy. A staircase leads upwards. Graffiti is everywhere. Die Mortal and Calamity be my Friend.

  ‘Hello,’ I call.

  ‘Who’s that?’ a bearded face says. ‘Is it some usurious brigand from the fascist council?’ The owner of the face stands wafting in the draught at the top of the stairs, a weedy sort of underfed guy wearing sandals, baggy shorts and despite the cold, a T-shirt saying Hell Burns - Stay Away From It.

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Looking for Senga McPhail. Got some food.’ I show him Mum’s beef casserole.

  ‘Vegetarian?’

  ‘When it was alive,’ I agree. But Senga herself appears behind the bearded figure.

  ‘Fergus.’ She sounds doubtful, worried and slightly shame-faced, all at the same time. ‘Come up.’

  ‘Great place, eh?’ I mount the creaking stairs. ‘If you’re filming a haunted house movie.’ The bearded guy disappears and Senga leads me into her room where there is a camp bed, an Ikebana suitcase and a kerosene lamp plus a high wind. The place is light and airy because there is no window glass. ‘Thought you’d still be at work, Senga.’

  ‘Ah,’ says my sister. ‘Ah’ in that context means, I’ve lost my job, I quit, I was downsized, take your pick.

  ‘Gee,’ I say. ‘Gee’ used like that means, I am not impressed with these living arrangements. Be it ever so humble, it’s not as good as her room at home. Even with the dampness and a four-by-three rammed through the ceiling, it’s better than this.

  ‘You won’t tell Mum, will you?’ Senga bites her lip.

  ‘She’ll need to know something,’ I say.

  ‘Invent.’ Senga urges me. ‘Paint a better picture.’

  ‘You’d need a real estate guy for that,’ I tell her. ‘Besides, Mum wants to visit. She sees this place it’ll bring on the baby. That’ll look good on the birth certificate. Place of Birth: A squat.’

  ‘Look, I had to get away, Fergus. Too many restrictions in that place.’

  ‘At least at home there’s a sink in the kitchen.’ As I look around, the bearded guy enters without knocking because there’s no door.

  ‘So what about this food, then?’ Senga introduces him as Leon, who is some kind of unemployed philosopher, guru and all-round spokesperson for whatever cause needs speaking up for. I leave him fishing the parsnips out of Mum’s casserole and go home in a depressed frame of mind. My sister, living in a squat.

  The second week of holidays begins with Dad pointing out what I’ve already noticed for myself: Rodney next door has still not been at his drums lately. This fills me with wild hope. It could mean Rodney has gone away on a skiing holiday or better still, he’s got tired of them. Lambert was right. I should have waited and we could have had the drums. But impetuosity was always my downfall. Plus zits and a general air of unattractiveness.

  When Mum demands a report on Senga’s new address, I do as my sister asked and describe a different environment without actually lying.

  ‘It’s pretty basic, Mum.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Furniture?’

  ‘Yep.’ (A camp bed is furniture.)

  ‘Who’s she sharing with?’

  ‘A guy called Leon.’

  ‘I see.’ Mum stiffens. ‘Same room?’

  ‘Oh, no, Mum,’ I assure her primly. ‘Leon’s not into stuff like that. He’s a guru.’

  ‘Isn’t that an animal?’ Dad demands from the sofa where his leg is still giving him gyp.

  ‘You’re thinking of a gnu.’

  ‘A canoe’s a boat.’ Dad is totally lost now. Thanks to his input, my double-dealing description gets a bit diluted and Mum eases off temporarily but both parents continue to fret about the situation. For this, Senga owes me big time.

  A day and a half later, Senga comes home all in a breathless rush. We are to visit her new place this afternoon, but she’s very specific about the time because she only has an hour away from work. Then Senga skips off to continue with her busy lifestyle, leaving Mum with narrowed eyes.

  We make the trip to the new place, which miraculously is no longer in Hunter Street, but in Hillsden Avenue in a block of exclusive units. A lift takes us up to the third floor where Senga greets us warmly and ushers us in.

  ‘This place must cost a bomb,’ Dad says, fingering the woodwork by the front door.

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ Senga laughs an upmarket laugh. ‘As if I could afford it on my own. I share with two other girls.’

  ‘Even so,’ Dad muses, ‘a third of the rent of this place must add up to big bikkies.’

  As Mum and Dad sip tea from fine china, they look around Senga’s tastefully decorated and furnished lounge room which owes a lot to Vogue Living. Then a baby cries from the next room.

  ‘A baby?’ Mum raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Belongs to one of the other girls,’ Senga explains. ‘I’m minding it for her.’ She gets up quickly to check on the infant.

  And later, after a few hints and some urging from Senga, we go down in the lift again, silent now, thinking our own thoughts. On the ground floor, we pass another couple heading for the lift, a man and a woman.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Mum says.

  ‘Yes,’ the man agrees.

  ‘Yuppies,’ Dad observes.

  ‘Shh,’ Mum cautions. ‘They’ll hear.’

  ‘Who the hell were they?’ I overhear the yuppie woman ask before the lift door closes on them. Unlike us, they don’t give a toss who hears, which is a yuppie hallmark.

  In the street, Mum looks up at the third floor unit where Senga recently entertained us to tea and nibblies.

  ‘Fergus, where is she living?’

  ‘I thought it was nice, Mum,’ I say. Anything to change the subject, but my mother is on to me in a- flash.

  ‘Out with it, Fergus! You know. Don’t you?’

  I am in our straggly front yard, pulling weeds out by the roots when Mitch comes by with news of Sophie. He says she mentioned my name, but was nice about it, didn’t sneer or curl her lip. It brings everything rushing back, that magic moment on her doorstep where Sophie was about to kiss me. Or me about to kiss her. It was a mutual thing but it’s gone now.

  ‘So what did she say?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, just general chat,’ Mitch answers then he wants to talk about other things. ‘I reckon Rodney’s gone off the drums.’

  ‘Me too,’ I agree. ‘I live next door.’

  ‘I heard he’s into blading only he fell in the pool twice and they got rusty.’ Mitch points to a weed that I missed. I want to steer the conversation back to Sophie, without making it too obvious.

  ‘So what else did old Sophie say?’

  ‘She’d been to a movie.’

  ‘Yeah, and -?’

  ‘General stuff.�
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  ‘So make it specific. What did she say about - me?’

  I now don’t bother to hide my interest. ‘Did she ask questions or make statements?’

  ‘Want me to write it down?’ Mitch goes on. Then he relents. ‘She asked what you were doing for the holidays, and -’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She asked if you ever mentioned her.’ Mitch pauses. ‘She seemed sort of sad, Fergus.’

  ‘Maybe it was the movie,’ I suggest.

  ‘Could be.’ Mitch heads off, leaving me with my weeds and thinking about Sophie and the way her hair fell on my arm then the way she straightened up and looked at me. The last of the weeds comes out to join the pile.

  If Rodney’s off his drum kit then maybe it’s time to make a move in that direction, if only to take my mind off things.

  Senga shows up at home just before we are about to sit down to a family dinner. This time she has her suitcase and Leon comes too. His T-shirt says: Honk if you are a goose.

  ‘Mum,’ Senga announces, ‘we’ve had a bit of a problem with our house.’

  ‘Peace,’ says Leon, looking at the food.

  ‘It seemed a nice place to me,’ Mum says with heavy irony. ‘What sort of problem was it exactly?’

  ‘It had a collision,’ Leon tells us, ‘with a council bulldozer. They fell on us like thieves in the night. That rapacious scum has a lot to answer for. National Socialist dregs and droppings! Sneaking up on us.’

  ‘With bulldozers?’ Jennifer asks. ‘Some sneak!’ The rest of it is soon explained. The council finished the demolition of Hunter Street, removing the last house to create room for a cemetery. It’s usually the other way round. So homeless Senga returns to the fold. Secretly, I’m happy. She begs for outcast Leon to be allowed to stay until he finds a place. A couple of days. Tops. Not so secretly and for reasons of space, I’m less happy. Dad looks at his rapidly cooling dinner.

  ‘But what exactly is - you know - the arrangement here?’

  ‘Dad means, are you two shacked up?’ Jennifer asks the question on everyone’s lips.

  ‘Jennifer!’ Mum frowns. ‘The expression is cohabiting or living in sin.’ But she turns to Senga all the same.

  ‘Oh, mother, Leon’s not my boyfriend,’ Senga assures us. ‘For Leon, the concept of boyfriend and girlfriend is an outmoded notion.’

  ‘Even for procreation,’ Leon adds helpfully.

  ‘That’s making babies,’ Jennifer explains.

  ‘Leon’s a guru,’ Senga tells us.

  ‘Here we go,’ Dad huffs. ‘We’re back to the boats.’

  ‘But, where’s he going to actually sleep?’ Mum wonders. ‘Senga can have her old room back - alone, of course. With the door shut.’

  I’ll say this for my parents, they’d never embarrass any of their children, apart from Mum being eight months pregnant and Dad’s flatulence. If Senga offers Leon a bed at our place, then that’s what happens; he gets a bed. Mum and Dad keep their thoughts to themselves but you can bet their little brain-boxes are working overtime.

  But I can tell the actual sleeping arrangements are going to involve me, space-wise.

  I am trying to sleep in the nursery that my father added to one end of the house. It is decorated with Teletubbies wallpaper and a dinky little night-light. Dad built a cot for the new arrival, making it extra long in case Mum has twins who would sleep end to end. But even so, it is not long enough and I must curl up like a letter S.

  On his first night at dinner, Leon hoes into the food like a man with five arms while Senga does the talking for him.

  ‘Leon likes to preserve a silence,’ she explains.

  ‘But it’s okay if we talk?’ Dad asks and Mum lets fly with a kick under the table which gets me instead.

  ‘So what does a guru do?’ Mum asks generally.

  ‘He ponders the woes of the world,’ Senga tells us. ‘Society is already top-heavy with doers and makers. It needs thinkers and reflectors to contemplate the mess, so one day, his thought processes will lead to a lasting solution.’

  ‘Any money in it?’ Dad asks.

  ‘For Leon, money and ownership are alien concepts.’

  ‘So how does he pay his way?’

  ‘Obviously, he won’t be able to,’ Senga explains as if we should already know that. ‘Not in the short term.’

  ‘Another outmoded notion,’ Dad says then he frowns because Leon has whipped off with the last two potatoes.

  And at night, I curl up and try to sleep then comes a tinkling from my room where Leon rests. He has set up his wind-bells above my window to catch the night breeze. Ting-along-a-ling, they go.

  I turn over and try wrapping the Bananas in Pyjamas pillow around my ears. But still comes that ting-along-a-ling-along. Then soon, despite it all, I drift off and dream of Sophie. At first I see her face when she’s angry then when she makes a point. I see her laughing and admire the way she fans out her long fingers and touches them to her throat or puts a forefinger to her mouth and pulls down her bottom lip as she decides what she’ll say next.

  I hear her voice, when she’s steely cold and distant with me, then when she’s amused at something I’ve said.

  I’m too young to talk about love. Okay, I’ve got all the equipment, the hormones and urges and stuff. There was a time when I wouldn’t allow rotten girls in my games then almost overnight, they suddenly appeared to be different only there was no one to say what had made the change. Then I discovered it was me.

  What with Mitch’s news, of Sophie, and my own feelings, I’ll have to accept Mr Carter’s price and go around to her place. After all, I’ve been invited by the man himself.

  I wake up to a sudden silence. The wind-bells have become still. But it is not for long.

  ‘Om, om, om,’ chants a dark brown voice from my bedroom and I stiffen like a board. What now? For someone who’s forsaken making and doing, Leon’s performing not too badly in the unwanted noise department! I ease my legs through the bars of the cot and grit my teeth. Leon has to go! Yes, that’s it! I’ll complain to the management! ‘Om, om, om,’ Leon chants again and I turn over rapidly and try to bury my head in the pillow. But since my legs poke through the bars of the cot, there comes a crashing and a snapping noise as the bars disintegrate and fall on the floor.

  ‘Fergus!’ Senga calls through the locked door of her lonely bedroom. ‘Don’t make so much noise in there! Leon needs his rest.

  Huh!

  At breakfast, Leon shows up, scratching himself, looking rumpled and all set for a long day of thinking and pondering.

  ‘Leon likes to break his fast with boiled rice,’ Senga explains.

  ‘He’ll need it,’ Mum agrees heartily. ‘We’ve got a few little chores lined up for him.’ Leon stiffens.

  ‘Yeah, how are you with a paintbrush, son?’ Dad asks. ‘See, it’s the McPhail policy to involve our guests in family life, from the ground up.’

  ‘Mum!’ Senga appeals with her eyes.

  ‘Leon won’t mind a bit of labour,’ Mum persists with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes. ‘Not painting, that can wait till the afternoon. I’m planning a vegetable garden, Senga. So it’ll be ready for spring sowing. A garden should be right up Leon’s street. I can’t do the heavy digging, nor can your father. Now, about that rice, Leon? Basmati or jasmine? One cup or two?’

  Leon doesn’t stay for breakfast. He takes his wind- bells, his om-ming and his two T-shirts and points his sandalled feet to a place where he’ll be better appreciated.

  ‘Pass the muesli,’ Senga says after he has gone. Then she smiles and spells it out. ‘He was a real pain in the B-U-M, wasn’t he?’

  Good old Mum, good old Dad. I see them exchange winks then Dad tippy-toes his fingers across the table and intertwines them with Mum’s.

  I pop into the newsagents to get the Age for Dad. Which is where I see Angela. She’s browsing in Pectoral Monthly, but only for the articles, she tells me. This is a different Angela - she smiles at me, she’s amiable a
nd asks how the holidays are going.

  ‘Nearly over,’ I say.

  ‘Worst luck,’ she agrees.

  ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh, hanging out with Soph.’ Then from the sad look in Angela’s eyes, I know there’s a story to come. She speaks gently. ‘Things are not the best with Sophie. At home, I mean.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Oh, her stepdad’s gone on the rampage. There’s no living with him.’ Angela puts the magazine back on the shelf. ‘I’ve got to go, Fergus. See you in school Monday. Bye.’ Angela goes, leaving me wondering. If Sophie’s stepfather is in a bad mood, that’s one place I don’t want to be. Invitation or no invitation. As I stand there, thinking about it, Rodney lurches out from behind a rack of lifestyle magazines.

  ‘Well, well,’ he says. ‘It’s the guy from next door.’

  ‘Yeah, hi, Rodney,’ I greet him although I could do without talking right now.

  ‘Still interested in borrowing my drum kit?’ he asks.

  Disclosures

  The woman is naked. She has dark eyes and looks with a half smile through the long, twin cascading drapes of her hair. She knows the effect she’s having on me and from all the thumb prints at the edge of the page, I can tell hundreds of other guys have already been under her spell. I turn the book around to appreciate her beauty from another angle, which is when I hear the cough behind me.

  ‘Enjoying that, McPhail?’ It is our art teacher, Ms Crombie.

  ‘Um, yes,’ I agree and slam the book shut, catching my thumb a painful one. ‘I mean, well -’

  ‘You were supposed to be tidying up in here,’ Ms Crombie says. ‘Not ogling pictures of naked women.’ I put the book back on the shelf.

  ‘I was appreciating it, Miss. Not ogling.’

  ‘Go on, I can tell an ogle when I see one.’ Ms Crombie smiles her way to the cupboard where I’ve been tidying up and stacks in some tubes of paint. ‘Do you think you’re ready for figure work, McPhail?’

  My mouth goes dry. What is this woman saying? Is she offering me the chance to paint a nude? It is every teenage boy’s dream.