Fergus McPhail

by David McRobbie

  ‘But seriously, guys.’ I am running out of arguments. ‘It’s not as if we’re genuine art students. We only do it because it’s on the timetable. I mean, if they put bricklaying on the timetable, that’s what we’d do.’

  ‘Nude bricklaying?’ one of the other guys asks. ‘We get a female to do that?’

  Since I am getting nowhere with this mob, I head off to try the girls. After all, they’re already opposed to the idea of a nude female model. I find Angela sitting under a tree, sheltering from the wind.

  ‘Look, Angela, about this model who’s coming,’ I say. ‘I think it’s demeaning, it’s degrading for the female sex.’ Angela looks at me as if she’s observing Fergus McPhail in a new light. Then I see Sophie coming to join us. Normally, I’d go away but this time I hold my ground. ‘Some of these guys are just in it for kicks,’ I add.

  ‘And you’re not?’ Sophie asks.

  ‘Changed my tune,’ I say. ‘I saw the light.’ Angela considers.

  ‘If we cancel the female,’ she says, ‘then we girls don’t get the guy.’

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ I agree. ‘We take an equal opportunities stance here.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Angela says. ‘I’ve already bought a new sketchpad.’

  ‘But the model might be some guy’s sister,’ I persist.

  ‘Unless she’s an only child,’ Sophie offers.

  ‘Well, I feel strongly about it,’ I tell them. ‘So strongly, that when the model’s there, I’m going to boycott the class.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be girlcott?’ Angela asks. But I leave them.

  I go to school with heavy tread because this is the day of our art lesson. There is just one more trick up my sleeve.

  The art-room door is closed and through the glass panel we can see the screens have been arranged in a semi-circle and the electric heater is on. Ms Crombie is bustling about inside while outside, boys bristle with anticipation. Some have a whole bunch of 2B pencils already with needle points so they won’t have to tear their eyes away to re-sharpen.

  ‘This is a sad day for childhood,’ I tell anyone who’ll listen. ‘It’s a loss of innocence.’ Then Ms Crombie opens the door and I’m shoved aside in the stampede. Again I try to make my pathetic protest, all the time eyeing that set of screens. ‘Ms Crombie, this should be cancelled.’

  ‘Point taken, McPhail,’ she says. ‘But it’s too late. You’re the one who asked for a figure model, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble, and here she is, behind the screen.’

  ‘I thought I’d write to the papers,’ I tell her but there comes such a howl of protest that I have to back-pedal. ‘But I only thought about it.’ With order restored, Ms Crombie demands that all opera glasses, binoculars and cameras be brought to the front and only then does she consent to shift the screen.

  There is a silence you could park a truck on. Ms Crombie pulls the screen away and there sits a woman, fully dressed. She looks a bit like Ms Crombie but there is also a table on which a small baby goos and gurgles. The baby wears a nappy.

  ‘This is baby Elice,’ Ms Crombie tells us. ‘She’s six months old. My sister’s girl.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Lambert demands. ‘That’s our model?’

  ‘Well, she’s topless,’ Ms Crombie says. ‘She’s female, so get sketching.’ I take up a pencil and make a start. This is better. Across the room, I see Sophie grinning at Ms Crombie’s joke. Ms Crombie is also amused. ‘As if I’d give you lot a grown-up figure model,’ she grins. ‘Be as much as my job’s worth and to think, only one of you protested. Well done, Fergus McPhail.’

  Sophie catches my eye and this time I don’t look away. She smiles at me the way she used to.

  But what was Senga doing at school? An idea comes into my head. I see her sitting in the headmaster’s office.

  ‘You’ve made a wise choice,’ he tells her then quotes the old saying. ‘Knowledge is a light burden that is easy to carry. ’

  ‘So I can start on Monday?’ Senga asks.

  ‘Year twelve,’ the headmaster agrees.

  As I sketch baby Elice in the art room, I realise I have made her look like a water-melon with a little fat, podgy thing at each corner. Her nappy looks quite realistic, though.

  At lunch time, Senga is at school to pick up a book list.

  ‘I think I’ll fit in here,’ she says, eyeing a hunky year-twelve guy who walks past and happens to smile in her direction.

  They say that bombshells come in triplicate; also tragedies and calamities. For example, if a famous person dies, you can bet your boots another two will pop off the same week. Moral: don’t become famous. So bad news seems to come in threes, and bombshells are a land of bad news. That’s my theory anyway. So here goes:

  Bombshell 1.

  Sophie catches up with me as I walk home from school.

  ‘You’re avoiding me,’ she accuses. ‘You have been since before the holidays.’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I lie. ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Ha! You were busting your boiler to go out with me,’ she goes on. ‘Then all of a sudden you back off. What is it? Some kind of playing hard-to-get?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘I even got chummy with Richmond.’ Sophie lets her lip curl. ‘Thought that might stir you up.’

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I lie again.

  ‘Liar! Anyway, I’ve done my best, so have it your own way.’ She looks me in the eye. ‘But what I want to know is, what did you say to my stepfather?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Three weeks of hell then he packs up and leaves home,’ she says. ‘And before he shot through he snarled at me, “It’s all that McPhail boy’s fault!”’

  ‘Gee?’

  ‘So what have you done? What did you say to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell Sophie.

  This is the truth. But I can see it now; it’s my fault because I did nothing. If I’d accepted Mr Carter’s invitation, it would have told him I had agreed to his price: Sophie’s friendship buys my silence. But doing nothing must have nagged him raw. What did I have in mind? What was I going to do with the information? Since I wasn’t coming around, it was obvious the deal was off. So, he must have kept wondering when I’d tell Sophie.

  I look at her, shake my head and shrug. Sophie can’t speak. She just makes a ‘tchah’ sort of noise and goes, leaving me to walk on.

  It’s a lot to think about but instead of being left alone to get on with the thought processing, who should catch up with me but Rodney from next door. Which brings us to:

  Bombshell 2.

  ‘G’day,’ Rodney says. ‘Glad I caught you on your own. Thought you’d never get rid of those other two geeks. So we can talk, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree. In fact, I’m getting sick of old Rodney and his stupid point-scoring and lording it over us with his drums plus the on-again, off-again work he wants done.

  ‘You know that little job I want you to do?’ he asks.

  ‘Listen, Rodney,’ I cut him off. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can ram your drums. Starting with the big one.’

  ‘So you don’t want them now?’

  ‘We don’t want all the crap that goes with them.’

  ‘All right, one last job,’ Rodney pleads. ‘Then you can have them.’

  ‘One job?’

  ‘One job.’ He confirms with a nod.

  ‘So spill it.’ I wait, but Rodney seems almost shy about telling me what he wants.

  ‘You know that girl you hang around with?’ ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Is that her name?’

  ‘Yeah. Sophie Bartolemeo.’

  ‘Your girlfriend?’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ I tell him. Maybe I say it too quickly, but it seems to give Rodney more confidence.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ he says. ‘But you know her. Right, fix me up with a date, and the drums are yours.’

  The good thing is that Rodney has some other stuff to do so we don’t walk the rest of the way home t
ogether. What’s happening to this world? Some girl’s stepfather blames me because his life falls to pieces, then Rodney waits until he gets me alone to make the offer of the century. I decide that I need to share this with someone, and Mum’s the one. She’ll listen and give me the right advice. Mum never fails. But when I get home, it leads to:

  Bombshell 3.

  ‘Fergus,’ Mum greets me. She’s standing, leaning against a doorpost as if she’s scared to move. ‘I think the baby’s coming!’

  The Amateur Gynaecologist

  Fresh home from school, ready to raid the fridge and have a heart-to-heart with my mother I find Mum with a look on her face that tells me this is the real thing. It is also best-laid-schemes-go-up-the-spout time.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask, panic rising.

  ‘Gone to pay the phone bill,’ Mum says then has a quick intake of breath. ‘So we can have it re-connected.’ This sounds ominous. No dial tone. Even more ominous.

  ‘Senga?’

  ‘Not home from school yet.’

  ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘Gone to a friend.’

  ‘So it’s you and me?’ I ask.

  ‘And baby makes three.’ Mum gives another groan. I suggest nipping out and phoning from one of the neighbours’ but between bouts of pain, Mum tells me the old guy next door’s deaf as a post and never had the phone on.

  ‘He might have a fax or be on the Internet.’ I try to be helpful but despite her condition, my mother is still able to wither me with a single look. The good news is that Mum has done this before, three times to be exact, and she kept her eyes open every time. In her heyday she was a dental nurse so maybe some glimmer of medical expertise rubbed off. Antiseptics and stuff. ‘I can run for help,’ I suggest. The truth is I don’t want to hang around.

  ‘No, I need you here,’ Mum says and gives three small cries of pain. Oh, oh and oh, in that order.

  ‘They’re pretty close together, Mum. Should I time them or something? Like on television.’

  ‘Help me to the living room.’ Mum ignores my suggestion. ‘Then get cushions and towels.’

  ‘So we’re not going for the underwater delivery then?’

  ‘Shut up and get on with it!’

  Where is my father? Or Senga or Jennifer? Even a couple of door-to-door evangelists would be handy right now.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ I’ll say. ‘Have I got a presentation for you!’

  It’s not that we as a family haven’t prepared for this moment. In the days leading up to Mum’s bombshell announcement, Dad starts organising us so that we’ll all know what to do. At breakfast one morning, he rallies his troops, Senga, Jennifer and me, while Mum looks on in amusement.

  ‘Babies don’t wait,’ Dad tells us. ‘They’ve got no manners. When they're ready to face the world, morning, noon or night, there’s no stopping them.’

  ‘We know, Dad,’ Senga tells him. ‘I was a two AM job.’

  ‘Me - half past six,’ Jennifer adds through a mouthful of muesli.

  ‘So it’s all hands to the pump,’ Dad announces.

  ‘We use a pump?’ I ask, only to receive pitying looks from my sisters. ‘I thought it just sort of flopped out.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Jennifer says. ‘I’m eating.’

  ‘So we’ll have a dummy run,’ Dad goes on. ‘Two in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, can’t we do it in daylight?’ Mum protests.

  ‘It’s gotta be realistic,’ Dad says.

  ‘Oh, it’ll be realistic, all right,’ Mum snorts. ‘I can tell you that!’ She rises from the table but these days she’s a slow mover.

  Then at two AM by my bedside alarm, Dad gives us an urgent call and says it’s time but no one is to panic. I hear him pounding frantically on other bedroom doors and so rise from my bleary-eyed slumber to get dressed.

  ‘This a dummy run?’ I ask. ‘Right, Dad?’

  ‘Wrong, mate. The real thing,’ Dad tells me. ‘The biggie.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Mum calls.

  She wears a dressing gown and slippers and stands patiendy in the hallway. Jennifer and Senga appear and we swing into action, as rehearsed. My job is to start the car and get the doors open. Senga is on suitcase duty while Jennifer is to show concern, or as Dad puts it, she’s to twitter.

  ‘Great twittering,’ Dad encourages her. ‘It shows concern. A female bonding thing.’ And soon Mum and Dad are on the way to hospital, with Senga in the back of the car with a torch and the street directory on her knee.

  ‘Left here, Dad.’

  ‘It’s one-way.’

  ‘Right, go along a bit then chuck a leftie.’

  ‘Haven’t you worked out the shortest route yet?’ Mum wants to know. Mum’s now quite chirpy because the pain has abated so within an hour they return with the news that it was a false alarm. Then we go through the process in reverse - Mum out of car and back to bed, suitcase left in a handy place and soon there is peace once more.

  ‘How was my twittering?’ Jennifer asks bitterly, since no one can sleep.

  ‘Jennifer,’ Senga tells her. ‘That was World Cup twittering.’

  And all of this happened before the beefy guy with the truck dumped a mountain of sand in our driveway, blocking the Holden in the garage.

  But back in the real world, where I am on my own with my mother about to give birth, Mum directs and I hold her hand. I know that somewhere in the house there’s a book on childbirth but I’ve only read the chapter on conception. I decide not to mention it. Meanwhile, Mum settles me down and tells me what to do.

  ‘Now, Fergus,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to catch baby when it comes out.’

  ‘So I’ll move back a bit?’ I crouch like a wicket keeper.

  ‘It’s not going to shoot out!’ Mum tells me and all too soon the whole thing becomes amazing and I forget about not wanting to be there. Then before long, I’m holding my little sister and I tell Mum it’s a girl and she’s pleased. Mum checks that she’s breathing and my new sister cries so Mum holds her and strokes the baby’s hair.

  ‘She’s got little fingers and toes.’ I marvel at how beautiful she is. Yucky too with all the stuff on her but Mum doesn’t mind. ‘There’s a sort of tube thing here, Mum.’

  ‘Umbilical cord,’ Mum tells me.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got to cut that.’

  ‘You’ll cut nothing till I’ve counted everything!’ Mum tells me firmly. ‘And there’s still the afterbirth.’

  ‘You mean there’s more?’ But at that point, Senga returns and her eyes pop when she sees what she missed.

  ‘It’s the baby! Fergus just delivered the baby!’

  ‘I just delivered the baby!’ Mum tells her, but she’s pleased that it all went well. I am proud.

  ‘A girl,’ I say. ‘A little sister.’

  ‘She’ll wrap us all round her little finger.’ Senga puts an arm around my shoulder and gives me a squeeze.

  ‘Me, she’s doing that already,’ I say. So Senga goes outside and stops a taxi in the street and the driver puts in a call and we wait. Jennifer too arrives home, annoyed at having missed all the action. She goes to the kitchen to boil some water but Senga tells her to toss in a handful of tea. Before long there’s an ambulance at the front door with two capable and expert-looking ambulance officers and one of them grins at me.

  ‘Was this your doing?’

  ‘No, it was my father,’ I tell him.

  ‘Hey, what sort of family do you think we are?’ Jennifer asks.

  Dad is pleased that everything turned out well. Annoyed with himself for letting the phone get cut off but, as he says, it was phone bill or the rates so something had to give.

  ‘You’ll know better next time, Dad,’ I console him. Then he becomes serious.

  ‘Your mum and I had a talk,’ he says. ‘About a name for your baby sister. And we both think, how about you have a go?’

  ‘Me? Name her?’

  ‘It’s a fair offer, son.’

  ‘Sophie,�
�� I say without hesitation. Dad gives me a wink.

  ‘I’ll put it to your mum.’ The good thing is that Senga and Jennifer agree with my choice on two counts; count one that I should name our new sister and count two that her name should be Sophie. And from her hospital bed in the maternity section, before she fades off for a well-earned rest, Mum agrees that Sophie McPhail will do very well. She’s got some wonderful siblings, so it’s a good start in life.

  ‘And a pretty hot-stuff mum and dad,’ I agree.

  At school next day, thanks to Senga’s big year-twelve mouth, everyone gets to hear about my fleeting stint as amateur gynaecologist. Teachers comment on it, guys stop me to ask if it’s true and girls look at me with new respect.

  ‘It’s only a hobby at this stage,’ I tell them modestly. Meanwhile, Lambert hangs around me, hoping that some of my sudden fame might rub off on him. Sophie and Angela take their time about it but before long, they come to hear about my adventure first-hand. I stand with Lambert at the edge of the playing field, under the shade of the big old tree whose name, genus and stuff I don’t know. The thing about scoring brownie points is that sometimes you just seem to keep scoring them.

  ‘So,’ Angela says. ‘All of a sudden, you’re some kind of hero?’

  'Mum was the hero,’ I say. The girls are impressed. Brownie points up.

  ‘Yeah, his mum was the hero,’ Lambert reiterates. But he’s only hoping to score some kudos himself.

  ‘Girl or boy?’ Sophie asks.

  ‘Girl,’ Lambert whips in before I can draw breath. ‘Two point five kilograms.’

  ‘What’s your mother calling her?’ Angela asks.

  ‘Sophie,’ I say and there is a sudden silence from the girls. Then Angela acts. She grabs Lambert’s arm.

  ‘Listen, sport,’ she says pleasantly enough. ‘I want a word with you. In private.’

  ‘Me?’ Lambert looks as if he’s been trapped by someone he’s always wanted to trap him. ‘Sure you got the right guy?’