‘Away.’ Angela gives him a nudge and I can tell this has been engineered between the girls because Sophie wants a private word with me. Lambert will know the reason soon enough, which in his case will be a bit like the Tooth Fairy coming to take her money back and leaving him with somebody else’s yucky tooth under his pillow.
‘So,’ Sophie says when we’re standing there alone. ‘Did you have anything to do with naming the baby?’
‘Yeah. Mum and Dad let me do it. Besides, I’ve always liked Sophie.’
Sophie pauses. ‘Do you like the owner - or the name?’
‘Yeah, she’s beautiful,’ I agree. Sophie gives a small smile.
‘I can imagine.’ Talk between us dries up but it’s a magic moment. Soon the bell will go for the first period. Sophie sits and pats the bench beside her. ‘Sit, then. We’ve got a couple of minutes.’ I sit.
‘About that stuff with your stepfather -’ I begin.
‘Oh, him!’ Sophie takes a deep, scornful breath then lets it out suddenly. ‘Him!’
Then words of explanation and relief pour from me. ‘Look, I saw Mr Carter one afternoon, he was parked in his car -’
‘With her?’
‘He said she was a friend -’
‘It’s not what my mother calls her!’
‘Anyway, he almost grabbed me, well he didn’t actually grab me physically, he got out of the car, friendly as you like, invited me home any time.’
‘The big pay-off?’
‘Yeah.’ I try to convince Sophie with my eyes. ‘It was like that was his offer - the price he was willing to pay. I shut up about what I’d seen - and I get to see you.’
‘Typical.’
‘So I couldn’t do it, Sophie.’ I take a pause. The bell rings. ‘I couldn’t come to your house. It was terrible - especially since we’d been getting on like a bush-fire.’
Sophie rises and hitches her school bag. I get up and follow her.
‘That’s okay, then.’ She smiles. We walk together and suddenly it’s as if there’s bouncy turf under my feet. We don’t need words any more. Which is where I should have left things, but no, Old Fumble-Foot has to go and ruin the morning.
It was the Rodney business. He’d asked for a meeting, a date with Sophie. All I wanted was to know if Sophie already knew Rodney - and if she was interested in him.
‘Sophie, do you know a guy called Rodney?’ I ask, recklessly. ‘Lives next door to me, goes to an up-itself private school. Got heaps of money.’
‘No.’
‘Well, he knows you.’
‘I can’t help being famous.’ We walk towards the school building. Sophie looks at me through her tumbling hair and I think it’s great to be back like this. She goes on, ‘Why did you bring this up - about this Rodney loser?’
‘Oh, no reason, he just sort of- um - wants to - go out with you.’
‘He told you that?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘You talked about me? And what? He asked you to arrange a meet?’
‘Urn, something like that,’ I agree and try to go into back-pedalling mode while Sophie suddenly glares at me.
‘And what was your price, Fergus McPhail?’
She goes, making it plain that I’m not to follow. All around me, the grass is littered with dead brownies clutching worthless points while in the background, just parking his sleigh and reindeer, is Santa Claus who’s come to get all of his presents back.
‘Good, you haven’t unwrapped them?’ he says. ‘Ooh, this one feels like a big drum. You’d have enjoyed that, Fergus. Pity.’
I suppose I could have handled things a bit better.
At home, it is quiet for another night then Mum returns from hospital with baby Sophie and bunches of flowers and a clutch of congratulations cards, including one from the taxi driver who passed on the emergency message that afternoon. He didn’t leave a return address though, and actions like that almost make you love the human race for the things they can do. And hate yourself for your stupidity.
We make a fuss of Mum and our new sister who is going to be spoiled rotten. Mum catches me alone and has a word.
‘And how did the other Sophie take the news?’ ‘Pretty impressed, Mum.’
‘And the name?’
‘For a while I was flying high,’ I say. ‘But you know how it is. That was yesterday; today’s today.’
Rodney meets me on the way home from school next afternoon.
‘So what did she say, Fergus?’
‘She might have called you a bastard, Rodney. But she was talking under her breath.’
‘Oh, I like them feisty.’
‘Well, this one doesn’t like you.’
I am all for storming off home when I spot Angela coming our way. Angela has obviously had a full report of my insensitivity vis-a-vis the date with Rodney incident. Even from that distance, I can feel the rush of cold air. But Rodney’s eyes light up and he stands chewing a wad of non-existent gum, as if he’s Mr Suave himself, come to brighten her humdrum life. Angela approaches.
‘Hi, Sophie,’ Rodney greets her but she bares her teeth at him.
‘Drop off!’ She walks on. It takes a full five seconds for the implication of this to sink in, after which I grit my teeth and spit the words at him one at a time.
‘That’s not Sophie. ’
‘So why’d you tell me she was?’ Rodney is annoyed. He’s given up being Mr Suave. The whole thing is my fault and no amount of terse and patient explanation of the mess he’s helped create will satisfy Rodney or shut him up. ‘You’re an idiot, McPhail!’
‘Listen,’ I manage to get a word in. ‘If you want to see an even bigger one, go home and look in the mirror!’ As insults go, it’s pretty pathetic but at times like that you’re not thinking your best. I’ll come up with a good one in bed tonight.
‘You’ll be sorry,’ Rodney calls after me. But I already know that.
At night, Baby Sophie cries and I get up to her. All of a sudden it’s like a traffic jam in the nursery. Senga wants to take our small sister but Jennifer won’t let go and all the time we whisper threats and appeals to each other.
‘Be quiet, you’ll wake Mum,’ Jennifer hisses. ‘And you held her two hours ago.’
This keeps up we’ll need a roster.
Romantic stories are supposed to go: Boy and Girl Meet. They Lose Each Other. Things Get Worse. There’s a whole lot of stuff then Things Get Better, or Worse Still. Then Girl and Boy Find Each Other. Or Lose Each Other for Keeps. Something like that.
It depends on whether you want a happy or sad ending. I vote for a happy one but I am still somewhere in the middle of all that maze, looking for a way out.
Then days later at home there’s a subtle change. When Baby Sophie calls in the night, there is no longer a traffic jam in the nursery. It is mainly me who rises into the cold night air, but somehow since the day Sophie and I met in such an unconventional way, we’ve become good mates. And all the while my other sisters slumber.
At six weeks, little Sophie likes to party late and share her rattle with me. She’s very generous with that rattle and what with all the getting up in the middle of the night, I am becoming sleep-deprived. Mum too, of course. The result is I stumble off to school in the morning and luckily, Mitch and Lambert are always on hand to collect and shepherd me in the right direction.
In class, I sometimes nod off or let my attention wander, which is how another row develops. It happens in science where we have to do an experiment where we heat water in a retort then pass it through a condenser to measure the volume of condensate produced after three minutes of rapid boiling. (I don’t know why we have to do this; it is the teacher’s idea.)
To make it more complicated, we have to work in teams - Sophie, Lambert and your friend and mine, Fergus McPhail. (Doing it in teams has nothing to do with learning to work cooperatively; it has everything to do with there not being enough equipment to go around.)
So I am at the output end with a beak
er, Lambert has the stop-watch while Sophie is in charge of the thermometer and gas burner. It’s been more than six weeks since that huge mistake I made and no, I didn’t bother with explanations. Sophie remained cool but now, at a word from the teacher, she lights the gas under the retort. Lambert starts the stopwatch but Sophie snaps at him he’s got to wait till the water boils.
Sophie is very terse with both of us since she’d prefer to work with Angela or anyone else. Lambert is on the outer because of his association with me so Sophie doesn’t speak to him and there’s no point speaking with me since I am already dozing off over my empty beaker. We work in silence while all around us other guys are making comments about what they are doing.
‘Coming to the boil,’ Sophie warns and Lambert gets ready with the stop-watch.
‘Ready when you are,’ he says.
‘Boiling!’ Sophie snaps and Lambert presses the button on the stop-watch, but he forgot to reset it from the last time. ‘Oh, great!’ Sophie explodes. ‘Now we don’t know where we are!’
Lambert stops the watch, resets it then starts it again.
‘I’ll knock about twenty seconds off at the other end,’ he offers.
‘Oh, very scientific that is.’ Sophie fumes over her gas burner and then at my end, the condensate begins to trickle, drop at a time into the beaker until Lambert calls that it’s time.
176
‘Less twenty seconds,’ he adds. Sophie turns off the gas then she comes to me.
‘You idiot!’ She throws up her hands. ‘That’s not a graduated beaker.’
‘So we pour it into a graduated beaker,’ I say and grab one and complete the operation. But, oops! There’s already some water in the graduated beaker. Sophie draws herself to her magnificent height and I can’t help thinking, I’d rather be her friend than her enemy.
‘So!’ is all she can say.
‘Stuffed that one, didn’t we?’ I confess. Lambert comes to share the blame and we stand, hangdog, the pair of us, while Sophie continues to smoulder. Then there’s a tiny crack of a smile at the corner of her mouth but she turns away before it breaks out into something bigger.
‘So I’ll make a guess.’ Sophie jots down a figure in the work sheet. Another great moment in the search for scientific truth. But think of the gas we’d have saved if we’d just made a guess at the beginning.
Sophie’s little crack of a smile gives me hope and it’s not too long before I find her one lunch time sitting alone under the spring-time shade of our tree. I speak first.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
So far, so good. Nothing controversial here. It’s time to widen the conversation and use more syllables. I venture a bit extra.
‘Eating?’
‘Finished.’ This time I sit at the far end of the bench but swivel my eyes towards her, looking for a sign of encouragement. It is time to break this one-word conversation we’ve been having. It is time to make amends.
‘Listen, about this Rodney guy -’
‘What about him?’ Sophie’s words are positively icebergian.
‘It was all a big mistake.’ This time she doesn’t answer so I launch into the complete story, how we wanted his drums, how he kept us dangling, then he saw Angela and thought she was Sophie. She takes it all in then there’s a big silence.
‘Okay, I’ve had a lot on my mind,’ she says at last. ‘What with him!’ I know who she means but I return to speaking one word at a time.
‘Yeah.’
‘We were getting on great, weren’t we?’
‘Yeah, nearly two months ago.’ There comes another long silence. From experience, I know that where there’s silence, there’s hope. Sophie screws up her lunch bag and drops it in her school bag.
‘I sort of liked the way it was heading,’ she says.
‘Me too.’
‘Still -’ Sophie leaves the word hanging in mid-air. It’s as if she’s lobbed me a perfect pass. If I don’t run with it, I’m an idiot so I trap the ball neatly then move on towards the open goal. (The goalie’s off chatting to a girl spectator. In my dreams of sporting glory, all goalkeepers are that obliging.)
‘What say we do a rewind,’ I suggest. ‘Then pick up from just before things went wrong.'
Sophie considers for a long time. ‘Okay.’
‘Great!’ I am pleased and sit for several seconds thinking about it. Then I become bolder, not to say friskier. ‘But, what were we doing just before things went wrong, eh?’
‘Urn -’ she says.
‘Before your stepfather opened the front door that afternoon and caught us. We were about to do the lip thing,’ I remind her. ‘The big K.’
‘Don’t push it, bozo!’ Sophie gets up. ‘Or you’ll get the big K-N-E-E in the G-R-O-I-N! Okay?’
‘So, I’m a man of patience,’ I tell her. Sophie gives me a wink then starts back to class. I get up and join her.
The pharmacy is busy and all the assistants seem to be girls and most of them are my age, doing work-experience and stuff. Not a good scene when a guy has to buy his first pack of condoms.
I have done all the right things. Checked out the shelf where they keep them, counted the number of steps to the counter, so it’s just a case of grab a packet from the shelf, walk quickly to the counter, slap them down, hand over the money then off with them in an anonymous paper bag. All I need is the male assistant to be at the counter to serve me.
It’s like a geometry lesson, working out angles, speed of approach as well as keeping an eye out for other customers who might get to the counter before me. Some of these pensioners can really move when the need arises. And they get snaky with it.
‘I was here first, you vagabond! Need a prescription stopper for my hot-water bottle and you’re not standing in my way!’
And all this time, I’m aware of a security camera overhead, capturing my image as I lurk by the Lucozade shelf. I didn’t know barley water came in six flavours. If the security guys see me on their video monitors they’ll get suspicious.
‘Hey, Charlie. What do you reckon about this turkey?’
‘Oh, he’s a first-time condom buyer. ’ Charlie recognises the signs. ‘Just about to make his dash, I’d say. I bet he goes for the big packet! Save him coming back.’
‘Cricket team size?’
‘They’re the ones.’
I make my sprint - move quickly past the condom shelf, grab without looking. (I hate those Mister Cool guys who browse.) Then it’s on to the counter where the young male assistant is in no hurry. And he’s chatty with it. There are two girl assistants only a metre away on each side of him. One glance in this direction and they’ll know what’s what as I lob the packet on the counter and look away, noisily clearing my throat, hoping to convince the girls I’m buying cough mixture.
‘For your grandpa?’ the assistant asks.
‘Don’t think he’s up to it these days,’ I mumble. What’s he talking about? My grandpa’s been dead for years! Then the assistant needs help. He waves the packet around and calls for the whole world to hear.
‘These still at the old price?’
‘Yes,’ a know-all girl assistant bellows back. That’s all we need. Publicity. I drop my eyes. On the counter, there’s a leaflet about feminine itching but it’s upside down. I wonder if I should take one so that when Sophie and me get into a clinch, I’ll know the parts to avoid. But the assistant finally tells me I’m lucky because the next shipment’s at the new price. He puts my packet in a striped paper bag and I part with my money then, as they say in romantic circles, I am kitted up and ready for action. I have a packet in my pocket.
On a balmy evening, Sophie and I walk together through the park, down by the gently flowing Yarra where sad willows dangle in the water. I create an image of Sophie at the blunt end of a rowing boat wearing a flowery dress and wide-brimmed hat, languidly trailing her fingers in our wake, regarding me from under that hat of hers. It makes me flush warm just to think of Sophie like that, or to think of
her at all! As we walk, we have a lot to say, misunderstandings to sort out and Sophie wants to talk about her stepfather going off with the other woman.
‘He sort of lorded it over Mum and me,’ she explains. ‘Then at the end we find he was a total hypocrite.’
‘Gee,’ I say.
‘You’ll never be a hypocrite, will you, Fergus? You’ll always say what’s on your mind?’
‘Yes, Sophie.’ The darkness falls and lights come on. Across the river there’s a restaurant with a string of coloured light bulbs and we hear piano music.
‘We’ll go there one day,’ she promises.
‘Yeah.’ At a time like this, I’d agree to anything. We find a bench to sit together and Sophie becomes philosophical.
‘Mum used to say: “A boy sees a girl as a vision ethereal. But a girl sees a boy as a piece of material.’”
‘That’s very profound, Sophie,’ I murmur, which is another way of saying I don’t know what it means.
‘It means,’ she explains, ‘it means you’re good basic raw material, Fergus McPhail. But I’ll need to work on you.’
‘I’ll be in that,’ I agree. And then we kiss. Just a little one without clinching, open mouths or tongues. Sophie leans against me and sighs. I sigh too. Then somehow she brushes against the packet in my pocket and becomes playful.
‘Oh, you bought chocolate,’ she cries. ‘There’s hope for you yet.’ Before I can stop her, she’s got hold of the striped paper bag and takes it from my windcheater pocket. Then out comes the packet and she looks at the cellophane wrapper. It’s dark so she has to angle the packet to catch what light there is. Wordlessly, she hands it back to me.
‘Yeah, well -’ I am uneasy now. The mood has been shattered.
‘Did you go into the chemist and buy them?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘I might be changing my opinion about you.’ She has a soft look on her face. ‘You really have got hidden depths. Hundreds of guys wouldn’t be seen doing a thing like that.’
What the hell’s in this packet? Mystified, I look. It says, incontinence garment. Dapper gent size. They also come in dribble and full-flow.
Fergus McPhail Page 13