Fergus McPhail

by David McRobbie

  ‘Mother’s in Noumea,’ Rodney says. ‘Father in Vanuatu. Or it’s the other way around. They left a note this morning. Or yesterday.’

  ‘Holiday?’ Mum asks with a frown.

  ‘They don’t do holidays,’ Rodney says, but he takes the hint and prepares to leave. At the front door, I sense his reluctance to part from us. ‘Hey, Fergus, come and check out the drums. Please.’ I’d been hoping he’d remember his kind offer so I say, ‘Yeah, why not?’ Now it’s as if I’m doing him a favour.

  Another week of school, then third term comes to an end. Oh, joy, oh, bliss! With time on my hands, I pop into Rodney’s place to check out the drums. But after their dunking in the swimming pool, they are damp, the skins slack and water-stained but I’m not ready to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even a moist gift horse. Rodney invites me inside to see his place.

  He was right about the furniture. There’s not a lot of it, here a tall-backed chair, there a tiny table sort of thing with a slender vase on it, a single feathery plant sprouting from its narrow neck. There is no dust, nor is anything out of place.

  ‘Just don’t touch the walls and watch where you put your feet,’ Rodney instructs me. ‘Mrs Hannigan might be lurking about.’ We continue our tour of the house. Nothing is misplaced, the arrangement is perfect, even Rodney’s bedroom is like some kind of showpiece, all ready to be photographed for House & Garden. We stand at the door, looking in.

  ‘Ty-dee.’ I shake my head in wonder then go to the window, being careful not to smudge the glass.

  ‘You like it?’ Rodney asks in disbelief.

  ‘Yeah, terrific.’

  ‘I only come here to sleep.’ He has something on his mind. ‘I spend all my time in the garage. The cars are never there.’ Rodney takes a pause. ‘Nor is Mrs Hannigan.’ Another pause. ‘The thing is, Fergus, I really like your place.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, it’s sort of lively. Interesting. Stuff happens. And there’s people.’ He looks at me, calculating. ‘Hey, if you really like it here, what say we swap? You here, me at your place. Just for tonight.’

  ‘Cool,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll be in it.’

  ‘What’ll your mother say?’

  ‘She won’t mind.’ A quick conference with Mum and it’s agreed. I’m about to see how the other half lives; Rodney can have my room and family for a night and a bit. So, collecting jim-jams, toothbrush and the TV Week, I set out for a night of luxury.

  I know it’s the TV room, because Rodney told me. But where’s the TV and the remote? There’s a couple of large chairs and a blank wall. I try speaking to the wall in case it’s a voice-activated thing.

  ‘TV, on!’ I bark. Pause. ‘TV on, please.’ Nothing. Bummer. I lean back in the chair and at the same time, a panel slides open on the armrest. There are controls for everything. Button one, a panel in the wall slides back, button two, TV on, and no please or thankyou required. So I watch a show, but somehow it’s not the same. There’s no one singing along with the ads, making comments on the dishy actors, no arguments about which channel we’ll watch, no appealing to Mum that it’s somebody else’s turn to look in on Sophie.

  It’s time to check out the TV snack situation which means the kitchen, but this place is like the control deck of some stainless steel space shuttle. Where’s the food? All the doors are the same, this one’s the dishwasher, the next one’s full of dishwasher soap, further along is empty, empty again then comes a spare dishwasher, unless I’ve started to go round again. There’s a freezer stacked with pre-cooked meals. The fridge next to it contains an orange, bottled water and a carton of milk. No leftovers. I go to bed hungry.

  It’s quiet in this house. Not a whisper of sound. On a bed in the guest room I lie at attention between stiff new sheets, wondering who got the best deal here. The silence is unnatural. After a while, it becomes frightening and I do what I haven’t done since I was small. I pull the sheets over my head and hope I don’t wet the bed. At last, sleep takes me and my dream is of hundreds of silent dust-busting house-cleaning mice who sneak out of holes in the wall panels to deal with stray crumbs and footprints then disappear again before any human being knows they were about.

  Classical music plays and I think it is part of my dream where Jennifer is doing her stuff in the concert hall, but no, it’s the radio with a wake-up call.

  I pad along to the bathroom to shower and brush my teeth, which is where I receive a shock of the non-electric variety - my scraggy old toothbrush, which looked out of place here, has gone. Instead, a new one rests in a spotless glass. Okay, so my toothbrush never fitted in here, that’s fine by me. But who made the switch? I search for a machine, maybe some kind of video camera that decides my dental hygiene arrangements do not make the grade. There has to be a little hole in the wall where an arm comes out, extracts my toothbrush then issues a new one. But it dawns on me: there must be someone else in the house! Even now they’re probably in the bedroom, with a face mask and surgical forceps, examining my daggy underpants! ‘Hmm, these have not been changed for two days.’ This is scary stuff.

  Fresh from the shower, I nip back to my room to dress but somebody has ironed my jeans and T-shirt. They are both stiff as boards and I really have to push to get my legs down the limb-holes then I walk sort of stiffly, making creak-creak noises as I go, eenk, oink, eenk, oink. It’s embarrassing.

  With great care, I venture downstairs for breakfast. The kitchen is as spotless as I remember it but there is a no-nonsense looking woman fussing about with a spray bottle of cleanser and a cloth. This must be Mrs Hannigan.

  ‘Good morning,’ I say. She doesn’t turn around.

  ‘Good morning, Rodney.’ Okay, she thinks I’m Rodney. I decide not to put her straight, see how long it takes for her to notice. She might even throw a wobbly; it would be good to get some kind of human reaction around here. After a search, I find a bowl which will do for cornflakes. Another hunt produces a cereal packet and I sprinkle some in the bowl. Milk’s in the fridge, I know that, but as I go for it, Mrs Hannigan has nipped around behind me, cleared away my cereal bowl and spoon, wiped the bench then moved off. I stand with the carton of milk with nowhere to pour it.

  Repeat operation: Find a fresh bowl, locate cornflakes then find another spoon. By the time I’ve done all three, Mrs Hannigan has gone off with the milk. I see her pour it down the sink and shake the carton to get out the last drop.

  ‘Yesterday’s,’ she says with a sniff.

  ‘So where’s today’s?’ I ask. But she has other things on her mind.

  ‘Your mother’s home this morning, so don’t dawdle over breakfast. She’s got a meeting at nine. There’s your dinner for tonight.’ Mrs Hannigan transfers a frozen meal from the freezer to the fridge. The label tells me it is lamb casserole.

  I decide to nip home for more breakfast, which at our place can be a bit of a bunfight at times, but nothing like this! As I am about to leave, I realise someone is in the hall, talking on a mobile phone. It is Rodney’s mother, dressed in a smart business suit, a Louis Vuitton suitcase standing beside her perfectly stockinged legs. She is giving hell to some quivering minion in a department store.

  ‘Look, I expected it to be cerise,’ she says. ‘Which is what it says on the label. Now that I look at the thing in a decent light, I find it’s mauve, not cerise. Mauve is not my colour, in fact I don’t think mauve is anyone’s colour this season - so you will credit this garment then send someone to pick it up!’ She hangs up and sees me, but she’s not bothered.

  ‘Hi,’ I explain. ‘I’m a friend of Rodney’s - we’re doing a sort of swap. Me here, him there.’

  ‘Yes, Rodney sent me an e-mail.’ Rodney’s mother waves a hand then she’s off out the front door to her BMW. I give her time to get clear then follow on foot. Since it’s the first day of the school holiday, I plan to make it a sort of laze-about day.

  Rodney’s had a good night at our place. The family played Monopoly then he and Senga sat up talkin
g for ages until Mum came and wrenched them apart. Not exactly a bucket of water job but they have warmed up nicely, those two.

  ‘Did you meet Mrs Hannigan?’ Rodney asks.

  ‘She ironed my jeans. Thought I’d never bend my legs again.’

  ‘Been there,’ Rodney says.

  ‘She left your dinner out. I didn’t eat it.’

  ‘Lamb casserole?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I just hope you put it back in the freezer.’ Rodney gives a little wag of his finger.

  ‘It’s under my sweater.’

  ‘Your mum’s invited me for dinner again,’ Rodney says. ‘I’ve accepted.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say. As far as Rodney’s place is concerned, enough is enough. So we sort of mooch around for the day, Rodney and me. To tell the truth, now I feel sorry for him. It’s no wonder he’s the way he is, money to burn and no sense of purpose. Lambert shows up and is suspicious of Rodney but after a while he relaxes too.

  We spend a morning grooving around, then it’s time to eat.

  ‘Your place or mine?’ Rodney asks. We make it mine. Lambert comes too. Dad’s home from his early shift at the lollipop factory. But he is bitter, which is not like Dad. Also, he doesn’t have his lollipop or smart cap any more.

  ‘I waited at that crossing, I waited,’ he says. ‘But not a kid showed up.’

  ‘It’s school holidays, Dad,’ I explain.

  ‘Now you tell me!’ Dad is aggrieved. ‘Me standing there like a nong while they’re all sunning themselves in Surfers Paradise. Anyway, I decided to get a bit of practice in and stopped a few cars. But there was this stroppy woman in a BMW who argued the point. “You have no children with you,” she says, hi-falutin’ voice, and goes to barge past me, despite my sign which clearly says STOP.’

  ‘In a BMW?’ Rodney becomes anxious.

  ‘Yeah, you’ll know it by the dent in its roof.’ Dad is miserable. It all comes clear to me.

  ‘So you lost your job, Dad?’

  ‘Got it in one, Fergus. But not a word to your mum, eh?’

  ‘At least until pay day.’

  ‘That’s the ticket, Fergus.’

  For the next few days, Rodney’s a kind of fixture in our place but he fits in easily so no one minds. He doesn’t sleep here any more but comes in at night to watch TV or just to sit and talk. When it’s time for him to be off home, he’s always reluctant to go and Senga’s the one to see him off, after a little farewell chat on the doorstep.

  ‘I feel sorry for him,’ Mum says after Rodney’s gone. ‘Going home to a lonely house, parents always away.’ Senga returns with a smile on her face.

  ‘He just needs someone to keep him company,’ she says, then floats off to bed.

  . Two nights later, the McPhails are hard at it, watching a deeply intellectual television program where this brain-sucking leech creature has temporarily taken human form and no one in the space-ship crew knows who he is. The crew decide to unmask him by playing Scrabble because it’s a well- known fact that brain-sucking leeches can’t spell. This is the intellectual bit.

  Rodney sits cross-legged on the carpet, eyes a-goggle, Senga is in the chair behind him and when she thinks no one’s looking, she twirls the hair at the back of Rodney’s neck. I haven’t yet worked out if this is what’s making his eyes go pop.

  There comes a dramatic moment in the TV action.

  ‘Deceit,’ says one of the crew and snaps down the letters.

  ‘Danger,’ says another and everyone round the Scrabble board looks narrow-eyed at the next player. Can he spell or can’t he? It is tense. This is the moment of truth. There comes a click at the front door.

  ‘That’ll be your father,’ Mum murmurs.

  ‘Shh,’ Jennifer hisses. At this point, Mum hasn’t found out that Dad is unemployed. The sitting room door opens and we all become aware of a rapidbreathing presence amongst us. Fearing it might be a brain-sucker, we all turn to look. A large, shaggy dog wags his tail at us then makes straight for Rodney and tries to lick his face.

  ‘Hello, dog,’ Rodney says.

  ‘Hello, dog nothing.’ Mum gets to her feet. ‘Where’d it come from?’ Then Dad enters, a grin from ear to ear.

  ‘You like him then?’ Dad says. ‘His name’s Cactus.’ The dog is friendly, wet, shaggy and smelly. It has no manners and with the interruption we missed finding out which one of the crew was the leech. There is now an ad on the television. Bummer. ‘I did a job for this guy,’ Dad goes on to explain. ‘Couldn’t pay so he gave me one of his bitch’s pups.’

  ‘If that’s a pup, its mum must be an elephant!’ Jennifer recoils but Cactus is pleased to be with us. He bounds around the room, growling and shaking his head from side to side, pretending to be angry.

  ‘You did a job?’ Mum asks, her nose on one side of her face. ‘What about the council position? M-mm?’

  ‘That wasn’t full time,’ Dad says and makes meaningful eye signals to indicate that Rodney’s in the room so now’s not the time to discuss intimate family matters such as sudden and unforeseen unemployment, is it? It’s an old Dad trick; when there’s bad news, always create a distraction - which role Cactus fills to a T. The dog’s found TV Week and starts worrying it to death.

  ‘Huh, now he’s doing origami,’ Jennifer snorts.

  ‘He’ll eat his own weight in dog biscuits,’ Mum observes.

  ‘A good watchdog though,’ Dad says. ‘Here boy, here boy.’ Cactus ignores him. Rodney snaps a finger.

  ‘Cactus, heel!’ Cactus bounds to Rodney and sits holding his head up, managing to appear quite noble, alert and aware, despite looking shaggy and generally disorganised.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Dad is proud.

  We make Cactus comfortable for the night, which is to say we lock him in the cold damp shed out the back with a bucket of water and a heap of dog biscuits.

  In the cool of the October night, Cactus starts up with a Baskerville howl. Ba-ooo, ba-ooo. The wind whistles through the tree. It is scary. Mum stirs and goes to the back door.

  ‘He’ll wake the whole neighbourhood,’ she says to the household generally.

  ‘The neighbour’s deaf,’ Dad points out.

  ‘I’m not,’ Mum snaps back. She calls out to Cactus. ‘Hey, dog! Shut up!’ I get out of bed and go to join Mum at the back door.

  Ba-ooo, ba-ooo. Cactus lets fly again. Then Rodney’s at the back fence in pyjamas and freshly ironed dressing-gown.

  ‘Hi, Mrs McPhail, hi, Fergus.’

  ‘Hi, Rodney,’ Mum says. ‘That dog, eh?’

  ‘Let me talk to him.’ Rodney slips into the darkness then I hear him say, ‘Cactus, boy. Quiet. Shh. Not so much noise, eh? Good boy, good boy.’ Cactus goes woof, just once, then he’s silent. Rodney pads back along the fence and gives us a wave. ‘He’s just lonely, Mrs McPhail.’ He goes inside. Mum shakes her head. ‘Well, Rodney knows all about lonely, doesn’t he?’ ‘Yeah, Mum. It takes one to know one.’

  As Mum settles in her bedroom, I hear her grump to Dad, ‘It’s that dog, or the relationship. Make your choice, Donald McPhail.’ Dad does a snore noise, but I know he’s awake. In my bedroom, I lie waiting for Cactus to start up again but he’s quiet for the rest of the night. Where dogs are concerned, this Rodney’s a natural.

  Old Cactus has other advantages. The girls love him. Sophie and Angela come around and I hear them say things I wish they’d say about me.

  ‘He’s so cute.’

  ‘Cuddly.’

  ‘Oh, look at his big, sad eyes. Don’t you just want to hug him?’

  Okay, girls, I vow. I’ll work on it.

  Whenever the dog claps his big sad eyes on me, Old Cactus tries to hump my leg but the girls don’t comment about that. And where Cactus goes, there goes Rodney. What’s more, Rodney can get Cactus to do tricks like roll over, play dead, fetch things and swim underwater in the pool. Cactus leaves a trail of drowned fleas on the surface. Rodney swears the dog can also do long division and geometry,
but I take his word on that one.

  It’s not long before Rodney comes to Mum and hums and haws for a bit. Cactus sits quietly, head cocked to one side, taking all of this in.

  ‘The thing is, Mrs McPhail, Cactus and I understand each other,’ Rodney says. ‘So I’d like to have him. I’ve never had a pet, never wanted one until I met Cactus and now I know he’s for me. Aren’t you, boy?’ Cactus goes woof and wags his tail.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Rodney.’ Mum shakes her head. ‘He’s almost part of the family. Cactus McPhail.’ But in the end, like in about fourteen seconds, she relents and Rodney and Cactus are now in a dog/owner togetherness situation.

  I go with them just to check out the settling-in phase because I already know that a large, scruffy dog and that house next door are not meant for each other. Cactus lollops into the kitchen, snuffling here and there, leaving wet paw-prints on the floor and letting his tail bang, bang against the walls making moist, feathery marks. Mrs Hannigan pauses in mid- spray, her eyes flashing dangerously.

  ‘Have you got a dish for his water?’ Rodney gets in first.

  ‘Toilet or drinking?’ Mrs Hannigan puts down her spray bottle. ‘If it stays, I go.’ Rodney finds a flat dish in a cupboard. He ignores Mrs Hannigan and runs some water into the dish then carefully sets it before his dog.

  Later, after Cactus has explored every room then decided which chair he’ll sleep on, Rodney’s mother comes home and senses an unruly canine presence. ‘I’ve got a dog,’ Rodney tells her. ‘Meet Cactus.’

  ‘A dog?’ His mother’s eyebrows shoot up.

  ‘My psychologist’s idea.’ Rodney gives me a lying wink. ‘Says it will help soothe my aggression and temper my truculent mood swings.’

  ‘Oh well, if he says so, it must be right.’

  ‘And Mrs Hannigan quit.’

  ‘Who’s Mrs Hannigan?’