Fergus McPhail

by David McRobbie

  ‘The housekeeper.’

  ‘Oh, was that her name? I’ll phone the agency, but first I’ve got to book my car in.’ Rodney’s mother takes out her mobile phone and punches in a number then wanders off to find better reception. ‘Hello,’ I hear her say. ‘I’d like you to take a dent out of my car. Some fool of a man hit me with a large thing on a pole.’ Rodney and I exchange glances then whistle airily. Before too long, his mother comes back into the room with a question on her face. ‘Rodney, did your psychologist really say that?’

  ‘No. Just made it up,’ Rodney grins. ‘I haven’t seen him for months.’

  Rodney’s mother sits beside him and looks at Cactus. The dog seems to know this is a significant, make-or-break moment; he manages to look soulful and sincere, putting his head to one side. He stops dribbling.

  ‘He’s really quite cute,’ Rodney’s mother says and pats the dog’s head. ‘I had a dog when I was young. Loved him.’ Cactus makes a low growl of pleasure. ‘It takes me back.’

  ‘He does tricks. Look.’ Rodney kicks off his sneaker and flicks it across the room. ‘Fetch it, boy!’ Cactus makes a bound for the running shoe, shifts a chair, nudges aside a coffee table, ruffles an Afghan rug and comes prancing back to Rodney, shaking the shoe from side to side, growling like a polar bear.

  ‘You’ll need to buy him a collar,’ Rodney’s mother goes on. ‘And make sure he’s registered and checked by the vet. And he’ll need lots of exercise, a big dog like that. Won’t you, boy?’ She holds out a hand to Cactus.

  ‘Woof!’ the dog agrees.

  ‘I’ve been spending time next door, with Fergus,’ Rodney goes on. ‘And his family. Y’know, his mother and father, his sister -’ Rodney takes a pause. ‘I like it, Mum. The family thing. They treat me like one of theirs.’ Rodney’s mother digests this for long seconds. It’s a good thing Cactus is there to give her something to do with her hands and somewhere to put her eyes.

  ‘Tell you what.’ She looks at her watch. ‘I’ve got some time right now. How about you, Cactus and I go for a walk? I’ll get changed, okay?’

  ‘Can Fergus come?’ Rodney asks.

  ‘If he wants.’ Rodney’s mother gets up and goes to the door but she only has eyes for Cactus. She snaps her fingers and he goes to her.

  ‘Um,’ I lie, ‘I think Mum wants me - for something.’ I catch Rodney’s eye, give him a wink and ease out of the room.

  There are times when a guy should be alone with his mother. And his dog.

  Mitch is home from Europe, keen to get our band off the ground, by hook or by crook - it seems he visited Scotland, his parents’ ancestral home, where he saw some kids who’d got a band going. Although he didn’t understand a word they said, the experience filled him with enthusiasm for us getting into gear, band-wise. On top of that, the year-ten end-of-school dance is coming up in November and it’s our chance to play a starring role, if we can get our act together in time. Okay, nothing insurmountable here - the only problem is that Sophie now wants to be our drummer. She hasn’t said as much but it’s a case of: you want my brother’s drums, you take me too.

  Looking at things one at a time, Lambert and I discuss ways of easing Mitch out of our band and inserting Sophie in his place. Mitch is rampagingly keen to be part of our little world of music but at this point, he doesn’t know about Rodney’s kind offer, or that Sophie’s big brother’s drum kit is ours for the asking. Lambert and I invent private reasons why Mitch can’t be in our band. Reason one: Being on the youthful side, he could be bad for our image.

  ‘We haven’t got an image,’ Lambert growls. ‘We haven’t even got a band!’

  ‘When we get one,’ I persist, ‘Mitch could be bad for it. How would you be, up on stage - a couple of cool, older guys, that’s you and me - then there’s Mitch in short trousers, can’t see over the top of the big drum. Still in primary school.’

  ‘Junior secondary.’

  ‘Whatever. He might start cracking one of the juvenile jokes he brought back from Scotland, like: “How do you cure a pig with a pimple?”’

  ‘I dunno,’ Lambert says. I deliver the punch line. ‘Use oinkment. Isn’t that tragic?’ But it makes old Lambert smile. He likes it, so I picked the wrong juvenile joke.

  ‘Mitch has been loyal all along,’ Lambert goes on doggedly. ‘Saving up, washing cars, collecting bottles, starting a bank account plus he’s good on the drums so we shouldn’t dump him.’

  ‘Okay,’ I put it to Lambert. ‘ You tell Sophie she’s out.’ Lambert dithers. I press my advantage. ‘Getting rid of Sophie means Angela won’t hang around.’ So in this way, the problem is now as much mine as it is Lambert’s. He furrows his brow and comes up with reason two: if we get to play for the dance, it’ll mean staying up past Mitch’s bedtime. It’s not a very good reason but Lambert is thinking in the right direction. ‘True, true.’ I nod wisely. ‘So you’ll tell him he’s out.’ I move off smartly, leaving Lambert to ponder our decision.

  ‘Hang on.’ He comes after me at the trot. ‘What’s wrong with you telling him?’

  ‘Lambert, Lambert.’ I put an arm around his shoulder and we walk off. But after a few paces, I agree that we should act like men and face Mitch together, tell him we’re not starting a band after all. It only means that we’ll have to rehearse in secret. Already Mr Negative Lambert can see a fly in the oinkment. Mitch goes to the same school as us. How are we going to keep him from finding out that we’re hoping to play for the year ten dance? ‘You’ll think of something,’ I say to my friend.

  Mitch accepts our lying excuse about end-of-year pressure, exams, tests and assessments.

  ‘Okay.’ He shrugs. ‘So after your exams we give it a go? Right?’

  ‘Sure thing, Mitch.’ Already I hate myself. But with problem one sort of solved, and because we’re both feeling guilty as sin about sidelining Mitch, we head off wordlessly to inspect Sophie’s brother’s drum kit.

  ‘I feel rotten,’ Lambert confesses after a while. I try to make a joke of his feelings, but it doesn’t work.

  We’ve crossed that bridge and shut the stable door, so we must live with what we’ve done.

  Sophie is there with Angela and they both greet us brightly. Lambert and I follow them around the back to the garage where the drum kit is stored. The place is full of furniture and oddments so it’s a case of shifting things - a trampoline, two bicycles, a sideboard and a large object with nozzles and red rubber tubes coming out of it. It looks medical. Lambert whispers to me that it’s either for milking cows or making illegal alcohol. I don’t like to show my ignorance. He could be right on both counts. With Sophie’s help, I shift a double bed which brings me out in hot flushes - me and Sophie together right next to a bed. The fact that it’s in seven pieces is neither here nor there; a bed’s a bed. Our eyes meet over the springy part and I pause to see if Sophie’s thinking what I’m thinking.

  ‘Are you just going to stand there looking soulful?’ she asks. Okay, so she’s not thinking my way, or if she is, she’s hiding it well. I notice that when Angela helps Lambert shift the mattress he’s also a quivering, stumbling mess. I can see it in his eyes: Angela + Lambert + Inner Spring = drool, drool, drool.

  At last, at last, we get our minds back on other things. Sophie unearths the drum kit and our faces fall. It is only one big drum and what’s worse it’s got Salvation Army on it in big round cheerful letters.

  Lambert and I hide our disappointment. Sophie rolls it out to us. It goes dum, dum a-lum, dum on the garage floor.

  ‘Sophie, was your brother a member?’ Angela asks.

  ‘No, he won the drum in a card game,’ Sophie responds. This is not the Salvation Army behaviour I know but I have another concern.

  ‘Urn, Sophie, you said “drum kit”.’ I casually put stress on the kit word. ‘Um, where’s the - um - the rest of it?’ Sophie rummages and produces two sticks and a clip to hold the music on top. There’s also a leather harness for strapping on the drum so you can march as w
ell as play. Then comes another delicate problem: Sophie wanting to be part of our group. It is Lambert who raises the issue.

  ‘And Fergus says you play, Sophie.’

  ‘Yeah, I love the big drum. Watch.’ Sophie grabs a drumstick then goes, bang-bang-bang-bang-bangy- bang bang. ‘That’s Onward Christian Soldiers. Then there’s -’ She goes, bang-ity-bang, bang-ity bang. ‘And that’s Silent Flight. ’

  ‘Brilliant.’ Angela approves. ‘Do you know any more tunes, Soph?’

  ‘Heaps. Abide with Me, Crimond and Does your Anchor Hold in the Storm of Lifer

  ‘That’s a comprehensive list, Sophie,’ I say. Inwardly, I am churning. You can’t dance to any of them! Lambert nods slowly, his head to one side, not game to look me in the eye. Sophie smiles.

  ‘What do you guys think? Be honest.’

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Your time-keeping’s excellent. Spot on. Never heard such a tempo.’

  ‘Right then.’ Lambert becomes brisk and businesslike. He rolls the big drum out into the sunlight. ‘We’ll take this back to Fergus’s place, get it tuned, cleaned up and try it out.’

  ‘And I’m in the band?’ Sophie asks. ‘Right, guys? You promised.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ I tell her. We shift all the other stuff back into the garage then go home with the big drum, fixed smiles on our faces.

  ‘This is embarrassing,’ Lambert says once we are away from Sophie’s house. We take turns at carrying the drum, two hundred paces each then we change over. ‘I bet this is nicked or it fell off a lorry. What if a Salvation Army guy sees us?’

  ‘We do a swift U-turn. Anyway, Salvos are easy to spot - they wear uniforms.’

  ‘He might be in plain clothes.’

  ‘No, it’s a number one rule: always wear uniform. And the women carry tambourines.’ We march on and an old man gives me twenty cents.

  ‘God bless you,’ he says. ‘For showing me the light.’ It was me carrying the drum at the time and I felt stupid.

  This is a disaster! Two guitars and a big Salvation Army drum do not a rock group make, not with Sophie who only knows hymns. What sort of teenager have I got mixed up with? She’s the woman of my dreams, but I am now discovering some of her limitations, for example, no taste in music. What else is she hiding? Lambert and I have the same brainwave simultaneously - we’ll go and get Rodney’s drums. His offer is still open - all we need is to borrow Senga’s hair driers - she’s got four of them - dry out the damp skins, wipe off the chlorine stains, find a decent drummer and we’re in the rock business. Brilliant!

  Rodney next door is pleased to see us, not like the old days. Cactus too is happy to see me again. When he starts with his humping the upper leg habit, I introduce him to Lambert. But Rodney has bad news.

  ‘You’re too late, guys. Mitch came and got the whole kit.’

  ‘And caboodle,’ says Lambert, his face falling to his feet. Bummer! Double Bummer!

  So there you go. We’ve already fobbed Mitch off with the lie about not forming a rock group after all. Meanwhile, smart Mitch moves in and with the help of his Dad and a ute, collects Rodney’s drums and drives home laughing. Aesop could make a fable out of this!

  Now one piece of the problem is how to delicately ease Sophie out of the band we haven’t formed yet - the other bit is how to get Mitch to part with the good drums. Or give him back his old job.

  Some people say the teenage years are a happy, carefree, uncomplicated time in a young person’s life. Huh! Not from where I’m standing. You wake up some days, swing your legs out of bed and say, ‘Good morning, world,’ or whatever. Then things start going wrong. Your mother insists you have a shower only there’s no hot water. You can’t find your favourite jeans and Mum says they’re in the rag bag and no, you can’t get them out again because she already ripped a leg off below the knee. You get to the breakfast table where Jennifer’s been waiting for just this very moment. She up-ends the muesli packet and sprinkles the last of the stuff into her plate.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she says. ‘None left for Fergus.’ I grab the milk, meaning to deprive her of it. We fight, but the top’s open, milk sloshes and who gets the stuff on his clean shirt? Who gets the blame? Yep and yep! You got it both times.

  Making things worse, Lambert says he’s dipping out on the Mitch/Sophie/drum/band negotiations. He’s going to concentrate on his studies and forget rock music.

  ‘Think about Angela,’ I tell him.

  ‘I do that all the time,’ he growls. ‘I’m going blind thinking about Angela.’

  At school, Lambert and I become experts at changing the subject. Every time Sophie or Angela mentions the band and when we’re going to give Sophie a try-out with the big drum, we think of something else to talk about.

  ‘Did you see that dinosaur movie last night?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, brilliant,’ Lambert takes up the lie. ‘Like when the big hairy green one chewed that fat guy’s arm off

  ‘Yeah, gruesome.’

  ‘Listen, when are we going to practise?’ Sophie demands. She pulls out a sheet of paper and gives it to me.

  ‘Soon’ I assure her. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I wrote a song,’ she says. ‘Not the music, just the words.’

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ Angela enthuses. ‘And it’s not a hymn either.’

  ‘Terrific!’ I pretend to be wild about the idea, but my heart sinks. If Sophie writes the way she belts her brother’s big drum, this is going to be a song and a half. I make to fold the paper and put it away but she’s not having it.

  ‘Go on, read it. Tell me what you think.’

  ‘Be honest,’ Angela adds.

  This is a delicate moment. When a girl says, ‘Be honest,’ she doesn’t mean it literally. She means, never mind the truth, just say you love my lyrics and a truck will be round with the brownie points, where do you want them? Lambert takes half a step away. He’s not getting caught up in this. But he has a sly grin.

  ‘Yeah, go on, Fergus. Read it aloud.’

  I open the paper and read Sophie’s words, trying to jazz them up with my voice, making enthusiastic sounds, shaking my head from side to side, going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Clicking my fingers; it all helps.

  When I'm this close to you,

  I don’t know what to do

  I get in such a stew I’m blue,

  It’s true,

  I can’t construe.

  ‘I spew?’ Lambert suggests helpfully, his face straight as a ruler. ‘Plus I’ve got flu?’ But luckily the bell rings so I’m saved from reading the rest.

  ‘I knew you’d like it,’ Sophie says. ‘You can set it to music, right?’ She blows me a kiss and trots away with Angela. Lambert catches my desperate, heart-sunk eye.

  ‘It’s vomitsville!’ He stalks off to the classroom. ‘We could work on it,’ I call after him but he only sticks a finger in his mouth and pretends to throw up. Please, can I start my life all over again?

  I’m having a heady dream. Sophie slinks into view, looking wonderful. She smiles at me in that heartmelting way of hers. I become Mr Cool and walk towards her, my head doing little noddy-noddies. She lets me approach then starts whacking the big Salvation Army drum and chanting in a voice like a fistful of tossed gravel:

  There’s one thing you gotta know about me baby,

  When I say ‘no’ I don’t mean ‘maybe’.

  The way she punishes that drum it sounds like the whole gymnasium full of basketballs drumbling downstairs at the same time.

  I creak an eye open and say, ‘Good morning, world. I’ve missed you.’

  This is terrible! It used to be the bad stuff started after I got out of bed. Now it’s taking over my dreams!

  Trudging to school, I fall in with Lambert. We don’t need to speak. The late spring sun shines down on us but misery is everywhere. Lambert breaks the silence.

  ‘Now Angela’s at it,’ he says, gloom and doom dripping from his words.

  ‘At what?’

  ‘Writing songs.’
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br />   ‘Good ones?’

  ‘You kidding?’ Lambert turns down a thumb, Roman Emperor style.

  ‘We’re going to have to make a stand,’ I say. ‘Tell them their songs are crap, tell them the big drum’s hopeless -’

  ‘And Sophie’s not gonna be in the band. Not with that deranged drumming she does.’ It’s the truth. Look what’s happened because we’re too chicken to come out and say what we believe. But even at that moment, I still search for a way out. I back-pedal.

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  ‘I’d go that far,’ Lambert grumps sourly. ‘I’ll tell her it’s all off.’ Ahead, I see Sophie and Angela coming out of the newsagent with this month’s Sally. They see us and wave.

  ‘Now’s your chance, Lambert.’ My friend steels himself then before I can stop him, he takes a convenient right turn and flees like the wind, his little sneakers doing a high speed flip-flop, flip-flop along the pavement until he’s out of sight. What a mate!

  Sophie greets me.

  ‘That was Lambert?’

  ‘It was,’ I agree. ‘He got sudden diarrhoea.’

  ‘Shame. I’ve got a few more songs for him.’ Angela produces a wad of paper. ‘Wanna see them?’

  ‘Not right now, Angela,’ I say. This is the moment of truth. I take out Sophie’s song and hand it to her. ‘And the thing is, Sophie, I can’t set your song to music either.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says and bites her lip. ‘You can’t - or you won’t?’

  ‘A bit of both, sort of,’ I say. ‘But more can’t than won’t.’ Angela stiffens. Sophie faces me.

  ‘Are you saying - my words are - crap?’

  ‘You already said you liked them, Fergus.’ Angela appeals with her sad eyes. For me, this is even worse than sidelining Mitch.

  ‘I just don’t have the musical skill,’ I mumble. Sophie now has a little quiver in her voice, making it even harder for me to find the words. Fortunately, Angela saves me the bother.

  ‘I think he’s saying your song’s rotten, Sophie.’

  ‘No, no, not rotten.’ I go into rapid reverse mode, but Sophie has already been stung to the quick.