by Ross Watkins
‘It was a car accident,’ he replied. ‘I provided a statement.’
‘I see,’ said Fielder. Then, as if to signify that the pleasantries were over, he leant forward to engage the recording device on the other side of the desk. ‘You need to know that this interview is being recorded, okay?’ Adrian nodded, and Fielder sat back and arranged his papers.
Adrian looked at the recording device, and then at the camera installed between the ceiling and door. The door had a small window of reflective glass, which he knew people could see through because he’d looked on the way in. It was all very bare and grey. It matched Fielder’s tone.
‘Are you aware why you’ve been brought in for this inter-view today, Mr Pomeroy?’
Adrian watched the digital recorder, its digits ticking over. He rehearsed his response mentally before speaking. ‘I believe that Alex Bowman has made allegations against me.’
‘That’s correct, Mr Pomeroy. Statements have been made alleging aggravated indecent assault by you on a minor, and our first task here is to establish the facts around these allegations. I’m hoping you can assist us with this in the best way possible.’
Adrian guessed this would have been a good time to ask for the union rep, or to contact his lawyer. But he had never joined the union and didn’t have a lawyer. He nodded. The less said, the better.
‘What is your relationship to Alex Bowman?’
‘He’s a student in my English class. I taught him in Year Seven and now in Year Eleven.’
‘So is it accurate to say that your relationship is on a professional basis only?’
‘Yes.’
And no.
‘You are his teacher, in a position of authority – correct?’
‘Yes.’
And no.
‘In your opinion, does that relationship occasionally have cause to extend beyond what might be considered professional?’
‘That depends.’
‘Please explain.’
‘On the student, sir.’
‘Continue.’
‘Some students need a personal approach in order for the teaching to be effective.’
‘And is Alex Bowman a student who you would describe as requiring a more personal approach from your teaching?’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet you stated a moment ago that the relationship is purely professional. Would you like to correct that response?’
‘What I mean is that a personal approach to teaching can be part of my professional role.’
‘Then can you describe what you mean by a personal approach, Mr Pomeroy?’
Adrian leant against the back of the chair and put his hands behind his head. He then realised that this was the exact pose of a perpetrator being arrested. He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Look, I know what you’re trying to get at here, and I know you think I did whatever it is Alex said I did, but—’
‘Let me be clear, Mr Pomeroy,’ Fielder interrupted. ‘I make no assumptions as to whether or not the alleged incidents have occurred. It must be understood that it is not my role to decide your guilt or innocence. My role is to establish the facts. The greatest problem in criminal investigations is the potential for an officer to assume the validity of the alleged victim’s statement and then set out to prove that assumption right. I understand that an allegation of indecent assault on a minor has the potential to damage a person’s future, whether or not the allegations are factual. Because of this I think it’s best for all involved that the facts are established promptly and thoroughly. Do you agree?’
Adrian nodded.
‘Now’ – Fielder looked down to his notes – ‘please describe what you mean by a personal approach, Mr Pomeroy.’
*
Seven months earlier. It was late evening and Adrian was going about the routine of getting Tam to bed. Noo wasn’t well – she said there was a burning sensation in her chest, probably indigestion from the red onion in her goi ga.
He settled Tam beneath the covers and stroked the boy’s straight black hair away from his face. Perhaps it was the half-light, perhaps the evening tone, but whenever he tucked the boy in like this he couldn’t help seeing the piccolo face of his son as a toddler. The bath routine was his task back then, and he had always found significance in the event – pouring water over his son’s plump little body as he splashed and tipped a full cup into an empty cup and back again. The simplicity of the play brought Adrian remarkable joy. Tam meant heart in Vietnamese, and at moments like those Adrian was glad they had chosen no other name.
Nguyet always said Adrian would eat the boy if he could, and while he laughed in agreement it wasn’t really like that. He did hunger for the boy’s affection, for the contact of his lips on the boy’s bright skin, but it was more about proximity – that the small space between them was an intimacy wholly theirs. Unbreached. Still, Adrian sometimes imagined putting the boy’s entire body in his mouth, if only to protect him from everything and everyone else out there.
Now, Adrian kissed a line between the boy’s forehead and nose, felt the familiar swell in his chest, said goodnight and left the room.
Nguyet was lying on the bed, reading. She said she was trying to distract herself from the feeling in her chest. Adrian offered to go and buy some antacids, and she said she’d appreciate that. He got his keys and wallet and shut the front door behind him.
Adrian liked driving at night, the dashboard lit up like an old arcade game and the street lamps a runway. He’d scroll through the radio stations until he hit upon a sound that paired with his mood – sometimes ambient dance music, sometimes classical piano, sometimes alternative rock. Tonight he discovered a persuasive jazz tune with velvety trumpet and piano that spoke directly to his romantic tendencies.
He wound down the window and put his arm on the sill. It was a cool night but not too fresh – a trace of summer remained in the early autumn. He felt young. He felt like he could drive all night.
Reluctantly he pulled up at the small convenience store where Noo worked, half a dozen blocks from home. He switched off the engine and went in. He walked the aisles quickly but couldn’t see what he wanted, so he asked the woman behind the counter, telling her it was for Noo. The woman said no, they didn’t stock things like that, and directed him to a chemist in Blacktown, which she thought closed at eight. It was close to eight already, but he knew there was a twenty-four-hour convenience store closer to Parramatta. He thanked the woman and got going.
There was little traffic and he drove without urgency. His thoughts drifted to school and the small incidents of the day – the inconsequential acts and expressions that pass by, noticed but not analysed. He tried to gather them into something meaningful now, but failed, because although he was getting physically closer to the school, his thoughts were moving elsewhere, through time and place, as he passed a street crossing which he knew led directly to the house where he grew up.
That street, that house … He envisaged standing on the driveway and looking, with childhood eyes, through the old timber and wire mesh fence, along the long front yard towards the house. The crumbling wooden letterbox on the gatepost … his mother’s rose beds, which he and Noel had to weed each summer. He remembered pushing Noel off his bicycle into one of the rosebushes, and the emotion that ran through him as Noel was carried inside and laid out on the kitchen floor so Glenda could pull out the thorns. He remembered the blood on the lino, and his brother’s legs wrapped in gauze. He had felt culpable but not at all remorseful – as far as he was concerned, Noel deserved each and every one of those bloody thorns. He envisaged looking up and down the street to where the twins lived a few doors along on the other side, and to where the old bloke lived who bred budgies and quails. He remembered the time he arrived home to see the one of the housing commission units burning, the black smoke lifting and the fire truck wailing.
His imagination was stepping him along the driveway towards the carport and the house, an old weatherboard job with brown trim and front windows that reminded him of a face, the eyes lidded by venetian blinds. But as he walked into the convenience store, the fluoro lights erased his musing. He checked the aisles absent-mindedly, forgetting even what he was there for, when he stopped in the middle of an aisle and looked around at the shelves of confectionery.
Someone was behind him.
‘Sir?’
He turned to the young store attendant, and for a moment thought he was back at school, though he didn’t know why. Then the moment passed into recognition – of course he knew the face, just not in this context. ‘Akker?’
‘Good to see you, sir.’
‘I didn’t know you worked here.’
Akker looked down at his badge, the polo shirt with the logo, his black jeans. ‘I haven’t been here long. About two months.’
‘Not that I come here often or anything. You like the work?’
He looked around. ‘It’s okay. The money helps my family.’ He straightened some packets on a shelf. ‘It’s a bit boring but I like working at night. The night’s good. Quiet.’
The boy was being more conversational than he was in class.
‘You must get some interesting characters in here at night.’
He smiled, nodded. ‘You live near here?’ Akker asked.
‘I wouldn’t say near, no.’
‘What are you here for?’
Adrian caught himself, and tracked his thoughts back to earlier in the evening and Noo on the bed. ‘Antacids, actually. Just some antacids.’
‘For your wife?’
Adrian nodded.
‘What’s she like?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What’s her name – what’s she like? You don’t ever talk about her at school.’
‘Well, school is for education on topics other than my wife.’
Akker shut up then. Another customer walked into the store.
‘Those antacids?’
Akker showed him to the right section. The products were on a low shelf, so Adrian had to crouch. Akker stood behind him while Adrian looked at the products – tablets, liquids, chewables. The black jeans brushed his shoulder – a knee perhaps. The boy was almost standing over him as he made his choice and, next thing, Adrian felt a hand come down onto his shoulder, a flat palm with fingers wrapping the curve of muscle. It was a gentle placement, almost a caress. Like Akker didn’t know if he should be doing this but wanted to do it anyway.
Adrian turned his head a little but said nothing: he didn’t know what to say. He felt the heat of the hand through his shirt, an intimacy altogether unexpected, then grabbed whatever packet and stood, and the hand let go. Within a minute Adrian had paid and left. Nothing was said. No eye contact.
Adrian drove the most direct route home. He switched off the radio because he needed the headspace to replay those few seconds in his mind. Akker hadn’t needed to stand so close. And the hand – Adrian felt Akker’s palm for the rest of the drive, as though flesh could burn. Regardless of how he tried to distract himself, the sensation persisted, even after he arrived home to find Noo asleep on top of the bedsheets, still in her clothes.
As he carefully undressed her and folded her body into bed, he told himself that nothing was meant by the gesture – that it was just a friendly thing, that the kid was probably unaware of the personal space he’d breached. As he poured himself a glass of wine and sat on the front porch, he wondered why he was even giving so much thought to what had happened. Eventually he concluded that Alex was simply reaching out – literally and figuratively – and that it was his role as a teacher to recognise the boy’s needs and respond accordingly. Drinking his wine, Adrian told himself that Alex Bowman was indeed a quality student who hadn’t yet reached his potential, a boy who would benefit from a more personal teaching approach.
Yeah, he thought, that’s the phrase.
And as he put the empty wine glass on the kitchen sink and took himself to bed, reaching for the warmth of the body beside him, he reminded himself that he had not touched the boy – the boy had touched him.
The boy is not an object of my desire, he told the night, and decided that he needn’t think more about it. I am in full control. He knew, however, that neither statement was a complete and verifiable truth.
*
‘Mr Pomeroy, one of the witnesses described you as being inquisitive about students’ private lives. Now, in a boys’ school I assume that sexuality is a topic raised on various occasions, both formally and informally. Are you of the opinion that you became more involved with the private life of the alleged victim than your employment required?’
Adrian read between the lines but he wanted Fielder to just come out and say it. ‘Sorry, I don’t follow your meaning.’
‘What I’m asking is whether or not the alleged victim’s sexual persuasion ever became a topic of discussion between you and the alleged victim.’
So someone had said he was inquisitive … Well, yes, it was true enough, and he was sorry. He’d gone and stuck his nose in Akker’s business with no right to do so. He hadn’t put his nose there to get his hands on Akker or Akker’s hands on him, but that was now a moot point.
He had seen too much. For some reason the students always thought that because the focus was on him at the front of the room, only they were watching him – but he saw each of them in great detail too. And the detail was revealing. Every day he was audience to a private demonstration of youth on show, with all the usual players. Villains, jesters, scribes, tragic heroes. All the big themes were there: pride and the abuse of power; the fraught relationship between men and the gods; crimes committed by heroes who cannot see their own folly until the world collapses around them … Probably the comparison was over the top but it allowed him to maintain a sense of humour – and entertaining yourself was sometimes the only way to get through a day in the classroom. Sad but true.
Marley was the cruel jester of Year Eleven English. He was a solid lump of a kid, almost arrogant in his physical presence, leaning over the table half the time or lounging back in his chair, with a mouth that followed. Whenever Adrian asked about a concept or a theme, Marley was the one to shout something mildly provocative. Early in the year Adrian was talking about Chekhov and the potency of the right word to strike the reader’s heart.
‘Is that like what’s on the door in the toilets, sir?’ Marley said.
Adrian looked up from his book. ‘I’m not interested in that, Marley.’
‘But it’s exactly what you mean, sir. It’s true.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it is, Marley.’
For some reason this made Marley ecstatic. He could barely remain in his chair.
‘So it is true you take it up the arse, sir?’
The boys all laughed, of course, and Marley turned to Akker beside him, seeking approval with a fist bump. Akker hesitated, looking sheepish, then bumped him back.
Adrian had visualised physically harming Marley on several occasions, but the closest he ever came to that was during lunchtime duty on the oval, where the boys exacted physical distress on each other by playing tackle football. Adrian was supposed to stop this kind of activity but he always let it ride. He gained a certain pleasure from watching this culturally acceptable form of brutalisation, the contest of force as the boys grew into their shoulders, their chests, and hammered the hell out of each other. They always thanked him for his leniency – which was the only leniency they afforded him.
But sexuality and masculine potency were sites of contest from the first to the final bell. The boys were suspect of anyone who strayed from heteronormative behaviour and yet didn’t comprehend the irony of some of their own actions. Whenever he tried to get the boys to do some creative writing they said writing was for poofters. He tried t
o get them to write about social media; once he even tried to get them to text lines of prose to each other, to compose a group short story, but that devolved as soon as a picture of someone’s genitals did the rounds. Akker – God, Akker – was one of the only ones who didn’t join in.
Adrian still had hope in the boy back then. He thought there was enough of Alex and Alex’s sensibilities left in Akker to keep him above the idiocy. He had hoped the boy would become a writer, or a humanist of some description, and if not in vocation then at least in the small acts of the everyday. He’d hoped for so much, and none of it for himself but for the boy. He’d hoped …
But no. There was never any explicit conversation about Akker’s sexual proclivities. Being explicit isn’t needed when the implicit makes a more potent statement.
‘I’m sorry, Detective Fielder, but I can’t recall a single occasion when Alex and I spoke on that topic.’
‘Do you admit that there was a change in the professionally established relationship earlier this year?’
‘That’s not untrue.’
‘Who initiated that change in the relationship?’
‘He did.’
Fielder was becoming more animated. ‘Mr Pomeroy, can you provide any evidence to support that claim?’
Evidence. Adrian suddenly realised that officers would be waltzing through his front door right now, seizing materials and equipment. The box of unfinished marking, his work diary, his desktop and notebook computers, his mobile. Neighbours would witness his stuff being shut into the trunks of police vehicles and driven away. And then there was Noo. While they were carting out the stuff, she’d be standing back and wondering what was going on. His only hope was that she might be out picking up Tam from school.
A digital forensics team had perhaps already begun plugging in his gear and hacking the hard drives, retrieving his search engine history, scrolling through his text messages and call log and email and social media, copying and pasting into folders on their own databases and filing records. Or something like that. He didn’t know much about the law but he knew the police would be well within their rights to seize and detain his possessions. His personal life would be prised open. A profile was being built, but it was not of him, exactly – it was of Adrian Pomeroy the Kiddie Fiddler, Adrian Pomeroy the Divorced, Adrian Pomeroy the Shamed, the Incarcerated, the Sodomised. It was Adrian Pomeroy the Utterly Broken.