Him and Elsie: twenty-three years now, he figured. He could remember the first time he saw her, the day war was declared and he was stomping through Brisbane trying to feel like a grown-up and wondering if he should enlist. A tram slowed on Adelaide Street and she’d swung out before it fully stopped, bright and young in her pale green dress. The sun caught her hair, the wind caught her skirt, and she looked so impossibly pretty that Clem paused and put his hand up to help her down without thinking. That was that – he wasn’t going to war; wasn’t going anywhere. When they were married, the next year, she wore the green dress, its skirt overlaid with something sheer and its top prettied up with lace. His mum had loved her – thrifty enough to make do with a frock she had, and alive enough to make Clem stay away from getting himself killed. They had good times, the three of them – and then the five of them, with the twins – in the old house on Highgate Hill. He still missed it, and his mum, though she’d been dead now a decade.
The boy threw a rope out towards the jetty, and Clem braced again as it tightened and held – he liked to feel the decking shift as everyone rushed off before him. First job was something in the physics building today, he knew, a dodgy door into one of the lavatories – shouldn’t take more than half an hour, and if he got to it while there was a lecture on, he shouldn’t inconvenience anyone about the convenience. He smiled at his pun as he climbed the hill, took his tools, and cut into the Great Court, dazzled by the colour of the morning sun against its sandstone.
Scoping the halls of the physics building, he saw students hurrying towards a class and stood a moment in the foyer, his eyes adjusting to the low light while he waited for the crush to pass.
‘Mr Gormley, is that you?’ Clem recognised the quiet voice of one of the tutors, and nodded. ‘You’re here about the lavatory? Because when you’ve dealt with that, I’d appreciate you having a look at my office door as well – I’m teaching now, but you’ll see it’s left open, down the hall. If you could pop by, if you’ve got a moment. I really do need to be able to make it secure.’
Clem turned in the direction the man indicated, and turned back to see him disappearing into the lecture hall. As Clem carried his tools towards the bathroom, he heard the man bark, ‘All right, all right’ – such a different tone from the one he’d just used.
They were cold, these buildings, no matter the season. Clem shivered as the men’s room door swung behind him – the smooth cold floor, the tiled walls, the doors that clattered against the two stalls. He saw the problem, rescrewed the hinge, and was done in ten minutes, washing his hands at one of the basins and smiling as the hot water came through at last.
The tutor’s door, and then he’d get out into the sun and take a breather.
He found the man’s office and pushed at the door, feeling the way it sagged out of kilter with the weakness of its upper hinge. Clem pressed at the rectangle of metal, reaching for the screwdriver in his back pocket – A man could’ve done this himself, if it was so important, he thought, but perhaps physicists didn’t work with anything quite so blunt.
Still, he thought, glancing at the desk behind him, this one’s not as messy as most – taking in the neat papers, squared with each other and the desk’s edge, the pot of pencils, the half-empty cup of tea set on a coaster. There was a typewriter too, pushed to one side – no women tapping away for this man – and behind it, slightly obscured, a dome of glass on a varnished wooden stand.
Inside was a funnel full of black stuff – tar, thought Clem, or maybe pitch. He’d had an uncle who built a boat when he was a boy, and Clem had spent weekends by the river, smoothing over the joins in the little craft’s hull, proud to be involved with something as grand as caulking.
He leaned back against the now-closed door. Uncle Perc: he hadn’t thought of him for years – and then what? The boat finished, the man had kissed his sister – Clem’s mum – goodbye, and prepared to set off, across Moreton Bay, and on towards New Zealand.
‘But how do you know how to sail her, Uncle Perc?’ Clem, tiny and pleading, desperate to be taken for a turn. ‘Oughtn’t you to take her out for a run, before you try for the whole horizon?’
‘It’s in my bones, Clem, the wind and the water – ask your mum about growing up on the shoreline with such a bad influence for a brother. Once I go, I don’t turn back.’ He’d named the boat for Clem’s mum too: The Pearl.
‘She sounds like a pirate ship,’ breathed the boy.
There might have been a Christmas card that first year, from New Zealand, Clem thought now, but nothing after that, and he’d never asked his mum where Uncle Perc had gone, or why. It was funny, the way family was so disposable: If Donny upped and moved to another country, he thought, and then smiled. Elsie would never let her children get away. She’d know where they were, and what they were doing, until the last living breath left her body. ‘My babies,’ she still called them sometimes, though she swore it was accidental.
Breathing deep, Clem rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes: he’d get on then. And maybe he would see about a little boat – call it the Pearl II. He bent down to gather his tools and imagined leaning forward to pull at some oars. Stroke. Stroke. He could feel the muscles that would open up across his shoulder blades, muscles he hadn’t used for years – it was as if he’d suddenly remembered how to fly. Reckon I could row Elsie all the way to Indooroopilly Island, if the tides were right.
Straightening up, his leg knocked the desk and something moved. Clem turned towards the glass jar: the pitch that had been dangling down the neck of the funnel, thick and heavy, was creaking and stretching until it broke free and folded into the small beaker below.
No, no: Clem stared at it – had he done this? Had he broken this thing? All the possibility he’d felt – the lovely idea of a boat, a day on the river – shattered and closed down. Just get out: he grabbed his bag and reached for the door, fumbling in his haste. The tutor was standing outside, his hand in his pocket for the key.
‘All done? Grand, thank you. I’ve just come for my book—’ he stepped around Clem, stopping as he saw the jar. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘Oh no.’
‘I don’t know how it happened,’ Clem stammered. ‘I was rescrewing the hinge and when I turned, it was like …’
‘So you didn’t see it?’ The man was holding his arm now, and leaning in close. ‘You were in the very room, and you didn’t see it?’
Clem blinked, swallowed, and took a guess at the right answer – this was worse than being hauled up and asked about algebra in school.
‘No, sir, no, I didn’t.’ Fourteen years old again and desperate to be away.
The physicist laughed and inched the bell jar a little towards the window. ‘Eight years since the last drop – that one was only the fourth since Parnell began the experiment, you know. And you know the mad thing? No one’s ever seen it happen. Ever. I’ve had it in here for a year now, waiting. And the blessed thing waits till I’m talking to first-years – and waits, may I say, till your back’s turned and you’re busy with the ruddy door. Then off it goes. An historic moment. Unseen by the scientist or the janitor – pah!’
He grabbed at the book, so fast that Clem jumped aside.
‘Shut the door on your way out, would you?’ he called, rushing and almost halfway back to his class.
‘But should I wait? If it’s going to happen again, I could wait and watch for that? If it matters that I missed it this time?’ From deep in the hallway, Clem heard the man laugh.
‘Come back in seven or eight years,’ he said. ‘That’s when the next one will be ready to taunt me.’ And he disappeared into the gloom.
Alone in the room, Clem crouched beside the jar, staring at the glass, the pitch, the empty space below the funnel. Eight years of waiting, and here I was. He cupped his hand around the jar’s curved top, trying to think of another thing in his life to which only he wa
s witness. There was Elsie, he thought, although she spoke sometimes of a young fella she’d known before she met him, and Clem wondered in the middle of some nights how much there might have been to that. But all right then, Elsie sleeping, maybe – but then there were the twins, and always one or other of them ending up in the bed before morning. The pitch was so shiny, so sleek – he could have stood and watched it forever. In the end, it was his hand, sweaty, against the glass that made him step back, wipe it down, and walk away.
Outside, in the elegant loggia of the Great Court, he took the long way towards the workshop, visualising the pitch’s drop again and again. Maybe he’d tell Elsie, as they walked home together. Maybe he’d tell her as they had their tea. Or maybe it’d take him as long to tell her about the silly pitch as it had to say something about his dad and the crow. There was something nice about a story you kept inside yourself; there was something nice about a secret, or a fear.
The sun inched across the sky and the day passed, Clem’s stomach rolling now and then as if he was on the brink of falling in love. A bit of pitch, he told himself more than once. All this for a bit of pitch. At the end of the day, waiting for the punt to cast off, he watched the late afternoon light pick up the currents on the river’s surface and saw himself caulking the perfectly smooth keel of a dinghy or a skiff. From the trees above, a chorus of corellas broke out, and Clem smiled at their song.
Then, behind him, came the physicist’s voice – the polite, hallway tone, not the rousing bark for students. ‘And blow me if it didn’t go today – I was giving a lecture. Parnell’s pitch gave way, and there wasn’t a blessed soul there to see it.’
At the punt’s rail, Clem saw his knuckles grip to whiteness. Hang on, he wanted to call across the deck. There was a blessed soul – and the blessed soul did see it. But the man’s voice had dropped into the next part of his conversation, and Clem knew he would never have made himself heard.
He stared at the water and saw nothing but its usual murky brown. Overhead, the corellas rose as a block, bright whiteness against the dusk.
What a man might expect; what a man might get – If I’d had a learning man for my dad, that pitch would be mine to claim. But his dad had shot birds and died young, and that was all. Clem wouldn’t tell Elsie about the slow black drop folding itself into the jar; he wouldn’t tell her he was dreaming of a boat. He wouldn’t even dream.
He let go of the punt’s rail and stumbled, seeing himself as the physicist might – a plain man with ginger hair and stubble, pushing through his forties; worked a bit too hard and disappointed a bit too often.
All these moments, he thought as the punt eased away from St Lucia to take him home. They added up to something, but he could never quite see what.
She Knows How to Look After Herself
Michel Dignand
Jennifer Essambot sits alone in the carriage. She has worked late, as sometimes happens in her business, so is alert to the possibility of danger. When she started her journey there had been a scattering of other travellers occupying the carriage, but at each station along the way passengers have alighted, until now she is alone.
Realising this, she leaves her seat on the upper level and moves down the stairs to the open area near the doors. There is a pimply youth with his head in a book sitting in a seat in the corner, but it takes Jennifer no more than a brief look to decide she will face no threat from him. There is a bench seat on either side of the carriage, each capable of seating only five passengers. She takes the seat diagonally opposite the pimply youth. His name is Arthur Bartholomew, but of course she is unaware of that.
The train continues through two stations with no passengers joining or alighting. Jennifer is relaxed, but still alert. She opens the book she has been reading and finds her place on the page.
The door leading to the next carriage is suddenly opened loudly as if thrown to the side. Jennifer looks up and watches as a young man enters, followed by another. They leave the door open, and the noise from the wheels on the rails is very loud. The two men stand in the open area before the main doors, holding on to the central column of handrails for support as the train sways from side to side. The pimply youth sitting beside the open door cautiously slides it shut without looking at the two men and the noise in the carriage returns to its previous level.
The two men in the open area are bending to peer along the lower deck of the carriage. They can see it is empty. One of them steps up to the upper deck and notes that it, too, is empty.
Jennifer is feeling slightly uneasy, a feeling she often gets when travelling late; so far, though, she has never been subjected to any sort of harassment. Jennifer is twenty-four, and believes she can look after herself.
Arthur Bartholomew, on the other hand, is a little frightened. He is eighteen, and has been bullied all his life. He is an only child. His mother is a single parent. They lead quiet, frequently frightened lives.
From the corner of his eye he can see the two men looking towards Jennifer, nudging each other and laughing. Arthur can sense danger here and wishes he was in another carriage.
Jennifer decides that if the two men show no sign of leaving the train at the next station, she will leave herself and take a taxi the rest of the way home. She pretends not to have noticed the men, and continues reading. In fact she hasn’t read a word, her attention being entirely on her safety. She turns a page to give the impression she is reading. She will find her place again later, when she gets home.
The man furthest from her moves around his partner and takes a seat beside Jennifer, his partner breaking into a guffaw. The partner’s name is Peter Onslow, and he would have liked to have the self-confidence to do what Jimmy Parker, his friend, has just done. But he is a follower, not a leader, and he has never successfully approached a girl before. The woman Jimmy is seated next to is a stunner: blonde, a pony-tail, well-dressed. Peter can’t actually see her face, but he knows she will be a stunner. He wishes she would stand up so that he could see the whole of her.
Jimmy has had many women. He is twenty-two years old and knows how to force a girl into a corner for a snog. He knows how to feel them up, often in public where they don’t want to make a fuss in front of their friends. He stares at Jennifer now, lowering and tilting his head so that she cannot help seeing him, his head nearly in her lap. She notices that his hair is a little greasy, and that he has a crop of blackheads around the flare of his nostrils. The standing man sniggers and she knows she is in trouble now.
Arthur knows it, too. He watches frozen as she sits up and snaps the book closed. Peter has moved closer, crowding her on that side, and Jimmy is still bent, close to her face.
Jennifer has had no training in any form of unarmed combat, but is nevertheless confident that she can handle the situation. She watches a great deal of TV, and has rehearsed the moves she has witnessed so often; the ones that might prove helpful to her, anyway. She knows that ruthless action is the key to success.
With adrenalin pumping, she quickly reassesses the situation. Is she sure she is under threat? Yes.
Could they be just messing around? Yes, but they have gone much too far.
If she does nothing, if she allows them to have their fun, will she remain safe? No.
At that moment Jimmy, the confident one sitting beside her, raises his head and puts his hand on her knee, sliding it under her skirt and along her thigh.
Jennifer lifts her bag from beside her and puts it in her lap, opening it and dropping her book into it. Without pausing she feels for the hard drive, an almost-new two terrabyte device in a steel case, and folds it in her fist, her thumb wrapped around one end of it, the other end protruding rather like a heavy dagger. Smoothly she lifts the hard drive from the bag and with all her strength smashes it sideways into Jimmy’s face, aiming for the bridge of his nose. She feels great satisfaction at the crumpling sensation in her fist, knowing
that it will not be the sturdy case of the hard drive that is crumpling.
Without a pause Jennifer rises and performs a lightning-fast fouetté, the ballet movement adopted by street fighters and kick-boxers to bring the foot crashing into the faces of opponents. Jennifer, as we know, knows nothing about fighting; but she took five years of ballet lessons during her teens, only to discover that she has grown too tall to become a successful ballet dancer.
Peter, who has registered almost nothing of all this, just a flashing of arms and legs, takes the toe of Jennifer’s boot in his throat. Jennifer has lifted her leg as high as her short Lycra skirt allows, and while she aims at his head, hoping to hit beside the ear with the solid side of the boot, it is the flattened point of the boot that catches Peter behind his Adam’s apple. With a roar of pain Peter falls to the ground clutching his throat, rolling under the seats.
Arthur is standing, horrified, at the end of the carriage, his eyes wide with fear, his body slightly bent as though preparing to flee, his book still in his hand, his satchel hanging behind him. He wants to scream but something is preventing him from doing so, maybe an element of empathy with Peter, who is having great difficulty breathing, his trachea swelling dangerously.
Jimmy is bleeding copiously, his shirt front soaked by the blood running over his chin despite his efforts to stem the flow by pressing both hands to his shattered face. He will never again be able to view himself as the laughing, handsome boy his mother has always told him he is.
He will have breathing problems for the rest of his life, and in fact a great deal of surgery will be necessary before he can breathe through his nose at all. He lies on his side on the seat Jennifer has so recently vacated, making a terrible mess of the upholstery.
Jennifer takes a brief look around her. Her foot has been badly twisted by the angle at which the boot struck, and her ankle is already developing a swelling that will make removal of the boot a bit of a problem later that night. She hopes the hard drive is not too badly damaged, but consoles herself with the knowledge that it is quite new and contains only ten days of back-ups, which she has duplicated on her work computer anyway. On the whole, she is pleased with herself. She retrieves her bag from under Jimmy’s head, a little cross that he has bled on the lower corner of it, then moves towards Arthur and the door to the next carriage. He steps back as she passes close to him, and she slides the door wide to leave the carriage. She turns to slide the door closed behind her, but Arthur isn’t staying there alone with those two thugs. He hurries after her, and only then is the sliding door closed behind them. Arthur looks for some sort of lock, but there is none.
The Best Australian Stories 2012 Page 17