by Stephen Orr
‘Not in tech. You got a moment?’
The Wilkies followed Jeff Owen-Smith towards the main building. As they went, Harry said to his brother, ‘We had this huge sandstorm.’
Aiden just looked at him.
‘Two days—and you couldn’t even see the sheds.’
‘Right.’ He took out his iPod.
‘No,’ Carelyn said.
He looked at her, scrunched it into a ball and shoved it into his pocket.
‘Do they hire movies?’ Harry asked his brother.
‘Does who hire movies?’
‘In the boarding house?’
‘Of course they do. What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘MA?’
‘How would I know?’
Meanwhile, Trevor was walking beside the tech teacher. ‘Still running metalwork?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Your son’s very handy with an arc welder.’
‘He’s been welding since he was ten. There’s always something needs doing, isn’t there, Aiden?’ He turned to him.
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘I did my Matric here in 1974.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, very different then. It was, let me think, Mr Kristie running tech studies.’
‘I’ve heard of him.’
‘Old school, you know, no nonsense. You talked out of turn a piece of wood’d come flying across the room.’ He smiled, remembering. ‘I got clocked in the head a few times, but you learnt to listen.’
As they walked, Trevor studied the walls, covered with hi-gloss saints, Christ, Mary and the others, busy with dramas that filled every hallway, science lab and dining room. There were plinths, too, with statues that had been knocked over and glued together. Jesus, mostly, in the arms of Mary, or holding his hand out pleadingly to the 600 boys who walked past every day.
Around a corner, beneath a set of stained-glass windows, he noticed the honour board: block names reaching back to the college’s foundation. And there, among the crowd:
ATHLETICS
1917 Morris Wilkie
1946 Murray Wilkie
1974 Trevor Wilkie
He could see the gap, still there, for 1911, where John Wilkie had once had his name. Before his public disgrace. Before his removal with mineral turpentine.
Owen-Smith led them into the workshops: tools on shadow racks and lathes sitting fat and solid in the sunlight. Around the welding bays, past the plastics’ oven into the storeroom.
‘Aiden tells me you like to work with wood,’ he said to Trevor.
‘Yes, sometimes.’
‘Well, that must be where he gets it from.’
Trevor was lost for words. Kristie had been an old cunt, and when he thought about it, he’d never liked tech, or school. He’d hated the boarding-house food, the long hours of Latin, the commandments, the whispered prayers. He looked at his son. ‘You okay?’
But Aiden was too ashamed, partly of the story the teacher was spinning, but mostly of himself, for going along with it.
‘Look at this little beauty,’ Owen-Smith said, retrieving a small coffee table from a shelf, finding a rag and wiping it down.
‘Nice work,’ Trevor agreed, running his hand over the stained pine.
‘I gave him an A. Look at those joins … and every cut, neat and clean.’ He lifted and turned the table, so they could see what he meant.
Carelyn took her son around the shoulders. ‘See … and there’s you saying you’re not good at anything.’
Aiden wanted to pull away from her but knew he couldn’t. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You did.’
‘He thinks he should skip Year Twelve,’ she told Owen-Smith. ‘Thinks he can only get Cs.’
‘Nonsense. From what I hear …’
She returned to her son. ‘See?’
Aiden wanted to argue, wanted to say, No, you don’t understand. Why should I spend another year learning about matrices and mitochondria?
Harry looked at his brother but knew better than to say anything, at least now. He knew what he was thinking. Why don’t you all shut up and leave me alone?
Trevor, too, was watching his son, wondering. ‘It’s a nice bit of work,’ he said.
‘Commercial quality,’ the teacher explained. ‘Someone would pay good money for that.’
‘It’s all in your head,’ Carelyn continued. ‘Whatever you set your mind to.’ She ran a hand over the table’s legs.
Trevor looked at Jesus on his cross, hanging above the door. He noticed how He’d been carved from wood. ‘That leaves my stuff for dead,’ he said to Aiden.
A few minutes later they were heading back to the garden, Trevor carrying the table. ‘Weren’t you gonna bring this home?’ he asked his son.
‘I forgot.’
Back at Bundeena, Murray seemed immune to the responsibility he’d inherited. He lay on his stretcher in his sleep-out smoking cigarettes, singing along to the record he’d left playing in the lounge room:
Tell me, darling, that you love me,
While the moon is shining bright!
He’d smoke each rollie, then snuff it out in the old jar that was more butt than sand. He’d wait, taking his time, then give in to the boredom, picking up his next cigarette, striking his lighter and slowly tempting the tobacco to life. More smoke, exhalation, the room filling with its usual port-flavoured fog.
He studied the pine beams supporting the ceiling. One had two small letters carved into it: PR. Paul Rice. He’d been one of Bundeena’s few visitors—a rough-bearded, red-faced young man who, one day in 1916, had come walking up the front drive carrying a duffle bag. He’d knocked on the back door and Mary, wife of Bill, father of Morris, father of Murray, had greeted him with floury hands.
‘You Mrs Wilkie?’ he’d asked.
She’d wiped her hands on her apron and studied the stranger’s face. ‘Yes. You after my husband?’ As she’d searched the yards for his horse.
He’d said, ‘I walked.’
‘From where?’
‘The train. I come from Perth to tell you something.’ He’d tried to smile but only revealed a few broken teeth. ‘Name’s Paul Rice.’
Mary had brought him inside. Made him a cup of tea and sat watching as he sipped and slurped, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Although Bill was off with his rifle she didn’t think this stranger, with his sun-bleached hair and dry lips, meant trouble. Why would you come so far to rob a farmhouse that wouldn’t have anything more than a few old clocks?
‘How long you been walkin’?’ she’d asked.
‘I got off last night,’ he’d explained. ‘I was too tired to walk, so I slept in some grass.’
A short silence. Eventually she’d looked at him and asked, ‘So, what have you come to tell us, Mr Rice?’
He’d studied the china cup then met her eyes. ‘It’s about John. I was serving with him.’
Mary had sat forward, her breath halved, stolen, her heart racing. It was the first time she’d heard her missing son’s name for months—since he’d been shamed on the Cowards’ List in the 7 September 1916 edition of the Port Augusta Chronicle; since, a month before that, when they’d received a letter from the army:
Dear Mr and Mrs Wilkie,
It is with regret that I write to you regarding your son, Private John Wilkie, 2419387. At evening roll call on 21 July 1916, Private Wilkie was found to be missing. Enquiries with his officers and NCOs revealed nothing. Dozens of infantrymen from his battalion were interviewed but none had seen him since the previous evening …
She’d remembered the way the words were arranged into paragraphs, how the typewriter (with a fading ribbon) dropped its k and how there was a finger smudge on the bottom right hand corner of the letter.
The battalion was involved in heavy fighting on the 19th, but a survey was taken of the Fallen, and your son was not among them. Mr and Mrs Wilkie, I must inform you that John had been recorded as a deserter …
Later that day,
after Bill had returned from his shooting, he’d sat with Mary and Paul and asked him about their son.
‘I last saw him when we attacked,’ Rice had told them. ‘He was right into it, and took the charge.’
‘He did?’ Bill had asked.
‘Yes … he was no shirker, Mr Wilkie.’
Then Bill had gone to a drawer and found a copy of a letter they’d sent to the army.
He lives for his mates and would die for them. John is no coward. Surely what you mean is ‘missing’? Maybe he is dazed, confused, lost, captured? We don’t like to think of it, but perhaps he is dead?
‘That’s about right,’ Rice had told them. ‘The army’s got it all wrong. I told our captain, but he wouldn’t listen.’
Bill and Mary had just waited, barely breathing.
‘John was no coward,’ he’d said. ‘I think the noise, the shells, and what he saw, just got to him. I’d often see him crying at night. Like he’d reached some sort of … end.’
Mary and Bill had looked at each other.
‘I think he was shell-shocked. He’d curl up in a ball. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, even me.’
There’d been a meal and an evening around the fire. Then they’d offered him the sleep-out.
‘That’d be nice, folks,’ he’d replied. ‘I got sent home because of my kidneys.’
‘Your kidneys?’ Bill had asked.
The stranger had showed them the scar where the shrapnel had hit him and cut deep into his belly.
Murray hadn’t known the stranger, of course. But the overheard whispers had been enough for him to reconstruct the story, to make the connection between his uncle, the sense of bitterness and regret that lingered in the family, and the body hanging from a rough beam in Number one. There’d always been a feeling that this tragedy had somehow finished the Wilkies. Not as a catastrophic collapse, but as a crack in the prism through which they viewed the world.
He noticed a puddle spreading from under the walls, soaking his rug, flowing under his bedside table. ‘Christ.’ He heard running water from the bathroom and knew it was Chris. Dragging himself up, he went into the house and down the hallway to the bathroom. ‘Chris. Where are yer?’
The bath had been left on. Water was overflowing onto the tiles, into the hallway, under doors, soaking into a pile of books on the floor of Trevor and Carelyn’s room. He went in, turned off the tap and called again. ‘Chris!’
Nothing.
So he went into the room the boy (for he always thought of him this way) shared with his mother. And there he was, naked, stretched out on his bed, listening to the iPod Fay had bought him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Chris sat up and took out his ear-pieces. He made no attempt to cover himself. ‘I’m gonna have a bath.’
‘Bloody idiot … there’s water everywhere.’
Chris just looked at him, confused.
‘Get a mop and clean it up.’
He stood and started to walk from the room.
‘After you get some clothes on,’ Murray growled. He remembered the books. Returned to his son’s room, picked up the pile and laid the volumes on the bed. When Chris reappeared he said, ‘When yer done you can get the hairdryer and start on these.’
Chris went to the laundry and returned with a mop.
‘Where’s yer bucket?’ Murray asked, emptying the bath. ‘What are you gonna put the water in?’ Again, Chris stopped, looked at him and returned to the laundry.
‘Bloody idiot,’ Murray grumbled.
‘I am not,’ Chris replied, turning.
‘Get the water.’
‘I just forgot.’
‘Yeah, I know, you always forget, that’s why you’re a bloody idiot.’
‘Mum!’ Chris howled. He dropped the mop and ran out, looking for Fay.
A few minutes later she came in to find Murray mopping the hallway.
‘You can’t call him an idiot,’ she said.
Murray didn’t respond. He started on the bathroom.
‘Did you hear me, Murray?’
‘He was lying on his bed, fiddling with himself.’
‘I was not,’ Chris said.
‘Looked like it to me.’
‘I was waiting for the bath to fill up.’
Murray almost laughed. ‘How long were you gonna wait?’
Fay looked at her son. ‘What were you gonna do in there?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, and Fay tended to agree. She’d trained him well enough, early enough, to do that sort of thing over the toilet.
‘He was just waiting,’ she said to her brother.
‘Really?’ Murray asked.
‘I was,’ Chris insisted.
‘Well, either way.’ He handed Chris the mop.
Fay glared at her brother. ‘You’ve never understood how hurtful your words are.’
Murray shrugged. ‘They’re not hurtful, they’re facts.’
‘Calling people idiots?’
Murray was having none of it. ‘You gotta say it as it is,’ he told his sister. ‘Otherwise, where would we be?’
‘We’d be getting along.’
‘The world doesn’t work like that.’ He wondered how they’d tolerated such weakness for so long. He looked at his sister. ‘You startin’ tea soon, or do I gotta do that too?’
8
With a predicted top of thirty-nine degrees they decided to start the School of the Air picnic early. A couple of dozen mums and dads and fifty or so kids gathered on the dead lawn of the ‘Scooter’ Haraway Memorial Park and within fifteen minutes the competitions had begun.
The egg-and-spoon race. Harry the number one runner, using his often practised walk-run, the spoon held at chin height. He was the second to cross the line, passing his spoon to Carelyn, who fumbled it, dropped the egg and looked at him. ‘Quick!’ he said, pulling his hair.
Carelyn picked up the egg, replaced it and walked slowly. ‘It won’t stay there,’ she said, and the crowd (some of whom had started an improvised chant) laughed.
‘Keep your eye on the egg,’ Harry called.
‘I am.’ She looked back at him and the egg dropped again. By now the second member of every other team had finished. She carried on, handing over to Aiden, who managed to sprint the twenty metres without looking at the egg; handing it to his father who, having seen they’d lost, took his time, slowly sauntering towards the line. He stopped a few feet from the finish, feigned a twisted ankle, turned to the crowd and said, ‘I don’t think I can make it.’
‘Lame,’ Harry called.
‘Get on with it,’ Carelyn said.
‘Dad,’ Aiden sang, above the voices.
He turned, tripped, and the egg fell, shattering on the ground. They rewarded him with applause and he looked at them as if to say, Such is Life.
There was music on a tinny PA and the group broke into families and clans: the wheat-sheep group, the cattle group, the roadhouse kids, and Shakina and Aleisha, hanging off a set of old monkey bars. The Wilkies drifted back to their table, their bottles of Coke and lemonade, half-eaten chicken and a pair of dips that had hardened in the morning sun. Aiden sat beside his brother and said, ‘You told me you’d been practising.’
‘I have,’ Harry replied.
As he recalled his relays around the compound with Chris—three, four broken eggs on the ground and him saying: ‘You gotta keep your eye on the egg.’ As Chris just looked at him, dropping another one. Until Carelyn came out, saw what they’d wasted, and said, ‘No more.’
Back in the park, Harry was glad to be sitting beside his brother. ‘I was trying to teach Uncle Chris,’ he told him. ‘I thought he might come this year.’ He studied his brother’s face. Noticed his pale skin, probably from too much study. But the changes looked far more dramatic, and final, in a way, he guessed, that would affect everything that had always passed between them. ‘I can help you with your car.’
‘What?’
‘Finish painting it.’
Aiden shrugged.
‘How often do you shave?’ Harry asked.
‘Mind your own fucking business.’
‘Aiden,’ Carelyn growled.
‘Well, tell him to stop crapping on.’
‘I’m not crapping on,’ Harry replied. ‘I just wanted to know.’
Silence, as Aiden gave him his shit-for-brains look and then almost smiled. ‘We gotta get some paint,’ he said to him.
Harry looked at Carelyn.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Can we get some paint?’
She poured herself a glass of wine. ‘Ask your father.’
The park was a concession to civilisation: old play equipment and thin-on-the-ground pine chips; concrete tables with cast-iron shelters whose shadows hardly ever fell across burnt skin. A few dead trees, with a banner strung up: ‘SOTA Xmas Picnic’, the date painted out and updated. Someone had set up their barbecue in an old pond beside a brick construction with a plaque: ‘In Memory of “Scooter” Haraway, AO, who played in this park as a child. His contribution to the local’—(and someone had scribbled ‘porn’)—‘industry changed many lives and impacted the history of our town. A’—(and someone had added ‘gay’)—‘man in a big world’.
‘Pity if they watered the lawn,’ Carelyn said to her sons, watching her husband caught up in a conversation with an old friend on the other side of the park.
‘Can we get some paint?’ Harry asked.
She thought of the holidays, the lean hours, the empty days; the lack of real or virtual education; the claustrophobia. ‘Okay, but you can contribute.’
‘Some,’ Aiden said.
‘Half.’
They noticed a small elephant harnessed to a wooden cart pulling half-a-dozen kids around the park. It plodded across the grass and continued into the carpark, stopping to wait for a reversing Fiat.
‘Where did they get an elephant?’ Harry asked.
‘It’s here every year,’ Carelyn replied. ‘Poor bastard … it’s probably wishing someone would shoot it.’
Shakina was soon over, pulling Harry’s arm. ‘Come on, they’re doing a treasure hunt.’
He resisted. ‘No, I’m too hot.’
‘Come on.’
‘Go on,’ Carelyn said.