Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The (24 page)

He went home and found Hayley putting out plates for lunch. She had baked beans heating in a pot and she dropped an egg on top the way he liked. He told her about Shelley and said six weeks wasn't long. Joanie would be back in six weeks too.

‘I want you to suss things out in Melbourne. You can post me the house-for-sale ads. And the situations vacant as well. And go and look at some suburbs you'd like to live. Get Beth to take you. Ask her about small places too. Towns on the coast, with beaches, eh? But there's got to be a place where I can work.'

‘Sure. OK.'

‘Cheer up, love. There's places as good as Saxton.'

‘I know.'

‘Go and look at some softball matches. See if they come up to our standard.'

Hayley had been in Saxton all her life. He knew it would be hard for her to leave.

Norma telephoned the Round house and asked for Duncan. ‘I just wondered how you were getting on.'

‘Good. Everything's good.' She heard him crackle like a voice from space.

‘You haven't been to see me for a while.'

‘No. I've been busy.'

‘Your mother told me you've bought a telescope.'

‘Yeah.'

‘And do you like looking at the stars?'

‘Yeah. It's fun.'

She could keep going for a long time with girls, wear them down, but had no energy for it with Duncan.

‘All right, Duncan. I rang because I'm going out to see Mr Toft today. I wondered if you'd like to come.'

‘Can't, I'm sorry. There's lots of things I've got to do.'

She thought of asking what, but gave it up.

‘Well, as long as you're busy. Goodbye, Duncan.'

‘Bye. Hey, Mrs Sangster.'

‘Yes? What?'

‘Next time you come round to see Mum, if it's night, you can have a look in my telescope. If you like.'

‘Yes. I'd like. Very much. Thank you, Duncan.'

Tears of gratitude sprang in her eyes. She wiped them away. What a state I'm in, weeping because a boy of sixteen drops me a crumb. She put through a wash and hung it out, cut the used-up flea collar off the cat, walked around the house and straightened the pictures (had there been an earthquake in the night?), read two pages of
The Blind Watchmaker
and thought, old arguments, how they keep on. There was beauty, though, in cellular splitting and she was calmed. Time and chance murder and save. Two billion years as saviour and judge, a lovely idea, though it did not let one off the hook of individual being.

She drove out to the berry farm for lunch. The glassed-in porch
had become her mother's retreat and Daphne was nervous of going there. Norma felt sorry for her, robbed of part of her house, but admired the way her mother had found strength and cleverness with her husband gone.

‘She's such a fusser,' Mrs Schwass said. ‘I can't bear her pulling and straightening things. She even counts the flowers in the vase for even numbers. And she nearly choked me with a scarf this morning. Who needs a scarf with weather like this? I'm going back to my house after Christmas.'

‘Yes Mum, I think you should.' For Clive and Daphne's sake. Daphne would need nursing if this went on.

‘And when I can't look after myself I'll go into a home. You're not to think of looking after me.'

‘No Mum, I won't.'

‘When I die I want to be cremated, not buried like Ken. You can throw the ashes over the hedge to annoy the neighbours.' She had taken her husband's aggressiveness. Perhaps it was loyalty or sympathetic saving. There would be no peanut brownies from now on.

‘I see the girl got six weeks.'

‘Yes.'

‘They should have given her six weeks with Daphne, that would straighten her out. Do you think she'll go back to that fellow?'

‘He got two years.'

‘What was his face like, Norma?'

‘Oh, empty. Like – nothing.'

‘Don't be silly, dear. He's under the same rules as you and me.'

‘Well, he's, I don't know, spoiled.'

‘His mother's fault, is that what you mean?'

‘Not that sort of spoiled. Pushed on an angle. Not facing the same way as everyone else.'

Her mother lost interest. ‘I'm going to write to that girl, Shelley whatever, and tell her she's not to blame for Ken. She's not, you know. But I'll tell her what I think of her choice of boyfriends.'

‘That's a good idea.'

‘Can you find her address for me? I don't mean prison. I suppose someone can send it on?'

Norma walked with Clive in the boysenberries after lunch. They talked about their mother. Her change was contrariness to Clive. ‘You're going to have to take a share of her. She's too much for
Daphne. After Christmas she can come to you.'

‘She's going home,' Norma said. ‘That's the proper place for her.'

‘I've got tenants for that house. She can get three hundred a week in the holiday season. Three fifty.'

‘She doesn't need three fifty, she needs to be in her own place by herself. I'll be close, I'll keep an eye on her.' And if she has an accident and dies that's in the natural course of things. But she did not say that to Clive. She let him sputter on, then heard his complaint about his pickers – slowness, absenteeism, bad language, berry fights, short shorts, no bras, picking green, dropped trays. Most were college girls and Norma was to blame.

‘I'm on holiday,' she answered, ‘I'm keeping out of it.'

She turned away before the packing tent and went by irrigation ponds into a strawberry field. Picking was finished there, but small berries lay hidden in the leaves. She walked along, eating the smallest – they were sweetest too – and dropping the rest into her basin. The plants were mulched on black polythene instead of straw and the berries were robbed of part of their name – and their flavour too? Every now and then one left a tinny taste.

She filled her basin, made a hill on top, some for John, and walked back, sweating lightly, through the boysenberries.

‘Norma,' a voice called.

For a moment she did not recognize the woman: zinc on her nose, baseball cap shading her eyes.

‘Sandra? Yes, it is.'

‘I didn't know you either in your garden-party hat.'

‘Are you working here?'

‘Yes, I pick every year. It's my holiday. I'm one of those people who can't sit still. Worms in my head.'

‘Do you like it?'

‘This place? I came because it's closest to town. Never again.'

‘Why?'

‘He's a mean bastard. It wouldn't surprise me if he's born again.'

‘He's my brother,' Norma said.

‘Jesus, put my foot in it.'

‘From what I hear he's got cause for complaint with some of our girls.'

‘They're on holiday. You can't blame them.'

‘But they're taking money.'

‘They still get plenty done. The sun heats them up.' She grinned. ‘So do the boys. I look the other way.'

‘You've been eating his boysenberries.'

‘Yeah, purple-stained mouth. It's legitimate perks.'

‘Have a strawberry.'

‘Thanks.' She took a handful. ‘I'm sorry for what I said about your brother.'

‘That's all right. He wouldn't approve of life if it wasn't a battle. Sandra –' she looked at the girl (wasn't she a woman though, thirty-five at least?), pretty, hard, confident, quick-eyed, and did not think what she had to say would spoil her day – ‘there's a poem called “Prize-giving Speech”.'

‘I was waiting for this.'

‘Was it only seventh-formers you read it to?'

‘Yes. We had some spare time. I thought of sending Julie Stanley out, but what the hell! It was her, I suppose?'

‘Yes, it was. Her father's sent copies to the Board. There's one word in particular that he doesn't like.'

‘Sodomy, I can guess.'

‘I think it was rather poor judgement, Sandra –'

‘Look,' she flared up, ‘I didn't give it to them as a programme for revolt. Just an alternative view. It's a kind of dramatic monologue, a bit like Browning. I wanted them to consider it as literature.'

‘And an alternative view.'

‘Yeah, sure. Why not? They're hardly going to go out and rob banks.'

Norma ate a strawberry. The position was difficult. She did not know what to do and was angry with Sandra for making trouble; did not like her, liked her very much.

‘They're going to want to get rid of you.'

‘That's nothing new.'

‘I don't want to get rid of you.'

‘Tha-anks. Gre-eat.'

‘Though I wonder why.'

Sandra looked savage, then suddenly grinned. ‘Stroppy bitches make the best schoolteachers.'

‘That's debatable.'

‘Well, I'm one. And I'm the best English teacher you've got.'
Grinned again. ‘If you fire me you've struck a blow for mediocrity.'

‘It won't be me who does the firing. Sandra, all I can do is – put your case.'

‘In words like that? You really make the language stand up and sing.'

‘And you are a nasty piece of work. What's the matter, Sandra? Is it your nature or did something go wrong?'

Sandra laughed. ‘OK, good. You can bite. One thing, I'm not apologizing. And I'm not giving them hosts of daffodils either.'

‘Do you want to stay?'

‘Yes, I do. I like Saxton and I like the school. Although more and more I wonder why.' She grinned, Norma could not tell whether to soften or emphasize. She looked a little joky with her Nell Gwyn tray of berries at her waist, and her thin zinc-whitened nose and starved-clown cheeks. She's starved for kindness too, Norma thought. Sandra was confusing, contradictory.

‘I'd better pick some boysenberries or I'll get the sack from here.' She turned away, then back. ‘Hey, you're friends with Tom Round, aren't you?'

‘I'm a friend of his wife.'

‘Is anything still going on with them?'

‘Why?'

‘He's trying to move in on me. Sure, you turned him down. That shows good taste. I'm a kind of specialist in bad taste.'

‘He's got a friend already, you know that?'

‘Friend meaning girlfriend? No, I didn't. The cunning sod.'

‘It sounds as if he might be succeeding.'

‘It's – fluid. Anyway, thanks. His wife is OK, is she? And the girls?'

‘I think,' she had a sudden inrush of loathing for Tom Round, ‘I think you'd be doing them all a favour. You mightn't be doing yourself one, though. He's not a man I'd recommend.'

‘Well, with me, that's a recommendation.'

Norma did not want to talk about Tom – that bad taste, bad smell in the air. ‘Are you still seeing something of Lex?'

‘Seeing something of. I love your language.'

For a moment Norma thought she was going to cry. I'm tired, that's all. I need a bit of kindness from someone. Sandra Duff had the mouth of a snapping turtle. Sandra Duff had shark teeth,
pick-axe chin. Her sinewy stained hands tore things apart. But I like her, Norma thought, and I want a kind word.

‘I mean,' she said carefully, ‘do you still visit him?'

Sandra gave a mocking caw; then peered hard at Norma. ‘Now and then. If visit's the word. Are you all right?'

‘The sun's so hot.'

‘Do you really want to know about Lex?'

‘I liked him. But it's mainly curiosity.'

‘Did you ever see that picture where the scientist turned into a fly? Lex is turning into a goat.'

Norma gave a laugh, just a single note. She was not sure Sandra meant to joke. This sun is going to make me faint, she thought.

‘I don't mean growing horns and hooves, or getting goatish in the usual way,' Sandra grinned. ‘In fact, I think he's putting that behind him, which is just as well, he could hurt someone. I mean he's trying to see the world the way a goat would and it's got to the point where it's not voluntary any more.'

‘I'm not sure I understand.'

‘He thinks – God, what does he think? Thinking's out, you see, because goats don't. But in the beginning – which is appropriate – he must have decided that goats were, well, Adam and Eve before the apple, taking all that as a metaphor. The apple was self consciousness, am I right? And goats don't have it, they live in a light perpetual and they don't cast any shadows either. I think Lex is getting rid of knowledge. And he thinks of it as being a goat. Which is what he's turning into, the poor sod.'

‘Shouldn't something be done for him?'

‘Like what? Put him in a strait-jacket and pump him full of drugs? No, what I hope is he'll get where he's going and then remember the apple and take himself a bite and start coming back. Not that he's going to find me waiting, after last night.'

‘What happened?'

‘I went up to see him – and God, Norma, he's filthy, he stinks. Don't goats get dipped or drenched or something? Anyway, I went, and I tried to talk him into having a shower, eating some decent food, anything. I told him to change and come into town and we'd get a meal in a restaurant. We were outside in the yard and you know what he did? He just dropped his pants and started having a shit, there on the lawn. You don't believe me, do you? It's true.
Goats shit just wherever they shit. The anal sphincter's not under conscious control, so why not Lex?'

‘What did you do?'

‘Went home. What else?'

‘Are you sure' – she felt sick, but wildly amused – ‘it wasn't just a clever way of getting rid of you?'

‘If it was he should patent it. No, he's loopy-de-loop. But he's a pretty smart fellow too, in some things anyway. I think he's got a good chance of coming back.'

‘I hope you're right.'

‘I think, you know, he should be walled off and left alone. It's an interesting experiment, after all. Maybe he'll write a book about it one day. God, there's your brother glaring, I'd better pick some berries.'

‘He's glaring at me. Do you think it would help if I talked to Lex?'

‘No, stay away. Everyone should leave him alone. I'll see you, Norma. Don't let buggerlugs Stanley spoil your Christmas. Oh, I was sorry about your old man.'

She walked down her row and started picking. Norma went to the house and said goodbye. Driving out to the valley, she found a flaw in Sandra's reasoning. Lex might squat and defecate whenever the urge took him but he remembered to drop his trousers. And if he was a goat now, shouldn't he run naked on his hill? Human consciousness was operating, it could not be put off by design. Still, she conceded, he was up to something unusual. She hoped that when he wanted he would turn round and come back. It might be a question of finding the way. He might by then have had too much practice in going too far.