Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The (29 page)

Someone hits. Duncan doesn't see the ball but hears it crash in the gum trees. That was Mr Compton and he's done his hundred dollars. The next one, Rock Edison, takes a long time and the others start heckling him in a way that would be cheating in a proper match. Sound comes clearly in the night, as though things that block it in the daytime are removed. Each bit is round and smooth and seems to chime in a hollow place inside itself. Something ragged though begins to sound from the other way. It's like a yard-broom sweeping; then it turns to water. Ducks, he thinks.

Rock Edison's ball lands between the pine trees and the green. Duncan hears him swear, as clear as a morepork. More splashing comes and he eases into the willows and sees a woman walking in the river, holding her skirt bunched in front of her. He thinks at first it's the crazy woman, then recognizes Stella from her throat and jaw. He lets her come up close enough to touch.

‘Gidday, Stell.'

‘Jesus.' She drops her sandals in the water. He hooks them with his foot and picks them up.

‘Didn't mean to frighten you.'

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Watching.' A ball hits the willow trees beyond them. ‘That was Mr Geldard.'

Stella climbs out and crouches on the mat of willow-hair. ‘I'll kill you if you scare me like that again.'

‘Sorry, Stell.'

She's quiet for a moment, peering up the hill. ‘Are you sure they can't see you?'

‘Not if we stay in the trees. Mr Hillman's next.'

‘I'll bet you've got the same idea as me.'

‘What's that, Stell?'

‘Don't play dumb. You're going to shift Dad's ball.'

‘No I'm not.'

‘Liar.'

‘I'm going to put someone else's closer to the hole.'

‘Whose?'

‘Anyone's. As long as I can find one.'

They hear the whack of the club from up the hill and wait for a time that seems too long. Then they hear a thud. A ball jumps halfway across the green and runs over the lip on the other side.

‘That one will do. I like Mr Hillman,' Stella says.

‘I thought you'd want Dad to win.'

He hears a little sound in her stomach, some liquid squeaking through a place that's bent because she's squatting. It surprises Duncan that Stella should make a noise like that. Her insides should be clean as clean and work like a Rolls-Royce engine.

‘You like him don't you, Stell?' Mandy can do his operations and Stella can bail him out is just about Tom's favourite joke.

She doesn't answer. Wipes her nose on the back of her hand – another thing he's never seen her do. ‘Can they see balls on the green from up there?'

‘No.'

‘I just don't think he should always win.'

‘He won't tonight.' Another ball lands short of the green. ‘That was Mr Martin. Munday comes next. Then Pelham. Then Dad. Why don't you like him, Stell?'

‘It's none of your business.'

‘I thought you all did except Mum and me.'

‘I'll be away from here next year. Thank God for that.'

‘Next year's in,' peers at his watch, ‘sixteen minutes. If we weren't on daylight saving we'd have an hour to go.' He thinks about that and sees how clock-time doesn't mean a thing.

Mr Munday's ball lands in the river.

Mr Pelham's ball takes a very long time and hits the front of the green and backspins out of sight.

‘I'll be sorry when you go, Stell.'

‘You shouldn't be. I treat you like dirt.'

‘No you don't. Like dog shit.'

‘I don't know how you can joke about it.'

‘Here comes Dad.'

They see him waggle his club. They see his forearms shine.

‘All the rest of them are second rate,' Stella says. Her voice sounds as if she's got bits of glass in her mouth. Duncan wants to put his finger in and find out. He's alarmed at the way his mind is working tonight. It brings him and other people close. It presses them together so he can feel their lungs and hearts inside. He slides his finger between his cheek and gums. Warm and slippery; and that's how Stella is. With hard bits inside her that can break. He touches his teeth. It's like touching his father.

‘Eee,' he says.

‘What?'

‘Do you like Mum?'

‘Mum's all right.'

‘Yeah, she's not bad.'

‘She's doing the best she can for herself. Don't you worry, Dunc. Mandy and I are going to look after you.'

‘I can look after myself. I'm going to do some correspondence courses next year. Twelve minutes.'

He feels sorry for Stella. She's like one of those dolls with a joint in their necks. She can only do eyes front and when you want to make her look at something else you've got to twist her head, you hear the click. He looks at her profile in the moonlight and sees how pretty she is and wonders why she doesn't have any boyfriends.

Tom Round swings his club. There's a delay in the sound reaching them. Duncan thinks if he could measure it he could work out the distance between his father and him, down to centimetres. Tom stands with his arms wrapped round his neck, hugging himself. He's like an illustration in a golf book, the Golden Bear or the White Shark, and his club-head at his shoulder glitters like an eye inspecting him.

Thud goes the ball and they find it by hearing first, then sight. It bounces past the hole, not very far, and stops as though the green is magnetized. It must have a lot of backspin on. Duncan admires his father for being able to do that. The men up the hill are talking
in loud voices. They troop off the tee with a gloss of moonlight on their foreheads.

‘When they're in the gums,' Duncan says. He hears them crashing and laughing. Tom Round does his Tarzan yell.

‘Now,' Stella whispers, and gives him a push on his behind.

Duncan runs round the edge of the green. Mr Hillman's ball should lie on the fairway, but it's not there. He tracks this way and that. ‘I can't find it.' It must have rolled and rolled and gone into the rushes in the dry patch of swamp. The men are out of the gums, the first ones are climbing the fence.

‘Why didn't someone tell me it's barbed wire?' Don Compton yells.

Duncan finds the ball and grabs it. Sees Stella running on the green. She's stealing their father's ball and she's just in time. He rolls Mr Hillman's and it vanishes over the lip. There's enough speed to take it near the hole. He retreats into the river, not bothering to take his sneakers off, and wades in the shadows to their hiding place. Stella has climbed down from the willow mat. She stands in water up to her knees. They look past the roots at eye level and see the men in a herd between the macrocarpas and the green. Tom is leading.

‘Only one on the green. You're a bunch of no-hopers.'

Stella squats. The back of her skirt dips in the water. ‘Stell?' She rests her forehead on the spongy mat.

‘Are you scared of him, Stell?'

‘Yes.' She hisses the word. He can't tell whether she's angry or frightened. ‘Get down. The moon's on your face.'

He squats beside her, feeling water cold on his bum.

‘Here's one at the front. Pro-Flite. Who's that?'

‘Me.'

‘Hard cheese, Jeff.'

Their feet go scuff and thud. One of them belches. One of them laughs.

‘Ten feet. I'd hole that putt. Not bad for night-time, eh?'

Duncan risks a look. Their shadows angle on the green, making even stripes as though they're ruled. The ball makes a foot-long shadow too. Tom stands with legs apart and hips stuck out – the way he stands, Duncan thinks, peeing in a hedge. He likes the ball and doesn't pick it up. Rock Edison, creaking, bends and scoops.
He holds the ball close against his eye. ‘Top-Flite?' he says, looking at Tom.

‘That's me.' Tony Hillman.

‘Let me see.' Tom grabs it, reads. ‘Jesus then, mine must be in the hole.' He's at the flag in three strides and pulls it out. Looks inside. Squats and puts his hand in. Geldard laughs. He thinks Tom is joking. The others don't laugh.

‘I should have put a mousetrap in,' Duncan whispers. He feels Stella trembling and bends his head down and looks at her face. Her eyes are tightly closed. She looks as if she's going to be sick. He pulls her hand out of the willow-hair and she holds him with a tightness that makes his finger bones roll on each other.

‘Hard cheese, Tom,' Morris Martin says.

‘Some of you bastards have done a switch.'

‘Aw, come on!'

‘We'll have another.'

‘No way.'

‘Not for me.'

‘I'm not climbing down that paddock again for anyone.'

They walk off the green, leaving Tom alone. He looks around. He turns in a circle. He knows his ball was on. Tom Round
knows
.

‘Is he coming?' Her eyes are closed.

‘No. It's all right.'

Tom tries to break his home-made pin but the hard tea-tree resists. He turns and seems to look at Duncan and Stella; takes a step and throws the pin like a spear. It hisses through the willow tops and flies across the river, where its sharpened end fixes in the bank and its flag torn off a shirt dangles in the water. He shakes his head, making his hair flick round his eyes, then smooths it and turns, a baffled circle; gives a yell. He walks off the green after his friends. They go into the macrocarpa trees and climb the fence. A shrieking wire makes Stella jerk.

‘He's gone, Stell. It was just the wire.'

Duncan unclenches her fingers and takes the golf ball from her hand. He puts it in the water and lets it sink. ‘In case he looks tomorrow. Listen Stell, that's New Year.'

The men in the gum trees are yodelling and whistling. People on the lawns call out and bang things together and car horns toot from behind the house. Someone puts a loud record on.

‘Come on, we'll walk to the bridge.'

She straightens up. Releases his hand, then grabs it again to steady herself.

‘That's one time he didn't win,' Duncan says.

Halfway to the bridge she stops and kisses his cheek. ‘Happy New Year, Duncan.'

He smiles.

That makes two times tonight I've been kissed.

Norma was happy when she left the party but happiness subtracted in quanta as she put her car in the garage, walked up the path, let herself in, turned on the lights, saw kitchen and living-room and bedroom. ‘Here I am again.' That chair, that bed, that dressing-table, that familiar
House and Garden
emptiness. It was tidy and comfortable, but had a squalor of insufficiency. The cat had followed her from the garage. It rubbed about her calves to be picked up, so she picked it up; then held it under its middle and dropped it on four feet; pushed with her toe. She was not going to have her closest touching with a cat.

How, she asked, did I get into this state? Was it the party? It had been successful as parties go. Lots of shiny good-fellowship; rather like a polished apple in fact, but little spots of black, little spots of nastiness here and there. She had enjoyed Duncan; but Duncan was insufficient too. He wanted only small things from her now, which she could give. Her main function was to watch him as a spectacle. Duncan's life would fill him to the limits of his mind and with any luck there'd be an overflow into his feelings – she must hope – and possibly exteriors, face and body, would not count. But watching was not a role that could satisfy. Duncan passed like a jogger, gave a shout and wave, and loped away; not of her kind.

She washed her hands. She took a needle from her sewing box and tried to dig a gorse prickle from her palm. It would not come. Blood filled the hole she made and swamped the speck, so she put Vaseline on a bandaid and covered it. Thinking all the time, what is K. for?

‘Thanks. K.B.': the note in the ice-cream container in her milk box. Fancy someone going to that trouble, returning a disposable container, the very next day. It was ludicrous. She was, though, excited by his B. instead of Birtles. She read in it a kind of ease their walk on the island had made grounds for; but had not been able to decide that a next move must come from her.

Next move, she thought. Good God, is it like that? I'm forty-five
and I'm damned if I'll play teenagers again. If I want a man to go to bed with me I'll ask, that's all.

Norma smiled. Now she'd had a triumph over herself; had brought it from its hiding place – go to bed. Appropriate phrase, for she wanted more than just sex; but less of course than a lasting relationship. Not perhaps even ongoing – dreadful word. Going on for a little while though – a week or two of close-touching would suit her fine. But no, no, definitely not just sex. She smiled in recollection of a friend – another town, another age – a nursing-sister who had made do with not very frequent one night stands: ‘There's nothing like a good fuck to set a girl up for the winter.' Norma had been shocked, but she understood now. Wanted, though, something more than just a four-letter act for herself.

I could have brought Tony home, she thought. Tony Hillman, known quantity, very safe. K. Birtles was a mystery. K. Birtles might be dangerous. He might even be the kind of man who would get into a fit of puritan rage. She did not think so. Knowledge of him might be discovered; it was only a matter of friendly invitation. He might say no to a New Year's drink; or she could send him home after it; or anything.

Norma looked up his number and telephoned. He was probably at a party of his own.

‘Oh, Mr Birtles, it's Norma Sangster. How are you?'

‘Hello. OK.' She wanted to laugh at his surprise.

‘Thank you for returning my ice-cream carton.'

‘No trouble. I wasn't sure you'd want it.'

‘No, I didn't. Still, it's the thought. Mr Birtles, I know it's late, but I was wondering if you'd like to come over for a New Year's drink.'

Now there's a silence, Norma thought as it went on and on.

‘Are you still there?'

‘I'd never make it. It's ten to twelve.'

‘Oh well, time doesn't matter. What's a few minutes either way?'

‘Have you got a party on?'

‘No, I'm all alone. Are you alone?' She had not thought of that. Perhaps his wife was out of hospital.

‘Yeah, I am.'

‘Will you come then?'

Silence again. It wasn't that her brain was quicker than his, just that she knew what was going on.

‘OK, I'll come. I'll bring a bottle, eh?'

‘No, I've got plenty. I'll see you soon. Goodbye.' Norma hung up. She was full of confidence, so why was she trembling? The thoughtful woman had a quick shower; but evidence of that might alarm him, and really she was clean enough. I want to give him signs I'm just like him, because I am, I'm nothing special, and we can surely have the odd bit of sweat from the day. In the bathroom she cleaned her make-up off, guessing he'd like her more that way. Then she checked that beer was in the fridge, though hoping he'd choose a more interesting drink. She spread a few crackers with pate and blue vein cheese. Put out olives? Yes, why not? Olives for me. If he doesn't like them that's too bad. Wondered if entertaining, feeding him, would turn out to be all she would want.

He took longer to arrive than she had expected. Cars went by but none stopped. Horns and hooters sounded in the town. It was New Year. He's got cold feet, he's chickened out. She ate an olive and poured herself a drink. All the while she knew that he would come.

‘Hallo, you made it. I didn't hear a car.'

‘I rode Hayley's bike. It hasn't got a light so I had to hold a torch.' Held it in his hand. ‘Those things are not easy to ride with one hand.'

‘I'm sure they're not.' He had not wanted to leave his car at her gate. There's delicacy for you, she thought; but tried then to put that smart way of responding off. He did not thrill or even interest her. She admired the plainness of him, body, mind, and knew her instinct had been right, they would manage joining of an undemanding sort. Pleasant and plain. Oh do stop it Norma, she told herself.

‘I brought the bike in, round the back.'

‘It's very thoughtful of you.' Stop it, stop it.

‘Ten-speed bikes get pinched.' He was hostile.

‘Come in here. Put your torch down. What will you drink?'

‘What have you got?' He held his peaked cap – baseball cap? – in one hand and when he sat wore it on his knee. ‘Rum, eh? Rum and coke. You got any coke?'

‘No, I'm sorry.'

‘Whisky and ginger ale then, that'll do.'

When she handed it to him he pointed at her blouse. ‘That's not boysenberry juice.'

She looked and found the spot. ‘No, it's blood. I pricked my hand
on a gorse bush.' She showed him the bandaid. ‘I can't get the prickle out.'

‘If there's a prickle in there it's not gorse.' Such dogmatism. ‘Gorse doesn't snap off. I know. I was always digging prickles out of the kids.'

‘Well, it might be a barberry. I think there was some barberry up there.'

‘Yeah, barberry's a cow. I don't know why you people let it in.'

‘Oh, we made hundreds of mistakes of that sort. Rabbits and possums and blackberry and old man's beard. And gorse of course.' Repeated it for the rhyme. Why are we talking like this? ‘Here's to a Happy New Year.'

‘It's got to be better than the last.'

They drank and looked at each other. She liked what she saw up to the point of finding him original. Beyond that were none of the things she looked for in a man. To put it simply, mind in a face. Mind, of course, was not always trustworthy and sometimes in the end had little weight – see Tony Hillman. But K. Birtles – Norma looked and saw – had his hard experience marked there, and that was something. Men usually managed to cover that sort of nakedness.

He had come in sneakers and jeans and windcheater. And baseball cap. Original, for this sort of assignation. Norma liked it.

‘What does K. stand for?'

‘Ken.'

‘That was my father's name. I'm Norma, Ken.'

‘Gidday.'

First names were somehow a step back – deleting that bit of – what? – elemental strangeness from the situation. We're in danger of getting social, we're going to get embarrassed, and then he'll go away.

‘I asked you round because I thought that we –'

He stopped her by opening his hand. ‘I know, I'm not dumb.'

‘I never thought you were. The last man I went to bed with, he was dumb. But not you.' There, it's out. He sat and watched her with an expression between – was it more of interest or distaste? ‘On the island, I liked you, and I thought that you liked me. And we're both grown up. We can say what we like.'

‘I've got a wife, you know.'

‘I know. And I suppose that makes me a temptress.' Wrong word. She hurried past it. ‘Please don't do anything you can't do. If it's a betrayal, don't do it then. If it hurts her, or hurts you.'

He looked away and took a big swallow of his drink. ‘As long as it's not any big deal, eh?'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Some big experience. Something we've got to get,' fluttered his hand in the air, ‘way up here about.'

‘Sex has never been that way for me. But it's not nothing either.' Too much talk. ‘Ken.' She went to him, knelt by his chair. ‘I think I'm only asking for one night.' She took his hand. It made a jerk, involuntary, then closed hard on her own. ‘Jesus,' he said. Began to shake. He lowered his head and let his forehead rest on hers. ‘Jesus, Norma.'

‘It's all right.' She kissed him softly, quickly, on the mouth.

‘I been working all day. I need a shower.'

She could smell him but it seemed new sweat, not old. ‘I don't mind if you're dirty.'

‘No. I need a shower. Where do I go?'

She led him to the bathroom and gave him a towel. He sat on the edge of the bath and undid his sneakers and seemed to want Norma to go away. She went to the bedroom and turned down the bed covers – that bed that was three-quarter, generous and discreet. Is it better to stay dressed or get undressed? She chose undressed, and wiped her damp armpits with a Snowtex. Took the clips out of her hair and let it down. Then turned off the light – did not like love-making in hard light, but wanted a shaded low-watt bulb somewhere near the bed. Tonight though, moonlight, what could be better? She pulled the curtains back and let in the glow; silver but buttery and dulcifying too. I'd better not use words like that with him – and gave a snicker; then felt she had betrayed him and herself.

Norma sat on the edge of the bed. She heard the shower running. She felt girlish, inexperienced in here, though it was a cool thing to strip off and wait on the bed. I'm not alone, she thought, I've got someone, and the thought of company, more than sex, made her heart jolt hard, it really thumped her.

He'll get out of the shower and wonder what in God's name he's doing, he'll want to go. She saw it would alarm him to find himself
naked in her house, he'd wonder if he had made an awful mistake, the cops were coming; so she had better be there when he turned off the water and came out.

She went to the bathroom and saw him blurred behind the plastic curtain. He seemed to be washing his hair, and that was weird – was ominous: washing temptation, Norma Sangster, out?

He turned the water off and stepped on to the mat. She handed him his towel and he covered himself. ‘Sorry,' he said, starting to blush.

‘How did you get like that, in the shower?'

‘Thinking, I guess.'

‘Stop thinking. Ken?' She put her arms around him, his wet back, felt her breasts slide on his chest, and lower down the abrasive towel, and his hard penis denting her.

‘Come on, not here.'

They lay on the bed and his hair dripped on her.

‘Oh, that cat.' She slipped away, grabbed the willing thing, and dropped it out of the window into the night. ‘No one can see. Don't you like the moon?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Norma. I don't know any fancy stuff.'

How foolish; how sad to have to say a thing like that. ‘I'm just a plain girl. Ken, I do like kissing.'

They made love. He was very plain, delighting her and making her feel she was with someone; as she had not in bed with Tony Hillman – despite his willingness and care – and other men. Some of those acts might as well have been solo for all the interchange in them. But Ken was present, oh he was present, working there like a man with a pick and shovel, involved in his job, practical, unfussy, strong and neat. He forgot his lack of fancy knowledge; had no need for anything like that. And Norma went with him, open wide and wrapped around, her hands clapped on his hard resistant back.

Remembering that night, it was not love-making she brought back but things he said that made her smile, whether they were funny or not. For example: ‘Since I got married I've never slept with anyone but my wife.' And: ‘I guess I should have told you it's safe, you know, for you. I had a vasectomy when Joanie got sick. Not that I needed to because we stopped doing anything.' Twice he mentioned his wife, then not again.

She woke to hear him leaving the bed, finding the toilet, peeing,
flushing it. When he came back he seemed hesitant, ashamed perhaps of that natural act, so she went too, though she had no need; and back in bed pulled him round to face her and found that he had been thinking again. She bossed him, speeded him then slowed him down, and would have got on top, except he might find that too fancy – another time – and it was less energetic, less of a lovely gallop than the first, but more pleasurable, and Ken Birtles somehow more full of being than before. His hands were abrasive, ridged and hard. All her life the hands of her bed-mates had been soft. This was the first time she had felt palm and fingerpad that had worked. She felt he would be making marks on her and liked the idea. She had made marks on his shoulder with her teeth.

Another thing she remembered: in the dawn he sat on the bed in his underpants and pulled the bandaid off her palm and tried to squeeze the prickle out. It would not come so she fetched a needle and he put the point on the embedded prickle and waggled it – that hurt a bit – and eased it out and laid it on her palm. ‘Barberry. I told you.'