Cold Skin (3 page)

hands me my towel.

He’s a gentleman,

he’s my friend.

Eddie

I found the necklace beside the train tracks

and knew that someone rich

and spoilt,

or angry,

had thrown it from the train window.

It shone in the grass

and I rushed across the line to pick it up

and polish its shiny-metal smoothness.

I opened the heart-shaped locket.

The inscription read

‘To my Beloved’.

That’s all.

No signature.

Maybe he was embarrassed to sign his name.

Or he didn’t mean it,

didn’t have the guts to commit.

Perhaps that’s why it got tossed by a girl

who couldn’t stand to wear it around her neck

and be reminded of his lies.

When I got home

I hid it in my drawer,

stuffed in the oldest pair of socks.

For safe keeping.

For Sally.

Sally

I don’t know what came over me.

When Eddie held the rope

as I walked towards him,

dripping wet and trembling from the cold water,

well,

when he handed me the rope

and smiled in his relaxed way,

I leaned forward and kissed him.

On the lips.

I closed my eyes

and I’m sure he closed his.

We stood there together

with our lips touching

for a few seconds

and I stopped shaking.

I gripped the rope tightly

as I drifted back from Eddie

and flung myself

as far into the river

as the swing would take me,

and just before I dropped

I looked back towards the bank.

Eddie was gone.

Eddie

Sally has a tiny gap between her two front teeth.

I get lost in her smile.

That’s what I was looking at

when she walked up to me

all wet and shivering,

and I wasn’t ready for what she did.

Bloody hell.

Would I ever be ready?

At school, when it comes to Friday games,

like tug-of-war,

I’m the first picked

and the other side always asks for an extra player.

When deliveries come in from the city

they get me to unload the truck

and I toss the boxes into the storeroom.

Sometimes I lift three at a time

just to see how much I can carry.

I tell the driver this is better than school work.

Nobody in school is stronger than me.

But when Sally Holmes kissed me,

I never felt so weak in all my life.

Eddie

I do the washing up for Mum

same as every night,

because Larry says he has to study.

Aren’t we in the same class?

Don’t we do the same homework?

Larry sneers when I say this.

‘My homework is nothing like yours.’

I know what he means

but I don’t argue

because someone’s got to do the dishes

for Mum,

who’s done all the cooking.

Tonight I wash real slow

because I’m looking out the window

down to Jamison River

and I’m thinking of Sally Holmes

with her red lips wet,

brushing mine,

and I figure

it’s worth it

in my little life

to stand here

dreaming.

Larry

Yeah, my brother

hangs around with Sally,

but I reckon

she’s just taking pity on him,

on account of her too-good ways.

I don’t care.

She ain’t that pretty.

Give me Colleen O’Connor any day.

She’s as attractive as any movie star, I reckon.

That’s why every morning

I go to the library

and sit at the same desk as Colleen.

She don’t say much

but I don’t care

because I work on reading my book

and looking at her white blouse

and imagining what’s underneath.

I’m getting so good at it

sometimes

when the bell rings

I can’t move for a few minutes

until it’s safe to stand,

if you know what I mean.

I watch Colleen walk out of the library,

her fine legs and ankles,

and I sit here

getting the courage

to ask her out,

one day,

when I think the time is right.

Me and Colleen.

Eddie

In the backyard of our old house, before the war,

Dad built us a cubby

out of cast-off fence posts and rusty nails.

Me and Larry would play in it most of the weekend,

pretending to be cowboy scouts

waiting for the Indians to attack.

Dad carved us guns out of pine wood

and coloured the barrels with charcoal,

drilling a hole where the trigger should be.

He taught us how to twirl the six-gun.

Me and Larry would face off across the grass

until Dad called ‘shoot’.

We’d both fling ourselves to the ground

pointing the guns at each other,

yelling, ‘bang, bang, bang’

until Dad would wink at one of us to play dead.

He did it in turn so Larry and me

each got to blow imaginary smoke from our barrels

and be a western hero

while Dad carried off the body of our brother

to the far corner of the yard

where the compost heap steamed.

Dad called it Tombstone Hill.

That was when we were young.

Before Dad signed up for the war.

Long before the war.

TWO
Coal town

Mr Butcher

I have ambitions

for teaching in the city.

At a Grammar school,

where everyone,

I mean everyone,

addresses you as ‘Sir’.

Where they have servants

preparing lunch for staff,

served in a dining room lined with pictures

of the school history.

They have linen on the tables,

leather chairs,

and the only sound you hear

is the clink of fine bone china.

A school where you can dedicate your life

and become a History Master.

And the students sit up straight

in spotless, pressed uniforms,

listening.

And they all have plans.

Solicitors.

Doctors.

Managers.

A school where they play rugby,

serve tea and scones

on the sidelines every Saturday,

with the parents asking after ‘young Harold’

and whether his homework

is up to standard.

As if it isn’t anything but perfect.

Mr Butcher.

Master Butcher.

Sir.

Mr Butcher

I stroll to school down Main Street,

listening to the groaning freight train

pulling the night-shift coal load to the coast.

I nod to Calder, the butcher,

and Old Man Wilson

who runs the hardware.

He spends most of his day

sitting in his office,

looking down on the store

as he sips his tea

and watches each customer,

tipping his hat to the ladies,

but rarely getting up from his

expensive swivel chair,

letting his son do the work.

I say ‘Good morning’ to Mr Carter,

editor of
The Guardian,

who keeps an eagle eye

on Main Street early morning,

as if the news is just waiting to happen

outside his shopfront.

Mrs Kain sits on her bentwood chair

at the front of Sunset Café,

having her first tea of the day.

She calls to her husband,

‘Is the grill ready yet, Ernie?’

I raise my hat and keep walking to the corner,

past Paley’s Emporium,

with the staff already busy

sweeping and dusting

because Paley doesn’t employ cleaners.

He gets the staff to do everything.

Mr Carter

I’ve had some front-page stories,

let me tell you.

Our boys marching to war in crisp uniforms,

eyes forward,

the click of heels down Main Street.

The day our football team won the Shield

for the first time in a generation, by Jove.

They mounted the trophy in the window at Paley’s

and the young children stood admiring it till sunset.

The collapse of number two shaft

at the end of the day shift.

A pall of dust settled over the town

while we waited for the bodies to be brought up.

The following Sunday the church was full

for the first time in years.

A week later, Mayor Paley unveiled the memorial

for two family men lost.

In the paper the next day

was a photo of the grieving miners,

arm-in-arm at the ceremony.

I gave a paragraph to Paley’s speech.

The rest of the page was devoted

to the brave souls lost

and the Union Appeal for their families

with an anonymous one hundred pound donation

to get things moving.

Never you mind who it was.

I’m careful with what I put on the front page.

No rubbish or gossip.

I don’t print what people think,

only what they say.

If they say it, I quote them.

I’ve studied awhile on who to believe in town,

and how to check on those I don’t.

I run a newspaper,

not the town diary.

And those who don’t like it,

well,

they can listen to the gossips

at Paley’s Store.

Mayor Paley

Dr Barnes said it was ‘fluid on the knee’

and he wrote a letter to the Army

dismissing my chances of serving.

I wanted to enlist.

I craved to go with the rest of the men.

But, my knee.

It was cruel to watch them leave.

I made a rousing speech at the farewell parade

and decided to serve at home.

I ran for mayor to improve my town.

Not for myself.

Lord.

Didn’t I already have enough to do with my store?

But we all must make sacrifices,

and so I put my name forward

and won.

In a landslide.

It’s the fluid that makes me limp

but I don’t complain,

even when a youngster from school,

some little tyke, asks me,

‘Did you get that in the war?’

Bloody cheeky kid.

No respect for my efforts.

I do it all for this town.

Mayor Paley

I didn’t approve of what Carter wrote

when I was elected mayor.

He didn’t have to print ‘unopposed’

as the headline,

implying that there was no one else to vote for.

I was elected because of what I stood for,

what I had to offer,

because the whole town,

all the women

and the men not at war,

everyone believed in me.

I call that a landslide.

A lesser man would have cancelled

all advertisements from the paper,

in protest.

But I like to think of myself as a big man,

a trifle overweight,

but big in spirit and generosity.

I don’t have much time for the likes of Carter.

My father always said

to remember your enemies

as well as your friends,

and don’t trust either of them.

Mr Carter

Mr Butcher walks by each day

with a shallow ‘Good morning’.

That’s all.

He thinks I’m looking for a front page.

Tell me,

how can a man employed as a teacher

be so clueless?

What I am doing is watching the kids

wandering ragtag to school,

and even though I dare not,

I’m writing their stories.

The freckle-faced boys,

future miners.

In five years time I’ll be nodding to them

as they come coughing up Main Street.

A few will leave town to work in the city,

in an office,

with clean clothes

and a determination to forget

where they came from.

The rest will bide their time on farms,

or in the shops in town.

Some of the girls will fall pregnant,

choosing their life

by what goes on down by the river

one Saturday night.

Except Sally Holmes

and Colleen O’Connor.

Those two,

they’ll make their way.

They won’t let Butcher’s pedestrian teaching

ruin their chances.

So I answer Mr Butcher with a firm nod

and I keep vigil on those two girls

because I know

there’s always hope.

Sally

This morning I see Eddie

taking the short cut to school,

along the riverbank.

He swings his bag from side to side,

hand to hand,

playing some intricate game only he knows.

I wolf-whistle as loud as I dare

and quickly duck behind a bush.

Eddie stops and looks around,

the hint of a smile on his face.

When he starts walking away

I try to whistle again

but nothing comes except laughter.

He’s seen me!

I grab my bag and run to meet him.

He’s carrying a sprig of mountain wattle

and he offers it to me.

I push the stalk into my top buttonhole.

‘Thanks, Eddie.’

He smiles back

and I’m pretty sure

we’re both thinking of what happened by the river,

even though neither of us is going to say

a word about it,

today,

or the day after.

Colleen

Larry scares me with his wandering eyes

and greasy hair.

I know he’s looking at me,

sitting across the desk every morning

in the library.