Muck (16 page)

But I’d rather starve than eat them, cheese and jam. And I do starve—I don’t need food. How can I have an appetite when The Mansions awaits me each day!

Mornings are spent in sickness. I dry-retch at the thought of eating breakfast. On the mornings I shave, I wish I could shave away the parts of me I despise. As whiskers glide clean, if only the ugly blood-blue mole on my cheek would glide clean too. I dig the blade in to make it bleed, but still that mark of a mole remains. My nose, that bulbous thing the strutters call “pus-bag.” My huge ears they pull as “aeroplanes.” Did Genevieve suddenly realise she couldn’t bear the sight of me, I was too repulsive and hideous a thing?

If I could rip the ears from my head with the razor, there would be one flaw less to tease, though my skinniness will stay, worse each week now the hunger pains don’t matter. I could feed myself up but that would require eating, and I would want to vomit the food up until I was empty again.

I spend my days on guard against the strutters. My best chance is my swagger—hands behind back, the Tudor Park pose, as if I am too good for them. This nose is no pus-bag, it is a proud, hawk nose. These ears are wonders of Magi-made construction.

I must not play kick-and-run—I am not feared enough to repel beatings. Like Churchill I would fail to show who’s boss among us. So, swagger. Swagger. Even when the deputy principal finds my lunches rotted in my locker: “We’ve had complaints— the smell. Please open up your locker and let us explore.” Even then, my hawk nose is lifted proud-high. Every sandwich bag glued together, months of them, furred black with mould.

I pinch them between my forefinger and thumb. I drop them in the rubbish, one hand behind my back. Drop them daintily as sugar lumps into tea. My lips bitten together in a fake smile that I hope gives me a nonchalant air.

“Why store them if you had no intention of eating them? You’re a strange one,” the deputy principal sniffs and steps away from the bin’s reek.

Strutters gather behind the deputy. They make the loony sign at me—a finger circling their temples.

I don’t know why I have let this rotting happen in my locker. Feet made them, these sandwiches. I could not throw away the food of my mother. But I could never confess such weakness, such regard for the handiwork of a mother. Better to lie, and do so hawk-proud, judgmental. A lie that has claws, that is wise and constant as the moon. “I did not want to be wasteful, Sir. To throw out food when half the world is in famine would disgust me. I know the value of a dollar.”

“You’re a strange one.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Yes, it makes sense now. We are poor. I can stand it no longer. It’s time to hold The Duke accountable. “How could you let this happen?” I stamp at him.

“I’ve done no such thing,” he retaliates with a frowning, offended stare.

I will not be protected like a child from the truth. “Then why are we fading towels? Why shift the clothes-horse so it follows the sun?”

“Because,” The Duke sighs, “it’s your mother’s little thing. She has notions. And there’s no way you’ll ever get them out.”

“What
little thing
? What notions?” It’s low of him to use her for his lies.

“She gets notions in her head.”

“What notions?” I go into the lounge and insist on being told by Feet herself to expose him. “What notions?”

Feet flares, launching herself from her cushions to jab out her cigarette. “I’ve got no notions in my head.” She pokes the air with telling off The Duke. With the other hand she grinds the cigarette into the ashtray, her new ashtray from the knickknack shop in Coogee, green opals she regrets are wasted on ash when you could hang it on your wall for its colour tones. “You should be saying ‘Good on you. Well done for thinking up the scheme.’ Someone else is welcome to if they have the brains. If a company is so stupid as to leave a loophole in the guarantee, then it serves them right to have me use it.” She pokes again at The Duke. “You want your son to grow up and not use the world to his advantage?
Notions in my head
. That’s the thanks I get for having initiative.”

She bites on a fresh cigarette and lights it with an angry scratching of a match. She keeps the cigarette bitten in her teeth behind smoke-swirl while she mutters, “Towels. Damn bastard bloody towels. Shit bastard things. Things we bloody well dry our privates with. Bloody cheek to ask money for the bastard things, for something we dirty with our bodies and then just hang there on a rail for everyone to see. Makes me sick. I wouldn’t waste my time with you both. You make me sick the lot of you. Sick.”

She spits smoke with every word as if the second self has come this time burning language.

T
HE
D
UKE SMILES
that his suit fits me better than it does him.

He puts his arm over my shoulder as we walk. He steps in front of me to inspect my presentation one more time before we reach the Members enclosure. He whistles a tune of his own random making, straightens and tightens my tie so it more gaplessly meets the throat. He draws the lapels together across my front and tells me, “Only do up the middle button because the middle button is the fashionable approach.” He calls me a chip off the old block and pinches the prow of his blue pork-pie so the hat is as off-centre as is dashing. He pinches the brim downward to firm the fit on his head. Before he lets his hands fall to his sides he slides his thumb along the brim. Not to wipe something away but with a finishing flick as if saluting me.

He tugs his pocket handkerchief up into yellow dog-ears pricked upon his chest. He tugs mine too and reminds me to take out the handkerchief regularly through the day and fold two ends of it inward and one end down so I have two handkerchief ears showing not a crowded three. Two stay pricked longer if you remember to perform the re-folds. “Maroon was an excellent choice,” he says of my handkerchief selected from his drawer. “My congratulations. You’re a chip off the old block with this style lark. Maroon goes with copper as does yellow with my blue.”

He compliments me on my polished shoes which he calls mirrors, and can’t believe I was a squirt in short pants just yesterday, or so it seems, and today I’m as tall as him or taller. If Bazza wins today, he’ll appoint me his official lucky charm because what a day it will be—just we two together. Two men. Father and son as one.

He moves his binoculars down to his bare wrist from where it has been slung on his forearm. That way their weight won’t leave an impression on his sleeve. Time to get going, according to his watch. First race will almost be closed for betting.

Ten paces and he shakes a hand. Twelve paces, another hand. Eight, another. Fifteen. Ten. Like a welcome dance where men exchange partners with each other, those they call Bob and Mate and Bluey. Passing on to the next hand in the crosscurrent of the crowd, saying, “Good to see you. Good luck to you today.”

They stand tie to tie, hush-voiced after the initial cheerfulness. They lean close as if about to kiss, and whisper “The word is” and the name of a horse marked for “just going round” or “jumping out of its skin” or “probably needs the run.”

“This is my son,” The Duke introduces. Now it’s my turn to dance, to take hands in mine, hands with gold and tiny gems on their little fingers. If the shaker is too weak a squeezer, I’m free to say so to The Duke when I’ve fared that shaker cheerio because he never trusts such people who have the grip of a boneless fish: “A spineless grip means they’re spineless in reality, and liars.”

Bart Cummings’ hand passes as a shaker of firm hold. “You’ve met my son, Bart,” The Duke says, touching my elbow to raise my hand and grip the grip of his horse trainer. “Training Bazza for me is as good as training for this boy,” he says and winks at me.

Now The Duke nods “Neville” to the Premier and insists I nod hello to him as well though I see the Premier blink bewildered at The Duke who continues with “Good to see you again” as if they are acquaintances, more so, friends.

The Duke nudges me to look over there: “That Malcolm Fraser’s a tall fellow, isn’t he? Good thing too. You want a Prime Minister taller than everyone else I always think. It’s commanding.” He nudges me again with his elbow. “Would you like to meet him?”

I shake my head, No.

“Don’t you want to meet the Prime Minister of Australia?”

“Do you know him?”

“I might,” The Duke says, winking.

“Do you really?” I am awed that he knows the Prime Minister of Australia. And I am ashamed of myself for being awed. As if The Duke, my father, would not as a matter of course know the Prime Minister.

The Duke puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I wouldn’t say I know him.” Then he grins. “But maybe he should know me. Ay?” He waves for me to follow him.

He skips into a brisk walk to catch up to the Prime Minister. He calls his name, “Mal,” and reaches out to shake hands. The Prime Minister shakes but doesn’t look at The Duke. He keeps walking on, a brown-suited tower-man—The Duke’s hat barely comes level with his shoulder.

The Duke doesn’t release his hand grip. The Prime Minister is forced to slow, to stop, to listen. “This is my son, Prime Minister.” He clasps the Prime Minister’s wrist for him to join his hand to mine.

Why would I want to meet someone who makes The Duke lower in rank, lesser in my eye? I cannot bear to look at this brown tower. I do not look at him as I shake, therefore he is disqualified from my life, he isn’t even here with his hand around my hand.

But The Duke will not be quiet. He steps close to the tower as if to speak confidentially. He places a hand on the high brown shoulder. “I’ll tell you this, Mal. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this boy of mine is Prime Minister himself some day. What with his education and his leadership qualities. Mark my words, I’ve seen it for myself, he’s a born leader this one.”

The tower mumbles “Is that so?” and tries to walk off but The Duke has reached out his hand again for a parting shake and wink and nodded Goodbye. We watch the tower walk off through other be-suited winkers and nodders whose hand the Prime Minister takes without stilling from his stride.

“There you go,” The Duke nudges. “When you get home you can tell your mother your old man introduced you to the Prime Minister.” He puts one hand in his pocket and rocks heel to toe while gripping his lapel with his binocular hand as if in weighty contemplation.