Muck (19 page)

The book. I must read the book again, today. Now. This second. I want to believe its every word where I didn’t believe any before. I vow I will. All beliefs begin by being forced. Mr Birch sits at his piano as if fending it off, arms at full stretch, hands barely reaching the keys. His back is so straight his chin is pressed over his tie knot. His neck is too fat for his tie and spills over his collar as he rolls his fingers up the keyboard scale. In between rolls he pulls at his collar to relieve the red grab on his skin.

“Sing the scale to my playing,” he commands. I take a breath and follow his fingers.

He stops playing before completing a roll and shakes his head. “No, no, no.” He places his palms on his knees and sighs. “I’m sorry. But I was led to believe you could sing.”

Led to believe? I give a jerk of my shoulders to punish him for his “Led to believe.”

“I
can
sing,” I say. I give another jerk, and a sneer-smile learnt from years of watching Feet. Perhaps he is testing me to assess my confidence and humour.

He tells me to sing again, all the way up the scale and down. But when I do, there is the same reaction from him. A “No, no, no” as if there is offensive wrongness in my every note.

“What have I done?” I jerk. I smile-sneer.

He turns up his palms, holds them out to indicate it is obvious what is wrong. “You sing from the throat.”

It must gall music teachers to be only that, a teacher. A teacher at a school. Schools are all they are any good for. They bear a grudge for it which they take out on pupils. No opera house for them where they might instruct feted tenors in wigs and tights. Their lot is school boys, and some with more talent than they have ever had themselves. Mr Birch knows this of himself and resents it. He is one of
them
: he is a disappointed man.

“Elvis Presley sang from the throat. So did Nat King Cole,” I remind him. Though there is no reasoning with a disappointed man. You must never give in to them. They’re there to break the spirit in you. The spirit they lack. The mind, the heart.

“Yes, they did indeed sing from the throat,” says Birch. He smirks. He is a disappointed man with a smirk. Far too satisfied a man given his position in life. “Indeed they did. But the difference in their case is,
they
could sing. Really, and greatly. Voices unique and pretty, if thin.”

I lean across to grip an edge of the piano. Grip it to dig my fingernails into the wood until an ache reaches the quick. This is a way to let the insult out, through the pain of crushing my nails into wood. Tears stay out of sight behind my eyes that way. My chin keeps from quivering. My twitch self jams in me before spit-breaths and cursing reach my lips. “I can sing as good as them,” I say, a little juice of hatred filling my mouth. It takes two swallows to keep the spittle down.

Birch places his knuckles to his mouth to cover a mocking laugh.

I dig into the wood and sing the scale without his piano rolls, Elvis Presley-perfect. The vibrato droning with long delicate vowels.

Birch removes his knuckles. “This is a school play in Bellevue Hill, not the Mississippi.”

I dig, waiting for him to say more, to admire at least the mimicking as remarkable. Does he want me to beg for praise?

I will not beg. I would never beg to a disappointed man. Just a kind word or two is all I need. A complimentary phrase then the twitch self would ease.

He clasps his hands in his lap. “An impersonation very competent, I’m sure.”

Is that praise? Yes, it is. I’m certain it is praising—
competent
. Yes it is. At last. “Thank you,” I nod.

“But you should sing from down
here
,” he says, hand on his chest as if making a promise. “Even from down here,”
hand on belly. He extends his arms in a swelling gesture.
“You need to project yourself to a hall full of people. Not confine your talents to abominating hymns in chapel.”

Talents.
That is what he said: talents. It is definitely praise.
I will present him with a “Yes, Sir” for that talents praise.

“To be an imitator is all very well but I want the original you. Do you have a
you
?”

A you? What is a you?

Birch makes a fist at his throat and speaks in a strangled voice. A person’s
them
, their
you
, would never be situated in their throat. It would be situated in their chest. Their trunk.Their shoulders, stomach, bowels. “You have no
you
.” He slaps his thigh. “Who are you?”

A question to shrug at, not answer. How is it answered except with shrugging?

This is what the
Catcher in the Rye
is about, Birch slaps. A boy who has no
him
, no
he
. Who has nothing going for him except that he is in a novel in search of how to become he. “You two are perfect for each other. So let us start that search now for your
you
voice.”

He finger-rolls up the scale, grandly ending the performance with a ballet dancer’s majestic curl of the wrist. He marches his fingers along the scale for my singing to follow. He beckons me with a nodding smile to keep up and stay in time.

I do keep up, but my voice is weak when singing this new way. A sound any boy might make, mounting the scale with a sweet, high-pitched vowel.

I must end this. I do not wish to sing in this play. Let the spittle rise up into my mouth. I will not stop it with finger-nails in wood. Let me swear, teeth gritted, sucks of air bubbling through them.

But he keeps calming me with praising, this music teacher. Tricking me with his “Good. That’s better. Keep going. There’s the fellow.”

He said of Holden Caulfield that he had nothing going for him. Applying it to me too with his “perfect for each other.”

Tudor Park, is that nothing? A constituency I can be one of but above, is that nothing? Rain on a string? Prime Ministers of Australia if I want for friends?

Yet Birch’s
goods
and
betters
bring up a boy sound from my belly. He tells me he is pleased, he sees progress in me. He presents a script to me and recommends that with holidays upon us I read it. He hopes I practise what I have learnt from him today: no throat; sing from down
here.
Next term we’ll find the me in me if it’s there.

T
HE LOOPHOLE ALSO WORKS
for clothes.

Feet’s blue frock for evenings and her peach blouse with neck ruffles. Is there anything worse than having to wear the same piece of clothing over and over? She thinks not. Wearing it against one’s ugly, wrinkly skin once, twice, on and on, rubbing in all one’s odours just like towels. Replacing them is like keeping yourself new.

Of course, synthetics are dyed in deep and require a smidgeon of bleach to speed the balcony process. But girls behind the counter are none the wiser, and with the forcefulness of Feet’s complaining she gets her way.

So important, new clothes, now the builders have finished the Tudor Park house to the point where it is livable. More a manor house than a plain word like house. What entertaining we’re bound to do! People will be name-calling out the other side of their face. We’ll be casting the net wider than cow people. “Believe you me, a house like we’ve built is one people travel to see. I can’t wait to see them turn green,” Feet says, clapping her hands together.

The thoroughbred yearling sales in Hamilton in January. Feet can only imagine who might drop in and stay. “There’s bound to be Bart Cummings one minute. Tommy Smith and his crowd the next. Because now we’re in a position where we’re not to afraid to say ‘Welcome to our humble abode.’”

The Duke stretches out in his chair and winks at her how glad he’s going to be to have his good wife come out of her shell and enjoy the company of others once again. “My lady is back.” He holds up his right hand, fits it into his left and shakes “Congratulations” to himself.

Feet unrolls the architect’s plans on the dining-room table. She points to measurements on the scrolled paper, mouths them silently as if to keep them in her memory. She steps across the lounge in measuring strides, counts out 1, 2, 3. Turns right and steps, counts. Steps right again, counts. She mutters how wonderful it will be to have bathrooms you can swing a cat in.

She takes her box of crayons from the odds and ends drawer. Crayons for the special purpose of matching linen, cushion and rug colour to the walls, the ceiling, curtains, lampshades. She marks out strips of crayon colour on the plans to find the natural pairings. “I’ll put ink-blue eiderdowns, blue rugs as well, against the oyster carpet,” she says, tongue poked out in concentration. “My relations’ mouths will water when they see it. I wonder where all my school friends have ended up. I’d love to see their faces.”

She wonders if there is anything of The Duke’s she can fade. It would be a shame not to have a few shirts, ones that really suit him, given her balcony treatment. One of his silk numbers perhaps. The purple paisley one she likes. She will get to work on it at once. We only have a week and we board the plane. She’ll have to drop some bleach in. A shame the sun won’t shine at night.

And on the subject of shame, why must her only son torment her? His face should be lit up. He should be running his fingers over the plans as excited as she is. He should be measuring out his bedroom. Stepping out the billiard room—a father and son’s very own gentleman’s nook. “How can you stand there sad as sacks? Makes me wonder why your father and I bother.”

She tells me to please help her carry the clothes horse onto the balcony. And please show a bit of enthusiasm for the manor house. “You’ll cut your mother and father to the quick.”

I do have enthusiasm for the manor house, I say. I’ve proudly worn the scars from Tudor Park. I have displayed them like a love tattoo of the place.

The Duke has picked up his newspaper and flicked it to a page. He will stay behind that screen, reading and listening to me explain myself. He will scrunch the paper down into his lap if he needs to have a say.

Feet will attempt to embrace me when I tell her: “But I also have another enthusiasm. A singing enthusiasm.” I will have to let her do it, her wine-breath all over me. She will insist I thank her for inheriting her musicalness and when I don’t thank her she will thank herself on my behalf. A manor house and a singer in one day! I brace for her outstretched arms, her smothering talcs and bittery scents.

“I want to learn to sing from down
here
,” I announce, tapping my chest. “I need to see music shows, theatre plays, live plays, up close. I have been selected. That’s right,
selected
.”

The Duke bends one page-end down. I explain what it is I have been selected for.

Feet holds her end of the clothes horse mid-air to comprehend the news. She says to The Duke, “Special. Did you hear that?”

The Duke scrunches his paper into his lap. “Singing?” He frowns for more information.

“In the school play,” I say. “I was selected.”

Feet puts down the clothes horse. She stretches out her arms for me to be embraced. I bow my head and allow it to happen. She rubs my back for me to please return her hugging. I tell her I can’t breathe with her pulling me so close. I put my arm around her and squeeze her until she gasps painfully, “Not so tight.” That gets me free of her and the smothering smells.

The Duke laughs, “You can sing to the cows. They might milk more. I’ve heard cows like music in that way.”

I scowl that I don’t sing to cows. I’ll be singing to a hall full of people. In Taonga there is a manor house. Here there are playhouses. This is a city not the sticks. There are singing teachers and theatres. I need to practise, to learn the singing craft or I will be laughed at and be remembered as a flop.

“Well, that’s too bad,” says The Duke. “You have to come to Taonga.”

“Why?”

The Duke shakes his head and closes his eyes in a condescending manner. “As if I have to bother explaining that.” He holds up a finger to count off a point. “Number one—you’re sixteen and can’t stay here by yourself.”

“I could.”

The Duke closes his eyes and says, “Ridiculous.”

I dig my nails into the sides of my legs. My bottom teeth jut out in front of my top. “There’d be somewhere I could board.”

Two fingers. “Number two. This is a very important occasion for us. The house we’ve set our hearts on. We’re building up a showpiece for ourselves for years to come. We’re doing this for you. Are you saying that is second fiddle to a bloody school play?”

Feet answers for me, “He is.” She has begun her own digging, in her hair. She pants noisily out of her nostrils. “He’s got tickets on himself. Forget everything we’ve done for him. Never mind Tudor Park. He’s got tickets on himself.”

The Dukes scrunches his paper to the floor. “See what you’ve done?” He closes his eyes and implores Feet, “Don’t go all funny. There’s no need to go funny.”

She pants that she is not going funny and is not going to put up with insults that she’s going funny. She simply feels gutted that her only son could not give a shitting damn about her beautiful manor house.

The Duke turns to me, “Tell your mother you give a damn.”