The Children's Writer (6 page)

It was Rory Whittaker who pointed out to me, when I took the bat over for a hit that afternoon, that it wasn’t a ‘proper’ bat. He was only too pleased to show me that the V shape where the handle was spliced into the blade was only painted on and that the bat was no more than a lump of pine (even a fence paling), which made me wonder if that couple of dollars Mum handed over to Old Perc really was for our Christmas chook, or the bird plus a little more.

‘You been sold a crock, Monkey Boy,’ Rory said, laughing at my tears. ‘This bat’s a fake.’

I never did tell my mother this because I knew that she had given me all she could afford and I should be satisfied with that. But when Mum died, I chucked the bat out. I put it in the wheelie bin with her hat blocks and a million other childhood memories that brought me grief. Which is why I said to Lootie, ‘Do you want a hand with that stencil-cutting?’ since it looked like fun.

T
hat first Monday of Lootie’s prac I woke up to see her standing in front of her open wardrobe. She was wearing a pair of cotton knickers.

‘What do you think?’ she said, turning to me as I lounged on my pillow.

‘How about you come back to bed?’ I replied, lifting the doona.

‘Ha,’ she laughed. ‘I’m asking what you think I should wear.’

‘To bed?’ I said. ‘Nothing.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She hauled a couple of dresses from the wardrobe and held them up. ‘I’m a teacher today. Not a lover.’

‘Pity,’ I said. ‘So what have you got?’

‘Not much,’ she said, looking at the dresses critically. ‘Unless I wear jeans. And I can’t do that. Not on my first day.’

She was right, of course. It would never do for a teacher as young and pretty as Lootie to wear jeans.
Especially on her first day. And in front of a class of boys. ‘How about that blue one? It’s nice.’

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, putting the clothes back. ‘I should make a firm impression. A skirt, I think. That’s what a teacher would wear. Tartan. It’s conservative. And a cardigan. Yes?’

‘I guess.’ I was tickled that she bothered to ask. ‘Come back,’ I said, patting the bed. ‘The kids can wait.’

‘You’re being silly,’ she said, giving me a consolatory peck on the forehead. ‘Besides, you should be up yourself. You
are
going to work, aren’t you?’

I groaned. I had no choice as to what I would wear.

I knocked off early that afternoon. I guessed that Lootie would be tired after her first day and I wanted to have something ready for dinner. Seeing the autumn leaves aflame, I took a short cut through the park. I broke some leaves off (sprigs, you might say, not branches): red and orange from an oak, and yellow from a golden elm, much like the one in our garden.

When I came onto the main road, heading home, I saw a tram in front of me, and there was Lootie, sitting alone in the back. I waved and yelled, but she didn’t see me, so I gave up, content to follow. I watched the tramlines disappear beneath me.

People say that tramlines
snake.
To ‘snake’ implies choice, swerving and curving, almost as an act of escape. It came to me that tramlines do not snake. Tramlines are too set in their prescribed direction to snake, having no will of their own, no option but to follow a path already
established, the necessarily limiting (dare I say ‘preordained’?) grooves set in the road by council workers who, no doubt, followed a map, a plan, at the very least. Yet here I was following them. Following Lootie.

I wondered then (but only momentarily) if I had a choice?

The tram stopped and Lootie got off. I pulled in to the kerb to meet her. Because she was loaded up with bags I didn’t give her the bouquet of flaming leaves collected in the park, although I did point them out, sprawled riotously across my handlebars. She said nothing, being tired, or preoccupied, I guess. So I took some of her bags and slung them over my shoulder and we walked on home together.

‘I love it,’ she said when I asked. ‘I love them.’

‘Hang on,’ I said, and stopped to brush chalk dust from her cardigan, which was dark brown, the back covered in reversed-out writing. ‘You’ve been leaning against a blackboard,’ I said. ‘You must be a teacher.’

‘I’ve never been happier,’ she said, and she kissed me, there in the street, and me in my stinking XPress courier gear.

Lootie talked about her day right through dinner. I hadn’t gone to any trouble but I did spread the fiery autumn leaves on the white tablecloth.

Apparently Miss Svenson, the real teacher of Lootie’s class, was about forty-five and pretty tough. When the boys entered the classroom, she made them stand to attention at their desks before they could be seated.
There was a strict ‘hands up’ and ‘no calling out’ policy and every page of their writing books had to have a five (not
four
or
seven
) centimetre margin ruled down the left hand side, in
red
(not blue, not black).

‘I understand the standing at the desk,’ I said, ‘but why the red margin?’

‘Because Miss Svenson said,’ was the answer.

‘
Miss
Svenson?’

‘She’s married, but she calls herself Miss.’

‘How do you know she’s married?’

‘Because she told me. He’s a stockbroker. There’s no children.’

‘Does she like kids?’

‘She’s been a teacher for eighteen years.’

‘So?’

Lootie shrugged. ‘So I guess she likes them. Or did once. I think she’s nearly burnt out.’

‘Hasn’t she got another ten years to go?’

‘Who cares?’ Lootie said. ‘Do you want to hear about my boys?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll do the dishes. You pour yourself a drink and get comfy in the living room.’

Lootie had learned the names of three boys: Russell, Nathan and Paul. I asked her to describe them to me and she made me laugh.

‘Is there a Charlie?’ I wanted to know.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but now that you mention it, there’s a boy just like you.’

‘Fat and stupid?’ I said, readying myself.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Is he the library monitor?’

‘You really do have a low opinion of yourself,’ she said. ‘You make it impossible to talk to you.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m listening.’

‘He’s a nice boy. He just reminds me of you. That’s all.’

‘So what’s his name?’ I wanted to know about this kid, figuring that if I did, I might find out what Lootie liked about me.

But she shrugged and acted as if it didn’t matter, choosing to rattle on about the activities that she had supervised, and those she had actually instigated. Then she reached into one of the carry bags she’d lugged home and pulled out a pile of papers.

‘These are the stories that they wrote today,’ she said, spreading them on the floor, ‘And these are the pictures they drew. I couldn’t carry twenty-four exercise books on the tram, plus another twenty-four project books. So I got the boys to use loose sheets of paper, not their proper books. I wanted to bring them home to mark. And to show you, of course.’

‘You wanted to show me?’

‘Well, don’t you want to see?’

‘Read me some stories,’ I said.

Lootie sat up looking very prim, every bit the teacher. ‘The lesson was about animals in the wild,’ she said. ‘I told them how our world is shrinking and how wild animals find it harder to survive in a diminishing habitat. I showed the class the animals that you helped me cut out of cardboard on the weekend. The kids filled the shapes with coloured cellophane and we stuck them up against
the glass, against the light through the windows. I asked the class to write a story about one of those animals, and how it survived.’

She cleared her throat, preparing herself, then read the entire twenty-four stories. First she said the name of the writer, then she read the story and we talked about it. Some made me laugh, some made me think.

‘Which one was by the boy who reminds you of me?’ I wanted to know. She giggled and shook her head. ‘Now you’re just looking for compliments. I told them I’d return their work on Thursday,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘That will give me more time to mark. Their stories are full of spelling mistakes and punctuation errors.’

‘Aren’t these kids eight years old?’ I said.

‘Year Two,’ she said. ‘They can only just write independently.’

‘But they’re good,’ I said. ‘How about the pictures?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘the pictures had to be a visual response to their stories. See?’

The drawings were made on white cartridge paper using crayons. I saw animals of every sort, in landscapes of every sort. I saw happy and sad animals, animals that were obviously thriving and those that were not.

‘There’s one problem,’ Lootie said, pointing. ‘Nearly every boy has drawn the sun as a big yellow disc with pointy rays coming out. And three birds as wavy lines in the sky. And toffee-apple trees. I’ll have to get them out of that habit. I’ll have to get them to express themselves more creatively. Some of these are so clichéd.’

The idea of creative uniformity did make me wonder. I was brave enough to say that she couldn’t prove the boys had intended the yellow circles to be suns, nor that the three wavy lines were birds. Given that these kids came from all over, if their visual representations of the natural world were so similar, what made them so? Or were we adults limiting the kids’ imaginations? Reducing them to our own tired interpretations? Mightn’t the big yellow disc be the power of God, and the wavy lines angels?

‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘Kids don’t think like that. You give them too much credit. The yellow disc is the sun. Their god is the dollar. It’s that simple, trust me.’

In bed that night I looked at the ceiling, at the stains and creeping shadows. I thought of the boys’ art, of those soulless grey tramlines and that pile of fiery leaves out there on the table, still burning.

In the morning, as Lootie made coffee, she called from the kitchen, ‘How come you left these dead leaves here? They look awful.’

T
he elm fell bare that weekend, a crow perching in its branches. I was happier inside, helping Lootie with her lessons.

I arrived home Monday, showered and had a beer, but Lootie did not come. I made soup, and waited, had another beer, and still she didn’t come. At eight o’clock I heard the door, and she was there.

‘What?’ I said, as she pushed past me.

I heated the soup, and cut bread, but she didn’t come to the table.

I found her on the bed, face down, crying.

‘What?’ I said again.

She turned on the pillow. ‘Sebastian came today,’ she said.

‘Didn’t you want him to?’

She put out her hand and patted the bed, inviting me to sit. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘Not what I hoped for.’

I tried consoling her, telling her she was tired. ‘And it’s cold. Come and have some soup.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was the boys. They were awful to him.’

I lay down beside her, to comfort her.

I will pause here, being reminded of my mother and how I sat with her, comforting her, towards the end. I will tell this now, because if I don’t, Chanteleer will take over, as he always did, and swamp me. As he swamped my Lootie. So I will take this opportunity to tell you about my mum, and how I learned to wait, and to listen.

My mother was a big woman, as I have said. She saw me through school, and my teenage years, working all the time to have me educated. I grew big too, much like her, I guess, until finally I left the brothers at St Finbar’s, and their saints and martyrs. Although I was not what you call smart, I was not stupid, and I loved reading, but it was my mother’s work and her commitment that really saw me through.

Some people live just long enough to bring their dreams to fruition. So it was with my mother. When she knew that I had made it into uni, she took to her bed, coughing.

Within a month her cough had driven away her society women, her Flemington hat buyers, the source of her miserable income.

The doctor came, a little old man in a dark suit, his face florid, his hair receding. He wore round, gold-framed glasses. He prescribed a pile of mixtures and drugs. I collected these from the pharmacy and Mum took them, grumbling, the teaspoon trembling at her lips. Still the coughing persisted. I filled out the forms for a pension.

She neither improved nor declined. She clung. Lying in her bed, with me at her side, she would say, ‘Charlie, find me something bright.’

‘What?’ I’d ask, not understanding.

‘Something lively.’

I thought of flowers, but there were none in our yard, only the maudlin arum lilies out the front, their curled edges yellowing like boiled milk left to stand.

‘You need a hospital,’ I said. ‘That’s what you need.’

‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘I’ve got bronchitis.’

‘I’ll make you a cuppa,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said, turning to me. ‘Find something from my workroom. Something lively. Something bright.’

‘A catalogue?’ I asked. We didn’t have magazines.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Something…’

There were cherries on her work table. Big red cherries that some woman had wanted on her hat. Awful, artificial, but bright. I took them back.

‘You’re a good boy,’ she said. ‘You always know. When I was a kid, we had a cherry tree in the front yard at home. Real nice, it was. Here…’ and she held out her hand.

My mother had big hands, rough, like a man’s. But the cherries didn’t look silly, not the way she cupped them in her palm. They looked smaller, nicer (as she had said) and I thought how she made her hats. How she crafted something lovely out of a raw-edged square of straw, steamed over the kettle on the stove. How those big hands moved, this way and that, and when the straw was steamy limp, they moulded it into the shape of the woman’s head, complimenting her brow, reducing her
nose, accentuating her lips, ennobling her chin, making not only the hat fine and dainty, but the woman who wore it. And now Mum was holding a handful of fake cherries, red and bulbous, making them nice too.

She was happy, just to have me there (knowing I was there, assured) while she rolled the cherries between her fingers, enjoying them.

Then the coughing came, hacking and hard, doubling her over, and she clenched her fist, not wanting to drop what she held. Wanting to hold on, no matter how bad.

‘You go,’ she said. ‘Do your study. I’ll be all right.’

But I couldn’t. Not with her so sick, not with her needing me. That’s how I learned to wait, and listen. And do as I was told.

Lootie turned in the bed. ‘Everything went wrong,’ she said. ‘As soon as I arrived, Michael, the principal, the man you met at the garden party, asked me into his office. He told me that Miss Svenson wasn’t coming in. She was sick. I would have to take the class by myself. I said that was fine, but then he dropped the bombshell. Not only that, the school had a call from Sebastian’s girl Eve, to say that “due to unforeseen circumstances” he was coming. Today! He was due on Thursday. I hadn’t prepared the boys. I wanted to tell them about him beforehand, read them some extracts from his novels, put his visit in a context, get them thinking about questions. But I couldn’t. I had to focus on teaching what Svenson had phoned in. Maths. Phonics. Blah, blah. It was awful. The boys were really bad. I had no authority at all.

‘Sebastian turned up about two o’clock. He came to the classroom door with Eve. She gave me a wave and then disappeared into the staff room. But he came in. He looked just the same, in that baggy suit and bow tie, and I introduced him to the boys. I told them that he was a famous children’s writer and how privileged they were to have him pay them a visit and then he sat down at the teacher’s table out front and said, “My dears…what would you like to ask me?”

‘Bad start, I know, but the boys made it worse. They were already silly, as I said, not having their proper teacher there, then one started giggling and dropped his pencil and then they all started dropping pencils and staring under the table where Sebastian sat and then they all started giggling.

‘The first question this boy Liam asked was, “Why are you wearing different coloured socks?” and Sebastian said, “Because Y’s a crooked letter. Let’s have another question.” And the next boy, Angelo, said, “If you’re so famous, how come you’re in our classroom. Are you a teacher?”

‘I could see that Sebastian was uncomfortable, so I moved to the front of the room and said, “Now boys, let’s have some questions about writing. Anyone?”

‘There was silence, then more giggling, then Robert said, “If you’re so famous, how come we never heard of you?”

‘I could see disaster just around the corner so I said, “Mr Chanteleer was due to come on Thursday and I was going to introduce you to his books before he came. But…”

‘Sebastian cut me off. “Perhaps my books are too hard for you?” he said to them. “I didn’t write
Noddy
, you know.”

‘That shut them up. None of them would know who Noddy was, but they sure read the insult in his tone.

“‘So,” Sebastian said, “Since you don’t want to ask me any
real
questions, I’ll tell you something about myself…” And he told them about how he was born in Sussex and how his father died when he was a boy, and how hard he had to work to be a writer, and how writing wasn’t easy and that sort of thing. I can’t say whether they were too bored to interrupt or just couldn’t be bothered because it was late in the afternoon and they had football training but they let him talk until the bell went and then all raced for the door.

‘I didn’t know what to do, so I thanked Sebastian for coming and apologised for the boys’ behaviour. “Children are revolting,” he said. “You’ll work that out soon enough. Let’s get out of here. Eve can take us for a drink.”’

Her grip on my hand tightened. ‘Charlie,’ she said, ‘my head was spinning. He would never have talked like that if the boys had shown some manners. Why would they be so rude?’

This was a hard question and best deflected. So I said, ‘And you went to the pub? That’s how come you were late?’

‘I had a couple of chardonnays,’ she said. ‘I felt terrible.’

‘Have a shower,’ I said. ‘I’ll get your dinner. We all have bad days. Have an early night; everything will be right tomorrow.’

But as the days passed, Lootie’s reports grew more and more negative. ‘The boys were awful’ became ‘The boys were little shits’, and by the last day of her prac, she dropped her bags on the floor and threw herself on the sofa, declaring ‘Sebastian was right. I hate kids.’