All These Perfect Strangers (3 page)

‘And what do you think of the rest of Scullin?' he asked, motioning at the building with his cigar, loose ash shimmering through the air.

‘I haven't seen much of the inside yet.'

‘But the building itself, don't you find it has a certain totalitarian charm? That it exudes Five Year Plan? I have a notion to get enormous banners of myself to display at the entrance. Something in a bright communist red would stand out so nicely.' He inhaled deeply on his cigar. ‘Sadly, I suspect the
Sub-Dean
would not approve of the expense.'

The emphasis suggested the Sub-Dean was one of the little people. Leaning so far back on his chair that it was in danger of toppling over, he continued. ‘I wanted to meet and congratulate you as our first bursary recipient. An idea of mine. The first of many. I must say your application interested me. I can see that you're a survivor, a trait I value highly. So easy to play the victim. So much harder to make a comeback.'

I sat up a bit straighter at this. I wasn't used to people praising me for anything, let alone for the very events most were so critical about.

He exhaled, a spiral of smoke snaking upward. ‘Some might see the bursary as misguided
noblesse oblige
. Certainly the Sub-Dean thinks so. He doesn't come out and say that directly of course. Being forthright is not his style, but that's what he thinks. I prefer to see this bursary as an endorsement from one survivor to another. I see potential in you. Don't disappoint me.'

I didn't intend to. That bursary paid all the accommodation and food costs. It was the only reason I could stay at a residential college. Frank had been my referee for the application, detailing all the personal history that the bursary would help me escape from.

‘Consider this a fresh start, Ms Sheppard. For you, for many of your colleagues. University is an excellent place to reinvent oneself.'

I opened my mouth to say thank you, but he was still talking.

‘Anyway, we need a photograph to record this happy occasion. Always publicise one's successes because no one else will.' He heaved himself out of his chair, ignoring my half-hearted protests that it really wasn't necessary, and began striding back towards the office, bellowing, ‘Carol! Carol!'

A woman, who looked like other people's mothers, in sensible trousers and neatly cut dark short hair, eventually appeared. ‘Yes, Master?'

‘The camera. We must have a photograph.'

Carol scurried back inside the office, with Marcus close behind. I was unsure whether to get up or stay put, so I waited, pretending to admire the roses before following. By the time I reached the room, there was still no camera but Toby had appeared with a handful of keys.

‘You finished with Pen?' Toby asked Marcus. ‘She hasn't been to her room yet. Still time to get unpacked before dinner.'

‘Aah, it seems the photograph will have to wait. Perhaps tomorrow,' said Marcus. ‘It will be an excellent year, Ms Sheppard, certainly not dull. I'm sure as the first bursary recipient you will achieve great distinction for yourself and this college.' Picking up his cigar from a large ashtray, he put his head close to mine and said, ‘University can be an expensive place. I'm sure we can find you some gainful employment if needed.' Waving away my thanks, he headed back out to the garden.

‘You're bloody lucky,' Toby said in an accusatory tone, once we were far enough away from the office. ‘I didn't even know there was a new bursary.' But he didn't seem to hold a grudge because he quickly defaulted to tour guide mode. ‘Dining room is that way,' he said, pointing through double glass doors, ‘and public telephones are down there, if you need to call home saying you got here in one piece. Take a book. There's always a queue.'

I made a non-committal kind of sound, as I had no intention of calling home. We passed a set of stairs. ‘Page Tower's up there. That's where the non-smokers live their boring healthy little lives. You're in Forde with me, where happiness is a lit cancer stick.'

I had put down smoking on my application form, not because I actually smoked, but because I had some vague idea that smokers were a more tolerant group, on the whole.

‘We're on the third floor,' Toby said, hoisting one of my bags onto his shoulder, as he began to climb the second set of stairs. ‘This is the only exercise I do.'

‘Why Forde and Page?' I asked, trying to squeeze past two girls who stopped on a landing to let us pass.

‘Don't you know your history? Prime Ministers, same as Scullin,' Toby said, nodding at the girls. ‘Most of the places on campus are named after Prime Ministers. Forde and Page are the Patron Saints of Failure. Didn't even last a month between them.'

We arrived at our floor and Toby ripped off a piece of paper stuck to the first door which said, ‘Back in 5'. He pulled out a key that had been hanging on a piece of string around his neck and unlocked it.

‘I'll make you a cuppa first and then you can start unpacking.'

The room was large, a double room in fact.

‘Don't get too excited,' Toby warned, as I looked around approvingly. ‘Your room's a coffin.'

Music posters covered every inch of the walls. Wild hair, extravagant eye shadow, velvet and black, lots of black. The faces glared down at me, as if they weren't nearly as impressed by Toby's room as I was. The double bed near the window was barely visible under a mound of clothes, paper, junk and a large billiard ball bean bag. In the middle of the room, shrine-like, was an enormous stereo, a mountain of CDs piled next to it. I had seen CDs before, but never so many together, outside of the music store in our town. As Toby disappeared through an internal door into a tiny bathroom to fill up the kettle, I started to count them.

‘Dave, my boyfriend, is an airline pilot,' he said, catching me in the act, as he came back into the room with the kettle. ‘He buys pirated CDs in Bali for me. You can get them for a couple of bucks each.'

Where I came from, old people still used ‘gay' to describe being happy, and young people used ‘faggot' and beat up boys they suspected of being one. Toby must have guessed something from my face. ‘Would you like me to hide in a closet to give you time to get used to the idea?' Then he told me he had actually climbed into his neighbour's closet in his first year and frightened some poor girl's mother half to death when he burst out of it. I made him promise that if my mother ever came to visit, he would do that to her.

We had tea and biscuits while Toby showed me the floor plan. ‘Bedrooms run down either side of the corridor with a basic kitchenette and bathrooms in the middle. Only residential assistants like me get their own ensuite.' He looked pretty happy about this. ‘I decided to put all the floor's first-years near each other because you tend to hang out together at the start anyway.' He pointed to a little square on the plan. ‘That room's Joad's and next to him is a girl called Kesh. Her real name is Marrakesh, can you believe it? She said she grew up in a commune. Anyway, they have both picked up their keys.'

‘Where am I?'

Toby moved his finger further down the corridor. It was just a box like the others but I still felt a thrill. My own room in college, where I was surrounded by other people roughly the same age as me. This was the beginning of something new and we were all at the starting line together.

‘You can have that one. It's pretty good. Not next to the bathrooms, might have to give that one to Michael because he's the last to check in. You can hear the toilets flushing and people vomiting. Breakout area is worse though. Drunken first-years talking rubbish all night and it's also where the phone is. Incoming calls only but still. Can drive you mad having to answer it all the time. Gave that room to Joad.'

‘Why?'

Toby flashed a wicked smile. ‘Seemed appropriate.'

‘Who's next to me?'

‘Rachel. She's a second-year. Probably make her grand entrance tomorrow.'

Sounds of people moving echoed up from the stairs. ‘Must be dinner time.' There was a knock on the door and a solemn-looking boy poked his head through. Square head, John Lennon round glasses, light brown hair that looked like he cut it himself, he was wearing woven leather sandals that would have spelt social death in my town.

‘I was told you had my key.'

‘Michael Doherty?' Toby guessed, after checking his list, and beckoned him in. ‘We were about to send out a search party. You are the lucky last!'

‘There was a note on the door.'

‘That's right,' said Toby.

‘It said you'd be back in five minutes but you were gone for over an hour.'

Turning to hand me my key, Toby arched an eyebrow. Michael was definitely getting the room nearest the bathroom. I decided to make my excuses and left.

My room was the last one along the corridor. Even though it was still bright outside, the room was subdued. I switched on the overhead fluorescent light, but it buzzed so loudly I turned it back off.

I shut the door and locked it, a good strong lock, and immediately the thought entered my head that Tracey would have approved of it. She put a lock on my bedroom door for me when Mum was dating Gary.

Dumping my bags on the industrial bristle floor, I lay down on the bed and took it all in. Toby's description of the room captured its ambiance, if not its shape. More square. The walls were mouse-coloured, a depressing grey-brown. Blobs of old Blu-tack from the last inhabitant were still stuck on them, and I could smell the ghosts of thousands of cigarettes in the air. It was sparsely furnished with a wooden bookcase, a plastic chair, metal bin and a large laminate desk. There was a mirror over a sink with a small cupboard underneath. Next to it was a much larger cupboard, which later I would be told was referred to as a ‘Tardis', because of the incredible amounts of junk that could be squashed inside it, and that was it. Better than a prison cell but not by much.

I lay down on my bed. The blanket itched my skin. I was going to stop thinking about Tracey. I was here and she wasn't. That was the end of it. I would make new friends even if I wasn't used to making polite conversation with strangers. There wasn't much call for that at home. Even less, if you were the town pariah. I had talked to more people today than I had in months. It was exhausting. My mouth hurt from smiling. I decided to skip dinner and stayed where I was, staring up at the ceiling. It was nicotine-stained with funny yellow clouds, round like squashed thought bubbles.

In the end, I sat up and read the information that had been left on my desk. There was a brochure on the history of the college, claiming this was the home of ‘high achievers'. The only one I had heard of was a TV show host, who got axed when he had appeared on air drunk. The next piece of paper was headed
UNI-SAFE – IT CONCERNS U
, about a recent attack by someone wielding a screwdriver. I was used to my mother's gun-loving boyfriends. A screwdriver didn't even seem like the person was trying. I threw all of it into the bin, stood on my bed and gazed out of the window at the empty car park below. The sun was setting. I could see past where the bus had dropped me off and back along to the other residences. Then I turned to look at the river which ran roughly parallel to the road. The noises of the college receded as the buzz from the cicadas swelled, and the world slowed until it was neither day nor night, but something in between.

Today, I am early for my appointment with Frank, so I sit on a bench near the bus stop where I left from six months ago. That feels like ancient history and it feels like yesterday. Second semester starts next week but I won't be there.

The bench is in the square with the Carillon on one side and the black bones of cherry trees on the other. There is a new tourist information board next to the trees, stating they are a town feature.

It is a raw winter day with a weak sun and there are not many people about. Even the court house across the road is quiet. Just a couple of utes are parked out the front of it. Most of our town is a sprawl of bad 1960s architecture and cheap fibro housing, but the court house was built in good times when people and money sluiced into town and before they slipped away with all the wealth. It's made of faded yellow sandstone with columns, a massive green octagonal dome and a large clock in the centre that probably stopped working last century. Sitting back from the road, behind a wrought-iron fence with stone pillars, it presides over our town. I like to look at it because it doesn't belong here and neither do I.

In primary school we went on an excursion to the police station around the corner and the court house. I was allowed to sit in the judge's chair. Tracey was the accused, standing behind the wooden bars in the dock, telling jokes and cheeking our teacher. Mrs Kelly told me to bring my court to order. I held the gavel in my hand, my fingers still inky from the fingerprinting. It was lighter than I had expected so when I tapped it onto its wooden block, I thought no one would hear it. But it sounded as if I was thumping the bench with a hammer and the result was immediate. Complete silence. I had the power for there to be noise, or for there to be none. Everyone was listening to me.

When I came back to court for Tracey's committal, people were supposed to listen, but it was the lawyers who talked the most, interrupting, objecting and telling me to keep to the question. I realised important people are the ones who ask the questions, not give the answers. But still my answers were enough. During my evidence, Tracey's mother fainted in the court room and the case was adjourned while an ambulance was called.

By then, I was a couple of months into my sessions with Frank and it would be another year before I decided to stop. We often discussed Mrs Cuttmore fainting in the court. She was the only one who believed that the police had the wrong person, and she kept believing right up to the point she heard me, Tracey's best friend, say that they didn't.