Fresh Fields (3 page)

The woman's duties were to attend to the reception area and the phone switchboard after hours and at weekends, and generally assist Mrs. Stott. There were two other live-in staff, a cook and a cleaner.

The Miami Guesthouse was really four separate houses, each divided into as many rooms as possible, and linked to each other by a back lane. The dining room was in one of the other houses and at mealtimes the lane was filled with a straggle of guests going back and forth. The first and only time the youth tried the soup he truly thought they'd served up the dirty dishwater by mistake. Then the main meal came and he realised the soup hadn't been an accident. After that the youth ate with the woman and the boy in the staff tea-room. There were often angry scenes in the dining room and at the reception desk. Few guests stayed longer than a week, but that didn't matter. The whole operation was based on a constant turnover.

The youth liked it at the Miami. There were always things happening, always different people. It might be two New Zealand girls on a working holiday, or a bloke down from the bush in moleskins and a wide hat, or a family from interstate. The youth heard all the staff gossip and knew everyone's business, but without being personally involved. And because he seemed vaguely part of the staff he was often asked things, like where the bus stop or the post office was, so he began to get the hang of being conversational with people. It was like having a grandstand seat at the parade of life.

The best thing was that he had his little top-floor room to himself. He could retreat up there when he chose and lie on his bed with his
Women's Weekly
magazines, or he could cuddle his pillow and think about Polly. He went back to Ashvale once on the train and sat again on the bench outside the salon and looked through the window. But Polly wasn't there. Maybe she was off that day, or maybe she'd left the job. Anyway, it didn't seem the same at Ashvale and the youth did not go back after that one time. In a sense it didn't matter if he never saw Polly again. He had the image of her to focus on when he needed it—like when he was alone in his room, or when he daydreamed himself into other places and other times and needed to picture the beautiful girl whose lover he was.

One night about ten o'clock the youth heard shouts from downstairs. It did not sound like an angry guest demanding a refund. The youth went to the top of the stairs and got a faint whiff of smoke. As he went down the stink of burning got stronger and he saw people in their nighties and pyjamas gathered at the door of the staff tea-room. “It's alright,” Mrs. Stott was telling them. “It's under control.” The youth looked into the tea-room and saw someone lying on the floor under a blanket. There was smoke circling from a little room like a cupboard which opened off the tea-room and which had belonged to Beryl, the cook. One of the guests was in there, pouring water on the mattress from a plastic bucket. The youth found the boy beside him. “Where's Mum?” the youth asked.

“Ringing up,” the boy replied.

The woman came from the switchboard and pushed through into the tea-room and told Mrs. Stott the ambulance was coming. Then she knelt beside the figure under the blanket.

“Just take it easy, Beryl,” she kept saying. “Just take it easy.” The figure under the blanket was shuddering violently.

“Someone fill this up for me,” said the guest with the plastic bucket.

The woman looked over and saw the youth and motioned him to take the bucket. The youth filled it at the sink and handed it back to the guest and watched him pour the water carefully on those parts of the mattress that were still smouldering. There were burn marks up the wall beside the bed, and photos and other personal things were lying broken and jumbled on the floor. The youth filled the bucket a couple more times, trying not to look at the figure under the blanket. The shuddering had stopped and there was just the smell.

Mr. Stavros arrived as the ambulance men were carrying Beryl out on a stretcher. He went out with them and then came back and examined the burnt room. He was serious-faced but calm and businesslike and there was something in his manner that made the youth think that maybe Mr. Stavros had seen many bad things in his life and had no sense of drama about them anymore. Then he noticed that Mr. Stavros was glancing sharply at him. A moment later he noticed it again. He wondered what was wrong. His mouth felt stiff and tight and he realised he was grinning. Maybe he'd been grinning the whole time. He tried to make his mouth straighten to normal but the grin stayed. He put his hand to his face and pretended to be stroking his upper lip reflectively. Mr. Stavros glanced sharply at him again and the youth knew that Mr. Stavros knew he was still grinning behind his hand. The youth went up to his room and lay on the bed. After a long time his mouth began to relax and he could stop grinning.

Next morning he heard that Beryl had died in the ambulance.

 

IT WASN'T
long after that the youth got a room-mate. His name was Sal and he was about twenty, thin and dark and quietly spoken. When he was shown into the room he apologised for intruding and said he probably wouldn't be staying long, so the youth made an effort to be friendly. They gradually began to talk and sometimes had good conversations. Sal talked mainly about girls. Each evening he would spruce himself up and go out to clubs and dances. Next day he'd tell the youth about the girls he'd danced with or kissed. At first the youth tried to appear knowledgeable, as though it was all familiar stuff to him, but after a while he let the pretence drop. It was easier then. He could ask questions. How does one approach girls? What does one talk to them about?

“Do you know any girls at all?” Sal asked.

“One,” said the youth, anxious not to appear too pathetic. “Her name's Polly.”

“How often do you see her?”

“Not much now. We had a sort of love affair, but it wasn't sex.”

“What's she like?”

So the youth described Polly. He described how they used to meet every day for lunch and sometimes for a picnic in the park, or sometimes for an outing to the pictures. He explained that Polly was very religious, that in fact she wanted to become a nun, so of course it had never gone beyond just holding hands and a brief kiss once in a while.

One evening the youth confided that he'd like to have sex with a girl just once, to find out what it was like.

“Trouble is,” said Sal, “when you've had it once you want to go on having it.”

This impressed the youth deeply, and chilled him. He'd thought of sex as something he might have just a couple of times in his life if he was lucky. But if Sal was right, if having it once meant being a slave to it . . . No, the youth thought bitterly, he had no intention of being caught like that.

He thought of Diestl. There was a scene in the film where Diestl shelters for the night in an old barn. A beautiful French girl is by herself in the farmhouse nearby. She comes to Diestl just before dawn and kneels beside him in the straw. She is so lonely, she tells him, and frightened by the war. All she wants is a little tenderness. Diestl stares up at her with his cold blue eyes and says nothing. He has his knife ready to kill her if she makes a false move. The girl creeps away again. Then Diestl gets up to leave in case the bitch is alerting the partisans. He limps away down the road with the Schmeisser at the ready and his shadow long behind him, and the girl watches from the farmhouse window as he fades into the distance. The youth felt he understood that scene now. He must be cold and remote like Diestl, needing nobody but himself, scorning the trap of sex.

The youth was reading a book about the rise and fall of the Nazis. Or rather he read the first few chapters and the last few. The stuff in between was mostly about policies and strategies and it bored him. It was the Nazis as underdogs that appealed to his imagination, Nazis relying on their own hardness and will, battling first to win the streets from the Reds and come to power, and then battling at the end as the overwhelming might of the world bears down on them.

 

ONE NIGHT
the youth was reading on his bed while Sal smartened himself at the mirror. Sal asked what the book was and the youth held it up for him to see. Sal said something about Jews.

“I don't know any Jews,” the youth said.

“Yes you do,” said Sal. “I'm a Jew. So is Stavros.”

The youth looked at him in surprise. He wondered if the sight of the book had offended him. But Sal kept on combing his hair and brushing his jacket the way he normally did. He didn't seem bothered.

“What do Jews actually do?” the youth asked.

“I don't know,” said Sal. “I'm not a practising Jew.”

“But what made Hitler want to . . . you know . . .”

“Kill them?”

“Yes.”

“Search me. Ask Stavros. He was in the camps.”

Sal waved his hand and went out.

The youth would have liked to ask Mr. Stavros about the camps and the war and everything, but of course there was no way of doing that. Besides, the youth had felt a coldness in Mr. Stavros. Several times since the fire they'd passed each other and the youth had muttered hello and had only got a blank look. It was noticeable because Mr. Stavros was still affable and smiling with everyone else. Except perhaps the woman. He seemed a bit cold towards her too.

One evening the youth was sitting by himself in the staff tea-room. He had a packet of crayons belonging to the boy and was idly making designs on a drawing pad. He began to do a big swastika. It was turning out better than the other designs he had tried, so he kept on with it. When he had the outline right he filled it in with black. He left a circle of white around the centre and finished the background in red. It looked good, a complete Nazi flag in the correct colours. It had dramatic power. Just then he heard someone coming and he turned the pad face down on the table. Mr. Stavros stood at the door. “Just doing some drawing,” the youth said awkwardly. Mr. Stavros came across to the table and turned the pad over and looked at it. Then he turned it face down again and went out without speaking.

The next day the woman told the youth she wanted to talk to him seriously.

“What do you want to do?” she asked when they had sat down.

“How do you mean?”

“With your life, your future. You appear to have no interest in going back to school, so what do you intend doing?”

“I don't know,” the youth replied blankly.

“Well you'd better start thinking about it. You can't go around in a daze forever.”

“I'm not in a daze.”

“Aren't you? You're giving a pretty good imitation of it then. Who do you think pays for your room and board here?”

“I don't know,” he replied. It had never occurred to him that these were being paid for.

“I do, of course,” said the woman. “But I have your brother and myself to keep, as well as you, and this job might not last much longer. You have to start taking responsibility for yourself. That's all I'm saying.”

“What should I do then?” asked the youth in bewilderment.

“You could look for a job, for one thing.”

The youth felt as though he'd been told to fly to the moon.

“If you had a job you could support yourself. You could rent a room somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere nearby. There are lots of rooms for rent.”

“What's wrong with here?”

The woman looked at him.

“Mr. Stavros doesn't want you here anymore.”

The youth stared away.

“Look,” said the woman, “I've rung Mrs. Hardcastle and made an appointment for you tomorrow morning.”

The youth said nothing.

“Well,” the woman asked, “what do you think about that?”

“I don't know,” said the youth.

The woman got up.

“You've got your whole life to get through,” she said brusquely. “So you'd better smarten your ideas up!”

 

MRS. HARDCASTLE
was a thin woman seated behind a desk. She wore a fox fur round her shoulders. The fox's head was still attached and rested against her bosom, the mouth drawn back in a snarl and the beady glass eyes seeming to glare across at the youth. Mrs. Hardcastle was flicking through a card index.

“And your dear mother is well?” she asked without looking up.

“Yes,” murmured the youth.

“I like to think of my clients as one big happy family,” Mrs. Hardcastle said, still not looking up.

The fox glared unblinkingly.

“And now you're part of our family too.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Hardcastle stopped flicking the cards and looked closely at one of them. “What about the lure of the land?” she said, toying with the card. “Mr. Coles wants a station lad. Sheep property, near Balinga. Start ASAP.”

“Yes,” murmured the youth, wondering what “ASAP” meant.

“I'll telegram Mr. Coles then.”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you phone me this time tomorrow and I'll tell you the arrangements.”

“Yes.”

“And give my best to your dear mother.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Hardcastle did not look up as he left, but the fox watched him to the door.

The youth was to meet Mr. Coles at the stock and station agents in Balinga at two o'clock on the Wednesday. He got to the main city station early, bought his ticket and then sat in the hall of the interstate and country trains, the same one he and the woman and boy had stepped out into a few months before. He had one small bag and a little money that the woman had given him in addition to his fare.

He kept going to the big board where the arrivals and departures were displayed, to check and recheck the departure time and platform number of his train. He kept feeling in his pocket to make sure the ticket was still there. And he kept touching his bag to make sure it was still beside him. Each time he checked these things he felt in control for a minute or two, but then anxiety would rush over him and he would have to recheck it all again.