Hoi Polloi (23 page)

I’m included. I resist being included: I don’t raise my arms to their shoulders. But there’s no denying I feel privileged at this moment to be included in this wrap of arms despite what is happening in front of me, the thing I know is wrong but do nothing to stop. I should unwrap myself. Fine words should be forming in me, a speech to confront the surfie tribers, silence them into guilt. “That could be our fathers,” I want to say, but I don’t want to sound weak and have the tribers’ mouths fart ridicule at me and the notion that their fathers would ever be deros.

Polsie groans and cries out “Fuck.” The dero has kicked him, flung a bottle at him. The dero is yelling for his cardboard to be left alone. Polsie has fallen over, shocked at the retaliation. The surfie tribers stop laughing. They want to help Polsie but are frightened to go closer to the dero who now gathers the cardboard around himself like a prized possession. Polsie grabs the edge of the cardboard and tears a piece off. The dero keeps gathering it up though Polsie rips more pieces. Oggs tells Polsie to leave the dero and come away with us but Polsie ignores him and kicks at the dero, kicks at the cardboard. Jonesie and Oggs each take a side of him and pull him out of the alley into the yellow glow and the passing headlight beams of the night’s traffic. Oggs thinks the dero’s following us so we run up Park Street towards Hyde Park, glancing behind in case the dero’s there. He isn’t there. At the park we bend over for breath and Polsie jigs on the spot exhilarated as if he’s just won at sport. “I got his cardboard. Did you see? I got his fucking cardboard.” He wolf-howls to the world triumphantly. The surfie tribers wolf-howl with him. “Fuck that was good,” Polsie pants, then wolf-howls again.

I say goodbye, I’m going to the Macbeth movie. They say not to go to a boring old movie, go with them.

“Where?”

“We’ll have another crack at the dero,” Polsie jigs.

I twist out of their wrap of arms and leave. The surfie tribers take turns to tell me to “Fuck off, translator man.

You’re gutless.”

Most scenes in
Macbeth
remind me of the dero. Duncan was king but that didn’t protect him from the Macbeth tribe. The dero was a king in his way, king of his domain, his alley. Cardboard for a castle. I name him Duncan. When Lady Macbeth finds blood on her hands, the phantom blood of guilt—“Out, damned spot!”—I squeeze my hands together and wipe them on my knees.

Is there a church open at this hour? Somewhere to pray for forgiveness and make my slate clean, a holy bird-bath to wash the stain from my hands. Even if there were, God’s easy forgiveness is easily betrayed, and therefore worthless.

Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty pace, says Macbeth, but tomorrow I could go find the dero, Duncan. I will. I’ll take the money I’ve saved that’s stuck behind my bedhead. I’ll give it to Duncan. It’s dirty money anyway—fifty dollars stolen from Winks’ suit; ten dollars for being a pickpocket’s delivery boy. Five dollars in chickenfeed cellotaped coin by coin. A sixty-five-dollar apology to Duncan, one he can hold and count, eat and drink with.

Next morning I get out of bed at six and take the early-bird bus into the city. I walk up Park Street to find Duncan’s alley. Even if it means being late for school I’ll find the right alley, the cardboard castle, and Duncan himself rugged in his coat, asleep. I’ll wake him with my gift, my apology. If he flinches from me, frightened, I’ll reassure him I’m here to make amends for the surfie tribe and my own part in last night’s episode.

Duncan’s not here. I stand in the alley—I’m certain this is the right alley. The remnants of a crumpled cardboard shelter lie in a doorway. The streetlight is positioned at the alley entrance as I remember it. The rubbish bins have been emptied, their lids tossed aside, but there seems the same number of them as last night. Yes, this is the right alley. I wait for five minutes but Duncan doesn’t appear. A man in a white chef uniform, his apron smeared in kitchen wipings, steps from a door for a smoke. I ask if he’s seen Duncan, a down-on-his-luck type of fellow with a big coat and whiskers. I say this is Duncan’s alley at night. The chef sneers that he’s seen dozens of him. He flicks his cigarette, half-smoked, into the air and goes inside. Streams and cross-currents of crowds dressed in their morning best flood the footpaths, veer into offices. School will have started by now. My name will have been called by Mr Vella for French. He’ll mark my absence with red.

I search the north end of Hyde Park in case Duncan is bundled on a bench, sleeping, watching. Then the south end. A barefoot woman, black soles, black toes with nails like hooks, sleeps on one bench with a grimy shopping bag of her things for a pillow. I ask her if she has seen someone fitting Duncan’s description. She stares blankly into the grass as if asleep with her eyes open.

In the alley a truck has backed up to a door to deliver toilet paper and serviettes. I upturn a milk crate, sit, wait. I stand, walk the streets to find other alleys, but Duncan is in none of them. I return to the milk crate.

It’s almost lunchtime before I give up. I take an exercise book from my schoolbag, tear out a page and write.

To the man in this alley last night,

I was a member of a group of boys who harassed and assaulted
you here. It was a shameful thing to do. I feel terrible about it and
would like you to accept this money—sixty-five dollars’ worth of
money I’ve saved—as a sign that I wish to make it up to you somehow.
I hope this money comes in useful.

Once again I want to let you know how bad I feel about last
night. I intend never to be involved in something like that again.

All the best for the future,

A friend.

I drop the chicken-feed into an empty beer bottle that’s near the cardboard. I roll my note inside the sixty dollars’ cash and stuff that into the bottle’s neck. I make sure the money is poking out just enough to be noticeable and attract Duncan’s attention. That is, if it’s daylight when he gets to it. If it’s night-time he might not see it. And there’s no guarantee that he’ll be the one to discover it. It could be another dero. Duncan may not be the king of this alley at all. There may be a different king every night. Even so, it’s all I can think to do. I feel better for doing it. I’m sure I shouldn’t feel better so easily. I wrote the letter with my right hand.

W
E’RE BACK ON THE LIST.
Heels presses her hands to gether in a prayer-steeple: thank you, thank you, she prays to the ceiling. Thank you, thank you, she blows kisses to the ceiling light, her “little sun” as she calls it since the curtains have been permanently closed. It’s been a month in the wilderness but she has just this minute got off the phone to Genevieve and we’re back on the list for Melbourne Cup Day. “Wouldn’t you know it, without the slightest bit of prompting Genevieve apologised for the debacle of her last party.” Normally Heels would have said it’s a bit rich taking a month for an apology but under the circumstances she’s decided not to press the point. She merely told Genevieve she’d wondered if she, Heels, had put her foot in it in some way. But she wasn’t going to press the point, except to say she was a tiny bit hurt, but she wasn’t going to go on about it, except to say she’d wondered if she’d eaten with her mouth open or something. But under the circumstances she decided to let the matter rest.

By circumstances she’s referring to the news Genevieve imparted to her, how things are not as they should be between her and Mr Hush Hush. In fact Mr Hush Hush and Genevieve’s
arrangement
has cooled considerably and is all but kaput. Genevieve suspects he has wandering eyes. If it wasn’t for the little matter of Brett, Genevieve and Mr Hush Hush would be an item no more. But that’s their business not ours, Heels says. The main thing is we’re back on the list and on Melbourne Cup Day she’ll be at Genevieve’s bash. And I will be too if I wish because the invitation extends to me: “Genevieve’s very own words, because you’re so helpful in the kitchen,” reports Heels. “It’s a school day and you have my permission to call in sick because, after all, it’s that one day of the year.”

I have no intention of going to Genevieve’s. How could I face her! The mention of her name slumps me forward as if punctured. The memory of touching her face. Her shock, her recoil. If anything I should write her a note as I did Duncan, post it, put it in her letterbox.

I sit at my desk and begin.

Dear Genevieve,

I’m sorry for my actions. I’m sorry I touched your face in that
way.

The apology warps into a defence.

Mind you, you have acted in a similar way in the past, which is
what gave me the idea in the first place.

I’m angry now. At her. At myself.

It was just my John Thomas talking.

I rip up the note and flush it down the toilet. An hour later I attempt another. I begin it
Dear Genevieve
, scrub it out for
To Genevieve
. The note is not a note at all. It has become a poem for me to keep in my drawer with my other poems, or folded and zipped away privately in my wallet behind my bus pass like special money for looking at.

Where bouquet of pines so rich with scent,

Where lonely eyes of life have spent,

Where syrup drifts the dozy creek,

Alone again awake to seek.

Unveiled among reflections bright,

Descending hair against moonlight.

When all the stars are knitted above,

The jewels upon the planet’s glove.

The last line is my second choice. My first choice is,

I touch your face and say I love.

But as last lines go it’s much too corny, and too close to the bone.

I’ve done no homework for weeks. A composition is due for English, but I can think of no topic. I hand in my Genevieve poem, name changed from
To Genevieve
to
A Poem
for Someone
.

I’m marked seven out of ten. I’m happy with that though Mr Collins is sure I can do better. He says next time try writing from real life.

No, I will not go to Genevieve’s party. I lie awake and repeat that I will not go to Genevieve’s. I imagine Genevieve phoning us and I happen to answer. “I’ll get my mother,” I say, determined not to converse.

“No need,” she says. “I just wanted to make sure you
all
were coming to my party. That includes you. Do, please do. It would be so good to see you. I apologise for carrying on like a pork chop, getting all flustered that day in the kitchen.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh I think you know very well what I mean. You will come to my Melbourne Cup bash, won’t you?”

I will not go to Genevieve’s. I will not. I will not. My gentle, beautiful, rejecter Genevieve.

I will.

W
HAT A RELIEF, SAYS HEELS
, the sniffling woman isn’t here—she’s back with her husband. Things didn’t work out with aeroplane girl. It’s a reasonable gathering in her opinion. Reasonable without being sparkling. Heels can pick out a few faces. A few clothing designers she’s seen in magazines, including that what’s-her-name who’s in that ad on TV. “I hope we haven’t been invited simply to make up the numbers,” she mutters, and then notices a face whose name she forgets but who’s a fill-in newsreader on the ABC. And there’s that fellow who looks like Mike Willesee, who
isn’t
Mike Willesee but who was in
Number
96
with that blond thing, Abigail. There was a time when someone like Abigail would be here. When Heels doesn’t see someone here she thought would be here, she wonders if they’ve moved up a rung or down a rung. Yes, a reasonable gathering though it’s plain to see Mr Hush Hush has tightened the purse strings because that’s the third time this year Genevieve has been seen in that calf-skin lace-up blouse number. And go into the kitchen and take a peep for yourself: Genevieve has been spotted secretly filling white wine glasses from a wine cask instead of from bottles. It’s beside the refrigerator and covered by a tea-towel. And doesn’t she look drawn!

Heels kisses close to Genevieve’s face but at a comfortable distance from her makeup and tells her she looks terrific and that there’s such a wonderful crowd here, so many Sydney faces. She asks after Brett. Brett’s fine and spending the day with Mr Hush Hush on his yacht,
Treading Water
.

Eventually Genevieve leans forward and kisses close to my face then wipes me with her thumb below my ear though I’m sure I felt no graze of lips and lipstick. She doesn’t speak to me. She turns and introduces Heels and Winks to a urologist who fixed her father’s prostate and his clinical psychologist wife who should really fix all our heads. Heels greets them with the plum in her mouth that she always uses for doctors: “How do you do?”

Winks excuses himself to take up position with a race guide and glass of beer in front of the radio where the big race will come live from Melbourne. He predicts Van Der Hum is a certainty now that it’s pouring rain in Melbourne.