Holier Than Thou (3 page)

3

I had plotted to poach Liam for myself, and later for my group, well before it happened. He and I were the only two from our school on our train line into town. I was aware of his presence on the platform all through junior school, mainly in my peripheral vision, as we never exchanged words or even looks. But his presence became reassuring and familiar, and I felt a bit bereft on the rare days he was missing. We sat in different carriages until Year Nine (Year Ten for him) when we, still wordlessly, merged into the same carriage, although I sat upstairs and he sat downstairs. Sometimes he listened to his MP3 player, sometimes he read and sometimes he just stood on the platform with his hands in his pockets.

In fourth term of Year Nine I contracted chicken pox – from Paddy, the little shit – and I was out of commission for over a fortnight. On my triumphal, if scabby, return to school, I could have sworn that a look of relief flooded his face, followed by the tiniest flicker of greeting when I walked past him on the platform. In return, I twitched a smile and continued to where I always stood a few metres further down the platform. Once in the city, we headed to the bus stop outside Central where we were no longer the only two kids from our school.

Obviously we weren’t in any of the same classes, being a year apart, but I would often pass Liam as I cut through the quadrangle, or see his curly head bobbing up ahead of me in the corridors. His locker was in the upper east corridor, alongside most of his group’s. Mine, Abigail’s, Lara’s and Daniel’s were in the lower south.

By Year Ten my little gang had staked a corner patch of one of the few grassed areas in the school grounds, with a short metal bench, a bit of shade from a sad-looking tree, and some milk crates we had pinched from out the back of the canteen. Periodically the milk crates would disappear overnight, often reappearing in another group’s patch, and we would have to scavenge some more, which could take weeks. Or if we outranked the suspected poachers, we might confront them. Milk crates were a sought-after currency at our school.

Liam and his friends had the steps and a section of the low wall, not far from the canteen, well within my line of sight. There were eight tw of them, four girls and four boys, all from Year Eleven. One of the girls was Ffion Mallon; her father was some kind of Irish-Australian right-wing historian, always in the paper hammering on about ‘those blasted Aborigines’, or ‘bloody boat people’, the ‘harm-minimisation brigade’ or the Greens. He often got into public brawls with my father, with heated letters and articles being sent back and forth in the op-ed sections of the newspapers and in Ffion’s father’s magazine. His
rag
I should say
.

Although by the time I was in Year Ten, my father was getting sicker, and he engaged less and less with Jack Mallon. An academic colleague of my father’s died early that year, a man who had a longstanding friendship with Jack Mallon, and Jack wrote an obituary for him in the paper. I happened upon it on the breakfast table, after my father had retired to his easy chair with a hot water bottle and one of the pain-killers that made him glassy-eyed and in and out of consciousness.

‘
Last to pay his respects was the mortally ailing John Yarkov, no fight left in him and leaning heavily on his stricken but still-lovely wife, knowing as he passed by the casket that it would not be long before he lay in one himself
.’

A band tightened around my chest and adrenaline began to pump around my body. I re-read that sentence then dropped the newspaper. How
dare
he write such a thing! I went to my room and paced around, waiting for the feeling of panic to subside.
Surely it’s not that dire is it? Dad’s still having chemo. He’s getting treatment for fuck’s sake, he’s going to the hospital practically every other day. He could get better. He will get better. That shithead Jack Mallon should keep his goddamn mouth shut and stop going around saying that people’s fathers are dying.

The following Monday, I stalked past Liam’s group on my way to the canteen. Ffion Mallon’s pale skin and thick reddish-brown hair seemed to glint in the sunlight. I glared at her, which she must have sensed as she looked at me briefly, and I knew in that moment that she knew who I was. Even though she always pretended that she didn’t.

On my way back she was locked in conversation with Liam. Once I was sitting on my milk crate and dispensing Jupiter Caramel bars to all, Daniel asked me quietly how my dad was.

‘My mum showed me that thing in the paper,’ he added.

‘So did mine,’ added Abigail.

‘All that man knows how to do is write crap and piss people off!’ I spat. ‘And . . . and stir shit up! He doesn’t know anything. Why do people listen to him?’ I felt so defensive I’d have drawn my sword and brandished it if I’d been wearing one.

‘Hols . . . ’ Lara tried to bring me back to earth, as she was often wont to do.

‘How
dare
he!’

‘Hols . . . ’

‘Fucking
windbag—
’

‘Hols, how is your dad?’

‘Sick.’ And I allowed myself a couple of sobs, for what would be the last time in many months. Lara, Abs and Daniel all bent their heads toward me.

That afternoon as Liam and I climbed up the stairs leading out of Petersham station, he fell into step beside me and said, ‘Hey.’

‘Hey . . . ’ I said back.

There was a long fifty metres coming up where we both would walk up Terminus Street until we went our separate ways. Were we going to walk next to each other? Should I repay his overture with an attempt at conversation?

‘I’m Holly,’ was the only thing I could think of to say, after keeping step with him for a while, and I hoped it wasn’t too intense.

‘I know,’ he said, smiling. ‘Liam.’

‘I know.’

Well, we both know! That’s a good start.

‘Bye, Holly.’

‘Yeah . . . bye.’

He crossed the road, and I wondered what on earth it was about that boy’s energy that made me want to be friends with him so badly.

‘Um . . . Holly?’ his voice called out behind me.

‘Yeah?’

‘Jack Mallon is an arsehole.’

‘Thanks.’

His
energy
, his
carriage
, what? What was it? I have pondered this question often, then and since.

Little things? Big things? Big things that masqueraded as little things?

He could have worn the seniors’ shirt, tie and blazer, with poxy stripes sewn onto the blazer immortalising the wearer’s participation in debating, cricket, basketball, band, house captaincy, Student Representative Council, or whatever school-approved achievements some people like other people to know about. Liam wore the white shirt that seniors wore, but over it he just wore a plain grey jumper or a nondescript black hoodie. His tie was stuffed into his pants pocket and retrieved for school assemblies or teachers who insisted on it. He was interesting-looking, but not strictly speaking good-looking, although he looked pretty damn good to me. He had pale skin and dark frizzy hair that hovered just shy of shoulder length.

But best and oddest of all, as we got to know each other I noticed that his irises were burnt copper on the left half and rich brown on the right half. A freak of nature, like those cats with one green eye and one blue eye.

I’d seen him reading a Jonathan Franzen novel on the train platform, and the odd
Quarterly EontQuartessay
. Kate Grenville. Don DeLillo. Smarty pants. A boy, I reflected in years following, after my father’s heart. His parents were divorced and he lived with his mum. Over the years I became as defensive of her as he was dismissive. Ingrid was her name.

In the months after that first ‘hey’ at the station we made pretty rapid progress to chatting on the platform, sitting together on the train, sharing an earphone each of his MP3 player and going for a coffee together in the city after school. Conversation became easier and easier at an exponential rate, laughter was frequent and relaxation constant. I even went back to hang at his house every now and again, where we listened to music, laughed at silly songs online, indulged a shameful secret passion for
Star Trek
(Next Gen), drank cups of tea and generally enjoyed having the house to ourselves. Liam’s house was ye olde in style, none of this open-plan design or skylight nonsense. It was dark and cavernous and all the rooms led off a long musty hallway. In one of them I noticed an upright piano of dark wood, well camouflaged in the dim light.

‘Who plays?’ I asked him as we walked toward the kitchen at the back of the house.

‘That would be me,’ he said casually.

‘Serious!’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘How good are you?’

‘Oh, you know.’

‘I don’t. Can you play me something?’ I stopped walking and tugged his arm back up the hallway.

‘Eh . . . ,’ he protested.

‘Pleeeeease, go on.’

He tugged back in the other direction.

‘Yes, you will play me something . . . ’

‘Al
right
!’ The tussle ended. ‘I’ll just wash my hands first.’

He disappeared into the bathroom and I hovered outside the piano room, shy to enter the space without him.

‘Okay . . . ’ He slipped past me and switched on the light. I don’t know why he did that rather than opening the blinds, because it was still broad daylight outside. But it lent a certain atmosphere. The piano stood in the far corner and there were stacks of archive boxes and papers pretty much covering every inch of floor. Liam motioned for me to sit next to him on the piano stool – there was nowhere else. There was plenty of room on the stool, our thighs and even elbows were not touching. Together we lifted the heavy lid to reveal keys far more yellowed than not, and he retrieved a book of sheet music from a stack on the carpet.
Goyescas.
He flipped it open and positioned it on the wooden panel. He placed his fingers on the keys and his whole stature changed; he seemed to grow bigger and stronger, the sinews of his pale hands stood out.

The music Liam played made the muscles in the bottom of my tummy cl="3 my tumench. And he played with a mastery that made me feel like the most unaccomplished fifteen-year-old in the world. Toward the end of the piece he closed his eyes, and I was free to observe his face, particularly his mouth with the lips slightly parted, at once tense with concentration and completely relaxed with joy.

‘
Liam
-mond.’ I said softly. ‘You are amazing.’

‘Well, thank you, ma’am,’ he said lightly, closing the book and reaching down to rummage once more at his feet.

‘What about something a bit more . . . um . . . ’ He pulled another book from the stack and righted himself. ‘Have you heard of Tori Amos?’

‘I . . . think so. Sounds familiar . . . She sings . . . um . . . ’

‘She sings and plays the piano.’ Liam held up a book with a white cover and a photograph of a red-headed woman crouched in a wooden box.
Little Earthquakes
, I read. He opened it to a song called ‘Winter’ and began to play. I was mesmerised, until he interrupted his own playing halfway through and turned to me.

‘Hey, can you sing?’

At school he still sat with his group, and I sat with mine, although I’d often stop to say hello to him on my way to the canteen. Eventually, most of the boys in the group would nod in recognition, too, but the girls uniformly glared somewhere over my shoulder. I enjoyed my lunchtimes with my gang, although they were a little same-ish, but I missed Liam and looked forward to the afternoons when we would finally be alone together on the train. Several people from our groups got the bus with us into the city on the way home, including Ffion, and Daniel on days when he did maths tutoring at this coaching place near World Square.

Dans was such a little nerd, however he might try to grow his hair a little longer, wear leather bracelets and rubber wristbands proclaiming a cause, and take off his tie. I loved him dearly for it. He was still the same sweet-natured little guy from Grade Three, with his shirt tucked into his grey stubbies shorts, his back-and-sides haircut and his eager enquiries as to whether I would like to start a computer club with him.

On those afternoon bus trips he and I mostly hung together, but he sometimes made brave attempts to talk to Ffion and her best friend Megan, even though he so didn’t make their grade. He refused to accept the status quo. He was not going to go quietly into that good night. Bless.

It must have been nearly halfway through that year when auditions were announced for the school musical,
Kiss Me Kate.

Liam said he was going for music captain and would play keyboards with the orchestra. Daniel would clearly be in charge of techie, although he was only in Year Ten. Lara was a shoo-in for first violin. Abigail opted for backstage and I was undecided about what I wanted to go for. Perhaps singing in the chorus.

Liam, however, had another idea. After all my singing of Tori Amos in his dusty music room, he convinced me to audition for one of the principal roles. He got hold of some sheet music and accompanied meveccompane as I practised a song for the role of Lois, who plays Katherine’s younger sister in the play within the play, a supporting but quite prominent role. After singing the song and doing a talking scene for Mr Crawford, the director, I found myself staying back after school for the call-backs. I was paired directly with Ffion Mallon, who was singing for the title role. We sang individually, with Liam accompanying us on the piano. Perhaps it was his familiar presence and the cadences of his playing, but I found myself quite relaxed in the song and then enjoying the talking scene. Ffion was forced to make eye contact with me at times, but we slid quite easily into the roles of big, bitchy and little, ditzy sister as Katharine and Bianca, and then as rivals for the same man as Lilli and Lois. We did some basic dance steps and then sat on the wooden floorboards of the stage, waiting for Mr Crawford to confer with his assistant director, Miss Britz, behind the table they set up in the middle of the hall. Eventually they addressed us as we sat on the edge of the stage with our legs dangling over its edge.