The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (50 page)

‘Me and Don Thompson,' she said, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Cassie, there's nothing much left of me that's real — hair, eyelashes, tits. I'm the great invention of the latter part of the twentieth century, as they say.'

‘You look real enough to me,' I said, and I meant it. What I saw was undeniably solid, sturdy and somehow more true than I had perceived earlier in the day.

‘You came to stay with me one night,' she said.

‘So I did.'

As our school years passed, we became friends of a kind. I was clever and hard working. Others fell behind at school as they grew old enough to work at home and on farms. I began to understand what my mother had told me, that only knowledge would save me. Marcia and I formed an alliance of sorts. Marcia couldn't spell, and wouldn't have known a good sentence if she fell over it; for her part, she helped me with arithmetic. Eventually, I was invited to stay overnight at her house.

‘You went home before breakfast the next day. What frightened you? My mother at her beads?'

‘Not exactly,' I said slowly, trying to frame a reply. I remembered my mother pursing her lips in a line. ‘What do you think?' she asked my father.

‘I don't like it,' he said, as if Marcia had something catching.

In the end I went. Her parents owned the bakery; mine owed them money.

Marcia's bedroom was behind the store, the guestroom down the
passageway
. There was boiled fish for tea. I picked the bones over with my fork and pretended to eat, Marcia's mother looked at me with reproach. She was a heavy woman with strong eyebrows.

In bed, I looked up and discovered Jesus's picture hanging above me, His chest wound open and terrible. The bleeding heart of Jesus. I lay awake, damp with fear, so that I would not disturb Him.

In the morning, as soon as it was light, I rose and dressed quietly. I crept out of the house and walked home.

‘It was Christ,' I told her, ‘I couldn't stomach him.'

‘You mean, we were Catholics.'

‘No, I didn't mean that.' I stood in front of the mirror, bending towards it, so that the cheap fluorescent light lit up the lines along my cheekbones. My eyes looked dishonest, even to me. I pulled out my lipstick and began to draw a large red mouth for myself.

‘You don't think you did. Not now. Too liberal, by far. I'll bet you're a real little supporter of causes, Cassie.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘I am. So what's your story?'

Marcia's voice deepened as she began to imitate a familiar voice. ‘I'll have to enrol your children, Mrs O'Donnell, there being no convent around here. But just make sure they don't go round spreading their Papist ways to other children.'

‘Flavell.'

‘Yes.'

‘I thought you were one of his favourites?'

‘I wanted God and Mr Flavell to love me better than any other kid in the world.'

‘You never said anything. I thought you'd tell everyone what a baby I was, running home.'

‘Well, I just thought, that's it, she's found out about us. She'll tell Flavell we don't eat meat on Fridays.'

‘I'm going back to the motel for a drink,' I said. ‘Do you want to come, or do you still have some more dancing to do?'

She hesitated a moment and smiled. I could see she was tired. ‘I've had a dance with Don,' she said. ‘Honour done.'

‘You're better than I am. Although, if it comes to that, he didn't ask me.'

‘I laid him once,' she said.

‘You didn't?' I couldn't contain my fierce distaste.

‘A goodbye present at the end of high school. Of course, you'd beggered off then. Goodbye Cassandra clever clogs, off to boarding school.' I looked over my shoulder, back towards clusters of people round the door, their cigarettes glowing in the dark; and I thought of him being so lucky. Set up, put on his way, the mystery revealed. If she became promiscuous, and I guessed that she did, that would have come later. For Don, an act of uncomplicated generosity.

Back at the motel, she turned her gin and tonic this way and that, then swallowed it straight down. ‘You know what Flavell did to us, don't you Cassie?'

I had to think about that. Us. Before it had always been what he'd done to me.

‘He picked us off one by one, and turned us against each other,' she said. ‘Everyone who was different. Uglies, brown skins, Mickey Doolans like me. Clever people like you. Do you think he's really at this reunion?'

‘Flavell?' That hadn't occurred to me. ‘You mean, he's just a figment of our imaginations?'

‘Not exactly,' she said, slowly.

‘Then what?'

‘Why doesn't he appear? I mean, did he register and then not turn up?'

‘Perhaps he's hiding from us.'

‘Don't be silly. He probably thinks he's our hero. Shall we cut and run?'

‘I've promised to judge this competition,' I said.

She sighed. ‘Always a good girl at heart.'

‘I'm not,' I said, and stopped.

‘All this frigging modesty. You can grab the last sandwich off the plate as quick as the next, I'll guarantee.'

‘Stay a while and talk,' I said.

We were still talking, still drinking, when the phone rang.

‘The boyfriend,' she said, her eyes shrewd. We had told each other a good deal by then.

‘So, how's it going?' Gregor asked.

‘Great, it's going just great,' I said. ‘How come all my friends are North American these days?' I laughed, that drunken late night laughter that hadn't overtaken me in years, and winked at Marcia. ‘Old times. We've got a lot to catch up on.'

‘Sounds like you're having a good time.' His voice was cool.

‘Well, of course I am. That's what I came for.'

‘Okay, Cassie. Sure.'

‘What have you been doing?' I said, trying to recover myself. I could see where this was leading, the phone slammed down in the middle of the night. My night, anyway. A few sleepless hours until dawn.

‘Nothing much. I saw a couple of exhibitions. Looked at some
photographs
.'

‘Anything interesting?'

‘Yeah.' His voice had become slow and meditative. ‘A retrospective, early stuff I saw this picture of a boot.'

‘A boot?'

‘Yeah, a boot. A footballer kicking a ball. The ball looks like a kind of a sponge, and just above it there's a little globe of light.'

‘Light. Where does the light come from?'

‘It's a circlet of dust actually, risen from the ball in a millionth of a second, as the foot lands on the ball.'

I breathed slowly, wanting him to keep on talking. Moments before I had felt angry and cornered. ‘So what is the point?' I asked.

‘What's the point? I don't know, Cassie. You tell me.' He sounded tired and flat, across on the other side of the world.

‘I don't know either. I haven't seen the picture.'

‘Well, there was a caption under the picture. It said, the empty spaces between the thinnest slices of time have been filled. Something like that.'

‘Is that what we're doing? Filling the empty spaces.'

The silence was so long I almost thought he had hung up on me, if it were not for the faint catch of his breath. ‘I think,' he said at last, ‘that we've got the thinnest slice of time at our disposal. In the order of things.'

‘Perhaps,' I said. I added, ‘Good night,' before I put the phone down.

‘For Chrissake, honey,' said Marcia, ‘for
Chrissake,
that guy's in love with you.'

‘That could be.'

‘Old chicks like us can't pass up our opportunities,' she said. ‘I mean, really, Cass.'

‘Count myself lucky?'

She sighed. ‘Something like that.'

When I finished judging the children's art, I asked John Royce where Flavell was. He wanted to talk about the art work, did I think it had changed much since I was at school, were the forms more vigorous, the colour more free? I said it was hard to remember, that I was sure it was, though perhaps no less diagrammatic, only more frightening, if I was truthful. He wanted me to explain myself, to tell him if I thought they were getting things right, was the school on the right track? Yes, I told him, yes of course. But why, I asked him, why didn't Flavell judge the competition?

He shrugged. ‘I believe he hasn't been well.'

‘Hasn't been well. Ha.' Marcia was at my shoulder. ‘D'you believe that, Cassie? Eh, what's he playing at?' A small crowd began to gather, Dodie and Mihi at its centre.

‘Flavell, we're coming to get you,' Marcia shouted suddenly. Everyone jumped, a flicker of uncertainty crossing each face. I saw that in a sudden shift in the weather, the sky was clouding over, turning dark and menacing, as if a storm was racing in off the Pacific. In spite of this, the heat was intense, that heavy stultifying humidity that strikes the sub-tropics. I began moving, as if mesmerised, to join these women from my past, linked as we were in a profound untested rage, dammed up since our childhood.

‘Flavell,' I echoed, ‘we're coming to get you.'

‘Ms Lomax … Cassie,' Royce said, his voice in ruins. ‘Please don't … spoil things.'

‘Flavell,' I called. ‘Come out wherever you are.'

And then, we began to march, stamping our feet in imitation of soldiers. FLA-VELL, FLA-VELL, FLA-VELL, we shouted.

‘Where are you going?' Don Thompson appeared, bringing up the rear. ‘Where are y'all off to?'

‘Get Flavell.' I heard my voice, thick and dirty, like phlegm.

‘I'll come.'

Others joined in the rampage; I didn't recognise all of them; some older than myself, others younger, spanning twenty years of Flavell's reign.

Mihi pointed with a wild wide gesture towards the staffroom window. ‘There.'

A thin figure stood back from the window, apparently gazing down at the advancing mob. I don't know how I knew it was him. Something about the way he stood and stared in an unmoving resolute way, as if nothing he could see would disquiet him.

‘He's been here all the time,' Marcia said. ‘He was hiding.'

Beside me, I heard Don say: ‘Bastard.' Then he scooped a rock from the edge of a flowerbed, and flung it in one fluid motion. Glass shattered at our feet.

We stopped then.

The rock had missed Flavell. He didn't appear hurt. He was dressed in a shabby, rust-coloured three-piece suit, an old man trembling on his stick, glaring at us through the damage we had caused. Like children, we began to wonder aloud, one by one, what would happen to us.

‘Holy Mother of God,' said Marcia, ‘if this gets back home, I'll be out of a job.'

‘I'm on probation for drunk driving already' Don said.

Mihi and Dodie began to wail. It was as if we had let the genie out of its bottle and now we could not contain its contents.

Flavell turned away, back to where he had been sneaking lamingtons and chocolate creams. He pushed cake into his mouth with childish greed, a spool of spittle on his chin. I knew then that he hadn't the faintest idea who we were, or why we were there. He was like any other old man smelling like the skimmings off meat.

Mihi stood close to me, her eyes still flecked with fear. From her wrist hung a cheap Polaroid camera. I turned and snatched it from her, raised it to my eye. In the silence that had descended, I snapped Flavell's picture.

‘Tell them I did it,' I said. ‘Tell them, Flavell, that it was Cassandra who did it.'

A collective sigh rustled through the crowd. If I was looking for approval in their eyes, I didn't find it. As if the matter was already settled.

In the background, I heard the voice of John Royce lifted in a desperate closing prayer. ‘Let us give thanks for this weekend of remembrance. Let us rejoice in the days of our youth.'

I slipped Mihi's camera into the flax kete lying at her feet, glad to be leaving her a present.

I stopped beside the flagpole. Another day came back. On the day of King George the Sixth's funeral, the school kept two minutes' silence, all over the country. All over the Commonwealth, as Flavell told us. I was older then. Flavell had begun to have some regard for me; perhaps he admired my survival skills. He had come to think of me as conscientious. I was foolishly grateful, proud to be chosen that day. I stood outside by the flagpole and rang the bell to signal that the silence was beginning, and again when it
ended. It seemed like the longest silence in the history of the world. In those two minutes, I found myself wondering what my life would be like. Whether anyone would keep silence when I died. And if they didn't, would it matter?

I was, of course, turning towards the future that day, to the grown-up world.

Rain began to fall over the flowery scented landscape, as I hurried away from Loop School. I started to compose a letter in my head to Gregor:
Does
this
mean,
I wrote in my imaginary sky handwriting,
that
I
am
grateful
to
Flavell?
No,
no,
of
course
not
— if I had been really writing, my hands would have been trembling —
I
have
always
known
that
our
monsters,
all
the
terrors
of
our
dark
and
sleepless
nights,
are
only
men
and
women
and
what
we
do
to
each
other.
For
an
instant,
as
in
that
circlet
of
dust
or
light
you
mentioned
last
night,
I
remembered
why
I
take
photographs,
and
why
I
do
what
I
do.
It
'
s
easy
to
forget.