The First Week (17 page)

‘They're embarrassed,' Ros said. ‘They don't know what to say, so they just shut up. Don't you reckon?' She appealed to Marian.

Marian shook her head helplessly. ‘I suppose so. Perhaps they're scared of upsetting you.'

The week after her father's death she'd met a friend in the library.
How are you
, asked the friend.
Not too good. My dad's died
, Marian replied.
Oh sorry
, the friend said. Then, in the next breath,
a fox killed all my chooks
.

Lee joined them just as Evie arrived back with a tray.

‘Great talk,' Evie said.

‘Thanks. I don't know your name.'

Marian was flustered. ‘This is Evie, an old friend of mine.'

Evie grinned at Lee. ‘I liked what you said about terrorism, that it's all relative.'

‘Yeah. The latest scare campaign. Be afraid, be very afraid.'

‘How can you joke about terrorism?' protested Sam. ‘All those people dying.'

‘I'm not saying it's a joke,' Lee said. ‘It's deadly serious. Both sides working very hard to keep us afraid. All done with lies and bullshit.'

‘Yes,' said Evie, eyes bright. ‘Much easier to manipulate people if they're scared.'

Here we go, thought Marian. She's off.

‘These laws,' Evie said. ‘They don't like the look of you, you're done for. Someone like Charlie, they'd just shoot him dead.'

There was a shocked silence.

‘Charlie's not a terrorist,' Ros said flatly.

Sam sat up straighter. ‘A terrorist is political, or religious or something. A fanatic.'

‘Well isn't that what Lee was saying?' Evie asked. ‘That it depends who's handing out the labels?'

‘Yeah,' said Lee. ‘It's what you get from anyone if you push them too far.'

Marian leaned forward. ‘You think Charlie …?'

But Ros spoke over the top of her. ‘Nobody was pushing Charlie,' she protested.

‘I don't know,' Lee said. ‘I doubt if Charlie knows himself.'

‘This is what I think,' Evie said, more thoughtfully. ‘Those boys, Muslims, the ones who blow themselves and everyone else into paradise, they're the same as the rest of us.'

‘Yeah,' Sam broke in. ‘They're not like genetically different or something. They're someone's son, aren't they? Like Charlie? Someone's brother, someone's friend.'

Lee nodded. ‘So do they stop being your friend?'

Silence again.

Sam spoke, colour burning in her cheeks. ‘You know when we got the news, about Charlie I mean, there was this moment, just at first, when I was pleased.' Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I feel terrible, but it's true. My first thought was like
hey
, at last he's got off his bum and done something.'

Evie looked at her with interest. ‘Probably not unusual when something shocking happens,' she said. ‘Your mind can't cope with the whole thing at once. You just grab bits.'

‘Yes,' Ros said. ‘That's right. I've had all these thoughts flashing around. Some are proper, like
oh how awful
, but some are totally weird … bits of all the violence I've ever seen on TV …'

Evie turned her cup around in its saucer. ‘Maybe the difference between women and men is just that women are more inhibited about acting things out. Maybe we're not that different under the skin. Just as violent.'

‘No. It's men's stuff.' Sam was agitated. ‘And we can't just let them get away with it. So what if they've had a hard time? That doesn't justify violence.'

Marian held her coffee mug in front of her face and let the voices fade and blur again. What was the point? Women sitting around worrying about men's violence. Probably all women did it and had been doing it, generation after generation, since the beginning of time.

‘White boys want to be rebels, but what against?' Sam was asking. ‘They aren't women, aren't ethnic, aren't Indigenous. If they aren't gay then they're stuffed.'

Evie laughed, but Sam was serious, thinking it out. ‘So they take on other people's fights.'

‘Yes,' Evie said. ‘And in twenty years time they'll be wearing suits and greasing palms to get pre-selection.'

Ros was frowning. ‘But it's sad. They get stuck. Stranded.'

‘Knowing that their fate is to become rich white men in suits?' asked Evie.

‘Oh well.' Ros subsided.

‘That's what I was trying to get at before,' Lee said. ‘Aunty Rene says this thing about community, that it's a woven basket for holding people. What she says about the sad boys, our kids, is that we have to hold them and keep them safe from themselves. That way, we're safe too. She's not saying it's easy. She's spent her whole life at it. It's a big job. We need to work together.'

‘Not hating each other?' said Evie, a little quizzical.

Lee grinned at her. ‘Hell, I don't hate you whitefellas. I'm only trying to fix youse up.'

A greying man in baggy jeans came up to the table and waited next to Lee for a pause in the conversation.

She greeted him. ‘Hi Tim.'

‘Great paper, Lee. Well done.'

‘Thanks.' Lee turned back to Marian and Evie. ‘This is Tim. Tim Clark. He was hoping to catch you, Marian.'

‘Yes. Sorry to interrupt. I was hoping to have a word, Mrs Anditon? It's just that I was one of Charlie's teachers.'

Marian stood up and looked across the table at Evie. Evie lifted one hand. ‘I'll wait for you.'

Tim Clark held the door for Marian. ‘My office isn't far.'

The office was chaotic, worse than the lawyer's. Marian tried not to stare at the tottering piles on the floor and kept her feet tucked in, afraid of starting an avalanche. This man needed a secretary or two.

‘Charlie was in my Australian Studies class until he dropped out. I've been thinking about him all week.' Tim pushed his glasses up off his forehead and rubbed his eyes. ‘He was a bright student and we failed him somehow.'

‘Mmm.' Marian didn't know what to say.

‘I've got an essay here of his, the last thing he wrote for me.'

The lecturer rustled through the piles and produced a bundle of stapled paper topped by a yellow pro-forma with Charlie's name in black ink. He handed the essay to Marian, then took it back and turned to the first page so that she could see the title as Charlie had typed it.

Marian was moved by the effort that Charlie had made. At least he'd written something, quite a few pages by the feel of it. For once he had tried to do the right thing, do what his teacher, this Tim Clark, asked him. Balancing the essay on a corner of the desk she fumbled for her glasses.

White Culpability for Damage to the Land and its Indigenous People.

Charlie's absent voice cut across her emotion, her
sentimental crap
. Charlie wasn't trying to please anyone. Preach at them, more like.

Marian put the paper down. She couldn't read this, she'd had enough of it.

‘I think you should have it, Mrs Anditon. I've been wondering what to do. I think Charlie's lawyer should see what he's written at the end.'

Marian flicked to the last page. Below the list of
Works Cited
, Charlie had handwritten a note.

Tim, I won't be coming back any more. It's futile, all the talking. We need real action, direct action. Someone has to do something. Thanks anyway, for what you've shown me. Charlie.

Marian looked up. The lecturer was staring at the paper in her hands, a crease between his eyes.

‘Is this why …?' she asked.

Why? That was the question everyone asked. Perhaps it was always the question.
We have to know why.

Marian cleared her throat. ‘You think that shooting those people was his idea of direct action?'

Tim Clark felt for the glasses on top of his head, folded them and placed them carefully on the desk. A few moments later he unfolded them and pushed them back onto his face.

‘I don't know,' he said at last. ‘He certainly snapped.'

‘But he didn't know them,' Marian protested, ‘the people he shot. They hadn't done anything. Why them?'

‘I don't know.'

They were white.

Charlie couldn't have shot them because they were white. Could he? He was white himself.

‘How could he think that would make anything better?' she cried. ‘It's made everything worse. Much worse.'

Tim Clark smiled sadly. ‘We do a lot of talking here about what's wrong with the world. Maybe that's the problem. We aren't very good at ideas for making things better.'

‘He must have been so unhappy!' Marian couldn't bear it.

‘I'm sorry. I blame myself very much. I should have chased him up. Found out what was wrong.'

‘Everyone thinks it's their fault,' she said, surprised. ‘Everyone I've spoken to so far.'

‘Reaction to trauma. It's almost universal I believe. Probably all need counselling. I'll see what I can do for Charlie's friends. They're the University's responsibility, or should be. But what about you?'

‘Me?'

‘Can I help in any way?'

‘Oh. Not that I can think of.' She hesitated. ‘Maybe you're right about this though. Could you send the essay and the note to the lawyer? Just so he knows.' She fished in her purse for Simon Ingerson's card. ‘I've got his address here.'

‘Sure. I'll ring him. I'd be prepared to be a character witness for Charlie, anything like that.'

‘Even though he's done this …'

‘Well, he's going to need people to stand by him.'

Marian saw the lecturer's straggly beard, his tired eyes. She wanted to fall down on the stained carpet and kiss his feet in their clunky boots.

‘Thank you,' she said.

Evie parked under a tree a block away from the psychologist's office.

‘How are you feeling?' she asked.

‘Not sure.' Marian flexed her shoulders, preparing for action. ‘What will she want to know?'

‘Don't ask me. All about Charlie, I suppose. Painful birth, potty training. All that.'

Painful birth. Could it be that? It sounded too easy. Like daytime television. But Marian remembered the fury of Charlie's yell and wondered. Brian had never yelled like that. Brian cried when he wanted food or needed changing. But Charlie yelled for no reason at all.

‘I'd better go,' she said, opening the door.

Evie leaned over and hugged her. ‘Let me know? Okay? Don't vanish. I'll ring you if I don't hear.'

Marian stood on the verge as Evie did a u-turn in front of an indignant taxi, then wound down the window and called to Marian. ‘Don't let the shrink intimidate you.'

Marian laughed and glanced around, but no one was taking any notice. Evie's car shot off up the road.

The waiting room was all cream carpet. Marian hesitated in the doorway, conscious of her dusty shoes.

An inner door opened and a woman appeared, smiling. ‘Do you mind waiting? I won't be long.'

She didn't act like a receptionist so she must be the doctor. But Marian had expected a younger person. This woman was older than Marian, with curly white hair and a large bosom. She couldn't be a real doctor. It was a bosom you could lay your head on and be comforted. Grandma. Marian shook herself.

The woman was still waiting for an answer.

‘Sorry. Yes, I'll wait.' Marian sat down hurriedly on the edge of a chair. The woman nodded and disappeared behind the door, pulling it shut. Marian wriggled her bottom back. The chair was deep and softly padded and she let it swallow her. There were magazines on a coffee table, but it was too late to reach them now. As soon as she closed her eyes she was adrift. She forced them open again and yawned. This was important, she must stay alert …

The doctor's face loomed above her.

‘Mrs Anditon?'

‘Yes.' Marian jerked awake and tried to lever herself upright.

The other woman held out a hand. ‘They're a bit like that, these chairs. I come out here and have a nap myself sometimes when I've got a moment.'

Marian took the offered hand and let the woman pull her out of the chair.

‘I'm Jennifer Guthrie. Call me Jennifer, please.' She shook Marian's hand, which she was still holding. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Come in.'

Marian followed her through the inner door, trying surreptitiously to pat her hair back into shape, and took the closest chair. The room was small and lined with bookcases full of shabby well-used books. The coloured spines made a mosaic. But the real colour came from a carpet on the floor, glowing red and orange. A flying carpet from a picture book.

Instead of going behind the desk, the psychologist sat in the other chair on the magic carpet.

They could fly off somewhere together.

Realising that silence had settled around them, Marian raised her head. The psychologist was sitting with her hands in her lap. Marian couldn't see the woman's eyes behind her glasses, and was filled with panic. That bosom was not for comfort. Not for Marian. She, Marian, was here so that this woman, this psychologist, could expose her failure to be a proper mother. The psychologist would explain what must be obvious to everyone except Marian, how it should be done, what Marian should have taught Charlie, how she should have brought him up. This was her examiner, in an exam that she had already failed. Marian's heart beat faster and she sat forward in her chair.

Jennifer took off her glasses and folded them on the desk. ‘May I call you Marian?'

Marian nodded dumbly.

‘Thanks for coming to see me. I understand from Simon Ingerson that you're heading back to the country. I appreciate you fitting me in first.'

Marian fitting her in? Wasn't it the other way round?