The Idea of Perfection (7 page)

The narrow shops were jammed up along Parnassus Road in an irregular wall. Each one had done something different in plaster: there were swags of flowers, pointed urns, furled brackets, wreaths, pediments. There were little niches and meaningless piercings and fluted columns holding up nothing.

From here you could see how long it was since anything had had any maintenance, except the big shiny Coke sign along the awning of the Mini-Mart. All the fancy decorations were rough with paint that had cracked and weathered into a kind of oatmeal. Something had taken root in the droopy bit of one of the swags of flowers of the closed Karakarook Bakery next to the Mini-Mart, and had even gone so far as to produce small yellow flowers of its own. Grass sprouted all along the gutter, like a fringe that needed cutting, and one of the pointed urn things had fallen off the facade of the shop below him. Standing at the window, he could see where it had rolled down the sloping roof behind the facade and come to rest against a chimney.

In the presence of so much sky, the attempt at grandeur was a mistake. Up beyond the flimsy little shops the hills were very close, very solid. They were a structure of another kind altogether. Up there, dark timeless pelts of bush folded themselves over the curves of the land. Air moved in stately tides. Clouds made large bold gestures in the sky.

He seemed to be the only guest at the Caledonian. He pushed at the big wooden door with DINING ROOM in gilt letters with big serifs, like something engraved in Latin on a public monument. A woman was there, putting knives and forks away in a drawer.

Morning, he said.

He felt conspicuous, standing among all the empty tables and chairs. He sat quickly in the first chair that came to hand.

Morning, she called. The Set Breakfast, love?

He nodded, more eagerly than the Set Breakfast probably called for.

Yes. Yes please.

He wished he had chosen a seat with his back to the wall. Not only did he have his back to the room, but he could not see out the window, and only had the plastic tomato sauce bottle in the shape of a tomato to look at.

But he thought it might look funny to change tables.

The woman pushed at the swinging door that led to the kitchen, and he could hear a fine day being forecast for the slopes and plains, plates being stacked with a great clattering, glasses clashing together, a tap drumming into a sink. A female voice said something that made a male voice laugh.

He supposed he could look rather ridiculous sitting in the solitary splendour of the DINING ROOM. He knew pretty much what to expect from the Set Breakfast. On a big oval plate with a blue rim, there would be the two flabby fried eggs, the watery fried tomato and the brittle bacon. White-bread toast, curled like a scroll, would crack in the toast-rack.

He sat staring at the sauce bottle. Now that the swinging door was closed again he could not hear anything from the kitchen. He wondered if they minded turning everything on, the big stove and the exhaust fan and everything, just to cook one Set Breakfast. He wondered if he should spare them the trouble and go down the road to the Acropolis. But then it might look as if he did not like the Caledonian’s cooking.

Sometimes he felt the urge to apologise simply for existing, much less wanting breakfast.

 

 

Head Office had organised for him to meet the road gang’s Leading Hand in the bar. The problem was, the publican was still cleaning out there from the day before. One eye was higher than the other and his nose was crooked. It gave him an unsteady wary look as he glanced up.

G‘day, mate, he said, pausing in his mopping.

G‘day, mate, Douglas said.

He hoped it didn’t sound like satire. He wished he had got in first and called out
Morning, mate!
in a big hearty way. He perched uneasily on a bar stool. The publican pushed the mop backwards and forwards next to his feet.

You want a drink, mate, have to wait till I’m done here.

He unhooked his bottom from the stool.

Oh, sorry, he said. Mate. Should have said. Just waiting for a bloke.

He was standing in a puddle of water. The dirty strings of the mop were flicking around his boots.

Said I’d meet him here.

Suit yourself, mate, the publican said.

His lips were pressed together as if the mop took a lot of concentration.

Douglas got back on the stool, but tentatively, one foot still on the floor. It was dark in the bar, glittering with wet tiles, and draughty, all the windows flung open. The great grey eye of the television hung over the bar and he kept glancing at it, and at the enigmatic handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard underneath it: TOUCH REGO BOWLO SAT. The publican hosed out the floor with a great blast of water, slapped over the metal counters with a lump of wet rag, stacked crates with a rattle and flourish.

The silence, under the blasts and crashes the publican was producing, had become strained.

Hot enough for you? Douglas finally said.

It came out croaky and he cleared his throat.

The publican looked up suspiciously from mopping around the cigarette machine.

Eh?

Douglas cleared his throat again.

Hot, he said clearly. Hot, isn’t it?

The publican grunted and bent back to his mopping. The quality of the silence was now something you could snap in your hand. He had to get his feet out of the way quickly as the publican threw down a rubber mat beside the bar.

The doorway filled with the darkness of a bulky man with the daylight behind him. A big cheery voice boomed out into the bar.

G‘day, Vince!

The publican straightened up from the mop.

Ah, Chook! G‘day, mate!

He sounded like someone who had just been rescued. Hearing that, you could tell that Vince had not liked having someone perched on a stool watching while he cleaned the place out.

Douglas wished, as he often wished, that he had thought a bit quicker. He was a good enough thinker, but a slow one.

He stuck out his hand blindly towards the silhouette.

G‘day, he said, I’m Douglas Cheeseman. From Head Office.

His hand was squashed in a strong meaty grip.

G‘day, Doug, Henry Henderson’s the name. Call me Chook, everyone does.

There was a short pause in which he could hear water dripping off the counter. It was getting into his boot.

 

 

Chook Henderson was only the Leading Hand, but he put himself in charge straight away.

We go in your ute, eh, he said.

It was not a question.

I’ll drive. Show you the way.

He was no older than Douglas, but he looked a lot tougher. His face, crinkled up for years against glare, was seamed like a shoe, the tufty eyebrows coarse and vigorous. He had an old felt hat, and a big round belly that pushed his pants down so they hung off his hips.

He led the way out to the street and got in the driver’s side while Douglas was still wondering how to say
no.

He was a conscientious man. The ute had been issued to him. He was not supposed to let anyone else drive it. It was the insurance or something. Whenever you had a vehicle issued to you, you had to sign the Vehicle Requisition Form and the Blue Slip. You made a note of the mileage and how much petrol was in the tank. There was a place on the form for Pre-Existing Damage, too.

He had made the ute his own, driving down that morning from Sydney. They were his own browning apple cores in the ashtray, his own crumpled newspaper all over the floor, his own old brown jacket squashed up on the seat on top of his December issue of the
Engineering Digest.

Chook Henderson was already reaching under the driver’s seat to slide it backwards. His belly just fitted nicely in behind the wheel. He wound down the window and held out his hand for the keys and Douglas gave them to him.

Just like that. It was as if his hand did it all by itself.

He stood with his mouth ajar, wondering.

Chook already had the engine running, had the thing in reverse, the hand-brake off. He had not needed to be shown the trick about reverse, how you had to push the little button down on the gearstick before you slid it across. It had taken Douglas a moment to work it out when he picked up the ute at the car pool. It was the kind of puzzle he liked, and he would have been happy to show Chook.

This Chook did not need to be shown anything. The only thing holding him up was the bloke from Head Office, standing there looking as if he’d just remembered he’d left the stove on.

He came around to the passenger’s side. Chook was pushing the newspapers to one side in a hospitable way. He saw the
Engineering Digest
and picked it up.

Temporal Variants in the Hydration of Portland Cement,
he read, and tossed it on to the dashboard ledge.

Bit dry, eh, Doug?

He laughed a gusty laugh. Douglas wondered if he had made a joke.
Dry. Hydration.

He laughed tentatively.

The
Digest
had seemed a good idea, back in Sydney. Catch up on a few back issues. Now he wished he had thought to put it in his bag. Over the years, he had found that it was hard to explain the attraction of the
Engineering Digest
to people. He had tried to tell them what was interesting about such things as the hydration of Portland Cement, but they had never seemed really convinced.

He stared out the side window. He did not know how you got to be a Chook Henderson. He had known them in the schoolyard. It seemed to come naturally to them. Perhaps it was something to do with your father, or whether you had brothers and sisters. Perhaps it was toilet training. He did not know how he had been toilet trained. It could be in the genes, or in the water. Iron in the pipes, something like that.

Whatever it was, it was too late for him now. He was good at working out the buttons on a gear stick and he knew a great deal about Portland Cement and other related subjects, but it seemed that he was no good with people. He had been told that more than once.

They left the shops behind, turned downhill and crossed the river. The bridge looked new, a simple job, pre-stressed concrete, three spans, he knew the type well. On the other side of the bridge there was a faded sign:
Karakarook North.
The road sloped around the hill along a ragged-looking street with no kerbing and guttering. The houses clung to the side of the hill, tilting on their foundations: blistered weatherboard places patched with stained fibro, the roofs rusting away, lattice unravelling from verandahs in long drooping strips, an old car up on bricks in every front yard.

Then without warning they were out of Karakarook, on a dirt road running between rounded paddocks with clumps of trees and lopsided corrugated iron sheds that sent long crooked shadows out over the ground.

Even at this early hour of the morning the air that came in the window was so dry that Douglas could feel the membranes on the inside of his nose drying out. He imagined them cracking like old leather. A horse lifted its head from a pink bath that lay tilted on the ground beside a fence and stared at him with drops of water falling off its whiskery mouth.

Chook drove much faster on the dirt than Douglas would have cared to. As well as being careful about the Blue Slip and the Vehicle Requisition Form, he was a cautious driver. He had never had an accident, never even had a parking ticket. Risks were not in his nature.

Chook was driving with his right hand and rolling a cigarette with his left. While he did it he was not driving any slower. It was not an arrangement that made Douglas feel relaxed. The springs under the seat bounced and rolled and he wondered how much traffic there was, out here in the bush.

He felt the need to swallow. He wondered if he should offer to roll the cigarette for Chook, although he had never rolled a cigarette. He had taken a few timid puffs of joints at parties long ago, but he had never quite seen how home-made cigarettes worked. In design terms, there did not seem to be anything stopping the tobacco falling out the end.

This thing’s buggered, Chook said.

He licked along the edge of the cigarette paper and squashed it around the tobacco.

Know what I mean?

Douglas could see that the cigarette was certainly a strange lumpy shape. He wondered if he should agree about it being buggered. He could suggest more stuffing. That would give it greater longitudinal strength. While he was thinking, Chook spoke again. There was an edge of impatience in his voice.

Your shocks, mate, he said. Your shocks are stuffed.

He glanced sideways at him and cocked a whiskery eyebrow.

Eh?

He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

I’d a thought they’d look after their vehicles, up in Head Office.

Douglas had no wish to defend Head Office and any decisions it might have made about stuffed shocks. He glanced quickly sideways out of the window as if something had caught his attention, but there was nothing out the window to catch anyone’s attention, only a drooping wire fence and a sheep with a big daggy backside.