This is My Song Page 11

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone like me,’ he muttered, still embarrassed.

  It was an unusual idea, she thought, to be like someone else. Unusual for her. She’d always considered herself to be … not like any other.

  The song finished and she sat with Bryan away from the circle, entranced as he shared his current passion for the French authors and a tragic character named Emma Bovary.

  ‘She’s not honest,’ said Bryan, ‘but she is attractive. I guess.’

  ‘Despite cheating and overspending and telling lies? Bryan, how is she attractive?’

  ‘Her desire,’ he said awkwardly. ‘She wants so much from life.’

  They talked some more in a regular, comfortable manner until Annie went to fetch another cup of punch and there was Nancy, set apart from proceedings as if conducting a survey.

  Nancy said, ‘Bryan’s a good guy.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  Nancy smiled and Annie said, a little too defensively, ‘We were just talking,’ and Nancy smiled again, though it did seem genuine.

  She said, ‘You never came back. Why was that? Your mother?’

  Annie nodded. Surprisingly, Nancy seemed to sense that nothing more was needed, or available, along that particular line, so they talked of other things: people from school, Mr Willis and his idiotic mohair shirts, the Lister twins who had returned to Melbourne in Australia – until finally a silence was reached, one that did need to be filled.

  Annie said, ‘Nancy? What about you?’

  ‘Me. You mean, leaving?’

  ‘Yes.’ She waited a moment before adding, ‘I never thought –’

  ‘No one did,’ Nancy told her. ‘Least of all, me.’

  Then?

  ‘Thing is,’ said Nancy with a sigh, ‘it’s all been – stupid.’

  The thickening, treacly air. Nancy took Annie by the arm and guided her beneath the dark scarlet of the trees to a place where the moon reached through, its beams edging past the leaves and lights to dapple the litter.

  ‘There was a boy,’ said Nancy carefully, ‘a little bit low grade in the eyes of some, but I did like his heart and I believe he liked mine. So we thought to pledge ourselves, but not in that way, you know? Words and thoughts but nothing else, nothing physical. However, the world being as it is, some people see things that aren’t there, I guess because they desire that kind of disruption, and next thing you know, there are guessing games and whispers and rumours. From rumour to fact, Annie, it’s a short journey.’

  Annie nodded.

  Nancy said, ‘I know, I’ve done it too. You’re probably thinking, just desserts. Maybe so. But, you know, this is the thing. Once I got wind I could’ve stopped those rumours at any time, could’ve just said no, you’re all wrong, it was this way not that, but I didn’t.’

  Annie felt breathless. She said, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Like I said, the whole thing was stupid,’ Nancy told her softly. ‘At first I thought to laugh along then it became more serious, the stories became deeper and built on a certain type of nastiness, and I saw that people were believing … they actually thought that of me. So I said to myself, wait on, what is it that you people are seeing here? What is it you want to see? Annie, there came a point where I knew I had to make a decision, to stop everything by telling the truth or let the lies rattle along, and I chose the latter. That way, if the story continued to grow and it all got out of hand to the point of being malicious, I would understand how poor – how small was their regard. And that’s exactly what happened.’

  She was quiet for a moment before leaning against the nub of a tree and scrubbing at her cheeks.

  ‘Even my parents,’ she said. ‘Someone told them these ridiculous things, that it wasn’t just one boy but many, my indecency was without limits. I don’t know who told them, don’t care too much either. The hurt comes from elsewhere. Annie, they believed it. Believed everything, without hesitation. My own parents! There was no question of what happened, more like, this has happened, how are we going to deal with it?’ She sighed from deep within herself then added, ‘Of course, that’s always been Daddy’s way. How will we deal with this – this thing? Life is a mathematical equation and you have to find the answer.’

  Annie said, ‘Then –’

  ‘Then he came down to the Academy, cancelled my enrolment like I was some sort of bug, going to infect all those good holy children, and arranged for me to go to my aunt’s place in Calgary. I leave next week.’

  Annie was silent. What could be said? It was a terrible injustice but there was, she thought, a sense of inevitability … as if Nancy’s precious, specious life had never quite been balanced, always teetering on the edge of a precipice, disaster popping and bubbling like a geyser below.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Nancy more brightly, ‘I might sound raw at present but truth is, I’m actually quite pleased.’ She waved in the general direction of the house and said, ‘You see that? It looks big but, you know, it’s not. It’s kind of narrow. There’s all this space and all these restrictions. So it’ll be good to leave and be me, proper me –’

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Annie in a rush, and Nancy smiled, came forward and said, ‘Well, not the person they expected or wanted. Not the cultivated one. You know, she’s like the crop. She grows up straight and obedient, flowers in spring, looks pretty, acts useful in some way. Always polite and doesn’t allow rumours. I’m not a boy like George so that’s what they wanted. In our family a girl has to be pretty and cultivated and clear of rumours. Or she has to be smart. I’m none of those things, so Calgary, thank the Lord, here I come.’

  Without warning she hugged Annie, released her and said, ‘Enough. Now, tell me all about you.’

  Temperature-wise it was a mild summer that year, a season made of westerlies and dust storms and thunder showers. The prairie shone and buckled and groaned during the day but by nightfall it had returned to its usual state, the unbreakable way that it had been throughout time. Overhead the stars clustered, the nearby mountains gleamed and the owls hooted as they swept across the flatlands. Sometimes, if she listened hard enough, Annie could hear the calls of other birds; whether plaintive or joyous or agonised, they remained the urgent cries of the living.

  That particular morning, just after dawn, her father departed the cabin in his usual stoic, almost anonymous manner. Annie waited for a few minutes then she walked into the kitchen with her backpack and signed-spoke to her mother. Helen listened intently before shaking her head, signing furiously. Eventually she wept and called Annie’s name in those clicking, broken tones. But she knows, thought Annie as finally they clung hard, she understands why, whereas he would never –

  Her mother remained at the window as Annie, dazed by the moment, walked away. She did not dare to look back.

  She caught a bus to Honey then used the money that her mother had given her to buy a ticket for the midday train to Calgary. As the train creaked away from the station she sat alone, hugged her knees to her chest and comforted herself with the thought that she could easily return. Her family, like the prairie, would always be there, a patterned comfortable quilt. For now, though, they were part of a confinement that she could no longer abide.

  The train gathered pace. Annie closed her eyes and leaned her head against the cool of the window. Before she slept she listened to the rhythmic thump of the wheels on the tracks. It was a powerful sound, unstoppable, and she was reminded of the song of the hunter, the kak-kak call of the goshawk.

  ‘Is it ever morally wrong to climb a mountain?’

  A low murmur, shuffling feet that edged towards complaint, silence. Joe’s brain did its whirring-throbbing thing but the rest of him reacted as internally requested, head down and hands by his sides, his own feet flat to the floor and stationary.

  ‘Anyone?’

  Finally, the voice of a girl, sardonic. He could see the girl’s face, the dips and dimples that marked the usual placements of her studs and rings, but Joe didn’t know her name
. Didn’t know many of the other names either.

  She said, ‘No.’

  Mr Bridgman said, ‘An explanation, please.’

  ‘It’s just a mountain,’ said the girl. ‘A bunch of rock. There’s nothing moral about it.’

  Joe imagined her mouth, a rubbery twist of as-ifness – as if the question matters, as if anyone would care, as if that’s going to help me learn stuff, the vital stuff, and pass exams and get a good report and finish school and get a good job, whatever that might be. As if this will lead to a good life, fun life, satisfy-me kind of life – as if!

  Boy’s voice. Footballer’s intonations: deep, impure, mud spots on the tonsils.

  ‘Stupid,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Mr Bridgman.

  ‘It’s not wrong to climb a mountain but it might be stupid,’ said the boy. A chorus erupted nearby – ‘Yeah, stupid. Go, Turts.’

  ‘Continue, Mr Turton.’

  ‘Like, if there was a blizzard,’ said the boy. He’d changed his tone, squad captain to the perennial bench guy.

  Joe sat tight, wishing that his brain would stop. Can a brain stop? Nah, only when it seizes up and dies in tandem with the body and even then the old cerebrum might be like a chicken with its head cut off, nerves still twitching away, feeding the mechanism with beeps and baps. The scream of the falling man: heed my call, heed my agony, the entirety of my life poured forth in one long scream …

  … The point being this. While you’re alive, thought is inescapable. You can’t empty your whirring-throbbing brain because there will always be at least one thought lifting its Harlequin face and probably many more. Like thoughts about cows. And Ms Wicks. And what-does-it-all-mean. Thoughts about his overtired mother and that whitewash of a day a couple of years back when Nash blazed away in his midlife-crisis Peugeot and the new baby and stupid, nose-picky Rebecca and even his grandfather, blank-eyed and silent in that tiny pale room –

  ‘Yeah, a blizzard,’ said the boy, already bored by the exchange. ‘Avalanche, rock fall. Act of God.’

  Someone snickered. The boy said, ‘Thanks, sir, great question,’ as the bell rang.

  ‘And still unanswered,’ said Mr Bridgman.

  He must have signalled: the sounds of packing up ceased, to be replaced by groans. Joe tensed. Here it comes, he thought. Again –

  ‘Mr Hawker?’

  He flushed, nibbled his lips. Looked up.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Care to comment?’

  Joe heard the nearby hiss – ‘Come on, Psycho, it’s freakin’ lunchtime!’

  Mr Bridgman asked once more, ‘Is it ever morally wrong to climb a mountain?’

  They waited. Joe had no air, no blood. Words only, come from afar.

  ‘Might be,’ he answered.

  ‘Fence-sitting, Joe? Come on, give me an example.’

  ‘If the mountain was sacred.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Um, people might think that gods, their gods, lived there, so it would be morally wrong for mere mortals to, you know, invade.’

  They were mocking him, he knew that, but not so darkly because they needed this, needed him to close it down so they could escape, run to the tuckshop, shove into line, swear, proclaim, continue.

  ‘Uh-huh. Is that it?’

  ‘If there was something immoral at the top of the mountain –’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Um, you know, sir. Porn, or something.’

  Sniggering, like a burst of rain. The flat of Mr Bridgman’s hand swiftly silenced them.

  ‘So climbing the mountain to see these – images – would be climbing it for immoral purposes, thus making it morally wrong?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Of course, he thought. A despot scaling the rock to watch captured prisoners being tortured on the plains below … the mountain might have been declared a flora or fauna sanctuary, home to a rare breed of bird or orchid … it might be a shrine for those who died during an avalanche … No, this is better, you’re climbing the mountain with another person, a friend who’s not really a friend or a relative who’s not really a relative (a stepmother, for example) but your real motivation is to throw them off the top and murder them –

  ‘A few,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Bridgman, ‘a few. Thank you, Joe. Class dismissed.’

  Lunch behind S-Block, away from prying eyes and pointless ball games. Piers had detention so Joe was by himself. He ate the same things he always ate – cheese and chutney roll, Pink Lady apple and his mother’s occasional speciality, strawberry cupcakes – and drank a flask of cordial. A fly landed on his arm and he watched it pick inquisitively through the light-coloured hairs before zooming away to find a bin.

  March in Brisbane, overheated, the city beset by a sort of gluggy stupidity. Joe stared at the useless sky and wondered if it at least provided a definition for non-colour.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  A girl, thinner than steam. Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, hair that gleamed. She was on the edge of a nearby concrete plateau, stooped beneath an enormous bag.

  ‘Please, I am lost. Where is the office?’

  Joe pointed. The girl nodded, picked her way across the greyness and weed. Despite being bent by the weight of the bag, she moved with obvious purpose.

  The break dragged. Joe sat with his back against a sun-warmed wall, closed his eyes and did what he always did when he needed to separate himself from plugging, worthless time.

  Imagined cows.

  Such important creatures! He thought, most people don’t realise that the cow is the anchor-point of civilisation. A tribe without cows – without herbivores, actually, horses or donkeys, goats, sheep, buffalo, but especially cows – was a tribe without hope of advancement. Give people a cow and not only did they have dairy, they had better nutrition and with that, better immunity against disease. The flow-on: more of their children lived, the tribe grew, more people to work the crops, more crops became more jobs because suddenly they needed government to administer the work and manufacturers for other cow by-products such as fuel created from the dried dung. The tribe could sell the by-products and become wealthy, meaning they could buy more cows. Unless they were from a religion that said otherwise they could also add meat to their diet, which meant more iron and greater strength so they could make better, safer villages – but that meant having better, safer technology so they were forced into developing new tools. Then, because they were stronger and immunised and more advanced with their tools, they could make weapons, meaning they could defend themselves, meaning longer survival. Not only that, they could travel further, meaning the chance to explore and find new sources of food as well as borrow technologies and languages from other tribes. So, advancement, expansion, longevity, people going from tiny tribe to thriving nation … and all because of that first, lovely cow.

  Last month, when the careers counsellor had asked him the Ridiculous Question – what do you want to be? – Joe had finally decided to be honest. Normally he kept Mrs LeStrange satisfied by pretending an interest in some random job – digital start-up entrepreneur (‘Great ambition!’), astronaut (‘Right, we can look into that,’) or mortician (‘Okay, interesting.’) This time he’d locked eyes and said, ‘Miss, I would like to be a Cow Historian.’

  Mrs LeStrange had stopped tapping her laptop – hallelujah for small mercies! – and said, ‘A Cow Historian? Joe, did I hear that correctly?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know of that particular career.’

  ‘That’s okay, miss. I probably invented it.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But it should exist. Cows are important. We need to chart their history.’ He’d felt this surge of enthusiasm as he’d outlined his plan, to write the history, raise the profile of the humble cow, make people understand –

  ‘Joe,’ said Mrs LeStrange kindly, ‘this sounds like a great project, fascinating! – but maybe not a career.
’

  He hadn’t bothered arguing. No one could argue with these people. They were the New Age hunters and gatherers of data and trends. Their spreadsheets rose like mushrooms after rain; they flicked effortlessly through PowerPoints and percentiles, talked about the uninvented jobs of the future like people used to talk about love.

  And cows.

  ‘Shall I just write Historian?’ Mrs LeStrange had asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Joe, keeping the peace.

  Maths then PE, badminton. Could there be anything more wasteful than time spent with a shuttlecock? Fortunately, he had his singing rotation, forty glorious minutes of tuition.

  Forty glorious minutes with Ms Wicks in the Green Room.

  Joe drifted along in a haze of notes and perfume, glancing up every so often in the hope that her grey eyes would administer the gentle, steady approval that he craved. It seemed that they did, although sometimes her delicate lids were down, her head nodding like that of a dozy bird as he worked through ‘Panis Angelicus’ …

  Another loud bell, in a life measured by the stupid things. Bells, clicks, alarms, flashing lights, dings and dongs, bangs and buzzers; time asserting itself. He hated it.

  Ms Wicks said, ‘Good work, Joe. As always.’

  Something missing? He’d nearly reached the door when she said, ‘Joe, your voice, your technique –’

  ‘Miss –’ Too eager?

  ‘Near perfect.’ She smiled but Joe saw it as apologetic rather than heartfelt. He looked away from her face, focusing instead on her slender hands as she tidied the scores into a neat rectangle.

  ‘You sight-read in an instant,’ she said. ‘You hear the music, pitch it and sing it beautifully, but Joe –’

  He was out the door, fretting –

  ‘Do you feel it?’ asked Ms Wicks.

  He sat on the bus, headphones jammed on so that he could avoid conversing with the usual clientele, pensioners or whack jobs. Looking through the window he could see Brisbane’s wavering, unsteady streets and, as the bus lumbered up the hills outside West End, the fractured skyline of the city. It was as if decades of humidity and storm blasts had buckled the substrata and created a shifting, twisting topography.