Don't Call Me Ishmael (13 page)

‘Tell me again why you had a little wooden dolly shoved up your daks.'

It was the next day-Thursday lunchtime–and we were having our usual debriefing session.

‘It wasn't a doll,' I said wearily in reply to Razza's neverending questions, ‘it was one of my sister's peg people. I told you it must have got caught on my pants or my shirt or something when I pulled my clothes from the line. I was in a hurry. I didn't have time to think. I just … I didn't … ‘ I gave up.

‘Peg people?'

‘It's a long story,' I said darkly.

‘All right,' Scobie interrupted, ‘I think it would be more beneficial if we just got on with the debriefing.'

‘Shouldn't take long.'

‘Thank you, Orazio. Now, if we could start?' Scobie said coldly.

Razza was right, though. What was there to debrief?
Following my stunning performance the debate was stopped and the points were awarded to Lourdes College.

‘Now obviously, there's not much we can say about the actual debate itself …'

‘Oh, I don't know. I reckon Leseur's dive was worth at least nine out of ten–bit too much of a splash on entry for a perfect score. Still, I think …' Razza finally wilted under Scobie's glare.

‘As I was saying … the purpose of this meeting is to thank Ishmael. Things may not have gone
exactly
to plan last night, but if it wasn't for Ishmael stepping in at the last moment, we would have been out of the finals. So I think we should all give him a round of applause.'

Scobie, Prindabel and Bill Kingsley clapped while Razza whistled, pounded on the desk and made a sound with his mouth like a roaring crowd.

‘Yeah, I got to admit, Ishmael, you came through, man–the cavalry to the rescue. But I reckon they'll have to rewrite the debating handbook. Why worry about preparing a case or trying to rebut the other team's argument? Just practise the Leseur Lunge. Yeah, when all else fails, grope one of the opposition.'

‘What?'

Razza stopped and stared at me.

Scobie, Bill and Prindabel stared at me.

‘What do you mean, “grope one of the opposition”?'

Razza turned to Scobie. ‘Oh my god, I don't think he knows.'

Scobie frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Ishmael, do you remember what you were doing just before you … passed out?'

‘Yes. Trying not to pass out.'

‘Do you remember anything after that?'

‘No. I was passed out,' I said, becoming more irritated with the pointless questions.

‘Well, yes,' Scobie said with a bleak smile, ‘but for instance, do you recall making a gesture with your left hand?'

‘Yeah … so what?'

‘Well …'

‘Let me tell him. I'll tell him. Come on. Please. I'll do it.'

Something about Razza's enthusiasm was deeply disturbing.

‘No. I think it would be better coming from me.'

That didn't sound good. That was the kind of line people said in soap operas when they were about to deliver some devastating news like, ‘I'm leaving you, Rodney. I'm marrying your evil twin brother who everyone thought died in that explosion but who really escaped and had plastic surgery and for the last ten years has been our gardener and … my
lover
!'.

Scobie faced me and frowned. ‘After you made that gesture with your left hand-which, incidentally, was a very good attempt at a non-aural persuasive technique …'

‘Quit stalling, Scobie,' Razza said impatiently.

‘After that … you started to fall forward … and then I guess because your arm was up … you overbalanced to the left … and then you obviously tried to break your fall because
you reached out …' Scobie hesitated before adding, ‘and that's when your left hand … came in
contact …
with the opposition-or, more particularly, the first speaker of the opposition.'

‘Yeah, she had sort of a close encounter of the
nerd
kind,' Razza said.

‘Oh god. She's all right, isn't she? I didn't hurt her, did I?'

James Scobie stared back vacantly.

‘Well, did I?'

Razza looked around at the others, beaming like a lighthouse. Prindabel's thin lips were pressed into a grin, as if he had just received the latest edition of
Algebra Monthly.
Even Bill Kingsley stopped drinking from a big carton of strawberry milk long enough for a brief flicker of something close to comprehension to scuttle across his face. This was bad. This was very bad. There was only one possible subject where those three could find common ground.

‘Scobie, what
kind
of … contact?' I asked with growing dread. ‘Scobie? What kind of contact did I make with Kelly … with the first speaker of the opposition?'

Scobie opened his mouth to speak, but before he had the chance Razza leapt from his chair, placed his hand on my shoulder and leant in close. ‘Let's just say, Ishy you old devil …' and suddenly Razza's hand had slipped down to my chest. ‘… it looked like you were very keen to keep a
-breast
of the opposition's argument.'

‘What?' I said, flinging Razza's hand away.

‘Don't worry, she probably just thought you were rebutting one of her impressive
points.'

‘What!' I reeled around in horror. ‘Scobie, what's he on about?'

By now Razza was prancing around the room like a prizefighter, digging Prindabel in the ribs and slapping Bill Kingsley on the back.

‘It wasn't your fault. It obviously wasn't intentional,' Scobie said reasonably. ‘It's just … she was there … and your hand was reaching out. No one thinks for a minute that you …'

‘Oh my god!' I looked from Scobie to the other three grinning faces.
‘Oh my god
! No! You're making it up. You're lying. It's garbage.'

‘Ishmael my man, calm down. It's no big deal. She'll understand. Just tell her that you're a
hands on
sort of a guy?'

‘Oh my god. That's it. My life is over. Just take me out and shoot me.'

Razza bobbed in again. ‘Look, Ishmael, I don't know why you're so upset. I think what you did was very brave.'

‘Brave? What the hell are you talking about!'

‘Well, who knows, she could have been
booby-
trapped
.'
Razza whooped and bounced around, pushing and prodding Prindabel and Bill Kingsley. ‘Eh, eh,
booby-
trapped? … doncha see? …
booby? … boob?'

‘Orazio, could you be serious for a minute? Ishmael's obviously upset and you're not helping.'

‘Sorry, sorry,' Razza said, lowering his head and holding up his hands as if to deflect Scobie's glare, ‘but I really think he's making too big a deal out of it. As far as I'm concerned that chick just got a bit of her own medicine back.'

‘What?' This time it was Scobie's turn to be confused. ‘What do you mean, her own medicine?'

‘Well she had a bit of a go at us in her speech, didn't she? So Ishmael had a go at her-sort of like
tit
for tat.'

This time Razza draped himself between Prindabel and Bill Kingsley, wrapped his arms around their necks and pulled them in.
‘Tit
for tat!
Tit
for tat! Somebody stop me!'

Ignatius Prindabel's face contorted in a bizarre leer until he looked like Mr Burns from
The Simpsons
, and his head bobbed up and down and air hissed in and out between his teeth. At the same time Bill Kingsley began to make a strange noise like an engine struggling to turn over. ‘Errummm … errumm … errummm.'

Not only had I shown Kelly Faulkner that I was a babbling idiot as well as a deviate who liked to store wooden objects in his pants and a wimp who passed out under pressure, I could now add ‘pervert' to my impressive list of credentials. There was only one course of action left open to me. I wrapped my arms around my head, lay on the desk and moaned.

‘Look, Ishmael …'

‘Orazio, that's enough!'

‘Scobes, I'm just trying to
help
here. Give me
some
credit, will you? I think I know where to draw the line. OK? As I was saying … look, Ishmael, I know you think that that Kelly chick is perfect, like some sort of a goddess or angel or something, but are you sure you're not getting carried away?'

‘What's your point exactly, Zorzotto?' I mumbled from under my arms, sensing danger.

‘My point is, Ishmael, that maybe not everyone thinks she's perfect. What I'm trying to say is, I'm sure she's got her
knockers.
But hey, I don't have to tell
you
that, do I?'

At this point Razza collapsed on the floor holding his stomach and groaning with laughter. Meanwhile Prindabel hissed and spluttered with even greater intensity and Bill Kingsley's grinding engine noise seemed on the verge of lurching into life. It was only Scobie's hard, unwavering voice that sliced through the simmering hysteria.

‘Orazio, show a bit of maturity for once. We're here to support Ishmael. So let's cut out all this nonsense over what are, after all, just mammary glands.'

‘Just what?' Razza managed to choke out while he gasped for air.

‘Mammary glands,' Scobie replied like a dictionary, ‘the milk-producing gland in female mammals. In other mammals called the udder but in humans called the breast.'

Razza dragged himself to his feet. ‘You're a sick individual, do you know that, Scobie?' he said seriously. ‘It's people like you that give us perverts a bad name.'

I lifted my head from the desk. There was only one question I wanted answered. ‘What will I say to her?'

Four pairs of eyes turned towards me.

‘Kelly Faulkner–what will I say to her?'

I looked around for an answer. Prindabel and Bill Kingsley stared back like pre-schoolers asked to explain the scientific theory behind the existence of black holes. Even Razza had run out of smart replies and weak puns. Scobie was my last
hope. Scobie always knew what to say. He could always find the right words.

‘Scobie? If I ever see Kelly Faulkner again, what could I possibly say to her?' I asked hopelessly.

Scobie pushed his lips to a pout, wrinkled his brow and put his mouth through the full range of twists and stretches. ‘Well … I think you have to try to see the big picture. This could turn out to be one of those interesting stories people tell about how they first met. So perhaps you could say … ‘ Scobie stopped and his eyes flicked towards Razza.

‘What? What could I say?'

‘… thanks for the
mammary
?

What followed wasn't pretty. Scobie's joke finally kickstarted Bill Kingsley's motor. Unfortunately he had just filled his mouth with strawberry milk and he immediately began to moan and buck like a cow giving birth. Razza, in turn, let out strangled cries like he was being stabbed and leapt about pointing at Scobie and Kingsley and shaking his head in disbelief. Prindabel, meanwhile, began shaking like a boiling kettle and making high-pitched humming noises, as if he were trying to keep a swarm of bees inside his mouth. Scobie just twisted his face into a knot and tried to look innocent.

The really ugly part came when strawberry milk bubbled out of Bill Kingsley's nose like pink lava and Ignatius Prindabel, under the immense strain of keeping everything inside, broke wind like a trumpet hitting three octaves above high C. This caused Razza to bolt from the room wiping tears from his eyes with one hand and clutching at his groin with the other. He was followed closely by Bill Kingsley sputtering like a pink
fountain and Ignatius Prindabel tooting like a brass band. It was quite a parade.

Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by how supportively my friends had rallied around in my time of personal crisis.

Only Scobie remained in the classroom, smiling sheepishly back at me.

‘I'm a complete drop kick.'

‘I don't think so. You showed the true St Daniel's spirit last night–you entered the lion's den.'

‘Yeah, and fainted,' I said glumly.

‘But not before you stood up.'

‘What difference does that make?'

‘Well, it's like what Miss Tarango's been saying about the short stories we're writing-about not going on too long and knowing when to end them? Well, I think your story ended when you got up in front of that audience. That's all we really needed to know about you.'

At home that night I tried desperately to erase the whole Kelly Faulkner groping disaster from my mind. But it wasn't that easy to just edit out all the excruciatingly embarrassing chunks of your life like they never existed. Maybe Razza had the right approach. Maybe I was taking it all too seriously Maybe it was best to just laugh about it and try to put things into perspective. After all, I still had my family and I still had my friends (even though their sense of humour left a lot to be desired) and my life was still relatively Barry Bagsley-free.

Yes, when I looked at the big picture, I realised that things could definitely be worse for me–a lot worse, in fact.

And before I knew it, they were.

It was on the first day after the short September holidays that we heard the news.

‘What do mean, he won't be back for the finals?'

‘Look, Ignatius, I'm just telling you what Miss Tarango told me. Scobie's with his father in Sydney for some reason and he won't be back in time for the finals.'

‘But he
is
coming back, right?' Razza asked.

‘Sure, yeah, of course.' But the trouble was, I wasn't that certain.

When I asked Miss Tarango the same question all she said was, ‘As far as I know,' and for a moment there she seemed to have lost her dimples.

‘Without Scobie we're dead.'

‘That's the spirit, Prindabel. Need any help hoisting the white flag?'

‘Well, I suppose that
you're
going to take Scobie's place are you, Orazio?'

‘No, but at least I'm not throwing in the towel before I even know the topic'

‘Ahhh …' This was going to be delicate. ‘That's another thing Miss Tarango told me. For the semi-final rounds … it's a secret topic'

‘What? Secret topic? How will we know what we have to talk about?'

‘I've got a hunch, Billy Boy,' Razza said, putting his arm around Bill Kingsley and speaking like a kindergarten teacher, ‘that maybe, just maybe, if we're extra specially good and eat up all our vegetables, they might let us in on the secret
before
we actually start debating. Would I be right, Ishmael?'

‘Right. We get the topic on the night. Then they lock us in a room with some encyclopaedias and a dictionary. We can't talk to anyone outside. We've only got an hour to prepare.'

‘An
hour
?' Razza said in disbelief. ‘Last debate it took us an entire
week
just to explain the
topic
to Kingsley'

‘Now do you want to hear the really bad news? Our opposition is Preston College.'

The looks on their faces said it all. If you went to Preston College and didn't become at least prime minister you were considered a disappointment. At Preston College they started debating in the womb. We were certainly up against it. The trick was to remain positive.

‘They're going to kill us. They're going to chew us up, spit us out and grind us into the dirt. They're going to massacre us. It'll be a blood bath. We'll be ripped to shreds and torn apart. We'll be drowning in our own offal.'

‘Tell me, Prindabel, have you ever thought of a career as a motivational speaker?'

‘And Orazio, I suppose
you
think we can
actually
win?'

‘Actually
I don't. That's about as likely as Kingsley here outrunning a three-toed sloth,
but
at least I'm willing to
pretend
that we can win.'

‘Well, I'm not. Why kid ourselves? I think we should forfeit. We're down to four already. If a couple of us say we're sick, what can they do? Look, we made the finals, didn't we? We've done better than anyone expected. If we're going to lose anyway, what does it matter? Orazio might want to make a fool of himself, but what about the rest of you? Kingsley, what do you say?'

‘I don't mind.'

‘That's the way, Billy Boy!' Razza said, punching him on the shoulder. ‘What's one more humiliation after a lifetime, eh? What about you, Ishmael?'

‘That's not fair. What's he care? He doesn't have to get up there while those cyborgs from Preston cut us to ribbons.'

Prindabel was right. I couldn't really say whether we should debate or not unless I was willing to be part of it. I thought long and hard before I replied.

‘I don't think we should forfeit. I think we owe it to Scobie to at least try'

Prindabel looked wildly around the room. ‘Is anybody listening here? Hello, can anybody hear me? We haven't got a hope–I repeat, not a hope.'

‘Neither did Peter Chung when he took on the Magnon.'

‘Ishmael's right,' Razza said. ‘Don' give rup! Don' give rin!'

‘Well, I think you're all mad.'

‘Look, Prindabel, we really need you there on the night. We need all that stuff you've got in your head–all those facts and figures.' I had to brace myself before I could go on. ‘Look, I'll make a deal with you. If you don't want to speak on the night … if you don't want to do it … then I'll take your place. Just as long as you're there to help us out with our case. OK?'

‘O? … Yeah, that's fine by me … I'll be there.'

So it was done. I didn't know whether to feel relieved or depressed. I guess it's the sort of feeling you'd expect when you'd just succeeded in driving the last nail in your own coffin.