Green (44 page)

‘But you always said that the scholarship was a bonus. You said you were really glad I got it, but it was a bonus.'

‘Well, what can you say when you're telling it to a young lad, when you're sending your little eleven-year-old out to do a big weekend of exams? “Remember boy, your entire future's riding on this”? Probably not a good idea. That's not to say we wouldn't have found the money somewhere. But we would have gone without other things.'

‘But we've never gone without anything. That's not what we do. That's not what we have to do. Stop talking like that. That's other people.' Sophisticated defence mechanisms a smouldering ruin, all I've got are mad denial and nausea. Hate that.

‘Well, there was that school trip to Africa that you wanted to go on.'

‘Yes, but I couldn't go on that because I had to learn the value of money. It wasn't that we couldn't afford it. I just had to, you know, not take everything for granted.'

‘Well done Mother is all I can say to that.'

‘But that's why we do that thing where I raise half. The dollar-for-dollar thing. It's to teach me the value of money.'

‘Right . . .'

‘But I like taking things for granted. Some things, anyway. Or at least fifty per cent for granted. I'm always happy to raise half. I particularly want to take for granted ideas like us, you know, not being strapped for cash. I like that one a lot.'

‘You were just a bit quick for us this time. And I wouldn't say strapped for cash, though we do try not to spend much, of course. Well, sometimes strapped for cash, sometimes just very careful. Why do you think we don't eat out or get takeaway a lot?'

‘To teach me the value of home-cooked food.'

‘Chalk another one up to Phoebe.'

‘No.'

‘Why don't you have a bicycle?'

‘On these roads? Are you mad. You've always said how dangerous they are.' I look across to my mother for reassurance. She says nothing.

‘And that computer-game package you wanted for the TV?'

‘That would have been completely inappropriate. Think of the distraction from study.'

‘And the time you wanted to go on holiday to Hawaii instead of the Sunshine Coast?'

‘We've got some of the best beaches in the world here.'

‘She's a genius, your mother.'

‘I shouldn't have bought the new chairs for the dining room,' she says. ‘That was my mistake, Philby. But I'd waited years to find some we could afford that actually went with the table. I put a deposit on them a while ago—when they were on sale—and I would have lost them if I hadn't paid them off. There's no drastic hurry for the camera, is there?'

‘No, but . . . But you could have been a bit more honest with me all these years. There I am going around thinking everything's okay and we've got this sensible excellent dollar-for-dollar deal . . . I feel like an idiot now. Like I should have worked it out years ago.'

‘There was no need for you to know. Really. You've never needed to know. Now, the camera,' she says, starting to look a little twitchy. ‘I wanted to ask you a few things about it, anyway.' She wrings her hands together. ‘Not about money. We wanted to . . . we were wondering, just, you know, wondering, what you were going to use it for.'

‘Don't you listen? I want to be a film maker. I have for years. Should I have specified genre, or something? What do you think I'm going to use it for? Porn, of course. Nasty dirty porn. Can't work in a chicken shop forever, and someone's got to put this family back on its feet. What do you mean? What do you think I'm going to use it for? Frank's buttocks? Did I say I was saving up for the wide-angle lens?'

They've made me angry with this invented issue about the camera. This is about money, this conversation. Money and the system of lies that makes up my world. They're sitting back in their seats looking stunned. Why? Do they think Frank doesn't have buttocks?

Okay, time to pull this back in. My turn for the deep breath and the pause for consideration. I've ranted, it's been good, but I've ranted enough. I have to recant.

I tell them it's okay. They surprised me, and that only indicates what a good job they've done stopping me worrying about the money issue for the past twenty-one years. But they can't expect me to take it all on board in one go. And there's no hurry with the video camera. No hurry. And I'm staying on at World of Chickens. I'll be earning more there. I'll get the camera eventually, one way or another. And I'll do very normal, legal, hopefully clever things with it. No buttocks. And if money's ever a big problem, I'm sure there are things I can cut down on. From now on, they can talk to me.

‘Good lad,' my father says. ‘Very good of you. But there's nothing to worry about, really. I think we're all glad to hear that Frank's bottom won't be involved when the camera eventually arrives, of course, but . . . I was just about to take a short walk to the drinks cabinet. Is there anything I can get you? Crme de Menthe perhaps? Drambuie?'

‘No, thanks. I'll be fine. It's been a long day, actually. We were trying out some new ideas at work tonight, so I'm pretty tired. I might just go to bed.'

‘Now, you're all right then?'

‘I'm all right.'

‘Don't be too worried about this.'

‘I won't be.'

Liar, liar. The smell of burning pant must surely fill the air as I leave to clean my teeth. I look at the toothpaste on the brush, feel wasteful and try to scrape about a third of it back into the tube.

We had a deal going. On paper, it was a dollar-for-dollar deal, but that's not the real deal. The real deal was that we were okay. And maybe we still are okay, but my deal was that we were very okay. I just had to learn the value of money and home-cooked food, avoid distractions from study and the dangers on the road, and appreciate the nearby beaches. Which are, it has to be said, excellent. I can't help feeling that I could have been let in on the truth a little earlier, a little more gradually and not quite as close to the end of my obstetrics term.

Lying in the dark, I can't count the number of good and specific reasons we've had for not buying things over the years. I've listened to Frank's worries about his family and money and listened to Ron, and it felt easier to hear all that when I was only an observer. That seems rather smug now.

It's hard not to lie here, looking around the room at the shapes and outlines of things and wondering how much they cost, or how much they're worth. I don't know if it's the kind of issue I could ever have talked to Frank about but, right now, it's Sophie I want to talk to. I want to tell her what's going on in my world, and I want her to know what's really going on in hers, so that we could talk about it. Do I want that for me or for her? I'm not sure. Am I overreacting? Probably. But they took me by surprise, and they shouldn't have.

 

 

 

18

 

 

 

O
kay,
it
rattled me, but by the next morning the world hasn't ended, there's still cereal and juice in the kitchen and my parents cope quite well when I query their choice to have the paper home-delivered every day.

I tell myself it's a sense of perspective that I need, and a day of true-life drama at the Mater Mothers' should be all it takes to give it to me. Think of baby Neil Armstrong up in Special Care, and financial comfort counts for less.

Telling myself that doesn't work perfectly, but at least it makes me remember I'll need to know some obstetrics soon, and it wouldn't be bad to give that most of my attention.

When I get home in the afternoon, there is no removal truck outside, the place isn't in the hands of the bailiffs—not that I'd know how it'd look if it was—and my mother's beef stroganoff smells like it always does.

I tell her I've worked out that I can earn what I need to buy the video camera myself in a few months, and then I ask her—okay, I have to fight off more nausea to manage it—what the hell they think they're doing, paying me an allowance when I'd regularly blow two thirds of the discretionary part of it on alcohol.

‘You're a university student, Philby,' my mother says. ‘What do you think we imagined you were spending it on? Antique clocks?'

 

*

 

On Friday morning, Ron turns up at six-thirty. My mother, confused by the early start, makes me a thermos of tea.

She's still in her dressing gown with her eyes mostly closed when she hands it to me, along with an old scarf in a plastic bag, and says, ‘Now, you will be here for dinner tomorrow night?'

‘I'll be back this evening. What do you think I'm doing? Going camping?'

‘And tomorrow night?'

‘Yes, I'll be here.'

She sees me to the door and waves me off as I walk down the path, thermos and bagged scarf in hand. She's said before that she isn't up to much mentally until she's got that first cup of tea in her.

Before I can explain to Ron what I'm carrying—if I can explain it—he's saying, ‘I could go a cuppa. Very thoughtful, your mother,' and we're swapping seats so that I can drive while he drinks tea.

‘Radio,' he says with a smile, and the tea laps against his moustache when I brake. ‘Radio and a newspaper. That's two different communications media.'

Vanessa's new sign is already out when we get there, telling the passing traffic it's ‘4BB FREEBIE FRIDAY—free food 78 a.m.' And the passing traffic is paying attention—there's a queue at the door. Well, three people. For us, that's a queue.

‘Look,' Ron says, ‘One of them's wearing shoes. He might be back with cash some day.'

Vanessa's outside as well, and she's turned up looking like someone with a sense of occasion. There's blue eye shadow that she's borrowed from somewhere, a blue fluoro shirt (buttoned to the top, with a brooch at the neck), matching blue Swatch, big thick white belt, white jeans and boots. And her hair is all lace and volume. Vanessa's hair goes big when it needs to. Vanessa looks like the second daughter Zel Todd never quite managed to have.

The
Westside Chronicle
has a journalist and a photographer waiting.

‘We were told there'd be a chicken,' the journalist says. ‘A big chicken. No promises, but I think I can get you front page for a big chicken. What does it look like? Is it friendly? Could we get a pic with a kid?'

‘Leave it to me,' I tell them. ‘It'll only take a minute.'

They follow us inside where the day shift, who have come in hours early for this, are already at work. The hotplate is on and there's a tray of chicken breasts on its way from the fridge in the storeroom. I change out the back, and I can't help noticing the spice-grinder technique on display as I'm passing on my way to the road. These people are definitely not the A team.

I bounce out the front door, as friendly as a giant chicken with a moulded head can be. There are now people clustering outside. I pat the heads of a couple of children, and they shriek. Not a good idea. I lean over so that I can see them properly and say something human and reassuring.

A girl, who must be about four, looks right into my eyes and screams, ‘Mummy it ate a man.'

We make do with a picture of me, Ron, Vanessa, the shopfront and a happy crowd of adult burger eaters.

Ron tells the
Chronicle
, ‘We're aiming to bring the western suburbs a touch of class on a family budget,' and the journalist says, ‘That's a quote for sure,' as she writes it down.

We talk about having quality in mind, and the customer. I tell them—and I can't believe I'm saying it—that Ron's a self-made man, you know, but I manage to stop myself getting into what he did for Australia in 'Nam.

The White Lightning car from Double B arrives, swinging into the driveway then swerving onto the pavement ‘Miami Vice' style. But the man who steps out of the passenger seat is neither Crockett nor Tubbs. He's wearing all-over denim for a start, rather than pastel, and his walk is white-guy faux-funky rather than sincerely cool. He's a try-hard in Ray-Bans and red shoes, a black Rat Man T-shirt and a rat's tail hanging from the back of his messy hair and over his collar. It can only be the star of the Breakfast Bar, the much-anticipated Richie the Rat.

I'm about to turn to Vanessa to tell her these kinds of people are often disappointing in the flesh, but she's already plunging into some deep starry-eyed swoon, clutching one of my wings so the world doesn't drop out from under her.

Richie looks our way with an oily smirky grin and Vanessa goes, ‘Oh god, oh god,' into my shoulder as he comes over. ‘Could you get me a sticker, Phil?'

‘Well,' Richie says, ‘we've got the chicken and we've got the chicken's little helper.' He sizes Vanessa up from head to toe. ‘How are you today, little helper?'

‘I'm good, Richie,' she manages in a small voice that makes it clear she would have settled for a sticker. ‘Love the show, mate.'

‘That's the way, babe, that's what Richie likes to hear. Now, what's the drill? What have we got happening here today, darlin'?'

‘Italian-style with mixed herbs and chunky tomato,' I hear Ron saying to my right, and he passes a chicken burger to Richie on a paper plate.

‘Fancy.' He takes a bite. ‘Fancy, but good. Not bullshit fancy. I like your style, mate. A plate of fries wouldn't go astray.' He turns to the White Lightning and shouts out, ‘Hey lads, come and cop some of this.'

They set up and he does the first cross back to the studio, using the expression ‘famous for their hotplate chicken' twice. He picks up comments from a few happy customers outside the store and he goes to a special World of Chickens double play—Mondo Rock's ‘Cool World' and Status Quo's ‘Rockin' All Over the World'.