Holden's Performance (7 page)

In the old days he would have answered back, ‘Yes-suh!' Now he paused in his declamatory rendition of Winnie and lowered his victory symbol, those little parted legs, and beckoned Holden. ‘You know where the old teapot is.' He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. ‘Good man. See what you can do.'

Holden obeyed.

Out of uniform Frank McBee looked less energetic. No doubt about it. His pyjamas were slack, his toes askew. But close up his face was rock-solid and spacious, and he had slightly tired, distant eyes. From the jawbone up it transmitted the tremendous mental superiority, hard-edged and what-not, of someone powerful, so Holden sensed, even when, catching the boy's gaze, McBee smiled casually out of the corner of his mouth.

So many things slid off Holden's large body; people commented.

He was generous, would always lend a hand, was dependable. Yes, but at whatever he saw or said or listened to his face remained as expressionless as his elbow. Even by the standards of the landscape and a laconic people the drollness of this boy was something else again.

At his shadeless school of asphalt where silence and the squinting poker-face developed as the norm, Holden's apparent indifference grew, with his size and smoothness of skin, monumental. Always to one side and at the back of a group (class photograph, 1945, to be repeated in many future photographs) Holden Shadbolt is head and shoulders above the rest, gazing at some point away at mid-distance. By the time he was fourteen he was already surmounted by the Easter Island head (just a few pimples). People naturally homed in on his nose which hung there; initially there was little else to grasp. But it was found to be dead ordinary, a nose only a shade oversize. The few signs and symbols which he'd allowed to run unrestrained hardly added to people's understanding. There was his occasional habit of tossing his head like a milkman's horse; the slow opening of his mouth and holding it open while concentrating on something; and under special circumstances, blinking. As clues they suggested patience, self-reliance—qualities which had already impressed themselves on everybody. And he wore neat, conspicuously neat, clothes. Even then, in those days—only a boy—he gave the impression of reliability, a preserver of secrets.

Impassiveness has its drawbacks; it can activate a flaw in an opposite personality.

When an irrational metalwork teacher hauled Holden out of his seat for sneezing at the wrong time, a study in local Protestant attitudes unfolded in slow motion. The teacher had untidy crinkled hair as if he'd snatched a handful of steel filings from one of the lathes and flung it on his skull. Without removing his coat, but making room around the desks, he brought the Queensland cane down in a fast-bowler's arcing action. Holden met the full force with a single, barely perceptible blink. It was enough to send the teacher into a frenzy. Glancing up at Holden and breathing through his teeth he grabbed the boy's other nondescript hand and in a shower of dandruff, spittle and chalk particles swung the cane down on it again and again.

Sensing some hesitancy in the strokes Holden met the man's eyes. He saw exhaustion and embarrassment. Offering an escape he lowered his hand.

The class remained respectfully silent as he bumped back to his desk and the teacher was left to contemplate what he had unnecessarily revealed of himself.

Pain for a time interested young Holden. Nothing kinky or dangerous, just ordinary old occasional pain. He looked upon it with curiosity. For a start he pondered its strange existence; he tried to inspect ‘pain'. He measured its range, its instantaneous connections, local and artery-wide, and his reactions to it. Even brief pain, implied, like electricity, a kind of endlessness. It hardly made sense. While being caned it had been all he could do to stop suddenly laughing; lucky he didn't. And when any victim was dragged out before the class Holden could not help noticing how the class fell unnaturally quiet and pencils remained poised, observers to a ritual. The spectacle of pain being administered, or the public humiliation, compelled the attention of them all. That's right: minor sadism—endurance for the future—catered for right there in the classrooms.

‘What do you expect in an agricultural economy?' his uncle surprised him by saying. And he added, ‘Unfortunate man.'

‘He's got his job to do,' Holden conceded. ‘No one likes him much though.'

After the caning the metalwork teacher fabricated the easiest questions for Holden, and paid close attention to his work. Where was the logic in that? If it had not been for his size the class would have called him teacher's pet.

Holden though realised an affinity with fulcrum tools, the shaping of metals, and it dawned on the teacher that in Holden he had a natural. Handling tinsnips and the oxy-torch he displayed a fluency which, because of the nature of the work, gave him added strength in the eyes of the others. And donning welding goggles he became even more impervious.

The school had a fleet of British lathes in battleship grey, and their electric belt-driven hum and ponderous revolutions, the dense smoke released from spinning metals, saturated in spurting milk, engrossed him. He was allowed to stay back and turn out a few knick-knacks—brass ashtrays for the corporal, and paperweights in the shape of pawns for his uncle. The misunderstood teacher stood beside him, and fitting callipers over a slowly revolving bar he too became engrossed. Shoulder-to-shoulder Holden felt the warmth of the man. Turning slightly he could see the blackheads on the man's sympathetic nose. The close proximity of such undivided interest produced in Holden a sensation similar to pain. It feathered out from his stomach and reached up into his throat. Out of embarrassment it was all he could do to stop himself laughing.

At home Holden and the ex-corporal mucked around together. Anticipating his jokes the boy began foolishly grinning. Frank McBee could really be funny! He waited for Holden to arrive, and soon had everyone splitting their sides. His uniform had been a sign of his transitory status. Now that he was clear of the army and wore their father's tram conductor's trousers he looked like a bandstand player without an instrument.

Frank McBee watched Holden and went after him. Anything to penetrate the boy's surface! Such impassiveness wasn't natural. Not at that age. His mother who behaved in the opposite way, all expression and abandon, could only roll her eyes, ‘That boy's always been a mystery to me.' And in an unfortunate allusion to his father, ‘He's like a telegraph pole.'

During a lull in activities Holden would find McBee staring at him and seeing him notice, McBee would give an exaggerated start (‘Who, me?'). Then he'd wave in front of the boy's nose, which made no impression, and pull a series of demented faces, which didn't work either; frowning, and still monitoring Holden's expressionlessness, he reached across on a Friday night and began twisting his arm.

‘Stop it,' their mother began laughing, ‘he's only a boy.'

McBee shook his head.

‘He's all right. Aren't you, boy?'

He leaned towards Holden's stiffening face.

‘Say something to the audience. Anything that comes into your head. Express yourself. Tell us what's going on in that thick skull of yours. What are your views of today's youth? Has the returned soldier been given a fair go?'

‘Please don't hurt him,' Karen cried.

McBee tickled her with his free hand, ‘I know your weak spots. I'll get you in a minute—when I've finished with this difficult bugger.'

Bent up behind his ear Holden's arm made the sound of snapping twigs and branches. An atomic flurry in the ground plan of Adelaide: it only lasted a minute. Faintly, Holden perceived it to be evidence of loyalty not to crack. It lessened the pain.

‘Good man,' McBee let go. ‘You beat the clock. You've got a good threshold. That's right.' He tried the word again: ‘“Threshold”. You've got a good threshold.'

‘I didn't mind,' Holden rubbed his elbow, ‘it didn't hurt.'

Karen didn't believe him. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Stupid,' their mother moved over to the sink. ‘That goes for the both of you.'

And when McBee nudged him and winked he felt included in an alliance, almost as an equal. Unlike his awkwardness with the metalwork teacher he experienced a kind of hectic gratitude for being allowed to remain close to the older man.

Moving up a grade to Indian arm-wrestling Holden felt he could beat McBee (hands down), though he never pushed his advantage, and throwing and lifting each other on the front lawn in the hot twilight Holden managed, despite an indifferent audience, to hold the former soldier horizontally above his head while remaining completely expressionless.

That irrational movement—arthritic, spasmodic—which disturbed the lines of the city on Friday evenings was nothing to the one which appeared later in the year, in broad daylight. External (that is, observed by the population at large), horizontal and longer-lasting it was accompanied by the metallic strokes of internal combustion. Leaving Uncle Vern's place late one afternoon Holden turned as usual into Magill Road. Head down, exaggerating the illusion of being engulfed by the tidal Hills rising darkly a few yards behind him, Holden quickly reached the point where the pedals of
Mercury
became hopelessly undergeared—must have been hitting forty-five or fifty—and was aiming to pass a tram, also swaying left and right as if being pedalled, when an olive-green war-disposal motorbike came from behind in a clatter and cut in front of him, leaning like a yacht tacking in a gale, almost clipping the tram's slatted cowcatcher, before leaning the other way in the one graceful motion to avoid colliding with a man and his missus, who'd stepped out to flag down the city-bound tram.

All Holden had glimpsed was a patch of nicotine-coloured hair. Something about the receding rider's splayed elbows opened Holden's eyes; and suddenly he recognised his father's piped trousers. By then the couple were directly in front of his handlebars, and only by swerving violently, his left elbow grazing the jutting breast of the embroidered woman did he avoid piling into them—a rare moment when his face expressed alarm.

Recovering nicely, he began laughing. Not over the close shave, the frozen faces and the man's angry shout, but in anticipation of seeing McBee at home with his precious motorbike.

A new informality showed between Mrs Shadbolt and Frank McBee. They could be quite solemn and matter-of-fact together: a naturalisation ceremony of the kind eventually performed by thousands of post-war migrants.

The naturalness tended (extended) to extremes. Diving under the table retrieving a fork Holden saw the former soldier's trigger hand between his mother's splayed legs. A single blink registered it as clearly as a Leica shutter, and he stayed under a second or two more for the humid image to develop. Emerging red in the face with the effort, as if he'd stayed too long under water, his mother hastily assumed it to be embarrassment and moved away from McBee. But it was when she began adding ‘dear' like a Christian-name at the end of every other sentence that Holden squirmed. The automation of the intimacy irritated him. He wondered what her feelings were. To Karen though the endearment was natural.

The Shadbolts were now usually into their dessert before McBee came in; ‘tea' had always been at six and Mrs Shadbolt saw no reason for delaying it. The sound of the motorbike as it turned into their street and accelerated towards them alerted their mother, and Holden, who had an ear for these things, although everybody recognised the distinctive single-cylinder clatter, nodded authoritatively, ‘Here he comes.' And as the rider changed down through the gears, blipping the throttle quite unnecessarily, their mother ducked out to consult a mirror. Only a brief embrace was allowed as he banged through the screen door. With the post-war reconstruction in full swing McBee wore overalls, his hands and sometimes his cheeks smudged with grease. And his raw energy—whack: ‘Howdy, Holden-boy!'— transformed the house.

After scrubbing his face clean, he sat down and proceeded to methodically chew the chop or steak, removing strands of gristle with his fingers, indicating to Holden not so much simple hunger as this man's unalloyed determination. Between mouthfuls he asked Karen, ‘And what did you get up to today?' Politely nodding at her finger-twisting recital he then turned to Holden, taking a different line, ‘Did you fell a teacher with a single blow to the head today? How many did you tell to jump in the lake? Let's have it, buster. You're among your mates here. At least you were when I left this morning.' The more colloquial and exaggerated he became the more they enjoyed it.

As he ate, Mrs Shadbolt watched his veins stand out, and she smiled pointedly at her children during his interrogations.

Only after leaning back and running his tongue over his teeth did he turn to her and almost jump out of his seat with surprise. Karen and Holden had been waiting for it; McBee never let them down. ‘What? You're here too? It's Mrs…'—clicking his fingers and frowning—‘Mrs Whatshername. For the life of me I've forgotten her surname. Normally I'm a tiger for…names. I believe we've met before. It was dark. Remember? My, you're looking nice today. Isn't she now? In broad daylight.'

Out of uniform his open-necked shirt always of the same brown-check spilled out from his slacks and at least one button and shoelace was undone. His red knuckles, oscillating Adam's apple and jaw had become hungry, carbuncular. The energy he brought into the kitchen and the bedroom was tradition-free, larrikin energy. It was expansive, raw, and sometimes dry, as unpredictable as the climate over the perplexing continent.

Holden heard McBee tell their mother he'd hired ‘without doubt the finest and most sought-after signwriter in the state' to paint her initials, AJS, in resplendent gold leaf on the petrol tank of the machine. And—who would believe?—she swallowed it. Long after he'd sold it and moved onto better things she kept seeing her monogrammed motorbike on the streets in various colours and states of repair; and once when she saw an AJS with a sidecar she felt a pang as if she had given birth to another child.