Holden's Performance (15 page)

With only one exit from the cul-de-sac meeting the furtive young man became unavoidable, and although Shadbolt avoided the eyes of the usherette that could see in the dark, he soon became on nodding acquaintance with the projectionist, who had a long but pleasant face, and close up, astonishing blue-green eyes.

‘Your friend Mr McBee—it doesn't have an
a
—is in hot water again.' The deadly proofreaders' pencil prescribed an arc (slightly exaggerated) reminding Holden of the birds with sharpened beaks he had seen on the Murray.

‘Profession, “automobile dealer”. He's going to break his neck if he doesn't watch his step. Then what will your poor mother do?'

Booked under the influence while riding a motorcycle; riding on footpath; blap-blapping with defective silencer; going through a red light (more than once); speeding; overtaking a tram on wrong side; overtaking stationary tram; overtaking Premier Play-ford while standing on seat and making disrespectful finger gesture. And the latest to hit the subheadlines: caught redhanded wheel-spinning his initials in the gravel around the sacred statue of Colonel Light at four in the morning. And abused the law when apprehended with electric torches.

‘Because he's Mr Frank McBee,' Wheelright underlined the ‘mister', ‘I suppose he'll get off scot-free.'

‘He cut in front of me the other day,' said Les, ‘riding no hands. He scared the living daylights out of me.'

A motorcyclist transgressing the rigid lines of the city was enough to drive a tram-driver mad.

Picturing it Holden couldn't help grinning.

Others too vaguely recognised in McBee's recklessness a last-ditch stand against the debilitating laws of the city.

‘He's getting worse,' Karen told them one day. ‘He can't sit still for a minute. He throws his money away—to anyone who comes to the door. He's been seen with other women. He's got confidential secretaries. His voice is getting louder. He slaps me on the bottom when I walk past. Our mother,' she turned to Holden, ‘doesn't know what to do. They're not married yet. He says, “Ask me about it tomorrow.” I don't suppose they ever will. He's a wild man. They're often yelling at each other. And yet he's still good to us. In a way, he's very nice. I guess I like him a lot. Don't you, really?'

‘He's what's called a yahoo,' Les said.

Holden didn't know what to think. He looked at his uncle.

‘Mr McBee's got advertisements on himself.' Wheelright's opinion. ‘Why doesn't he take things easy?'

‘He must be unhappy,' said Vern. And Holden agreed.

His image appeared constantly in the papers. If it wasn't the lackadaisical mugshot after another of his traffic offences it would be there leaping out from the full-page ads for his used-car yards, beaming or pulling faces (e.g., cross-eyed and tongue hanging out: ‘Only an idiot would sell
qwality
cars at these
crrrazy
prices!') As a way to be everywhere at once McBee sponsored a bewildering number of sporting events, such as solo world record or reliability attempts, usually to do with an engine and four wheels, though not always. Congratulating the exhausted victor, their hands clasped across the trophy the size of a funeral urn, the generous sponsor with the larrikin features gazed wistfully at the camera.

In summer he wore a knotted handkerchief on his head. His name became synonymous with perspiration and hard work, aphrodisiac moustache, good humour, opportunism (in the best sense!), perspicuity, pride in being Austrylian, loyalty, good honest value when it came to a used car.

And still—although his features were almost better known than the Premier's or Prime Minister Amen's—a dissatisfaction showed. It surfaced in the eyes and around the mouth. It registered too in his congratulatory speeches which tended to trail off, and in the horse-laugh and the unnecessary back-slapping. Holden recognised it, just as Karen complained of his restlessness. And in turn it made people watch Frank McBee all the more.

Holden Shadbolt had shot up like a rocket from Woomera, Wheelright's phrase, and reaching its ceiling, exploded auxiliary growths in sudden arcing trajectories; shirt and fly buttons cartwheeled away from the main body at various stages, bum-fluff sprouted from lips and chin and armpits, big toes bursting through the saddle-stitching of his locally made shoes.

Beneath his weight the hollow frame of
Mercury
suffered metal fatigue. He gave the bike away.

Size then remained more or less static. It had reached its optimum form. Modifications were constantly evolving, but in details so subtle and gradual they showed mostly as alterations to symmetry. His face became more adult. His neck thickened, eyebrows became conspicuously hooded, a few straight lines added here and there.

Those shadeless Australian afternoons. Without his bike Shadbolt covered long distances on foot. He didn't seem to mind at all. Vern had taught him the futility of complaining about things beyond your control, such as the daily weather. And in a continent obsessed by climate, Shadbolt's apparent indifference contributed to his reliability. He walked through the famous grasshopper plague (summer 1952), which clogged up the steaming radiators and windscreens of cars, stuffed motorbikes, and almost blotted out the sun there for a minute. It went on for days. And he would always remember the Black Thursday or Friday when the entire length of the Hills behind the city caught alight, a near-biblical lesson, and sent down a rain of grey ash on the streets. Walking home meant heading towards the flames. He then felt like a striding giant—able simply to stretch out an arm and plug the leaking dyke holding back a molten inferno. In the event all he did was hose the smouldering gutters of the usherette's house next door.

Indoctrinated by the mathematics of the streets and the general air of wide-openness Shadbolt became a ‘car maniac'. Others had their narrowing obsessions. At least a belief in something. It positioned a person within the endlessness. Cars suited Shadbolt's mechanical mind. The dense odour released by hot oil, aluminium and copper was French perfume to his nostrils. Other car maniacs his own age called for him with greasy hands, faces already endowed with pragmatism—knowing country faces. Outside the house they squatted like Aborigines around the dripping radiator of someone's Austin Seven stripped of mudguards, and standing they banged their post-adolescent buttocks against an unpàinted alloy bonnet held on with a leather strap. For hours they argued ponderously about specifications and the latest Formula One results, Shadbolt keeping one eye open for the usherette to appear in the front garden, or slowly enter the cul-de-sac after the last screening in town. At night they hurtled around corners on two wheels, converting right angles into curves.

Vern never inquired whether he was looking for work; enough that his presence remained in the house.

But for all his time spent with the maniacs it was the metal of the cars, not the maniacs, that held Shadbolt's interest. Realising this he studied the faces surrounding him and saw the distant, oblivious expressions as they argued. There was something temporary and unreliable about their repeated assertions which silenced him.

His loyalties remained with his uncle and their two best-friends. He listened, usually agreed and felt as one of them. In exchange for keeping the Wolseley spick and span, and mechanically A-l, Les offered him the car on Friday nights.

‘Aren't you going to say something?'

The familiar triumvirate nodded in the lounge room, a semicircle of approving aunts.

The boy's tongue—it should have been a man's by then— became tied. It was difficult to remain expressionless. To hand over the keys of a car: among the maniacs it represented the ultimate in friendship and trust. He'd do anything for these best-friends now! Grease and oilchange the car, run messages…

Some Friday nights he casually stayed home with Wheelright and Flies, and as they waited for Vern to stumble in from double-checking the entire Saturday edition he felt between his fingers the geometry of the Wolseley's keys—keys to an outer world of noise, speed and limitless space. Wheelright kept glancing at his watch as he tried concentrating on deciphering a pattern in his ‘preliminary findings', while bolt upright in an armchair Les listened to the wireless, or merely studied the palms of his hands. Shadbolt turned the pages of the sea-mail edition of
Autocar
. Now and then one of them spoke.

‘Saw a strange tiling from the tram today,' Flies usually began.

‘Oh, what was that?'…Wheelright asked, but remained staring at the Preliminary Findings. And gradually Shadbolt learnt more about his friends.

Flies, who saw life framed every day by the glass of his tram, casually mentioned he had every copy of
Life
magazine that had been printed. Stored in his bedroom the valuable pile ‘reached the ceiling'. And when Holden with a nostalgic lump rising in this throat announced from a partially digested proof that the national rain-seeding experiments were to cease, all the venomous frustrations of the hopelessly unreliable weather forecaster erupted as Wheelright banged his fist on the table.

‘I said at the time it'd never get off the ground.'

‘But, but…' Shadbolt protested. It had always seemed like a good idea to him.

‘You can't frig around with nature,' Flies joined in.

They turned to Vern for support. The various kinds of clouds were accordingly outlined. And what about the prevailing winds—did the rain-seeders ever think of that? You can't just turn nature off and on like a tap. Facing Shadbolt the three presented a united front, and with so many facts at their collective fingertips he back-pedalled, or rather, became confused. He changed the subject to one they were united on, the recent sightings of the usherette next door.

The diet that had grossly inflated his body growth and left him constipated imbued in him qualities of reliability. Twice daily he ‘chewed over information'. Nothing in the behaviour of men, or Amen, or the vagaries of nature, could surprise him, which is why he was hardly ever seen raising his eyebrows.

And then all thoughts of an obscure or unreliable type were systematically eliminated by his uncle—always there on red alert at his elbow to come down upon the slightest lapse, even before it formed in Shadbolt's mouth. Speaking in measured tones, and only when absolutely necessary, became a sign of reliability.

A sober view of the world was an asset, ‘it's as rare as hen's teeth,' and when combined with the boy's diet-induced photographic memory it guaranteed him a place in the modern world. ‘You'll find that most people don't want to know the facts, they steer clear of them. And so they're never really believable. Be less like them and before you know it, manufacturers, etcetera, will come running after you, waving their cheque books.' Again (Vern gesticulating among his statues): ‘Steer clear of other people's loose talk. Cut through the nonsense that's seen every day and spoken. Spare your words. There are already too many. The more you talk, the more errors you'll make. I say, is that a cicada on the wattle over there?'

With solid fact-particles as the foundation a person could grow and transmit knowledge and traffic opinions—and withstand the forces of criticism.

Waxing lyrical Vern appeared to speak on behalf of the silent statues. As Shadbolt ducked to avoid the ecstatic word-spray he fleetingly imagined the bronze arm of nearby Colonel Light moving to wipe its brow; such fanciful notions were precisely what his uncle preached against.

At the age of almost-nineteen and the golden horizon spread out before him he became aware of an encroaching, less definable world of softness and imprecision—the facts of life. His curiosity had turned towards girls developed into women, and vice versa, even when no girl-woman was in sight. He became conscious of the forms which existed beneath their words and vague clothing; and yet they eluded him. When the facts of life were revealed ceremonially he became still more confused; and he was attracted to the difficulty.

On a Friday night he'd been sliding the Wolseley sideways through the gorges in the Hills, the rock walls flickering in high-beam; almost had a head-on cutting a corner. Chastened, he dropped the other car maniacs off early. Entering the cul-de-sac he saw the usherette opening her gate. Fridays were her late night-shift. Unexpectedly, Vern's house was in complete darkness. Feeling for the switch inside his room a hand squashed his, ‘Shhhh'—Wheelright's instruction—and Vern's raincoated arm motioned to the chair. ‘Sit there.' Les Flies could be made out, seated on the bed.

Almost simultaneously a light came on in the room facing them. They stared at the illuminated rectangle, as though waiting for the feature to start at the Regent. And that was a turn-up. For now—what's this?—the usherette moved into the frame and faced them, still in her turquoise uniform. Until then Holden didn't have a clue what they were doing there.

Without a flyscreen the figure was not fragmented. The flesh tones, eyes and mole on skin were clearly defined. The glass actually added a touch of moisture to the teeth and eyes. She began unpinning her hair. This was the signal for Vern. He moved to the window.

Les crossed his legs, Wheelright sighed and shifted in his chair.

The usherette had stepped out of her uniform. Next, her silvery slip formed a pool around her ankles. To Shadbolt she seemed to be removing bandages. Suddenly spilling out and spreading, her two soft things stabilised and held the boy in a liquid gaze. From then on, from whatever angle as she moved, they offered their intangible softness.

Barely above a whisper Vern nevertheless managed to lecture with characteristic enthusiasm. It could have been his vocation. He pointed with the ruler, a salesman of medical encyclopaedias occasionally turning to his audience.

‘The breasts of a fully developed woman… these, these… come in various sizes, are composed in the main of fatty tissue. These here would be, I don't know—what would you say, Les?—above average size for the lass's weight and age? Right. They're common to all female mammals. Essentially they're there to manufacture and supply liquid nourishment to the offspring. What are these two brown, target-looking circles? If she'd just stop moving…there we are. We all have these in some form. They're even fitted to the chassis of cars. Am I right, Holden? These are a woman's nipples.'