Matty and Bill for Keeps (12 page)

Bill's mother called him ‘moody'. He didn't think that was fair. He wasn't being bad tempered. He still did his homework and the dishes, kept his room tidy, put the rubbish bins out and even mowed the lawn now. He just needed to sort things out, but he didn't know what the ‘things' were.

Pam also called Bill ‘greedy'. He was tearing his way through food. He'd eat bowls of cereal after school, just as an afternoon snack. After tea, he'd feel hungry all over again. He couldn't understand this raging appetite, himself.

The other grown-ups in his life seemed to be making a special effort to be kind to him. Mr Herbert Riley offered him a ten-dollar-a-week job sweeping leaves and weeding on Saturday mornings. He accepted. Mrs Mabel Flint started giving him and Mr Riley morning tea after his job was finished. He'd sit at her laminex table, eating her pumpkin scones and trying to answer her questions about school and his hobbies, but most of the time he just wanted to get home.

Matty's dad, Donald, invited Bill to help run his stall at the local market. He tried that a couple of times, but Matty liked to tag along, too. Tom even took Bill fishing once, down at the creek. He liked that because they didn't speak at all.

But Bill felt woolly. Nan or Tessa or someone else might be chatting kindly to him and yet it was as if everyone was on the outside of a sound-proof window.

And as for Matty? Bill would try to set off for school earlier than Mat usually did, although his timing didn't always work. When that happened, he'd walk along with her, but not talk. Silence protected Bill from Mat's badgering him about the Extravaganza. Silence also stopped her suggesting all those other whacky ideas. Bill could tell Matty was trying to accept the silence. She had on her brave face. Sometimes it meant she'd drift behind so that she and Bill would end up walking along the road in single file.

Some of Bill's worries were that parts of his body were changing, too, and he hadn't expected this to happen as early as Grade Six. Bill was taller. And he noticed it wasn't just his feet and hands getting bigger, or his skinny legs and arms getting hairier. When he showered, he now saw that hair was starting to grow in places where a man has hair. One time, even his voice unexpectedly dropped a couple of notes before bouncing high again. That added to his reluctance to speak much.

Bill spent a lot of time in his room. He'd look at himself in the mirror. He reckoned he looked like what the other boys at school would call ‘unco' – as gangly and awkward and strangely put together as a scarecrow.

And then one Saturday morning, after he'd come in from helping Mr Riley in his garden, Bill was inspecting himself in the mirror and he noticed something else. He was sure it wasn't his imagination – it seemed like his nose was bigger. And worse still, there on the very end was a pimple.

As Bill stared at that pimple, it seemed to become the size of a lighthouse. There it was, this huge red thing sticking out. Bill hated it. He seized the lump with his fingers and squeezed with all his might. When Bill looked in the mirror, the pimple appeared even bigger and much redder than before. Maybe if he ran his nose under cold water, the redness would go away.

Bill snuck out of his room and into the bathroom. It was difficult sticking his head in the basin and turning his head at just the right angle to get his nose under the tap, but he did manage it. The cold water gushed soothingly over the pimple. When Bill next inspected himself in the mirror, he expected to see the pimple gone – or at least changed from red to pink. But no such luck. His red lighthouse was blaring out at his reflection.

So Bill raided the bathroom cabinet where Pam kept things like bandaids and headache tablets. And this was where Bill found the zinc cream. It was white and the label promised it would heal skin problems. Bill smothered the end of his nose in the cream. Maybe people would think he was protecting his nose from sunburn. Bill had seen plenty of cricketers with white zinc on their noses.

At that moment, there was a knock on the bathroom door. ‘Bill?' asked Pam.

‘Yeah,' answered Bill.

‘You've been in there for ages,' said his mum.

‘So?'

‘Don't be rude!' said Pam. ‘You've got a visitor. Don't keep Mat waiting. She's in the kitchen.'

Bill panicked. He took a second look at his nose. Maybe Mat would realise the zinc cream was not for sunburn protection. Bill peered closer. His heart sank. The red pimple looked like it was mushrooming through the cream. It was like a monster in a sci-fi movie; it had a life of its own and it was screaming out for attention.

Another knock on the door. ‘Bill! Answer me,' called his mum.

Bill searched about for an escape. There was only a tiny window in the bathroom, too small to climb through.

Bill had to pull himself together and think clearly. What would Crispin do? For sure, he wouldn't run. No, Crispin would say something clever and sort of formal. Then the words came to him, straight from an old British movie he'd watched the night before.

‘Tell Mat I'm indisposed,' said Bill. He was pleased with that word. He wasn't precisely sure what it meant, but he kind of guessed. ‘Indisposed' sounded like you might or might not be ill, and that you didn't want to see people. That's what the old gentleman in the movie had been like, anyway.

‘You're what?' asked Pam.

‘Indisposed,' repeated Bill.

‘Heavens!' muttered Pam, but Bill could hear her footsteps retreating down the hallway.

Mat had left. Bill secretly watched through the window as she walked back across his yard to the boundary fence. She was in her pirate suit, the costume she'd been wearing the very first day he had seen her – a whole year and a half ago.

Mat was wearing the ragged, knee-length pants, the black vest, and the red scarf tied round her head – bandana style. Bill could also see elastic around the back of the scarf that meant Mat had her pirate eye patch on. Her head was hanging down and she was dragging a large wooden sword behind her. Over her other shoulder hung a sack. Bill guessed that it was full of ‘treasures' she had brought to show him.

Bill felt hollow. He was as empty as the treasure ship that Matty Grub, fearsome pirate, must have ransacked. His over-squeezed pimple was hot and glowing the rest of the day and all day Sunday as well, so he lost a weekend by having to hide away from the world.

But Bill couldn't hide his pimple all weekend from Pam. Mothers notice things. He tried not looking at her, but she saw alright. Of course someone would notice if you had a lighthouse on the end of your nose. Pam said it was not anything like the size of a lighthouse. After promising not to say a word to the Grub family, she drove off and came back an hour later with some special anti-pimple facewash and cream. Bill was deeply grateful, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to say thank you.

‘No more pimple squeezing,' warned Pam. ‘It really makes it worse.'

‘Okay,' said Bill.

‘And stop spending so much time in front of the mirror,' Pam added.

‘How would you know?' asked Bill suspiciously.

‘All teenagers do it.'

‘I'm still twelve.'

‘It's just a number. Your body says you're older. But I tell you, it's a pain in the neck for everyone else to see a kid so wrapped up in himself.'

‘That's not true!' said Bill. ‘I'm not.'

‘Whatever you say, Bill,' said Pam. ‘All I know is there's one friend of yours who feels very shut out of your life.'

‘Well, you just said I'm almost a teenager.'

‘Being a teenager isn't a ticket for being selfish,' said Pam.

‘I'm not being selfish,' said Bill angrily. ‘I'm just too big for Mat's games.'

This turned into the first real fight Bill had ever had with his mother. Who was she to tell him what to do or not to do? She was a female. She was different. She couldn't possibly understand what life was like for him – a boy. Suddenly he felt really angry that his dad wasn't there showing him how to deal with pimples and all the man stuff that was going on in his life. Troy wasn't there to be angry with either. Instead, Bill lashed out at his mother.

‘Keep out of my life, why don't you?' Bill yelled. ‘No wonder Dad has always been away so much. He couldn't stand the nagging!'

Pam's face crumpled. She stepped back and folded over as if she had been punched.

Bill was horrified at what had come out of his mouth. His mum was his hero. She had kept their little family together. She had hung in there with a weak husband when most women would have left. She had made sure Bill still had a dad in the picture – maybe not in the next room, but still in his life.

Bill watched the tears flowing down Pam's face. Was he turning into a Troy? Only idiots spoke to women like that.

‘I'm sorry, Mum,' said Bill gently. ‘I truly am.' He tried to step closer, but Pam drew back.

‘Don't. Just don't,' said Pam, holding her hands up as if warding off a savage dog. ‘If you really are sorry, then listen very carefully to what I say.'

‘Okay, Mum,' said Bill. ‘I'm listening.'

Pam was sobbing and the words jolted out of her. ‘Every – step – of – the – way – in – life – is – hard. If you start feeling – sorry for yourself – at twelve years old, it'll just become a bad habit. Sure, it would be better – to have – a dad around – while you're growing into a man. And sure – I understand Mat's games might seem a bit – silly. But get over it. Stop hurting people.'

‘I'll try,' said Bill.

‘And for starters, here's a present Mat left for you.' Pam pointed to a parcel on the kitchen bench. ‘You'd better open it and thank her properly.'

A large parcel wrapped in recycled Christmas paper sat on the laminex bench. A card was attached, but before reading it Bill wanted to see what his present was. As he tore off the paper, he recognised the white sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was the tin he and Mat had used as the time capsule that they'd buried in the garden early that year. Well, actually, buried, dug up, buried, dug up and buried again.

Sensing that the tin's contents were private, Pam drifted away to another part of the house. Bill sat down and lifted the lid. First, there was the letter Mat and he had written to explain to the people of the future about the Grub and O'Connell families. Bill laid it to one side. He would read it again after he'd examined the items he had chosen to give to the future: the battered, dog-chewed cricket ball, a five-cent piece, the news article about Bill's footie team, The Cats, and a parrot feather.

His choices seemed ridiculous. What would a stranger in a hundred years' time think about the world if all the information they found was about ball sports (with no instructions about the games, either), a piece of money and a bit of bird? On second thoughts, maybe he was being too tough on himself about the parrot feather. There really were lots of species of birds and animals becoming extinct every year. But what would the people of the future make of a chewed cricket ball? Would they think that the participant would chew on the ball – some sort of nervous reaction to the pressure of the game?

Next Bill looked at Mat's gifts to the future. Even in his present negative mood, Bill thought the CD with photos of their families, friends and daily lives was a clever idea.

Since coming to Dewey Creek and meeting Mat, Bill's world had expanded. It had grown from just him, his mum and an absent dad to having great mates at school and an extended family of neighbours, especially the Grubs.

Bill brought his attention back to a chocolate crackle recipe written in Mat's big, loopy handwriting. It made him smile. What would the people of 2110 make of that? Or of the empty chocolate wrapper?

Originally, there had been a bar of chocolate in the time capsule, but Matty had said it would go bad, so the tin had been dug up and the chocolate shared between them. (That was the reason behind the second re-burying of the capsule.)

Bill smiled as he turned the wrapper over in his hands. Matty was one of the strongest people he'd ever known; it was funny to think of her weakness for chocolate. It was sort of surprising. It dawned on Bill that all amazing people must have their own odd weaknesses – even Matty.

Then there was the thick, glossy, dark lock of Matty's hair, given to the future for DNA testing. Bill twisted the lock about in his fingers. Sure, scientists could one day figure out loads of medical and genetic information from Mat's hair, but it ended there. Bill wondered if they even could get a glimpse of her kind heart, her sense of what is fair, her whacky ideas, her love of learning and her courage. Holding Mat's hair made him realise he was missing her badly. If he had been able to find the word, he would have said he was grieving for her.

Bill divided the lock into two sections. He put one piece into the tin with all the other objects. Some time soon he'd give the time capsule back to Mat for a fourth burial. As for the other lock of hair, he'd keep it for himself. Bill placed it carefully into an empty jam jar that he hid in the back of his sock drawer.

Now came the essential part of the time capsule's contents – the letter. It was a sort of family tree for the Grub and O'Connell families. But it was better than an ordinary family tree because it gave everyone's occupations as well as their hobbies. This would give the future a much rounder, clearer picture of each person. For instance, next to Nan's name was ‘rug crocheter', and next to Pam's name was ‘folk artist and manager of laundromat'. What Bill noticed next on the list made his heart drop like an out-of-control elevator.

His dad's name, Troy, had a long blob next to it where a white-out pen had been used. Anyone could clearly see there had been a change of information. Written over the white-out were the words ‘computer student'. This was the truth. But Bill knew that the original dark secret of his father's past lay under the white-out pen. The hidden word was ‘unemployed'. There was nothing wrong with struggling to get work but, for Bill's sake, Mat had decided to describe Troy as ‘unemployed' because at that time his dad had been in jail.

Recently, Mrs Townsend had been teaching the class about the word ‘euphemism'. It's where you use a nice word instead of a nasty word – like ‘passed away' instead of ‘died', or ‘pass wind' instead of ‘fart'. Bill realised that ‘unemployed' was a big, fat euphemism, put there to protect his family from shame. And with yet another lurch of conscience, Bill recalled that it was Mat who had known his dreadful family secret, had guarded that secret, and had understood how Bill felt so she had given Troy O'Connell a respectable occupation on that document. Bill carefully placed the letter inside the time capsule and fitted the lid back on.

Bill was now ready to read Mat's card. It was handmade, with an arrangement of dried leaves and flowers glued to the front. Inside, Mat had written:

Dear Bill,

Our highly esteemed club member, Crispin de Floriette, is hundreds of kilometres away and will soon be flying to the other side of the earth. Since he's been gone, it feels like you have gone away, too. Nan says you are growing up and I should give you some space. I think growing up might be like flying to another part of the world. It must be scary and lonely.

I've decided to dig up our time capsule and give it to you as a goodbye present. It's not a goodbye forever present. Just a goodbye till I catch up later present. I know you and I wanted people in the future to understand us, but I think it is more important that you will have something to help you remember what it was like to be twelve.

I remain,

Your friend,

Mat Grub