I keep going back to Jimmy Irish’s, looking for her, for Mary, my first, wanting her again and again. Jimmy is never home. Mary never walks by when I sit on his veranda. I want more free love. Should I march in the street, storm a building, burn a bus? One night, Jimmy is home.
Jimmy, I say, where’s Mary?
Who? he says.
Mary, you know, that woman I had sex with.
Shit, Jacky, I don’t know. I never saw her again.
I am sitting at the Beast when Margaret Baker walks in and stands at the enquiry counter. Smiling. Waiting. Is she waiting for me? I don’t give myself time to answer, rise quickly, perhaps too quickly and almost run to the counter.
Margaret, I say.
Oh, she says. I met you up at the nurses’ quarters.
Yes. Nice of you to remember.
She smiles. The lizard shifts.
How long have you been in Moroki? she says.
Not long. I came up from the capital. I’m from Perth.
There was a girl in my school from Perth, Jennifer Gunning.
Are you serious? What school was that?
Pymble Ladies’ College.
Oh yeah, all the Gunning girls got sent east. Perth’s PLC wasn’t good enough for them. I went to her sister’s coming-out party last year. They live in Peppermint Grove in a massive house.
That’s unbelievable, Margaret says.
I think Margaret Baker is thinking she might like me. I warn myself. Remind myself I am too dirty for Princess Margaret, that I am no Lord Snowdon. But now she is in front of me, the dream comes alive.
Where did you go to school? she says.
Grammar, I say.
I’ve heard it’s the best in the West.
Ha ha, yeah.
What are you doing here?
Well, I’m supposed to be at uni doing law, but, you know, the examiners and I didn’t see eye to eye.
Margaret Baker laughs. Mr Jenson’s door opens.
Right, Miss Baker, I say quickly, how can I help you?
She nods politely and offers an enquiry that I can answer easily, speedily, but I don’t, I take it nice and slow, with great deliberation, as though the future of planet earth is at stake. And when she leaves the building I return to the Beast and kick her as hard as I can without breaking a toe.
Easy, boy, says Franky. You planning on making out with Margaret Baker?
You know her? I ask.
No, but I heard rumours.
What kind of rumours?
That she’s some kind of genius, that her father’s a legend and that if he finds anyone mucking around with her he’ll shoot the sod.
Haines walks past our machines.
You’re a fucking loser, Muir, he says.
Maybe, I say, but not at table tennis.
Haines is showing signs of moving on from not liking me to detesting me. I remember the look, have seen it before, on the faces of the bully boys in school. I can’t keep my mouth shut.
Hey, Haines, you wank with the same hand you play table tennis? That might be your problem.
Haines gives me the look. I snort.
Jack, says Frank, take it easy on him. Don’t push him too far.