‘NOW, who can tell me the adverb in this understated clause? Larkham? Basin?’
‘Oh, Mr Fairburn, you haven’t told us about your fishing trip yet …’
‘Yeah!’ chorused the second form English class.
‘Oh … ho … you don’t want to hear about that.’
‘Pleeease, sir,’ cried Larkham.
‘Ah go on, sir,’ whined Basin.
‘All right, all right …’
Phew. The class sat back for a bludge. Once we got him going he’d talk away at least half the period.
I scratched out a note to Sue, wrapped it around my rubber and dropped it in the aisle between us.
‘Psst.’
Sue, nodding attentively at Mr Fairburn’s story, reached down to pull up her sock, scooping up the rubber at the same time. She put it in her lap and read it.
‘Sue—Bruce wants me to meet him down the creek this arvo. Don’t think I’m slack, but do you reckon I should let him again? I don’t want to get a bad name. I don’t reckon he really likes me.’
Sue looked at Mr Fairburn, her eyes wide with attention and waited till the teacher cast his imaginary rod out of the window to scribble back a note to me. She put it into her pencil case and passed it across.
‘Look Debbie—Kim told me that Bruce’s wrapped in ya,’ it said. ‘Meet him but don’t let him use you. Lend us your ruler?’
I smiled at Mr Fairburn encouragingly, and passed another note, under the table and across the aisle. Sue propped it up behind her English book and read it.
‘I don’t want him to go round with me just for what he can get. I don’t want him to think that I’m just a rooting machine. Debbie and Bruce forever.’
There was no more room to write anything. The slip of paper was crammed with scribbled messages and hearts and old maths equations.
The bell went just as Mr Fairburn was hauling in his ‘whopper’.
Susan chucked the screwed up note into the bin as we went to meet the gang for lunch.
I did meet Bruce after school. We shared a cigarette and blew smoke rings behind the lantana.
Next afternoon I was daydreaming out of the window, when a messenger from the office came in.
‘Deborah,’ said Mr Fairburn, ‘Deborah Vickers, you’re wanted in the headmaster’s office immediately.’
I nearly choked. A wave of fear rushed through me. ‘What have I done?’ I thought. The whole class looked around at me. Was it smoking or nicking off? I couldn’t think of anything. The school was deadly quiet as I walked across the quadrangle. The sun glared down on the grey, bare asphalt. Used meat-pie wrappers and lunch bags blew about the bins, and I wished Sue was with me.
I knocked timidly on Mr Bishop’s door. His bald head looked up. ‘Come in, lassie.’
I entered.
‘Take a seat.’
I sat.
He ‘ummed’ and ‘ahhed’ and sighed. He rubbed his wrinkled temples and drummed his hairy fingers on the desk.
‘I’m disappointed in you, lassie … Frankly, I’m disgusted!’ A little bit of spit shot across the table. ‘Tch, tch, tch …’ For a moment he was overcome.
I clutched the sides of my seat. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a ragged piece of paper. He waved it in my face. I still didn’t know what he was talking about.
‘Maybe this will refresh your memory … I-don’t-want-him-to-go-round-with-me-just-for-what-he-can-get … I-don’t-want-him-to-think-I’m-just-a-rooting-machine.’ I sat on in agony. ‘Don’t try to deny it. It was found in the garbage bin by the cleaning woman yesterday. After your English class. She did the correct thing and brought it to me and I acted upon it immediately. I know the boy involved. I never expected this of you Deborah. Rooting machine! Would you mind elaborating on that?’ He leant forward.
I thought quickly. ‘Everybody says it, sir. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Am I to assume you’ve had sexual intercourse with that long-haired lout—Bruce Board?’ I nearly spewed.
He went on and on. He threatened to keep the note in his safe. He promised to send it to the Director of Education if I stepped out of line between now and when I left school and I wouldn’t get my HSC. I wouldn’t get a job. My parents would be informed. ‘So, Deborah Vickers, you’d better pull your socks up …’
Sue rang me that night.
‘Hi, Deb. What happened?’
‘He cracked a mental.’
‘What for?’
‘He found the note.’
‘Deadset? Are ya on detention? Is he gonna tell ya olds?’
‘Yeah, so he reckons.’
‘No bull? What a weak act.’
‘Oh the old perv. Bishop can stick it.’
‘Anyway, has Bruce rung ya yet?’
‘Nah. He rings me at eight.’
‘Deadset? Every Wednesday? Jeez, he’s roolly stoked in ya Deb. Treats ya roolly good and stuff.’
‘Yeah reckon. How ’bout Danny? Does he … tch! Oh hang on, it’s me old lady … Wot Mum? … Sue! … Yeah! I gotta ask her a science question don’t I? … Righto …’
Being a girl, I never rang Bruce. I just spent all Wednesday night by the phone. That gave me time to write out the junk I was going to say to him.
His contribution to the conversation consisted of a grunt, ‘yeah’, ‘deadset’, ‘unroole’, ‘perf’, ‘na’, ‘dunno’, and ‘seeya’.
‘Bruce, what are we doin’ Friday night?’
‘Danny wantsta go to the drive-in.’
‘Who’s goin’?’
‘I dunno. Deakin. Kim. Me.’
‘What’s on?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Okay, pick us up Friday.’
‘Righto seeya.’
I hung up the phone. ‘Mum …?’ She was packing Thursday’s lunches in the kitchen.
‘Yes dear.’
‘Can I go to the pictures with Sue on Friday night?’
‘Who else is going?’
‘Oh, all the other girls. Kim and Tracey and them.’
‘Not “them”. The others. Kim and Tracey and the others.’
‘Kim and Tracey and the others.’
‘What’s on?’
‘James Bond. It’s only rated “M”. We’re catching the bus and then Mr Knight’ll pick us up. Oh, go on.’
‘Go ask your father.’
‘Dad …’
On Friday evening I got ready. I wore straight-legged Levis and see-through underpants.
‘Now behave yourself.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘And thank Mr Knight.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘And don’t sit near the aisle.’
‘Huh?’
‘Some pusher may jab you in the arm with Heaven-knows-what. I read about it in the Mirror.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
Bruce wasn’t allowed at my place anymore. I wasn’t even supposed to be going out with him. Sue’s parents were cool, so I usually met him up there. My mum and dad thought he was ‘undesirable’.
‘He’s got nothing going for him,’ my mother said.
‘He’s below your standard, Deborah.’
‘How can you possibly find anything to talk to him about? What do you do with the boy all weekend?’
Then my father would pipe up. ‘What does his father do for a living?’
‘Yes,’ my mother would add, ‘what kind of house does he live in?’
Bruce’s father was a brickie’s labourer and they lived in a small fibro house. It was very embarrassing when I first brought him home. We had a three-storeyed red brick house with three bathrooms and a pool.
He had made a bad first impression on my parents.
My father glared at him as he bounced across the new shag-pile carpet, in his sandy, damp thongs.
‘Dad. This is Bruce. Bruce, my father.’
‘Gidday, Mr Vickers. Gettin’ heaps?’
‘How do you do?’ My father left the room.
‘Jeez! This is a fuckin’ mansion!’ Bruce said, flopping into the newly upholstered Keith Lord lounge suite that no one ever sat on.
‘Sssshh … Not so loud.’ Swearing was unheard of in my house. My pocket money was fined every time I swore or ‘took the Lord’s name in vain’.
He ate all the biscuits, swore at my little brother and smoked my father’s cigarettes. My mother was weeding the azaleas as I walked him down to the car. She came over to say goodbye, glancing in the back of his hotted-up panel van. She took note of the double mattress and the sex posters on the wall.
Bruce was revved up. ‘Seeya later old cheese!’ he cried and roared down the driveway.
From then on Bruce always had to pick me up on the corner.