In our year at uni, Frank Green is it. The style council, the big man on campus, the born leader. From day one, Frank Green has been the definition of cool. Frank Green, frank in all colours, shameless and sure as a peacock. Peach jeans, pink jeans, Frank Green.
Queensland Uni, Medicine, 1981. Nothing counts here if Frank’s not a part of it.
Frank Green juggles so many girls he’s nearly juggling all of them. He juggles so many girls they all know. They all know and don’t care. It’s the price to pay, if it’s a price at all. Frank Green has magic in his hands, the poise of a matador, the patter of a witless, irresistible charm.
I juggle girls the same way possums juggle Ford Cortinas. I’m road-kill out there, bitumen paté, seriously unsought-after. Quiet, dull-dressed, lurking without impact on the faculty peripheries. Lurking like some lame trap, like a trap baited with turd and I’m not catching much.
I have—my mother says I have—a confidence problem.
Frank Green has bad bum-parted hair, mild facial asymmetry and teeth like two rows of dazzling white runes, but he ducked the confidence problem like a limbo dancer.
Frank Green makes entrances. I turn up. When Frank Green is the last to leave I’m still there, but No one’s noticed. Frank Green dances like a thick liquid being poured out of something. I dance like I’m made of Lego, like I’m a glued-up Airfix model of something that dances. Better still, I don’t dance. I retreat quite imperceptibly like a shadow in bad clothes.
My mother says I have lovely eyes, and just wait, they’ll all get sick of Frank Green. My mother thinks he has no staying power, but I beg to differ. Frank, those pants and Countdown, I’ve told her, are three things that are here to stay. And she says, If you say so Philby, if you say so.
And I’ve told her there’s no more Philby now, but does she listen? I’ve told her I’m Phil, this is uni, I’m Phil. And I’m sure I was only even Phillip for about five minutes before Philby surfaced in Moscow loaded up with Orders of Lenin. Philby the Russian spy. Philby the Third Man. Philby the bug-eyed, black-haired baby just born in London. Me. Seventeen years of Philby now. And what chance does a philby have? Philbies sound so pathetic you shouldn’t let them out. Philby: a soft, hopeless marsupial that without a great deal of mollycoddling will drift into irrelevant extinction. A philby. A long-nosed, droop-eared wimp of a marsupial with lovely eyes, destined to die. Inevitably nocturnal, and very afraid.
Outside the house you don’t call me that, I tell her. Okay? Outside the house, no Philby.
On weekends I lie on my back with my physics book open over my head and I dream of girls. Girls who come up and talk to me at faculty functions. Who approach quite deliberately and talk to me with a calculating seductiveness. Glamorous, desirable girls who tell me quite openly that they crave me with a painful urgency, that Frank is all style and no substance, that they hope they’re not making fools of themselves, but they know what they want. And in the dream under the physics book I don’t shake with fear and lose the grip on my burger, I maintain calm, I sip at my plastic cup of Coke, I let them have their say and I acquiesce to their outrageous desires. In my dreams, I am a peach-jeaned man of cool. I am lithe and quite elegant. I am all they could want, I am highly supportive of their expectation of orgasm and I treat them kindly.
And unlike Frank, I’d be happy with one, though admittedly any one of several. I have a list, a list of four girls I would be quite unlikely to turn down, should I figure in their desires. I have spoken to one on three occasions and another once. Other than that, nothing happens. But that’s okay, I’ve got six years in this degree.
Chemistry pracs begin on Fridays, and this is where things get weird. I’m in Frank’s group (alphabetically) and his friends aren’t. Week Two and the group divides to do titrations and I’m standing next to Frank and a little behind him when the division occurs so I’m his partner.
I learn things about Frank. Close-up things. Unglamorous things, but quite okay things just the same. Frank twiddles his pencil when he doesn’t know much. Frank says Hey several times whenever he has an idea, or has something he thinks is an idea. Frank is very distractable and has no great interest in organic chemistry. In the first prac we talk a lot about bands we like. Frank sings like someone with terrible sinuses and fills beakers up with varying amounts of water and plays them with his pencil with no concession to the dual concepts of rhythm and melody. Our titration goes very poorly. Our tutor takes us aside and says, Listen guys, I’m worried about your attitude, that prac was piss easy. Frank sings several lines of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ but all on one note, and the tutor doesn’t know what to do.
Frank says Hi to me three times over the next four uni days. Frank actually says Hi to me, and people notice every time. People look at me and I can see them thinking, Hey, he’s Frank’s friend.
Friday in the chem lab, Frank says, I think I can get it right this time, and he sings ‘The Long and Winding Road’ again, but still all on one note. We spend the first forty minutes of the prac (Caffeine Extraction from a Measured Sample of Instant Coffee) discussing how profoundly the death of John Lennon has affected both us as individuals, and society as a whole. The tutor asks if we could please do the chem prac and I tell him he should treat Frank’s deeply held feelings about the death of John Lennon with respect. The tutor says he feels really bad about the death of John Lennon too, and agrees that the implications are undeniably global, but could we please do the chem prac. And he says ‘The Long and Winding Road’ is actually one of his favourite songs and could Frank please possibly never, ever sing it again, because Frank’s version of it makes him very angry. Frank starts to sing ‘Hey Jude’, all on one note (the same note as that used for ‘The Long and Winding Road’), and then thinks better of it.
We take a look at the chem prac. Frank admits he’s done none of the prep we’re supposed to and apologises to me, saying he’s not really doing his bit for the partnership. I tell him I spent a few minutes on it last night, and as I see it we have two options. The first is to do the prac the way the book says, bearing in mind that this involves several titrations and the result will be very bad. The second option has two parts, which I explain to Frank quietly. The first part is the maths. I have done the maths, and I know exactly what our yield should be. The second part is the extra instant coffee in my pocket.
Frank chooses option two. We end up with 120 per cent of the caffeine we are supposed to, and we tip just enough down the sink to give us an impressive but subtle 96 per cent yield.
After the prac Frank asks me if I’m doing anything tonight, not realising how unnecessary the question is. He says, We’re going down the pub if you want to join us. I say, Sure, but I try so hard to be cool when I say it that I gag slightly. I try to disguise it as a cough, but that only makes things worse. Frank looks at me. It seems I have to say something, so I say Mucus, and he says, Sure, I’ve got these sinuses, you know? So I get away with it. When Frank’s not looking I take my pulse. It’s 154. I hate the confidence problem.
So I go home after the chem prac. I have to think about this and I can’t do that in lectures. This is it. This is a big moment. This is tribal. This is right out of our anthropology subject, not out of my life. This is the bit where the anthropology lecturer said, All tribes have rituals, and if you don’t know them you’re not in the tribe.
There are problems with this. It took me seconds to realise I’d never had a drink in a pub before (and this is where the gritty issues of ritual will come into play), but it wasn’t till I was in the backyard thrashing the guts out of the Totem Tennis ball at 4.20 that I realised I didn’t know which pub to go to. With the Yellow Pages and a map I work out the half-dozen pubs nearest uni. At some point this evening I will enter one nonchalantly, and probably fashionably late (if late’s still fashionable), and say Hi to Frank and whoever he drinks with, and I won’t say a word about the other pubs I’ve been to first. I understand ritual. Step one—appear to know which pub.
I shower and put on a lime green shirt with a yachting motif and regular jeans. Will there be girls? I wish my teeth were straighter, my lips more full. I lace up my white canvas shoes and my mother stands me in front of the body length mirror and I just can’t believe this is as good as it gets. I don’t know what she expected, standing me here. I don’t know if she thought I could still go out after seeing this.
I think I’ll tell Frank I came down with something, some bug. If I was a real contender I could tell him I got a better offer. Sorry I didn’t make it Friday, Frank: girl trouble, you know? I’ll go with the bug. I’ll see him Monday morning and affect some queasy face that suggests a whole weekend of gastric discontent, and this’ll all be fine. And no prep for chem pracs in future, that’s where this trouble started.
My mother will have none of this. She’s seen the map and tells me I’ll need a driver. I’ll drive you round till we find the right place, and I’ll give you the money for a cab home, she says. And even though I’m protesting and telling her I’m really not feeling well, we seem to be having this conversation in her car and I seem to be taking ten bucks from her when we’re stopped at a traffic light.
This is really bad, this whole thing. I’m aware of that. Imagine if Frank sees me, being dropped off by my mother, my mother fussing over me before I’m allowed out of the car. I say none of this, but she knows it, anyway. This the plan, she says, slipping on sunglasses even though it’s early evening, driving faster than she needs to, braking late, talking with maybe just a hint of an accent. And I think it’s a hint of the accent she used sporadically but to good comic effect in a minor role in the Arts Theatre’s recent production of Uncle Vanya.
I’m hating this.
At the Royal Exchange I’ll park in the back car park, she says, going on in that damn accent. There appears to be a lane leading south-west from there, between two shops. You will walk down that lane. You will then turn right and walk along Toowong High Street until you arrive at the hotel, as though from the bus stop. I shall wait ten minutes, during which time I shall be reading this book. She holds up a Robert Ludlum novel she has borrowed from the library. If you are not back in ten minutes, I shall assume you have been successful. I shall drive down the lane, turn left and be gone.
My mother, when she takes the piss, really takes the piss. I am hating this evening even more. Hating this evening, hating Uncle Vanya and his whole family, hating Chekov, hating my parents whose abiding strangeness means I don’t have a chance out there. You’ve damaged me, I want to tell her. You’ve given me no idea of normal, damn you. If I die like a philby in there it’s all because of you.
She parks in the most secluded spot in the car park. I do the lane thing as she has directed. The Royal Exchange, it seems, has several different parts to it. I hadn’t expected that. (What had I expected? A barn? How could I not expect rooms?) It’s amazing how relaxed the people are in here, all of them, how conversant with ritual in a way that seems innate. How none of them has white canvas shoes, but maybe Frank won’t notice. I’m running round working up a sweat, running down my ten minutes, finding new bits of the Royal Exchange Hotel, not finding Frank Green.
I run back to the car park, to the secluded spot where my mother has opened her Robert Ludlum novel but is only pretending to read.
He’s not there, he’s not there, I tell her, and I don’t like the slightly desperate tone I use.
Calm now, Philby, she says. The mission has just begun. All will be well.
She guns the car out onto the High Street, loops back and parks in front of a panel beater’s shop round the corner from the Regatta.
Usual drill, she says, and reaches for Robert Ludlum.
I run to the Regatta, telling myself not to run. Telling myself Frank Green wouldn’t run. I’m sweating quite a lot now. I’m smelling like a wet dog, I’m sure of it. And I don’t see Frank Green, despite copious amounts of stupid looking. Everyone here is so relaxed. No one’s wearing a shirt like mine. No one’s wearing white canvas shoes. I feel sick, some bug, maybe.
Hey Phil, Frank says from behind, tapping me on the shoulder and catching me quite unprepared. We’re outside, on the verandah.
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt, peach jeans tonight. White canvas shoes. Frank Green is wearing white canvas shoes.
I just came in to buy a round, he says, and we walk to the bar. So what do you want?
I’m not prepared for this moment. Damn it, I didn’t think this through. I’m an anthropological idiot. What do I want? My palms sweat, my tongue rattles round in my mouth like a cricket bail. What do I want? I’m thinking all those beer words, but I have to pick the right one. I’ve never done this before. Do I want a pot? A schooner? A middy? Do I have to say which beer? What are the names of beers? I’m dying here. How many Xs was it? Or something involving spirits, spirits mixed with something. Frank’s waiting. Frank’s becoming confused. But Frank isn’t dizzy. Frank’s heart rate is well short of 200. Frank isn’t about to throw up and get frog-marched out of the tribe on his first day. I’m visualising my parents’ drinks cabinet. Damn them. Damn them and their stupid English people’s drink cabinet. You amateur theatre-loving bloody G and T drinking British colonial bloody bastards, I’m thinking when Frank says, What do you want? again.
I tell him beer, Fourex, a pot. In my head this is what I tell him, but my mouthparts are against me and say, Creme de Menthe.
Frank looks as though I’ve slapped him. Cream de menth, he says. You want cream de menth?
Yeah. I say yeah, because what else can I say now?
Righto, he says and shrugs his shoulders. You want ice?
Yeah.
So he orders three pots and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
He carries two pots out to the verandah. I carry one pot and the Creme de Menthe. And I visualise my parents’ drink cabinet and I curse the bright green bottle at the front. I see my father pouring it, offering me a glass with a con man’s smile and a white linen napkin over his arm, saying, And do we want it frappé, sir?
The others, Vince and Greg, friends of Frank’s from our year, stare at my drink from some distance away. I am about to begin a long journey into the wilderness. The urge to apologise for my drink choice is almost irresistible. I want to start again. I want a pot. I want to go outside and pay a cabbie ten bucks to drive over my head.
What’s that? Vince says, pointing to my drink (as if there’s any need to point).
I tell him and he nods, nods like he knew but he hoped he’d been wrong. He wants to ask why. He wants to ask why, but he doesn’t.
And I want to tell him. I want to say Look, it’s not my fault. My parents are so northern hemisphere, so insufferably strange. They drink this. They’ve made me drink it three times in company, but you shouldn’t think I’m one of them. I meant to get a pot.
We drink quickly.
My shout, Greg says, and goes inside. He’s back in a few minutes with three beers and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
And I can’t change now. I know I can’t change now. To say No, I’ll have a pot would be to admit a gross error of judgement, so I sit in my lonely, soft cloud of mint, sipping away. I take the next shout. Three beers and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
Frank is looking comfortable, leaning back in the white plastic seat and crapping on about uni, specifically about the chem prac and the coffee in my pocket, pinging a fingernail repeatedly against the rim of his beer glass and grinning at me while singing ‘The Long and Winding Road’ with the aid of no actual notes at all.
Shit, 96 per cent yield, Vince says, shaking his head. We got 88 and we thought that was okay.
I’m smiling, laughing with Frank about Vince who doesn’t quite get it and thinks we’re champion titrators, laughing with him about the coffee in my pocket, about how we wouldn’t have got 50 per cent without the coffee in my pocket. I’m sweating peppermint. I’m stinking of sweet mint and many parts of me are starting to relax, starting to become loose and less interested in direction. I’m laughing at almost anything now, just thinking about turning up at the chem prac with coffee in my pocket and laughing heaps.
This is very refreshing, I’m saying. Very refreshing with a little ice, you know. But I think I’m only saying this in my head, doing a secret ad for Creme de Menthe, turning to the camera with a James Bond smile and saying, Damn’ refreshing, and giving a little tilt of the head.
Vince says, Hey, what’s that like, that cream de menth? And he takes a sip from my glass. He scrunches up his eyes and thinks hard. He passes it to Greg and says, What do you reckon?
It’s not great with the beer, Greg says. It’s not great after ten beers, but maybe it’s not the best time, you know? Jeez, it’s strong though. I reckon if you wanted to get pissed, you’d get pissed pretty quick on this. What do you reckon, Phil? Get pissed pretty quick on this, do you?
I want to say, Shit yeah. I really want to say, Shit, yeah, but I can’t work out with any confidence which order the words go in, and while I’m thinking about it, while I’m trying really hard not to say, Yeah, shit, he says, I reckon Phil’s pissed on this, you know?
Well he would be, wouldn’t he? Frank says.
I can’t get up when it’s my shout any more, so I just hand Vince the money and he automatically comes back with three beers and a Creme de Menthe with ice.
My sinuses feel very clear, I say to Frank. Very, very clear.
And Frank says, Good on you.
I tell him it must be the mint. The mint clears the sinuses, I say quite loudly. I can recommend it. And Frank thinks I am recommending it, in an immediate and personal way and, aware that he has a problem with his sinuses, orders himself two Creme de Menthes with his next beer, taking them both quickly and earnestly, like medicine.
I am now feeling hot all over, and there is a ringing in my head coming from a long way off. I want to warn Frank about this, to say there might be side effects, but I can’t possibly be heard over his singing, particularly while Vince is shouting, Yeah I think they’re a bit clearer, your sinuses. Yeah. That’s sounding bloody good, mate.
So he joins in.
Hey, how about some Five Hundred, Greg says, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket. Just for small stuff, for ones, twos and fives, hey?
First I think he means dollars and I wonder what I’ve let myself in for, and then he scoops a handful of small change onto the table and organises it into three wobbly piles. So I say, Sure, and then realise I’ve never played Five Hundred before.
And just when I think I’m about to be thwarted by the tribal problem, I remember the Solo my father taught me to play. The Solo he had played when in the British Armed Forces in India. No one in the Punjab could touch me lad, when I had a bit of form going, he told me once. And he’s always said that Five Hundred was an inferior version of the great game, and that anyone who mastered Solo could make the best Five Hundred player in the world look like a fool.
So, after a brief clarification of house rules, we play. We play, and I hear myself shouting, but, I hope, not ungenerously as I take hand after hand. Boldly, flamboyantly, elegantly, like an impresario, like a hussar, feeling nothing below the waist, watching the table sway in front of me and rise on one occasion only to strike me softly in the face. And I feel nothing, nothing at all but mint and victory. And there are times when I’m sure my brain is resting and my arms play on without me, flourishing strategies that haven’t been seen outside the British Armed Forces in India since the late nineteenth century, passing Creme de Menthe to my shouting mouth, raking money across the table.
From this point, my recollections are non-linear.
I lie on my bed with my room full of well-established daylight and stinking of old mint. Crusty green debris around my nostrils, hidden Creme de Menthe oozing from my sinuses whenever I roll over. There is a bucket on the floor near the bed. A blue bucket with a slick of bubbly green swill on the bottom.
We sang ‘Across the Universe’, I recall. Sang it, or at least shouted it at the cars on Coro Drive, and they honked their horns, and I think I saluted. I recall myself shouting at all stages of the card game, loudly and in a ridiculous English accent, and saying very pukka things that today mean little. I remember giving the anthropology lecturer the bagging of a lifetime in his absence. At least, I assume it was in his absence. I can see him rearing up through my rickety dreams saying, You just got lucky kid, but I don’t think he did.
And some of my large pile of small-change winnings went on a bottle of Creme de Menthe and we toasted many things, including the way the game is, or was, played in the Punjab, back when it was played by experts and the sun had yet to set on the long twilight of the empire.
And I took the pack and started ripping out card tricks at high speed, just the way my father showed me, shouting at the others in a private parody of his voice, Come on then Charlie, pick a card, any card. And I fooled them every time, baffled them, and I can hear Vince’s voice saying, The man’s a genius, a genius.
And I’m still in the middle of this slow, green, glorious death, heaving up some more unnecessary gastric juices into the blue bucket when my mother comes in.
Your friend Frank’s called a couple of times, she says. He said to tell you that there’s a barbecue at his place tonight, and that three of the four girls you mentioned last night will be turning up. He said to tell you that it’s BYO—but don’t worry, he’ll have plenty of ice.
She watches me nod and lose a little more gastric juice.
You’re doin’ well, Philby, she says, perhaps in the accent she used to try out (unsuccessfully) for the part of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire. Doin’ fine.