Early Monday morning I spent an hour divesting my bike of its embellishments, and rode the stripped-back beast to school. As I was chaining it to the rack, a pink bubble appeared in my periphery, then expanded and popped, releasing the odour of cherry-flavoured smoker’s breath. ‘Nice wheels,’ the blower said, peeling gum from his sparsely haired top lip. ‘Got a light?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Commendable. Where’d you score the treadly? Looks familiar.’
‘Found it in a junkyard.’
‘Sweet.’ The kid’s overbite and weak chin gave him a rodent-like appearance, something I would never say to anybody because it’s cruel, but his twitching made the comparison impossible to ignore. I slung my satchel over my shoulder and started up the embankment.
‘Wait up, rookie. My name’s Starkey. It’s Evan Starkey, but everyone calls me Starkey.’
‘I’m Lincoln.’
‘I know. You’re Tibor Mintz’s girlfriend. Do people call you Stinkin’ Lincoln?’
‘I get Abraham more.’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind. I’m peeling off. I have to see Simmons before first period.’
‘Catch ya later, Stinkin’.’ He headed back to the racks, probably to check for unlocked bikes. Funny – I thought this school was selective.
EXCEL TODAY is etched into the glass entrance of the Coralee Coombs Sports Centre, nicknamed The Hive for the hexagonal photochromic glass cells of its vaulted ceiling. Ground level features a fifty-metre pool with tiered seating on one side and a gymnasium, hydrotherapy facility and showers on the other. Above the gym are two classrooms and the PDHPE faculty offices. These overlook the pool, which this morning was a perfect blue mirror against the pale amber of the glass ceiling. The only thing moving, aside from the hand of the Speedo lap timer, was me on my way to see the sportsmaster.
Simmons was reclining in an orange armchair, surrounded by dusty trophies and gleaming shields. His white polo shirt was tucked into white shorts tight enough to strangle his best friend. His white trainers looked as if they’d never touched grass. My impression that he might have once come close to rugby glory was in no way diminished by the substantial girth of his stomach, which he was doing his best to increase with an egg-and-bacon roll.
‘What do you want, germ?’
‘I haven’t enrolled in a sport yet, sir. I had to see Dr Limberg last Friday instead.’
‘Name?’
‘Lincoln Locke.’
He shook my hand with a super-firm grip, eyebrows challenging me to submit before he powdered my metacarpals. ‘Which sport?’ he said, then released.
I nominated chess, ping-pong and bowling, the three least likely to expose or aggravate the nub through physical exertion, but each option came up as blocked on his laptop.
‘Unusual,’ he said. ‘Let me check The Owl.’ He scanned my student profile, nodding and frowning. Then the electronic glockenspiel chimed, signalling the commencement of first period, which made me need to pee. ‘Congratulations, Locke. You’re in the pool with me.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said, guts now liquefying.
‘Says here that you represented your previous school at zone level and your PBs for the fly aren’t too shabby at all. You’ve already been drafted into swim squad by Assistant Coach Gelber.’
‘I’m not that great at butterfly.’
‘No need for false modesty.’
‘But that note in my file is wrong, sir. I was struggling to finish.’
‘Don’t you worry about that, son. Endurance training is my speciality. Your physical dimensions were fed into an algorithm that calculated swimming to be your ideal sport – specifically butterfly. Great wingspan and size-eleven feet.’
The talk of physical dimensions provoked an extremely awkward sensation in my lower regions, as though the nub was turning in on itself – inverting. Terrified that wearing only Speedos in a lane crowded with other swimmers would inevitably result in its exposure, I pleaded to be allowed to join another sport.
‘In a couple of months, if things don’t work out, you can switch. But you look like a swimmer to me. And trust me, son, I can pick ’em. Ever heard of Coralee Coombs? Of course you have – this sports centre’s named after her. She’s on the national team and a shoo-in for the Games. I was her first coach and now I’m yours.’
‘But—’
‘Training starts this Wednesday morning, clinic on Friday, training again on Mondays. Off you go now – scoot, you’re late for class.’
EXCEED TOMORROW was etched on The Hive’s exit doors. ‘Exceed what?’ Homunculus said as I walked through. ‘Your current low level of bladder and bowel control?’ I relieved myself and then ran to catch up with my art class, who’d already set out on an architectural tour of the school.
‘How kind of you to grace us with your presence,’ the Crestfield old boy Nigel Lethbridge said when I arrived panting at Old Block. His sculpted platinum hair, strangely taut skin and withering blue eyes gave him the appearance of someone who’d only recently been cryogenically defrosted – but his leather-elbowed jacket had obviously only been preserved in mothballs. The unmistakable smell of camphor discouraged me from getting any closer.
‘Rightio, let’s get cracking,’ Lethbridge said, and led us to the original house on the property. ‘Our most worthy founder, the pastoralist and cattle breeder Joseph Millington Drake, built his magnificent residence, Crestfield House, in eighteen seventy-nine. Judging Australian schools inferior to those of the motherland, he began teaching local boys in his own home.’ As we crossed the threshold, he said, ‘Those of you with classes here will appreciate the high ceilings and natural ventilation.’
We climbed three levels to the attic. ‘Best view in the house,’ Lethbridge said, waving us in. ‘And it belonged to the servants. Ha!’
From my position I could only see a blue patch of harbour, but on my turn at the small dormer window I looked straight down and saw the caretaker, Mr Jespersen, grooming one of many hedges that made a pattern of lines inside a huge square. In the centre was a hexagonal pergola covered in vines. ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘There’s a maze.’
‘The correct term is labyrinth, as there’s only one possible route,’ Lethbridge said.
Next stop was Redmayne Hall, which was completed in 1888 on the centenary of invasion, though being an old fart, Lethbridge used the term ‘settlement’.
‘Redmayne was designed by Justus Cobham, a proponent of the neo-Gothic style, which explains its somewhat ecclesiastical appearance. But even with its expanded capacity, Crestfield was soon overcrowded again. So Millington Drake devised a notoriously difficult entrance test based on mathematical, scientific and physical aptitude, with a vision to cultivate only the finest young men in the colony.’
‘Sounds like a crank,’ Phoenix Lee said.
Lethbridge showed us where the coach house and dairy once stood, then led us back to the tech workshops at New Block.
‘The Ormerod Wing was constructed in nineteen seventy-four to accommodate the first female students. The exposed concrete and brown bricks, while at odds with the elegance of earlier buildings, are typical of the brutalism school of architecture. One might consider it downright ugly. It was named after Crestfield’s first female librarian, Judith Ormerod – rather fitting, considering personal appearance was never her most pressing concern.’
‘I have a question,’ Phoenix said. ‘Were you born before or after the word “misogyny” was invented?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Please excuse the interruption!’ Ms Tarasek said.
Lethbridge licked his lips and took us right back to where I’d begun my day, The Hive. ‘Completed four years ago at a cost of fifteen million dollars, this glass temple of sporting excellence exemplifies our founder’s vision – the development of physical perfection. Some of Australia’s most notable figures and successful businessmen are Crestfield alumni. Their exceeding generosity made the construction of this superior facility possible.’
‘Of course no women contributed,’ Phoenix said to Isa as we entered the building.
‘When I was a Crestfield lad we had no pool here, but I consider myself a small link in the chain of our proud swimming history. Please don’t think me immodest by directing your gaze to the Roll of Champions behind you.’
I calculated Lethbridge must be in his nineties, and here he was, still crowing about being the junior backstroke champion. The pompous geezer fully deserved Phoenix Lee’s salty comments. His tour of Crestfield was kind of fascinating, but it made me feel I belonged there less than a three-legged Shetland pony in the Melbourne Cup.