OLD BEATRICE ELLEN Ann was fantastically talented at smelling fruit. She didn’t just say, ‘Royce, bring that piece of fruit up here’; she’d say, ‘Royce, bring that banana up here.’ In fact she was saying it right now.

They’d learnt about smell in biology. Sharks, for instance, can pick up one atom of smell in a million atoms of sea. And men butterflies can smell lady butterflies from half a mile. Well, Beatrice Ellen Ann was like that with fruit. She could distinguish between the various races of fruit – she had ‘well-adapted fruit sensory organs’. When Darwinism had killed off all the human race that couldn’t smell fruit, Beatrice Ellen Ann would survive.

‘Put it on my desk, Royce, thank you.’ She had her arms folded. She always did this when she was angry, as if showing you she’d like to put you in a headlock. And she made her lips hard. She had very nice lips most of the time, although the rest of her face was a bit puckered. Shrinkage with age. Where did it shrink to? It must dissolve from the inside. So then you’d swallow it. And pee it out later. Holy kermoley, you digest your own face then squirt it down the dunny!

Royce shambled down the aisle between desks, smiling in a friendly fashion, giving Billy Mosley’s ear a tweak on the way – bastard – making some of the girls laugh with the way he held the banana, and then putting it on the desk up the front.

Beatrice Ellen Ann was still crossing her arms in an artificially angry way. ‘Thank you, Royce. Is there anything you’d like to say?’

Why did she always leave herself open like that? ‘Yeah. Did you know, Mrs Hartley, that the first three letters of your first name are the same as the initials of all your first names? B.E.A.’

She was a huge blusher. People who blush that easily shouldn’t leave openings like that. She was gushing out blush like sweat right now.

‘Which are all very nice names, Mrs Hartley. We all think so, don’t we?’

‘Yeaaah!’ shouted everybody.

‘Keep quiet, all of you!’ squeaked Beatrice Ellen Ann. She always squeaked at crisis time – her voice had no big-time temperament. ‘Royce Rowland, get back to your desk and zip your lip until the end of class or you’ll be here till 4.30 tonight!’

He was already here until 4.30. She must have forgotten. Hang on, it wasn’t her who’d given him the detention; it was Inky in metalwork – for breaking three drills on steel plate.

‘WHAT ARE YOU doing tonight?’ asked Dana Glover when he got back to his place.

‘Going round to Gilbert’s. Play a bit of cards, put on a few records. Why?’

‘Thought you might be going down the Gren.’

‘Nah. I’m cutting back on drinking; just leave it till the weekend. Anyway I’ve got no money.’

‘I have.’

‘Nah. Not tonight.’

It was one of the bravest things he’d ever said. Much braver than telling Beatrice Ellen Ann he knew her first names. Dana Glover was the third girl who’d let him – and the wildest, once you got there. Which wasn’t every time – in fact it was hardly ever. And yet you’d think it was going to be every time by the noise she made. Once you started fiddling around she just left you and went into this wonderland of ecstasy in her head, which didn’t seem to have a hell of a lot to do with you. It made you wonder who she thought she was with. She moaned and panted but crossed her legs at the same time; she’d be pushing your hand away while she was giving you a three-week hickey. Weird.

He’d analysed her moans one night, and decided she was saying, ‘Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon …’ so he’d whispered, ‘Oh Dana, it’s me, Gordon.’ It had worked, as a matter of fact – it was one of the two times they’d done it. Afterwards she’d said, ‘Who’s Gordon?’

Most times she was hard work wasted. But it worked for her. She got herself really worked up by not doing it. Self-frustration. It was sort of the opposite of masturbation. She probably lay in bed at night, hovering her hand an inch over her fanny, for practice.

And he’d just turned her down!

She always had money, too. Her father was rich: Glover’s Watchmaking and Horology. They used to joke with her that horology meant brothel-keeping, but they were still pretty proud to have a word like that in the district. It was the biggest word most of them knew.

‘Well, Royce?’

‘… Mrs Hartley?’

‘It was your homework last night.’

‘Right …’

Beatrice Ellen Ann gave a sharp sigh that sounded like something in German and folded her arms again. Headlock time. ‘Can somebody remind Mr Rowland what he learnt by heart last night?’

Karen Phibbs put up her hand. Always bloody Karen Phibbs. Sat in the front row and put the date at the top of every page so she’d know what day she’d learnt that Ethiopia was in Africa or that Cape Horn was stormy. Quite pretty, with a figure that was totally wasted on her, and was girlfriends with boring old Grant Franklin in 6B who she’d probably marry and have babies with. Nice mouth, but it made this little hiss every time she said ess. She was a School Cert first-timer so she was a really keen studier.

‘Cod, haddock, plaice, herring and redfish, Mrs Hartley,’ she sang.

Holy shit, what was this?

‘Thank you, Karen. Those, Royce Rowland, are the commercial fish caught in the Bering Sea.’

‘Please, Mrs Hartley,’ gasped Karen Phibbs, ‘I also know the commercial fish caught in the seas off Japan.’ Her face was sort of bulging, like in ‘when you gotta go you gotta go’, and she burst into another list of fish without being able to stop herself: ‘Anchovy, cod, flounder, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, sardine, salmon, saury, sea bream, sea trout, smelt and tuna, Mrs Hartley.’

Royce’s head was ringing with esses.

‘… and in the inland waters, carp, eel and ugui minnow are harvested,’ she added, like those few drips you squeeze out at the end.

‘Thank you, Karen,’ said Beatrice Ellen Ann with a warning firmness. She was either reeling from esses too or was queasy at the thought of all that fish. How could one brain hold so many fish? And why? How many times in her life was someone going to stop her and say, ‘Excuse me, miss, do you happen to know the commercial fish harvested in the inland waters of Japan?’ ‘Why, yes, sir, as a matter of fact I do. There’s your ugui minnow, your …’

Royce had forgotten the rest.

‘Do you happen to know the commercial fish caught off the eastern coast of North America, Royce?’

‘Not off hand, Mrs Hartley. Um … Not crayfish, anyway, because they get all our ones.’ Until about age eleven, Royce had thought crayfish were red thorny things with a big hole at the back like the afterburner of a MIG fighter. Then he’d found out the hole was where a tail used to be, which had been pulled off and sent to America.

‘What about the commercial fish of Iceland?’

‘I think I’ve got a mental block about fish, Mrs Hartley.’

‘You have four weeks, Royce, till your third attempt at School Cert. I happen to think you can pass this exam, and thus boost your employment prospects hugely. But you must work!’

‘I just wasn’t feeling studious last night, Mrs Hartley.’ He pronounced it as in ‘stud’.

‘Studious, Royce, stooodious,’ she corrected wearily. ‘I’m afraid I’m rapidly losing patience with your attempts to reinvent the English language.’

Old Jack Styles had told them in English that words were pronounced by ‘common usage’; if everyone pronounced it that way, that’s how the dictionary said it was said. So Royce had turned 5B into a social laboratory. They now all said ‘studious’ as in ‘stud’, and when it had caught on, Royce was going to write to the dictionary people and tell them to change their pronunciation.

‘I’ll have a look at those commercial fish tonight, Mrs Hartley, promise.’

‘Thank you, that’s most magnanimous of you, Royce,’ gritted Mrs Hartley.

‘He wouldn’t even know the commercial fish in the sea off Westport, Mrs Hartley,’ snickered Billy Mosley.

‘I would so!’

‘Good,’ said Beatrice Ellen Ann suddenly. ‘Yes, a good idea, Billy.’ Her lips were pressed, the headlock fixed. ‘Then let’s hear them, Royce. The commercial fish in the sea off Westport.’

Shit. Bloody Billy Mosley. ‘Whitebait.’

‘Well … that’s more a river fish.’

‘No, Mrs Hartley, Billy Mosley’s father catches them at sea in his fishing boat. Ask him.’

‘He bloody does not!’

‘Billy! No language in here, thank you!’

‘He’s calling my dad a crook, Mrs Hartley.’

‘I’m sure he’s not. Now, that will do on the matter. Carry on, Royce.’

I’ll get you, Rowland.’

‘Just try it, Mosley.’

‘Royce!’

‘Sorry, Mrs Hartley.’

‘There’s twenty of them, Mrs Hartley, and I know them all. I bet this dumb bugger doesn’t know half.’

‘Billy!’

‘I bet I bloody do.’

‘Boys!’

‘Go on then, thicko.’

‘You be up the back of the grandstand after school.’

‘You’ll be in detention.’

‘After that.’

‘Boys! You’ll both be in detention if this keeps up.’

‘I’ll be at the back of the grandstand if you can name ten fish in the sea off Westport.’

‘Squid.’

‘One.’

‘Snapper. Flounders …’

‘Three.’

‘Keep quiet, Billy, let him concentrate.’

Eels? Do people sell eels? No, who’d buy eels? Ling? Yuk. Shark? Better not say that – shark was a secret Angelo at the fishnchip shop wouldn’t want spread around the School Cert circuit. Kahawai? Nah, you don’t eat bait. But hang on, Angelo’d told him they use kahawai for canned … ‘Tuna!’

Well, the whole bloody class went up at that faux pas, didn’t they? Mrs Hartley had closed her eyes. ‘I should have known it was tempting fate,’ she sighed. ‘Karen, can you enlighten Royce?’

‘Yes, Mrs Hartley:

‘Thank you, Karen.’

‘Thank you, Karen, that is very … compendious. The east coast, you will notice, Royce Rowland. Not, I am afraid, in the seas off Westport, which happen to be to the west – as you possibly already knew?’

And she put her eyebrows up into her wrinkles and put her mouth into an angled pout. This was her standard sarcastic expression. The rest of them were laughing like drains, of course.

‘Yeah, I think I knew that, Mrs Hartley,’ he muttered. ‘West is best.’

‘Concentration is best, Royce, especially for you, and especially right now. I warn you, time is getting on. You must make a commitment to learning!’ And her really kind old eyes went sort of yellow with worry and emphasis. Then she said, ‘Thank you, Karen. Now, class, if you’ll all open your books at page 163: Leading Fishing Industry Countries. Linda, I wonder if you would mind reading first?’

‘Yes, Mrs Hartley,’ said Linda Harvey. ‘Along the west coast of South America are the world’s newest fishing grounds …’

LINDA HARVEY. SHE was his ‘creation’. Like Roger Vadim had created Brigitte Bardot and some other French sex symbols, Royce had created Linda Harvey. She’d come here from England with pigtails and a Pommie accent years ago when they were all in Standard Four and most of the others had called her a freak. But he had seen the potential. He’d been the one who showed her around – where to put your bike, where to collect your school milk, how to order your pie from the dairy. The sorts of things that girls usually taught girls, but he did it. They’d turned into friends, and he’d known that she was going to blossom into a great beauty one day, which would piss all the others off.

Well, she had. And here she was: a great beauty, created by him. But none of the others noticed, and it pissed him off.

‘Why do you never dance with Linda Harvey at socials?’ he asked them, down at the Gren one night.

‘Outa my class, mate,’ said Clive.

‘Bullshit, she’s friendly and nice.’

‘Yeah, but you’re not at socials to be with friendly nice people, are you? You’re jacking yourself up for later.’

‘But look at her! She’s beautiful. It’s like dancing with someone from Hollywood.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, Royce,’ said Gilbert. ‘She’s got a great face, great tits, great legs – so why haven’t you shagged her?’

That had flabbergasted him a bit.

In the pause he was making while he thought, Gilbert went on, ‘Know what we call her?’

‘No.’

‘Your sister.’

And that’s more or less where the matter rested. His creation was a bit incomplete. He’d created a one-B BB: beautiful but not sexy.

And it was true. You could think dirty about her, but you’d never dream of letting her know. She was just so unhelpfully friggin’ virginal that there was no way of making the first step.

She did athletics like he did – they used to train together down at the Square. But legs never became more than ‘hamstrings’ and ‘Achilles tendons’, and breasts were never more than ‘upper body’ – and in the middle was just a goddamn ‘pelvis’ that you ‘rotate around for extension’ in the long-jump.

She was a sprinter and long-jumper. She had this amazing thoughtful sway to her hips as she walked up to her mark, then she’d skim down the track like dandelion, her blonde hair in a ponytail that streamed out behind her. She didn’t seem to put any effort into the jump, but it was usually huge – she sort of sneaked past gravity without it noticing. Her hair would arc over her head and nearly touch the sand in front of her as she landed.

She was beautiful to watch.

Yet when it got dark and she was packing up her training gear, he’d sometimes say, ‘I’ll just do a few more laps.’ He’d wait for her to bike off, then sneak up to the back of the grandstand and meet Colleen O’Reagan.

Consolation.

Cripes, talk about a world of difference. Colleen O’Reagan turned all those hamstrings and whatnots back into legs, the upper body into breasts and the pelvis … well, she rotated that for maximum extension.

Not a care in the world, Colleen O’Reagan – told him she wiped it all out at Confession by saying ‘Since my last Confession, Father, I have disobeyed my parents five times.’ She didn’t go on to say that what she’d disobeyed them about was their rules about not doing the facts of life with boys.

LINDA HARVEY WAS still blatting on about Peru’s fish. She had her head down while she read and the book was hidden by this amazing waterfall of yellow hair. He’d built up a dirty memory of her from the glimpses he got from time to time – you know, when her shorts fell open at the end of a jump, or when you could see down her bra as she practised sprint starts. He’d seen a bit of pubic hair once, too, and knew it was black. So by putting all these glimpses together he’d built up this erotic picture of her and he practised with it. It was starting to work, too – he’d think of it, and all the friendship bit would disappear and he’d get a hard on.

He’d best take his fish book around to Gilbert’s. Gilbert must know all this fish shit anyway – he got School Cert geography first shot. Eighty percent or something like that. Bloody intellectual – head full of fish, but no regard for the fundamentals of life. Like when Bernie McKenzie had leaned over the Albion bar at Royce the other night and said, ‘Listen, Royce, tell bloody Gilbert not to come into this bloody bar wearing his bloody school uniform! From now on it’s them black singlets I gave yers, or I’ll arsehole the bloody lot of yer!’

DANA GLOVER WAS slumped back, staring at her book about fish. Her blouse had slumped, too, so there was a little beak-shaped gap you could look through, at her bra. Wonderland. He’d been in there, he’d seen the detail on that bra and what was inside it – on about five percent of the times he’d tried. Well, maybe the odds would change a bit in his favour by his act of bravery. Royce was pretty sure he’d made a shrewd tactical move – he’d let her know he wasn’t at her beck and call. Let her know there were plenty more commercial fish in the sea. Shrewd. But bloody dangerous.

He looked up and she was looking at him. She knew where he’d been looking and she smiled dirtily. There was a pimple by the left side of her mouth; you could just see it because the pimple cream didn’t quite match her skin. He’d avoid that on Saturday night. She’d come to the footie in the afternoon, watch him score a couple of tries – it was only United they were playing, after all – then down to the clubrooms; him, the hero. Then …

Christ! This was the bloody weekend his Periodic Detention kicked in! Weekend cutting sodding blackberry at the golf links. Shit! Periodic De-friggin’-tention!

‘Don’t get ideas,’ whispered Dana Glover from behind Fishing Around the World. ‘I start my period on Saturday.’

‘Join the goddamn club,’ murmured Royce.