I get to the school gates at nine o’clock. As it’s Christmas holidays, Tapley students don’t have to wear school uniform. But due to the disturbing fact that my parents think wearing jeans will turn me into a Hell’s Angel or a UFC cage fighter, and that my art smock is fine for most social occasions and sporting events, I’m dressed in a George-Parker-Tapley-Grammar outfit of my own creation.
It’s made up of antique canvas gym shoes, faded blue floral board shorts that I found in my wardrobe, a white Tapley school shirt, and my Tapley straw hat with its black and gold band. So it’s no wonder that the six brass eagles on the school gates seem to look at me strangely, because even the headmaster’s German shepherd wears a tailor-made Italian suede jacket with bone-shaped biscuit pockets and a Velcro flap for her Royal German Airlines frequent flyer card.
Chase wanders up the path wearing white jeans, blue sneakers, and a shirt that’s a shade of violet I’ve never seen before. Sometimes I feel like the super-rich have their own colour spectrums. For instance, you won’t see a Tapley boy in seaweed-green, apart from me, unless he’s driving a Centurion tank in Cadets, or helping endangered waterbirds to extinction by shooting them out of the sky at the privately owned Lake Tapley Wildlife Reserve.
Chase waves.
‘Right on time, Georgie-boy!’
‘Ha, yes,’ I say. ‘No sleeping in today, Chase.’ Or any other day, as it’s a well-known family story that the last Parker to sleep in was Lawrence Parker in 1932, who earned himself the nickname of Lawrence the Lazy Loser until he died seventy-six years later at work (and in his sleep, funnily enough).
We leave the Tapley school grounds, which include a Formula One practice track, a live ammunition shooting range, and a miniature casino for the preppies. The only sign of life is the Tapley Grammar Commercial Bank, which has the same operating hours as the New York Stock Exchange.
‘It’s too quiet here over summer,’ Chase says. ‘Man, time stands still.’
There is a feeling of timelessness to the morning, which is an impossible but rather comical concept to think about if you’re a scientific type who’s feeling a little down in the dumps.
‘Hoo hoo, Chase!’ I chuckle out loud. ‘That’s funny. Time standing still.’
Chase gives me a hard look. ‘I’m not joking, George. This place is dead. We’ll go to my house in the city. It’s empty. My parents are away at a Truffle Hunting Boot Camp in France and my sister’s in a psychiatric hospital in New York.’
We can’t just leave school for the holidays!
‘Chase,’ I say, ‘unless our parents sign, counter-sign and sign again a Letter of Agreement, we can’t budge. We’re stuck.’
‘Oh no, we’re not,’ he replies sternly. ‘The headmaster will do exactly what my mother tells him. Or he’ll find himself as the prime minister again and he won’t like that one little bit. Anyway, your parents are down a hole, you said.’
‘Yes, they’re studying moon rocks in a bunker in Switzerland,’ I answer. ‘Evidently the rocks are quite heavy.’ Which would be no big surprise, I would’ve thought.
Chase and I walk past the Tapley Grammar Marina and Container-Ship Wharf. Most of the superyachts have gone to the Bahamas for summer, but there are still a couple of the hovercraft that the boys use on the golf course.
‘So we won’t disturb your parents,’ says Chase. ‘We’ll just get on with our own lives.’
That sounds like a very good idea.
‘What’s that girl doing on the old jetty, George?’ Chase looks up the beach, shading his eyes with a golden hand. ‘Is she waving at us?’
‘She appears to be,’ I say. ‘D’ you know her?’
‘Nope.’ Chase starts to jog. ‘Perhaps she needs help? Come on, George. Run.’
We run, which is not something I’m very good at or do very often.
‘Pump those arms, George!’ Chase whacks my elbow. ‘Put some effort into it.’
I do, and boy, it does seem to help and I make it onto the jetty a bare thirty metres behind Chase. The girl, who has red hair and is wearing a light-blue dress, points.
‘There’s a little dog in the water! But I can’t swim. Although I’ll try, if I have to. Which mightn’t turn out so well.’
I can see a little black, white, and brown dog paddling in circles.
‘We’ll go in.’ Chase kicks off his blue sneakers. ‘You can swim, can’t you, George?’
‘Certainly,’ I answer. ‘I favour the energy-efficient side-stroke that has unfortunately been overlooked as an Olympic event for the last one hundred and forty-eight years.’
‘What the—?’ Chase shakes his head. ‘Just get undressed and get in!’
Despite the fact that I’ve never undressed in front of a girl before, I remove all non-essential items, as this is an emergency.
‘I’ll just conduct a quick depth check,’ I say, as Chase hops around, trying to get his jeans off. ‘It’s about ten metres, I estimate, Chase. Not perfect. But I think I can work with an eight-metre margin for error.’ And in I go, executing a perfect safety star jump I learned online.
‘Go, Georgie!’ Chase yells. ‘Go!’
I side-stroke steadily. The great advantage of the style is that I can watch the dog and keep my nasal passages clear of water. The threat of shark attack I discount as being mathematically unlikely, but having read a number of disturbing reports of the deadly irukandji jellyfish moving south due to global warming, my pulse rate is in the red zone.
‘Swim, George!’ The red-headed girl claps. ‘You’re so brave!’
There’s an old Parker-family saying that, ‘Bravery is for people with too much time on their hands.’ But if what I’m doing is brave, then I’m encouraged, I must say.
The little dog paddles in my direction, crying. Its nose looks like a prune, its eyes like two raisins, so we have that in common.
‘Don’t worry about the irukandji jellyfish,’ I say reassuringly. ‘They’re still up around the Byron Bay–Maroochydore area. That’s two whole states away.’ I grab the dog by the scruff of the neck (since it has no collar) and head back to the jetty.
Chase and the girl kneel, ready to help. I give them the little dog and hang on to the jetty, estimating my pulse at about one hundred and ninety.
‘Great, George!’ Chase peers down. ‘That sidestroke is so weird, so stupid, but you made it. Fantastic!’
I take deep breaths and see that the girl has blue eyes and freckles, and one of her legs is made from plastic that would have a polypropylene core, I’d suggest. ‘Your dog, he’s—’
‘Oh, he’s not mine,’ she says. ‘And he’s a she.’
Chase helps me up onto the jetty. ‘She’s your dog now, George. Well done.’
I brush back the hair on one side of my head. Beneath my board shorts, my wool-cotton blend underpants are weighing me down, since they retain as much water as a medium-sized camel.
‘I can’t have a dog.’ I take another breath. ‘School rules, Chase. No dogs, cats, or cockatoos. Only polo ponies and leopards, if you have a special permission note from your parents and the African government. And not at my house, either. My mother was traumatised by a miniature schnauzer outside a public library in Munich, and will now allow only a black- and-white poster of a zebra, or a rubber koala on the end of a pencil.’
The girl hands me my Tapley hat, which reminds me that I’m still topless. Good Lord!
‘But if you don’t take her, George,’ the girl shrugs, ‘what happens to her?’
I put on my shirt, estimating that I’ve had enough UV exposure to last until I’m forty-seven years old. With regards to the dog, I have no answer.
‘George can have her.’ Chase stares seawards as if he’s to give the order to open fire on a fleet of enemy warships (which many Tapley boys have done, sometimes discovering later that they weren’t the enemy after all). ‘So that’s that. Fixed. She’s yours, George. Next!’
By now, the dog has cheered up and is wagging her tail. I daringly put my hand on her shoulder and feel how alive she is. Well, maybe I can have her!
‘You did wonderfully, George.’ The red-headed girl smiles. ‘Lots of people wouldn’t have gone in.’
‘Lots of people would,’ I reply. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t have done it without you chaps.’
‘That’s another load of Parker rubbish,’ says Chase. ‘You showed guts, George. Like a true leader.’
I’m no leader. Most of the time, I can’t decide what I should do, let alone tell other people. Although as president of the Tapley Chargers Chess Club (known as the T triple C by the coolest of our members), I did move the pencil sharpener away from the door as Stage One of our Risk Management Plan.
The girl stands. I see that the joints in her polypropylene leg are made of titanium, a space-age metallurgical compound. My lunchbox is titanium. My mother says that it will last a lifetime, and my dad says, There’s not an aeronautical engineer in this country, George, who would take her to court over that one.
‘My name’s Charlotte.’ The girl sweeps her hair back in a rippling copper wave. ‘What are you going to name your dog, George?’
‘Charlotte,’ I begin, ‘I don’t think—’
‘Shut up, George.’ Chase walks around with his shoelaces undone, which is banned under Stage Two of the Tapley Chargers Risk Management Plan. ‘Give the dog a name. I thought you were bright.’
‘I’m not bright,’ I protest. ‘I just happen to be good at maths, chemistry, physics, biology and languages, and have a deep interest in astronomy and fast-acting glues. I’m not good with names. I inherited that from my parents, Olruss and Tedward. I myself am named after a failed IBM computer, the George 1972.’
‘How about calling her Sponge?’ Chase suggests. ‘Or Spot? Spotless? Collarless? Aimless?’
‘Amy.’ This is the first name that pops into my head. I did consider a few numbers I’m rather fond of, but they’d be difficult to call out in an off-lead park, I would think. ‘There. A short name for a short dog.’
Charlotte laughs. ‘Oh, George. You’re so funny. I’m going to put you in the book I’m writing.’
Book? ‘Well, I’m not sure it’ll be a particularly funny book,’ I say, ‘if I’m in it. Because my comic talents are limited to a witty fact-based riddle or a historically accurate limerick shared with the lads at the Tapley Chargers Chess Club. No way am I—’
Chase snaps his fingers. ‘Stop saying that you’re not things when you are things, George. Now get Amy, and let’s get going. We’ve got to get organised today to be off tomorrow.’
We say goodbye to Charlotte and leave the jetty, then Chase and I head into town in the bright sunshine, which does nothing to diminish my dark fears for the future. And when I’m fearful, I tend to sneeze, which is what led me to the creation of my Early Warning Hay Fever app called the Parker Sneezer Wheezer Appeaser. But my invention was wiped off the online world by the powerful and violent South American crime gang, the Unpleasant Piranhas, who run the multi-billion-dollar illegal tissue trade out of the slums of Panama City.