Holden's Performance (10 page)

As for the loaded ‘He's an unknown quantity…'

Well, yes, when Holden's thoughts turned to Frank McBee he pictured the weave of his knitted back, or else a close-up of his jaw and neck, and at other times nothing but a rapidly diminishing dot. For McBee approached the family of Shadbolts the way he handled the smoking motorbike: rushing in, making noisy contact, veering off. His sentences rattled and vibrated, and when things went quiet he glanced left and right, his teeth chattering, waiting for an opening. Cut-throat shaving had stippled his neck. He grew a handlebar moustache and developed quite a spluttering kick-start laugh.

A side of McBee remained impenetrable. He could take a sudden close interest in a person. Often did. He made the point. Intimacy was allowed the way the arms of a pillion passenger encircled his waist for the duration of a ride. In the next breath he'd be standing there distant, a dot, taking no notice of anybody, his mind somewhere else. The Shadbolts regularly experienced it: part of his ‘unknown quantity'.

During this putting of distance between himself and others the jaw and nose of McBee unconsciously solidified, and especially at sunset among his dismembered aeroplanes, he assumed the same blind stare of the well-known visionaries standing in Vern's backyard. Holden had seen it when McBee first announced himself through the flyscreen door. Holden hadn't been mistaken. The roaring success of the scrap business allowed the former corporal to leave the day-to-day operation in the hands of a few trusted mechanics, and the Shadbolts' small nineteen thirties house had become a repository for local fauna in bric-a-brac and knick-knacks, the very latest in gadgetry and the woodcarver's art. Proof of McBee's success was there for all to see.

He was generous, and yet there was his impenetrable, invisible side.

Holden had not even been considering this on a day it had been raining. The gutters were still gurgling as he rode home on the heavy old machine, now reduced to ‘
MERC      Y
'

Each downward thrust of a pedal measured the space between the saturated telegraph poles. As Holden entered that simple regularity he began to experience an intense, private satisfaction, as if there on Magill Road in Adelaide he was in perfect tune with the universe. The entire world seemed to be laid out in clearly defined elements; water, glistening road and gutters were part of it; and almost with a laugh he imagined himself striding on the telegraph wires, a figure plunging through the sky. There was so much to see, so much to learn. Gripping the pitted handlebars he already decided how he'd enter the kitchen. He was going to burst in, rubbing his hands, talking his head off. That was the plan. To give an impression of energy. But as on other occasions an awkwardness would overrun his intentions at the last second, and he appeared extra-deadpan, suppressing his true feelings.

Lately his friend McBee had reverted to breezing in long after six. To kill time, and just for fun, Holden turned off into an unknown side street, although it had begun lightly raining.

The houses were spacious and set back. Instead of jacarandas, clumps of obnoxious lantana decorated the footpaths. Holden kept glancing left and right. One of these posh places could easily have an unknown Anson or Mosquito on the front lawn.

From behind, a familiar rattle of tappets entered the street and accelerated towards him. Holden swerved into the gutter. Already he had his knowing grin ready. But Frank McBee had twisted around to his pillion passenger, yelling something, before crouching and mounting the footpath opposite, and in an all too familiar hail of gravel and mud, spraying the hedges and a parked Buick, did his old slalom routine through the islands of lantana.

Above it all Holden heard the shrill notes of the squealing passenger. A peroxide blonde, she had pleasure-loving teeth. With her cheek glued to the curve of McBee's spine she managed to give the boy facing her a spontaneous little wave. Then, one leg extended in exaggerated speedway-style and giving the throttle a violent blip, which produced a fart of blue flame, McBee skidded sideways through a wrought-iron gate.

The trundle of trams and the gear-changing of evening traffic climbing Magill Road seemed to interfere with the boy's thinking.

For a good ten minutes he contemplated the toe of one of his dented shoes. Whenever he looked up he still saw the tail of the AJS parked at the end of the drive.

What could be going on in there? Holden wanted to pass through the wall of bricks—mottled, manganese which had been fired twenty years ago at Bennett's factory, only a few streets away—and enter the rooms, one by one, until he located McBee. But the house standing there not only remained bland, it appeared to be gazing blandly back at him.

Quickly he imagined how he'd greet his friend when he emerged. And what would McBee say, surprised to see him there?

A vague stain of uncertainty made Holden uncomfortable. He thought of his mother, waiting in the kitchen. It was enough to make him fiddle with a pedal. For the first time he wondered what he was doing there.

It was past six o'clock. Without looking again at the house Holden followed the sensible course and rode slowly home.

No one had met any of McBee's friends. Leaving the house early he'd be out all day and return after dark. Associates left digital messages over the telephone. It was all matter-of-fact.

It became a mystery: how could a man who clearly knew his way about town, a man with a future out of this world (i.e. beyond Adelaide), a man alert, and always ready with an impractical joke—how was it he never introduced a good friend, not one, not even in conversation? It bothered the Shadbolts. Even their Uncle Vern, Holden pointed out, had at least two good best-friends.

‘Of course Frank's very popular,' their mother explained, ‘with other men in particular. He's that type of man.' Though she immediately coughed and contradicted, ‘I know him better than anybody.'

Gradually this conspicuously vacant side of the man who came and went was accepted as part of his isolated make-up.

So that when Frank McBee announced from behind the paper he'd be bringing home a friend on Friday night, if that's OK by everybody, it sent the Shadbolts, after a moment's pause, running around in circles.

Holden, who regularly experienced McBee's ratbaggery, turned the colour of Bennett's brick. The peroxide blonde. Surely he wouldn't—.

‘Tell us. Who is he?'

They pleaded.

‘What's his name?'

‘But that's tomorrow night. What am I going to cook? Does he eat fish?'

At last McBee lowered the paper.

‘Stone the crows'—rural terms had penetrated the urban vocabulary in South Australia, along with mining slang—‘anyone would think I was bringing Jane Russell into the house.'

A private joke, it went down like a ‘lead balloon'—an aeronautical term, McBee was the first in the state to use it regularly, just as when giving the thumbs down he said, ‘That's a real no-no.' To Holden now he raised one shoulder and flashed one of Jane's cheesy smiles. The last of their American Liberators at Parafield had her symmetrical statistics curvaceously cartooned on the fuselage, spilling out of one-piece bathers.

‘Say, what's eating Holden-boy?'

‘Perhaps he's in the dark,' muttered Mrs Shadbolt, ‘like the rest of us.'

‘Friday nights are our special nights,' Karen reminded. ‘But I'm glad you're bringing him.'

‘Who said it's a him?' bellowed McBee, and laughed like a maniac from Parkside.

There he goes again, Holden frowned. And although he began smiling, something about McBee troubled him.

‘Don't you think I'm attracted to local sheilas?'

The newspaper sliding from his knees (‘
RAIN-SEEDING PLANS SHELVED
'), McBee scrambled after filly-legged Karen, giving their mother an affectionate pinch in passing.

As it happened, McBee's friend turned out to be a flight sergeant from Warragul, a good foot shorter than Holden, and sporting the pukka tooth-brush moustache of his superior officers. Natty little chap. When he grinned, which was every few seconds, he blinked vigorously. Originally a signal to show his prowess as a listener his blinking had developed into a Pavlovian tic.

‘How do you do?' their mother had offered her hand.

Standing to attention he remained at a slight Pisa-angle.

‘Sit down, sit down!' shouted McBee. ‘For Christsake, everybody sit down.'

It was then as the airman tried crossing legs under the table that Holden winced and realised he had only one leg.

‘Sorry, old boy,' said the airman. ‘My fault entirely.'

The evening advanced rapidly on several fronts: monologues shouted, froth and slops, and other repetitions. Two glasses were broken, as soon were laws of courtesy and commonsense.

Did the family always create such a deafening racket on Friday? Holden observed their behaviour through the eyes of the stranger. At the head of the table, and acting as headwaiter (‘Wait, don't get ahead of yourself'), McBee took on the complex tasks of chief toast-maker, bottle-opener, orator, joker. The last came easily to him. He told elongated stories. He repeated himself. (He was speaking to the ceiling.) A bang of the fist brought the table to order and a smile of indulgence from Mrs S. The success spread to his head. As Holden watched it expanded, squeezing transparent moisture from the pores, ballooning melon-round, and flushing into the blood of the rare steak he had insisted upon. After offering a glimpse of an inflated future McBee's face subsided into its familiar bright-eyed countenance. Patience meanwhile took its toll on Holden's mother. Drained to the colour of pearl she looked to be bored, definitely.

Mrs Shadbolt, and even Karen, began to wonder why the one-legged flight sergeant had been invited. McBee took no notice of him. Whenever he tentatively parted his purple Ups, which immediately activated the eyelids, McBee shouted the man down. To Holden it was not at all how he imagined a best-friend to be.

Ten-thirty, and Karen had nodded off in her chair.

The way the lonely airman surveyed his panatella between each puff showed he had been seeing too many American good-guy films. Now his way of half-smiling down at his lung-coloured smoke began attracting attention. The airman was getting too big for his boots (only officers were allowed shoes); and he seemed to be unaware of it. Between talking McBee was staring at him.

‘That looks like,' he suddenly pointed, ‘you're holding someone's prick in your hand.'

‘I say,' the flight sergeant reddened, and glanced at Mrs Shadbolt.

‘Don't mind us,' she yawned. ‘And Karen, she's off to bed.'

Holden stood up.

Grabbing his elbow McBee knocked a bottle over.

‘Before you go, what does this remind you of?'

Taking their visitor's chin he turned the face this way and that. Funny little chap—to put up with that. Well? McBee glanced around the table. Toulouse-Lautrec? No specs. How about Group Captain Douglas Bader? The legs more or less matched, but there was the problem of the charcoal moustache, all the rage in the forties. Why wasn't he original?

‘I know!' Holden's mother put her hand over her mouth.

‘Cut it out,' the airman blinked. ‘There's been a difficult war on.'

‘Shhh, let the drip have his go.'

Holden stood there like a post. His photographic memory had swung into place. Rough suggestion of Hitler—Adolf Hitler.

‘Right!' Whack on the shoulder-blades. ‘For zat, you vin vun hun-dered pounds and a free veek in Berlin.'

‘I said, that'll do. That's not funny. It's beyond control how a person looks.'

Frank McBee drowned him out with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers'.

‘You're a bully,' Holden's mother turned to him. ‘Why are you always a bully?'

‘I can take care of myself,' the sergeant interrupted. And he whispered, ‘I say, that boy of yours, if he is yours, gives me the ruddy creeps.'

‘Oh shut up.'

The ex-corporal didn't seem to be listening. Studying Holden's face he kept the elbow in a pincer-grip; Holden felt the man's strength. In his coarse shirt, and perspiring, he looked as if he'd come straight from a factory.

Holden's mother now had one of Adolf's panatellas in her mouth and the flight sergeant grinning encouragement slowly began disappearing behind reams of newspaper-coloured smoke.

Suddenly pitying her, and not knowing why, Holden felt ashamed.

‘Go to bed,' she coughed. ‘Frank, tell him to go.'

‘What's happening?' Karen asked.

Fumbling in the dark for his pyjamas Holden shook his head.

‘Nothing.'

And lying down the swirling impressions simply smothered his thoughts. The pillow's softness entered his ears and throat, filling the space behind his eyes, as water finds its own level. The adult murmuring from the kitchen rose and fell, a further blurring, edging higher, settling back, which served to upholster his disquiet; or so he thought.

Barely had memory and feeling departed when he was woken by a scream. As he sat up voices began overlapping, shouting. Another scream, higher still. That was their mother. In the bed opposite Karen began crying.

The shapes of things were still imprecise. In the soldier's room among the hat boxes and cartons of electrical appliances Holden crouching in his bare hocks found the .303. Its tremendous vertical weight pointed to the immensity of the task. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

Its weight briefly invited caution. So did its narrow precision-fitting length. But Holden had hardly thought about his action. ‘It happened like a dream.' Orchestrated by the floorboards his career started on schedule.

In the 100-watt kitchen he saw the moustachioed flight sergeant seated as before, his hands folded almost primly on his lap. His mother was partly obscured by McBee: bending over, he had her by the shoulders. On the exposed side of her dress a long glass of something had stained the shapes of India and Ceylon.