Listening to Mondrian (16 page)

So he did take me on a holiday at least once before, Ant realised. He took me camping. He saved my life. What other nice things did he do that I’ve forgotten?

‘Here you go, mate.’ The ranger handed Tony a cup of tea. ‘Lots of sugar in it. That’ll fix you up in no time.’

‘Thanks,’ Tony said. He looked at Ant. ‘Both of you.’

(12) THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

As well as collecting colour words, Ant would sometimes scrawl phrases from art books on to the inside flap of his sketchbook. One of these caught his eye as he opened the book back in the hotel room:

Landscape: a view or prospect of rural scenery, such as
can be taken in at a glance from a single point of view
. . . a picture representing such scenery . . .

He had read it a hundred times but now he found himself wondering: what if the same thing was looked at from two completely different viewpoints?

(13) ECONOMICS

The archaelogist wasn’t in the bar that night, but Ant again saw how easily his father could make friends with people. It was an abalone diver this time, a huge bloke with raw red hands and a scar running from eyebrow to jawline. Ant watched as Tony got the bloke talking about what he did – where he dived – how big the average catch was – how long he’d been diving – hazards and dangers . . .

‘Yeah, it can get pretty dicey down there at times,’ the diver said.

Tony shuddered. ‘I don’t know how you can stand it. I’d be hopeless. Got petrified just going down the caves this morning.’

Ant was surprised to hear his father come out with his fear in front of this bloke, but the ab diver nodded.

‘Everyone’s afraid of something, I reckon,’ he said. ‘With me it’s moths. Put me in a room with a bogong and I’m screaming in five seconds.’

Ant found himself remembering the woman in the aeroplane: her white knuckles. His own fear wasn’t triggered by a sense of physical danger, but by social things.

Ant could feel nervous about something as simple as telling his father he didn’t like bananas.

Tony pointed to the abalone diver’s glass. ‘What would you like?’

Over the next couple of drinks the diver asked Tony what he did for a crust, where he came from, and then the conversation moved back to abalone: prices, the Japanese market, fluctuations in the dollar, the value of the yen.

‘Course,’ the diver said, ‘it’s the licence fee that cripples you.’ He took a long swig of his beer. ‘They reckon it’s to protect the species or something,’ the diver went on. ‘Bloody conservationists.’ He made a spitting sound.

‘But – ’ Ant began. Then he was suddenly aware that every bloke in the bar was watching him, listening to him. He remembered the bumper stickers he’d seen on some of the utes in the carpark. ‘DOZE IN A GREENIE.’ ‘SAVE JOBS, NOT TREES.’

Tony deftly fielded the conversation in a safer direction. ‘It’s the same in my line of work,’ he told the abalone diver. ‘It costs an arm and a leg, before you earn a cracker.’

‘How come?’ the guy asked. ‘I’d’ve thought barristers would be on Easy Street.’

‘Oh, some of them,’ Tony agreed. ‘Some make a packet. But I’ve always mostly done Legal Aid work, and that’s really dried up now. The government just isn’t funding it any more.’ He nodded to the publican to order another round. ‘But whether I get any work or not,’ he went on, ‘I’ve still got to pay for my room in Chambers. And that’s on top of the rent for my flat. Still,’ Tony smiled, ‘I shouldn’t complain. There’s thousands far worse off.’

‘That’s for sure, mate,’ the diver agreed. ‘That’s for bloody sure.’

(14) THE FINE ART OF CONVERSATION

Later that night, lying in darkness in their room, Ant listened to the tempest. The roof had come off the fish cannery at Port MacDonnell, the publican had told them, and the harbour was closed at Portland. Some of the old-timers reckoned they couldn’t remember a storm quite this bad.

From the other bed, Tony asked tentatively, ‘You OK there? Not scared or anything?’

‘No,’ Ant said. The pub was an old stone building, huddled down into the earth. It felt safe.

But now that Tony had started talking, Ant wanted to keep going, wanted to say something – but how? Even in the dark, it wasn’t easy.

Just start . . .

‘Um,’ Ant said.

After a while came the reply: ‘Um what?’

‘Um, can I ask you something?’

‘Go on.’

Losing courage: ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes it does.’

‘No it doesn’t.’

Losing patience: ‘Come on, Antony. Out with it.’

‘Well. Um. You know how you’re really broke?’

‘No,’ said Ant’s father. ‘I am not really broke. I am just not really rich.’

‘Yeah, well, I was thinking . . .’

Silence.

‘Thinking what?’

All in a rush: ‘Thinking about how, if I changed over to the Creative Arts High School, then you wouldn’t have to pay my school fees?’

‘I am happy to pay the fees for your school.’

‘Yeah but . . .’

‘I went there, and I am happy for you to go there.’

So that was that. Mum had said not to waste his breath.

Then out it spluttered.

‘Yeah, but
I’m
not happy to go there. How do you think I feel, going somewhere you went? Hearing about you from the teachers, every day of my life? Looking at your name, on the board in the chapel? Having the same name, and being told all the time that I don’t live up to it?

How do you think I feel?’

‘It was the same for me, remember?’ Tony’s voice murmured. ‘I followed Grandpa there.’

‘Yeah, but you were good at the same things as him. I’m different.’

Silence for a moment.

‘I just don’t fit in there. And anyway, I hate it.’

‘Is it that bad?’

‘Worse. And I want to go to the Creative Arts School, and study something that I want to learn about.’

After a while: ‘It was your grandfather that put your name down for the school. Day you were born. I guess I just went along with it.’ Silence again. ‘I’d have to talk to your mother about it.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’ It was the first time he’d called his father that for a long time.

(15) DAY FIVE

Pancake time again. At some point in the night, the wind had dropped. Now sunlight was trying to break through the drizzle.

Ant was studying the map. Working out a route that would take them back to Melbourne a different way from how they’d come. His flight went at 5.15. Nine hours from now. Mum would pick him up from the airport; he’d be home in time for tea. Then he’d have nine days to potter about before school started.

‘I guess we could head inland to Winnap,’ he read off the map. ‘Then up a bit to Casterton. Join the highway and come down through Hamilton, back to Geelong, and up to Melbourne. Or after Hamilton we could just head east towards Ballarat, then come down to Melbourne.’

Tony squeezed lemon over his pancake, sprinkled sugar. ‘Which way would you like to go?’

Ant’s eyes scanned the map, flicking over exotic place names, blue threads of rivers, green patches of national park, an ochre colour towards the centre . . .

‘The way I’d like to go,’ he joked, ‘is straight up north, to the Little Desert National Park, then on from Dimboola, through Hopetoun – there’s another national park there – to Ouyen, or however you pronounce it. Up through the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park to Mildura, then all the way up the Silver City Highway to Broken Hill.’ Ant laughed, scoffed down his orange juice.

‘OK,’ Tony said. ‘Better ring your mother and tell her not to meet you.’

‘What?’ Ant’s eyes were on his father. He had to be joking.

‘Why not?’ Tony asked. ‘You’ve got another week of holidays, I haven’t got any work till August. We can go up to Broken Hill, poke around a bit, and then I can drive you back to Adelaide. Check out this school you’re so keen on, have a word with Mum about it . . .’

‘Do you really mean it?’ Ant had read about Broken Hill in an art magazine: lots of painters lived there. Just from photographs, Ant knew why: it was the colours of the landscape. Then he thought of something. ‘What about, um, money? Won’t a trip like that cost a lot?’

His father smiled. ‘There should be a disposal store in one of the bigger towns, where we could buy another tent pole and a fly. I don’t know about you, but I feel like going camping.’

‘Great,’ Ant agreed, and meant it.

(16) RECORDING THE JOURNEY

As they headed inland, the road began to open out before the windscreen. The sky was getting bigger and bluer, by the minute.

Ant propped his sketchbook against the flap of the glovebox, got out a pencil, began a rapid record of the journey.

Glancing over as the folds of the landscape began to flow across the page, Tony asked, ‘How on earth do you do that?’

‘It’s easy,’ Ant told him. ‘You just put down what you want to remember.’

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author and publisher would like to thank New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to quote Ezra Pound (pages 132 and 133). The 'Jonathan Jo' verse on page 3 is from
When We Were Very Young
(Methuen, London, 1924font-weight: bold;) by A.A. Milne. The scientific information about the caves in 'Land/scape' is derived from publications of the National Parks Service – Victoria