Owen Marshall Selected Stories (15 page)

F
or a long time I thought everybody could see the future in the way I could myself: an expectation based upon desire. The dream logic of the mind. Even though events were often very different, it was the reality I blamed and not the vision. The reality failed to match the vision, which was the first and greater view. The actual encroached, but expectation drew off, and set up again upon the high ground of the future.

I remember asking Dusty Rhodes what he thought being in a submarine was like. I dunno, he said, I dunno do I, until I've been in one. What a way to live. He didn't know any better. He was spared any disillusion at least. No matter how many times it happened, I felt a sense of loss and betrayal when things proved other than I had seen them. Not different only, but also less in fitness and in unity.

Like the fancy dress ball, for instance. I was twelve when the senior classes had a fancy dress ball to end the year. It was a strict convention that you had to have a partner in advance. Anyone not paired off would hold his hand in fire rather than turn up that night. As far as I knew I had only three attributes to attract the opposite sex. I was the second fastest runner in the school, I was top in maths and I had blue eyes. Dusty Rhodes was fastest boy, I never beat him, although sometimes I dreamt I might. I became accustomed to despair, and his greasy hair in front of me as we ran race after race. Dusty drowned in the Wairau the next year, by the berth of the coaster which used to come over from Wellington and up the
river. For years I had a guilt that I might have wished it. I was second fastest in the school to Dusty. I used to boast to the others that my legs just went that fast without any effort from the rest of me. To enhance this I had the habit of looking sideways as I ran, as if to see the cars on the road to the bridge, and escape the boredom of my automatic legs. Being top of maths was the second thing, and quite beyond my control. I was always top and never had an explanation for it. I was fearful I would lose the trick of it. And the blue eyes. There were only four boys with blue eyes in the class, and Fiona McCartney told Bodger that she liked blue eyes best. The class had been singing beautiful, beautiful brown eyes, and Bodger asked her which she preferred. Fiona McCartney blushed and said blue eyes, and the other girls giggled. I didn't forget that. I was beginning to store up points of knowledge about girls. Fiona McCartney was the oracle about such things at that school.

So those were the advantages I had going for me, and I exploited them to the full in the weeks before the fancy dress dance. I never ran so often or so fast. I was closer to first and further from third than ever before. I turned my head to the side with casual indifference and the old legs went with a will. I took to answering more maths questions in class, and fluked most of them right, and I used to widen my eyes when I was close to girls so that the blue of them would be more conspicuous.

Fiona McCartney passed a message to me saying she wanted to see me by the canteen at playtime, and when she came we went over by the sycamores and railings. She put one hand on the railing and swung her right foot in an arc on the grass. She glanced at her friends by the canteen and considered she had set a good scene. I widened my eyes at her, and held my breath without realising it. She told me that she wouldn't be going to the dance with me. I hadn't asked her, but she knew she was every boy's choice and was letting me down gently. As I was the second fastest and so on, she realised my expectations. I felt dizzy, then remembered to breathe out again. She
said I'd have no trouble getting someone to go with. The girls had been talking, she said. She said the girls had been talking and she put the tip of her tongue between her teeth and smiled. I smiled back and widened my eyes as if I were aware of what girls said.

It made me more anxious, though, Fiona saying that, especially when we started having dancing practices. I wondered which of the girls had partners arranged already, for I wanted to avoid the humiliation of asking them. Kelly Howick saved me the trouble. At the third practice she said to me that I wasn't much of a dancer, and was I going to the fancy dress night. I said that I thought that I probably would. Casually I said it, and looked to the side as if I were running. I widened my eyes too, which wasn't much good when I was looking away. Are you listening? she said. In the past I'd thought about Kelly mainly as the girl most likely to keep me from fluking top in maths. She was top in most things. She had definite breasts, though, and was pretty. Only a certain matter-of-fact manner prevented her from being more like Fiona McCartney. It came to me that she was willing to be my partner. Only later did it also occur to me that she and her friends had made the decision without my presence being required. I will be your partner if you like, she said. She didn't need an answer. She seemed pleased for me. She smiled at me, and at her friends, as we moved awkwardly to the dancing instructions of Bodger and Miss Erikson.

I'd had my share of success in life. Top of maths and running, as I've said, and trials for the under-thirteen reps, but in that school hall I felt for the first time the heady stuff of sexual preferment. Kelly Howick had sought me out. I looked with contempt upon the others in the hall: Dusty Rhodes who could only run fast, and Bodger with the sweat stains on his shirt. For the first time I perceived myself in the mirror of the feminine eye; I was filled with casual arrogance and power, I was aware of a new dimension to life. My head kept nodding indolently as we danced, and my shoulders shrugging in some instinctive male response.

The knowledge of sexual magnetism was a novelty. I felt I should be able to tap it for other purposes. The day after the dancing practice I raced Dusty again. I felt the new power within me and was resolved to express it in my running also. I would bury him. In fact it made not an inch of difference. I still had to run behind Dusty, his hair bobbing. And he didn't even have a partner to the dance. It was a shock to discover that the power generated by sexual preferment was not directly transferable to athletic performance.

In my mind I was quite sure how the fancy dress dance would be. Sure, I had been let down somewhat in the past by the failure of events to conform with my directions, but I wasn't responsible for that. I saw Kelly and myself always in the centre of the hall, always in the better light, and somehow slightly larger than our classmates. I would dance, or stand quietly and attract the attention of other girls because of my blue eyes, and a certain calmness of manner. Kelly would be constantly asking my opinion, and I would be giving it with easy finality. Instead of the lucky spot waltz there would be quizzes on tables, or a sprint the length of the hall and back when Dusty happened to be outside.

Kelly Howick talked to me during practices. I made the adult discovery that some people are ugly. I'd had the foolish idea that there were no common standards of appearance. Now I began to realise otherwise. Collie Richardson, for example, who told the best jokes in the school. He had a very small upper lip. It was like a little skirt, and his gums and teeth were always exposed beneath it. Once I realised he was ugly I never liked his jokes as much again.

At the practices Kelly took over my instruction. She gave an individual repetition of what Bodger and Miss Erikson kept saying. You've not got much rhythm, have you, she said. Me! Second fastest and with automatic legs. In other circumstances it would have irritated me, but in the complacency of preferment I let it pass. I just looked aside and widened my eyes at Fiona McCartney. Certain things about girls have to be tolerated for the overall benefit.

I skidded on loose stones by the sycamores next day and put a long graze along my left forearm. Mrs Hamil put iodine on it and Kelly was quite concerned. It won't show on the night, will it? she said. What are you going to wear anyway? What's your outfit like? Her saying that made my arm begin to throb. The blood seeped out into beads despite the iodine. I hadn't done anything about a costume. The priority of getting a partner had obscured all other aspects of the dance. I asked my mother about it that night, and she said that's nice, a costume party is nice. Sure, we'll think of something. And my father made jokes for his own amusement about being cloaked in ignorance, or dressed in a little brief authority. I could tell they didn't have the right view of the ball at all, that they were thinking of it as some party, some kids' thing.

Tony Poole said his parents were hiring a full cowboy outfit with sheepskin chaps, bandanna and matched revolvers. Dusty's parents were pretty poor. I thought he wouldn't have much to wear even when he did arrange a partner. But he said his cousin had a Captain Marvel costume which had been professionally made. What is it you're going as? Kelly asked me again. I started questioning my mother once more. What was she going to do for me? Kelly was going as Bo Peep. What about my costume, I said to my mother. Oh, we'll rustle up something don't you worry, she said. But I did. The more casual and unperturbed she was, the more I worried.

Finally my mother said she thought I should go as a parcel. A parcel, Jesus. She remembered someone at the New Year's party as a parcel, and he was a great hit. It was a cheap costume too, she said. A parcel, Jesus. It was the originality of it that intrigued her, she said. Anyone could go as a policeman or a musketeer; people grew tired of seeing them. The parcel left only head and limbs out, she said, and I could make up a giant stamp with crayons, and over my parcel body have stickers saying Fragile, London, This Side Up, Luxemburg, Handle with Care. The parcel was set to torpedo my night with Kelly Howick. Bo Peep Kelly with her beginning breasts and braided hair,
and me as a brown paper parcel with a stamp done in crayon.

There was a sense of inevitability about the parcel. I tried to persuade my mother that I should go as something else. I said I wouldn't wear it, but the parcel became part of me before I ever saw it, something irrevocable and humiliating before I was even dressed in it.

The dance was supposed to start at eight. It said so on the printed sheet I brought home. Nobody arrives at a dance on time, though, my mother said. She never realised how little adult convention applies to the young. It said eight o'clock on the sheet, didn't it? Why would it say that if it didn't mean it? Nobody comes to a dance till later my mother said. It's just how it's done. But I saw eight o'clock written. I knew everyone would be there. Anthony Poole in his cowboy outfit, and Kelly as Bo Peep.

On that Friday I didn't run well. Dusty beat me without hardly trying, and although I looked away as I ran, I was having a hard time to keep ahead of Ricky Ransumeen in third place. My automatic legs were being affected. I thought a good deal about that because it seemed unfair. When I was selected by Kelly, when desirability was conferred on me, although the power was great, it hadn't made me any faster, as I told you. But on that last day, as I turned my head in studied casualness, instead of the flowing leaves of the sycamores by the fence, I saw myself in a parcel costume with a crayon stamp. Just for a moment there in the stippled leaves and keeping pace with me was a
doppelgänger
in a parcel. I lacked rhythm as I ran, I lacked a full chest of air, my automatic legs made demands.

It wasn't until after tea that my mother even began the parcel. I had to wear my swimming togs so no clothes would show below the parcel. The brown paper strips were wrapped around me like nappies, and round and round my chest, and holes cut for my head and arms. I was tied with twine and with a yellow ribbon in a bow at the front. Over my heart was stuck the crayoned stamp, huge and serrated. Other oblong stickers were plastered on with flour-
and-water paste. This Side Up, Handle with Care, On Her Majesty's Service, Do Not Rattle. I was finally packed by eight o'clock, and set off on my bike for the school assembly hall. I tried to sit up straight on the seat so that the parcel wouldn't crinkle too much. The wrapping made noises as I rode, and the greasy blue and red head on the stamp grinned in the setting sun. I told myself that the parcel was really quite clever and would go down well. I could only half believe it, yet I never seriously thought about not going. The power of sexual preferment was enough to transform me. It would make difference distinction, and nonconformity audacity. To be with Kelly Howick would be sufficient to defeat the parcel.

They had started, of course. I knew it. The sheet had said eight o'clock after all. The light from the hall spilled out into the soft summer evening. The noise of the band and the dancing slid out with the light, and echoed in the quad. Bodger patrolled the grounds, alert for vandalism, or lust. Late, said Bodger. He looked at my costume and said no more. As I went in he was still there on the edge of the light and the noise, and with the blue evening as a backdrop. He had his hands behind his back, and he swayed forward on his toes. Hurry up then, said Bodger. I slipped in round the edge of the door, and worked my way over to the boys' side. Tony Poole had a curled stetson, sheepskin chaps, checked shirt and six-guns with matching handles. He came back from seeing Fiona McCartney to her seat. Toomey was a fire chief with a crested helmet that glittered, and a hatchet at his belt. Dusty's Captain Marvel insignia was startling on his chest, and his cloak was cherry rich and heavy. And I was a parcel. A brown paper parcel with bare legs and sandshoes. A brown paper parcel that crinkled when I moved. A brown paper parcel with a stamp drawn up in red and blue. It wasn't right: not for the second fastest runner in the whole school, not for the top maths boy, and the one preferred by Kelly Howick. What the hell is that you're wearing? said Dusty. Wouldn't you like to know, I said.

I went over to claim Kelly when the music began for the next
dance. It was a foxtrot. I had learnt both sorts of dance. A waltz was where you took one step to the side every now and again, and a quickstep was where you kept forging ahead. A foxtrot is just a slower quickstep. I'm a little late, I said, smiling and nodding. I found that, without meaning to, I was trying to compensate for being a parcel. Kelly's Bo Peep outfit suited her. The bodice with the crossed straps accentuated her breasts, and she had a curved crook. She looked fifteen at least. As we danced I knew that she was looking at the parcel. I heard myself laughing loudly at Captain Marvel who was fighting with a pirate, but Kelly kept looking at my costume. I was going to come as a pirate myself, I said. I had a better pirate outfit than that; a huge hat with skull and crossbones, and an eye-patch. What? she said. I was going to come as a pirate, I said. I can't hear you for all the noise your brown paper makes, Kelly said. It wasn't so, of course. The band was making more noise than the parcel. No, she was giving me the message. Even the way she danced with me was different from other times. She had a dull expression on her face, as if she was doing me a favour by dancing. I tried whirling her around, the way Bodger and Miss Erikson had demonstrated. I nearly fell over, she said. It was a lesson for me in the transience of sexual preferment. It was apparently something that had to be taken advantage of immediately.