This Excellent Machine Read online

Pop didn’t reply.

  ‘Pop?’

  ‘Gotta get this done. If you wanna help you can get us a drink.’

  ‘Bloody hot in here. Clem, Mum says—’

  ‘We’re workin’,’ I shot back.

  ‘Doesn’t look like you’re working.’

  ‘We’re working,’ Pop growled, and she retreated. I heard the fly door slam and Mum going off and ‘Xanadu’ fading in and out of the ether.

  Pop laid more parts on the ground. Then he stood back and said, ‘Gotta go down to Repco.’

  ‘Want me to come?’

  ‘No. Get going before—’

  But it was too late. Slam. Slippers on the pavers. Mum at the door. ‘Dad, come in. This is bloody ridiculous.’

  ‘I gotta get this done.’

  ‘It can wait till tomorrow. There’s a change coming.’ She glared at him.

  ‘Clem said he’d drive me to Repco.’

  She looked at me, as if I was part of the problem. ‘Then you’re both inside, right?’

  ‘Can’t stop workin’ cos it gets a bit warm.’

  ‘At eighty-two you can. You will.’

  Datsun 120Y. Four angry cylinders; plenty of rust, seatbelts that didn’t retract. Sink-hole bucket seats with cushions. Radio hissing eastbound and down, although north-east, actually. Working despite the dust and Coke spray. A glove box full of gas bills and two-for-one pizza vouchers, and a fuel gauge that didn’t work, of course.

  All of which might lead you to ask, why hadn’t Pop fixed it? But that was, and is, life: mechanics with their shitty cars, teachers with their innumerate kids. But despite all this, it just kept going, and now it was my turn. L-plates. Seatbelts (done yours up, Pop?). I checked my mirrors, started the engine and reversed into Lanark Avenue. Driving too long in first before stopping, indicating and turning into Dragon Street, past the basketball stadium with its sub-floor vents for disposing of uneaten lunches. I stopped again, listening to the clunk of the spastic blinker. Pop said, ‘You don’t need to keep stopping.’

  ‘You’re meant to.’

  In his day (so the speech went) you could walk into a police station, hand over a couple of quid, fill in a form and whacko, there was your driver’s licence. He couldn’t see the point of all this mucking around.

  ‘That’s what they look for in the test,’ I said.

  No reply.

  ‘Lose eight points, you’re done. If you don’t come to a full stop—’

  ‘Okay, I got yer.’

  We turned onto North East Road: two lanes of normally heavy traffic, but it was mad dogs and Englishmen, so there were just a few trucks, a bus, and I said, ‘Went up the back of one of those.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I was riding behind a bus and it slammed on the brakes, and I went up the back.’

  He refused to be drawn, although I knew he was listening.

  ‘Just picked up my bike, got onto the footpath …’ I wrestled into fourth, braked hard, nearly did it again.

  ‘Watch yerself.’

  I waited to get around. ‘No one stopped, asked how I was. Even the people walking past. Didn’t I ever tell you?’

  He didn’t say I had or hadn’t; whether he remembered or not. Maybe he was searching his head, the chip-crumb memories.

  We drove in silence. Me, following the rules, him, trying to remember. ‘What did I say we needed?’

  ‘Plugs, leads, filters, coolant, and more oil.’

  He turned to me. ‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty of oil.’

  ‘That’s what you said.’

  ‘Ah.’ As he imagined the drum, I suppose, and listened to how it sounded when you knocked on the side. ‘Well …’

  Stoplights. We rolled. I applied the handbrake, but it didn’t make any difference. How about we tighten it, Pop, I’d asked, and he’d agreed it needed to be done.

  ‘Just thinkin’ …’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘If that quack’s right.’

  He was starting to think that the doctor might know best. The proof was everywhere. After all these years you couldn’t ignore the lost bankbooks and shoes left on the lawn and the forgotten name of the orange stuff on your dinner plate.

  ‘If he’s right?’ I said.

  ‘Then you can help.’

  He’d told me this a few times, but I suppose he’d forgotten that too. ‘If I forget things, you can remind me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Don’t make a big fuss but, you know, tell me where I put things.’

  His wedding ring, in the nail jar. I’d only found it by accident.

  ‘Everyone forgets stuff,’ I said.

  He knew he could trust me. As we continued up Holden Hill he said, ‘You can help me out with … remembering things?’

  ‘Course I will, Pop.’

  ‘But you gotta get back to school.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Keep the grey cells workin’, eh?’

  I parked at Repco, locked the door (that you could open without a key) and we went in. The smell of fresh rubber, everything old, worn or cracked resurrected in a plastic wrapper. A nursery of gasket seals and rims. Although Pop didn’t see it this way. He picked up a fan belt and said, ‘Can’t see how they can charge six dollars for a strip of rubber.’

  ‘They charge what people’ll pay.’

  ‘Well, then people are stupid.’

  He wasn’t a Repco man. He knew people in the trade and could get everything at cost. But not today. It was too far to drive to Barron for a few plugs and leads. ‘Suppose we’re just gonna have to pay it.’

  Jacks with none of the paint scratched off; lengths of carpet to put on your dash; artificial lemons to hang from your rear-view; manuals, hundreds of them; but again, according to Pop, you wouldn’t buy them here.

  ‘Carn.’ He approached the counter and deposited his bits and pieces. A middle-aged man smiled and said, ‘How are you, Doug?’

  ‘Good. You?’

  The man sorted the items. I suppose he wanted to say, Jack, my name’s Jack, but he couldn’t.

  Pop noticed his badge. ‘Just these few, Jack.’

  Jack had his shirt half-open and there was a cauliflower chest with a gold chain, and you could see his big nipples through his Repco shirt. ‘Clem, isn’t it?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You still driving that 120Y?’

  Pop piped in. ‘Goes like a charm, eh, Clem?’

  ‘It does, Pop.’

  ‘Drive it into the ground, I reckon.’

  Then Jack said, ‘How’s Fay?’

  Pop knew what he didn’t know. ‘She hates the heat.’ An attempt to disguise whatever it was that connected Jack to Fay. ‘Always complaining, isn’t she, Clem?’ As he looked at me, half-desperate.

  I smiled at Jack. ‘Does Mum still see Raelene?’

  ‘Not so much.’ He rang up the items and started placing them in a bag.

  I could see the look on Pop’s face. Fay, his daughter, was some how connected to Raelene. But who was she? Jack’s wife? His daughter? Or did she work here?

  Jack pushed the bag across the counter and waited. ‘Let’s call it twenty-five dollars.’

  Pop paid him and there was some small talk and we left. On the way home he asked, ‘Who was that fella?’

  ‘Mum used to work with his wife. He’d stop out the front, and pick her up.’

  ‘His wife? Raelene?’

  ‘She’d come in for a cuppa, remember?’

  Not a word I should’ve used.

  ‘See, you coulda told me that, Clem.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘No, you coulda said, Mum and this … Raelene …’ He checked the bag. ‘We can get it finished today.’

  ‘Tomorrow, Pop. It’s too hot.’

  ‘Tomorrow, if you help?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m not gonna pay them bloody prices. I need a manual for
that Valiant but I’m not payin’ that sorta money.’

  ‘I can drive you to Barron one day.’

  ‘Good-o. Soon?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Pop still had his full licence, but knew he wasn’t any sort of long-distance driver anymore. So it was me, on my learners’, who did most of the long trips.

  I stalled at the lights.

  ‘Careful, you’ll have someone up yer arse.’

  Lanark Avenue. Three roads, dissected by two. A trilogy of fibro houses on knee-high stilts. Asbestos boxes reclining in the sun with feature windows to let in the heat, a couple of diosmas and a citrus out the front, for old time’s sake. Weak concrete for long driveways with Kingswoods and Datsuns. A viburnum reaching to powerlines carrying Matlock-Love Boat electricity. Homes like the magazines promised. No more cracking walls. No, this was all finely clipped Santa Ana, kids on rugs on Saturday nights when you had to escape the house.

  Lanark I: from the Patricia Avenue flats to Dragon Street

  Lanark II (us): from Dragon Street to Fleet Avenue

  Lanark III (which led to school): Fleet to the mound (more on that later).

  I (1—22) was childhood, II (23—67) the middle bit, III (68—92) old age, and beyond. Anyway, this is how I imagined it, and still do. A three-part road for a three-part life. We were number 31—another fourteen years and I’d arrive where I’d begun. But Lanark Avenue was, and is, all of a human life, many lives, lined up behind brick cladding over your asbestos. It was, and is, the world boiled down to basics. Everything I’ve ever learnt or come to understand had its template, example and elaboration there. People, behaviour, jobs, what goes in your mouth and out the other end, living, dying (mostly slowly).

  Pop said, ‘Here.’

  ‘What?’

  He indicated two cars in front of the Polish hall (63—67, apparently they’d demolished a couple of houses to build it). Polish as in folk dances, cooking, music groups and, on a Saturday night, rock bands.

  ‘Try yer parkin’,’ Pop said.

  The gap was just big enough. But then again, you could get a 120Y in anywhere. Attempt number one; I connected with the gutter.

  ‘Come in at more of an angle,’ Pop said.

  Number two; too far from the gutter.

  ‘How many goes they give you?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Right, well, you gotta get it this time.’

  Just right, but then I pumped the accelerator and shot back, clunked the other car’s bumper bar.

  ‘Jesus, Clem.’ Pop got out, went around and had a look.

  I followed. ‘It didn’t seem that close.’

  We studied the dent.

  ‘You barely touched it.’ He scanned the deserted street. He could knock on a few doors, explain, or … ‘Get in.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we—’

  ‘Just get in.’

  The thing was, we didn’t know any neighbours this far down Lanark Avenue, and it was just a little dent and, if you didn’t tell anyone, they wouldn’t notice.

  Driving the rest of the way, Pop said, ‘That doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘Should we go back?’

  ‘That wouldn’t make it right either. It was just a bomb. I mean, if it was something posh …’

  I smiled. ‘Then you would’ve stopped?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  We passed the Donnellans (33). David was there, in his wheelchair, under his tree, watching. We waved; he lifted his hand, almost. His mum, Val, or brother, Peter, put him out most mornings, and afternoons, and he’d sit for hours at a time, watching the traffic, waving to Ernie on his way to the Windsor. Like a pot plant, and no, I don’t mean it that way. They’d just put him out. Better than sitting inside all day, watching television, staring at the four walls.

  We got out, and Pop looked over the fence and called, ‘How are you, David?’

  He mumbled something.

  Pop must’ve felt social. He wandered into the Donnellans’ yard of dead lawn and cracked Bay of Biscay, a few old fruit trees, mostly dead. ‘Bit hot to be outside, isn’t it? Want me to take you in?’

  ‘No.’ David shook his head.

  ‘Righto. Got something to drink?’

  ‘Mum’ll bring me something soon.’

  David Donnellan: rugby player, law graduate, then recluse (as the street whispers began). Ambulances coming and going. All of this, dimly remembered from my own early years, overheard (Aunty Maureen, again), assumed.

  ‘Okay,’ Pop said. ‘See you, David.’

  Muscular dystrophy. But what did the name matter? Plenty of people around Gleneagles were running rough. Plenty of cancer. The Famous Disappearing Marinelli (a heart attack, the same way Sid Donnellan had gone in 1958), a girl with Down syndrome around the corner, a couple of spastics. We didn’t mean it cruelly; it was just what they were called. You looked out for them, went and told their mum when you saw them heading towards North East Road.

  Coming in, Pop tripped on one of the cracks. ‘Fuck.’ Ever since David’s wheelchair days no one had watered anything at number 33. No sign of Val at the end of a stinker, standing in her dressie, watering the fig tree that grew in the same way rabbits bred. No Peter Donnellan, in the early hours (before the sun had spread across the horizon) in his slippers, sprinkling the burnt clivias.

  Pop nearly turned back, nearly said, Water yer fuckin’ lawn, but you couldn’t say anything to the Donnellans. Life had shat on them.

  Six years at university, and he’d never practised. I’d mentioned this to Mum during one of my why-should-I-go-back-to-school speeches, but she’d said (quite rightly, I suppose) David Donnellan was different. Really unlucky. Which was true. Peter, who’d graduated with him, had made good money in family disputes, divorce, that sort of stuff, before drifting into a premature, hand-knitted retirement.

  As we headed down the drive, Pop said, ‘Used to hide in our shed. Look at him now.’

  Six pm. A day that refused to cool. Me on my bed, strumming my thirty-dollar guitar. Nobody told me, struggling with chord changes, as Jen played Daryl and the boys at top volume. Summer love is like no other love. Of course, I was interested, so I tried the progression, D to A minor, or was it C—it was hard to tell. ‘Turn it down!’

  No reply.

  ‘Oi!’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Mum?’

  A voice from the lounge of Leyland wanderings. ‘Jennifer!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Turn it down.’

  ‘Tell him to shove his guitar …’

  I wasn’t fazed. Lennon’s white-hot words filled my bedroom. Along with the Nazis. See, genius. Sweaty hands and fingers, D strings and the bit between leg and balls. But what did it matter? I looked at the poster on my wall for inspiration: the great man, circa 1975.

  ‘Turn it down!’

  I waited for the sun to drop, but that was still hours away. The heat rising from my shag-pile savannah. There was a ten-dollar fan, but that just spread the love. So you just sweated and waited for a change, which always seemed to be a day, a week, eternity away.

  A woman’s voice: Mrs Champness. I sat on the end of my bed, trained my telescope and focused. Wendy, with her roller-hair and apron. I knew everything about her. Luckily, my window aligned with the Champnesses’ driveway, so I could see straight down the side of their house, into their yard (mostly). The shed, and clothes line, and aviary that Les sat in front of for hours at a time. He stood over his wife, shouting something like, Always gonna … what about we eat? Wendy just took it, the washing held firmly under her left arm. She moved to get around him, but he blocked her path. She half-stumbled into a lavender, but he blocked her way back. So she just stood waiting, as he kept shouting: Wait forever, wouldn’t I?

  She tried again, brushed against him; he pushed her, she fell onto the ground and the washing went onto the drive. She knelt, started gathering it, but he was leaning over her, letting her have it: If yer good and fuckin’ ready.

  I fe
lt bad for her, but what could I do? Grow red and blue polyester flesh, a rubber mask, utility belt? Fly across the road, pick up Les, rocket up a hundred metres, drop him, so that he came crashing down (in a pile of flesh and bones) at her feet? No Marvel hero could save Wendy from Les. She was stuck with him. I’d told Mum and Pop, but they’d just said, ‘That’s for them to sort out.’

  Let your love come easy and free …

  ‘Turn it down!’

  ‘I did!’

  It must have been the fifth time she’d played it. It wasn’t right.

  Les followed Wendy, shouting in her ear, but she ignored him. She picked up a singlet or teatowel she’d missed and went in. I trained my TK25 on their yard, in their windows, through their fly door and down their hallway. There were dark figures moving, but no more voices. What would Kirby’s Fantastic Four do? What did it matter what they’d do?

  Shit! Some old girl walked past, looked in my window and saw me. I sat still. I wasn’t spying, as such—just gathering information, attempting to come to some understanding. Sociological observations that would definitely, probably, perhaps, come in handy one day.

  I looked up and down the street. Down Ronald and Hester Glasson’s (30) drive. They were the Howard Hugheses of Gleneagles, keeping to themselves, trimming the hedge that screened them from the prying eyes (and telescopes) of suburbia. They had a big gal fence and, behind this, fruit trees that kept them from our world of dragsters and going home to Gravox. Ironic, really, since they ran a lamb’s wool seat-cover business from their back shed and every Saturday morning there’d be cars the length of Lanark Avenue, and Mr Glasson out measuring seats. Then he’d go in and return a few minutes later to fit the covers. Mum, Pop, Les Champness and Val Donnellan had all whinged, but never said anything to the Glassons. It was only a few hours on a Saturday morning, and there was always a chance you’d need your own cover one day.

  There was nothing in Nan’s encyclopedias that could explain why Les shouted at Wendy, or Ronald and Hester refused to mix. I’d attempted to understand them. Employed various schemes: Terman’s, Maxwell’s Graduated Percentile. In the absence of facts I’d improvised, made my own method, based on observation and careful note keeping. I had a little book in my drawer.

  12/i/84 LC shouting at WC again. Not drunk, just manic …

  These records stretched back years. Every neighbour had their own page.