The Starlings Page 7

  Zarlok/Othello: Cassio, go and find Iago. We will put the utmost censure of the law in force against him and we will execute him with strict tortures.

  I can remember being especially proud of fuckaduck, whose charm had seduced me when one day I had heard a tradesman use the expression. I was also proud of my solution to the difficulty posed by Desdemona’s death. Why hadn’t Shakespeare or the Lambs seen such an obvious outcome? Good people should survive and bad people should perish.

  The Hawthorn–Fitzroy match was played on Saturday afternoon at Victoria Park, the home of the dreaded Collingwood. Victoria Park was an unappealing ground where the toilets were inadequate and the supporters abusive: it could get very cold, too, and my mother had fussed around and made sure I was fitted out in jumper and parka and sturdy shoes and the warm Hawthorn scarf my father had ceremoniously given me along with my Hawthorn jumper when I’d turned five. Consequently I was too hot for what was a mild autumn day. I had slipped Fleshbane in my parka pocket for comfort, and every now and again I surreptitiously fingered his sharp jaw, the knotted muscles of his body.

  ‘MORON!’ shouted my father three minutes into the match, springing to his feet and shaking his fist. ‘MAGGOT! Push in the BACK! Are you blind or WHAT?’

  This was one of the things I loathed about the football. It was not the case that my father was a lovable or cuddly person. But his general gloominess was at least a consistent facet of his personality, and I had learned to deal with it. I never recognised the bad-tempered lout he turned into at the football, and I couldn’t understand how he could enjoy football so much when it made him so angry. I was embarrassed by his outbursts. And there was something scruffy about him on football days, as if he had deliberately wanted to disconnect from his super-spruce dentist persona. He always wore an ancient brown jacket (which he said was lucky, whatever that meant) and a disgustingly furry Hawthorn scarf: my mother had given him a new Hawthorn scarf a couple of years ago, which, according to her, was still in its cellophane packaging at the bottom of his socks drawer. I thought he looked like an old derro. I huddled beside him and tried to pretend we were not related. This wasn’t easy, as he was constantly calling on me to condone his rage. All I could see were muddy distant men, jumping and running in incoherent ways, sometimes coagulating into a blurred pack, sometimes randomly separating out. Without my father’s commentary, I would have had no idea what was going on. The worst of it all was that I had to pretend to care.

  The other thing that I found hard about going to the football was the crowd. I felt as if the crowd were a great beast, curling itself around the ground. It murmured and grumbled and roared; it sobbed and sighed and shouted. I found it extraordinarily threatening, especially at the bigger grounds where it felt as if millions of people were teeming around me. The odd thing was that as individuals these people were not unfriendly. They offered me lollies and cracked jokes and patted me on my beanie-clad head. But then, once the match had begun, they were all magically subsumed into this terrible muttering beast.

  On this particular day all my father’s favourite players were on the ground. Matthews was playing, and Tuck and Brereton. DiPierdomenico, Eade, Ayres, Knights, Buckenara, Judge, Kennedy: it was a glittering rollcall, and my father’s comments throughout the match told me that they all lived up to their superhuman standards. The Hawks won by twenty-eight points and were fifth on the ladder. As we drove home, all was right with the world. That is, until he turned on the car radio to find out that Gary Ablett was said to have defeated St Kilda almost single-handedly, kicking six goals and taking a series of extraordinary marks. Ablett’s nickname was God, and this exasperated my father—probably, I think, because according to him there was only one god, and that was Lethal Leigh.

  ‘It was St Kilda,’ he said to me. ‘I ask you. Bottom of the ladder. If Geelong couldn’t beat St Kilda they don’t deserve to be in the competition.’

  That night, on the television, some football commentator made a remark about the Holy Grail.

  ‘What does he mean?’ I asked, confused. I had come across the Holy Grail only in the tales I had read about King Arthur. I knew it as something mystical, ungraspable, enigmatic.

  ‘The cup,’ said my father, impatiently. ‘The premiership cup.’

  ‘Why do they call it that?’

  ‘It’s ironic,’ said my mother. ‘They use the Holy Grail as a metaphor, because football supporters regard winning the grand final as being as important as the Holy Grail. And they’re both silver cups, sort of. Or was the Holy Grail gold?’

  ‘It was gold,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, ironic?’ said my father. ‘What’s ironic about it?’

  My mother gazed at him. ‘Ironic, Frank. You know what ironic means. It’s a rhetorical device. Irony makes a point by playing on perceived incongruities.’

  ‘I know what it means,’ he said. ‘I don’t actually need an English teacher to tell me what it means. I just don’t see why you’re using it in this instance. What’s ironic about the grand final?’

  ‘It’s using a heroic figure of speech in an unsuitable context. Need I say more?’

  ‘There’s nothing unsuitable about the context. Footy’s a game of heroes. Champions. Why shouldn’t the premiership cup be called a Holy Grail? It’s a heroic thing, isn’t it? It’s something to aspire to. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Frank, the last thing I want is to get into a debate about it.’ She spread her hands. ‘Nicky asked a question and I tried to answer it. Finish. End. Okay?’

  ‘What is it anyway?’ asked Pippa. ‘The Holy Grail?’

  My mother looked hurt.

  ‘Pippa, I read you all of the Lancelyn Green version of The Arthuriad. Twice.’

  ‘I know,’ said Pippa. ‘I know it was the shining cup and everything, and the Grail Maiden carried it, and it was always appearing and then disappearing before anyone could do anything with it, and it smelled nice and it was mysterious and beautiful. I remember all that stuff. But what was it exactly that made it so special?’

  ‘It was the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper,’ said my mother, repressively.

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘Also Joseph of Arimathea held it beneath Jesus when he was on the cross and caught his blood in it.’

  My father and Pippa looked at me with dislike.

  One day that week after school Miss Prentice asked me to remain in the classroom. I couldn’t remember having done anything wrong. Parent-teacher interviews were scheduled for that evening, however, and these always made me anxious.

  ‘Nicky,’ she said, sitting down at the desk next to mine. ‘I want to talk about this work you did the other day.’

  I looked at the page she was holding. Maths wasn’t a great favourite of mine, but on the other hand I wasn’t too bad at it, and I was alarmed to see the amount of red scribbled over the paper.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Nicky, usually we work from books, right? Or from copied sheets. But this time the photocopier had broken down and I wrote the sums on the board. Do you remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Did you have any problems reading the board?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe how?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. I didn’t know where this conversation was heading.

  She stood and went to the blackboard, where she wrote a line of figures. ‘What’s this number?’

  I squinted. ‘Six?’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘Seven?’

  ‘Nicky, you’re just guessing, aren’t you? You’re making the numbers up?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Come over here and read the numbers.’

  I went over and read the numbers, which were eight, five, and nine.

  ‘You need glasses, young man,’ said Miss Prentice.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure. Show me ho
w close to the board you have to be to read the numbers comfortably.’

  I took a few experimental steps backwards and forwards, and finished up quite close to the board.

  ‘It’s okay, Nicky. I’ll talk to your mum and dad tonight.’

  I wasn’t at all sure it was okay. I imagined this might be another disappointment for my father to add to all the others. His son was a non-footy-playing sissy who suffered from dizzy spells, played with dolls, and needed glasses. Could it get any worse?

  In fact my fears were misplaced. My father was almost jubilant. Short-sightedness provided an excuse, I discovered, for many of my shortcomings.

  ‘You never know,’ I heard him saying to my mother. ‘He might be able to kick a footy. He might even be able to mark it.’

  ‘A cause for celebration, then,’ she returned, with that flick in her voice that she kept for him.

  He disregarded this. ‘And it explains why he doesn’t get excited when we go to matches, why he can’t ever seem to follow what’s going on. He can’t see what’s happening.’

  He turned to me. ‘Nicky,’ he said. ‘When we go to the footy, can you read the numbers?’

  ‘The players’ numbers?’

  ‘Yes, on the backs of their jumpers. Can you read them?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He turned to my mother in triumph. ‘You see? He’s never been able to read the numbers!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard him say so.’

  ‘Well, don’t you see? Nicky, this is why you don’t enjoy the footy so much. You can’t read the numbers, so you don’t know who the players are! Why didn’t you ever tell me?’

  I stared at him. Suddenly the future held hundreds of football matches, unfolding like hinged mirrors, all of them featuring my father and his delight that finally I could see the numbers on the players’ backs. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  My father came to my bedroom that evening, while I was reading. Uncharacteristically, he sat on the bed. We eyed each other.

  ‘Nicky,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to push you. Of course we don’t have to go to the footy if you don’t want to.’

  I watched him.

  ‘But I thought perhaps we could go somewhere else? Just the two of us?’

  ‘Somewhere else?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d like to go to the art gallery?’

  I was horrified. ‘The art gallery?’

  He nodded eagerly.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said politely. I couldn’t imagine what he was on about. I had no interest in going to the art gallery with my father. I would shadow him while we inspected his interests and neglected mine. He would ask me questions I couldn’t answer; he would try to interest me in things I disliked. It would be a terrible outing. I was filled with embarrassment, so I returned to my book. I didn’t look up as he left.

  I am ashamed, now, to record this act of spectacular ungraciousness. But so it was.

  A few days later my glasses were ready. I went with my mother to the optician’s. He brought them out, polished them, bent over, and settled them experimentally on my face.

  ‘You can open your eyes, you know,’ he said.

  I did so, and was instantly shocked by the texture of his skin. His face was coarse with wrinkles and pores, and there were curly black hairs in his nose; he had dandruff. He was disgusting. I felt like Gulliver in Brobdingnag. Involuntarily I drew back.

  ‘Makes a difference?’ he enquired.

  I looked around, lost for words. Everything was slick and crisp with solid outlines: the comfortable blur I was used to had disappeared and I missed it. The world had become too definite: it pressed in on me and made me giddy. I fumbled with the arms of the glasses.

  ‘No, Nicky,’ cried my mother, delighted. ‘Don’t take them off!’

  Panic-stricken, I glanced around. Everywhere people were delineated with frightening clarity, and objects had threatening edges and corners.

  ‘I don’t like them,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to wear them, do I?’

  The optician laughed. I suppose he wasn’t necessarily a cruel man, but he wasn’t making a good impression on me.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he said with horrible jollity. ‘Your mum and dad aren’t going to be too happy if you don’t wear these glasses, after all the money they’ve paid for them.’

  ‘Nicky,’ said my mother, ‘you look gorgeous, darling.’

  I hadn’t even looked at my reflection, but when I did it seemed to me I looked far from gorgeous. More to the point, I looked like somebody else.

  But protesting was no use, of course. I needed glasses, and glasses had been obtained for me. I told my mother I felt dizzy: she took my arm and guided me out of the optician’s shop. I said I felt sick, which wasn’t, strictly speaking, true; she stroked my cheek and said it would all be better soon.

  When we arrived home my father greeted us with excitement. He had planned a treat for me. He would hold a newspaper up at some distance and I would demonstrate with what ease I could now read the headlines.

  Miserably, I sat in a chair at the far end of the sunroom while he stood at the opposite wall. My mother cheered on the sidelines. Pippa drifted down to see what was going on and lounged in the corner. She and I hadn’t spoken much since the Adam Pascoe episode. I didn’t appreciate her presence.

  ‘Here,’ cried my father, waving the sport section of the Age at me.

  ‘BLUES NAME SILVAGNI,’ I said.

  ‘Good boy! And can you read the smaller one? Here?’

  I squinted. ‘SERGIO RELENTS—ALLOWS TEENAGE SON TO PLAY.’

  ‘He shouldn’t,’ muttered my father. ‘The kid’s too young. Never mind—what about this, Nicky?’

  ‘It’s too small,’ I said.

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Don’t push him, Frank,’ said my mother.

  My father advanced down the room, flapping the paper at me. When he was more than halfway towards me, I got it.

  ‘HAWTHORN DROPS BIG “DIPPER”,’ I said.

  My father’s joy knew no bounds. ‘Seriously, Nicky,’ he assured me, later, during dinner. ‘This is going to make so much difference to you! How about the footy this weekend? We’re a shoo-in.’

  ‘We only just went,’ I said.

  He looked disconsolate.

  ‘They still make me feel a bit dizzy,’ I tried. ‘Can we go again when I’m more used to them?’

  For once my father was right in supposing Hawthorn would win easily. The match that week was against St Kilda, who were at the bottom of the ladder. But, pleading dizziness (I could tell this wasn’t going to work as a long-term excuse), I was able to wriggle out of it. The school holidays had just started, and I was looking forward to a fortnight of making up plays and stories.

  I wasn’t popular with my mother, either. She’d suggested celebrating my new vision by taking me to the holiday show, Paddington Bear. ‘Now you’ll be able to see theatre properly!’ she said. When I declined as nicely as I could, she wanted to organise a movie afternoon with my friends at the new Disney animated version of Robin Hood. I was astonished that she might think either event was in any way a suitable entertainment for someone caught up in higher dramatic concerns. I could also see that one of her objects was to bond me to a mythical group of boys who were called my friends but who did not in fact exist. I got on perfectly well, in a remote kind of way, with most people in my class, although I knew Nicky Starling was regarded as strange. (I didn’t mind being different, but I hated being perceived as different.) I knew that my inability to make particular friends (something the extroverted Pippa was extremely good at) was a source of concern to my mother, and I deeply resented her efforts to manufacture situations in which I had to do things with my friends.

  Now I was free to slip around to Grandpa’s on Saturday afternoon. I’d rung him to tell him about my new glasses, but it was really Rose I wanted to show them to. A couple of the girls in my class had giggled at them, or rather at me in them, and I want
ed Rose’s assurance that this was unjustified. The problem was that the frames were dark-rimmed and round. Harry Potter would later make such frames fashionable, but Harry Potter hadn’t arrived yet, and I was self-conscious about my appearance, even though I was beginning to find that there were advantages in being able to see properly. For one thing, I suspected that jigsaws would become easier, so I was keen to launch a new attack on the picture of the ship being towed.

  Since I had turned eight, there was less fuss about my walking the two blocks to Grandpa’s on my own, so long (my mother said) as I was expected, and didn’t dawdle, and didn’t speak to anybody, and was properly warm and protected, with jacket and scarf and beanie to defend me from the elements. I popped Brutum in my parka pocket and set out. The streets in our area had many deciduous trees—oaks, plane trees, liquidambars—and autumn was in full swing. In one way the walk to Grandpa’s was more magical now, with my glasses, because I could see the individual elements of the scene—the veined skeletons of the leaves, the bricks in the brickwork, the petals of flowers (there were still some late roses blooming), the fine gradations in puddles and lawns, the spreading cracks in the pavement. In another way it was far less magical. I had previously wandered through a hazy landscape of gold and crimson and bright butter-yellow: the very air had seemed coloured. Now, everything was delineated: the air was just air; the trees were precise collections of leaf and stem and branch and trunk; the colours didn’t melt into each other but remained constructions of hard-edged shapes.

  Rose was there, and she was as flattering about the glasses as I had hoped.

  ‘They make you look so intelligent, Nicky,’ she said, beaming. ‘Not that you didn’t already look intelligent, but they’re just terrific. And so are you.’ She hugged me. She examined the glasses, peered through them, made faces, exclaimed over how powerful the lenses were, tested the tiny hinges. As always, I felt how interested Rose was, how interesting she made me feel.

  My father was triumphant over the dinner table that night. He had forgotten that a victory over St Kilda was of no consequence.