John Marsden - Incurable

I knew a lot of the figures off by heart. With the new loan from the bank I was now paying $3760 a month in interest. The leases were a $1000 a week, or $4333 a calendar month. That was eight grand a month going out the door without me getting up from the desk. I hoped interest rates would stay on hold for a while, as the bank had already mugged me with one rise. Well, I had no control over that.

I still owed about $5000 in rent to the people we’d leased bits of the farm from. I’d paid the funeral directors ten grand, using the eight thousand my parents had in their account, plus two thousand from the bank. So I still owed the funeral guys about two and a half, and was getting nervous every time I went to the mailbox in case they sent me a letter threatening to dig everyone up again.

The only way I could buy a bike was to sell some cattle. The steers Dad had bought way back were in good nick. If I sold ten I could buy a new bike, pay the back rent and square up for the funerals. But it also meant that if the income from the agistment suddenly stopped — and face it, Mr Young could decide to move, or to sell his cattle any time, especially after the stampede — I’d have ten fewer of my own cattle to carry us through.

I sighed and pushed away the papers. I’d have to ask Mr Yannos. What on earth was Homer going to tell them? He had already come home minus one of their bikes such a short time ago when we’d rescued that Nick guy. Now he had another lost motorbike to explain away. Losing one motorbike is bad luck; losing two is a bit sloppy. How was I going to ring Mr Yannos, or drop in for a Sunday roast, and casually mention that I’d misplaced the four-wheeler?

I couldn’t stay awake. But as my head started to fall forwards I heard a cough — just that throat-clearing noise — from behind me. And it was Jeremy. I was a bit surprised, as he had been half asleep over the dinner table. I smiled at him and he came in behind me and started massaging the back of my neck.

I got a bit of a shock. But right away I realised what was happening. All the previous guys I’d had relationships with, all two of them, had done a lot of talking. Steve and Lee had both launched into it with a lot of ‘Is this going to work? Is this a good idea?’ although, to be fair to Lee, he was more forceful than me in the early days. I was the one with lots of reservations — well, I was the one who expressed them anyway.

Jeremy had a confidence that even Steve didn’t have. He just took it for granted that I was going to like what he was doing, and that I liked him. For a moment I tingled like I didn’t want to be touched. But his firm fingers and strong arms… soon they felt too good to push away. To be honest, I think anyone with those hands and arms would have done OK with me when I was so tired mentally and physically. I let myself lean back and enjoy the calm pressure. I even closed my eyes, which I don’t do with most guys. The thought, the memory, of the boy in New Zealand who had practically raped me at the party came back for a moment but I blocked it. I knew Jeremy had a good heart. His hands were good too, and his body was even better.

I can’t describe people very well so I normally don’t bother. But I’ll have a go with Jeremy. He was one of those people who’ve got all their parts in the right proportion to each other, if you know what I mean. Well, I don’t mean all their parts, but his legs and arms were the right length for the rest of him, and his head was right too. He wasn’t tall or short, just average I suppose, which sounds awful, but he was a very nice average. He looked like one of those boys who’d be good at every sport that came along — he had the balance, the co-ordination. I remember him saying once that he’d played fly half when he lived in New Zealand, and one of the boys who was listening and who knew a lot about rugby laughed and said, Yes, you’re such a fly half,’ and I said, What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Fly halves are like dancers, plus they can kick with left foot or right foot.’

I liked the sound of that.

Jeremy had a real shine in his eyes, which his father had too, even in the middle of a war. You knew he was alive when you looked into his eyes. He was growing a bit of a goatee, which didn’t exactly work, but I don’t know, on a lot of boys it looks so bad, and I used to think if a boy with a beard wanted to go with me the first thing I’d say to him was, ‘The beard comes off.’ But on Jeremy there was something kind of cute about it. Like it seemed really sincere, or it made him look like a really sincere person, which I know makes no sense at all.

Oh yeah, and he had brown hair and brown eyes and a bit of that acne that comes with scars and his feet were size nine, and that’s about the longest description of anyone I’ve ever tried to do since I started writing about the war, so long ago.

So there I was with the fly half giving me a neck massage and he hadn’t said a word. His hands worked their way across my shoulders and down my back. I leant back a bit more and purred. In a way there was nothing sexual about it and in another way it was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever had a boy do. The only tension I felt was the tension of hoping he wouldn’t stop, that I could lie there forever, and that somehow he’d never get tired of massaging me and he’d never want me to do anything in return.

That’s the really annoying thing in relationships: you have to actually do something for the other person once in a while, instead of lying back and waiting for them to peel another grape and drop it in your mouth. Maybe robots would be better.

The funny thing was that Jeremy left again, about twenty minutes later, and in all that time we didn’t exchange a word, but when he left there was a new vibe between us. I went to bed excited for the first time in ages, and realised, lying there in the dark, that I didn’t feel that way about Lee any more, or rather, that Lee didn’t make me feel that way any more, which may be the same thing. I hadn’t planned on complicating my life any further, but love, I guess it strikes like lightning and suddenly there’s a stampede. What am I talking about? That’s not just love, that’s life in general.

Oh, Jeremy. I was so tired but I couldn’t sleep. I ran through all his beautiful qualities, over and over. His warm eyes, his firm hands, the pleasing way he stood and sat and walked, his sense of humour, his intelligence, the way he knew so much about history and was so strong and passionate when he talked about it. I love people to be passionate about something. I’d rather they were passionate about football than about nothing. I’d rather they were passionate about tractors or pigshooting or Dalmatian dogs or making marmalade. About the only exception is computer games. I don’t find passionate computer nerds all that sexy.

Jeremy was calm as well as strong. He was a bit like his father in that way. He was kind and gentle and nice to everyone. I don’t think he was too like his father in that way though. I got the feeling in New Zealand that Colonel, sorry, General Finley was pretty tough on anyone who wasn’t doing what General Finley wanted. I wondered if that included his son. He would be a pretty strict father, I think. He had Jeremy’s shining eyes without the humour. And if Jeremy was the Scarlet Pimple, well, that would be impressive. I would like that. He would have to be a real leader to do that. He’d have to be someone who could take charge and make stuff happen. He’d be respected by everyone.

Oh, if my hands could only be his hands. I drifted off to sleep a while later, smiling for the first time in a long time.

I don’t know whether this is anything to do with love but over the next few days I made a fool of myself a zillion times, except that luckily most of the time no-one was there to notice. Maybe it was just total exhaustion, but I managed to spray the griller with eucalyptus instead of cooking oil, then I left nearly a dozen eggs on top of the stove when I was doing a roast, which didn’t do much for their freshness. The eucalyptus spray had been standing around in the kitchen for as long as I could remember. We used it for pretty much everything, like spraying around the room after I’d made a sardine sandwich (Mum hated the smell of sardines), spraying on burns, spraying on beds to get rid of dust mites, spraying on Gavin when he was being a nuisance.