David Malouf - The Great World

What she did know was that once Digger was plugged in to the thing all communication between them was cut. He was off in a world of his own, like the kids that turned up in the store on Sunday afternoons, shuffling about to the noise in their heads, and when she spoke to them shouting as if she was the one that had deafened herself. So she knew that far-off look on the chauffeur’s face.

She lowered her head to the back window and he didn’t even see her. He was smiling, his head on the back of the seat, his eyes closed. His cap, which was black with a shiny peak, was on the shelf above the dashboard. He was tapping his fingers on the wheel. She could smell the leather in there.

Suddenly he jerked upright, his eyes open just a foot from hers. ‘Jesus!’ he said. She had scared the pants off him.

Later, watching from the house, she saw him get out of the car and take off his jacket. All he had on underneath was braces. He walked down to the river and sat. He picked up bits of bark and tossed them into the stream, watching them whirl and slip away. Over and over he did it. At last she went down to him.

‘I bet you could do with a cuppa,’ she said, as lightly as she could manage. She wasn’t used to young fellers. She scared them.

He looked up at her. He was so bored with waiting.

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, and gave a bit of a grin.

‘An’a pikelet, eh?’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said.

‘And jam.’

He looked at her again and there was a flicker of doubt in him. She always went too far. ‘Come on then,’ she said quickly.

She sat him at the kitchen table and recalled vaguely that she had planned this a long time ago, only on that occasion it had been a little kid. Could this be him grown up?

‘Hey,’ she said, as she set a plate in front of him. ‘You oughta put bitter allers on ’em.’ She was referring to his nails, which were bitten to the quick.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Bitter allers. It’s ’orrible — but then you wouldn’t bite ’em.’

He flushed and put his hands away under the table. He was a good-looking feller but with eyes that kept darting about. He was unsure of her, or maybe it was of himself.

She tried a few questions. ‘Hey,’ he said to show how clever he was, ‘you’re on the pump!’ He laughed. But once he’d shown that he knew what she was up to, he was quite happy to rattle away.

Brad, he was called. He had been Mr Curran’s driver for two years. Before that he’d been a courier and before that worked in a motorbike shop. He’d struck it lucky this time. Vic Curran was a good sort of bloke to work for, very strict mind you, but fair, and he had stacks. ‘Stacks,’ the fellow said, taking another dob of cream, and his eyes lit up in a way she found unpleasant. He was greedy.

‘Got a terrific house out Turramurra,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’ mind livin’ in it. I got this nice little flat now, North Sydney, two rooms. Costs me ninety-eight dollars a week — that’s cheap! But I wouldn’ mind livin’ in a place like that. I will too, one day. .’

He would have gone on like this, but she got impatient. This wasn’t the sort of thing she was after.

‘You’re stupid,’ she said viciously, and the young man, his mouth half-open and full of pikelet, looked as if she had leaned across and bitten his nose. He was that astonished. Serve him right.

‘What about Digger?’ she demanded.

He drew back and looked at her. ‘Who’s Digger?’ he asked.

That did it. She gave him a shove then with the heel of her hand against his shoulder, and for all the heftiness of him he very nearly went over backwards out of his chair.

‘All right,’ he said. He got up, very flushed and foolish looking.

He didn’t know how to deal with her. If it was a man he would have flattened him.

‘F’ Christ’s sake!’ he said under his breath. He got into his uniform jacket and tugged it down hard, making himself stiff and formal. He was on his dignity now. He strode out.

‘I buggered it up,’ she told herself miserably. ‘It was me best chance and I buggered it up.’

She never saw that driver again, as she had never seen the little boy either. The next time Vic came he drove himself.

When she was very little and Digger just a baby she had been set sometimes to look after him. ‘You watch Digger now,’ her mother had told her, ‘there’s a good girl. I’m depending on you.’ She had believed always that the time might come when she would have to do it again.

Digger thought he was protecting her, and he was too, she was dependent on him. But he was too trusting, Digger. He knew a lot, he knew heaps, he could do things. But he didn’t know about the world, and she did. She knew how cruel it was. It didn’t matter what you knew or where you’d been — Digger had been overseas even, to the war even, she’d never been anywhere. To Brisbane. That wasn’t anywhere. But she did know what the world was. It could come at you, all the evil and cruelty of it, in a single blow: a big hand wet as a mackerel coming slam at the side of your head, knocking you sideways, and in just a fraction of a second you’d got all there was to know of how wicked it could be. Sister Francis of the Wash, that was. All six foot of her, looming up in a cloud of steam just as you were hoiking a stickful of sheets out of the copper, and knocking you sideways without a word. Wuthering Heights, that was. Or to give it its proper name, All Hallows Convent, The Valley, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, The World. Hell .

Some girls, all lined up in buff-coloured uniforms and pale stockings, got a good education there, or so they said. They paid for it. Others, who had fallen like her and had nowhere else to go, worked in the laundry. Except she hadn’t fallen at all — or not till Sister Francis got going. All she had done, once or twice, was lay down.

While she was still carrying her baby she scrubbed floors, and after she’d had it and they took it away without letting her see it even, to see if it had all its right parts, she worked in the wash. Bloody terrified she was most of the time of that Sister Francis, but even more of having to leave.

‘Please, please, Sister,’ she’d jabber, ducking under the fat palms, ‘it wasn’ me. Honest, Sister, I swear t’ God!’ But they kept coming down just the same, all suds, over your left ear or across your face, with all the weight of a six-foot Irish virgin behind them, her temper got up by the fact that you had fallen, and been picked up again, and were still no good. The weight of the whole Catholic Church as well — and she wasn’t even a Mick!

She had run away, oh, heaps of times, heaps! On trams. But that didn’t get you anywhere.

‘Sorry, girlie, this is the terminus.’

A feller in a blue uniform and a little round white cap told her that, a conductor bloke with a leather pouch at his waist and a punch for clipping tickets.

It was Dutton Park that time. She got off the tram, which went on sitting at the end of the line, and climbed up to a bandstand all painted but peeling. From there you could see the whole city, not too far away: the three bridges, the river switching back and forth, even Wuthering Heights with its steep black roofs on a cliff above the water.

The tram, all silver, went on sitting on the line and you could see right through it except for the driver and the conductor bloke who put their feet up on the seat and smoked.

At last the conductor got down. He stood for a moment looking up at her, then swung the pole, and the tram moved off.

It began to get dark. A couple of sailors came, Yanks, with girls, and she got scared.

She ended up walking all the way back. Hours it took. In the blackout, with men and women barging about the pavements and searchlights swinging overhead and crossing, catching stars.