David Malouf - The Great World

Sweat. His sweat, with the grime in it of things he had touched. He rubbed hard at his shorts. Guilt moved in him but he did not know what it was for since he had done nothing.

Maybe (and a shadow cast itself across his heart) it was for something that was still to come.

And the anger he had hoped to relieve himself of? To throw off forever with one swing of the axe? It would have no relief now, ever. He would be left with it.

He rubbed his hands again on the rough of his shorts. So his father had got the better of him after all.

He sat in the dark of the woodpile with the wall of the house behind him and the moonlit slope of the dunes in front and saw the great wall of it shift and begin to move. It rolled towards him. He did not move. It covered the pile of rubbish in the corner where he had so often emptied the basin, covered the smell of it and the old rags and papers there, and the burned ash of the straw jackets off beer-bottles, and the rusty tins and fishbones, then the woodpile till only the axe-handle poked out above it; then it covered that too and rolled on to push against the windows of the shack and break in and cover the chairs and table and the stiff grey sheets on the beds, and climbed into the teacups high on their hooks, till the whole room was filled to the ceiling and the rafters and roof were covered and there was no sign any more of them or of the life they had lived except in his head.

HIS LIFE CHANGED abruptly, and in ways so like his own secret wishing that he wondered later if he hadn’t, by some power he only half guessed at, brought it about, and that that was the guilt.

His father, though he had nothing to leave, had made a will. Vic was the sole beneficiary. But more important, he had named an executor, a Captain Warrender of Strathfield, Sydney. For three years during the war Dan Curran had been Captain Warrender’s batman, and the officer had agreed, in the event of Curran’s death, to act as guardian to any children he might leave. He appeared now, nearly twenty years later, to make good his word.

He was a large shy man in a three-piece suit. He patted Vic on the shoulder, then shook his hand, and Vic saw immediately that of the two of them it was Mr Warrender who was the more ill at ease.

He had come up from Sydney by train. The dirty little town, scattered at the edge of the sea, all unpainted timber and rusty iron, the sandy yards full of rubbish, the coal dust which that day was blowing all about in a stiff south-easterly making the sea air sharp with smuts — all this was unfamiliar to him. So was the barefoot boy with his raw haircut. At home he had only girls.

But for all his shyness he had eyes that looked right at you, not unkindly but with perfect frankness about what they were up to that showed you frankly, as well, what they saw.

Vic, who had put on a clean shirt and wet-combed his hair, stared straight back. He knew his best qualities and was confident they would show. He trusted this man to see them.

Mr Warrender looked for a long time, then patted Vic’s shoulder again and nodded.

Vic did not relax, not quite yet, but he saw that Mr Warrender did, and that was a good sign.

What he had grasped by instinct was that Mr Warrender was innocent and had better remain so, whatever glimpses he might have got into the truth of things from the squalor of their shack. He could have no idea how much Vic really knew, and Vic saw that he would need to be careful about this, hide it, bury it deep inside him and be a kid again. He would learn about life (or pretend to) all over again, on Mr Warrender’s terms. He could see, just from looking at him, that this was what he would expect.

When Mr Warrender explained that he was taking him to Sydney, Vic said nothing. He let him go on.

Mrs Warrender and the girls (there were two of them) had been told about him and were looking forward to his arrival, to having another man in the house. Vic still said nothing, but smiled to himself as Mr Warrender, in order to set him at his ease — which wasn’t necessary really, he was at ease, it was Mr Warrender who was nervous — made this acknowledgement of their shared masculinity.

He would have a room of his own of course and would go to high school. Only first, perhaps, they ought to go into town and get him some shoes.

Out of a fear of upsetting him, or out of embarrassment at the whole business of ‘grief’, Mr Warrender said nothing at all about his father, and Vic wondered at this. He wondered, too, what Mr Warrender had been looking for when at first he stood there studying him. Not what he had found — he was confident of that — but what, knowing only his father, he had expected.

Sitting beside him on the train, impressed by the smell of damp wool he gave off, which was oddly comforting, and watching the landscape fly through his own ghostly face in the glass, in a new pair of shorts, a sweater and boots that they had bought a size too large, Vic felt his body draw into itself, compact and sturdy, as solid on the velvet seat as the man’s, and got hold at last of the consequences of the thing. ‘I’ll never see this place again,’ he told himself as stretches of flat beach flew behind. It was a promise. There was only one thing he regretted, his mother’s grave.

He stayed quiet and would continue to be until he knew where he stood. He saw that Mr Warrender, who was observant, was impressed by this, and by the pride he showed in not feeling he had to be saying ‘thank you’ all the time, though he was very polite. He squared his shoulders, and when Mr Warrender spoke to him looked up very frank and steady, so that what Mr Warrender saw was a reflection of his own lack of guile. He was grateful for this chance to show himself in the best possible light, and to be looked at as if frankness and steadiness could be taken for granted in him. He felt a wave of affection for this shy man.

‘You’d better call me Pa, Vic,’ Mr Warrender said, ‘if that’s all right. It’s what the girls call me.’

Vic relaxed and smiled. By now he had done some observing of his own.

When Mr Warrender smoked he held the cigarette between thumb and finger like a pencil, and sucked, like a kid taking his first puff, which was odd in so bulky a figure. But he did it voluptuously. Vic thought that very strange, and after a time he decided that Mr Warrender, for all his air of solid assurance, was strange. That lack of ease he had felt in him hadn’t had to do only with the uncomfortable nature of the occasion. It was part of the man. He wasn’t intimidating at all, Vic decided, not at all. I needn’t have worried.

It occurred to him then that his father must have found Mr Warrender easy to fool, and this brought him up sharp. All the more reason, he decided, why I should be open and honest with him.

They were coming in to Sydney now, and as street after street flashed by, little backyards with chook-houses and rows of vegetables, and off in the distance smoke pouring up out of giant chimney stacks, he felt some wider vision open in him as well, an apprehension of just how large the world was that he was being carried towards, and the opportunity it offered of scope and space.

Strathfield, when they came to it, was an older suburb not too far from the centre, with avenues of big detached houses that had once been fashionable and were now in a state of elegant disrepair. Along the railway line there were some meaner streets, workmen’s houses in terraces that were quite scabbed and shabby, the alleys behind them piled with filth. Still, it was Sydney at last, the big smoke, and Vic had never seen anything like it.

Mrs Warrender, Ma, accepted him with open arms.

The girls, Lucille and Ellie, were sceptical at first, he saw that; but he knew just how to deal with them.