BETWEEN TWO STOOLS

The corridor was a zigzag of noise. A junta of boys exploded their lockers, putting the boot in as the doors, groaning on their twisted hinges, retaliated lamely. Boing! Boing! The tinny reverberations beat on Diana’s thin skin as she was jostled into room 13 on an undertow of swaggering shoulders.

Frazzled by test upon test, the catty joshing, the yahooing all along the tunnels of corridor, teachers that would suddenly bawl you out, she took small consolation from the coming of last period, but one glance about the classroom made her dizzy: tables skewed away from chairs, chip bags, half-wolfed sandwiches, tattered assignments peeling from scabby walls. Diana squared up the table fronting the teacher’s desk and flopped down. Only to discover a hard button bugging her bottom – a livid blob of furry, flattened chewing gum.

While she dabbed at the stain on her olive tunic, the third-form stragglers traipsed in, voices pitching shrill and loud as the weekend loomed with the prospect of skinny-dipping in a cool dam amid baked paddocks. The dull green curtains swished across the corridor windows, the blinds yanked down, the T.V. thumped into life. Diana sensed the four walls stealing in on her. Behind, raggedy rows of spectral faces were contorted by helpless giggling, then a prickly crust of bread struck her cheek.

‘Turn that bloody thing off!’ yelled. Ferret.

‘We want Play School! ‘We want Play School!’ shrieked a chorus of sirens from the wall-to-wall tables at the back.

‘Let’s play Mothers and Fathers!’ Trust Squeaky McAinch, who had the shrink visit him every Tuesday arvo.

‘Aaagh! Smithy’s assaulting me!’

Diana, not quite believing the racket, the spitting, the clumsy wrestling, peered toward s the door now smothered by rucks of curtain. What an utter waste of time, sitting there in that blacked-out bedlam; it felt weird, not belonging with your friends you’d grown up with. Next to her, Mazine was fidgeting round to gawp at the various performances, huffing spasms of confectionate breath into her face.

All at once, and not before time, there was scuffling by the door. The curtain billowed into awkward pregnancy and a long, thin silhouette was borne into the widening arc of light. Calmness fell with the force of ambush, every eyeball screwed on the phantom groping along the notice-boards.

‘Wanna light, sir?’

‘’ang about, I’ll strike a match.’

‘It’s a No Fire Day, stupid! Don’t worry, mate, we’ll watch T.V.’

‘Cor, yeah! We want the tele! We want the tele!’

The roar rushed up in Diana’s ears. She pressed fingers into temples. Fluorescence flickered on, off, on . . .

‘Hooray!’ rocketed up like a mortar bomb homing in on the enemy with a deafening wail. Within Diana, something fell away, her body twitched, aching to be soothed by the paddocks of home.

‘Shut up, you stupid morons!’ burst Mr Griggs from a skein of curtain, red-veined and owl-eyed, sidling to centre-stage with the audacity of a blinded rabbit. ‘You don’t behave like that. Wasting valuable time again. Get your books out at once!’

But his salvoes phutted like damp squibs in the sultry atmosphere, inciting the snipers to pop from cover.

‘What books?’

‘Ohhh do we have to? We’re sick of work. Why can’t we do something fun for a change?’

‘Booor-ring!’

‘Let’s have a discussion on sex education. I’ll lead.’

‘Can’t we go outside? It’s real stuffy in ‘ere. We never go outside. The other year 9s always do. It’s so unfair!’

That was Tricia’s whine that wound up your nerves to snapping-point. Diana shuffled to her feet and spoke, but her dry-throated voice drowned in the cross-fire.

‘Please, sir . . .’

‘Who’s a whingeing su uck?’

‘Slurp! Slurp!’

‘Sit down, Diana! I’m disappointed in you of all people.’

‘Please, sir, can I get a drink of water, sir?’

Mr. Griggs ignored the request, or couldn’t hear it, but decided on his sternest glare for the chewing platoon, who remained undaunted, in fact positively cheery in their state of siege. Whereas the teacher, trembling within, cultivated his trick of avoiding direct eye contact and pretending this scene was not shockingly abnormal. No longer could he expect reverent and curious faces to heed his pearls. Did they ever? he asked himself at night, sipping his Ovaltine during a break in correction. Surely, the blitz on his nervous system would not last forever; only seem so. Who could begrudge him slinking off home at three, as long as his tyres weren’t let down again?

‘Your local history assignment must be handed up today without fail. I am very disappointed in this class, particularly as several of you are direct descendants of the founding prospectors of this shire. Judging by what I’ve seen so far, most of you have a long way to go.’

‘It’s a long way to Tipperary . . . ‘

‘What’s a rary?’

‘Cut out that nonsense, Caitlin!’

‘It’s a long way to go.’

‘I’m warning you . . . ‘

‘It’s a town other side of Moe, you dill!’

‘For the last and final time –‘

‘Dum de dum dum, de dum de dum dum . . . .‘


As the school bus switchbacked the hills, discharging dust and suicidal rabbits, Diana slumped back against the criss-slashed vinyl, staring down into sheer, balding gullies. The faithful old bomb lurched round hairpin bends such that her stomach was punched hollow, as if she were suspended in mid-air, poised to plummet deep into the scree, before Vin Maurilli levelled it out, snatching her back from oblivion. But there was no escaping the litter of mortality – the skittled wallabies, crushed echidnas, maggies knocked senseless; even Stretch Grambeau had blinded himself holding a giant cracker at the Guy Fawkes barbie. Yet the hills lay so snug, so vast around, that calculations of time and distance dissolved into contours of familiarity. Green breasts scalloped the sky-line; grey corpses of mountain ash stood vigil; and then Cabbage Creek itself, dancing a quickstep round the ranges. This was home.

Diana hopped down, waggled goodbye fingers at Mazine and ambled up the unsealed driveway. She gladdened at the old gums, the tang of eucalyptus, and the crimson rosellas wheeling through their branches, the warmth of wattles, even the cacophony of chooks grubbing by the windmill.

‘Bus a bit late then, Di? What’s up? Have you got Fred?’

‘No, Mum.’

‘Want a bite of something?’ The young, but not so young-looking woman – it wasn’t just the rollers under the hair-net, but the grey, drooping eyes and the heavy swell of arms – lay her tatting on the island-bar.

‘S’pose.’

Diana watched her mum’s podgy fingers slicing the cake, yuk, not kiwi-fruit again, spotted the grime encased under the nails, sensed – what was it? – resentment at that porky body fussing about the kitchen. ‘I really hate school!’ she blurted. ‘I can’t stand it much longer.’

‘Now you listen to me. You’ve only got to stick it one more year, then you’re back on the farm. What happened up there today to rouse your hackles? Them larrikins been having a dig at you again?’

‘Not exactly,’ Diana sighed. Then with more irritation: ‘I don’t seem to be getting on. Some of the assignments they dish out are kids’ stuff. Besides, I can’t concentrate in that zoo.’ She dared not meet the gaze of her mother, who might throw a fit, or even a cup like that time she sussed out that Dad had given Aunt Mayha a feel at Stony Creek races.

Through the window, the picture of easygoing peace was disturbed by a figure in khaki, her dad, gumboots, barb-torn jumper, splattered denims, yelling on the leading Friesians as they wound up to the herring-bone.

‘You don’t have to sit on thistles. All the other girls will be sorting out what they’re going to wear to the cabaret. Here, have a cuppa.’

‘Or wondering how many bruises they’ll collect from those boozie clodhoppers.’

‘Enough of your toffee ways, miss. It’s a chance for me and your dad to enjoy a bit of a knees-up.’

The glass door slid open: a whiff of cow pats and manly sweat struck home.

‘What’s eating her? She looks as happy as a pig in shit,’ cut the cocky, planking down his tasselled hat from a round face crabby with flamed cheeks and pebble eyes. ‘Better lend me a hand with the milking, my girl.’

‘Oh, not this arvo, Dad. I’ve got to get my head down.’

‘Always the same excuse. You don’t lift a bloody finger round the place.’

‘No, it’s fair dinkum. Exams. Really.’

‘You and that damn swotting of yours. My oath, you’ll come a right cropper, always reading and writing. We managed to get by without it in my day.’

‘Only a spit and a shuffle ago, she was complaining she’d had it up to here.’

‘But, Mum, it’s different studying by yourself. At school, everyone mucks around.’

‘Huh! Stirring teachers . . . brings back memories . . . Stretch Grambeau and me an’ a couple o’ mates one time, we lifted this teacher’s jalopy down on to the oval. What was that dickhead’s name? . . . Horrie . . . .‘

Why couldn’t Dad just drink his tea instead of sucking it through his dentures?

‘Nah, you don’t learn nothin’ till you start earnin’ your own bread.’

‘I heard that Blair Clutterbuck is trying to get into Marcus Oldham,’ Diana put in cautiously.

‘What? That kid’s got rocks in his head! What’s he want to go to the big smoke for, when his old man’s got more savvy about daiyrin’ in Gippsland than those city-slickers loafing about on their arse all day with leckcha-notes.’

‘Yis, and if you’re going to marry a cocky, you’ll find plenty to do managing the house and vegie patch.’

‘What’s for tucker, Mags?

‘Savs, Wal. Fried. Swimming in onions, just as you like ‘em.’

‘Nothing beats a good feed.’

Except that Diana had been opening up her glory-box: inside, she caught a glimpse of herself, penned in by a turmoil of hacking sheep buried under a brool of blowies, crutching fat maggots out of shit-stained tail wool.

Diana changed into bleached casuals, grabbed I Can Jump Puddles from her bag and skipped off through the bone-dry poddy paddocks to the creek. Despondency sloughed off her like gums shedding slivers of bark and the more limpid air lapped her face into suppleness. She plonked down to dangle her feet over the old bridge, whose grey grooved timbers had weathered so many stresses that she could only just decipher her great-great-grandfather’s initials carved into the lynch-pin: T.W. 1872. Her forbears had crooked their backs on this land for a whole century, clearing and reclaiming; then, having broken it in, taming its rough edges to more profitable margins.

Every which way shadow-green convex spurs cut across the valley towards her. Never ever could she leave this land – at least, not in spirit; but why were its folk so gross and dumb, even if good for a belly-laugh now and again? And as for even thinking of marrying a feller like that Greg Mildenhall, who was supposed to fancy her, yuk, that was scary. What with his careering round the hills on Saturday nights in his clapped-out Holden; always tumbling into disused mine-shafts after a skinful; most of all, his shortness – that was creepy: too many ciggies or pots of liquid gold.

From inside the dust-jacket of the novel, she took out and unfolded her latest poem in progress:

The green hills cut deep into my heart,

Like the wound of a lover’s farewell.

Under cover of night they turn velvet,

And cushion me from a sickening hell.

For a hill’s only a hill to a cocky,

A bloody obstacle, something to flatten . . .

O fudge, wrong direction, wrong rhythm! How hard it was to think, let alone dig out rhymes! So she strolled on down the track, kicking aimlessly at pebbles, plucking at tassels, swatting infernal flies.

‘Hello, there!’

Diana checked in mid-meander, scrunching the ditty into a pocket. Down the tree-ferny bank, she caught Mr Griggs propped against a gum-stump.

‘I didn’t expect to bump into one of my prize pupils while enjoying a spot of fishing. One has to unwind somehow after such a dreadful day. The pools hereabouts are a haven for trout, so I’m told.’

‘I . . . I don’t know,’ she stammered. Which made Mr. Griggs’ forehead crinkle.

‘By the way, awfully sorry about last period. I know how much you were looking forward to researching the gold-diggers.’

‘That’s okay, sir. We were pretty awful.’ The pout showed how.

Mr. Griggs offered a pathetic smile and shrug before turning back to his line bobbing in the murkier reaches of streaming weed above cans and tires and broken bedsteads.

Diana struggled to conjure words: ‘I’m getting into I Can Jump Puddles. Have you read it, sir?’ An obstinate mozzie was tormenting her nose, accentuating the stillness or awkwardness with its squeaky drone.

‘Not for a long while. Though I did see the Czech film version in the city not so long ago. Did you? No, I guess you wouldn’t round here. Yes, I enjoyed it, seeing how the little boy overcame his terrible handicap. What’s more I loved the fascinating description of Victoria between the wars.’ Mr. Griggs was beginning to warm to the subject. ‘How are you finding it?’

Agh, that plummy, superior tone was jarring on her nerves, the question after question, like doing too many boring book reviews which took away the magic. Diana stubbed her toes into the grassy verge. Why weren’t there any simple answers? And what right had this crummy teacher, this alien, to trespass on her personal space, plunder her creek, disturb her peace? ‘It’s a bit of a drag,’ she lied, remembering Mazine’s latest favourite phrase. ‘Anyway, I’d better choof off.’

‘Good girl! Get that homework done before tea.’

Diana was already speeding back up the track, limbs milling, lungs pounding, welcoming the stitch that gnawed at her side, till she regained the old bridge, breathless.

Brushing a dusty sleeve over her brow, she peered over the ledge. A matchstick figure, slightly stooped, was still propped up patiently on the bank, apparently to no avail.

‘You can’t tickle trout there. Silly sod’s wasting his time!’ shuddered Diana, as teardrops slowly began bouncing off the rough, grey planking into the sluggish eddies of Cabbage Creek.



                                                                                                                                 Michael Small
October-November, 1972

published: The Sun-News Pictorial, January, 1972

                Festival and Other Stories, Wren, 1974

                Her Natural Life and Other Stories, Tamarillo, 1988