Hard Word

THE HARD WORD

John Clanchy
was born in Melbourne but has lived in Canberra since 1975. For some years he was head of an academic advisory service for students and later Foundation Director of the Graduate Teaching Program in the Graduate School at the Australian National University. His short stories have won awards in Europe, the US and New Zealand as well as in Australia.

Other books by the author.

Short stories and novellas

Lie of the land
Homecoming

Novels

Breaking Glass
If God Sleeps
(with Mark Henshaw, under the pseudonym J. M. Calder)

To my son
Edward James Grant Clanchy
(1974-1998)

Miriam

‘Look what I've found,' Philip says. When all I'd sent him to the laundry for was frozen peas.

‘See?' he says again when I don't turn.

‘Philip,' I say, ‘I'm trying to get this roast in the oven. If it doesn't go in this minute, it'll be nine o'clock before we eat.'

Though this isn't the reason I don't turn. The reason I don't turn is that I know whatever Philip has found that isn't frozen peas will be just another of his childish, schoolboy jokes.

That I normally love.

But not now. Not today. Not right at this minute.

‘Okay,' he says. ‘I can wait.'

And he does, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry. I do not look at him, but he fills the corner of my gaze each time I move between the bench and the shelves, between the shelves and the stove. I lay the sprigs of rosemary across the pale dusted skin of the lamb, sprinkle the last of the oil, and then lift the tray into the oven.

‘There,' I say, but still I don't turn or raise my eyes. At the sink I peel the last resistant orange glue of flour and paprika from my fingers and look out into the yard. In the reflections of the glass, I try to guess what it is that Philip is holding. Without giving him the satisfaction of actually looking. Something white and solid projects from his chest. It bounces languidly up and down in his hand.

‘It's melting,' he warns.

I dry my hands, breathing. Before I look. I am not going to be surprised, I tell myself, whatever it is.

‘God, Philip –' It's Laura, my daughter, who's surprised. Who's come bursting into the kitchen and given me the chance to look. The stupid grin on Philip's face is already falling away at one corner. ‘God,' Laura says again, ‘what's
that?'

‘That,' he says, ‘is what I hoped Miriam would tell me.' Except that now, his tone says, half the fun's gone out of it.

‘Weird,' Laura says, crossing to him. ‘It looks like –'

Yes, it does, I'm thinking. It looks like a plaster model of a moonscape, white, sparkling with frost, and with two white conical hills rising from the narrow band of the plain. But it's not a plaster model, of course. It's a bra which Philip has found, snap-frozen, in the deep freeze.

‘Well, it's not mine,' Laura says, taking it from him. She lays the cast across her T-shirt, fitting the cones over her smaller breasts. She has to press her shoulders back to do this, squinting concentratedly down at herself as she does. ‘Oh, that's cold,' she laughs, and takes off the stiff breastplate. Two small conical hills, sparkling with ice, are left moulded in her T-shirt. ‘It must be a 38,' she says, ‘a 36 at least, so it can't be Mum's.'
Bitch,
I say to myself, as she turns it over looking for a label. ‘Where on earth did you find it?'

Philip, I notice, is no longer looking at the bra.

‘He found it in the deep freeze, of course,' I say. And I hear the frost in my own voice.

‘The deep freeze?'

‘Why don't you go and put some proper clothes on,' I say. ‘If you're so cold.'

‘I'm not cold,' Laura says, and it's
her
mouth now that is starting to turn down. ‘I never said I was cold,' she says. In a moment, I know, she'll be storming off to her room. But, just now, there's something she finds more interesting. ‘What's it doing there,' she says, ‘in the deep freeze?'

And, of course, she knows as soon as she's said it. And bites her lip.

‘Exactly,' says Philip, remembering the point at last. But he's starting to look foolish now, as Laura hands him back the bra. It's beginning to sag with the heat of their handling.

‘Did you get out the peas?' I ask him.

‘What?'

‘In all this fooling about, did you manage to get out the peas?'

‘Now come on, Miriam,' he says. ‘Be fair. I wasn't the one who put the thing in there.'

‘Nobody said you did.'

Laura says nothing. She begins to look as though she wished she
had
gone to her room.

‘I simply found it.'

‘All I asked you to do was get some peas from the freezer.'

‘Well, I started to,' says Philip, who, right at this moment, is entirely unlovable. ‘And I found this.'

‘For Christ's sake –'

‘For Christ's sake, what? What am I supposed to do? Leave the thing there?'

Laura is frowning, fiddling now with the shuck of herb scraps and garlic skins left on the bench. I see her withdrawing.

All right, all right,' I say then. ‘I admit it shouldn't have been there. But it's a simple enough mistake. It's our own fault for keeping the freezer in the laundry.'

‘It's our fault now?'

‘Philip … will you just put it in the laundry basket where it should be, and get out the peas? And Philip – please, darling, it's been a long day – will you get me a drink? Sweetheart?' I say, looking at him properly for the first time since he came in.

‘Okay,' he grumbles. But lightening all the same, at the prospect of a drink for himself as well. ‘A gin?' he says, still not softening entirely.

‘A gin at this moment just might save my life.'

‘Okay.' He looks back over his shoulder at me as he stops by the laundry door. ‘I'll get the washing machine started up, and mix you one.'

We look at each other.

‘You've got to admit, Mum,' Laura says then. Quietly, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘It is pretty funny.'

‘I guess,' I say and make the effort to smile as she and Philip burst into laughter. ‘I guess it is.'

Laura

Names, God. Just try explaining to people.

Philip is Trent, and Mum is Harcourt. She
was
Harcourt when she was young, before she married Dad, and now she's Harcourt again even though she's married to Philip now, who's Trent. So, Katie, my little sister, is Trent-Harcourt. Mum would have wanted Harcourt-Trent because she's the mother and the mother's name should come first, but Harcourt-Trent gets mashed and garbled cos everyone runs the two t's together and it comes out
Hackit-rent
or something, and then you spend the whole day explaining and spelling it to people, whereas with Trent-Harcourt you've at least got to stop for a gulp of air in the middle. So it's Trent-Harcourt. But of course I'm still Vas-silopoulos, Laura Vassilopoulos, after my Dad. When Mum left Dad, she asked me if I wanted to change my name to Harcourt too – but I said no. I was only seven then, and I was frightened Dad might not be able to find me if Mum and me came back to Australia and my name was something different. Mum was upset, I know. She wanted to change everything then. But if that's what I wanted, she said, then that was that. Besides, I could hardly be Harcourt-Vassilopoulos, she said. It wouldn't fit on most of the forms for one thing. And school would be hopeless. Imagine telling other kids your name was Harcourt-Vassilopou-los. But Grandma Vera's Harcourt. Mrs Vera Harcourt. Though she's not
Mrs
any more, but she still calls herself that.

When she remembers.

People think you're crazy when they ask your name and you go
Laura Vassilopoulos,
and after they've swallowed that, they say, Is this your sister, and you go, yeah, that's Katie.
Katie Vassilopou-los
, they go, that's nice, just to be polite and show they've been listening to you and are sophisticated and that, and can speak Greek when they can't really speak a word of it, and that's when you go, No, Katie Harcourt-Trent actually, and they go
Hu-uh?
People are such fakes.

Like Philip. Philip is
such
a fake. He's always looking at other women, really perving when he pretends he's just so interested in what they're saying or if their kids are doing well at school, or whatever. Philip couldn't care less if they're doing well at school, he doesn't even know their names, so long as he can look down their mother's dress while he's doing it or when they're not looking. He thinks people don't notice, or maybe they don't. Like the time in the kitchen I put on Grandma Vera's bra that she'd put in the deep freeze instead of the laundry basket. I did that deliberately just to stir him, just to show him what a hypocrite he was. But Mum can't see it, she thinks he's normal. I don't know how she stands him. If someone did that to me –

Philip can be all right sometimes, though. Sometimes he stands up for me when Mum's been doing her Heil Hitler act about my room or homework or piano practice or blah. And he can be funny when he takes people off. He went to this posh school and he had all these weird teachers that he can do – their accents and everything. Like the French teacher who was really an Austrian butler and wasn't French at all, but he would line all the boys up in the corridor outside the classroom, and they'd have to come up to him, one at a time, and bow and say,
Bonjour, Monsieur Rifka
, and he'd say,
‘Bonjour, mon enfant
, and bow back, and then they'd go into the classroom and run to the back and get out the window and race around and get on the end of the line again. Some days, Philip says, it took twenty minutes to get them all in the room at once and half the lesson was over by then. Philip can be very funny when he does that, the boys bowing and Mr Rifka bowing back. But somehow he makes you sad for Mr Rifka as well as laughing at him. And one day apparently the headmaster came past when there was a lot of noise and fooling about, and Philip was in the front row and he heard the headmaster whispering to Mr Rifka, ‘For God sake, man, get a grip on things, can't you. The inspectors will be here in a week. Aren't you worried about the inspectors?', and Mr Rifka goes – Philip is really good at this, Mr Rifka is so calm, he's not frightened of the headmaster at all – he goes, ‘Inspectors? No,' he says, as slow as anything, as if he's been asked the date or his name or something, ‘for I haf been interrogated by the Nazis.'

Toni – she's my best friend – she thinks Philip is gorgeous, especially when he's telling a story. She thinks he's such a spunk. What, Philip? I say. Yeech, no thanks –

I only remember a few words of Greek, like
efhareesto
for thank you, or
avgho
for egg, or
yiayia
for grandma, though I could remember more if I really tried. Like
yeea sas
for hello or
poss eesteh
for how are you, and
andeeo
for goodbye. For my eighth and ninth birthdays, my father sent me cards and a present, but then he stopped. My mother said she heard he got married again and opened a garage in the village and she hopes he's happy now. And I think she means it, but you can never tell with parents. Sometimes I tell her I mean to go back there and see him and live there for a while, but I don't know if I do really. Or if I just say it to stir her. To see the look on her face when I say it.