Looking for Alibrandi (4 page)

Four

IT’S DEBATING TIME
again. The only time when Poison Ivy and I are on the same side of life, agreeing on the same thing. It begins each year in March and this year the competition began for us at our school, against St. Anthony’s.

Have I ever told you about John “love of my life” Barton?

Picture this. School captain of St. Anthony’s. Son of a member of Parliament. Greatest debater who ever lived. Good-looking. Popular. Tell me, what more could I want out of life?

For him to be equally in love with me, that’s what.

St. Anthony’s beat us on Friday night. Due to the fact that it was an argument about politics, I feel that John Barton’s team had a certain advantage.

When it was over I rushed to the classroom where they were serving coffee and biscuits. I was hoping to salvage the last piece of cake or maybe a chocolate biscuit but discovered I was too late when I found a girl taking the last four.

“I bet she was the type who hogged the potato chips at parties when she was young,” I heard someone whisper in my ear.

I turned to face John Barton and laughed, nodding my head.

It had been three months since I last saw him and he was looking even better. Not that he’s a “pretty boy” or even bursting with sex appeal, come to think about it. It’s the honesty and realness about him that I love. It’s written on his face like a script.

If he was a woman he would never need to wear rouge. He has that natural redness on his cheekbones. Although he’s a bit on the thin side, it’s his height that I like and the way his hazel eyes smile and change so instantly with his moods.

“I’m left with the boring Scotch Finger biscuits as usual,” I told him.

He grinned mischievously and held out his hand, holding two Tim Tams.

“I was a fairy-bread hogger at parties,” he told me seriously, his eyes immediately changing. “I used to put them in my pockets or hide them wherever I could, until one day I was exposed when my host handed me my parka and four slices of fairy bread fell out. I was seven years old, and up till this day if I ever see fairy bread I palpitate and realize that psychologically I will never be cured.”

I laughed at his theatrics and took the Tim Tam he offered me.

“So what deep, dark secret do you have to tell me about your party days?” he asked.

“Well, I was one of those ‘pass-the-parcel’ hoggers. I used to hold on to the parcel for five seconds more in case the music stopped. The same for musical chairs. I’d stand in front of the chair and not move. I was banned from parties after that.”

“Yeah,” he said, narrowing his eyes in mock suspicion. “You look the type.”

Mama came up and gave me a kiss and then made a bee-line for Sister Louise before I could stop her.

“She’s very natural. She looks more real than anyone else in this room,” he observed, his hazel eyes following her.

“I know,” I said, watching her talking to Sister. “I’m just worried about what Sister Louise is telling her. I’ve been in trouble lately.”

“You were very good at Martin Place the other day. I recognized your speech.”

I looked at him and frowned. “I didn’t see you there.”

“I was with Ivy and some others talking to the Premier.”

I nodded, thinking how perfectly suited his family was to Poison Ivy’s. I wished like crazy that he hadn’t mentioned her name. How could I compete with someone whose father was one of Sydney’s top heart surgeons and whose photo was in the
Australian
when she was elected school captain. I could picture her parents at dinner with his. They’d talk about politics, the arts and world affairs. Then I tried to picture them at dinner with Nonna and Mama. Not that I have ever been ashamed of them, by any means. But what would they talk about? The best way of making lasagna? Our families had nothing in common.

“That Cook High guy was pretty impressive. I mean, he wouldn’t make a great debater, but he was a surprise.”

“Jacob Coote,” I murmured as he grabbed some biscuits and we walked outside.

I tried to picture John Barton terrorizing girls in alleyways or Jacob Coote being able to converse with the Premier. It made me so much more aware of the social and cultural differences around me.

We ended up sitting on cane chairs on the veranda looking up at the sky. It was a beautiful, balmy night.

“Heard about the regional dance?”

I didn’t want to look at him because I would have seemed too eager. To walk into the regional dance with John Barton would make me the envy of every snob at St. Martha’s.

“It’s all we talk about. Can you imagine five different schools in one room? There’s either going to be heaps of fights or the beginning of mixed relationships.”

“I’m just glad St. Joan’s isn’t going to be there. We get stuck with them every time,” he complained. “We detest them.”

“We detest St. Francis’s guys. We were invited to their formal in Year Ten. They grouped together and sang rah-rah songs all night. For their football team and cricket team and basketball team and God knows what else.”

“All those guys know how to do is play sports,” he said. “The Marist Brothers are obsessed.”

“Slaughtered by them, right?”

“Embarrassing. The day after election day, actually. My father came to watch and said he was humiliated. The press were there, of course. I pointed out that academically the St. Francis guys were inept, but it still took me days to live it down.”

We sat alongside each other without speaking for a while. He’s the type of person you can do that with. It wasn’t an embarrassing silence, just a comfortable one. As if we both respected each other’s private thoughts.

“So what are you going to do next year?” he asked, offering me his last biscuit.

“I want to be a barrister.”

“If you couldn’t beat me back there with your clever conversation, you’ll never make it,” he teased.

I hit him and shrugged.

“Your father would have been humiliated if you’d lost the argument tonight so I allowed you to win.”

He gave me a sidelong look and we laughed.

“What about you?” I asked.

He looked at me in mock horror.

“Could you imagine me not going into law and then politics?”

“Yeah. I reckon you’d make a great teacher. I watched the little debaters come up to you. You’re very patient with them.”

“My father would have a stroke.”

“You’re a snob.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m a realist. My father is a politician, my grandfather was a politician and my great-grandfather was a backer of the first Liberal prime minister. My father believes that we have the breeding to one day give this country the best prime minister it has ever had. It was something his father told him and something his father’s father told him. On my birthday, every year, he stands on a soap-box.”

John stood on the chair and pulled his fringe back, imitating his father’s receding hairline.

“One of my sons,” he began in a droning voice, “will one day lead this country back into the path of glory and I feel it can easily be John. Forget the incidents of the past. He did his stint at FBA and is now on the road to recovery.”

“FBA?”

“Fairy Bread Anonymous. My parents even went to the organization that helped the family members of addicts.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’ve slightly exaggerated the case, but how can you escape his type of thinking and tradition?”

“Easy.” I shrugged. “My great-grandmother dressed the dead in Sicily, my grandmother worked on a farm in Queensland and my mother is a medical secretary in Leichhardt. I’m not going to follow in their footsteps and I know more than you about escaping tradition. You kind of just pave your own path.”

“It’s different for you,” he sighed. “You haven’t got any pressures in life. I’ve always had to be the best because it’s been expected of me. Do you think they voted me school captain because they wanted me? Get real. They knew I was going to be school captain when I was in Year Seven because every other Barton has been one. It’s got nothing to do with popularity. The guys don’t even know me.”

I was surprised at his bitterness and tried to cut the mood. “I haven’t got any pressures?” I asked, grabbing his sleeves dramatically. “I could write a book about them.”

“You always seem so in control.”

“And you don’t?”

He laughed, but somehow not humorously. There was a darkness in his eyes that had nothing to do with color.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m not. Sometimes I think that this life is shit. I mean, don’t you find it pathetic?”

I had never seen John like that before. I wondered if it was something new or if he hid those moods well. Whatever it was, I found it a bit freaky. My friends and I always muck around that life is shit, but none of us actually believes it.

I looked at him for a moment, finding his copper cowlick irritating and wanting to hand him a comb.

“Only when my mother comes up with excuses why I can’t go out. Or when I feel that I’ll be a nothing because socially I haven’t got a foot in the door,” I answered as truthfully as I could.

“Well, as I’m allowed to go out whenever I want to and socially I have got a foot in the door, I can’t really understand your problem.”

“So what’s your problem, John?”

“I don’t know what I want out of my life, but I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. I don’t want my children embarrassed every time I make the wrong decision and some journalist shits all over me in the paper. I don’t want a lot of responsibility in life. Does that sound weak and unambitious? Well, that must mean that I am weak and unambitious. I don’t want to climb to the top, Josephine. I’m comfortable enough where I’m standing. But when you have a father who is a minister in Parliament, you are expected to have ambition. And when you can’t work out your ambition, good old Dad does.”

“Then tell him what you told me.”

“Okay, I’ll just go find him. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, standing up.

I grabbed his arm and we both burst into laughter.

“It’s obvious that you don’t know my father, Josephine.”

I heard a noise behind me and winced when I saw Ivy approaching us.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she told John, smiling. I rarely see Poison Ivy smiling unless she’s crawling to Sister.

“Just appreciating the presence of a beautiful, fascinating, exotic woman,” he said.

“Oh, really, where did she go?” she asked, giving me a sweet, insincere smile.

“So you’ve found me, you parasite. I bet it’s for a lift home.”

“You bet right, and in the meantime think of Sarah Spencer’s party. I’m not going alone.”

“I will not associate with pretentious people with nothing constructive to discuss except what kind of car they’re getting for their eighteenth birthday,” he said, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Come on, John. She’s Dr. Spencer’s daughter. He’s my father’s best friend. I have to go,” she begged.

He thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “I’ll keep it in mind. Bribes over two dollars are tax deductible.”

“Thank you,” she said victoriously. “I’ll meet you outside in five minutes.”

We watched her walk away and then he turned and smiled at me.

“Are you going to go to that party?” I asked.

He gave me a mock horrified look. “Dr. Spencer is my father’s biggest backer. Of course I’ll go to that party. I’ll even be charming to Sarah Spencer and try not to froth at the mouth when her father presents her with the keys to the Ferrari.”

“A Ferrari?” I asked, shocked. “I’d kiss the dirtiest part of the ground just for a secondhand Mini.”

“On the North Shore, in our circle of friends, the fathers all try to outdo each other. Ever since we were young. If Ivy got a ten-speed bike for her tenth birthday, my father would get me a better one. We got to the stage that if I wanted something really badly I’d tell Ivy and she’d get her father to buy it for her and I was guaranteed to get it next birthday and vice versa.”

“I didn’t realize you and Ivy were such close family friends.”

“We had no choice, but it’s worked out well because we get on,” he said, sighing and standing up. He extended his hand and we made our way back into the building.

“What do you think of the English texts?” he asked.

“
Macbeth
is all right. They’re going to be playing the Zeffirelli version at the cinema just for all the HSC students.”

“Would you like to go see it with me?”

I smiled up at him and nodded. “I’d like that.”

People began to file out and I spotted my mother and Sister Louise looking at me and shaking their heads. Trouble as usual.

“That nun hates me.”

“Ivy reckons she’s a living doll.”

“Yeah, a voodoo one,” I said. “I’m going to grab my mother before Sister finds something else to complain about.”

“I’ll leave you to it. It was great beating you tonight.”

“You won’t be so lucky next time,” I called out after him.

I thought about his mood swing all weekend. It depressed me for a while because I was suddenly faced with a John that I really didn’t know.

The first time I ever saw him was about two years ago during a debate. One of the girls in the debating team left to be an exchange student and I was asked to fill her place. We were both third speakers and the topic was so boring that I can’t even remember it. But I do remember him looking over at me and mouthing the words “I’m bored.”

From that minute on I begged to stay on the debating team and I haven’t regretted a minute of it. Every time we debate at the same venue we race off alone afterward and talk. It’s kind of the highlight of my boring social life.

Another interesting thing that happened over the weekend was that I got a job at McDonald’s. Anna and I had seen the advertisement in our local paper and decided to go for it.

McDonald’s is not the most glamorous job to have, but living on five dollars’ pocket money a week is like something out of
The Brady Bunch
. I didn’t tell Mama that because she’d have a complex.

We had a big fight after I told her about the job. She eventually backed down when I explained to her that Anna’s father would let her have the car for the two nights a week we work.