Incurable

CHAPTER 14

Gavin nearly disintegrated when he realised I was getting off the bus with him. His eyes rolled around like they weren’t attached to anything any more, and suddenly he was too weak to pick up his bag. I hadn’t said anything to him the night before about his being sent home early, or about the cat, but when I got up and headed down the aisle towards the door he knew that this was D-Day, this was the hour of power, and he was about to be nailed to the wall like the fox skins pegged out in the barn.

For a moment it seemed like he was going to stay on board, but then he realised he couldn’t do that, so he followed me off. But as soon as we were standing on the grass he ran up to me, turned me around and tried to push me back onto the bus. I wouldn’t let myself be pushed.

Instead, I set off for the school gate. He darted around and got between me and the gate, dropped his bag and, with both hands, grabbed me by the elbows.

Again he tried to push me back.

‘Gavin,’ I said into his furious eyes, ‘I have to talk to your teacher.’

I wasn’t trying to be smart by doing it this way. But if I’d told Gavin the night before, or at breakfast, he would never have got on the bus. Now, with so many kids streaming past, he was in a tough spot. He couldn’t throw too spectacular a tantrum without embarrassing himself big-time. Even so, he threw a very intense small one. His hands dropped down and grabbed my forearms, and he held and squeezed them so tight that I had bruises for four days afterwards. He tried to outstare me but I knew I couldn’t let myself be outstared so we locked eyes and, trying not to blink, I said, ‘I’ve got to find out what’s going on with you.’

He shook me then shook his head. Again he tried to push me away, this time down the street towards the high school, but other kids started to notice and stop and look. That didn’t stop him but it did slow him down a bit and make him more self-conscious. I felt sorry for him, but I felt sorry for the cat too. I said, ’Listen, kid, I’ve been bullied by experts,’ and I pushed him off and walked into the school.

It’s a bit strange going back to your old primary school. For one thing, they look like the same kids you were at school with and you have a weird feeling that you’ve jumped back a few years and they really are the same kids — that’s Fi over there with her back to you, Homer running past, Kevin hunched over a Game Boy with another kid who didn’t look like anyone I knew. But the ones who did look a bit like Fi and Homer and Kevin, when I saw their faces, it was quite disconcerting.

For another thing, you feel like a giant. Everything’s smaller, including the students of course, and you get a sense of just how much you have grown in the last few years. The doorways are smaller, the classrooms are smaller, the lockers are smaller, and how I ever managed to sit in those chairs is beyond the freakiest imagination.

The third thing is that you do get mobbed a bit, which might look quite glamorous when you see it happen to superstars on TV but is a bloody nuisance when you’re in a hurry and in a bad mood, and it does seem like the girls who most want to mob you are often the obnoxious ones. I’m talking about the ones I knew from the swimming pool or I knew their sisters or brothers or parents, or they were on my bus and their main reason in coming up to me seemed to be to show off to their friends that they knew me. Most of them could talk to me just about any time, so I don’t know why they suddenly had to make a big deal about it. This is pretty horrible to the nice ones, because of course there were plenty of those, but I was too stressed to notice them.

So I was motoring across the yard like a car through floodwater, throwing up a wake that consisted of Year 4 and 5 girls saying, ‘Hi Ellie, what are you here for, Ellie, you here to see Gavin’s teacher, are you coming to Brendan’s eighteenth, Ellie?’ and it was all I could do not to turn around and screech at them, ‘Bugger off, the lot of you.’

I knew her name was Mrs Rosedale, and of course I’d seen her plenty of times, but we’d never talked for more than a minute. And even then it was only about basic things like, ‘We could do with some rain,’ ‘Did Gavin give you his excursion money?’ ‘Sorry he was away yesterday but we had a couple of trees down after the storm,’ ‘Thanks for finding his library book.’

You’d think someone with a name like Mrs Rosedale would be really nice. I mean, it’s like that book where the kid stays with Aunt Bridget Wonkham-Strong, and then at the end he goes off to live with Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet, and you figure he’s got to be better off. Like, it wasn’t as if she was Mrs Grumpybitch or Mrs Sourtits. Gavin seemed to like her well enough. He never said much about her really, but then he never said much about school. She seemed nice enough from what I’d had to do with her, just one of those straight-down-the-line, you-know-what-you’re-getting, middle-of-the-road primary school teachers.

I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to her, just, more than anything I think, to talk to an adult who knew Gavin well and could give me some idea of how to deal with him. That nice dream of us all living together as a family, and Gavin being the brother I never had, was disintegrating fast, now that I had to be his mother and father as well as his sister.

I was actually a bit pissed off at my parents for leaving me with this problem, conveniently forgetting that I was the one who had lumbered them with ‘this problem’ in the first place.

Mrs Rosedale was in the library and she didn’t give me the brush-off, like I expected. I thought I’d have to make an appointment and come back later. ‘Sure, the kids have got Music,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be five minutes.’

While I was waiting I wandered along the shelves having a little nostalgic meander. The library had survived the war almost untouched: I remembered one of the teachers telling Mum that although people had obviously borrowed books, they’d returned them too. There were about sixty that they couldn’t find. That was weird, all these invaders borrowing books from the Wirrawee Primary School library and returning them, like regular people.

It seemed in pretty good order now. I got a little thrill out of seeing my old friends, The Magic Faraway Tree, Who Sank the Boat? Tiger in the Bush, Charlotte’s Web, Robinson Crusoe, Where’s Wally? The Long Red Scarf… I ran my finger along their spines, wondering why I hadn’t shared more of them with Gavin. With each book came a film clip that ran in my mind: curled up in a cubby reading Tiger in the Bush, being in bed with Dad reading The Magic Faraway Tree, spilling orange juice on The Long Red Scarf.

‘Now, what can I do for you, Ellie?’ Mrs Rosedale said, and it was like a little slap, startling me back into the real world.

She led me into the side room. Before I could sit down she said, ‘I’m hoping you can give me a few tips on dealing with young Gavin.’

I felt like I’d been given a quick elbow to the stomach. I’d been rather hoping that she would sit down, open the inner taps of wisdom that most adults seem to have, and pour out wonderful words of advice that would solve all my problems.

‘Has he been a bit difficult?’ I asked. I felt embarrassed, as though Gavin’s behaviour was entirely my responsibility, so I should feel ashamed if he was not one of the best kids in the class.

She stretched her arms wide, rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘A bit difficult!’ she agreed. ‘He’s the original barrel of monkeys. Little bugger. We have a fight just about every day, but he still gets away with a lot, because with these big classes you can’t keep an eye on half of what’s going on.’

She got up and opened a window, then, still standing beside it, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘I can get away with this in here, just,’ she said with another laugh. I started to think that she was rather a nervous person. ‘Ellie, the farm you live on, there wouldn’t be any empty houses, would there? That you’d be interested in renting? Or my partner could do some work around the place in exchange for rent?’

I felt more and more dejected. I wanted to get this conversation back on track. It was like going to the station and expecting to catch the seven forty-five to Stratton, only to find yourself on the eighty-thirty to Cobbler’s Bay.

‘No, sorry, there’s nothing like that,’ I said. It was awkward being put in this position, although it had happened a few times already, with the demand for housing, not to mention all the people who wanted a nice house in the country with fresh air and space. ‘Do you think Gavin’s been getting worse?’

‘Gavin? Well, possibly, a little, yes. He wasn’t too great to begin with.’

‘Has he been violent?’ I asked.

Violent!’ she said, puffing on her cigarette and pushing a strand of hair away from her eye. ‘God, every story he writes and every picture he draws. Mind you, there’s a few of them who see life that way, which won’t come as any surprise to you. But he is among the worst.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘If you had to read the number of gory stories I’ve marked since school started again… severed limbs and decapitated torsos and blood gushing like fountains. And some of the pictures are just collages of tanks and guns and body parts. Even the kids who didn’t see much violence during the war have been infected by it.’

‘So what am I meant to do about Gavin?’ I asked, feeling more helpless with every minute. ‘He seems to be acting a bit violently at times too.’

I wasn’t really being honest about him, but I didn’t want to give him too bad a name.

She had that teacher suspicion thing though, where they can smell a copied essay or a cruel joke or a fake excuse from a kilometre away. She frowned at me through the cigarette smoke. What’s he done now?’

It was too early in the morning for me to avoid teachers’ suspicious questions. And after all, I had come there for a bit of comfort and support. ‘Something to a cat,’ I stammered. ‘He was staying at Mark’s, and they did something pretty horrible to a cat.’

She pressed her lips together and looked away. ‘It might be time to do something about him,’ she said. ‘In the old days he would have been at the therapist’s long ago, but the resources are few and far between at the moment. Still, I think he’s about ready for some intervention. It’s a scandal that there are no integration aides.’

‘I don’t want to get him into trouble,’ I said. ‘I just want some ideas on how to handle him.’

‘Oh God, I’ve got every sympathy with you,’ she said. ‘And with him too for that matter. I haven’t got much idea of what he went through in the war, but I know it was horrendous, and then there was the terrible thing out at your place…’

‘The terrible thing’ — seemed like that was its new name.

‘Yeah, that came at the worst time,’ I agreed, and a moment later thought, ‘What a stupid comment.’ As if there’s ever a best time.

Mrs Rosedale looked at the end of her cigarette. ‘You know, I’ve really got to give these up,’ she said. A whole lot of children’s voices, laughing and squealing and chattering, suddenly came through the other row of windows behind me. It sounded like a horde of wasps setting out for a day in the garden.

‘You just have to try to ignore the bad behaviour and reinforce the good,’ Mrs Rosedale said. When he does something good, give him lots of praise, and don’t take any notice when he’s been naughty. And I’ll have a chat to Mrs Howell about him. That business of the cat sounds serious.’

Walking back to the high school, I felt pretty miserable. It wasn’t only that Mrs Rosedale had been no help, but there was the feeling that I might have made things worse. The last thing I wanted was a whole bunch of people who didn’t know anything much about our situation to come poking around. I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job with Gavin on my own, but I had the feeling that they might do worse.