As Jack arrived at the gate to the long dirt road to his house, he realised he hadn’t even looked for Simon’s bike when fetching his. He hadn’t seen him on the road home either, not that he ever got to pass Simon. Maybe he was at some training session or other. Jack swung open the gate.
Mel leaned forward on the pale tan bench seat beside Juliet.
‘Hey, Mum, Mum, stop!’
‘What is it, Mel?’ asked Juliet, more amused than startled.
‘That’s Jack—the one I told you about.’
What a delight, thought Mel, to be living next to that great artist. Juliet pulled over. Mel leaned out the window as Jack wheeled his bike through the gate.
‘Jack, you live here?’
Jack pretended not to hear as he locked the gate. It was like this tomboy was deliberately following him!
‘Jack!’
He reluctantly turned round.
‘You live here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’re just over there.’
The next-door neighbour’s gate was wide open. Mystery solved. Jack felt a little deflated.
‘We could give you a lift to school, couldn’t we, Mum?’
‘Yes,’ said Juliet. ‘Starting tomorrow morning, if you like, Jack?
Jack tried to smile.
The rooster woke Jack at dawn. The sky began to pale yawningly above the horizon. Above the silhouetted treetops, the morning star shone brightly one last time before it was washed out by day. The sun rose on Jack’s house, and on the neighbours’. The cows were lowing in the field, rabbits scurried madly under fences, and lean foxes found their holes.
Mel and Juliet were hanging out washing.
Jean lowered her binoculars. Much of that laundry looked expensive and grand, in her opinion. She stepped away from the lounge-room window to appraise Daniel, Simon and Jack, who were having breakfast. She stared at Daniel, expecting him to ask what she had observed, but he did not look up from his toast.
‘No sign of a husband,’ she said, impatiently.
Daniel smeared his toast liberally with Vegemite. She expected such lack of taste from Jack. She put the binoculars back in their moulded, brown leather case, and tried to adopt a casual tone.
‘She was your childhood sweetheart, wasn’t she?’
Jack eyed his father sharply. Jean noticed and chided herself for the ring of hysteria in her voice as Daniel unfolded yesterday’s paper and found something of urgent fascination within its pages.
‘She won’t remember me, darling.’
She plonked the binoculars case down hard on the table. Still he wouldn’t look at her. Her gaze darted back to the neighbours’ but she couldn’t make out much through the prism of windows. Mrs Ashton had seen Juliet in town yesterday and said she was quite the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen pass through town, like a platinum blonde movie star. Jean pulled at her dark, slightly wavy do.
She remastered her even tone. ‘All right, Jack, if they’re so gracious as to offer you a lift, you’d better get going.’
Jack grabbed his bag and walked to the front door, but stopped and turned back to Simon.
‘You coming, Simon?’
‘Nuh.’
Jean waved Jack to the door. ‘No, your brother’s riding to school. He’s got to build up his muscles for football. He’s gonna be the success-story of this family, my Simon.’
Jean noticed Daniel’s almost imperceptible wince, and felt an odd pang. Why couldn’t she love him, or Jack, as she did Simon?
‘Aw, Mum,’ cooed Simon.
Daniel lowered his paper and peered at Jean as she stroked Simon’s hair. No one seemed to notice Jack, who hesitated at the door.
‘See ya, Dad,’ he ventured.
Daniel slowly drew his eyes away from Jean. ‘Okay, son.’
Jack looked again at Jean. She did not seem to notice him, or thought perhaps he had already left. As Jack went outside, he wondered at what his mother had mentioned.
Juliet, Daniel’s childhood sweetheart? What exactly was that?
Halfway through the long walk to the front gate, Simon sped past on his bike, making sure to half-brake and spin up the dust.
Mel and Juliet were waiting in the car. Simon had locked the gate. Jack clambered through the wires without opening it.
‘Sorry I’m late, but I—’
‘Hop in,’ said Juliet, pleasantly.
Mel jumped out of the car. Jack slid in and Mel got back in beside him, the three occupying the front bench seat. Sandwiched between the two, he soon relaxed despite himself, and after a while felt oddly cosy. Juliet had a very subtle, fragrant smell. She wore a hat at an angle with a slight veil. Mel was in odd-looking jeans; she must have found them on one of her overseas adventures.
He found that Mel was smiling at him. He looked away shyly, not wanting her to think he was staring. She turned on the radio to the ABC. Some classical piece was playing.
Mel beamed knowingly at Jack. It was odd, this instant connection. He wondered what her imagination was like.
They pulled up outside school where Glen, Michael, Noel and a few other classmates were standing round, talking. They stopped to stare at the beetle-green Citroën. Mel got out and, to their surprise, Jack was next! Juliet drove away, giving a friendly toot. Glen, Michael and Noel looked in astonishment at Jack with Mel. A flush spreading across his cheeks, Jack mumbled something unintelligible to Mel, before joining them. Mel stepped after him a pace, but hesitated when Jack cut her out of the circle by turning his back. Hurt, she half-ran, half-skipped to class.
Michael explained he was feeling better from his ‘summer cold’. Jack wondered if he hadn’t instead heard that Miss Jackson had left.
It occurred to Jack he did have a friend in Michael, and perhaps even in Noel.
They entered class, the three chatting. Their classmates were throwing paper planes, flicking rubber bands, and firing spitballs through biros from which they’d removed the nibs and ink tubes.
‘…she just lives next door,’ Jack was saying. ‘So I thought… Well, if I don’t have to ride…’
Mel was sitting alone at the front of class, in the boy’s half. Jack shut his mouth and looked down sheepishly. Without looking up again, he found his usual seat at the back with Michael. Jack pulled from his knapsack the past year’s Doctor Who almanac. Daniel had found it marked-down in the remainder bin outside the newsagent’s, the only place in town to occasionally stock books.
For the last week, Jack had pored over its pages late into the night, reading and re-reading every word and picture caption, learning more about Cybermen, Sontarons, Gallifrey and Sarah Jane Smith. He’d promised to bring it in for Michael.
Michael greedily thumbed through it, but was looking more at the pictures than reading.
Jack noticed a picture in the almanac of the doctor half shielding Sarah Jane Smith, his… the word came to him: companion. Travelling through time and space would be pretty boring and lonely on your own.
The rest of the class was still creating havoc. Except Mel… Guiltily, he tried to catch her eye but she wouldn’t turn round and acknowledge him. He stared out the window. For once, not because he was looking for something better out there, but because he was feeling rather foolish.
Jack knew exactly what his father would have counselled in such a situation: to always make anyone new feel welcome.
Rush was strolling purposefully towards the portables, the sun gently draped around his shoulders like a cat, when he ran into Higgins, who seemed to be hanging outside the entrance door. Higgins ventured an awkward greeting.
‘Morning.’
‘Good morning,’ returned Rush, reaching forward to push the door.
They entered the corridor and made their way to the homeroom. Before Rush could enter that, Higgins grabbed the doorhandle and held it shut.
‘Everything well?’ he asked.
Rush sized up Higgins, wondering what could be the matter.
‘Yes,’ he answered slowly.
Higgins cleared his throat.
‘And Jack?’
So that was it: concern over a student. Rush stared through the glass at the boy he presumed to be Jack, the remarkable talent sitting by the window, and the only one apart from Mel to be quiet and contained amid the flurry and fury around them. He turned back to Higgins.
‘The boy who’s either drawing or staring out the window?’ he clarified, without the least judgement.
To Rush’s surprise, Higgins grimaced. ‘Well, not always,’ he huffed.
Jack was still gazing out the window.
‘Probably bored,’ said Rush.
Higgins’ jaw dropped.
‘Bored?’ he expostulated, once he’d got his mouth closed enough to form words. ‘Bored? At Miller’s Creek Primary?’
Rush inwardly sighed, but thought it best, outwardly, to placate. ‘Well, Frank, sometimes if a student’s particularly bright…’
Higgins again flinched. ‘Bored, Mr Rush?’ he squawked. ‘Here? Where we offer the best a State School can—’
A duster crashed into the door’s inset window, leaving behind a cloud of chalk particles. Higgins thrust his wide face against the glass, and Rush could only wonder that Higgins must have looked like a powdered clown from the other side.
Glen, standing nearest to the door, bent down to pick up the duster to relaunch it. But, as he rose, he saw Higgins’ ghostly face framed in the glass. He swivelled round in panic.
‘Mr Higgins!’
The kids madly scrambled to their seats as Higgins and Rush entered. Jack looked round vaguely at the clatter of desks and chairs. Michael moved the Doctor Who book from the top to the underside of the desk, resting it on his knees. Higgins surveyed the class sternly as Rush walked to the front desk, frowning, hoping Higgins would leave him to manage on his own. With not a soul making a squeak, Higgins nodded, self-satisfied, to Rush. But as he made his way to the door, he took a quick survey of Jack to make sure he wasn’t proving Rush’s thesis through staring out the window, and his eyes landed on Michael instead. The grubby boy was evidently oblivious to his presence, for he was busy reading under his table. Some rot, no doubt. Higgins began a slow, deliberate march towards him. Rush, glancing between the two, wished only that Higgins would quit the room, but could not think of a polite way of asking. He deliberated it was best to catch him up, which wasn’t difficult given Higgins’ slow-motion pace, all done for effect.
Mel watched the charade, her eyes meeting Jack’s, as he turned from the window. Taking in what was about to happen, he immediately began nudging Michael.
Higgins, with Rush nary a step behind, continued to advance along the row of desks.
‘Michael… Michael!’ Jack whispered.
Higgins raised a finger to Jack, warning him not to alert his friend.
Michael craned up his head in time to see the shambolic figure of Higgins bearing down on him. Instinctively, he raised both arms as if to ward off a rock-fall. At the last second, Rush stepped between the two.
Higgins’ face could not have formed a more eloquent expression of surprise.
‘Michael!’ announced Rush.
Michael reflectively shut the book with a thwack.
‘Yes?’ he squeaked.
The rest of the class was nervous, the exchange between Michael and Miss Jackson still raw in their memories.
Rush grinned. ‘Whatever you’ve got there must be good if you have to read it under the table.’
Silence, then Jack heard a musical chuckle. He couldn’t confirm that it was Mel, since Higgins and Rush obscured her from view, but it did have her tinkle and clarity. The class laughed a moment later, once Rush had joined her. Michael was perplexed; Higgins frowned. In a friendly fashion, Rush held out his hand. Jack immediately knew what for, and felt a flush of annoyance to know his book was about to be confiscated. Gingerly, Michael handed it over. Flicking through its pages, Rush returned to the front of class, leaving Higgins in the back row like a student. Circling his desk, the teacher appeared utterly absorbed in the book. To Jack’s infinite surprise, Rush then began humming the opening bars from the Doctor Who theme, even playing up to it by pretending to flick an imaginary scarf.
The kids stared at him tentatively. Mel smiled, then glanced over her left shoulder to pick out Jack. Their eyes met. He smiled in a way that he hoped conveyed his apology. Rush looked up from the almanac.
‘Jon Pertwee was a good Doctor, but the current one… yes, yes, he’s very good. The Daleks versus the Cybermen? The Daleks every time. Now, who is that new Doctor?’
‘Tom Baker, sir.’
It was Jack’s turn to stare open-mouthed. Mel had answered Rush’s question.
‘Tom Baker, yes!’ shouted Rush, swivelling round but directing his words at Higgins. And then, to Mel, more quietly, ‘Thank you, Mel.’
Jack remained fixated on Mel, his forehead creasing. Sneaking another look back over her shoulder, she smiled again, as if to say, Well, didn’t you know that? Jack grinned in return. She really was quite unlike the other girls. Or boys, for that matter.
Rush had his nose back in the almanac and was walking down the aisle toward Jack and Michael’s desk. He stopped in front of it.
‘Ah, Doctor Who, travelling through time and space. Did you know, Michael, that you can travel in time through music?’
‘Nuh.’
Rush looked up from the almanac, before pirouetting to face Higgins.
‘Well, leastways you can travel backwards!’
Higgins’ eyebrows hit his hairline. Rush made his way back to his desk, whereupon he began circling it once more.
‘The Kinks’ ‘Lola’ was an unfortunate romance I had in Bristol; Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, an interminable convalescence I underwent in a sanatorium on the Bay of Islands; and, eleven years ago now, Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances…’
Mel wrote down that last piece, thinking her mother might know it. When she looked up, Rush was regarding her meaningfully.
‘…was…’ he uncharacteristically mumbled, seemingly now engaged in a conversation with himself. ‘Well, maybe the best choice I ever made.’
Mel was pleasantly puzzled, the others kids unsure of these ramblings. To Higgins, such carryings-on smacked of an unorthodoxy to which he would have to give weighty consideration. A scene would achieve nothing now. He walked awkwardly towards the door.
As he passed Mel, she blurted out a question.
‘Mr Rush, can we travel in time?’
Higgins hesitated.
‘Yes, of course!’ Rush announced, breaking out of his private thoughts. He then glanced at Higgins mischievously. ‘But it helps with the curtains shut!’
Rush lunged at the closest window hangings and drew them closed. He nodded to the kids to do likewise with those still drawn. In pairs, they stood on their desks and pulled the rest shut in something of a Mexican Wave. Higgins looked round, dismayed. With the closing of the last curtains, Higgins felt the light drain off his face.
To everyone else, the denuded light was more velvety, more wondrous; to Higgins, shadowy, suspicious. Rush gave him a wink before beginning a strange narration.
‘In a dimly lit but stately drawing room in Salzburg, Austria, Leopold Mozart…’ Rush grabbed Higgins by the shoulders, shoving him down in the teacher’s chair ‘…sits and listens to his talented daughter, Nannerl…’ Rush pointed at Mel ‘…playing the harpsichord.’
Rush led Mel gently to the front desk, placing her fingers on top of it as though it were a harpsichord. She promptly realised what he wished her to mime, and got into the spirit of the thing by striking a musician’s pose.
‘Leopold,’ Rush continued, nodding at Higgins, ‘has great hopes that one day Nannerl will perform for distinguished audiences throughout Europe.’
Higgins had had about enough and rose. Rush pushed him back down in his chair.
‘Leopold is a musician and violinist of some note himself,’ said Rush to Higgins. ‘He is Nannerl’s stern and exacting teacher. The year is 1762.’
As Rush described more of the scene, Jack came to see Higgins dressed in a high-parted, curled grey wig, with coat, jacket and breeches in a deep royal blue, trimmed with gold braid. Mel he pictured attired in a crimson pelisse, plainly embroidered in black swirls. The room became a voluptuous profusion of thick gilded mouldings, weighty brocades, and abundant marbling—in short, all the wonderful excesses of the Baroque era.
Mel played a ditty at the pretty harpsichord, lacquered as it was in paper printed with elaborate patterns. Rush strode over to Jack. Nervous, Jack wanted to slide under his desk, but Rush gestured to him. The next thing he knew, he was at the front of class, part of the historical play-acting.
‘Meanwhile,’ Rush continued to narrate, ‘little Amadeus, who has been sitting fidgeting, looking out the window…’
The class laughed. Jack tried not to blush.
‘…listening to his sister play, can no longer contain himself.’
Jack, imagining himself now clothed in a gold figured waistcoat and wearing a bicorne hat, began picking out tunes on the harpsichord as Nannerl tried to continue her practice.
‘Nannerl,’ narrated Rush, ‘turns to Leopold, pouting.’
‘Papa!’ yelled Mel. ‘Tell Amadeus to go outside.’
Rush put his hands on Higgins’ shoulders, preventing him from rising. ‘Leopold sits up straighter and says, “Amadeus, don’t disturb your sister. Go outside and play.”’
Rush let go of Higgins’ shoulders and began to weave between his three actors.
‘As Leopold speaks,’ Rush continued, ‘Amadeus moves to the other side of the harpsichord and again picks out his tune.’
Jack echoed the direction.
‘But Leopold growls: “Amadeus!”’
Jack jumped, startled, moving away from the desk. Mel made a face at him as she reclaimed her seat.
‘But little Amadeus does not want to go outside and play,’ said Rush. ‘He is fascinated by the harpsichord and keen to show his father his own tentative attempts to compose music.’
Jack nervously held up a dirty manuscript (his book of drawings) to Higgins.
‘Papa, look at my music.’
‘Leopold was gruff,’ narrated Rush, ‘as he snatched the book. “What’s this?” he mumbled. “What are you trying to do here?”’
Higgins reluctantly glanced over Jack’s exercise book.
‘Leopold looks at the messy manuscript and childish notations and sighs with agitation.
‘“Why don’t you go outside and play?” asks Leopold. “I’m listening to Nannerl. We’ll start serious lessons for you soon enough.”’
Rush shook a finger at Higgins. ‘But Leopold’s eyes and mind are drawn back to his young son’s notes and an idea begins to form in his head.’
Higgins sat up straight.
‘“Amadeus! From where did you copy this?”’
Rush slammed the desk in front of Higgins. ‘No, not a suspicion of plagiarism!’ he yelled. ‘Something else!’
For the first time, Higgins joined in the play-acting. ‘Oh, yes, yes, quite. Amadeus, Amadeus, come back inside. Go to the harpsichord and play your composition for me. Nannerl, move aside for your brother, please.’
Mel trotted off in a huff, glancing back at Jack. He poked his tongue out at her, before sitting back down at the desk, and throwing out imaginary coattails behind him.
‘Mozart plays his Alla Turka, quickly livening to its military band rhythms,’ intoned Rush while throwing up his arms, as if conducting Jack and class alike. ‘Leopold is amazed by the little boy’s composition. Not only does he have a talented daughter but an equally brilliant son!’
The-end-of-school bell sounded just as Jack passionately struck the last ecstatic note, before raising his fingers off the harpsichord.
Jack turned to see Rush, Higgins and the entire class staring at him. At once he was plain Jack again, sitting in a darkened classroom where he had been thumping on the teacher’s desk.
Rush nodded expansively at Higgins, as if to say, ‘There! He’s coming out of his shell.’
Higgins could only manage a grunt.
Mel caught up with Jack at the school gate.
‘You were brilliant!’ she cried.
Jack felt himself turning red, and fumbled with the strap on his bag.
‘I… well…’
Mel simply grabbed his arm, pushing him forward and into Juliet’s awaiting Citroën.
Juliet drove up to Jack’s gate and parked, expectantly. Jack clambered over Mel to get out. This time, rather than climb through the gate, he leapt over it instead. Juliet wound down her window.
‘Aren’t you going to open the gate, Jack?’
Jack looked down shyly. Jean was probably home and he wondered if she would like visitors when she wasn’t expecting any. She’d be worried the house wasn’t clean enough.
‘It’s a long way to walk,’ added Juliet.
He hoisted his bag to his shoulder. ‘It’s all right.’
Mel clambered over her mum to stick her head out the window.
‘Why don’t you come to our place, Jack?
Juliet nodded assent.
‘Yes, why don’t you?’
Jack wanted to, but his parents would be expecting him. He didn’t think Daniel would mind, but…
‘No, no, I think I’d better be getting home.’
He turned quickly, before either of them could make further entreaties, and got away, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. As he dragged his feet, he noticed the runnels edging the road. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he picked up a broken bit where it was eroding and threw it like it was a grenade. When it hit the ground and blew up in dust, he made the appropriate sound of an explosion.
Jack noted the driveway was getting quite rough, with all the potholes and fissures. Just another of Daniel’s jobs he hadn’t done, according to Jean—ordering a truck loaded with gravel to fill them.
He heard a toot and looked off to his left to see the green Citroën through the fence and line of poplars. Mel appeared to be sitting on her mum’s lap, steering. Jack lowered his hand with his next ‘bomb’ in it. His shyness had returned and he felt a total fool next to this girl who could drive, and wondered why that should matter to him.
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