Read Online Holden's Performance by Murray Bail - Free Book Online Page A

Aren't you, boy?’
    He leaned towards Holden's stiffening face.
    â€˜Say something to the audience. Anything that comes into your head. Express yourself. Tell us what's going on in that thick skull of yours. What are your views of today's youth? Has the returned soldier been given a fair go?’
    â€˜Please don't hurt him,’ Karen cried.
    McBee tickled her with his free hand, ‘I know your weak spots. I'll get you in a minute—when I've finished with this difficult bugger.’
    Bent up behind his ear Holden's arm made the sound of snapping twigs and branches. An atomic flurry in the ground plan of Adelaide: it only lasted a minute. Faintly, Holden perceived it to be evidence of loyalty not to crack. It lessened the pain.
    â€˜Good man,’ McBee let go. ‘You beat the clock. You've got a good threshold. That's right.’ He tried the word again: ‘“Threshold”. You've got a good threshold.’
    â€˜I didn't mind,’ Holden rubbed his elbow, ‘it didn't hurt.’
    Karen didn't believe him. ‘Are you all right?’
    â€˜Stupid,’ their mother moved over to the sink. ‘That goes for the both of you.’
    And when McBee nudged him and winked he felt included in an alliance, almost as an equal. Unlike his awkwardness with the metalwork teacher he experienced a kind of hectic gratitude for being allowed to remain close to the older man.
    Moving up a grade to Indian arm-wrestling Holden felt he could beat McBee (hands down), though he never pushed his advantage, and throwing and lifting each other on the front lawn in the hot twilight Holden managed, despite an indifferent audience, to hold the former soldier horizontally above his head while remaining completely expressionless.
    That irrational movement—arthritic, spasmodic—which disturbed the lines of the city on Friday evenings was nothing to the one which appeared later in the year, in broad daylight. External (that is, observed by the population at large), horizontal and longer-lasting it was accompanied by the metallic strokes of internal combustion. Leaving Uncle Vern's place late one afternoon Holden turned as usual into Magill Road. Head down, exaggerating the illusion of being engulfed by the tidal Hills rising darkly a few yards behind him, Holden quickly reached the point where the pedals of Mercury became hopelessly undergeared—must have been hitting forty-five or fifty—and was aiming to pass a tram, also swaying left and right as if being pedalled, when an olive-green war-disposal motorbike came from behind in a clatter and cut in front of him, leaning like a yacht tacking in a gale, almost clipping the tram's slatted cowcatcher, before leaning the other way in the one graceful motion to avoid colliding with a man and his missus, who'd stepped out to flag down the city-bound tram.
    All Holden had glimpsed was a patch of nicotine-coloured hair. Something about the receding rider's splayed elbows opened Holden's eyes; and suddenly he recognised his father's piped trousers. By then the couple were directly in front of his handlebars, and only by swerving violently, his left elbow grazing the jutting breast of the embroidered woman did he avoid piling into them—a rare moment when his face expressed alarm.
    Recovering nicely, he began laughing. Not over the close shave, the frozen faces and the man's angry shout, but in anticipation of seeing McBee at home with his precious motorbike.
    A new informality showed between Mrs Shadbolt and Frank McBee. They could be quite solemn and matter-of-fact together: a naturalisation ceremony of the kind eventually performed by thousands of post-war migrants.
    The naturalness tended (extended) to extremes. Diving under the table retrieving a fork Holden saw the former soldier's trigger hand between his mother's splayed legs. A single blink registered it as clearly as a Leica shutter, and he stayed under a second or two more for the humid