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

image to develop. Emerging red in the face with the effort, as if he'd stayed too long under water, his mother hastily assumed it to be embarrassment and moved away from McBee. But it was when she began adding ‘dear’ like a Christian-name at the end of every other sentence that Holden squirmed. The automation of the intimacy irritated him. He wondered what her feelings were. To Karen though the endearment was natural.
    The Shadbolts were now usually into their dessert before McBee came in; ‘tea’ had always been at six and Mrs Shadbolt saw no reason for delaying it. The sound of the motorbike as it turned into their street and accelerated towards them alerted their mother, and Holden, who had an ear for these things, although everybody recognised the distinctive single-cylinder clatter, nodded authoritatively, ‘Here he comes.’ And as the rider changed down through the gears, blipping the throttle quite unnecessarily, their mother ducked out to consult a mirror. Only a brief embrace was allowed as he banged through the screen door. With the post-war reconstruction in full swing McBee wore overalls, his hands and sometimes his cheeks smudged with grease. And his raw energy—whack: ‘Howdy, Holden-boy!’— transformed the house.
    After scrubbing his face clean, he sat down and proceeded to methodically chew the chop or steak, removing strands of gristle with his fingers, indicating to Holden not so much simple hunger as this man's unalloyed determination. Between mouthfuls he asked Karen, ‘And what did you get up to today?’ Politely nodding at her finger-twisting recital he then turned to Holden, taking a different line, ‘Did you fell a teacher with a single blow to the head today? How many did you tell to jump in the lake? Let's have it, buster. You're among your mates here. At least you were when I left this morning.’ The more colloquial and exaggerated he became the more they enjoyed it.
    As he ate, Mrs Shadbolt watched his veins stand out, and she smiled pointedly at her children during his interrogations.
    Only after leaning back and running his tongue over his teeth did he turn to her and almost jump out of his seat with surprise. Karen and Holden had been waiting for it; McBee never let them down. ‘What? You're here too? It's Mrs…’—clicking his fingers and frowning—‘Mrs Whatshername. For the life of me I've forgotten her surname. Normally I'm a tiger for…names. I believe we've met before. It was dark. Remember? My, you're looking nice today. Isn't she now? In broad daylight.’
    Out of uniform his open-necked shirt always of the same brown-check spilled out from his slacks and at least one button and shoelace was undone. His red knuckles, oscillating Adam's apple and jaw had become hungry, carbuncular. The energy he brought into the kitchen and the bedroom was tradition-free, larrikin energy. It was expansive, raw, and sometimes dry, as unpredictable as the climate over the perplexing continent.
    Holden heard McBee tell their mother he'd hired ‘without doubt the finest and most sought-after signwriter in the state’ to paint her initials, AJS, in resplendent gold leaf on the petrol tank of the machine. And—who would believe?—she swallowed it. Long after he'd sold it and moved onto better things she kept seeing her monogrammed motorbike on the streets in various colours and states of repair; and once when she saw an AJS with a sidecar she felt a pang as if she had given birth to another child.
    To Holden, McBee sometimes spoke in riddles. Slapping the machine's foam rubber seat he said quite loudly, ‘She's a good ride. I'll tell you about it one day. She can be a temperamental bitch,’ he added, a joke.
    Holden thought McBee had been confiding in him. Looking up he saw his mother with hands on her hips. ‘I heard that,’ she said. But smiling slightly she had eyes only for