The Lit. Class

Held off on the Eve Babitz & Anais Nin purchases, City Library volume of the latter would suffice. The Four-Chambered Heart, after a sequence of pages in the stacks had read pretty well. Years ago Miki had been a fan, dismissing the recent discovery of falsity in what was presented as memoir. Who gave a toss about all that, said the astro-physicist. Almost 4PM at Degraves downstairs, where the image of Kerryn Jackson from Veki’s school photographs returned again. Such a time. Kerryn had been in Veki’s form group, not ours, together with a couple of other transfers that year from a neighbouring school. We had cleared maybe 10% of Veki’s books and some of the choice vinyl albums. Veki’s sister had left some photograph albums too for sifting. Kerryn. The only girl of that name in twelve years of schooling. Very little of her had come back in all the time since, understandably buried so far in the past. Another girl who had transferred in the group with Kerryn had stung Veki and continued to plague his mind all these many years later. All the relevant events had remained of course in the back of the mind, but it was the face and bodily form in the photograph that delivered the force of life. There was the girl again in her person in her thick abundant hair held by a couple of clips, full figure beneath her blazer, the vivaciousness apparent behind the blank facade for the camera. What a quantity of girl at that age! Anais and Eve were perfectly fitting precursors. How the girl had mown through our ranks left and right with no beg pardons! Firstly there had been six or nine months with big blonde Dicko. More than odd now looking back how the Jock had never for a moment thought anything of those lunches the pair took at Dicko’s place through the first half of Year 12. School and local team captain, leader of the pack, fully seventeen years of age—not the faintest inkling. The best friend more or less. We went down to the holiday house in Rosebud the year before. Fishing with the plumber old man in his little tin sardine can. (Terrifying.) Drinking buddies. There was one memory of parting at the bottom of the overpass one lunchtime, the pair of them going off to the right and Jock left. In retrospect later John had been flushed and awkward on the turn, lumbering away heavily. Kerryn had somehow been off balance too, as if concerned she had made herself transparent just then and been unmasked. Not the faintest idea; never a thought. Training; the game on the Saturday; later in the afternoon the Bombers would be playing in the big league. Schoolwork figured almost zero and girls little more. Suddenly half way through the year the best pal’s gal was assuming a seat at the desk in the Lit. class, during Othello it may have started. (Dicko did Accounting.) Some number of weeks later out of nowhere the suggestion to see a movie in town. Without any memory of astonishment there could have been none when Kerryn suggested the venture. Other meetings in Footscray had followed, only recalled because the house boarder Stojan’s approving remark on a sighting stayed in memory. Completely forgettable, as was the feature on the big screen on that first date. There surely would have been kisses sitting close together like that in the dark. How had they been erased without any trace? Weren’t you supposed to recall such blazing moments, like Veki all the ins and outs with his secret sweetheart? Kerryn had been awaited at the head of the ramp at Footscray Station, dropped off by her mother in the car. Rather than the first kiss, the signal moment had been turning to climb up the ramp for platform No. 4, the presence of mind taking the hand immediately without further ado. Hers; not the Jock’s; within the first couple of strides. Up and down and into town; the initial kiss had been minor by comparison. A bar on Collins Street had been discovered some weeks before with the boys. Not bad going being recognised almost by the waiter afterward. The part-time KFC had loaded cash in the pocket. At her folk’s place in Robert Street, over the other side of Geelong Road up from the oval—opposite North Footscray’s oval in fact, one of our opponents—kisses and squeezes on the couch while mum and plumber dad (another one) slept on the other side of the hall. Later in the year a phone call from the booth around in the next street promptly ended the affair. We were too alike; it was no good; bye. Gee, that was quick; over in a flash. Taken to mean we both wanted it on our own terms; the other coming onto us. Possibly. Precocious seventeen year old psychological assessment. Dicko was left badly wounded. There could be no explanation. What was to say? Later again that year or early the next, Ronnie W. reported a big love bite given to Kerryn’s breast. There seemed to have been no preamble, nor any sequel either for Ron. Some time after that too, suddenly out of the blue again, Viddy brings the gal over to the flat in Balaclava one afternoon, where she commented on the Jock’s perfect toenails up on the fireplace. Strange and unfathomable. We repaired to a booth at The Greyhound on Nepean Highway, whispering between the pair while Ronnie and the Jock were supposed to twiddle our thumbs waiting, was it? Hey guys, no! Ten or fifteen years later she appeared 15-20kgs heavier with her husband in Viddy’s office seeking assistance over their taxation. (The team had produced a number of accountants.) Guilt long-lingering, making you wince inside. Did Dicko ever recover? did he ever turn away from the booze, the choice VB? His role model father never did, dying early. Spectacular racey gal. Masterful. The Jock had topped the class in the half year Lit. exam, though with the need to catch up on the other subjects in the last weeks of swotting, a failure in the finals. Ron Dyet the new principal had taken the Othello class himself, a rare standout in twelve years of Western Suburban schooling. During the regular teacher’s classes the fifty minutes was devoted to more important learning. Quite something how the Shakes. would stand as a signpost into the future. Curious how the bard’s name had carried into that particular milieu; in the previous year MacBeth too had been set. Tackling that giant to the ground and making some kind of sense of the matter constituted a signifier right enough. The old Signet edition still on the shelves bore the alternate title that had been half penned/half gouged into the front cover: IAGO. Rightly understood, such command of love and fallibility deserved precedence over the foolish old blundering Moor; (odd how Shakespeare could get something like that so badly wrong). Had that been the teacher Dyet’s, or in fact the Jock’s own insight? We followed the twists and turns of love in the class reading and simultaneously out in the field.