He threaded his way through the desks to the coat rack and I thought, shit, I love you, I love you, you are going to carry our film right out the bloody door, or maybe, just expose the film in front of everyone. I knew he was thinking what I was thinking, that’s the way we were.
As he delivered the bag to Crystal I was in the zone. He placed it on her desk. Right. He unzipped it. Right. He removed the camera and held it high, taunting.
Then he fucking gave it to her. I watched it in its full awfulness. Frederic held his head to one side, and if it was meant to be sarcastic, it was not. He stood in all his powerlessness and waited while she rewound the film.
Crystal removed the film and gave him back the camera.
The film is our property, he said.
Tough.
We paid for it with our money.
You’ll be reimbursed. Now, please take your place.
Please take your place. Who said that? I made a note, of course, but this was no longer our school. R. F. Mackenzie was not like this at all, and the whole home room were like POWs, shocked, and hating Crystal except—to be honest—maybe those who thought Frederic and I were too up ourselves, and of course they must have been the majority.
But even then it did not occur to me that the chunky spike-haired little band moll would actually process our film.
Later, on the due day when everyone presented their projects, nonstop, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., I watched her set up the projector and lace our processed film, and she was still hard-arsed, but when she saw the Agrikem sign her face softened and she glanced at me and I was pleased because I wanted her to like me after all. I knew I must be the most radical, the coolest student she ever had.
Frederic had shot the scenes in sequence so what was projected on the pitted wall was a kind of rough assembly of what we actually shot. Not quite the script, but close enough. Each take was short, three or five seconds, and Crystal’s face changed in sync with what she saw, as if she were entering the rhythm of the argument. 1. Agrikem sign. Good. 2. Wide shot of factory, good, zoom to sewer. Good. 3. Gaby takes her clothes off, OK. 4. Gaby rolls in the dirt. No, no. 5. Ambulance. 6. Gaby escorted through fence. 7. Ambulance leaves McBryde Street. 8. Royal Melbourne Hospital. Ambulance arrives. No, no, no. Crystal in total panic.
When Crystal ran from the room everybody stared at me. Freddo drew on his pad as if he had just had some really cool and urgent idea. Crystal came back with the temporary coordinator, a person not well suited to that role. When the temporary coordinator had seen the film she said she had a legal responsibility to show it to our parents.
We read Bleak House all afternoon. I hated it, that sweetie goodie Esther Summerson.
I asked Crystal did she like her.
Crystal said we were looking to go beyond “like.”
Doug the Organic Mechanic arrived to announce that he “very much doubted” you would even get a zit from a single exposure to the dirt at Agrikem. Melissa and Nada tittered. Doug ordered me to pull up my T-shirt and I said he was a perve. I said it was “inappropriate” and so he left the room. Then Crystal made me show my unmarked fat.
It was the worst day of my life.
My father made a big impact at the parents’ screening. He said what a relief it was, and what a happy occasion that no-one had been hurt, that no harm had been done and the best thing, he said to everyone, was that we had learned about the importance of doing homework. They all pissed themselves with laughter and I felt a fool. My father wore an open-neck shirt and a daggy unravelling sweater—pitch perfect for R. F. Mackenzie—and he looked so bright, and handsome and in charge. The Premier had just increased funding to suburban libraries. One of which was just across the street, Sando said, and his daughter could have learned everything she needed to know about dioxin’s side effects without getting herself muddy.
This was just so psychologically wrong.
He put his hand on Frederic’s mother’s shoulder and she stared at him like a cocker spaniel. Stoned. He tousled Frederic’s hair (which Frederic really didn’t like) and he hugged me and Celine to him in a monstrous family fake. I had never seen him so energised. He bullshitted and bulldozed the temporary coordinator and made a speech about Crystal’s amazing dedication. He thought the government’s negotiation with her union on pay scales would make her very happy.
Did Frederic understand what had happened? Of course. Exactly. But he led his dazed mum away without speaking to me. I had my bike so was excused the parental car. The Volvo was at home when I finally arrived, its radiator pinging as it cooled, and I wheeled my bike down the side and came in through the laundry. Once inside I discovered Act II was over and this was now Act III. All dark and comfortless.
Sando had clearly stewed on everything since leaving school and by the time I came into his presence he was triumphant. He could not wait to point it out: I had failed to prove my point. He had been right. I should have believed him, not Mervyn Aisen and his sloppy graduate student friend. He would be a minister by next year. Would I believe him then?
He became reflective, speculative. What, he asked me, what if I had succeeded in my film, what then? Academically speaking, he said. What if my skin had erupted? Did it occur to me how I would have hurt all of us, not only myself, but him? What would it have done for his future in the government?
I did not recognise the person who I had sided with against my mother.
How could you do this to me? he demanded. Why do you believe everyone outside the house but not your father?
You abused your beauty, he said. I told him he was pathetic and went to bed and locked the door so he had to apologise from the other side.
Then Celine tried to be the peacemaker. She must have been seeing Lionel Patrick (who was old enough to be a pensioner) but she sided with my father. He loves you, more than life itself, she said.
He’s a baby, I said.
All men are babies when they love you, she said, so vain.
33
AT FIRST, when Frederic surrendered our film to Crystal, I did not understand how much I had been betrayed. Frederic saw it, though. That was one of his amazing talents, to always see the contrail of my thoughts.
To the home room, we must have seemed unchanged: the up-themselves pair with matching eye shadow, and army boots. Freddo stroked my neck and blew in my ear in public. No-one had a clue, but he was asking me to forgive him when I wouldn’t admit that there was anything to forgive. He told me with his eyes that he needed me and I really couldn’t bear his need. It was so completely unappealing. No-one knew what was happening. I just went off him, in public. I wondered had I ever loved him anyway.
Then, quite soon, in days not weeks, without this ever being discussed, he was switching from Apple to PC. (What the fuck was this about?) He morphed into Freddo Version 3, all brisk and definite. PCs were just more serious, he decided. He was “polite.” He noticeably did not stroke my neck.
He was not going to say sorry for making a complete fool of me on film, showing my fat to the class without any bigger social benefit. Instead he produced Effective C++ by Scott Meyers, and read it as if it were a newspaper.
Was it really that easy for him, or was it: you punish me, I punish you, that sort of thing?