The Bertie Project

  “We’ll go some time, you and me. Maybe. If you’re good.”

  “Brucey’s a very good boy,” said Bruce. “Always is.”

  She licked the tip of his nose again.

  “We lived near Margaret River. My dad used to work in mining, but he gave that up when one of their properties turned out well. He bought a vineyard—they make really good wine in Western Australia, you know. I had some in the fridge, but Anna’s boyfriend drank it yesterday. He drank my wine. A real cheek.” Anna was Clare’s flatmate, and her boyfriend, Freddie, who worked for Scottish Widows, helped himself to the contents of the fridge at will.

  “Men,” said Bruce.

  “You can say that again. So there we were. I went to a local school to begin with and then had to go into Perth for senior school. I went to Presbyterian Ladies’ College. It was in Peppermint Grove, which is a really nice part of Perth. We had Black Watch tartan for our uniform and we had a well-known pipe band.”

  “Très Scottish,” said Bruce.

  “Yes,” said Clare. “My old man was Scottish, you see. He was born in Oz as well, but his father came from some dump called Glasgow. Only joking! My brother, Barry, went to Scotch College, which is this boarding school for boys in Perth. We used to have dances and debates with them all the time. You know the sort of thing. When Scotch College had a dance for the seniors, they used to bus girls in from Presbyterian Ladies’. It was like taking cattle to market—just like that, I swear.”

  “I went to a heterosexual school,” said Bruce. “Only joking. But we had heaps of girls. Heaps of them. All over the place.”

  “So there I was at Presbyterian Ladies’ and I stayed there until I had just turned eighteen and then I had to decide whether I should go over to Sydney or Melbourne to uni, or stay in Perth. I almost went to Melbourne, not to Melbourne Uni but to a place called Victoria Uni. They do a Bachelor of Physical Education course there and that’s what I wanted to do. They have these sports labs and things like that. But then I decided I didn’t want to live in Melbourne because it’s so big. It goes on and on, you know. It’s a great place for coffee bars and stuff like that, but Perth’s got these great beaches, you see, and for some of the things I wanted to do, Perth would be much better.”

  She looked at Bruce. “You paying attention, Brucey?”

  “Sure. Carry on. So you stayed in Perth. What then?”

  “I applied to the Uni of Western Australia—or I suppose they call it the University of Western Australia. It’s got a pretty cool campus on the river there. Pretty old, but pretty cool. Lots of girls from Presbyterian Ladies’ went there. Quite a few of my friends did, including a girl I knew called Helen MacFarlane. She was quite a good friend of mine at school—her folks came from way up the coast there, some godforsaken place, and she never went home very much. It was really boring, apparently. Anyway, she went to the UWA with me and you know what she said? I’ll tell you. She said, ‘I can’t wait to get to uni with all those guys being there.’ That’s what she said. She was boy-mad. She had pictures of guys all over her locker at school—once you opened it. We weren’t allowed to put guys on the outside, just the inside, and usually we just had a few guys, one or two, real hunks, that sort of thing. Well, she had guys all over. Every inch of space was some guy flexing his muscles. Honestly, let’s say you came from Mars and you saw that locker you’d think to yourself These strange creatures haven’t invented the shirt yet. Or underpants! You didn’t know where to look. Honestly.”

  “Cool,” said Bruce. “She sounds great.”

  Clare affected to ignore his comment.

  “You know,” she continued, “when Helen got to uni, you never saw her. She went to a few lectures and things, I suppose, but most of the time…Well, it was guys. She had about five boyfriends in the first year, and that was her only year. She failed every exam—every single exam, and some of the subjects she was doing were designed not to be failed. Sociology, for instance. If you’re really into guys, then you should study sociology, that’s a well-known fact. You don’t have to know anything. Media Studies is another one—maybe even more so. Or Film Studies. I swear, if you do Film Studies at uni all you have to do is watch movies. Then you write an essay saying why you liked the movie, and that’s it. I knew somebody—this guy from a place called Nannup, which is in the sticks outside Perth—he knew nothing. Zero. Zilch. He enrolled for Film Studies and he spent all day on Cottesloe Beach and at night he watched movies. He did really well.”

  “Cool,” said Bruce.

  “He got bitten by a shark, though. Not a big bite, but he had a whole bunch of stitches. He showed me. And then…”

  “And then?” said Bruce.

  “He graduated.”

  Quandong Berries

  “Where were we?” asked Clare, lying back on the sofa, staring now at the ceiling of her Newington flat, Bruce beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. She had just noticed water stains on the ceiling; from where she was, they looked rather like the outline on a map of continents and seas. There must have been a flood, she thought, and the plaster had simply been left to dry out rather than be replaced. Scotland, she thought, was so damp, with its lochs and its rain and its mists; there was water everywhere, even on the ceiling.

  “You were going off to uni,” said Bruce. “With Helen.”

  Clare laughed. “Her! OK, right, I went to UWA and I started studying physical education. I’d always been good at it and the gym teacher at school—she looked like a man, but was really nice, and we all liked her—she encouraged me to do PE at uni. She said if you want an outdoor job—and I did, I couldn’t stand the thought of being in an office—then you should be a PE teacher like me. I thought about it a bit and went to visit the department and they said they would love to get an application from me. So I applied and they wrote back and said I was in as long as my exam results were good enough.”

  “And they were?”

  “Just. So I started at uni and I lived in a hall of residence that was not far from the main campus. It was a bit of a dump and there were not enough bathrooms, but it was all right and we had a good time, I suppose. I made a lot of new friends and I enjoyed my course. We did psychology of sport, which was really interesting. And there was physiology, which was great, as it told you what happened when you breathed, and stuff like that.”

  Bruce raised an eyebrow. “I know what happens when you don’t breathe,” he said.

  Clare looked at him scornfully. “Yeah, we all know that. The interesting thing is where the oxygen goes. People think it goes into the lungs, but it actually goes into the blood. Lots of people don’t know that there’s oxygen in their blood. And how you regulate your temperature. People don’t know how long you can survive in cold water, for example.”

  “About twenty minutes in Scotland,” said Bruce. “I learned that when I was at school. We went for a sailing weekend at Port Edgar and they told us about survival times in the Firth of Forth in winter. Not long. And your muscles stop working quite quickly, and then you’re toast.”

  “Yeah,” said Clare. “We learned all that stuff—and more.”

  “So how long did you do that for?” asked Bruce.

  Clare hesitated before she gave her answer. “I didn’t finish the course,” she said. “I did a year and a half. Then I dropped out.”

  Bruce looked surprised. “But you said you enjoyed it.”

  “Yes, I enjoyed it but…”

  He waited. He noticed that she closed her eyes briefly, as if trying to shut out a painful memory.

  “There was a row,” she said at last. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “What happened?”

  Clare sighed. “It was halfway through my second year. We had to do teaching practice. We had to go to a school for a month and understudy the PE teacher or, as in my case, actually be the PE teacher if the regular one was on holiday. I was allocated to a school where the PE teacher was on maternity leave. I was in charge of the department for the whole tim
e I was there.”

  Bruce nodded. “So they threw you in the deep end?”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Clare. “And one of the things I had to do was to take a group of the kids for an adventure weekend in the bush. They had to do a ten-mile hike, then camp for the night and try to find some bush tucker if they could. We had rations, but not quite enough. They had been given lessons in getting bush tucker from roots and stuff and so they were meant to do that. They had to show the stuff to me and get it checked out in the book I had before they ate it.”

  “I’ve heard you can live on that,” said Bruce. “The aboriginal people can get by for ages on it, can’t they?”

  “They’re really good at survival in the bush,” said Clare. “They’ve handed down the knowledge from way, way back.” She paused. “Anyway, they took us out on a Saturday morning and dropped us off at the start point, which was a sheep station in the middle of nowhere. The kids had to make their way to some hills they could see in the distance. They couldn’t get lost. That was where we were going to camp that night.”

  “How old were they? Were they small kids?”

  “No. They were sixteen.”

  “So, how did it go?”

  Again Clare hesitated before replying. “It went well enough to begin with. They all reached the campsite no problem. Then we looked for bush tucker…”

  Bruce felt the suspense. He wondered whether the problem had been mushrooms. He had always been deeply suspicious of wild mushrooms and would never eat them himself.

  “They found quite a lot of things,” Clare went on. “One of the kids even found a comb of wild honey—there were no bees around, and so nobody got stung. That was a great find. There were also witchetty grubs. Have you ever seen those things? You probably don’t get them in Scotland.”

  “Never seen them,” said Bruce. “You eat them?”

  “Yes, they’re sort of fat white grubs, a bit like caterpillars. You can eat them raw or you can cook them. They taste a bit like almonds.”

  Bruce made a face.

  “I know,” said Clare. “People don’t like the idea of eating things like that, but if you’re in the bush and you’re hungry, you have to. You soon stop minding, I can tell you.”

  “And what else?”

  “Well, that’s where the problem came in. One of the kids came up with some quandong berries. These are bright red thingies that are full of vitamin C. They taste all right, too—a sort of bush tucker dessert.”

  “Weren’t they ripe?” asked Bruce.

  Clare shook her head. “No, they were ripe…The problem was that they weren’t quandong berries at all. They were something else.”

  Poor darling. Poor you

  As she continued, a note of defiance crept into Clare’s story.

  “I didn’t say what the kids claimed,” she said. “They said later that I told them that the berries were quandong. I didn’t. Definitely. You remember what you say, don’t you, Brucey?”

  Bruce did not hesitate. “Yeah, sure I remember. Every word. It’s all recorded in here.” He tapped his head.

  “What I said was that I thought they were quandong berries but I’d have to look them up in my book. There’s a difference, you know.”

  Bruce nodded. “Of course there’s a difference.” He had a sense of where the story was heading and was keen to hear more. “So, what happened?”

  Clare said that she was glad he saw the distinction; many people, she said, had failed to grasp it. “So I went off to get my book,” she went on, “which was in my backpack. I found it and I looked up quandong. I studied the picture, and I thought that although the berries the kids had picked looked very similar, I decided I would check them against the colour photograph in the book. But then I noticed that one of the students had left a fire unattended. He had made it for his billy, and the water was boiling. So I decided that I would take the billy off the fire and put the embers out—just to be safe. I did that, and it took a bit of time—these fires can get going and you have to use quite a bit of sand to put them out altogether.

  “Then I went back to where the kids were sitting. As I arrived, one of them said, ‘We just finished them, Miss.’ I asked them what they were talking about, and they said they had shared out the berries amongst themselves but had kept a few for me. I took these, and I examined them against the picture in my book. There were differences.”

  Bruce groaned. “Too late?”

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I told them off for eating the berries before I said they were safe. One of the boys became pretty lippy. ‘You told us they were okay, Miss. It’s your fault if we’re going to die now. My folks are going to be really mad at you, Miss.’ That sort of thing.”

  “Oh no,” groaned Bruce. “So all the kids died?” He paused, and then added, “Not that I’m saying it was your fault.”

  “They didn’t die,” said Clare. “In fact, they were fine for about half an hour. Then they began to complain about pain in their stomachs. One or two started to bring things up and made a big fuss about that—far more than was necessary, I thought. Then a couple of them started to writhe about a bit, and that’s when I realised we were in trouble.”

  Bruce winced. “And you were right out in the bush…”

  “Yes, we weren’t close to help. I had to do some quick thinking.”

  “And you decided what?”

  “I had a portable radio with me—it belonged to the school. I used it and I got in touch with a farmer who said that he’d alert the police. They sent a helicopter and started to take the kids back to a hospital. They had to do four trips.”

  Clare became silent, as if brooding on the outcome. Bruce asked her if everybody had survived, and she said they had. “They had diarrhoea for a couple of days,” she said. “But apart from that, none of them were really harmed—not that you’d think that from the school’s reaction.”

  “They were unreasonable?” asked Bruce.

  “Seriously unreasonable. They believed the kids, of course, rather than me. The Principal called me in and told me that I had been grossly irresponsible and that they were going to file a report with the uni to that effect. Then they ended my teaching practice and told me to go back to the uni.”

  “Were they supportive?” asked Bruce. “The uni people?”

  Clare answered bitterly. “Them? Well, they were all right about it, but they insisted that I would have to undergo safety instruction if I were to be allowed to be in charge of kids again. I’d had enough. I didn’t need to be lectured about safety.”

  Bruce touched her neck gently. “Poor darling,” he said. “Poor you.”

  “Thank you. So I told the uni where to go and I left. I went back to my dad and gave him the story and he was really mad. He went up to the uni and told them to sort out the school. They said they couldn’t do that, and I swear he tried to sock the head of department in the jaw. And the Vice-Chancellor, I think. I was really proud of him. Then we went home and I had a rethink about my future.”

  “And that’s when you joined Qantas?”

  “Yes. Well, I didn’t join straight away. I went to a sort of career counsellor and told her about what had happened. She said that it sounded as if I had been unfairly treated by the school, and that I should go and see a lawyer. But I didn’t want to do that. I’d had enough at that stage. And that’s when I saw an ad in the paper for cabin crew trainees. I went off to a place they have and signed up. There was a medical, of course, and they said that I was just the sort of person they needed because I’m a bit stronger than a lot of girls…”

  “Girls are so weak,” interrupted Bruce. “Only joking!”

  Clare ignored this. “The training was really interesting,” she continued. “There was more psychology—how to deal with difficult passengers and so on, and a lot about safety procedures. You know; what to do when your plane goes down? You make sure you know where the exit is. That’s the important thing, because there’s often smoke, you see. We learned all t
hat sort of thing. Also, how to push the trolley down the aisle without hitting people’s elbows. Oh, and how to open the toilet door if a passenger’s trapped inside.”

  Bruce laughed. “Didn’t somebody have to spend a whole flight in the toilet because the vacuum system had gone wrong and trapped them on the seat?”

  “Not on Qantas,” said Clare firmly.

  Bruce looked disappointed. “Pity. Good story.” He paused. “How long did you work for the airline?”

  “Three years,” said Clare. “I really enjoyed it, and I would have stayed had it not been for what happened.”

  Bruce gave her a sideways glance. Was Clare one of those people who attracted misfortune? He wondered about that, reflecting that he might need to be cautious; but caution, of course, although it operates in at least some of our affairs, does not necessarily operate when the affair in question is an affair.

  A Sighting in the Museum

  The entrance hall of the Royal Museum of Scotland was thronged with visitors, including a number of groups of children, all chattering excitedly, all being marshalled for a walk round the exhibits by tense-looking teachers and their helpers. That morning the Steiner School had sent Bertie’s class for a visit, and so it was that Bertie, Tofu, Olive, Pansy, Hiawatha, Larch and several others were being led up the staircase to the atrium.

  “Now, boys and girls,” said the teacher, Miss Campbell, “we are about to embark on a little voyage of discovery. We are about to take a walk round Scotland’s past—amongst lots of other things. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Not really,” muttered Tofu. “All the stuff here is old, really tired stuff.”

  “Did you say something, Tofu?” asked Miss Campbell.

  “Not me, Miss Campbell,” said Tofu.

  “Because I can’t imagine,” the teacher said, “that you would be so silly as to say that museums are full of things that are old and tired.”

  Tofu was adept at speaking without moving his lips, and now he said, sotto voce, “Just like you.”