All These Perfect Strangers (2 page)

I'm still not sure how I feel about this but I take it to my bedroom and lock the door. Propped up against my bed, I start writing on the page that has 1 January 1990 at the top of it, even though today is Tuesday, the 17th of July and the first event I am going to write about happened at the end of February. Still, New Year's Day feels right.

After some false starts, words crossed out, sentences left abandoned, I begin.

‘This is about three deaths . . .'

It was Mum's new boyfriend who drove me to the Carillon to start the long bus ride to university. The bus stop was across from the court house, right in the middle of town. Terry's a long strip of beef jerky with an IQ to match. Like lots of people in my town, he was glad to see the back of me.

I said goodbye to Mum before she left for work. She had used up all her sickies and couldn't take a day off from the Cannery but she gave me a couple of hundred dollars she'd been saving up, which was a nice surprise. Terry drove me so he could use Mum's car to pick up some building supplies for his mate. He didn't believe in material possessions such as owning a car or actually paying for things himself. He pretended it was because he was a hippy but really he was just another sponger. Mum only met him two weeks before and she was already lending him our car.

Terry watched me haul my bags out of the boot, mumbled something that could have been goodbye or good riddance and jumped back in and drove up the main road.

Getting on the bus, I turned up my Walkman loud enough to be an annoying buzz to the other passengers, as I gave a mental two-finger salute to the place I had lived in all my life.

We drove from my town, through even smaller towns, on potholed dusty country roads, until we came to a smooth black highway leading to the horizon. The university was in a city I had never been to before, far beyond the edge of my known world. The air-conditioning packed it in halfway into the trip but the bus kept going until, at the end of a sun-soaked afternoon, we entered the city interchange. From there, I hauled my luggage onto the bus to the university, taking up the entire seat with my belongings, which threatened to topple over as we began to navigate the labyrinth of internal campus roads.

Passing sports ovals, manoeuvring through roundabouts, I pressed my face to the glass. Green leafy trees lined the streets, welcome banners were up and people were dotted around large buildings. The bus slowed as we reached a pedestrian crossing. Groups of students spilled across the road, mooching their way to the grassy riverbank. As the driver pressed on the horn to hurry them along, I caught sight of a girl with dark hair falling to her shoulders, not curly, not straight, but somewhere in between. There was a glimpse of her fringe as well, all flicks and cowlicks that wouldn't lie flat. It was Tracey. I knew it was Tracey. Instinctively, I raised my hand to the glass to slap it and get her attention before she walked past, but then she turned to talk to a person behind her, and it was the wrong nose, different sunglasses and I realised that the girl outside was at least two inches too short. I fell back on my seat and felt upset and stupid all at once. The whole point of coming here was to escape from what had happened with Tracey, and yet it was as if I had packed her in my luggage and brought her along with me.

I didn't look out the window again until Scullin Hall loomed into view and the bus shuddered to a stop.

Clambering off the bus, gleaming with sweat, I stood and took it all in. There were two squat towers of grey brick, four storeys high, joined by a concrete wedge at ground level with the charisma of a nuclear bomb shelter. Months later, one of my lecturers told me it was a leading example of brutalist architecture. I could never tell if that was a joke or not.

For a moment I thought I had made a terrible mistake. That I didn't belong here and I should get back on the bus and go home. But too much had been sacrificed for that. Gathering up my bags, I went to the only door I could see. It was locked. Hearing voices, I trudged around the perimeter, until I discovered the main entrance on the far side, where a boy and girl were arguing while they dismantled a fold-up table.

‘Welcome to Scullin. I'm Toby.' Slim, with milky-brown skin and a gold hooped earring like a pirate, the boy stopped what he was doing and grinned at me. The girl frowned. Her dark-brown long hair was so straight it looked as if she had ironed it that morning along with her perfectly creased blouse. I felt even more crumpled looking at her.

‘My name is Leiza Parnell. Did you have any trouble finding us?' she asked, while shooting a sideways glance at Toby next to her. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. ‘Because Toby was supposed to have spent this morning putting up signs letting people know to come around the back.'

I decided to support Toby, who at least had a smile on his face. ‘No trouble at all.'

Toby looked at the girl in triumph. ‘See, I told you, Leiza, it's an intelligence test. If you can't find us, then you shouldn't be here anyway.'

Unconvinced, Leiza responded, ‘Really? Because you're very late. The Welcome barbecue has finished.' Behind them I could see a handful of people milling about picking up litter and packing away chairs.

‘That's true,' said Toby. ‘Everyone's inside getting depressed at the size of their rooms.'

‘I only just got off the bus,' I explained.

Leiza was still sceptical. ‘Anyway, we need to mark you off. Where did you put the list, Toby?'

‘Signs were my job. Everything else was yours.' Disgruntled, Leiza began to hunt through the pieces of paper lying on the ground.

Toby made no effort to help her. ‘Is this all you brought?' He looked at my bags. ‘You pack light. I've nearly done my back in carrying people's junk up and down the stairs. You should see the shit they pack. No parents either?'

I shook my head. Toby nodded his approval. ‘Mum's in the Philippines visiting relatives this year, but my first year she was here, sobbing her eyes out.'

Leiza interrupted. ‘You could actually help me find the list, Toby. The Sub-Dean was asking for it before. If you've lost it . . .'

‘I have the list here, Ms Parnell,' a voice said. ‘I thought registration had closed for the day.'

Standing behind us was a round-faced man in an ugly brown suit, with a petulant mouth. A chubby finger pushed his glasses up his nose as he looked at me. ‘And who do we have here?'

‘I'm Pen Sheppard.'

With a shrewd look in my direction, he drew a line on the piece of paper and I noticed circles of wet under his armpits.

‘Ms Penelope Sheppard,' he said aloud. ‘I am the Sub-Dean of Scullin, Bryan Keyes.' He seemed to imply that I should have known this already. ‘You would be our bursary recipient, if I am not mistaken.'

‘That's right,' I said, quickly, trying to stop him from talking about it in front of Leiza and Toby. I didn't want to be pigeonholed as the ‘poor girl' on my first afternoon but the Sub-Dean didn't notice and went on. ‘Our new Master's first initiative, but one I fully support. So important to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate.' Though from his face, he still needed convincing that I fell into this category. ‘I believe that was the reason the Master wanted to personally welcome you, Ms Sheppard.' He said this as though it was a great honour. ‘Tobias, as you are her residential assistant, you may wish to show her to the Master's office.'

‘No problem,' said Toby. ‘Leiza, are you sure you can manage without me?'

Leiza rolled her eyes, muttered ‘unbelievable' under her breath and went back to folding up the table.

Toby grabbed my smallest bag. Walking through the entrance, we moved through a dingy reception area, past walls of marked mint green and along long halls of scuffed linoleum, the black marks recording the migrating patterns of generations of students. Toby led me past family groups of nervous parents and kids my age wishing they would leave. Noisy later-year students yelled and ran past like they owned the place.

‘I owe you one,' he said. ‘Leiza was driving me crazy. She's a slave driver.' At the end of the second corridor, he knocked on a door with the words ‘Master Marcus Legard' scribbled on tatty cardboard and stuck on the brick wall beside it, as if it were a temporary exhibit.

Toby pushed on the door and stuck his head in. ‘No one's here.' Dropping my bags, I followed him inside. It was exactly what a place of learning looked like in my dreams, a complete contrast to what I had seen of the building so far: floor to ceiling bookshelves which gleamed in the subdued light, deep oxblood walls with lines of leather-bound books and an ornate Turkish rug on the carpet. If it hadn't been for the strong smell of fresh paint I would have thought this room had been untouched for decades.

‘Check this out.' Toby stepped forwards into the middle of the room, slowly spinning around with my two bags. ‘Completely different from last year. Carpet's new, and so are those bookshelves. The Sub-Dean has been going on all day about budgetary concerns. No one allowed to have a second sausage at the barbecue and now I see where all the money has gone. This would have cost a bomb.' He put his finger up to one of the walls, and the faintest red smear came off. ‘Not even dry,' he said.

I moved towards the bookcase, conscious of not touching anything for fear I might break something or smear dust across it. There were silver-framed photos of people in dinner suits and formal dresses, perfectly placed on a bookshelf so that all of them were easily visible. I recognised some politicians and an enormous opera singer who was always on television singing about dying while looking in the best of health. There was a man who was common to all of them. His hair, shaped dramatically like a cockatoo crest, changed from black to silver to white as he got older and fatter. Next to the photos, hanging on the wall, was a large blue and gold coat of arms of a book superimposed on the Southern Cross. It shone as if it had been recently polished, in contrast with a jumble of pine-framed pictures, carelessly propped underneath it.

‘These don't look very expensive,' I said. Reproductions of fruit bowls and flocks of sheep, gambolling in meadows, they were the stuff people from my town thought of as art, and hung on their walls for generations.

‘Belonged to the former occupant,' Toby explained. ‘Guess they're on the way out. Not good enough for our Marcus with his happy snaps of the rich and powerful. That emblem is his old fancy university. Bit rude to be rubbing our faces in it.' He wrinkled his nose. ‘This paint smell is unbearable.'

Moving past the bookshelves, I found a recessed wall, hidden from the doorway. Hanging from it was a large rectangular photograph that fit the space so perfectly I wondered if it had been bought for it. Or had the space been created with the picture in mind? It was over a metre long and at least that wide, with bleached white mounts, and a frame as sharp as a scalpel. It seemed at odds with the expensive clubbishness of the rest of the room because of the subject matter. It was of a nude boy lying down surrounded by darkness. A cold light caught only the right side of his body, leaving his face, genitals and feet in shadows. A white hip bone jutted out and you could count ribs, see the outline of a bent knee, part of a hand, a portion of thigh. The rest of his body dissolved into the blackness. It was as though he had been carefully cut into pieces. I was transfixed and repelled by it all at once.

Toby came to see what I was looking at.

‘Definitely new,' he said. ‘Still, better than the fruit, I must say.' He checked his watch. ‘Tell you what, I've got to go and pick up some keys from Carol, the Master's PA. How about I get yours and meet you back here?'

‘How about I come with you?' I asked, unable to take my eyes off the broken boy.

‘No, you should wait for Marcus. Don't worry about him,' he said, gesturing to the picture. ‘I think he's quite cute.' He gave me a half smile as he slouched out.

I stayed watching the boy for a long time, wanting him to wake up or turn over. I was still waiting when a man, dressed in an artistically crumpled linen suit, meandered in through a side door that I hadn't noticed, puffing on a cigar.

‘I do apologise,' he said. ‘Been here long?'

It was the face from the photos, sunburnt with even more chins. When he took off his hat, a jaunty straw Panama, I could see that the white sails of hair had become old-man wispy. His eyebrows were still impressively black, though, as if he spent every morning putting them on with pen. This must be the Master.

‘I've been sitting outside escaping the smell of paint.' He spoke in a powerfully projected baritone as if a crowd of students was listening to every word. ‘They finished yesterday but it's as if I'm drinking the stuff. Keep tasting it in my mouth.' He gestured expansively with the cigar. ‘Don't usually smoke these but thought it might help. Let's adjourn outside to my garden.'

Once outside, he headed towards two wrought-iron chairs under a lemon tree. One had a tumbler and a half-emptied whisky bottle underneath.

Pouring himself a drink, he told me to call him Marcus. ‘Titles are for small people to feel important, and Master makes me sound as if I'm planning world domination.'

Unable to bring myself to call him anything, I settled on, ‘It's a lovely garden.'

‘Courtesy of the last inhabitant.' He smiled and I caught a flash of small, uneven, grey teeth. ‘Much better than his interior choices, I will admit, but I am tempted to rough it up a little, plant a big cactus in the middle or perhaps install some confronting phallic water feature. Something to offset its
loveliness
. If I could give one piece of advice to students of this wonderful institution, it would be to avoid the lovely in life, so often synonymous with the dull.' There was not the slightest expectation that I might disagree. I didn't bother telling him that I had managed to avoid the lovely so far, though not by design.