Desperate Husbands (6 page)

We’ve had the same metal teapot for fifteen years, but recently it has become too battered to use. I set out to buy another, searching the net for a retailer who stocks our brand. This is how I discover our model was recalled, back in 1995. Apparently, it leaks lead poison into the tea, in a way proved to cause intellectual impairment among laboratory rats.

I break the news to Jocasta and she is not happy. ‘I don’t know why you bought a metal teapot in the first place. Didn’t you realise there might be lead in it? Your son will now almost certainly fail his final exams and it will be all your fault.’

She suggests I go and sit on the naughty chair as payment for my crimes. Jocasta has been watching the TV show
Supernanny
and wants to try out some of the tips. According to the Supernanny, offenders should be sentenced
to the naughty chair for a period of minutes equal to their age in years—five minutes if you are five years old, six minutes if you are six.

This is fine advice, except when the miscreant is, like me, forty-six. I tell Jocasta I think three-quarters of an hour is too long, but she is adamant.

I spend some time on the naughty chair contemplating my crime. I realise I feel quite upbeat. Everyone else in society has an excuse for their failings—excuses such as poverty, racial intolerance and ingrained prejudice towards the left-handed. Finally I have mine. Oh, bliss. I’ve been poisoned by my teapot. Suddenly, it’s clear—the bad temper, the over-reliance on alcohol, the oversensitivity to criticism—it’s all the fault of the teapot.

Jocasta sits at the kitchen table, glumly dunking a teabag. ‘You’re like the Dr Crippen of the inner west,’ she says.

I decide to award myself remission of sentence for good behaviour. I arise from the naughty chair, pour a glass of wine to celebrate my release and sink into the couch. By now, Jocasta has told the children about the teapot and Batboy has decided he may as well stop studying for his end-of-school exams. ‘I’d wondered why I couldn’t understand a word of Shakespeare,’ he says resignedly, turning his attention to the TV. ‘And why those Russian names in World War II were so hard to remember. If it wasn’t for that teapot, I wouldn’t be in this situation. The whole thing is hopeless.’

He busies himself drinking water in an effort, he says, ‘to leach the lead out of my system’.

I try to work out just how much lead we’ve ingested and, therefore, how much the teapot is to blame for our various
shortcomings. I do the numbers—as best I can considering I’m a man suffering severe mental damage. Three cups a day, for twenty years, with two extra cups on both Saturday and Sunday, comes to a grand total of, give me a minute…well, a lot. If I had not been systemically poisoned by my own teapot I may be able to offer a firmer figure.

I have a better idea: I will work backwards from all the disappointments I’ve suffered. It’s probably the most accurate way to get a good fix on just how much lead I’ve consumed. Why, for example, have my books never sold as well as those of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling? Why am I unable to win a single game of squash, even if I hand-pick the most asthmatic, lard-arsed of opponents?

And why am I yet to win a significant literary prize? Or, for that matter, a prize for medicine, science or peace?

That teapot has a lot to answer for.

Once in a mood like this, you start to go through your whole life, blow by disastrous body blow. I remember when I first left school, I tried to get a job at the bottom rung of the television industry. My idea was to start as a coffee boy and then rise to become the director of TV soap operas. The coffee boy job, however, eluded me. I had aimed low, and missed.

Fair enough, this happened
before
I bought the teapot; I have to accept that the teapot may not be to blame for
all
life’s disappointments. But if not the teapot, it must be something else. There are those aluminium frypans we used to use, and which are still stuck up the back of the cupboard. The fibro garage we had at home when I was growing up. The flightpath overhead. The fluoride in the water supply…

I wonder about the laboratory rats—the source of the original case against the teapot. How, exactly, do they test these things? How good is the evidence? I imagine the rats sitting in their cages with a tiny miniature tea service. ‘Milk?’ asks one rat of the other, its little pinkie held aloft as it pours. ‘Yes,’ says his companion rat, ‘and a couple of sugars, if you don’t mind.’

I idly open a beer, wondering how they test the level of intellectual impairment in tea-drinking rats. Perhaps they screen repeated episodes of
Supernanny
and see how long it takes to drive them insane with boredom.

Batboy is still staring at the TV in a glum sort of way. ‘I just knew there was some reason I found it so hard to settle down and study. Mum’s right. I don’t why you’d buy such a thing. I’m almost certain to fail however hard I study.’

At this point he is struck by an idea, and his mood suddenly lifts. ‘Perhaps I could apply for some sort of special dispensation.’

For somebody poisoned by his parents’ teapot, the boy is not as stupid as you might think. He’s onto something. Perhaps we should all apply for some sort of special dispensation. Surely you, too, have some sort of excuse.

‘We should watch
Dad’s Army
,’ I say, holding up the DVD I bought three months ago. ‘It’s crap,’ chorus Batboy and The Space Cadet, using the English language with all their usual skill and precision. I know they love the
Blackadder
series, so I try a fresh tack. ‘Ben Elton, who wrote
Blackadder
, says that
Dad’s Army
is great,’ I tell them. ‘I once heard him say that it was his favourite comedy ever.’

‘You said that last time you tried to make us watch it,’ says The Space Cadet, shaking his head. He turns to his mother: ‘Dad’s now on some sort of endless loop.’

Owning a small collection of DVDs is a wonderful thing, but it creates new conflicts. Before DVD, you’d all agree to watch television and confront a choice of five shows. Two would be too violent, one would be an Albanian dog-poisoning movie on SBS, and the other would be hosted by
Eddie McGuire. Result: you watch the creaky pommy drama on the ABC and no one’s in a position to complain.

Now there’s the shelf of DVDs and videos: thirty choices, all the time. But here’s the problem: buy a new DVD movie, and Batboy and his brother will watch it twenty-four times in the first three days. Later, having owned the thing for three months, I suggest I might like to watch the movie for a second time and they stare at me in mute disbelief. By now, they’ve watched it 137 times, know the whole script by heart and are arguing over the dolly track placement in scenes ten through to fifteen.

They’ve even tried to inject some interest by watching it with the Polish subtitles, so often they could probably now order coffee for two in a Gdansk shipyard cafe. Worse, they behave as if somehow the movies are going to breed, right there on the DVD shelf, and that new choices will suddenly appear. Why else do they keep scanning the row ‘just to see if there’s something really good’?

I try to talk sense into them: ‘There’s nothing we haven’t watched a million times. The only thing left is
Dad’s Army.
’

‘It’s crap.’

‘Well, Ben Elton says…’

And so it’s back to scanning the shelves. And here’s the other problem with the DVD. A person—say, for instance, me—makes a single purchasing error and it just sits there, ready to draw comment during every scan of the DVD shelf.

‘Ah, great,’ says The Space Cadet, with a level of sarcasm only possible if you are a thirteen-year-old boy. ‘Here’s Woody Allen’s
Curse of the Jade Scorpion
. We could watch that. Or we could hit ourselves over the head with a chair, which might be more fun. Good one, Dad.’

‘Yeah,’ agrees Batboy. ‘Good one, Dad’.

They say exactly these words, in exactly this tone of voice, every time they look through the shelf and come across
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
, which, it must be admitted,
is
crap. I turn to Jocasta: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with these boys, they’re now on some sort of endless loop.’

It’s at this point we mount an expedition to the video shop, where a whole new world of misery and indecision awaits. It’s a testament to Hollywood that you can have a choice of 300 new releases, made with a combined budget of $15.5 gazillion dollars, and still not find a single movie worth hiring. How they do it God only knows (although the continuing existence of Jerry Bruckheimer may be a factor worth considering).

Adding to our problems is my inability to remember which movies we’ve seen. I ring Jocasta. ‘How about
Spy Games
?’

‘We watched it…yesterday,’ says Jocasta. ‘OK, not yesterday. But last week. What’s wrong with you?’

What’s wrong with me is the way all Hollywood movie titles sound essentially the same. I scan the shelves:
Extreme Summer, Extreme Blow, Blow Hard, Blow Up, Blow Off, Pay Off, Back Off, Back Pay, Extreme Back Pain…

The Space Cadet wants to hire a shoot-’em-up called
Summer Death Blow
; Batboy wants to hire some wintry epic about the siege of Stalingrad; and I fancy a morbid drama about life in a stifling small town. By some process that I still don’t understand, we emerge with
Legally Blonde Two.

We arrive home and I’m relieved to discover we didn’t view it yesterday. ‘It looks crap,’ says Jocasta, using the language with all her usual skill and precision.

The movie is OK but leaves us hungry, still wanting more. The Space Cadet scans the shelves. He does his
Curse of the Jade Scorpion
speech. I go and fetch
Dad’s Army
and do my Ben Elton speech. Jocasta puts her head in her hands and weeps. Since we got the DVD, I have the feeling this family is on some sort of endless loop.

Batboy’s latest hobby is home-brewed beer—an interest chosen for its capacity to chew up whole afternoons and thus prevent any study for his end-of-school exams. The idea first emerges on Saturday morning in an attempt to avoid an essay on World War II. Batboy is due to spend a whole day with Hitler in his bunker and is desperate to find a means of escape.

He wants me to accompany him to the home-brew shop and to fund the purchase of some gear. Or, as he puts it, ‘invest in the equipment’. His speech is eloquent in terms of the scientific principles he might learn and the opportunity it will give him to understand production processes in what he calls this ‘brand-name obsessed and pre-packaged society’.

I stand back impressed. People attack the Higher School Certificate, but it certainly equips students with a magnificent ability to bullshit their parents.

I am initially reluctant, however. I don’t want to encourage drinking; I don’t want to encourage time-wasting; and I don’t want to deny Hitler a little company in his bunker. But Batboy assures me he will enjoy the merest sip of the brew. His main interest is his father, and the provision of a cheap, potable and regular supply of fluids.

There is a pause while we stare each other down. It is in this silence that he plays his masterstroke. ‘It’s tax-free alcohol, Dad.’

Jocasta has often criticised me for tardiness. There can be no such criticism this time. Within minutes of those intoxicating words being uttered—the term ‘tax-free’ coquettishly rubbing itself up alongside the word ‘alcohol’—I find myself behind the wheel of the ute, motoring towards Gladesville.

Our ‘investment’ comes to $80, for which we are given a bewildering array of tubs and tubes. We decide we will make a lager-style beer, flavoured with Hersbrucker German hops. We are given an instruction sheet. Back home we set to work. We boil and we sterilise, we pour and we mix. We argue over the recipe. The Space Cadet decides to get involved. ‘When it says fill to twenty-two litres, does that include the two litres you started with, or is it extra to that?’ he asks, peering at the instructions. We’re unsure, so we split the difference.

The Space Cadet encourages me to drink some packaged beer, ‘because we really need the bottles’. Jocasta stands in the kitchen, arms folded, watching this scene unfold: a thirteen-year-old being enticed by his father into the world of alcoholism. From the look on her face, she’s going to ring
the child welfare people any minute and suggest an intervention.

Batboy, meanwhile, works on the computer, designing and printing the labels. He has located a photograph of himself in
Lederhosen
, drinking a beer, taken while on student exchange in Germany. He places it on the label beneath the brand name ‘Papa Glover’s German-style Lager’. Across the bottom he has added the slogan: ‘The authentic taste you only get from Papa.’ This amuses Jocasta sufficiently to buy us a little more time.

The plastic brewing tub has a thermometer stuck on the outside: one must place the tub so that it achieves a temperature of twenty to twenty-four degrees. Over the next two days I try it in various positions, including the laundry (too cold) and the living room (too hot). The only place it hits the right temperature is in The Space Cadet’s bedroom, sitting on his desk. Sweeping aside his homework books and his collection of model planes, I plonk down the now bubbling and fermenting vat.

Jocasta looms at the doorway. ‘You cannot turn your thirteen-year-old’s bedroom into a brewery. Where’s he going to do his homework? What about the smell of that thing? And what about the noise?’

It’s true; the thing makes this incredibly loud sound. There’s a water-filled valve in the top; the gas builds as the beer ferments and, at intervals of twenty or thirty seconds, it bubbles up like a loud, noxious fart, filling the air with a smell of rank hops. And yet the temperature is perfect.

I set up a bed for The Space Cadet in my room and volunteer to sleep in his bed beside the vat. I hardly sleep all
night. Each time I start to nod off, I’m startled awake by another hugely loud, gurgling fart. In the morning, I stagger out to the kitchen. ‘I hardly slept a wink,’ I tell Jocasta, ‘all night long next to this stinking, farting tub of booze.’

‘Now you know how I feel most nights,’ she replies, buttering toast.

Of course, the beer-brewing is only one of a number of activities designed by Batboy to make studying impossible.

His exam subjects appear to include English, history, German and a practical unit called procrastination. He is already showing an excellent grasp of the basic principles. Aside from brewing beer, he’s playing squash, walking the dog and talking intensely to friends. He’s suddenly got a thousand activities. He’ll do anything as long as it’s not studying.

He’s not the only one. Our once-sleepy neighbourhood is ablaze with activity. The closer we get to the HSC, the more we are witnessing a cultural and sporting renaissance. One student has discovered a love of swimming—he walks to the pool, swims twenty laps, and then walks back home. He’s fitter than he’s ever been. If he takes the long way home, he can draw out the process to last most of the morning.

One girl, according to her mother, has discovered the joys of cleaning her own bedroom. So keen is she to avoid extension English, she’s repacked all her clothes, wiped down all the shelves and vacuumed the blinds. After seventeen years of slovenly behaviour, she now has the neatest room in the house. A group of the boys, meanwhile, has formed a vegetable growing club, specialising in the competitive farming of chillies. No, really: chillies. When the
aim is avoiding HSC study, no activity is too bizarre or too obscure.

Batboy has his beer brewing and his chilli farming, but there is still a risk that a few hours might be available for study, especially during the morning. That’s why he’s developed a sudden urge to read the
Sydney Morning Herald
. For years, I’ve tried to push him towards the newspaper, hoping he might develop an interest in current affairs. For years, he’s rolled his eyes and mouthed the word ‘boring’. Now, suddenly, under the gun of the HSC, he can’t get enough of it. One morning this week, he read it for two hours straight—even enduring several pieces on Australian politics.

Maybe this is the real power of the HSC: it promises to create citizens of the future, and indeed it does—out of their very desperation to avoid the official curriculum. They’ll do anything to get out of paying proper attention to HSC work, even becoming well-rounded, sociable citizens.

For the first time in living memory, they debate politics, play tennis and go jogging. No longer do they shrug and mumble when asked about their day. When their only alternative is study, they can think of nothing more delightful than leaning against the kitchen bench, chatting animatedly to their parents.

One seventeen-year-old boy last week offered to cook dinner for the family. An eighteen-year-old girl, meanwhile, offered to accompany her mother to the supermarket. The parents of both children are currently being treated for traumatic shock.

Yet even the most practised procrastinators will finally run out of excuses. Midway through this week, Batboy and
friends discovered that this time had come. They had ridden the boundaries of their chilli farms, chatted endlessly to their parents, and tidied their bedrooms. Their beer brews were happily fermenting. Through some amazing coincidences, there was not a single eighteenth birthday party on that evening. They had read the
Herald
, even unto the arts pages. With a jolt of panic, they realised that ahead stretched two or three hours during which it was technically possible for them to study.

It was a nasty couple of minutes before one of the crew had the realisation: they had yet to organise their accommodation for schoolies week. Phew. Crisis averted. Organising schoolies week, if done properly, can take days—no, weeks. Which town to visit? Where to stay? And how to talk parents into handing over cash for a bond which has so little chance of ever being returned?

Batboy and his friends settled down to the task, while Jocasta nervously eyed the calendar.

‘So this is the next few months,’ she said, as the boys organised their trip. ‘He procrastinates with his friends, you have the fun of helping him with the brewing beer, while I stare at the calendar, getting uptight on his behalf. And what happens at the end of this process? He gets to go off on schoolies and I get to keep working. How fair is that?’

Jocasta rocked back against the fridge and looked wistfully into the middle distance. ‘You know what we need? A schoolies week for the mothers. As a reward for all we’ve been through. Straight after the exams. Somewhere inland, while all the eighteen-year-olds are at the coast. Somewhere with plenty of wine. And massages. I think the Hunter Valley would be perfect. Or perhaps the Victorian Alps.’

That’s what I like about the HSC. It leaves everyone so focused. Ever since this time, the mood has been hectic, as Batboy and friends argue about which town they should subject to their invasion, while Jocasta rings around soliciting other takers for her schoolies week for mums.

Six days into our first brew, and by God I need a beer.