JOHN
Harris’ parents drove him up to Benalla, a three journey from Melbourne, to get
some sort of insight to the new life he would shortly be leading. He was a
mummy’s boy- a sort of daddy’s boy as well- living a very uncomplicated first
twenty three years or so. He’d never mowed a lawn, never planted a tomato,
never painted a fence. John Harris led a charmed life in luxurious Reservoir,
and knew absolutely nothing about the real world. The day his parents drove him
to Benalla, he sat in the back seat, contemplating the next chapter in his
uneventful life with a degree of naïve confidence. ‘How
could it be so difficult?’ he thought to himself. There was the teaching caper
that was just around the corner, and the living in a rented house with others
caper, and the new town of which he knew next to nothing caper. It all sounded
fairly easy. He was always natural and good humoured, and knew he would always
be able to fit in. Benalla High was about to be the location for his first
teaching position.
Weeks
later, John Harris arrived, solo, to the main street of Wangaratta, just thirty
kilometres north of Benalla. Someone told him it was better not to live in the
same town as your students, so he prudently chose Wangaratta as the town of
choice, for the multitude of virgin experiences that lay excitingly ahead. His
car was loaded with bags and books and very little else. He travelled lightly
and knew that he would have to buy things, but there was no hurry overall.
There was an advertisement that he had answered from Melbourne, just to make
sure that first day went smoothly. ‘WANTED: A SINGLE PERSON TO SHARE A
COMFORTABLE THREE BEDROOM HOME WITH A COUPLE AND ANOTHER SINGLE PERSON.
PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE NEED ONLY APPLY.’
The
‘professional’ part appealed to him. ‘You must make sure the people are
sensible and professional’, more experienced adults advised him. The prospect
of living at 51 Rowan Street was good. He saw right away what a lovely home it
was. Potentially a bit noisy, being right underneath the overpass, but John
Harris was given a comfortable, reasonable sized bedroom at the front of the
house. The other occupants proved to be very difficult to get to know. Alan had
just broken off an engagement- or, rather, it seemed that he was the one on the
losing side. He was the other single person in the room next door. Overly
serious, morose you might say, seemingly depressed and totally non-
communicative. Oh, dear. John felt that Alan was impenetrable, and John wasn’t
used to that. Later he would call Alan the ‘thin, grey spectre’, but never to
his face, only to his amused friends in Melbourne.
The
biggest bedroom was inhabited by an older, mature couple called Peter and
Lyndsay. They owned a photocopying company in the town. They were a little more
friendly, but wrapped up in their own lives and not particularly interested in
poor John Harris. Where John was expecting friendship, John was receiving
acquaintance. You pay your money, you get a room. That was the kind of alien
thinking that unnerved John. Even after weeks, and months, went by, John still
didn’t feel comfortable in this modern, breezy house. He would usually go to
Melbourne on weekends. One Sunday night, after a particularly enjoyable time in
Melbourne with dear family and friends, John reluctantly returned to
Wangaratta, but was nevertheless in a good mood as he entered the household and
wandered into the lounge area. Alan, Lyndsay and Peter were all watching ’60
Minutes.’ ‘Hi’ said John with a confident, optimistic tone, ‘how are things
here?’ ‘OK’ was the reply. ‘How was Melbourne?’ There was a distinct lack of
tenderness in the voice. In fact, none of the three occupants of the house even
looked at John. Their gaze remained on the television. John spent a couple more
minutes in the lounge, utterly deflated, and crawled back to his room, to his
desk, and to his diary. His diary got a good workout this particular month.
Things
improved a bit after this. There were
still lonely times ahead, though. John
would wander the streets of Wangaratta with his ‘Walkman’ listening to Van
Morrison songs for comfort, delaying his return to the house as long as
possible: ‘Oh, won’t you stay? Stay a
while with your own ones. This old world is so cold. Don’t care nothing for
your soul, that you share, with your own ones.’
And
then there was the awkwardness in the kitchen. Alan didn’t go out much, and as
much as John tried to avoid a clash of cooking times with Alan, invariably they
would become hungry at the same time. One memorable day, Alan was in the
kitchen cooking eggs and baked beans for lunch. There were your usual four
elements to choose from. John found one that was free. He planted his skillet
pan on this and scooped the hamburgers inside. The air was thick with tension.
John and Alan had not spoken for weeks. Perhaps a grunt here, and a grunt
there. It had been like a monastery of two silent monks. With a tiny bit of
space enveloping them, Alan and John managed to cook each other’s sad and sorry
meals, almost elbow to elbow, and should to shoulder, without speaking a
solitary word. It was almost impossible, yet they pulled it off.
School
and teaching motored on reasonably comfortably. John took himself off sometimes
to the local nightclub called ‘The Pinsent’ and met some local women. Things
got easier rather than tougher. But he never felt happy in the tight confines
of 81 Rowan Street. What a miserable household. Something comparable to a house
in an Edgar Allan Poe short story. John
stayed six months. Eventually, and miraculously, he answered another
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END
PART ONE
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