Free Holden's Performance by Murray Bail

McBee.
    Squatting beside him Holden developed his mechanical mind. For McBee seemed to enjoy dismantling the Amal carburettor, adjusting its needle. He fiddled with the magneto. They threw away the air cleaner. The spark plug was reverently handed to Holden to clean, and using a shirt soaked in petrol he polished the alloy crankcase until it mirrored his solemn face.
    And McBee and the boy became a common sight around the streets of Burnside, Payneham, Norwood. Accelerating up Magill Road after tea the motorcycle's four-stroke engine imitated the sound of tearing trousers, and as the succession of shaded streets fell away left and right, the expanse of pale countryside and rising hills opened up before them in a vast zipper-action. Holden embraced the man in the foetal crouch, leaning when he leaned. Braking heavily he merged into the broad back. Briefly then they were one, their eyes slitted like our Asian friends. It encouraged in Holden a false feeling of equality.
    â€˜Where do you go all day?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is it your job? Can I come one day?’
    The scattered remnants of the world war included of course a surplus (there's a mercantile term) of khaki trousers and epauletted shirts, and tons of ammunition boxes with the rope handles going cheap. There was a glut of rucksacks and canvas belts which matched the complexion of the jaundiced survivors of Burma and the Islands, while tarpaulins and tents used now for picnics had the dusty greens of the box-hedges. It would be years before the regulation boots wore out in the trenches of homesites, or along the borders of invisible gardens, just as the veterans of Crete and the Western Desert would take almost as long to stop ducking their heads at the distant explosions from the quarry in the Hills overlooking the city.
    The dry colours of this surplus material had been carefully manufactured for its camouflage qualities—its closeness to earth. Now in peacetime it introduced a layer of melancholy to the city. Khaki was a hardworking colour, the defender of plain virtues. It was a declaration of practicality, of post-war rebuilding and repopulation. Nothing frivolous about khaki. It's all over Africa and the colonies like a plague. The word itself has been handed down from the Hindustani. Is it worn much by affluent, already-made societies? There's scarcely a square metre of the stuff in Sweden or Switzerland.
    The most eyecatching relics of war were the rearing fuselages of stranded Avro Ansons. From the back of the AJS Holden spotted them behind blurred hedges or protruding in backyards, and in an otherwise ordinary street off Payneham Road a Mustang fighter had managed a perfect pancake landing on a lawn tennis court. Stripped of wings and disgorging the instrument panel and intestines of plaited wiring, these great machines announced an agony of impotence: the war was well and truly over, kaput.
    Between them Holden and Frank McBee knew the location of most of the aircraft in Adelaide; a small city, easily traversed. But if McBee had a special interest he wasn't letting on. He crouched over the rattling motorbike.
    In those days aluminium was as exotic and as expensive as poultry at Christmas. Its light weight and dull shine fascinated Holden. And the aluminium accounted for only a small part of an aeroplane's technology. It had the instruments and the hydraulics, and riveted struts and pedals drilled to reduce weight had a refined engineering-sculptural quality. Whenever he sighted one of those partially stripped planes Holden envied the gaunt handyman in weekend overalls who'd had the foresight to acquire it.
    â€˜You know my Uncle Vern, he reckons you can get an Avro Anson for £140.’
    â€˜Is he looking for one? Does he want to buy one?’
    Holden shook his head, ‘He's interested in other things.’
    â€˜I don't know the man. He's on your mother's side, right?’
    â€˜Her brother,’ Holden nodded solemnly.