Free Burning Boy (Penguin Award Winning Classics), The by Maurice Gee

the school.’
    ‘Oh surely we don’t say that.’
    ‘Some of them do. Mrs Muir does.’ She moved impatiently. ‘I can smell my sweat, I need a swim.’
    ‘Isn’t it too cold?’
    ‘Dad’s rigged up a solar panel.’
    ‘It takes the chill off,’ Stella said. ‘I think we should go, Mrs Sangster. It’s been very nice.’
    ‘It’s been nice for me too. I don’t see enough of girls outside school. Duncan, do you see anything you’d like to borrow?’
    He turned from the books and shook his head. A bank of hair slid down and seemed to hiss on the slick skin above his ear – that melted ear without curl or lobe. Seeing his face suddenly was a shock. She smiled at him. ‘Remember what I said, you can come whenever you like. And borrow anything. You girls as well.’ Stella did not like being lumped in. Belinda, too, would not come again. No success with them, but Norma did not mean to let Duncan go. ‘Here,’ she pulled a book from the shelf, ‘take this. It might help with some of those big words.’
    His hand closed unwillingly on it. He had retreated. She would not let him. ‘Stella, when you play tennis again you bring Duncan. And Duncan, you come here. I’ll expect you.’
    ‘Sure,’ he said.
    Belinda looked at the book. ‘
A Dictionary of Mathematics and Physics?
’ she said, surprised.
    ‘Meanings are important. Stella, bring him.’
    ‘If you’re sure he won’t be a pest.’
    ‘I’ll ride my bike. I’ll come by myself,’ Duncan said.
    ‘You fall off your bike.’
    ‘Well, I’ll walk.’
    ‘We’ll bring you, Dunc. So shut up, Stell,’ Belinda said.
    ‘It’s settled then.’ Norma felt herself relax as though a great danger had been passed. She smiled at Duncan, touched his arm. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Tell Josie where you’ve been. Give her my love.’
    ‘How about Dad?’
    ‘Oh, leave him out.’
    The girls were looking suspicious. She played the schoolteacher and shooed them out. They picked up their rackets in the porch and walked down the garden path with Duncan between them into the park.
    ‘Goodbye,’ Norma called. She went back to the sitting-room and watched them cross the clover slope to the graveyard; saw him like a prisoner between guards. She had seen a man marched into the bush in that way once. A documentary, on TV? Unnecessary person, taken off to be clubbed to death. The close-up showed his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat.
    Oh no, Duncan, no, Norma cried. I’m not going to let that happen to you.

5
    I’m inclined to get rid of the man I’ve called Clive Schwass; and Daphne, his wife. It’s established that he owns a berry farm. Norma has pictured him out in his vines letting hailstones strike him on the face. I can’t see much more than a sour expression. He’s Norma’s older brother, a man well-off in money and property but with a meanness in his nature that leads him to negative judgements on most things, including himself. He works hard, getting a sour pleasure from the monotony of his life. He thinks that Norma holds herself superior to him – and Norma, in fact, believes he has mental talents he’s never used, or had them once, but it’s too late now. His habit of denigration angers her. More than once she’s snatched up her coat and bag and slammed out of his house; but knows that this behaviour satisfies him. Daphne is the one who patches things up.
    Their children have grown up and gone. Francine is a secretary and Deborah a nurse. The boy, Mark, did not want to work with his father. He’s in Australia driving an earth-moving machine. In the photograph he sent home last Christmas he stands only half the height of the giant wheel. Daphne worries about him getting killed or meeting a girl and marrying and not coming back to Saxton. Clive won’t believe his story that he’s saving lots of money. He’s heard about the brothels in Australian work-towns and thinks his son will come home broke one day, with a disease.
    Norma is