Holden's Performance by Murray Bail Page A

airman surveyed his panatella between each puff showed he had been seeing too many American good-guy films. Now his way of half-smiling down at his lung-coloured smoke began attracting attention. The airman was getting too big for his boots (only officers were allowed shoes); and he seemed to be unaware of it. Between talking McBee was staring at him.
    â€˜That looks like,’ he suddenly pointed, ‘you're holding someone's prick in your hand.’
    â€˜I say,’ the flight sergeant reddened, and glanced at Mrs Shadbolt.
    â€˜Don't mind us,’ she yawned. ‘And Karen, she's off to bed.’
    Holden stood up.
    Grabbing his elbow McBee knocked a bottle over.
    â€˜Before you go, what does this remind you of?’
    Taking their visitor's chin he turned the face this way and that. Funny little chap—to put up with that. Well? McBee glanced around the table. Toulouse-Lautrec? No specs. How about Group Captain Douglas Bader? The legs more or less matched, but there was the problem of the charcoal moustache, all the rage in the forties. Why wasn't he original?
    â€˜I know!’ Holden's mother put her hand over her mouth.
    â€˜Cut it out,’ the airman blinked. ‘There's been a difficult war on.’
    â€˜Shhh, let the drip have his go.’
    Holden stood there like a post. His photographic memory had swung into place. Rough suggestion of Hitler—Adolf Hitler.
    â€˜Right!’ Whack on the shoulder-blades. ‘For zat, you vin vun hun-dered pounds and a free veek in Berlin.’
    â€˜I said, that'll do. That's not funny. It's beyond control how a person looks.’
    Frank McBee drowned him out with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’.
    â€˜You're a bully,’ Holden's mother turned to him. ‘Why are you always a bully?’
    â€˜I can take care of myself,’ the sergeant interrupted. And he whispered, ‘I say, that boy of yours, if he is yours, gives me the ruddy creeps.’
    â€˜Oh shut up.’
    The ex-corporal didn't seem to be listening. Studying Holden's face he kept the elbow in a pincer-grip; Holden felt the man's strength. In his coarse shirt, and perspiring, he looked as if he'd come straight from a factory.
    Holden's mother now had one of Adolf's panatellas in her mouth and the flight sergeant grinning encouragement slowly began disappearing behind reams of newspaper-coloured smoke.
    Suddenly pitying her, and not knowing why, Holden felt ashamed.
    â€˜Go to bed,’ she coughed. ‘Frank, tell him to go.’
    â€˜What's happening?’ Karen asked.
    Fumbling in the dark for his pyjamas Holden shook his head.
    â€˜Nothing.’
    And lying down the swirling impressions simply smothered his thoughts. The pillow's softness entered his ears and throat, filling the space behind his eyes, as water finds its own level. The adult murmuring from the kitchen rose and fell, a further blurring, edging higher, settling back, which served to upholster his disquiet; or so he thought.
    Barely had memory and feeling departed when he was woken by a scream. As he sat up voices began overlapping, shouting. Another scream, higher still. That was their mother. In the bed opposite Karen began crying.
    The shapes of things were still imprecise. In the soldier's room among the hat boxes and cartons of electrical appliances Holden crouching in his bare hocks found the .303. Its tremendous vertical weight pointed to the immensity of the task. He couldn't think of anything else to do.
    Its weight briefly invited caution. So did its narrow precision-fitting length. But Holden had hardly thought about his action. ‘It happened like a dream.’ Orchestrated by the floorboards his career started on schedule.
    In the 100-watt kitchen he saw the moustachioed flight sergeant seated as before, his hands folded almost primly on his lap. His mother was partly obscured by McBee: bending over, he had her by the shoulders. On the exposed side of her dress a