Holden's Performance by Murray Bail Page B

long glass of something had stained the shapes of India and Ceylon.
    â€˜What is it you want? What's gotten into you?’
    Shaking her head she sniffled, ‘I don't know.’
    The throttling shadows on the wall above may have grossly exaggerated; yes, but—
    â€˜She doesn't know,’ the flight sergeant intercepted.
    â€˜I'll tell you what,’ McBee straightened and revealed all of Holden's mother. ‘Tell you what I'm going to do.’
    She raised her head in partial hope. It was then they saw Holden almost together,
    â€˜What are you doing?’ she stared. ‘My God, what's that he's got?’
    The flight sergeant stuka-dived under the table, his DSO and Bar forming a brief rainbow.
    â€˜Put that thing away!’ Holden's mother shouted. ‘I'll brain you.’
    McBee restrained her with a slight head movement.
    Stepping forward he held out his hand and laughed, ‘That's my rifle. Come on, boy.’
    But Holden followed him in an arc. That did it: daylight of release widened between his mother and him.
    And yet her face contorted, ‘What are you doing this to me for?’
    From under the table came the cramped voice, ‘Tell him someone could get killed…’
    McBee had not taken his eyes off Holden. Now the former corporal stiffened, his face, neck and shoulders expanded into a sterner remote force.
    â€˜Atten-shun!’ He went cross-eyed with the effort. ‘Pre—zent…ARMS!’
    McBee turned from Holden with contempt. Phew! The airman crawled out from under the table, lucky to be alive. ‘A fat lot of good you were,’ McBee said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You RAAF types are all the bloody same.’
    Mrs Shadbolt pushed forward; Holden had never seen eyes so wide.
    Without a word she slapped him hard across the face.
    In the congested kitchen the never-before-heard blaze of noise reverberated, and it was that as much as the loosely held war rifle which threw Holden backwards. The weapon fell from his hands. But too late for the copper bullet to alter its busy trajectory through local history: first collapsing the nearest table leg, before driving the smallest of McBee's toes clean through the pine floorboards (where it gradually decomposed into opal and dust), cartwheeling McBee backwards in a spurt of blood, upsetting the cotton reels in the mending basket, then ricocheting off the concrete back step, shattering louvres and exploding the myth of the flyscreen door, perforating two perfect piss-holes in the corrugated tank, and so touched upon the cardinal points of the South Australian house, deflating the front tyre of McBee's motorbike and clipping the wing of the Medleys' notorious Black Orpington.
    McBee lay on the lino, clutching his foot. Pale and trembling he raised himself, and steadying against the sideboard, aimed a tremendous boot at Holden's behind with his undamaged size 8, corporal punishment, the force of which sent him sprawling again and torpedoed the bewildered boy through the doorway into the arms of his sister, Karen.
    Those were the days when the appearance on the streets of a new car attracted curious crowds. No sooner had one pulled into the kerb and the driver casually stepped out hurdling the door if it was a roadster—than men would be drawn from across the street, from passing trams, men from all walks, and couldn't-be-less-interested wives would turn in mid-sentence to find themselves temporarily abandoned, as if the latest in cars had magnets fitted under their fenders and bonnets, exerting an irresistible pull within a short radius, causing in the process jaws to drop, eyes to glaze and hands to thrust deep in the pockets of trousers. Within minutes it would be two or three deep around the car. From splayed legs underneath came muffled reports to the nodding bystanders on the type of front suspension, depth of sump and other specifications, and just about everyone perfected the technique of