At Wally's

AT WALLY's

Sandwiches. I don't much like them, rarely ever eat them. I certainly don't make them, but I suppose if I was forced to name a sandwich I would eat, if I had to, it would be ham and cheese.

There's not much to this story really, certainly very little in the way of sandwiches, but that's how it starts. For most of my school years my Mother made me sandwiches to take for my school lunch. I ate them, peanut butter, processed meat and tomato sauce, sometimes jam, but mostly ham and cheese. I ate them slowly, so slowly that I missed most of the games that other boys played and the conversations they had at lunchtime. Eventually I stopped eating the sandwiches. I gave them to another boy who was always hungry. Wally Henderson or Wally Underwood depending on who he wanted to be on any given day. Wally ate my sandwiches in the Nineteen Sixties.

Wally was one of those kids you hardly ever noticed at school. He might have been unprepossessing if I'd known what it meant at the time. I mean he was at school, in my class for a few years, but there is nothing he did that ever drew attention. He was not one of the smart kids, nor one of the sporty types and he was definitely not popular and hardly handsome. Most of the time I imagine he hung around on his own. Even the other kids who didn't seem to fit in hung around with each other. Not Wally.

But let's get to the sandwiches.

I thought I was smart and athletic and popular. The way this manifest itself was by my trying to get onto every sports team at school. Baseball, all grades, fail. Football, all grades, fail. Athletics, all grades, fail. Basketball, all grades fail. Let's get something clear here. I probably could have sat on the bench for the baseball thirds team, but I decided not too. They told me I could be a back up short stop. They put me on the team list once, my sole claim to sporting success. I didn't think I was that bad, but I never did play. Fail.

What all of this meant was that on sport's day, once a week, a bunch of us including Wally Henderson or Wally Underwood (whoever turned up on the day) were given a soccer ball to kick around. A teacher stood in the middle of what looked like a paddock, although we were assured it was a soccer field, and half refereed a game we played. I was the star.

Henderson or Underwood? Wally's mother had left his father and remarried. But I never knew whether she had left Mr Henderson or Mr Underwood. Wally's clarity around this was never profound. It was one or the other, whatever suited him.

To tell this story properly you need to get a picture of Wally. A photo would be better, but essentially Wally was the equal smallest boy in our class. Brian Moore was pretty small too, but Brian was nothing compared to Wally who had buck teeth, which made understanding him difficult. He was skinny with a head full of tightly cropped curly brown hair. Some said he never washed. But I wouldn't have said that of Wally.

He knew little about sport, the Beatles, or anything. He couldn’t spell, his writing was barely legible and he struggled to read aloud. While he admitted to having heard of Chicago and knew it was a city, he couldn’t name any other American town or location. Is that enough about Wally? Although you already know he liked my mother's sandwiches.

And it may have been those sandwiches which caused, what I now call these many years later, the Great Wainwright Debate.

Did she or didn't she? Or was it all in my imagination?

Because I'd given Wally all those sandwiches for some reason he felt he was in my debt. That's the only way I can explain it.

I thought I was smart too. When I finished school I would go to university and become a doctor or veterinary surgeon. I might become a jet pilot as well. I hadn't made up my mind. Mostly though I forgot what I was going to become and watched television until my mother told me to go to bed.

But obviously I was popular because I was never in trouble with my teacher's and I was never taken aside and told to work harder on my subjects. I was mainly left alone. On the weekends I rode my pushbike around to Digby Nelson’s or Steve Wagg’s and we would make up games or go playing in the abandoned industrial area. They were great times. Back at school on Monday we talked about getting our driver's licences in a couple of years. We would be even more popular then.

"They're pressed meat and tomato sauce Wally."

Wally Henderson had sat down next to me on one of the benches on our school verandah. Today he was Wally Henderson. We were allowed to eat there. But the older kids, the cooler kids had commandeered the big grassed area on the side of the school. I couldn't wait to be there.

"You gonna come back to school next year?"

Wally again. I didn't know what the answer was. There were some important exams coming up but my parents would make that decision. I didn't mind school, it seemed like a good way to delay the inevitable.

"Anyway I'm leaving." His words tumbling out as he chewed.

He was half way through the second sandwich. I could see where his teeth had bitten into the white bread and sliced through the thin meat, some tomato sauce sitting in a blob, ready to drop. It wasn't as if I paid him much attention when he ate, but buck teeth or not he was making rapid progress.

I didn't say anything. I was picking my way through a small packet of sultanas that my mother sometimes included as a treat. Her idea, not mine. Sultanas? A treat? I shook my head.

And this is where the Great Wainwright Debate starts.

"Do you know Susan Wainwright?"

It was hard not to. She was not only the biggest girl in our class, but she was the smartest too. So smart that she was smarter than all the boys. So big that she was bigger than all the boys. Susan Wainwright for those of you who don't know was also our class's athletic champion. She could beat all the boys. In fact the only people who could run faster or throw a javelin further were in their last year of school and they were a couple of boys, two years older than her at least.

We didn't call her a freak in those days, but she was. She was ordinary to look at, she looked like any other girl, except at fifteen it looked like she was fully grown but with some more growing to do.

Yes I knew Susan Wainwright but she was of little interest to me.

“Do you want to come to my party on the weekend? She’ll be there and she does a magic trick and makes herself invisible.”

Wally would normally take my sandwiches and go and eat them somewhere else. Perhaps he was waiting for a response, and indication that I had heard what he said. Wally the unpopular was having a birthday party. Susan Wainwright would be there.

"OK" I said standing and walking off down the verandah. I looked back, Wally was still sitting there. He had turned. He had his back to me. His skinny, bony back with his shirt hanging out of his pants. Some bread crusts lay at his feet.

I knew enough then to know that an invitation to a party was usually accompanied by a small card telling the time and place of the party. Wally had no such invitation. It was just “Come over on Saturday afternoon.”

No one I asked seemed to know anything about the party. I could have asked Susan Wainwright but that seemed pointless. Besides I could hardly see myself walking up to her and asking if she was going to Wally Underwood or Wally Henderson's birthday party. She would have given me that irritated look she gave to most boys.

When Saturday came around I wondered about Wally’s party. Was there one? Who would be there if no one else seemed to have been invited?

After all those years and all those sandwiches I knew where Wally lived, he’d told me one day so finding his place was pretty easy. It was only a few blocks away from where I lived. But I’d never been there before. It was an old two storey house divided into several units. I knocked on the door of the one that I thought was Wally’s.

There was no answer, and I was about to leave when a girl opened the door and said “He’s upstairs.”

The girl was Yvonne Wainwright, the younger sister of Susan. The Wainwright sisters were very similar, although Yvonne was not big like her sister. Just as smart though.

When I got to the top of the steps Wally was sitting on a lounge. Susan Wainwright sat on the opposite side of the room. It was a big room. There was a table and chairs, and a few paintings on the walls.

I looked about, there was no one else. I was amazed by Susan Wainwright's presence. She didn't say anything. Not that we ever spoke at school.

“What about the party Wally?” I’d been hoping for a few treats like pizza or drinks, or ice-creams, but there didn’t appear to be any.

He looked back at me and told me his Mum and Dad had gone into the city so he had to cancel it. I sat down on the lounge with Wally. Yvonne Wainwright decided to sit next to me.

“Well now that we’re all here its time for some magic” It was Susan speaking. Yvonne giggled and tucked her feet up on the lounge.

Despite the fact that I’d been going to school with Susan Wainwright for most of my school life I knew little about her. She rarely spoke in class unless asked something by the teachers. Her size and speed were also a little intimidating for most of us boys.

“I’m going to do a magic trick for you called the dance of the invisible fairy.” She said. There was more giggling from Yvonne. I guess the words sounded funny.

I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I also wondered if my bike might get stolen, I had left it in the street. But what happened next took my mind well and truly off my bike. Susanne was dressed in a pair of shorts and T Shirt, bare feet. She stood up.

“I’m going to do a costume change” She said, and walked behind the lounge.

Then just as suddenly she appeared in her underwear. That was all. I stared. Yvonne giggled. She never seemed to stop. And Wally hunched forward.

My mind raced. Part of me wanted to run away, part of me was transfixed. Transfixed won. She simply tip-toed around with an imaginary wand and said peculiar things like “You can all be flowers.”

But I barely heard the words. I suppose part of me was trying to understand what was happening. I had never seen a girl... you can all be flowers.

She walked so slowly I could see through her undies, as if they were invisible, her bottom smooth, pale and wiggling. She wore nothing else. She was either fourteen or fifteen. Bare breasted.

Yvonne suppressed a laugh, her face was red. I was bewildered but I wanted the dance of the invisible fairy to continue. Wally hadn’t moved as he sat following her every move. I felt an ache inside and I could hear my breathing. I looked at Susan. I was frightened.

I don't know what happened and I tried to explain it to myself for days afterwards but I suppose she eventually became bored. Some stupid schoolgirl dare achieved and then what else was there to do? I didn’t know what was in or on her mind. She stopped and sat down on the couch opposite.

The room was old and big with a high ceiling. I asked Wally for a glass of water and he pointed to an open door. In the kitchen were the words he said. They seemed disembodied. He had a strange look on his face. From the kitchen I heard some talking and then Yvonne Wainwright speaking to her sister.

“Mum and Dad will be back soon Suse. When we see them we'll have to go home.”

Susan walked to the second floor window to look out. The window was on an enclosed verandah that ran off the big room we were in. She knelt on a chair looking down into the street.

We stood there waiting for Mr and Mrs Wainwright to arrive. I spent all of that time, it must only been a few minutes, looking at Susan. She had her back to me and I looked at the freckles on her shoulders. And at that point I imagined myself in love with her, the school athletics champion and invisible fairy.

There were so many things I tried to explain to myself, more so in the years since, but at the time there was no answer.

I sat next to Wally in class as the last couple of weeks of school ebbed away. There were no more invitations to parties. School holidays arrived and along with my parents I went to my Grandmother's place up on the lakes.

When I returned to school the following year I looked everywhere for Wally Underwood or Wally Henderson. He had left. And he was no longer living in the house above the Wainwrights.

I thought a lot about Susan and how Wally knew her and if he had seen her do her magic trick before. I recreated those scenes in my mind over and over. I asked my mother to stop making sandwiches, give me some money, let me buy my own lunch like other kids. She did, I spent most of the money on soft drink and candy.

But for some reason I could never bring myself to speak to Susan Wainwright. She was smart and fast and when she left school everyone said she was going to try out for the State University athletic's team. Her name was in the newspaper. I don't know if she ever made the team.

Eventually when I finished school I got a job in the city and caught the train to work everyday. One day I saw a sandwich that someone had left behind on their seat and all I could think about was Susan Wainwright. And I wondered what happened to Wally. It looked like the sandwich was ham and cheese.

END.