Nobody's Fault by Derek Haines (english novels to read .txt) 📖

and falls, dropped plastic cups full of soft drink when they walked around the houses instead of staying at the table as they were told, these three kids were normal, and abnormally well behaved.
Shortly after turning ten years old, and his little sister who was six years younger than him were told by their mum that they would be moving to the city. Dad’s work was slowing down again, and grandma was on her own in Perth. Grand-dad had died a year or so back. The excitement of the adventure of going to Perth and being able to watch television at grandma’s, overshadowed the fact to David that he would lose his best friends. But as he was ten years old, and there was no television in his country town, the thought of being able to watch television every night won the day. He was ready. Although far too young to realise how settled he was, David would look back later in life and realise this period of time in this country town would be the most stable and settled part of his life. His two friends would be the first of many he would lose along the way. He would reflect on this loss and wonder if he ever said goodbye to them.
Arriving in Perth was a disorganised time for the family. A rented house, a new school, looking for work, building a house. It was organised chaos. David shared a bed with his sister because the house was so small. He hated his new school. He hated the teachers. He wasn’t all that keen on the other kids. This was unusual for David. He retreated into himself. The only bright spot was the new black and white television set sitting in the lounge room. David would get impatient watching the test pattern, then waiting for the national anthem and the station announcement to finish before the programs started. But wait he would. He loved TV. Like any novelty, it would wear off, but while he hated where he lived and went to school, television was his escape.
After what seemed forever, but more likely one year, the new house was ready. It was in a different suburb and the change of schools was just what David needed. He made new friends quickly, and returned to his grades that took him near but not quite to the top of the class. He loved sport, but wasn’t very good. It didn’t matter. He tried his heart out. He started at this new school with a little less than two years of primary school to complete. There was a high school near by, so the future looked stable. But it wasn’t.
David entered a music scholarship contest at the suggestion of his teacher in his last year of primary school. He had no idea what it meant, he just enjoyed playing the violin. The adjudicator came to David’s school for the audition, so it didn’t seem like a big event to him. Once the audition was over, he forgot about it. Until he won. His parents were so proud of him. He had been accepted to go to a high school that specialised in music tuition. He would receive the standard education, but have extra periods of music and out of school activities. It was a marvellous opportunity. He loved music. However, the school was three buses and one and a half hours away from his home. In accepting the scholarship, David sentenced himself to three hours travel a day and the loss again of his newly acquired friends at his primary school.
For a skinny freckled face boy with a haircut always a little shorter than he really wanted, who thrived on the company of his friends, David had made a regretful decision. He knew it. He was an intelligent boy, with deep and thoughtful blue eyes that never revealed what was inside his mind. He fully understood that the scholarship was an honour and an opportunity he was lucky to have received. He also knew he would regret leaving his friends. The amount of travel he would have to do would not allow him to see his friends after school, or participate in local sporting activities near his home. At the young age of twelve, David was feeling that friends for him would only exist in short time frames. When other children were building on their friendships that had started at kindergarten or earlier primary school, David was starting high school without a solitary friend. Outwardly he didn’t show his feelings, nor discuss his fear and loss with anyone. The outside of David smiled, the inside cried.
While waiting for his third bus on the morning of his first day to his new school, David met, and made a new friend, also a scholarship winner, also on his own, also looking for someone to talk to on what was going to be a difficult day. A new school is always full of fears, and especially the first day of high school. He was relieved he was not totally alone now. He had only known his new friend for a few minutes, but it was a security he hadn’t had an hour before . David wondered how all his old friends from primary school were, secure in their own groups on this fearsome day, he jealously thought.
Within a few months, he had settled. He had a new group of friends, his school work and music progressed well. He navigated his first year without any drama. He must have been saving his energy for the following year.
Nineteen Seventy. David fell off the rails. He was about to cancel out all the years he had been such a good boy to his parents. His credits would be used up inside eighteen months. Simply, David got bored. School work had been easy to him. He had never struggled to learn. From simply missing a few periods of school to enjoy a smoke with his mates in a nearby lane way, David and a few of his friends found that life in the city, where they had to change buses in the morning provided a vast array of interesting things to do. The snooker hall was their number one favourite. This place was full of characters almost every hour of the day. The small barber shop in the small corridor at the bottom of the entrance stairs to this basement haven was a favourite haunt of David’s. He enjoyed the conversation of the old men, the drunks, the Vietnam vets, the losers and the winners. He often played a game of snooker with the jeweller who owned the jewellery shop at the top of the stairs at street level. He oozed money. David had never seen so much gold around someone’s neck and wrists. He also played and enjoyed equally the company of the cities down and outs. Their stories, mostly lies, dreams and exaggerated memories amused David for hours. He learned how to set someone up by playing badly for the first game for twenty cents and losing, then asking for another game for a dollar, and win by a whisker. He was not a hustler, just a quick learner. There were enough strangers coming in each week to let David make a few dollars. He wasn’t ever going to be world snooker champion, but he played well enough, and picked his marks well enough to succeed in his ploy on most occasions. It was enough to fund a few packs of smokes, and a Coke or two during what used to be school hours.
David and his friends would still attend school roughly sixty per cent of the time. He enjoyed his music classes, and surprisingly missed very few music periods. Somehow he attended enough classes to pass the year. This was an intelligent boy who could have stayed at the top of his classes. He didn’t however.
Nineteen seventy-one. This was the year David became a stranger to his parents. It is not unusual for fifteen year olds to be difficult to communicate with, but David was impossible to break through to. He closed off completely. The only open communication he had was with his small group of friends. The same ones he had inhabited the snooker hall with the year previous. From a platform of returning to the previous year's routine, this small group of lads began to stretch out for independence. They all felt fenced in and restricted. They lost life’s rule book that they had all learned so well as children. These young boys knew right from wrong. They were not from dysfunctional families. One boy was the only child of a wealthy couple. One was the son of a senior army officer. One was the child of a schoolteacher. And David was the son of a carpenter. Within a few months all had tasted new life adventures. Alcohol, grass, theft and sex. These boys abandoned any boundaries. The common bond these boys had was loneliness. None having friends of longstanding, they gelled together in a reaction to their lack of peers. Not as a gang. They just felt they were on their own and took sanctuary in each other's company. As misery does.
There was an attempt to run away to Sydney. David and the military officer’s son hatched a plan to ride their push bikes to Sydney. Being some 2700 miles away, the two boys had the good sense to pack a bag each of tinned food. Not far into their epic journey came their first problem. The climb up Greenmount to the top of the escarpment that borders the east side of Perth is very steep. Impossible to ride up on a push bike with no gears, and made all the more difficult by the heavy bags of tinned food hanging off their backs. They consoled each other with the thought that once they covered the twenty miles up Greenmount, it should be flat for the next 2680 miles to Sydney.
The next problem was a little more threatening to the journey. David’s friend dropped his bike and started running for the bush. ‘Run, it’s my old man! That’s his car coming behind us’. David jumped to the order and bolted with his friend deep into the scrub. They heard voices as they hid in a small gully, but couldn’t decipher what was said. After an hour or so, they popped their heads out for a look. No one. Nothing moved. Moving quietly and carefully they made their way back to the road side. Their bikes had disappeared. ‘Fuck it!’ pronounced David at the loudest volume he could muster.
A few minutes discussion ended up in agreement that they should camp the night in the scrub. It was probably about six o’clock in the evening. It was late winter and getting a little cool. They had no idea what time it was, but they did discover that they had forgotten to bring a watch. With the onset of hunger, they made another fascinating discovery. They hadn’t packed a can opener! ‘Fuck it, Fuck it, Fuck it!’ David screamed as he belted the living daylights out of a can of spaghetti with a rock. Its contents firmly entrenched inside the can. The two boys had missed many science lessons. But at least tonight they did discover the strength of tin.
When the can had been pummelled past its point of submission, a creamy pinkish red paste like sludge dribbled from a few cracks in its defence. This sludge was once spaghetti in a bolognese sauce. It was now just goo reacting to the pressure built up in the almost crushed tin. As it dripped to the ground, the boys made yet another discovery. A plate would have been a handy addition to their kit bags. With the lack of a plate they took turns in sucking