Jackjumper

By Jane Naqvi

Annie and Jak - mother and wayward son.

 

Jak is playing silly buggers when he steps into a nest of jack jumpers.

The first sting in the tale of his life trajectory.

 

Annie believes her destiny was unwittingly ordained through her father's deception,

long ago in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi's assas

• Language: English
• Publisher: Forty South Publishing
• Release date: May 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648532941

Jane Naqvi

The author of Jackjumper, Jane Naqvi, lives in Tasmania, between bushland and sea with her husband, Ike, and two ponies. She had a long career as a teacher and she gave it up to travel interstate and overseas each year to visit her children and seven grandchildren, to ramble with friends over long and winding tracks and to spend time in India with husband, Ikram. When away, Jane took photographs and wrote notes - and on returning home she fictionalised many real-life experiences into stories. Without any chances of travelling in 2020, she connected her stories, drove them up a notch, and Jackjumper emerged from its hiding place on the East Coast of Tasmania.

Book preview

1

London

Friday, 25 July 1986

8.30 am

Please, please, not the blue zone, Jak pleads silently as the purple and white uniform emerges from the gloom of the long basement corridor. A short distance before him, the figure stops, as he knows it will, and consults a clipboard. The action gives him another moment to lean against the wall and press his hands together as if in prayer. Put me in with the great whites, the redbacks, the blue-ringed or the other things that want us dead but please, not the dinosaurs.

‘So, young Jak, my notes here say you are leaving us?’

‘Yes, this is my last day.’

‘How long has it been?’

‘Three.’

‘Weeks, months or years?’

‘Years.’

‘Time flies.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘You’re in Creepy Crawlies today. Going back home?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Australia isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

For his last shift he’s been given the only place to which he has any kind of affiliation. He’ll play his part of Visitor Experience Assistant and he’ll explain the peculiar features of precious, stuffed stuff. He’ll smile at the wide-eyed enthusiasms and furtive boredoms of the lines of children and will nod, with just the slightest hint of acknowledgement, to their officious minders.

He dons his purple and white uniform for the last time and winds his way along the plethora of corridors, great halls and grand staircases to the Creepy Crawlies. One look at this place shows that every living being is stuffed in the end, he tells himself. Old Douglas included.

As the uniform dictates, he nods and smiles to passing staff and visitors but inside, due to imminent escape, his guts are beginning to churn. London is almost over. Done if not dusted. What will he do in his last spare hour? Have a beer or a walk by the murky Thames, pending the afternoon tides? Then he remembers the tangle of bikes dumped in the foyer of the apartment block in Green Dragon Way. Get some blood flowing before thirty hours of sitting motionless streaming through space. A nicked-bike ride along the Grand Union Canal. Last flash by peek in the windows of the houseboats by the locks. Farewell the ducks, swans and moorhens. Try not to slide the bike in slime. Drop the bike back into the mass, grab his stuff and go.

The thought calms him for a couple of minutes as he paces the empty Creepy Crawlies Hall. There will be no farewell wishes for him as he is only on a flicker of eye contact with most of the other staff. As a part-timer, he is the lowest species of stuffed mammal in the place, and his lowliness is compounded by the fact that he has never had an iota of interest in science, even natural history. Especially not in the dinosaurs in the blue zone, exemplified by the fact that he can only answer questions that are already on billboards and most seven-year-olds can spout more detail.

The only displays about which he genuinely has any knowledge and affinity are in the room he is in right now because, amongst less impressive features, it has a section titled Dangerous and Deadly Wildlife of Australia.

He circles the room looking for fingermarks on the glass. Beside the dung beetle display he stoops, takes a key from his pocket and unlocks a drawer, gathers the lint-free cloths to begin the process of cleaning and polishing the glass. He has an hour before visitors arrive. An hour to think about the events that brought him to this last day in London.

His hand that glides the cloth across the glass in front of the taipan, death adder and copperhead begins to shake and his heart races. The dead eyes of the tiger snake remind him of one of the snakes that Old Douglas had to remove ‘in the colonial way’ when it took up residence underneath the shack at Right Whale Cove. Curse Old Douglas. Curse him for making him go to Rose Cottage. Curse him for giving him hope. Curse the bastard for wrecking his return home. Curse him for dying last night.

Jak has a half hour left to finish the display cases and get himself under control. For the first fifteen minutes he allows himself to curse as he cleans. In the final fifteen he polishes with a vigour born from the anger of loss.

10.00 am

Jak unlocks the drawer beneath the dung beetles and replaces the cloths, carefully separating the cleaners from the polishers. He is now ready for his last shift. He locks the drawer, stands up, and within the gaze of Dangerous Snakes, he adjusts his uniform and straightens his nametag.

When the first visitors arrive they look through sparkling glass cases of fascinating displays and find the dark and handsome young guide in Creepy Crawlies, completely charming.

The morning is slow, no one seems to need him so Jak clock-watches, willing his shift to be over, but near the end of it he sees a line of seven-year-olds and from their minder’s mouth he hears the same toffee accent that Old Douglas had and he has a sudden urge to punch her out. Instead, he retreats behind the dung beetle display until his fists unclench and he can take a deep breath, emerge and assume the role of nature nerd.

‘Good morning,’ he says as he walks towards her, knowing that she knows he has the status of an ant and, with fingers smoothing his left lapel and just stopping himself from bowing, ‘may I be of assistance?’

‘No, thank you.’

The rebuff is abrupt, just an aside from the monologue being delivered with more than a degree of misinformation about the dangerous wildlife of Australia. She doesn’t even look in his direction. The children stand stock-still. Not one of them looks at him either. All eyes are on the woman, most likely through fear of a reprimand should they fidget. He realizes this is a person who, like Old Douglas, does not like to be interrupted, but hell, he only has ten minutes left in the job, so he continues boldly, ‘I couldn’t help but overhear and, I’m Australian, and I’ve had much experience with the wildlife there.’

She frowns for a second then a practised, over wide smile appears and, as she turns to the children she announces, ‘This morning we have a special treat. A real live Australian. Sit on the floor children.’

The woman squints at Jak’s lapel, ‘First, what may we call you?’

‘Jak,’ he says, ‘Jack with no ‘c’.’

In the split second before she speaks, Jak senses a disdainful twitch of her nose before she says, ‘Jak knows an amazing amount, I can tell, children. From what part of the country do you come?’

‘Tasmania. The island state. The best.’

‘Why is it the best?’ asks a child.

‘Tassie is the best because we have more than our fair share of hazardous wildlife’.

‘Just tell us about the most dangerous creature’ interrupts the toffee-voice.

‘This is going to surprise you,’ says, Jak, ‘because it’s not one of the snakes in the display case. The most hazardous of all wildlife hazards is an ant. He’s called Myrmecia pilosula, but the locals call him the jack jumper because he can jump on you from a long way off. He’s very smart and he has work to do just like a human. He might be a hunter or a builder or a soldier. And, whatever his job, he is ruled over by a queen, who lives in an underground palace with lots of servants.

‘Is she beautiful?’ asks a little girl.

‘Her subjects think so. She’s very important because she lays eggs that turn into black babies, who grow up to be her workers and slaves.’

‘And why are they deemed hazardous?’ says toffee-voice, with a deliberate glance at her wristwatch.

‘Because they are super-athletes with a bad attitude,’ says Jak, and he kneels down to be at eye level with the children, ‘and also because …’

‘What?’ breathe the children.

‘They have a sting in their tail that can kill ya.’

He leans towards them, and his eyes shine green as they rove around the group, before he whispers, ‘If you are at the beach and you leave your T-shirt on a log on the sand when you go swimming, a jack jumper may hide inside it to wait, just for you, and when you come back, you put on your T-shirt and … aaaaah!’

‘Could a jack jumper jump all the way to England?’ asks a fright­ened child.

‘He can only get that far,’ says Jak, eyeballing them all again, ‘if he jumps into someone’s suitcase and hides amongst the clothes and that person gets on a plane and brings him to London. And do you remember something?’

‘What?’ the children whisper.

‘Guess who’s called Jak and is from Tasmania?’ shouts Jak, jumping up, scrunching his hands and pulling a menacing face.

They scream.

‘Shh, children,’ scolds the toffee-voice, ‘I think our guide is over-exaggerating. They are surely not that bad, are they?’

Jak glances at the clock on the wall. He has twenty seconds left in the job.

In as posh an accent as he can conjure, to all and sundry who are now in the hall, he announces, loudly, ‘Yes, madam, jack jumpers are fucking bastards.’

His shift and his job are over.

2

West London

Afternoon, Friday, 25 July 1986

Jak is going home to the edge of the world. To Annie, as she approaches the edge of her tether, to Aunty Win, to the remains of Old Douglas’s shack at Freycinet as it disintegrates in the salt breezes on the edge of the bay and to Gypsy, who lives on the edge of his consciousness.

His bag is packed, his passport and ticket are in his wallet under the mattress. He is twenty-one, this boy from the island, and he has finished with London. Three years has been enough time back home for the familiar to wither and Old Douglas to die. But all Jak can do right now is get the District Line for the last time, grab his stuff and then take the Piccadilly tube to Heathrow. Goodbye hordes, goodbye street garbage, goodbye white noise, goodbye Cindy, Lindy and Mindy – whoever you were – and thanks for your affections, and sod off to the unfinished Diploma in Tourism and up yours to the Museum.

If the District Line is on time and the 237 bus is running every ten minutes, he will have an hour to kill when he gets back to his dingy flat in Green Dragon Way. Plenty of time for his last Grand Union towpath ride. He’s paid his dues, and the night before he farewelled mates with drinks at the Bulls Head and had a kick of the footy in the adjacent park where a red telephone box made a fine goal for him to show off the drop punt instilled in him by an Aussie Rules coach: ‘Balance yerself, boy, square yer hips, drop it low towards your target, point yer toe, kick and follow through.’ Jak did all that and the footy had smashed right into a glass panel of a British Telecom kiosk and shards flew everywhere. He didn’t bother to retrieve his ball; there was no room for it in his bag and none of his mates dared lest someone reported them, and so they took off back to the Bulls Head in fits of laughter, ordered steak & ale pies, mushy peas, chips and beer, and made a night of it.

Mafoosh Muawwadh is happy. He is similar to Jak in many ways, dark of complexion, short of stature, twenty-two years old, good health, an inclination towards self-deprecation but not modesty, and in London without being a Londoner. However, where Jak is generally a creature of indecision, lack of direction and self-discipline, Mafoosh Muawwadh has an admirable work ethic. He’s decisive, ambitious and disciplined, and where Jak is handsome with his hair trimmed to the latest trend and sporting toned biceps, Mafoosh Muawwadh is dog-ugly.

Mafoosh Muawwadh knows this, came to terms with it when he was fourteen years old and cast it aside as a non-issue. The untameable, brittle hair, the pock-marked cheeks, the sixth little digit that flaps uselessly on the side of his left hand and the thick glasses have not held him back. The proof of this is Mafoosh Muawwadh’s admittance into prestigious universities, first in Delhi and now in England, and his early engagement to his cousin, Ghazal. One approach from his parents to hers was all it took and they were all over him, popping sweetmeats into his mouth and discussing propitious dates. Oh, Mafoosh Muawwadh knows that Ghazal is no movie star and he knows also that her motivation may be the dream of a life in the west. But he is confident she will come to love him and look after him, as he will love and look after her as that is how they have both been programmed: get married and fall in love, not the risky other way around.

Mafoosh Muawwadh boarded Air India Boeing Flight 281 after patiently enduring strings of cotton being tied around his wrists to keep him safe while his jacket lapels became soggy with the tears of aunties seeing him off outside the security gate of the Indira Gandhi International Airport. He arrives at Heathrow the same day that Jak is leaving. He is grilled by the Customs Officer (how could an ethnic Indian be so nasty to another Indian, he wonders) before he is able to collect the vinyl suitcase with his name on it in very big, inked letters, which houses his books and his diesel-smelling pile of clothes. Mafoosh Muawwadh negotiates his way to the Tube and finds his pre-arranged lodgings in Green Dragon Way by mid-afternoon.

Once there, he becomes an excited young man, in love with the thought of love, looking forward to new forays into academia and relishing his positive life prospects. Thank you, Allah, for thou art bountiful. He is too excited to unpack or rest. He sits a moment on the single bed with the grey blanket and checks his small, black diary and underlines the time he needs to arrive for orientation at university on Monday, even though he’s done this once from home and several times on the plane. He re-reads the description of the route, realizes it is not far away and he makes a little shrieking with joy noise and jumps up, shoves the little diary into his back pocket and leaves his dingy room, oblivious to its dinginess. Like his appearance, a room’s veneer just isn’t an issue when no little pots of paints have any hope of uplifting it. He bounces down the stairs on his knock-kneed skinny legs and, for the first time in his life, Mafoosh Muawwadh transgresses from his usual honourable behaviour. Slightly. There is a tangle of old bikes in the foyer. They don’t have locks and Mafoosh Muawwadh looks around and, seeing no one, wheels one outside and rides away. He calls to no one, ‘Back soon Sir, not stealing, just borrowing, okay, yar.’

Jak’s plan for his last hour in London is nearly thwarted by a woman with a baby carriage on the 237 bus. As soon as she starts to tilt it to propel it up the steps, the bus driver tells her she cannot fit it down the aisle. She ignores him as she puffs and shoves the pram with its occupant screaming. She clocks her concession pass and forces the baby-bearing vehicle down the aisle, bumping into the bandaged shins of elderly passengers in the disabled seats, who protest angrily, causing the infant to scream even louder. When the pram’s metal frame gets stuck between the back of the next grubby seat, there is an eruption of expletives. The driver rests his elbows on the steering wheel with his fists under his chin and keeps his foot on the brake.

Jak has no other choice than to play the hero or his Grand Union Canal ride is not going to happen. He leaps from his seat at the back, takes the protesting baby out of its pram, hands it to its frustrated mother (or grandmother, Jak can’t tell), manoeuvres the pram from its stuck position, pushes the annoying object into the wide-spot by the exit door and yells, ‘Let’s go.’ After this hiccup the 237 resumes its way towards its destination and Jak resumes his way towards his destiny; a destiny which has skewed because of a dead Old Douglas and a minor, everyday occurrence on a west London bus.

After he has raced up the staircase of Green Dragon Way and checked that his passport, ticket and wallet are still under the mattress, taken a shower and changed into his travel clothes and squashed his bag and zipped it up, Jak only has fifty-five minutes left to take his ride. Fourteen minutes to the starting point at Brentford Dock, thirty on the canal track and, warmed up, fifteen back. He needs to feel the rush of air through his hair (no poncy helmet for him). He needs to do anything but think about Old Douglas. If he does think about him he might not even get on the plane. Curse the bastard for his rotten timing.

It is as simple as usual for Jak to nick a bike from the foyer in Green Dragon Way and his ride proper begins over the pedestrian bridges and past the locks and grungy houseboats and he soon reaches the spooky tin shed that is about a hundred metres in length and stretches over the bike path and half of the canal. Inside motley pigeons eke out an existence, a few brave houseboat owners carry out repairs and through it walkers quicken their steps and riders put pressure on their pedals. Jak used to love his moments here. He thought it made the perfect murder location for an episode of The Bill. A psycho pushes a stranger into the black water, so toxic the victim disappears with hardly a protesting splash, hardly a splutter, hardly a bubble. The psycho only did it as there was no one around, on impulse: a wild whim, an un-premeditated snuff, which the cops on The Bill would eventually have to turn into a cold case.

An unsatisfactory ending, thinks Jak as he rides out of the gloom of the shed and back into the light, and he pedals furiously to dispel the fantasy and not think of anything at all. Especially Old Douglas in a coffin, burning.

He slows and looks at his watch. Almost fifteen minutes on the towpath have passed. Time to turn back. But he has nearly reached the other creepy spot under the bridge that spans the deep, black water in this part of the canal. Here slick, greasy weeds rise as the concrete wall meets the pathway and ancient litter has mixed with the green slime of moorhen excreta. Even they only stop here momentarily to shit. Above, six lanes of vehicles race stressed-out Londoners in and out of their sickly city and no one looks down for there is a concrete wall on the sides of the bridge and no footpath. So, under the bridge is a deserted, dank place, the epitome of darkest fantasies, fears, fucks and felonies. A red-sprayed graffiti slogan screams garishly at Jak, ‘Better to spend one day of your life as a wolf than a hundred as a sheep.’

He laughs as he reads it and hears himself scream back, ‘I’m a wolf, I’m a wolf!’ Ride through, Jak, and turn around fast. You’ve got a plane to catch.

But Jak is now approaching the line in the map of his history, where everything, what had been and what could have been, with or without Old Douglas, shifts and changes. All it will take is one movement, one moment, one mistake.

With the wind at his back, his hair pointing at the sky like a Danger symbol on an electricity pylon, the mud squelching under his tyres and with the exhilaration of arriving and in the buzz of a beginning, Mafoosh Muawwadh is wobbling alongside the towpath on his stolen-borrowed bike. A hundred metres ahead of him, he is happy to see the figure of another cyclist because Mafoosh Muawwadh is not used to being alone.

Mafoosh Muawwadh is thinking about composing a letter to his new bride. A woman, whose very name is poetry; Ghazal – a love sonnet, a sensual song. He should write an embellished description of his ride alongside the Grand Union Canal, a glowing appraisal of his accommodation, an amusing anecdote about his journey from Delhi to London, ending in a flowery quotation about love and how everything he will do from this moment on he will do for her. He is launching himself into Bollywood filmy-song mode, and he imagines he is standing on the saddle and raising his arms to the sky. Mafoosh Muawwadh knows that his giddy mind letter will not transcribe anywhere near as unrestrained into the draft letter he will scrawl in his little black diary (he pats his bottom to check if it’s still in his pocket; it is) and that the final, self-censored version on a light blue aerogramme that he will pop dutifully into the Royal Mail will be stilted in its formality. If he writes what he is thinking now, his bride will be terrified and his marriage annulled quick smart.

Mafoosh Muawwadh laughs out loud, swings his stolen-borrowed bike to the edge of the canal, stands up and pedals wildly as if he is approaching the finish line of the Tour de France, in gay abandon, just for the sheer freedom and Bollywood-hero joy of it.

Before it happens, a disturbed, angry jack jumper can sense when it is about to be scrunched by a careless foot, and it jumps and strikes the scruncher with its venomous sting before the scruncher scrunches, which causes the would-be scruncher to leap uncharacteristically high with the shock of it. It also may cause his heart rate to race, his blood pressure to drop, his face to redden, his throat to swell and he falls and dies from anaphylaxis. All over in a moment. The jack jumper then buries itself until the excitement has passed.

And so it kind of is with Jak, the jackjumper, and Mafoosh Muawwadh, the would-be scruncher.

Mafoosh Muawwadh is hurtling headlong, still in gay abandon on the edge of the canal, like a circus acrobat he reaches the bridge of darkest fantasies, fears, fucks, felonies and fiery graffiti at the same time as Jak who, without slowing his bike one iota, swings into his plane-to-catch turn and slides in slime towards the edge of the canal and senses a scrunch.

Like a jack jumper’s instinctive strike, his right leg kicks with the punt his old footy coach had instilled, infused with the adrenalin of speed, fantasy and the fury that precedes grief, and Mafoosh Muawwadh is hurtling headlong into the middle of the canal where the water is black and toxic and thick, and he disappears most elegantly with hardly a protesting splash, hardly a splutter. A mottled line of bubbles erupts by the path edge as the bike twists a surprised goodbye. All over in a moment. The only thing that would ever denote the presence of Mafoosh Muawwadh and his stolen-borrowed bike is a small, black diary that escapes from his back pocket as he is launched into flight by the perfectly delivered, low trajectory punt with pointed toe. Without getting off his bike, Jak scoops it up with the deft left-arm action of a footballer on the run and slams it into his own back pocket and, perfectly balanced, he rides like hell.

Kick and run. He has a plane to catch.

By the time he is heading for Heathrow on the Piccadilly Line, he decides that he’ll view the event simply as a reckless impulse, an unpremeditated snuff to be turned into a cold case, an explosion of pain to be blamed entirely on that bastard of an Old Douglas and his rotten timing, his ruining of everything.

3

Green Dragon Way

West London

Morning, Monday, 14 July 1986

Jak

Annie rang.

I knew it was Annie as she never thought to calculate the time difference between Hobart and London. I grumbled as I fumbled my way to the kitchen where the phone hung in its cradle against the grimy wall.

‘What?’

‘It’s snowing in Sandy Bay Jak. Coldest day ever and the garden has turned into a wonderland and the car won’t start.’

‘Well, it’s hot and stuffy in here, and it’s two o’clock in the morning.’

‘Funny old upside-down world. How have you been?’

‘Asleep.’

‘Sorry, but will you talk to Old Douglas for a few minutes? He’s eager for a word with you.

That was unusual. I knew Old Douglas disliked telephone con­versations, so it made me slightly nervous. He had admonished me for coming to London in the first place three years ago to study. God only knows what he would say if he found out I had been kicked out of the course. It only took a perfunctory greeting before he came to the point.

‘Have you any intention of visiting the cottage as I have requested, Jak?’

‘I haven’t had time yet.’

‘No time in almost three years? Less distance than from Sandy Bay to Freycinet. It’s July, are you not on a summer break?’

‘Yes, but I am working at the Museum, paying my own way as you know.’

‘I would like you to visit the cottage. You sound tired, Jak. Get out of London. Wander the green hills of Surrey. Melvin will show you around. He’s the farmer who rents the cottage. Doesn’t live in it but farms the land. Nice chap.’

‘I will try, soon as possible’ I said.

‘If you can, that would be appreciated. Do you still have the address?’

‘You better give it to me again.’

I went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. Old Douglas owned a cottage with the stellar name of Rose Cottage, everyone’s expectation for a cute cottage in the English countryside. Although it was an inheritance, he had never gone back to England since immigrating to Tasmania, as far away as he could get, and he had no idea whether the cottage was appealing or simply a wreck. Wanting me to go there sounded like a plea ­– very unlike him. I wished I had been more prepared for the call so I could have been more awake, less snide, interested in the unusual snowfall back home and keen to venture to Surrey. I missed them, Old Douglas, Annie, Aunty Win and Gypsy but I was reticent to go back home like the prodigal son having achieved bugger all in my three years in London. When I was a kid people used to think Gypsy and me were brother and sister because we both had a touch of the tar brush, not that I understood what that meant nor why Old Douglas and Aunty Win slapped each other on the back and laughed as they said it.

Gypsy and I lived with them and my mum, Annie, in Hobart and we all went up the shack for the holidays. We all called Aunty Win – Aunty Win. She was Annie’s nanny when Annie was a kid and she was Gypsy’s grandmother and was Old Douglas’s partner or something and was no one’s aunt as far as I knew. But back in the day Gypsy and I were joined at the hip. Each of us has mislaid our past, but I think I was pretty normal until the time we were up the shack, playing silly buggers on the Wineglass Track when I forged my link with those bastard jackjumpers. I was only eight and I’ve always blamed Gypsy. We were an odd family, we five, whom some wouldn’t consider a family at all.

When I was nineteen I came to London to study but it was really an excuse to get away as far as possible from Tasmania. Ironic, really, the opposite of what Old Douglas had done when he was young, or relatively young. But for different reasons. His was tragedy. Mine was failure. I had let the family down big time, especially Old Douglas and Gypsy. Where Old Douglas had built a successful life in the antipodes (as he always called it), in London I became stuck in a morbid rut with shattered dreams, lethargy and boredom.

I was bored with everything the city had to offer that I could afford. My sources of entertainment were kicking a footy around with other Aussies in the park in Earls Court, beers in pubs where the blokes told smutty jokes and where it was too easy to entice some girl, a slag, a student, to my grotty bed in Green Dragon Way. After the tourism course had bored me enough to not do the assignments, the end had come with a letter of dismissal a year ago.

The most boring thing of all was the part-time job at the Museum. At six o’clock on the morning of Old Douglas’s plea on the phone I made a decision. I’d take a sickie and go to bloody Rose Cottage. Just for him.

At seven I went back to the telephone on the grimy wall in the kitchen, dialled and, in a croaky voice, lied to a staffing manager at the Museum that I was ill, bedridden, and unable to work for at least a few days, and yes, I will bring in the doctor’s certificate on my return.

I will worry about that detail later.

i1

4

ROSE COTTAGE

Knolm, Surrey

England

Monday, 14 July 1986

Jak

At Clapham Junction, I zigzagged through the crowd and in a small shop within the station