by Robert Drewe
‘Look at that!’ I said to Sten and Dogs.
‘Gaol-bait,’ said Sten.
‘Bullshit,’ I said.
In the time it took her to step out over the reef, wincing and giving little squeals when she trod on a sharp rock, then pose at the outer edge and dive elegantly into the sea – two minutes at most – I developed a major interest. When she surfaced dramatically and self-consciously, the way all the girls did, spearing up into the air, chest out, head thrown back to smooth her hair, then opened her eyes and smiled distantly in the general direction of the boys salivating on the shore – and I got a front view – I fell for her.
Sten said, ‘She’s only thirteen, I heard.’
‘So, who’s superstitious?’ Dogs said languidly.
‘Crap,’ I said. ‘Not looking like that.’ But it was a blow. Yet again I pondered how amazingly different girls were. A thirteen-year-old boy was still a kid. ‘Anyway, I’m only fifteen myself.’
‘Sixteen, when I last heard,’ said Sten.
‘Only by a few minutes.’
‘He’s getting over-excited,’ said Dogs, ‘just because he’s legally allowed to do it from today.’
‘Only if the bird’s sixteen, too,’ said Sten. ‘Otherwise it’s carnal knowledge.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Six months inside.’
‘You’d do better with the bakery girl,’ Dogs suggested. ‘You’ve got a head start there.’
They couldn’t put me off. ‘Are we going to say hello, or not?’ For once I thought I could overcome my usual perverse shyness. I was prepared to show I was as willing as I felt.
‘Cradle-snatcher,’ Sten muttered. But they didn’t need much urging.
We went for the gradual approach. We stood a little way off and skimmed stones in the water. Then we pushed each other in. We progressed to some increasingly reckless dives, somersaults and bombs off the Diving Rock, and then a dangerous under-the-reef swimming contest. We tapered off by noisily carving our initials on a rock face near her now languidly sun-baking figure.
And at some stage Roberta and I somehow started talking. ‘It’s my birthday,’ I announced giddily. The birthday gambit enabled me to learn that she was actually fourteen. Two years was no great age gap, I told myself. On the other hand it was large enough to give me confidence. I felt mature and relaxed for once. Then there was the extraordinary coincidence of our names. We even lived in the same street, Circe Circle. Were these omens, or what?
I cracked jokes and Roberta laughed. If my sudden urbanity surprised me, it also surprised the birthday-less Sten and Dogs. Their increasingly grim rock-chipping – their initials were already inches deep – indicated their growing envy. I could see they were mentally extricating themselves from Wendy and Jenny and about to join the fray. They were becoming louder and more competitive by the second. Any moment now Dogs would do his chick-trick of walking on his hands.
Hastily, I staked a claim. ‘High Society is playing tonight,’ I said to Roberta.
High Society was standard family holiday fare every summer. I’d already seen it three times at different locales – but only when the choice was High Society or staying home. For some reason the film made me feel edgy and frustrated. The characters were too flippant. I couldn’t believe Grace Kelly would be attracted to Bing Crosby enough to marry him once, much less twice. Or that Frank Sinatra would be such a prim gentleman when tipsy Grace flirted with him. It annoyed me that the lyrics in Bing’s song ‘Now You Has Jazz’ lazily confused jazz and rock ’n’ roll. I hated musicals anyway.
‘It’s supposed to be pretty good,’ I said to Roberta. ‘Do you want to go?’
‘I’ve seen it, but OK,’ she said.
One of the attractions of Rottnest was its old, run-down buildings. The Rottnest Hostel, where Roberta was staying with her family, had once been the Aboriginal prison. It hadn’t changed too much over the years. I supposed people paid for the atmosphere. When I arrived to pick her up, her father emerged from their limestone cell in the old Quad and looked me over suspiciously. Back on the mainland he was a leading barrister. He didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘So, the pictures, eh?’ he said.
‘Yes, High Society.’ My earnest tone acknowledged the suitability of this distinguished film. It implied a Royal Command Performance rather than a repeat screening of an old musical in an iron and asbestos shed where half the audience would be barefoot.
‘The show finishes at eleven,’ he said. He stood on the hostel veranda and looked pointedly towards the picture theatre. It was about a hundred yards away. ‘Five past eleven should see you back.’
I heard Dogs, Sten, Wendy, Jenny and Suzette Minchin come into the theatre a while before I saw them. My spirits sank. ‘There they are!’ Suzette’s voice cried out. They moved into the row behind us and the sotto voce wisecracks began.
It sounded to me like Dogs and Sten had managed to acquire a couple of hip flasks of their favourite tipple, Beenleigh rum. Suzette, too, was wittier than she’d ever been. She kept cracking them up. When Bing and Grace sang ‘True Love’ on the moonlit deck of Bing’s fake-looking yacht, they crooned along and someone dug me in the back. Then Suzette had a brainwave. In an indignant voice she snapped, ‘Hands off, Robert!’ and the audience exploded. The usher had to come down and tell them to cut it out.
I turned around to mouth silent threats at them and looked straight into the stony faces of Roberta’s father and mother sitting in the row behind them.
Purely as a bitter-sweet masochistic exercise now, I certainly did contemplate putting hands on Roberta, or around her. She sat an inch away from me – and a mile. I could smell her faint lemony perfume and the shampoo in her damp hair. Her face and graceful neck and bare brown arms glowed in the reflected light from Grace Kelly’s fabulous gold and silver wedding presents. The whites of her eyes glistened. She looked dewy and polished and edible and slightly startled. I thought she was much better looking than Grace Kelly.
Of course I didn’t lay a finger on her. Even so I felt her father’s loathing-filled eyes boring into my spine. Stay upbeat, I ordered myself. Girls hated it if you were morose or solemn. They liked the reckless, relaxed types. Well, OK. Good old Bing sang ‘Now You Has Jazz’, and got jazz and rock ’n’ roll mixed up again, and good old Satchmo rolled his eyes again and wiped his trumpet spit on his hankie, and I feigned cool appreciation and tapped my foot and beat time on my knee.
As we filed out of the theatre both groups seemed to surge around us. Sten and Dogs had cigarettes masculinely lit and sparking away in no time. Suzette was still oddly vivacious, almost bouncing on the spot. For a moment I thought she was going to get us all to sportingly link arms like the just-married couples striding into the credits in High Society. ‘Who else enjoyed it?’ she asked brightly.
We all walked back to the hostel together. Suzette and Roberta seemed to hit it off. Dogs and Sten were puffing away and sucking up to Roberta’s mother. Everyone chatted merrily except Roberta’s father and me. He was right. Five past eleven easily did it.
Everyone was suddenly behaving strangely. They all seemed to have turned sarcastic overnight. Sten and Dogs went off fishing by themselves without telling me. Suzette Minchin was still aloof with me and hysterical with everyone else. Wendy and Jenny looked old-maidish and disapproving. They were all acting as if Roberta and I were a hot item but I didn’t even know if we were going out or not.
The Schwabbs must have noticed the change in vibes, the sudden rise in emotional levels, because over dinner the night after High Society (barbecued crayfish) Gordon Schwabb took it on himself to deliver a caution.
As usual he was able to air some Rottnest knowledge. He told us about someone called the Moral Agent and how, in the bad old days, the government had sent him to the island to watch over the moral welfare of the Aborigines with their degenerate habits. The idea was that the Christian presence of the Moral Agent would also curb Vincent’s ear-ripping style of discipline. As a result it would cut the number of
increasingly desperate Aboriginal escapes – the stolen boats and suicidal swimming attempts.
Ever since those days, according to Mr Schwabb, successive island managers had taken on something of the Moral Agent’s role. Free-and-easy ways might seem the norm, but the island manager took a dim view of certain types of misbehaviour. He was entrusted by Perth’s parents with the care of their teenagers. He’d suddenly make an example of some quokka-spearing larrikin or other. He’d pop up anywhere, at any time. He was king of the island. ‘He could walk through this front door right now,’ said Mr Schwabb.
He took a deep breath. ‘Now and then,’ he went on, ominously, turning away from the table and gazing out to sea, ‘he finds a boy and girl in a compromising situation. Undressed, shall we say. In bed.’
Then, he said, all hell broke loose. Their parents were informed. The boy and girl were escorted to the jetty, placed on ferries – different ferries – and thrown off the island. Never to return. Reputations in tatters. Names so bad they never recovered.
I’d been following his gaze out to sea. Reluctantly, I turned back to the dinner table. Sten, Dogs, Jenny, Wendy, Mrs Schwabb and Suzette Minchin were all staring at me over their crayfish. They looked as if they knew this sermon was coming. Suzette arched an eyebrow, slowly forked a lump of crayfish into her mouth and began rhythmically chewing. Sten deftly snapped a crayfish leg and noisily sucked out the flesh. All of them looked prim and smug.
I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even held hands with Roberta yet and now I had to look over my shoulder for the Moral Agent. I seemed destined to have a Moral Agent dogging my heels forever.
Then Mrs Schwabb blinked and gave me a bright smile. ‘We seem to be running out of crayfish. Would you be a dear and get us a couple tomorrow?’
They were trying to keep me away from her. ‘I’d be happy to,’ I said.
I killed the shark instead. I speared it with a gidgie, a hand spear, in eight feet of water off Parrakeet Bay. I was looking for crayfish under the reef ledge when I spotted it. It was only a four-foot carpet shark, a wobbegong, and resting on the bottom at the time, but it was indeed a shark, I told myself at the anxious and exciting instant of impalement, all my nervous energy forcing the spear through the tough, fibrous flesh of its ornate, carpet-patterned head.
I must have pierced its brain right away. It didn’t put up much of a fight. It didn’t thrash as they were supposed to. It didn’t try to bite me. It just lurched a little bit. Maybe it was sick or asleep.
But a shark, I thought, as I dragged it with difficulty up onto the reef. My heart was beating fast. More importantly, it was a shark to show her, I told myself as I pedalled slowly back along the hot white limedust road to the settlement. Its big flat head hung heavily across my shoulders and the tail drooped precariously over the handlebars. Its skin pattern was already fading to a muddy brown. Flies clung to the fishy blood seeping down my back and chest.
‘Dangerous if molested,’ I remembered all the fishing books warned of carpet sharks. ‘Aggressive feeders. Formidable fanglike teeth at the front of the jaw.’ If those enlarged impaling teeth were strong enough to crush crayfish and hard-shelled crabs they could give you a nasty bite. You could lose a chunk of flesh, maybe a hand or foot. Pierce an artery. Bleed to death.
That made me feel better. That was the risk I’d taken, I told myself. I concentrated on the danger aspect. Look, I thought, it could have woken up at any moment.
It was a hilly road back to the settlement and the limedust made it soft and skiddy. The white glare of the dust was beginning to make my head feel funny. The shark kept slipping and I had to keep getting off the bike and hauling it back onto my shoulders. It fell in the dust a few times. When I eventually reached the hostel I was exhausted. I got off the bike, hauled the shark up around my neck and shuffled into the Quad.
Now I was there I wasn’t sure how to handle the shark presentation. I circled the Quad a few times, hoping Roberta would somehow materialise and catch me casually passing by after a successful day’s shark hunting.
The leathery, boneless weight was thudding around my neck. I had to keep hitching it up. Fishy-smelling liquid still oozed down my chest but I didn’t mind. I was attracting clouds of flies and a few curious children but not yet the admiring female glances I’d anticipated.
After the third circuit of the Quad I gave up and knocked on the Ainslies’ door. Her father opened it. He gave me a disbelieving look. I asked whether Roberta was there. Reluctantly, with a sideways scowl at me, he called her. ‘Mr High Society’s here wearing a fish,’ he said.
The shark was beginning to smell bad in the heat. All its weight had dropped into its head and guts were peeping from its mouth. I’d forgotten sharks had no bones to hold everything in. Although it was more elongated and felt very much heavier, it looked wrinkled and smaller. Roberta stepped tentatively outside.
‘Pooh!’ she said.
‘Oh, well,’ I said. My neck was aching so much from supporting it that I could hardly straighten up enough to look her in the face. I tapped the spear a couple of times on the ground in a Masai-warrior sort of way. ‘Sharks, you know.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
It was a shark. It was for display purposes, evidence of the catcher’s bravery. I leaned thoughtfully on my spear. ‘Maybe I’ll keep the teeth as a souvenir.’ Then I took the plunge. ‘Actually, I thought you might like them.’
‘Me?’ she said. ‘Oh.’ Her eyes were darting around the Quad. She was bare-legged and she kept moving from one foot to the other.
‘I’ll cut them out, if you like,’ I said.
‘My God,’ she said.
With relief I lowered the shark. It flopped to the ground and I squatted beside it on the bare yellow lawn of the Quad. Sticky flies buzzed on us. Roberta brushed at them and took a step back. I noticed I had dusty dried blood streaked all down me, even on my feet. I saw Roberta frowning and wrinkling her nose but I was determined to do this. ‘A shark-tooth necklace looks pretty good,’ I said.
Actually I’d never seen a carpet shark’s teeth before. I jabbed at its mouth with the prongs of the gidgie. The mouth was surrounded by ugly, whiskery feelers. The flesh was like scratchy rubber. I prised open the jaws a little. The mouth didn’t form the usual sharky oval of jagged teeth that beachside people kept on their bars or mantelpieces. The teeth were narrow but I could see a couple of big Dracula-type fangs at the front.
At least they looked vaguely sinister. I supposed a fang necklace wasn’t out of the question. I kept jabbing away while Roberta looked off into the middle distance. I wasn’t making much progress with the teeth. She’d stepped further back. She was now about ten feet from the shark and me. She seemed restless.
‘Are you sure it’s a shark?’ she said. ‘It looks more like a flathead.’
‘Yes, a carpet shark.’
‘They don’t have teeth, do they? Aren’t they the ones with just gums?’
‘No, they do,’ I enthused. ‘Look at these beauties.’ I lifted up the beard-like skin fronds around its lips. To give her a clearer view of the Dracula fangs, I pushed away some of the intestinal matter dangling from its mouth.
‘I don’t suppose I could borrow a knife?’ I said. ‘It’d make it easier to cut out the jaw.’
Roberta didn’t answer. She said she had to go inside then. She walked back into the cell and closed the door. The shark was hard to lift up again. I thought about carrying it back to the cottage but then I didn’t bother. I just dropped the stinking body in the bushes outside the hostel.
THE EYES OF BILLY GRAHAM
One afternoon after school my mother asked me, rather shyly, if I wanted to go with her that evening to hear Billy Graham speak at the Showground. ‘I’m curious,’ she said.
The American evangelist was visiting Perth as part of his Australian and world crusade. My mother showed me an article she’d torn from the paper that morning which declared boldly that crime in Sydney had halved
since his crusade there.
‘He must have something,’ she said. ‘Apart from looks.’ Looks? He looked to me like a Christian male version of Bette Davis. I was about to say so but she looked surprisingly girlish and fidgety so I didn’t.
Billy Graham was declaring there was a spiritual flame sweeping Australia. He said the crusade’s success so far, with tens of thousands of people making decisions for Christ, had made Australia the most prayed-for country in the world.
My father said it was a load of rubbish. ‘I’m not going to any loudmouth Yank’s crusade.’ Religion at an intense level made him testy and nervous. It opened old wounds, and there were plenty of them.
His father was from a Baptist family, originally strict nonconformist working-class, who’d migrated from Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge in Wiltshire in 1854 and quickly prospered in the leafy south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
His father, William, my grandfather, was an architect. He helped found Carey Baptist Grammar School at Kew, acquired six properties in Malvern, East St Kilda and Windsor, and during a concentrated burst of energy had designed and built many of the remarkably similar solid bluestone churches around Malvern, Toorak, Camberwell, Kew, Hawthorn and South Yarra, all noted for their small, high windows, starkly functional lines, absence of religious ornamentation, apparently bomb-proof exteriors and well-off parishioners.
At the age of thirty-five, he’d retired to his own functional and gloomy study at 42 Stanhope Street, Malvern, to read biographies, do The Age crossword and listen to the cricket on the wireless, remaining there, in retirement and seclusion, except for his nightly foray out to Malvern’s Greek cafe for his roast-lamb dinner (having starched his collar and ironed his shirt) and his weekly visit to the bank to deposit his rental cheques, for the next fifty-eight years.
My mother said the reason my grandfather went to his room for so long was my grandmother. Her name was Daisy Mae, the same name, I was delighted to discover, as the voluptuous girlfriend of the comic-strip character Li’l Abner. When the young church architect met Daisy Mae Wells she was working behind the millinery counter at Myer’s department store. But not for long.