Spirit House

by Mark Dapin

  ‘Keneally said he was going to put the frog through further training, then race it against Townsville Jack’s finest thorough-breds. Townsville Jack still didn’t believe there was anything between frogs, but he could see the betting potential in a grudge match, and started to tell anybody who’d listen that number eight – which was now known as Rivette, after the 1939 Melbourne Cup winner – was a traitor and a defector. Townsville Jack had fed and cared for him like a son, only to find one morning he had jumped ship.

  ‘“He’s nothing but a slimy toad,” said Townsville Jack.

  ‘In Camp Rivette, Keneally was putting it about that he’d trained frogs back home in Ireland, although blokes who knew him from Deniliquin reckoned he’d never left the town. Also, none of the Paddies in camp could remember much excitement about frog racing in the old country, which had been known to produce fairly useful gallops from time to time.

  ‘We heard Keneally was actually walking his frog on a leash in the mornings, although Townsville Jack couldn’t see what good that would do. Keneally said he was developing the frog’s overall fitness, and Sheldon the Showie, who used to work with a mouse circus, was trying to teach the frog to bench press his own weight.

  ‘Townsville Jack began to worry that his frogs were going into competition unprepared, and he started letting them out of the bucket to jump around the hut. But he had to have fielders positioned to catch them, and he still lost a couple.

  ‘Townsville Jack hired Sheldon the Showie to spruik for the race. He wasn’t exactly P.T. Barnum, but he knew how to spin a yarn. Between them, Sheldon the Showie and Townsville Jack decided the race was the “Amphibious Fixture of the Century”. Katz reckoned it should be “amphibians’ fixture”, because otherwise it sounded like part of the race’d be held under water, but Townsville Jack told him if he wanted to name his own fixtures he could start his own bloody racing code.

  ‘Sheldon the Showie found a drum, which was easy in Changi: you’d think the Japs had captured an orchestra not an army. So Townsville Jack set up his frog-racing marquee made out of bits of old tent, and Sheldon the Showie stood outside, banging his drum and telling the story of the two rival stables who hated each other more than they hated the Japs, and had been at each other’s throats from the moment they’d got to Changi. Both men, said Sheldon the Showie, were from famous frog-racing families: Townsville Jack was descended from the Aboriginal frog racers of Rockhampton; Croaker Keneally was the grandson of the tinkers who had brought frog racing to Donegal.

  ‘Cowboy Miller sat on a rock outside the tent bashing his guitar and singing a song he’d written called “Changi Races”. A fella named Bluey from Warracknabeal, Victoria, turned up with a ventriloquist’s dummy, Little Bluey, and he moved its jaw up and down in time with the song, which was one of the stupidest things I’d ever seen.

  ‘To Townsville Jack, the whole show was bullshit, because frogs were frogs and there was never going to be a great racing frog any more than there was going to be a frog that could play the flute. He expected heavy betting on Rivette and offered good odds, and Keneally’s mates backed the frog with banana money, pounds sterling and packets of Bonox.

  ‘“If they win,” I said, “we’ll need to rob a bloody bank.”

  ‘“I already robbed a bloody bank,” said Townsville Jack.

  ‘I thought he was joking, but he told me the story with a straight face, which was a bit of a miracle since Townsville Jack found it hard to keep even his face straight. “I was running down Bukit Timah Road,” he said, “chasing these local fellas who were peeling off their uniforms, trying to look like civilians, and everyone was screaming and crying – just typical boong chaos – and I saw there was a bank still trading. I thought, Well, now’s the time to make a withdrawal but I don’t have my bank book with me. Then I remembered I had my Tommy gun, and bugger me if the bloke in charge didn’t recognise it as an official document.

  ‘“He filled up my kitbag and I jumped into a rickshaw to Lavender Street. I bought two whores and three ounces of opium, two bottles of whisky and a pipe, and died and went to heaven. That’s why I was a bit late in getting captured. I couldn’t find my way to jail.”

  ‘Townsville Jack had notes rolled under his hat, folded into his boots and jammed halfway up his arse. He had Straits dollars stuffed in his palliasse and buried in a tin outside our hut, so I thought we’d be okay. I thought we’d be able to cover the bets if the worst came to the worst.

  ‘On the day, some blokes turned up in hats and frocks, with brollies and bags, as if it was the Melbourne Cup. This was the first time I realised that a few fellas in Changi spent half their time taking up the hemlines on their dresses. And they weren’t poofs either. I never understood it. Anyway, five minutes before close of betting, Townsville Jack sent me to the Pommy camp to lay off the bets with Whitechapel Dave, who wouldn’t accept Bonox as a stake but gladly took on the rest, because he knew only a fool would bet on a frog.

  ‘While I was counting notes with Whitechapel Dave, Croaker Keneally turned up at the marquee with a wad as fat as a bottle.

  ‘“I can’t accept that,’ said Townsville Jack. “I’ll wipe you out. You and every other Paddy in the camp.”

  ‘“That’s our business,’ said Keneally. “Your business is book-making. Now piss or get off the pot.”

  ‘Townsville Jack was afraid that if he took all the Irish money, the Paddies would back up and kill him.

  ‘“We’ll kill you if you don’t,” said Croaker Keneally.

  ‘So the bet was laid and the race was on.

  ‘The frog races were usually called by Professor Scaly, but he couldn’t attend due to a conflict of interest, so Sheldon the Showie did the honours. Rivette took his place with all the others, the starter made a noise like a pistol, then Rivette jumped – and when he did, all the men in the marquee knew they were witness to a great moment in sport, because Rivette was the Phar Lap of bloody frogs. He jumped higher, faster and longer than anything else in the field, and he was over the finish line in two hops.

  ‘He jumped off the track, into the water, out of the marquee, over the wire and out of the camp, with blokes chasing him and yelling and throwing their arms in the air and cheering.

  ‘It took Townsville Jack a week to settle all the bets, and he had to call in everything. He knew he’d been suckered. Professor Scaly was in Keneally’s camp, and Townsville Jack guessed Rivette must’ve been some special species of frog that only Professor Scaly could recognise, but he couldn’t prove anything since Rivette was never found – and anyway, it was the sport of frog racing, not mangrove-frog racing.

  ‘When he’d counted out the last dollar and divided up the last box of Bonox, Townsville Jack dropped his head into his hands.

  ‘“Paddy took us to the bloody cleaners,” he told me. “Now we’re broke.”’

  *

  Jimmy smoked and coughed, coughed and smoked. Apparently my dad used to smoke, although I couldn’t imagine it. Mum had given up when she was pregnant with Daniel, but she’d started to buy cigarettes again when she left Dad. She enjoyed them in secret now, since the Dark Man was a health freak who rode a bicycle.

  ‘They say cigarettes kill you,’ said Jimmy, more or less to his cigarette, ‘and maybe they do, but in the old days we used to think they gave you wind when you were puffed out. The army used to dole out a ration of cigarettes – the buggers were determined to finish us off one way or the other. In the camps we smoked hibiscus leaves wrapped in Bible pages. But I gave up smoking in Changi and didn’t have another durrie until the war was over and I brought a packet to Townsville Jack.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Everything good is bad for you,’ he said. ‘They’ve even got people allergic to peanuts.’

  By now the frummers were coming home from shule. I wondered what my dad was doing with the Woman in White. When he was at home she usually made him clean or tidy things, and he was useless at it so she shouted at him, and he’d go into t
he yard and pretend to cut the grass, which he couldn’t anyway because there was no motor in the lawnmower because I’d taken it out to build a go-kart, which turned out to be quite hard but not as difficult as it was to fit the engine back in the mower once I’d given up. There was elephant grass in the backyard. It was so tall, you could lose a gnome in it.

  In fact, it was possible the Woman in White was spending the morning looking for her stupid garden gnome.

  The funny thing was, although the Woman in White was horrible, Dad seemed happy.

  ‘He needs a woman,’ said Jimmy. ‘To cook for him and do his laundry. That’s why blokes get married these days. They can get a bit of the other wherever they like.’

  But even then I knew Dad wasn’t smiling because he’d found someone to fold his shirts.

  It was easier to understand Mum and the Dark Man. He was younger than Mum, and quite good-looking, and more interesting than Dad (although he was still boring). He never talked about adhesives and sealants – which Dad did all the time, because it was his business – but he never talked about war either, because he hadn’t been in one. When he got tired of Mum going on at him, he usually went out into the hallway to fix his bike, which was never broken.

  I thought that when I grew up and women shouted at me, I’d probably go to the Club like Jimmy, instead of pretending to repair the car or something.

  ‘That’s why there’s all this buggery around,’ said Jimmy. ‘Blokes just want to live with someone who’ll leave them alone.’

  ‘Well, Grandma’s left you alone,’ I said.

  ‘It’s no good them doing that when you’re used to them,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s a different thing.’

  Barry Dick stopped by the fence.

  ‘You missed a good sermon,’ he said to Jimmy. ‘The Rov was on form.’

  ‘Did he tell you not to eat meat?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ asked Barry Dick.

  ‘Or mushrooms, eggs, garlic and onions?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Barry Dick without smiling.

  One of the American frummers, who was tall and freckled with red hair tucked under his hat, said to Jimmy, ‘Jewish people are permitted to eat garlic and onions, sir. And eggs and mushrooms. And meat so long as the animal . . .’

  ‘. . . has feet like the Devil and two bellies like Bert Newton,’ said Jimmy. ‘I know. But I thought you lot were Hare Krishnas.’

  The American rubbed his beard, baffled.

  ‘It’s just Mr Ruben’s little joke,’ said Barry Dick.

  Jimmy laughed until he coughed, coughed until he choked, and choked until a thread of blood unravelled down his chin.

  *

  ‘It was always easy to go over the wall or under the wire,’ said Jimmy slowly. ‘In the early days there wasn’t even any wire. Blokes would go out to get food, cigarettes and medical supplies, and the bits and pieces we needed to keep the canaries and the camp workshops running. Early in the piece Bargo got caught by the Japs, and they dragged him into the square and battered his face with the butts of their rifles until they caved in his eye sockets, smashed his nose, burst his lips and knocked his teeth into his throat. It couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer fella, really.

  ‘They stamped on his hands and broke his fingers, and jumped on his legs until his kneecaps smashed. Then they dragged him into a cell and left him for three days and nights, to see if he’d die. But Bargo was a tough little nutcase, and he hung on in the hope of getting back to Bargo and swimming in the potholes, which was all he ever talked about and probably all there was to do.

  ‘So they tied him to a pole in the sun until his eyes scorched and his tongue swelled and he screamed for God to take him. Just when you could see his soul about to burst out of his body, the Japs cut him down, gave him a canteen of cold water, a cup of rice and a packet of cigarettes, and let Quilpie carry him to the hospital. You could never tell what the Nips were going to do next, whether they felt mercy or regret, if they thought a bloke had taken his punishment or they just got jack of dishing it out.

  ‘Bargo was babbling and crying and shaking, and he stayed in the hospital for about two months while his bones mended. When he got back on his feet, he didn’t believe he was in Changi any more. He thought he was camping with Chinese gold miners in Bendigo.

  ‘So it was taking a chance for a bloke to go into Changi village – which was just a chaos of corrugated-iron shops and attap huts, piled on top of each other like humpies in a boong camp – and only a handful got any further. But one night Bathurst Billy crawled back in with a yarn nobody could believe. The locals’d told him there were no Japs left in Singapore. He’d gone down to the quays to have a gander, and it was fair dinkum. There were a couple of officers strutting up and down like dwarfs on dress-up day, but no bloody men. One of the officers saw Bathurst Billy, and Bathurst Billy thought, I’m done for here, but the officer saluted him. He saluted Bathurst Billy.

  ‘Bathurst Billy thought we must’ve won the war. He nearly took a sword as a souvenir and jumped on the first sampan back to Darwin, but a Chinese lady called him over for a bowl of chicken and rice, so he decided to sit tight and eat as much as he could before he woke up from the dream. They brought him food, they brought him beer, and they told him the Nips had all disappeared two days ago. The whole of Singapore was chockers with prisoners of war: Aussies, Pommies, Yanks and Dutch, with their feet up in the tea houses, enjoying the view of Chinese girls, and no digger had to put his hand in his pocket for anything. Even the rickshaw men were giving rides for free.

  ‘Bathurst Billy told me and Townsville Jack to get down to Singapore quick smart, before they shut the pearly gates. We talked about it for a day, trying to figure out whether it was all a trick. That night I went outside the barracks and everywhere you looked you could see diggers schlepping their packs towards the city.

  ‘I thought, Bugger this, I’m off to escape.

  ‘“I’m off to rob the bank,” said Townsville Jack.

  ‘Townsville Jack was one of half-a-dozen blokes in the camp who still had his gun. He probably still had his old Ford car stashed somewhere too, and his mum to make him a cooked breakfast.

  ‘He dug up his weapon, cleaned it and assembled it. He was going to visit the same branch, he said, because he knew their procedures: you pointed your gun at them, they gave you their money. Townsville Jack didn’t want to escape, just to come back to the camp with a stake to set him up in a new racket. For a couple of weeks I’d noticed him trying to coax snails to follow a white line. “Imagine how great it would be,” he said, “to hold the slowest races in the world.”

  ‘The officers tried to stop us from leaving the camp. They ordered us not to go. What would it look like when the Nips came back and found there was no bugger anywhere, just a bunch of captains playing bridge and making lists of blokes who weren’t there? They’d think our sirs weren’t up to the job of guarding us. They’d think they’d gone over to our side.

  ‘But I packed a knife and a dixie and a billy and went under the wire that a bloke had stolen to fence off his chook run, and me and Townsville Jack hitched a ride with a truck full of Poms going into town.

  ‘Townsville Jack jumped off with the others when we reached Lavender Street. I asked the driver to take me to the rickshaw men’s house to look for Chinese Frank and Mei-Li. Townsville Jack didn’t bother with goodbyes. He said I’d get nowhere and we’d meet tomorrow back at the hut, by which time he’d be the richest man in Changi again.

  ‘The All Chinese Union of Rickshaw Men had disappeared. Even the stonemason had gone. The shopfront had been closed up and the shop house looked like it was being used for storage. The doors were all bolted and chained. The driver waited while I kicked at the locks, then I asked if he’d take me to Woodlands, to see if the causeway had been repaired, because I was going to head across the water to Johor.

  ‘The journey north took the whole afternoon. We were picking up and dropping off POWs all the
way across the island. The driver made up a fares system as we went along, and started giving twenty per cent off for return tickets. I paid my passage by writing out the stubs on Tally-Hos. The funny thing was, the cigarette papers were worth more than the fares.

  ‘I didn’t have much of a plan, but every other bugger in the army had started off with a plan and it’d all gone to shit, so I thought if I just pointed my nose north and headed away from my arse, at least I’d see the Japs before they saw me. Unless they turned up behind me because they finally’d decided to attack from the Straits of Singapore, of course.

  ‘I got about half a mile up the road before I ran straight into a Jap convoy, and they saw me first.

  ‘The Japs didn’t salute me but they didn’t shoot me either. They looked at me like they’d never seen anything like me, and I looked at them like I’d never seen anything like them. Then I turned and ran like fuck.

  ‘All over the island, blokes were doing the same thing, jumping out of cathouse windows, hiding under blankets in the back of rickshaws, or dashing through the bush like bilbies. Even though I had the furthest to travel, I was one of the first back under the wire, because the driver – God bless him – came back for me, and we belted down to Changi faster than Rivette the racing frog. Townsville Jack wasn’t in the barracks to meet me, but I didn’t think anything had happened to him because I didn’t think anything could happen to him. Townsville Jack seemed invincible to me and, looking back, I can see I had to believe that. I had to let myself think there was someone nothing could touch, that we weren’t all going to be destroyed by prison and defeat and the officers and the Nips. You see, I was prone to low morale, David. I could see things the way they were.

  ‘I spent that night talking to Katz. In Changi, when you started a conversation with somebody, there was no end to it. It just went on until they’d told you everything they knew, and everything that had ever happened in their lives.

  ‘Townsville Jack was smuggled in the next morning, in a tea chest on the back of an oxcart. Most of the other blokes managed to break back into the prison, but the Japs caught a handful outside the perimeter and gave them their usual six-on-one beating. One fella lost both eyes.