John’s friends stopped coming around much after that. I think they lost their sense of humour and had better things to do. It was back to just Mum and us again, cuddling her in a corner of the house, waiting for Reg to get home from nightshift to save her from nothing.
I could never work out why Mum was so scared all the time. In time I worked out that the prowlers, who seemed to be lurking in the shadows wherever we lived, never existed, except maybe in my mum’s mind. But I couldn’t work out why she thought ‘they’ were coming for her, not to mention who ‘they’ were. Was there something in my mum’s dark past that we didn’t know about that kept her on her toes, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of them at all time? Had she done something that made her feel so bad about herself that she had to run away all her life, even from us, the ones who loved her and needed her more than anyone in the world? Or was it that she just didn’t fit in anywhere?
Maybe she couldn’t stop roaming until she found her place; a place where she could just stop and breathe. I think it might be as simple as that. I know it has taken me most of my life to just be; to stop for the first time and breathe.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
the time our worlds collided
The school holidays were great once we lived with Reg. He was happy to show me where he’d played as a child and worked as an adult. It wasn’t long until I knew my way around that area like the back of my hand. I liked the place, and still do. It was a very working-class area and quite tough but unlike Elizabeth, the people seemed reasonably happy. You could even walk around the place and not get stabbed or kicked to bits. People passing you on the street would stop and help you if you needed directions. This is what life in Australia was supposed to be like. I was still very young but I felt safe walking around the Port by myself. Maybe I wasn’t, but compared to where I’d been this was Disneyland.
It was just around the corner from where I used to escape to when I lived in Elizabeth. I could walk to the beach if I wanted to and the Port River ran right through the place.
Where I came from in Glasgow, the River Clyde was dark and cold and the wind howled through the trees on its banks. It didn’t breathe life into you, it sucked you under and held you down. I’ve read stories about nice rivers that sing to you and whisper secrets that you can hear if you listen carefully. But not the Clyde. That river cried like a mother who had lost a child and all its secrets were buried on the bottom or washed out to sea with the rest of the rubbish.
The Port River railway bridge was not for the public. We had to jump a fence to reach the small service paths that ran along each side of the railway tracks – wooden slats, with guard rails that led across the bridge. Half of these slats were missing so it could be quite tricky to get from one side to the other. This was where we would sit and do whatever we wanted. The trains that crossed the bridge moved so fast that we couldn’t see into them so we presumed they couldn’t see us. They shook and rattled the bridge so much we sometimes thought we were about to fall off.
The bridge was right towards the end of the Port River. Just past the bridge was the Causeway, a stretch of road that by-passed the Port and led to the beaches. This was built after the Port had lost its shine. It used to be the driving hub of the whole area; now it was just an old main street with too many pubs and not enough people to fill them. Even the cargo ships never came down this far anymore. They docked at Outer Harbour with its high-tech facilities and new roads in and out. Beyond the Causeway, the river turned into swamp, spreading out into a wet land that should have been home to all sorts of birds and native animals. But because of years of industrial pollution, there was only a swamp, made up of very tough plants that hardly broke the surface of the red-stained ground, burned from the chemicals and rust. All across the swamp there were pools of evil-smelling liquids oozing out of the ground. Nothing lived in there except feral cats and snakes.
The Port in some respects was a lot like the Clyde. Both were murky and dangerous but the Port rolled along a little slower. There was something about it that helped me forget about Elizabeth. And as I sat on the railway bridge, life beyond where I was moved faster and faster. Much faster than the river flowed, and faster than the trains that whooshed past me on the bridge.
I was sure I saw the water police fishing the odd body out of the river just down from where I would fish. And I heard stories of murder in the area but I wasn’t scared. I was too smart to get caught by any weirdos. And I was too fast to be caught by any drunks. Looking back, maybe I was just lucky. Kids did go missing in the area but I never wanted to hear about that from anybody. I was free. I was taught how to fish in the river by Reg’s dad. It became my playground.
I used to go swimming in the river with a few friends. One of my friends’ dads owned a little dinghy and used to let us borrow it. We would row around the river and jump off the dinghy whenever we felt like it. In the summer this was great fun. The sun would be blazing down and it would be stinking hot. We could dive off the boat and swim whenever there were no big ships passing by. There were cargo ships and fishing boats, big and small, but we just swam around them. Occasionally someone would yell out at us, ‘Get out of the way, you stupid little bastards.’ We just jumped back in the boat and rowed away laughing at them.
The water wasn’t blue and inviting like a normal river, it was black and threatening, and what we saw floating on the top was only half of what was in there. I’m sure there were things that were weighted down to the bottom too. This river, like the Clyde, had stories it would not give up.
We did see suspicious-looking characters dumping things into it. And I heard about companies dumping chemicals too. The river was dark and dirty but we dived into the depths without even a thought of what lay beneath the surface. It’s a wonder we never got sick from the cocktail of shit that was tossed into it. We were kids and we were tough so we never thought about that at all. I wouldn’t swim in there now. Especially when I think of the things that floated past us.
There was a couple of guys who used to go dynamite fishing in broad daylight. This was in the middle of a busy waterway. They would pull up in their boat and throw a stick of dynamite over the side. A few seconds later – boom! – there would be an explosion. Next thing, fish would just float to the surface and they would scoop them up with a net and move on down the river to their next spot. We would follow behind, grabbing any fish they left, but these guys didn’t want anyone watching them and would threaten us whenever we got too close. How they got away with this, we could never work out, but it did reassure us that there were plenty of fish in the river, waiting to be caught by us.
We would row up to places you couldn’t get to by foot, so we felt like we were going somewhere we shouldn’t have. Somewhere top secret. But there wasn’t a lot going on behind our backs; we just imagined that there was. And we kept our eyes peeled for anything that might interest us.
There were a few nights we went out with Reg and Mum and sat on the railway bridge until sun-up, fishing. We didn’t catch too much, just enough to keep us there. Staring at the end of our lines, saying nothing, waiting on a bite. It was great just to have the silence, occasionally broken by the sound of a train, clicking in time like a drummer, as it passed over the bridge.
We would have something simple to eat, Vegemite sandwiches and tea from a Thermos, to keep us going all night. It was like camping. We didn’t have to talk much. We would sit and stare into the water or up at the night sky. Every now and then Reg would think of something to tell me about one of his brothers or one of his cousins.
Reg used a language I wasn’t used to. People we knew spoke Scots or would be swearing and slurring. But he’d say things like, ‘Tom was a real scallywag and Mum and Dad would scare the living Christ out of him and chase him with a switch.’
It was like he didn’t speak English. In Scots that would have been, ‘Wee Tommy was a bit of a lad and his ma and da wid frighten the shite oot o’ him, and skelp his arse wi’ a stick.’
/>
That would have made sense to me. So at the start, I would have to listen really carefully, just so I could understand him. But I just nodded along with him as if it was normal to me.
Mum used three or four voices. I used to think that they were just because she was insecure but I’ve since worked out that it was so she could be understood. The Scottish accent is hard to understand sometimes but the broad Glaswegian accent is almost impossible to catch unless you’re used to it. Even then it can be hard, especially if someone is yelling at you.
So later on in life when we had a phone, I would hear Mum on the phone sounding like she had a plum in her mouth, saying things like, ‘Oh yes. I see what you mean. I will get onto that right away.’
We would all laugh and tell each other that Mum was pretending to be posh. But she was probably trying to get something done for the house, or paying a bill. She still uses that voice when she answers the phone to this day. I’ve heard it when I ring her.
Then there were times that she sounded like she was in the markets in Glasgow, swearing like a sailor, bagging Dad or someone else but laughing and sounding young. ‘Ma man is fuckin’ useless, he’s no like me, good at everythin’. Ha ha ha.’
In those times I could hardly understand her, but I was glad she was happy. A Glaswegian woman can sound as rough as guts if she gets wound up. It’s frightening.
Mum had another voice that came out when we’d done something wrong. This voice was shrill and piercing and could peel the paint off walls. It sounded like a starving pterodactyl swooping down on a small furry animal that was too slow to keep up with its mum. When we heard that voice, it was time to leave the house by the back door as fast as we could.
‘Did you make this mess? I just cleaned this hoose. I’m goin’ tae murder ye when I get ma hands on you, ya wee bastard.’
The last voice was soft and loving and made me think that everything would be all right. ‘You know I love you, my son of gold. I’m here so you don’t have to worry.’
But I never heard that voice unless something drastic had happened.
There were days when I used to go down to the mudflats with a shovel and dig up these long slimy things called blood worms to use as bait. Then I’d sit on the old railway bridge and fish all day by myself and never feel lonely. Life was good. This was the same bridge that Grandpa used to fish off when he was young. And the same bridge that he taught Reg to fish from. Not that Reg was a great fisherman. By the time our worlds collided, he only went fishing because he knew I liked it.
I would catch tommy roughs and take them to Grandpa’s house. He’d show me how to clean them and then he’d cook them up and we’d sit in the backyard and have a feast. I felt like Huckleberry Finn, living by the river, catching my own meals and needing no one. Well, I needed Grandpa to clean and cook them.
Grandpa used to give me slices of fruit cake with a cup of tea. He called it racecourse cake. Now, I used to just wolf it down like any hungry young lad but after a few visits I had to ask him why he called it racecourse cake. He smiled at me and told me he’d do better than tell me, he’d show me.
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and said, ‘All right, let’s go and get some racecourse cake.’
I went on the bus with him and he didn’t say where we were going or where we would find this fantastic cake. But I soon worked it out when we ended up at the racetrack. Now Grandpa wasn’t a gambler; he wasn’t one to waste money frivolously. Maybe he liked to look at the horses, who knows? But he took me to sit in the racecourse cafeteria and have a cup of tea. Guess what they served the tea with? That’s right, fruit cake.
‘This is the best place in the world to get this cake,’ he said. So that’s what I’ve called it ever since – racecourse cake.
Grandpa had false top teeth that he never wore and he laughed all the time. He was a great guy to hang around with. I loved listening to him tell stories about the Port and how much it had changed over the years. He told me stories about fishing and about boats and ghosts and any other things he thought I would like.
He told me a yarn – that’s what he called stories – about years earlier, when he had been out fishing in his boat. But first he sat down and lit a cigarette, breathed in a huge cloud of smoke then he began to talk.
‘Now I was out in my boat this day. It wasn’t that big, maybe twenty feet long at the most and that was with the outboard motor.’ Laughing and coughing out the smoke he had just sucked into his lungs. ‘I was at the channel marker about three miles off of Largs. Don’t tell anyone about this place. It’s one of my secret spots for catching sand whiting.’ He gave me a knowing wink and a grin. ‘Well, I noticed a big bloody shark cruising around and under my boat. I’d seen plenty of big sharks out there before; there are always loads of them. They cruise up and down the coast. So I wasn’t that worried.’
He flicked the ash carefully off his cigarette; it floated down into the ashtray. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘the sun was setting and a full moon was coming up. She was lighting up the sky like a bloody beacon. I was sitting there alone in the boat, contemplating life. As you do.’ He laughed again. ‘When I felt this bloody big bump. I nearly fell out of the boat. The bugger had come back and was after a taste of my boat.’ He nervously sucked on his cigarette, as if it had all just happened.
‘I was a bit tired but suddenly my eyes were wide open and I could see everything that was in the water, big or small. As clear as day, I could see this bloody thing swimming around my boat. That’s when I really started to worry.’ A cloud of blue smoke fled his mouth and floated off into the sky. ‘Then there was a big splash and the bastard hit my boat even harder. Now I was panicking.’
He lowered his voice and looked at me as if he was trying to see if I was scared yet. ‘Suddenly –’
I jumped, he was almost shouting now.
‘This big bastard came up out of the water behind the boat. I tell you, against the night sky he looked massive. He lunged towards my boat with his mouth wide open and ripped the bloody outboard motor off.’ He took another drag of his smoke. ‘If he was big enough to eat the motor I figured he was big enough to take down the whole bloody boat. I tried to keep calm and I slowly picked up my oars from the bottom of the boat and began rowing back to shore.’
If this was just a story, he had me sucked right in. ‘All the way back I was waiting for the bastard to come back for his second course, which I assumed would be me. But he left me alone. Probably didn’t like the taste of the oily old motor. I made it to shore in one piece, albeit in need of a new pair of underpants. Ha ha ha.’ He coughed. ‘Next day my boat was up on the trailer at home and I found a couple of big teeth stuck into the hull. The bloody thing had tried to eat my boat.’
I was beginning to think he was an old sea dog telling old sea tales. Then he went inside and came out with a couple of big shark’s teeth he kept in a drawer in the house. I never doubted him again.
I never really wore shoes that often. I was always in and out of the water. Anyway, one day I was out on my bike about two miles from the house, fishing off the rocks next to the railway bridge at a place called the Causeway, a good place to catch bream. I was standing on a big rock when I got a bite.
Now I had a feeling this was going to be the biggest fish I’d ever caught. In fact, in my mind this was going to be the biggest fish ever caught by anyone from this spot. So I worked my way down to the river’s edge to pull it in. I took one wrong step and slipped and sliced my foot open on a barnacle on one of the rocks. These shells were like razors and it cut me right to the bone so I tried to get the fish in as fast as I could.
I could see a pool of blood spreading in the water all around me, getting bigger and bigger, and by this time I was up to my waist in water. I suddenly remembered the stories Grandpa had told me about the big sharks who followed the boats in from the harbour, up the river to feed.
Catching that fish went from being the most important moment in my life to being meaningless
, when the thought of being eaten overwhelmed me. I jumped out of the water. Then, when I looked at the wound on my foot and realised how big the cut was, I dropped my fishing rod and got on my bike and rode home. I left a trail of blood the whole way back to our house. I was taken to hospital and stitched up – again. As a kid I always seemed to be being stitched up for something.
The next day I followed the trail of my own blood back to where the accident had happened and stood and stared out across the river wondering if that fish knew how lucky he was. I’d be back for him soon. The battle was not over yet.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
don’t let the name down
By this time, I was nearly ready to start high school and Reg wanted me to go to the same school he and his brothers had gone to in Semaphore South. So he signed me up to start at Le Fevre Boys High, one of the best schools in that area.
I loved the school. Reg had told me about his name, along with the names of his brothers, on the honour roll on the office wall. He got me a second-hand uniform and new shoes and a schoolbag ready for my first day. I think he was more nervous than me.
‘Now this is a special school, son. Your uncles and me were students here so don’t let the name down. If you work hard here you’ll be able to do anything you want in life.’
It all went well; I was smarter than he thought. All my old tools were still working well. Work hard and get the teachers to like you. This would be easy.
Reg talked to me about how important this phase of my life was and how much work it would take for me to get the most out of it. But I’d never had to work really hard for anything, mainly because we didn’t have anything to work for before, so the idea of responsibility for myself was completely new to me.
Working Class Boy Page 20