When we got home Dad was gone, the bedroom spotless and Mum prepared to talk again. (When did she weep, mourn, despair? We never knew.) She asked in the interested tone she kept for our small affairs, ‘How was your day?’
I said, ‘All right,’ having no words for impalpable discomforts and inaudible jeers, but Teddy could always find words: ‘Nobody called us Swill. Not yet.’
She said, ‘Sit down,’ and we sat while she spoke in a hard tone we would get used to. ‘This family is not Swill and will not be. We cannot stay in this house but we will not be reduced to the tenements. Tell everybody that.’
The kids would have called that bluff without mercy; to them you were Sweet or you were Swill. Teddy went to the core of it: ‘They’ll say, if you aren’t Swill why are you leaving?’
Mum knew what was unsaid, that neighbours as well as their young could be infinitely disgusting. ‘Don’t go back to that school. I’ll arrange it.’ And she did.
Next day at the Cremation Center we saw the shamed thing, wrapped in black plastic, vanish through the automatic doors; impersonal music played from a tape that needed reclarifying. Bland relatives attended but no friends; friends could plead ‘decent consideration’ but in fact had already distanced themselves, as if our condition might be contagious.
After that affairs moved with speed. Once Mum had been allocated a place to live, everything could be done with triv calls to the proper Departments. Sales and Rental repossessed the house at the calculated market price, which left Mum in a raging mood because it was mulcted for small repairs which it claimed Dad should have made. ‘Instead of polishing the duco,’ Teddy said, unwisely, and her glare silenced him for hours.
She got a good price for the car by calling on the Vintagers who already knew its value. Strangers bought it; covetous friends stayed away. When Teddy sneered at their defection Mum took their part, saying that one must live with society as it exists; there was a saying that you couldn’t touch pitch and not be defiled. Teddy said, ‘They’re superstitious, that’s all,’ and she replied, ‘No, they’re frightened. Any of them may be next. They don’t want to think about it.’
That’s another sentence that haunts our lives. It’s a great shaper of history, that record of disasters we didn’t want to think about.
Our new home was allocated by Housing computer search, based on Mum’s statement of what we could afford, and she was very thoughtful when she learned where it was. She did not complain, because the computers gave the best available match between need and ability to pay, but the information shocked her.
She told us, ‘It’s closer to the tenements than I would have liked,’ as if her new hardness had been pierced by a needle of doubt. ‘It’s in Newport.’ I recalled the day at the beach and Newport in the distance and what she had said about floods. It wouldn’t apply to us, though. That was only about Swill.
I had sense enough to keep a certain private excitement to myself. Kids whispered about the Swill but really knew nothing about them and the idea of proximity (safe proximity, of course) had a touch of adventure about it, I could not realize what the social disaster meant to Mum or the well of terror into which her life had fallen. Equally, I could not help but realize that the light and joy had gone out of her. They never came back.
4
We moved before dawn. The hovervan crew probably charged extortionately for running so early but Mum said she wasn’t about to make a show for spiteful neighbours pretending to potter in their gardens while the corners of their turned-away eyes absorbed the thrill of another downfall. We travelled in the back of the van because what had been only money was now treasure for hoarding.
There was a long drive in darkness before the dawn caught us. Then, staring out from amid our boxes and furnishings, I saw vast grey towers rearing on either side as our route took us through the heart of a Swill Enclave. I held my breath in a fascination of fright and curiosity, expecting horrors, but there were only empty streets where nothing stirred, sky-stabbing piles whose windows were dark save for a very occasional light like a little star set in a concrete wall and such silence as tombs are made for. The millions of workless Swill slept, having nothing better to do.
From the Enclave we crossed the river into a middle-class district much like the one we had left. In the early light I saw, not far away, the palaces of City Center, not repetitious monoliths like the tenements but mysteries of dawn-lit colour and form. Some day, I promised myself, I would visit City Center, the grandest of all surroundings. (So, eventually, I did, to discover that the palaces were office blocks and heartless, bustling hives.) But now we passed it by.
The drive seemed endless and it was bright day when we saw our street. It was like nothing in my experience. The houses were all different. In our old street each house had its touches of colour and decoration but all were built to an orderly plan; this street was a jumble. Many of the houses were built of what I came to know as ‘brick’ and shared a common wall instead of being separated by fences, while others were constructed of overlapping planks of timber on which paint had faded and cracked. There were slate roofs, which I had never seen before, and what I learned were ‘tiles,’ and others of unbelievable corrugated iron all warped and loose and rusted where the paint had flaked away. There were iron-roofed verandas instead of awnings and some of these loomed right on to the footpath with no garden space at all.
As if she saw into my mind Mum murmured, ‘This is a very old part of Melbourne. Some of these houses were built over a hundred years ago.’ She was apologizing.
It was depressing. There were few garden trees and no nature strip in the footpath, which itself was asphalt (also never seen before), holed and uneven, while the gutter was formed of big, squarish stones. All the windows were narrow and secretive; the street and everything in it was shabby and untidy, having given away pride.
Our new house was brick, its two halves separated by a passage with a front door in the middle. We were to have only half of it – three rooms to ourselves and a share in kitchen and bathroom – and small rooms made it much less than we were used to. In front was a veranda with a wooden floor whose planks were broken in places and a strip of garden overgrown with weeds, uncared for.
The owners, an old couple, watched us from the veranda like a pair of scruffy birds, with that look of grubbiness which so often comes unfairly to the old. They exchanged words we could not hear with expressionless faces, pretending they were not assessing us for the squeezing of extras.
Teddy, as usual, found words. ‘It’s a stinking slum.’
It was not quite that but its time was running out; only two blocks distant the tenement towers cut the sky. We had missed Swilldom by a thrilling hair’s breadth. Thrilling? Swill horror country was also triv serial adventure country from which brave policemen or brave young scientists or brave and muscular footballers rescued beautiful girls held captive for purposes not fully understood.
As the vanman lugged our belongings on to the footpath I saw the first live Swill person in my experience.
He leaned against the picket fence, quite still except for his gently moving jaws. He was about Dad’s age, middle forties, but lanky and fleshless as if his bones stretched his skin; he didn’t look starved, more as if his body held only what was useful to it. He was narrow – face, nose, pointed chin – and he had no expression at all; he simply looked and didn’t seem to care whether he saw anything or not, and chewed. Triv thriller lore identified him as a ‘chewer,’ addicted to a vice not mentioned in respectable suburbs; the schoolkid legend had it that chewing turned your skin yellow and you went blind and your tossle fell off.
He was neither blind nor yellow and didn’t look as though anything might be missing, but his shirt and trousers and old canvas shoes were so filthy that Mum would have thrown them out. He was unshaven, his brownish hair fell raggedly over his forehead and neck and he looked as if he would smell.
Also – a terrific touch, this – he wore a knife at his belt
and this in triv lore made him a local gang leader. (Curiously, half correct.) But why was he here? The triv rule was that Swill came into Sweet areas only in marauding gangs, but I saw no gang. Ours was a corner house and I peeped around into the next street to make sure.
He spat a gobbet of grey stuff across the footpath into the cobbled gutter, so I had my first sight of the masticated, half-digested ‘opiate of the unwashed’ and my silly breast seethed with the exciting wickedness of it. (Disappointing to discover later that the ‘chew’ is an almost harmless mild narcotic with few side effects.)
Teddy hissed at me, ‘Stop looking at him! He stinks!’ Even Teddy couldn’t smell him at five meters but he turned his back to register contempt.
The chewer had sharp ears; his eyes were instantly aware and the narrow mouth widened to grin some contempt of its own. Then, to my hypnotized ecstasy, he closed one eye at me in a ferocious, entrancing, conspiratorial wink.
Then Mum called me to help carry some loose things into the house; the vanmen lumped the heavy furniture inside and we inspected our new home.
Mum said nothing but I might have cried if I hadn’t been afraid of Teddy’s sneering. There were no built-in cupboards or shelves, the walls were dirty and the ceiling was cracked; the floors gave underfoot and the triv was an old, half-size model from years back. After our big double-glazed windows and fadeless paint this was a prison. Through the three rooms our furniture lay in a clutter of mattresses, dismantled tables and chairs, broken crates and bursting parcels, and my dejection lay among them.
Mum paid the men, the hovervan hissed away and we were alone with our fate. Not quite alone: on the veranda the ancient couple hovered, knowing a scene yet to be played and humiliation awaiting us.
But the first humiliation was theirs, when the chewer moved at last to turn his head over his shoulder and say to them with flat emptiness of feeling, ‘Piss off.’
They fled into the house, scarcely waiting to gasp in unison, ‘Yes, Mr Kovacs.’
Mum had been conscious of him all the time, knowing what he was and why he waited, but refusing to look at him. Now she looked steadily but I saw that she was frightened. (This is a great puzzle in childhood, this discovery that the invulnerable adults share our shameful weaknesses.)
The chewer levered himself off the fence and for all his savage dirtiness did not look like the murderous Swill of the triv plays. He looked like a thin, strong, rather ordinary man who needed a bath. He slouched to where we stood beleaguered in a strange land, two little boys whose mother’s arms crept around their shoulders, and nodded, confirming some secret deduction and said, ‘You don’t know a thing, Mrs Conway, do you? Not a bloody thing.’
Mum’s fingers tightened on my flesh but she said nothing, not even to ask how he knew our name.
He said, ‘I’m Billy Kovacs. You’ll get to know me. PR.’
With a sort of last-ditch courage Mum said, ‘Public Relations,’ in the voice she used for dirty habits.
He shook his head and smiled and his whole face changed. I knew he was good. ‘Protection Racket, Mrs Conway. Call things by their names, then no mistakes.’
His voice was what we called ‘common’ but he didn’t speak Swill the way the triv actors did.
Mum said, ‘Go inside, boys,’ but Kovacs said, ‘Why don’t we all go in?’ and when Mum hesitated he went on, ‘Mrs Conway, we got to talk sense and your boys better hear it. What they’ll hear is what can keep them alive that much longer. Maybe you, too.’
That was the first hint that the schoolground tales might have some truth in them. Mum caught her breath a little but nodded and he followed us inside. Mum hated him because he was a threat and Teddy despised him as he despised anyone who did not fuss over Teddy, but I felt already the stirring of hero worship for tough, dirty Billy Kovacs who had winked his way straight into a small boy’s heart.
In the lounge-room Teddy and I sat on the sofa where it had been dropped in the middle of the floor. Mum stood by the narrow, unclean window, fidgeting and forlorn, and Kovacs perched on a crate with his legs crossed under him, which is awkward if you aren’t used to it. It crossed my mind even then that perhaps Swill places did not have much furniture and so they sat on the floor. And now that he was close, he did stink – of chewey and sweat and plain dirtiness.
He poked a thumb at our piled-up stuff and said, ‘Too much furniture.’ Mum hadn’t wanted to leave anything and we would be pushed for space to move between the chairs and cabinets and little tables. ‘You should’ve sold it. Know why?’ He let the question hang until our mouths dropped with waiting. ‘Because the Swill – that’s people like me, lady – live just down the road. They hear you’ve got all this nice stuff and they think how they can sell it. Over your knifed guts if need be.’
He was matter-of-fact; it was everyday stuff, like sunrise. Mum stared out of the window, pretending not to be frightened but her voice said otherwise. ‘It isn’t like that. This is the Fringe but it isn’t Swill. You’re trying to put your price up.’
Price? More Swill lore?
‘It is like that, lady, and your price was fixed before you got here. I know what’s in your bank and what you can pay.’ That shocked her; her face fell apart as he told her exactly the state of her account. ‘So you can pay your way for a couple of years, maybe three or four if you’re careful.’
Mum tried not to cry. ‘How could you know? The banks—’
Kovacs’ grin opened wide, like a friendly shark that might gulp us down with the greatest goodwill. ‘Accounts can be tapped if you have the right connections. Like the coppers.’
Blunt statement of the corruption sometimes hinted at in the triv plays was excitement for me but for Mum it was a pit open at her feet. She had always claimed that the scriptwriters exaggerated everything.
‘Call it co-operation, lady. You had police protection while you paid taxes, but now you’ve got no income and you draw Suss and to the coppers that makes you Swill.’ Mum’s instant anger rejected that and beside me Teddy made a spitting sound like a cat, but I could tell that Kovacs was being hard so that we would remember. ‘Swill don’t pay taxes, so the coppers don’t know you – unless you do something silly like join a protest against food prices or power blackouts or—’ he paused, then said as if it had just occurred to him, ‘—child prostitution. That includes young boys.’ I wasn’t sure of his meaning but Mum’s face was ugly with fright. ‘Protesters get noticed and next thing their brains get splashed on the footpath. What they don’t get is protection against theft or violence or pack rape. For that you have to come to the gutter shit – me.’
Teddy yelled, ‘Don’t you talk like that to my mother!’ To give Teddy his due, he was always brave, though now he was red in the face and shaking.
Kovacs pretended to be puzzled. ‘Like what, sonny?’
‘Words like—’ He shut up and I couldn’t stop a giggle at how he had nearly been tricked into saying it himself.
Mum knew she had to make some stand. She said in the voice for visitors she didn’t know very well, ‘It doesn’t matter, Teddy. Mr Kovacs is trying to help. In his fashion. Still—’ at last she looked straight at him, ‘—we can do without Swill language in my home.’
Anyone else would have apologized but Kovacs gave her a surprise of a really strange kind. ‘Shit isn’t Swill talk. You wouldn’t understand gutter Swill if you heard it. That stuff they feed you on triv plays is prettied up but shit is proper English. From the Middle German schiten and before that—’
Mum was so furious she broke in on him. ‘I’ve heard there’s no lout worse than an educated lout.’
He flung out his arms and legs like someone applauding a tremendous joke or like a great laughing spider who had the three of us in his web. Then he curled the long legs back under him and laid his big, bony hands on his knees and the laugh was over. ‘I’m not a lout, Mrs Conway, if it suits me to act one, and I’m not educated neither – either.’ We would become familiar with his trick of se
lf-correction, his effort to be what he was not. ‘I went to school when they still had real schools for Swill kids, not the pigpens they run now. So I learnt – learned – to read. Maybe one Swill in ten can read, the older ones. I’ve got books, like a dictionary and encyclopedias and that sort – if you have to know, I stole them – and I read them because knowing a few things is useful in my work.’
But that stuff was all on Data Central, so why did he need books? Wondering, I noticed what had escaped me before, something as daunting as being lost in the dark: there was no Info terminal on the ancient triv. We weren’t hooked in to Data. We would never know anything.
‘Work!’ Mum’s contempt was brave. ‘You blackmail the helpless!’
Kovacs was unmoved. ‘Blackmail is a dirtier word than shit and I give value for money. That’s what I started to tell you before young Galahad got all upset and wanted to fight me – I think.’
He had Teddy summed up from the start. I have never worked out whether Billy was an intellect blunted by environment or just a thug with flashes of insight.
He went on, ‘I was saying about pack rape,’ and Mum muttered again that he exaggerated but she was only talking up her courage. ‘You think so, lady? It happens every day. The teenagers are the worst. People die in the towers and in Fringe streets like this one and it isn’t old age that kicks ’em to death and cuts ’em up with blades fixed in the toes of the clogs. You better believe it.’ His voice was no louder for its burden of horrors, only harder against our ignorant resistance. ‘The newscasts won’t tell you, because why? Because Sweet don’t want to know and the State likes Sweet that way. Anyway, who cares what happens to Swill?’
Some real hatred broke through, something of black hatred for facts of an existence inconceivable to us.
‘Swill are nothing because they do nothing because there’s nothing for them to do. It costs the State money just to keep them alive. How long can that last? One day the State will begin killing them off because it can’t afford them any longer. They’ll be wiped off the books and respectable Sweet won’t have to go on hiding from their own guilt.’
The Sea and Summer Page 5