After a while Flogger took off his apron and hung it on the pie-cart. He came over to me and said: ‘Look after the cart. I’ll be away with this bloke for a while.’ He glanced at my clothes, then took an apron off the pie-cart and tied it on me. ‘It’ll keep you clean. Wipe your hands on it.’
‘How long will you be?’ I asked, looking down at the apron that had added a grotesque note to my appearance.
‘Not long. About an hour.’
‘Cripes!’ I exclaimed, feeling disturbed. ‘That long? I wonder how I’ll get on.’
‘You’ll be right!’
He walked up Flinders Street with the man, a little ahead of him as if they were not together. He walked unobtrusively, shrunken into inconspicuousness and glancing round from under a lowered head for signs of recognition from those they passed. To be recognised was to be remembered. The detaining hand of a policeman always began its journey in the mind of a man who remembered.
The man following him had straightened his shoulders, adjusted his tie. He was a man haunted by the ghost of a wife and he was demonstrating his contempt for its reproachful touch on his arm.
Flogger often left me to look after the pie-cart while he talked to some man in a shop doorway out of earshot, but these secret meetings only took a few minutes. I had never been left in charge of the pie-cart for an hour. I concluded he had taken the man up to Little Lonsdale Street but it seemed odd that he had not saved himself the walk by suggesting to him that he wait at the cart for a girl.
I concentrated on selling pies. I knew the regular customers and began to enjoy their comments on my role.
‘There’ll be plenty of sauce tonight, Bob, Alan’s on the job,’ a workman said to his mate, then to me: ‘Come on. Up with the bottle. Don’t be lousy like Flogger. Let ’er gurgle.’
I jerked the bottle up and down above the pies they held and smothered the pastry in sauce.
‘Whoa there!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hell! What a mess! No matter; here’s into it.’
‘ ’Ot pie or a frankfurt!’ I yelled in a self-conscious imitation of Flogger’s voice, determined to experience the finer shades of effect my role had to offer.
‘With plenty a sauce,’ yelled the workman, raising his head from his pie, his mouth smeared with red.
His contribution gave him great enjoyment, and he bent his body and spluttered laughter into his pie.
‘A cooked mouse in every pie,’ cried his mate, seized by the same hilarity.
They both regarded this joke as magnificent. They laughed uproariously together. They walked away laughing.
When Flogger returned I handed him the apron and the money I had taken and said: ‘I certainly threw that sauce around.’
‘That’s all right with me,’ he said, tying on his apron and flattening it against his legs with his hands.
He stepped before the fire, straightened himself and called loudly in a voice that was in some subtle way different in tone to the calls he had made before he had left with the man: ‘ ’Ot pie or a frankfurt.’ Now his call was a releasing one. It moved him from one existence to another. It established him as a pie-man once more, removing the responsibilities of the existence from which he had just stepped.
After his shout to the people he smiled, secure now in his honourable job of selling for profit, a job that policemen respected.
He turned his attention to his hands, looking carefully at them for a moment, opening and shutting his fingers. He thrust one of them into his pocket and furtively raised a wad of notes to the entrance where he glanced at it, his head bent sideways.
‘Where’d you leave the bloke?’ I asked him, suddenly troubled.
‘Flat on his back under an elm tree in the Fitzroy Gardens,’ he said.
‘Hell!’ I exclaimed in fright.
‘He’s all right. He’ll have a stiff jaw for a couple of days.’
‘What . . .?’ I said, feeling cold. ‘How did . . .? Did you go over him?’
‘Yes. I thought he had more than he did. He was only carrying twelve quid.’
‘He’ll go to the coppers!’ I exclaimed in panic. ‘They’ll be down here in a minute!’
He turned and looked at me unperturbed. ‘Married men never squeal,’ he said.
I was going to say: ‘They might,’ but I knew he was right.
He saw by my expression that I was worried and he said: ‘Forget it. If I hadn’t got his roll, the first moll he picked up would have. A bloke like that is a sitting shot. He’s just a big mug, the sort of bloke that brings a dose home to his missus. Well, he’ll go home clean this time.’
I began some observation on what he had said but he interrupted me: ‘Here she is.’ His battered face had softened. Something fine was altering the bitter lines upon his face, was changing the way he stood. He had straightened himself as one would who seeks to show respect.
A similar change was taking place in me for I shared his regard for the little girl approaching. She was dressed in a college uniform and was holding her mother’s hand. She was about eight years of age and had brown hair and dark eyes, and she smiled as she walked towards us, anticipating some moment of happiness.
The reality that existed for her was a reflection of qualities she possessed that transformed the world around her. She imbued all things upon which she looked with some enchantment, and thus transformed they threw back, to rest upon her face, the radiance she felt was theirs.
She came, I felt sure, from a world of books and music and decent people, a place where there was respect and love and no continuous struggle to hold one’s head above the dirt.
Her mother was a slender, well-dressed woman with a smile that suggested she respected us. She passed the pie-cart each Thursday night with her daughter and we looked forward to their coming. For some reason they left us with a warmer feeling towards each other and towards the people we met after they had gone.
Flogger told me he once lent a quid to the ‘biggest bastard in Melbourne’ just after one of their visits.
‘Anyway, it did some good: I haven’t seen him since.’
They appeared now with the little girl pulling her mother’s hand to hurry.
‘Good evening.’ The mother greeted us with a nod as she stopped in front of us. ‘Did you think we weren’t coming?’ With some parcels clamped under one arm she was fumbling with the catch of an expensive, black leather handbag as she spoke.
‘We knew you’d turn up,’ said Flogger, then, to the little girl: ‘He’s been waiting for you all night, miss.’
‘Has he!’ she replied, happy in his remark, believing him absolutely.
The mother thrust her hand into the bag and drew out a carrot which she handed to her impatient daughter.
‘There.’
The little girl ran round to the pony that had turned its head to watch her approach. It took the carrot from her hand with its flexible lips and munched it while she leant towards it with her hands on her knees, watching it with a rapt expression.
I had seen her do this many times. It always made me feel like crying.
3
Horses always suggested the country to me. All my mental pictures of them were in bush settings. Their floating manes and tails borne by the wind as they galloped demanded wide paddocks and background trees and clouds in a blue sky before they took on the nature of wings. Their strength and power expressed and justified itself in the pulling of ploughs and reapers, and in drawing wagons laden with hay.
The city horses that pulled dray-loads of earth from excavations, cab-horses with fetlocks swollen from the constant hammering of their hooves on stone, the draughts in brewers’ wagons, delivery-horses in bakers’ carts, well-fed council horses pulling loads of refuse to the tip—they all seemed to me to be in gaol.
They were the last of the prisoners. Trucks and cars were taking their place. The excavations in Lonsdale Street being made for the erection of Myer’s huge store saw the moving in of trucks to carry away the displaced earth, saw the last o
f the dray-horses and their drivers on building sites.
Sometimes the wooden ramp reaching up to the street from the Myer excavation was too steep for the laden truck, and its straining engine spluttered and died. A dray-horse was then hitched to the front of the truck with trace chains. The engine roared, the iron shoes of the horse slipped, then gripped and clumped on the wood in a straining pull. The truck moved slowly up the incline and lumbered out on to the street where the blowing horse, its body streaked with sweat, was unhitched and let back into the steep hole to continue helping its own destruction.
I identified myself with the city horses, imbuing them with my frustrations and longings as if they were human. What crimes had they committed that they should be condemned to this? What crimes had I committed?
The doors of my gaol were not barred. I could escape to the country each week-end and there, in the company of trees and birds, I gained the spiritual nourishment I needed to face city life again.
I often made attempts to lead the conversation of those I met at the pie-cart round to a discussion on the beauty of the bush. I wanted to talk about early mornings with frost on the grass, of homes where clotted cream filled bowls upon the breakfast-tables and big log fires warmed the lamp-lit rooms at night.
The city people who made the pie-cart a meeting-place were not interested in such things. They were interested in horses, but only racehorses. A horse to them was an animal with immense possibilities for making them wealthy, and a mention of it would launch them into speculation as to the winners next Saturday.
Race-course touts and urgers collected round the pie-cart on Friday nights. An S.P. bookie stood in the shadows of a doorway for a few minutes, then sauntered up the street before returning. His pauses at the doorway were marked by a busy scribbling in a note-book, a quick pocketing of money and hurried exchanges between him and the cluster of men placing bets.
‘He’s like Rube,’ Flogger told me, referring to a Collins Street prostitute we knew, ‘always on the move. He scents a copper like a dog. Take a look at him now, will ya.’
The S.P. man wore an expensive suit and his shoes were highly polished. His body sloped out in a well-fed curve from his neck to his belly, then slipped sharply in towards his legs so that part of it faced the ground. His face was always flushed as if he had been running, and he kept lifting it from his notes and looking round like a nervous animal drinking.
The urgers were sharp men with pointed shoes and tight suits. One of them used to clean his nails while standing before the pie-cart fire. He often looked at his hands which were slender and delicate like a woman’s. He kept an eye open for men from the country down for the races, and these he would approach in a casual way and engage them in conversation about crops and the weather. He had stock remarks he used to introduce conversation.
‘We could do with rain badly,’ he often said, a remark that had little to do with the weather since it was sometimes raining when he said it, but it gave an impression of shared experience in the bush.
His approach to city men was more sophisticated. It suggested long friendship with influential racing-men, knowledge that rendered him invaluable to owners. It impressed those men who hungered for money, the men with whom gambling was a disease. They were suspicious men but their greed was greater than their suspicion and it nullified their judgment.
Sometimes he adopted a role that demanded linking himself with his victim in a mutual venture. I watched him approach a young man who had revealed in a conversation with me that he had been to the races the week before and had backed a couple of winners.
‘How’d you go last Saturday?’ he asked him.
‘Not bad,’ said the young man who was wearing a red satin bow-tie and bright tan shoes. ‘I was on Rodin and Vampire. I’d ’ve come out all right but I went and backed Mudlark in the last.’
The urger snorted contemptuously. ‘Mudlark! Who put you on to him?’
‘Well,’ said the young man, preparing to defend his judgment, ‘I reckoned they’d been saving him for it. He was favourite last week and got nowhere. He was a good price Saturday. What more do you want?’
The urger’s manner now suggested that he felt it useless to attempt to enlighten this young man on the factors involved in picking winners. He turned away, almost abruptly, as if he had suddenly been confronted with a simplicity he felt was beyond his experience and which only existed in the world of suckers.
He was silent a moment, then said thoughtfully, as if working out a problem of his own: ‘I won fifty notes last Wednesday, two hundred the week before—hm!’
‘Get out, did you!’ exclaimed the young man enviously.
The urger now deigned to look at him again. His expression was friendly, as if he were looking at a likeable child. ‘You never lose when you’re in the know,’ he said complacently.
The young man was looking at the ground. He was impressed by this remark which he felt was a profound truth he had been ignoring.
‘Yes,’ went on the urger, whose finger-nails had been engaging his attention, ‘a mate of mine has been giving me information. I’m to meet him tonight.’ He looked at his watch, then glanced at the young man. ‘Where do you come from?’
‘South Melbourne.’
‘I come from England myself,’ lied the urger in the belief that such a claim established his honesty. ‘I’m not long out. I was training over there but I’ve done well punting since I landed. I picked up the contacts easy enough. My mate’s late. He’s got a cert for me tonight; he told me over the phone.’
‘What horse?’
‘I don’t know yet. He knows the trainer and everything’s right. He’s letting me in on it. If they let it out the odds’ll shorten. They’re sending a telegram to the owner in code tonight. They’re thorough, there’s no doubt about that. This racing’s big business. You’re either in or you’re out.’
‘How about putting me in?’ requested the young man.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the urger doubtfully. ‘It’s my mate who’s the trouble. If I let this out he’ll never let me in on anything else.’
‘I know how to keep my mouth shut.’
‘I know that,’ the urger hastened to assure him, ‘I can tell by the look of you. But . . . Well, I don’t know. . . .’
He thought a moment then, like one coming to an important decision, he changed his tone and said briskly: ‘Look, let this one go tonight. I’ll meet you here next Friday and put you on to something. It mightn’t be as good but you’ll be able to empty your pockets on it.’
The young man felt he was being dismissed just when there was a chance of his making money. Next Friday night was a long way off. The reluctance of the urger to agree to his proposal seemed to him evidence of the urger’s honesty.
‘Listen,’ he said, restraining his eagerness, ‘you can trust me to shut up about it. I just want to put on a fiver, that’s all. It’ll make no difference to the odds. Give me the drum when he tells you.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said the urger, thoughtfully pressing his lower lip between his finger and thumb. ‘Anyway, hang around. Here’s my mate now,’ he added.
I had noticed that whenever he pressed his lower lip between his finger and thumb this man appeared. He was a heavy-built man and he approached with his hands thrust into the pockets of his Burberry overcoat. His face was tight, as if it were incapable of breaking into smiles. I knew him well by sight. He could always be found round the pie-cart on a Friday night and I knew he worked in with the urger. He had been waiting a little way up the street for the sign which always turned him into an actor stepping on to the stage.
The urger stepped forward to meet him and they stood together talking. In a few moments they raised their voices so that the young man, who was standing watching them, could hear what they were saying.
‘I tell you he is a friend of mine,’ the urger was arguing. ‘I’ll guarantee he’ll keep it to himself.’
They continued this arg
ument, the big man gradually becoming less emphatic. He suddenly seemed satisfied and the urger handed him a bundle of ten-pound notes which he proceeded to count.
‘A hundred and fifty-five quid,’ he said with a final flick of his finger. ‘The odd fiver’s there.’ He became confidential. ‘The best I can get is twenty to one. I’ll go down to the club and place it now. Be here at eight o’clock tomorrow night and I’ll settle up the lot with you then.’
‘I’ll be here,’ said the urger.
He watched his partner walk up the street then returned to the young man.
‘Well, you’re set,’ he said, apparently pleased with his efforts. ‘I got a fiver on for you. It took some doing but you’ll have a hundred quid tomorrow night.’
‘Thanks,’ said the young man gratefully. He took a five-pound note from his pocket and gave it to the urger, but some doubt seized him as he saw the urger pocket it with a haste that suggested furtiveness. ‘You wouldn’t be crook, would you?’ he asked, a tight smile on his face.
‘Jesus! Don’t say that!’ exclaimed the urger in such a tone of shocked surprise, with such a startled widening of the eyes, that the young man must almost have felt ashamed at doubting him.
They discussed the horse, the name of which the urger had given him, then arranged to meet the next night to collect the winnings. But the urger wanted to leave him. His eyes kept roaming round looking for another victim and he soon went away.
Flogger had been observing them with an expressionless face. I walked over and stood beside him. ‘That was a nice bit of work,’ I said with a sarcasm that made him glance at me.
‘He’s getting his education cheap,’ he said. ‘It’s going to cost you a bloody sight more than that before you’re finished but it will be worth it.’
Flogger wasn’t interested in racing. The fact that he owned a pony gave him some interest in horses and he always listened when I talked about them, or told him of birds or animals I had seen in the bush over the week-end. I brought him a spider orchid once and he held it in his hand a long time looking at it, unable to make any comment, but I noticed he kept it.
This Is the Grass Page 15