by Mike Safe
Harcourt nodded. ‘I don’t mind the winter either. For starters, all the backpackers have gone back to wherever they came from.’
‘You local surfers have always been like that,’ smiled Ralph. ‘Not that I blame you, but way back we didn’t have backpackers, just the mob from the suburbs on the hot summer weekends. It was quiet on the week days. We didn’t even lifeguard the beach in winter – the board-riders could go wherever they wanted and they’d get in all sorts of strife. I was raised on those old hollow boards, the toothpicks as we used to call ’em, and then the first malibus came along from California and no one could believe how light and manoeuvrable they were, even though they were big and heavy compared to what the kids ride today.’
This was an age-old discussion, a ‘back in my day’ moment when everything had been bigger, better and bolder, but Harcourt didn’t mind having it with old-timers like Ralph – not that there were many of them left, at least not on the local beaches. The conversation turned to Ralph’s son, Cruz – Harcourt used his given name, Malcolm, not the common beachside nickname. Ralph and his wife, Dot, had originally hoped that he would go to university to do law, medicine, or something that would give him the advantages that were supposed to come with a tertiary education.
As if on cue, Dot arrived with coffee for both of them and slices of lemon cake. ‘But that was never going to be,’ she said of their parental wish. ‘Like his father, Malcolm loved the beach too much.’
‘And, be truthful now, so did you,’ said Ralph. This brought smiles to their faces. And, again, this was a story that was often told by the Jones family. Dot, short for Dorothy or so Harcourt supposed, remained a striking woman. She was tall and lean, her hair as white as pristine sand on a tropical beach, her skin the colour of softly polished mahogany, her eyes a more sparkling blue than Ralph’s. In her day she had been the local beach girl queen – a few years after the time Vargas’s late mother had reined further down the coast. That had been an era when such competitions were seen as innocent summer fun, not oppression of the sisterhood as some would now label such goings-on. Whatever the case, Ralph and Dot remained unofficial custodians of the haphazard history of local beachside culture, sort of keepers of the flame as represented in the grainy black-and-white photographs of long-gone surfboat rowers and board-paddlers found on the walls and above the bars of the neighbourhood clubs and pubs where there was still the scrape of sand on the floor and the tang of saltwater in the air.
‘Now Malcolm has two boys of his own and, guess what, they want to be lifeguards too,’ said Dot. Harcourt pictured the pair, sun-bleached shaggy-haired young rippers who rode shortboards and pulled off loose-limbed manoeuvres that seemed more at home in a gymnastics routine than the surf. Grandfather to son to grandsons, so it went.
Dot excused herself, saying she had to meet a couple of girlfriends – they were all still girls in mind if not quite body – down at the surf club to help arrange a fundraiser for a couple of local girl competitors who were going to Hawaii to compete in a marathon paddling contest. It seemed a perfectly natural thing for her to be doing.
After she left and without prompting, Ralph told Harcourt how he hated being in the wheelchair but that he’d come to accept it for what it was. ‘It was hard at first, and it still is at times, especially on those perfect days – not too hot, not to cold, the sun shining, barely a breath of wind. Just to go down there, walk across the sand, dive in and feel the water wash over you … Still, I had a pretty good go.’
Finally, the talk turned to Vargas, or at least Ralph’s memories of him, and the old man’s face took on a more serious look. ‘Well, as you know, he was from a few beaches further down and so we didn’t see him that often. I knew his grandfather a bit as he was a patrol captain with the surf club down there and they did pretty well in some of the interclub championships at the time.’
Young Vargas would occasionally show up locally when the waves were from the south, the beach’s optimum direction. ‘He was pretty good back then, never going to be a champion, but he had a bit of style about him and he’d have a go in most conditions – big, small, whatever. Your friend Bobby Burns – the one you all call Brown – reminds me a bit of what Vargas was like back then, although Brown is much more of an all-round waterman. Anyway, Vargas was quite a charismatic kid, good-looking and, like I say, with a bit of flair even if there was something smart-alecky about him as well.’ Ralph smiled, ‘The girls liked him too and maybe that’s why some of the blokes didn’t. You could say he ended up in the right job.’
He shifted in his wheelchair as grey clouds scudded across the sky and spots of rain started to fall on the picture window. His face grew serious again. ‘But then something bad happened that’s since been all but forgotten, lost in the mists of time – and young Vargas was the one who survived it.’
Old enough to have had his driver’s licence at the time, Vargas and another teenager – ‘his name was Tommy Woodrell and he was still at school, as well as a being a few years younger than Vargas’ – had gone surfing down the coast at an isolated spot the surfers called Boomers. It was notorious for its heavy waves that broke over a jagged reef further south of the cliffs where Harcourt, Carpark and Brown had experienced their own dramas during the cyclone swell. Harcourt knew the spot and hadn’t surfed it in years and even Brown was wary of it.
‘It gets nasty in big south swells,’ said Harcourt. ‘It’s unpredictable and more often than not doesn’t line up properly. One wave in a set might be all right, but the next one is just as likely to break wide and catch you inside.’
Ralph told how the story back then had been that Vargas had talked Tommy into heading down the coast to surf. ‘Why they picked to go out at a place like Boomers was never explained. They were just kids, especially Tommy, but, as I say, Vargas was a pretty persuasive type. I can only presume he talked the young fella into it. Anyway, they went out and Tommy drowned. The kid had an older brother – his name was Phil – and Tommy had left him a note at home, saying he was going down to Boomers with Vargas. Phil was an up-and-coming rugby league player who was in lower grades with Easts at the time. So he came home from a morning training session, apparently their dad and mum were both at work, found the note and, being a surfer himself, he knew there was a big swell running and that Boomers would have been about as dangerous as it could get. So he decided to high tail it down there and try to stop them, not knowing his younger brother was about to die, if not already dead.’
Ralph drained the last of the coffee from his mug as the gathering storm now drove steady rain across the window. Down the hill, white caps skittered across the ocean and the beach was deserted.
‘You also have to remember that back then much of the coastal land down that way was still privately owned and at best there were only rough tracks into the coast from the main road, if the owners would even let surfers in there at all. Also, there were very few at spots like that back then, especially on weekdays, and so it wasn’t like there were people around to help if something went wrong.’
‘So the brother was pretty worried while driving all the way down there,’ said Harcourt. He smiled ruefully, ‘He could hardly phone the kid or send a text, could he?’
‘Sure, it was another era,’ said Ralph. ‘But one thing that never changed over my forty-plus years of lifeguarding was the ability of people, young males especially, to put themselves in dangerous situations, whether by stupidity, ignorance or bravado. I don’t know the full ins and outs of what happened down there but they were taking on way more than they could handle.
‘Anyway, Phil, the big brother, finally arrived at Boomers, saw their car on the cliff, but no sign of surfers in the surf, which was a dangerous mess. But then he looked down to the beach and there was Vargas alone. So he climbed down and Vargas, who was really shaken up, told him they’d been out there and that Tommy had been cleaned up by a nasty one and he’d lost sight of him. He’d supposedly paddled around looking for him, but couldn’t
find any sign.’
There was a search organised and, again, there was no trace of Tommy nor his surfboard. ‘It went on for a couple of days, I think,’ said Ralph.
Harcourt asked if the drowning received much coverage in the media. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it, but I was just a kid back then so it would hardly have registered with me anyway.’
Ralph shrugged. ‘Now here’s the strange thing. Although I don’t know all the details of what happened, I remember the date, or the general date at least. It was December 1967, not long before Christmas, and I know that because it was only a couple of days after the prime minister at the time, Harold Holt, drowned in heavy seas down in Victoria. I mean, that was a massive event and it dominated the newspapers, TV and radio for weeks. He disappeared without trace and it was only a blink of an eye later that the same thing happened to Tommy. But I guess the reality was that the disappearance of the prime minister, who was supposed to be an experienced diver and competent in the water, took all the attention away from a schoolkid next to nobody knew. From what I recall, there were bits in the papers and on TV about Tommy but nothing anywhere near that about Holt.’
‘I guess it was a different time,’ said Harcourt, thinking of how the media had changed. ‘Today there would probably be a beat up, maybe along the lines of a macabre comparison … teenager drowns days after PM – was it a copycat death? Or some similar BS.’
Harcourt was careful not to swear blatantly in front of Ralph, who was a stickler for good manners and who, with Dot pushing his wheelchair, remained a regular at Sunday Mass at the local Catholic church.
‘Oh, there was plenty of overexcitement with Holt,’ said Ralph. ‘It was an international event and there was all sorts of speculation.’ He smiled and added, ‘The best of it was the rumour that he’d been taken away, either willingly or unwillingly, in a Chinese submarine for some reason or other.’
‘Of course. Everyone’s heard that story. So I guess they could beat up a story back then just as much as they can now.’
‘I remember Holt’s wife, Zara, who was a bit of a character, dismissed the Chinese sub stuff out of hand,’ said Ralph. ‘She said he didn’t even like Chinese food and so the thought of him somehow going off in one of their submarines was ridiculous.’
The room quietened for a moment, the only sound was the rain as it hit and then streaked across the big window in the gusting wind.
‘And so while all this wacky stuff was creating headlines Tommy Woodrell also drowned and rated only a few paragraphs,’ said Harcourt. ‘That makes it kind of extra sad in a way.’
‘Well, we heard about it around here and Vargas’s name was mentioned among the beach crew, but not in any major way and I don’t think he was ever named in the papers or on TV in regard to what had happened. We saw very little of him on our beach in the aftermath and then after a year or so he was on TV doing ads and then soapies and the like before disappearing overseas. From memory, the authorities never held what had happened against him – it was an accident – and it all disappeared pretty quickly and now it’s forgotten. I knew Tommy and his family a bit, having helped his dad out at one stage, and I happened upon Phil, the big brother, once or twice in the aftermath of the drowning and he was bitter, resented Vargas in a big way which, I guess, was understandable. I don’t recall what happened to the parents but Phil had a lower grade football career for a while.’
Ralph shifted in his wheelchair as a shudder of wind drove the rain even harder against the window. ‘You know, Johno, when something terrible like a drowning happens on your watch it stays with you. In all my years as head lifeguard down here, we had twelve of them and a couple of those were the results of heart attacks. When I think of the hundreds of thousands, millions I guess, of people from all around the world who entered the water here in all that time I suppose it’s not a bad result and we must have rescued thousands as well, although many of those were more about panic than getting in any serious trouble.’ He paused before continuing.
‘I still remember one who drowned, a boy, aged eight, from the bush and down here on Christmas holidays with his family. It was a hot day, big crowd and a tricky swell, lots of rips, lots of rescues. He got outside the flags, and somehow we missed him. We thought he was probably dumped pretty heavily in the shorebreak and maybe even knocked unconscious before being swept out. By the time we got to him he was gone. We dragged him back to the sand and worked on him for what seemed an age, half an hour maybe, but he was dead. His mum and dad were there by then and I had to tell them we couldn’t get him back … I’ve never forgotten that.’
Ralph fixed Harcourt with his now almost tearful eyes. ‘Johno, I can guarantee you that if your movie star friend Mr Vargas is any sort of a decent bloke, no matter what he’s done and where he’s been since, he’ll still remember the day he took young Tommy Woodrell surfing and Tommy never came back. Something like that you never forget.’
TWELVE
‘Yeah, I know of him,’ said Burk, ‘but from others’ memories of him, not mine.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Harcourt.
They were having a drink at their usual haunt, the back bar of the Dog and Whistle pub, and Harcourt was asking his footballer turned sportswriter friend if he recalled Phil Woodrell, the older brother of the dead and seemingly forgotten Tommy, Mike Vargas’s former surfing companion.
‘Well, Phil never had much of a profile, never made it as a first grader and was gone from the game before I came along,’ said Burk. ‘I started out at Easts and he’d been there as a junior and then as a lower grader for a few years. He might have warmed the first grade bench a time or two, but nothing more than that. He was a hooker and they nicknamed him “Flipper” because he had this odd way of passing the ball. Sort of flipped it rather than spun it from his hands.’
Burk paused for a moment. ‘His exploits on the field didn’t seem to be terribly memorable, but from what I recall the older guys hanging around the club at the time seemed pretty impressed by his off-field deeds. Whenever talk came up about the good old days and how everything was better back then, Flipper always rated a mention. Apparently, he was the ultra-pugnacious type – he was a hooker, after all, and they were always a bit crazy in those days. Scrums were still a real contest for the ball, not like now, and when things got rough and push came to shove, as inevitably happened, anything short of homicide tended to be condoned. Apparently, Flipper also had a habit of getting fired up on the drink quite regularly, like after every game, and, again, anything could happen. Friend as well as foe was never safe.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘No idea,’ said Burk. ‘A lot of those old-time tough guys ended up in a bad way. There was little money in the game back then and they got bashed around, be it on or off the field. There was next to no compensation or support after their playing days and they were mainly working-class blokes who weren’t trained for anything else. If they were lucky, a few might have got a start as a copper or with the fire brigade or with their local council riding the garbage truck while they were still playing, but only the biggest names – maybe the star internationals and club champions – came out the other end with anything much at all. A lot of them simply fell through the cracks and were never heard from again – and the grog took its toll.’
‘Could you find out what happened to him? Where he is now? If he’s even still alive.’
‘Well, I could ask around.’ Burk paused and then asked, ‘Why?’
Harcourt told him.
‘That’s quite a story,’ said Burk. ‘I’ve never heard anything about it.’ Like Harcourt, he knew Ralph Jones, if only casually, and he wasn’t surprised that details of Tommy Woodrell’s death and Mike Vargas’s association with it had all but faded away. ‘Old Ralph was always a straight shooter. Not one to encourage tale-telling.’
Harcourt thought about it for a moment. ‘I know him and his family reasonably well and when he found out I was investigating doing this V
argas book maybe he thought Tommy Woodrell’s death should be part of it. If so, I tend to agree with him. For better or worse, it’s part of Vargas’s story and a seemingly important part. I mean, as kids we don’t tend to see our friends die, especially in such a dramatic way.’
‘What does Vargas say?’
‘I haven’t talked to him about it yet – I don’t even know if I’ll be doing the book. I thought it would be best to see Phil Woodrell first, get his take on it – that’s if he’s still around, of course.’
They fell silent for a moment amid the noise and bustle of the lunchtime pub crowd before Burk shook his head and said, ‘Your buddy Vargas reminds me a bit of one of those despots and their cults of celebrity. You know, Ceausescu in Romania and that dynasty of Kim dickheads in North Korea, or even Putin in Russia. Apparently, everything is wonderful under their inspired leadership with the bad bits being swept under the proverbial carpet – although it didn’t end up so well for Ceausescu once the rank and file got hold of him.’
Harcourt laughed, but he could see the darker side to Burk’s jest. ‘Vargas can exhibit his own streak of megalomania at times. If I end up being offered this book I’ll have to decide whether I want to come down to being his glorified messenger boy.’
‘Well, he obviously thinks you can do the book. The fact that he had you up to his place suggests there’s something there.’
They ordered two more beers that arrived just as ‘Toxic’ Tab Markinson emerged from the lunchtime crowd.
‘Oh, Johno, nice to see you,’ he said to Harcourt. ‘Now that you’re no longer with us, you seem to be spending more than a fair share of your time floating around on our periphery.’
Burk said, ‘Piss off, Tab, there’s a good fella. What the fuck are you doing always lazing around in the pub? Surely you’ve got someone to fire or at least their expenses to put your red pen through.’