by Steve Bisley
They punch on for three rounds, and in the end it’s a draw. Richard gets five quid and the black bloke gets a feed.
I come out of the tent into the twilight. I see my brother surrounded, heading back to the beer tent. What a day! What an absolute corker of a day. Lust and blood and fairy floss!
I meet up with Cathy later, and we find a quiet spot on a broken hay bale behind the chook pavilion. She smells like boiled lollies. The fireworks go off. You see, it’s true – at the show, everyone’s a winner!
Gypsies and other strangers
There are Cadillacs on the highway coming south! Sleek low riders with pedestrian-killer fins, Chevys with thumping V8s towing sleek silver vans. Chopped-top Customlines, DeSotos and Pontiacs.
The gypsies are coming!
We didn’t like foreigners.
People locked their doors and kept their children close. They were coming all right! Someone had seen them in Swansea that morning, fuelling the big American cars. They swore there were twenty in the convoy at least.
Blokes on farms locked the shed.
Their wives hid their jewellery.
Better safe than sorry was the word.
The gypsies were here!
They were true nomads. They had to be. They’d been running for a thousand years. Word had it that they had originated in India when the Islamic invaders had expelled them. They had been persecuted throughout Europe for hundreds of years as they searched for a place to settle and to rest.
In Australia they followed the harvest season down the east coast, fruit picking and doing general farm work. They worked the show and carnival circuits. They were skilled horse-breakers and metal workers. But whatever their skills, they weren’t welcome here.
There was a large tract of open land just off the highway only a mile from our place. They circled the flashy American cars like they had their wagons in olden times. At night the cooking fires blazed as they sang the songs of old to the strains of the accordion, fiddle and drum. They danced and sang under the stars, barefoot and free. They always stayed a week. They would visit the local farms in search of work. They would offer to bless money or cast spells to ward off sickness or poverty. They were physically striking: dark-skinned with hooded blue eyes. The women had an exotic beauty about them, slim and lithe. The men were muscular and quick and the kids were like dark cherubs, beautiful but different, strange.
We feared them.
We locked our doors against them and lay in our safe beds at night, in our safe houses, and told ourselves that they were thieves and tricksters. In truth, what we feared was our own small lives and the freedom we knew they had. When they had gone we would tell ourselves that we were safe now, safe like before.
We were white and we were Australians.
We didn’t even like Poms, and we were descended from them.
We didn’t really like anybody.
There was a local Aboriginal man who lived in a humpy on a small plot of land. He did odd jobs around the place; there wasn’t much he couldn’t do. He was a skilled horse-breaker. He had a way with horses that was amazing to watch. He would walk into a paddock full of horses and just stand there unmoving. One by one they would come to him, and when they did he would move away. Again and again they would follow. He would run from them and they would chase him, just to be near him. He would whisper secret things in their ears and blow his calming breath into their wide nostrils.
He would work all day for you, he never made demands, he broke all our horses in – but you never took him to the pub or had him in your house, because at the end of the day he was just a blackfella, a boong, a coon.
Italians were wogs or dagos. Sometimes we called them Eye-ties. They were mad for a tomato. I’ve never known another race of people that were so crazy for a vegetable like Eye-ties were for a tomato, never. They worshipped tomatoes. They made sauce out of them. They put them on the base of their pizzas, cut them up and put them on bread, boiled them, dried them, puréed and mashed them.
I had a mate at school who was a dago. I was round at his place one Saturday morning when all his rellos arrived. Everyone had brought tomatoes with them. Paolo’s parents grew more stuff in their small backyard than we grew on our entire farm. There were grapes growing across the patio out the back, rows of climbing peas and beans along the fence. Pumpkins and melons fought each other like gangs, their twisted tendrils interwoven. There were rows of corn and carrots, great clumps of beetroot, garlic and onions and potatoes in the dark earth. There were pots of chilli like firecrackers and pendulous sweet peppers, languid in the heat. Cucumber and zucchini, lettuce and leeks, ran riot, and everywhere pomodoro, the love apple.
There must have been a dozen kinds. Some squat and pillar-box red, others the colour of port wine, elegant romas hanging, the trestles bending with the weight of them, and potted types, small and zesty – and everywhere the sweet, acrid smell of them.
More dagos arrive, and suddenly there’s food everywhere. Great doughy loaves of crusty bread, oily olives in olive oil, homemade salami and prosciutto, great wedges of cheese, wine from cousin Fredo in last year’s bottles, ragù Bolognese and everything laid out on scrubbed tables under the vines. We ate for hours. This wasn’t a party; this was a family having lunch together on a Saturday.
After lunch, with the tables cleared, the work began.
The tomatoes were all put into wooden fruit boxes for ease of handling and stacked at the end of one of the tables. I sat with Paolo and some of the bigger kids. We were each given a knife and a cutting board. Our job was to cut the tomatoes into rough quarters. Fires were lit and huge pots set over the flames till the water frothed and boiled. Fresh herbs were cut from the garden and cast into the pots with handfuls of coarse salt. Some of the fruit was left whole and put into a separate pot, to later have their loosened skins removed and finally made into a paste-like concentrate, preserved in oil to be used in the months ahead. Nothing wasted, everything precious, everything shared.
Our quartered fruit was tipped into the waiting pots and boiled till they were reduced to a thick molten sauce, rich and blood red. When strained, preserved and bottled, the sauce would line the shelves in the kitchens of twenty families for the following year.
I rode my bike home in the late afternoon. I arrived home in time for dinner: curried mince on toast and a cuppa.
My sister had a Greek boyfriend for a while, Nick Something-opolous. All I knew about Greeks was they liked boats and fishing and they could dance, but only in a circle. This bloke’s father owned Pete’s Café in the main drag at Wyong. All the wogs in the district used to go there for the strange food. We used to go as well because they had a sign in the window that said AUSTRALIAN MEALS SERVED. They had the best mixed grill on the coast and the banana split was heaven in a bowl.
All the young Greek guys used to hang out there. They were known as rockers. The guys all wore black mesh T-shirts and black stovepipe jeans and ripple-soled shoes called ‘brothel creepers’. Some wore shoes with points like knives. There were two long mirrors out the front. They’d be out there, legs spread wide, combing their hair into what was known as ‘racks’, the sides gleaming with Brylcreem and the middle section falling forward like two greasy waves to rest on their foreheads. They wore car badges for belt buckles. Their chicks wore tight dresses and black shit around their eyes and motorcycle jackets with their bras thrust out like cones. They drove American cars – Chevys, Ford Mustangs, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles – or souped-up local jobs, Holdens, Fords and Valiants. There would be fluffy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror and stickers on the back window saying Moon equipped. They rode motorbikes as well, Nortons, Ariels and BSAs.
The Chinese were called Chinks. The only Chinks I ever saw owned the Chinese restaurant in Wyong. We never went; we mistrusted the food. The only thing I knew about the Chinese was they invented fireworks and were good at ping-pong.
The local garage was owned by Dutch people. They had a sort of dum-de-dum way
of speaking and wore weird shoes. Americans were only on TV and were the best at everything, ever. That was about it for foreigners – except for the Indians, who had wobbly heads, and the Japanese, who were still on detention because of the war.
Gangs
It’s midnight, Saturday in Charmhaven.
A blot on a dot on a map of the coast. More fibro shacks, cacti, weeds and gravel, tinnies in the spare fridge and a boat rusting in the carport. On a clear day you can see the new power station across the lake. Problem is, the days are always clear. Seaweed flops on what used to be a beach. There was never weed here before they built the plant. Now there’s more weed than water. The prawns have gone. Or gone somewhere.
The rockers are here. Greaseballs, some wogs, some whites, Elvis freaks and James Dean lookalikes. Fast cars parked under the only streetlight on the town side. Chicks with too much mascara sit close on the bench seats, short dresses, bad shoes, their panties on the floor by the stick shift. Bad girls with bad boys. Engines on nitro throb and suck the night air. Elvis on the eight track, daddy-o.
Five miles north and closing, the surfies are coming. Hair like tangled rope and the sea in their eyes. This meeting is no accident. It was settled a week ago. ‘Midnight, Saturday, Charmhaven – be late, be dead.’ Ten in the convoy and more if they’re needed; we’ll see when we get there. Someone heard a rumour about knives so tonight there are iron bars in the boot. It’s all because of a girl, someone else’s girl.
Mitch in the DeSoto three back from the lead. He’s the one that did it. Pulled the rocker’s girl in the pub a week ago, while her bloke was on shift down the mines. All’s fair. And if tonight goes as planned he’ll be doing it again, first chance he gets. If you’d seen her arse, you would too.
The convoy arrives and parks up. Motors growling, tyres spinning and smoking on the black stuff. Surfboards on racks on the roof. Dogs pissing on other dogs’ scent and the bitches on heat in the dark cars. Then the quiet. Two gangs each side of the black road now, waiting for the next step, waiting for something to happen, for something to break.
Two interstates looming from the south. Air horns blaring from the lead rig cut the mood to the quick. Spotlights tear the night to ribbons and they’re gone, barrelling to Brisbane on eighteen wheels and a pocketful of pills. His mate behind rants into the open channel of the CB about his cheating wife, too many mouths to feed, fucking hippies and the price of piss, pies and diesel. He’s so wired, he followed an Alsatian from Yass to Goulburn earlier. He’s looking for another one to get him to Kempsey. He’s been amped for two days but needs this trip to make ends meet. His eyes are locked on the lead truck, his head full of demons and darkness.
Back at the Haven the wogs issue the challenge across the road.
‘Youse rope-heads send your little mate over the road to apologise for what he done, otherwise …’
‘Otherwise what?’
‘Otherwise the bitch gets another hiding. I’ll do it meself right here, right now!’
This is not about the girl.
It’s just a way to get it started.
They think it’s hate; it gives them a reason.
It’s not that either.
It’s not rockers against surfers, black against white, us against them or the wogs or the slopes, the chinks or the gooks.
It’s as old as dirt itself.
It’s about being recognised, for something, anything.
Making a mark.
It’s about a release, the letting go of something deep. Something caught in the blood and feeling it loosen and fighting and screaming with the rage of forcing it free.
Mitch undoes the buttons on his best shirt and strips to the waist. It was always going to come to this. He knows he won’t be crossing the road alone; one in, all in, like always.
‘Shhhh for a second!’ someone says. ‘Everyone just shut up for a minute.’
Now they all hear it, the sirens wailing in the night from the north, distant now but coming fast. ‘It’s Evans. Piss off or he’ll lock you up.’
Someone’s rung the cops in Swansea. Someone in a fibro house who pays their rates and puts up with this shit most Saturday nights. Someone who’s had enough.
‘You mullets, better be here next week or …’ The threat gets lost as the tyres squeal and smoke on the black stuff. Everyone’s heading south, away from the threat. No one wants to be here when Evans turns up. No one’s that stupid, they think. And anyway, there’s always next week, and the one after that, and the one after that.
Two am in Charmhaven.
A blot on a dot on a map of the coast.
The lights on the power station wink across the weedy lake.
Big trouble
The headmaster’s name is Mr Egger, so of course he’s called ‘the Goog’. The deputy headmaster is Mr Ferguson, known as ‘Mousey’ because he has the look of the rodent about him.
Gary Grant and me are standing outside the Goog’s office, which can only mean one thing: trouble. I don’t know why we’re here and if Gary knows, he’s not saying. I rack my brains to see if I can remember anything I might have done, but I come up empty. We’ve been summoned here from the first period after lunch. Earlier in the day we’d been given half a period off before the morning recess to prepare tea and biscuits in the teachers’ staffroom. I’d done it several times before and it’s a bludge.
I’d unpacked the biscuits and arranged them on a large white platter. There are twenty-five teachers and at two each, that’s a lot of biscuits.
Gary was over by the sink filling the two large iron teapots from the silver urn and with twenty-five teachers, that’s a lot of tea. The bell sounded to signal the start of recess. I quickly filled the two large glass jugs with milk from the fridge, placed them on the table and we were done and gone, easy.
We wait outside the office. Time saunters on. Maybe it’s about the half-pack of Arrowroot biscuits we knocked off before we left the staffroom. No, couldn’t be that. Who would have known? Who would have cared? I check my lips for crumbs.
‘Bisley, Grant!’ It’s Mousey, the deputy, a small neat man. ‘Inside!’ Small and neat maybe, but vicious with the cane.
We go in. The Goog’s at his desk, with a hand supporting his chin as he reads from a stack of papers. We stop in front of his large dark desk. Mousey stands beside Mr Egger. Bad cop, bad cop. The Goog reads on. More waiting, just like at home, in the shed.
School sounds leak into the office and swell and fade and swell again. The trill of a whistle from the oval, ten times tables droning in the distance, a door slamming somewhere and another somewhere else, magpies arguing in the trees outside the tuckshop and far off a clarinet played badly pipes and squawks to a thankful end.
The headmaster screws the lid on his delicate gold-tipped fountain pen and places it neatly beside the squat blue ink bottle, his fingers the colour of washed oysters, his nails trimmed to perfection. He slides the stacked papers sideways, leans back into the plush leather of the chair and stares at us.
Mousey cuts the silence like a rapier. ‘You boys were assisting in the preparation of the teachers’ morning tea today – is that correct, Bisley?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I reply, puzzled.
‘You, Grant?’
‘Sir?’
‘You and Bisley were assisting in the preparation of the teachers’ morning tea today, yes or no?’
I shoot a glance at Gary. His face is reddening and his gaze is fixed on a spot on the floor.
‘Grant?’
Nothing.
I’m still looking at Gary and can’t understand why he’s not responding.
‘Who made the tea?’ asks the headmaster.
I wait.
Nothing from Gary!
‘Bisley, who made the tea?’
‘I did the biscuits,’ I say.
Silence.
The bell sounds the end of the period, then the noise of the school moving from one classroom to another.
We wait.
A small knock on the door. Mousey opens it. A muted conversation, the other voice a woman’s, words short, sharp, to the point, the door closing with a sigh. Mousey turns from the door. He has one of the bright iron teapots in his hands, all wrong against his neat dark suit. He carries it like a trophy and places it squarely in the centre of the headmaster’s desk then steps back.
‘Lift the lid, Grant!’
Gary inches forward like something hobbled. His right hand hovers over the lid like a bird. Finally he lifts it clear and places it on the desk.
‘What can you smell, Grant?’ asks Mousey.
Nothing from Gary.
‘I’ll ask you again, Grant: what can you smell?’
Still nothing.
‘Bisley, what can you smell?’
‘Urine, sir!’
‘Who pissed in the teapot?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ I say.
‘You’re excused, Bisley,’ says Mr Egger.
I leave the office. It’s like leaving a condemned man on death row. I can’t even begin to understand why he did it. He must have known he’d be caught.
Maybe that was the point.
I’d been back in class for half an hour when Gary came back. He looked like he’d been crying and his hands were red from the cane. He didn’t say anything; he just packed his bag and left without a look. I never saw him again.
Finding the light
It was the start of second term in first year when I was asked to join the organising committee, a group that was responsible for planning the social side of school life. The group was selected by the teaching staff and was made up of a student from each year from first year to fifth. We planned all the fetes, market days, dances and socials. We did everything from booking bands and decorating the school hall to arranging the catering and selling tickets. We were the major fundraising body of the school and the success or failure of each event rested on us. We were given some time off from class to handle our responsibilities – bliss. It was a gig everyone in the school wanted.