“How long can he go on blaming Japan?” I said bitterly.
As she pulled up at our next pillar box she glanced at me with pained expression. “That’s just my thoughts, not his. He doesn’t talk about it. He won’t talk to me about anything.”
I emptied the box and when I returned to the van I changed the topic to football.
Helping her each evening was good for me in other ways. Besides our collaboration, it gave me the chance to feel like I was doing something useful for my community. For the first time in my life I felt a strong bond to a place. It wasn’t much of a place, a tinpot port with spurious claims, I had learnt, to the title of first settlement in the region that would become Victoria, but a place, all the same, where I had been to the one school for several years and now had a house resembling a home, not to mention a few friends I could count on.
Besides, I was about to meet a new friend. And so, too, was Denny.
THE WOODS
There was a house that backed onto our place, which was still unoccupied, the last vacancy on the estate. One afternoon, a few days before Christmas, I was in the back yard weeding our vegetable garden when I heard the sounds of removalists unloading. I peered over and saw a sandy-headed tribe. The kids, with broad foreheads and vivid green eyes, all resembled the man. I counted six. Only the woman had dark hair. The eldest boy came over to say hello. He was about my age. When we shook hands he gave mine a mighty squeeze, smiled boldly to let me know he wasn’t someone to be trifled with, and declared he was Jimmy Woods. A few hours later there was a knock on our front door.
Always cautious about opening the door to a stranger lest it be a debt collector, Denny parted the venetian blinds in my bedroom where he could get a glimpse of the front porch, until I, behind him, recognised Jimmy and his father. When I explained who they were he went to the door.
Jimmy’s father introduced himself as Barry. His handshake was intended to place you somewhere in the pecking order below him. He wanted to know where the nearest phone booth was.
Denny knew it well. Since the shift to West Portland, some distance from the TAB, he had started up a phone betting account. He offered to drive them there, and I went along for the ride.
There was a store near the phone booth, and while Barry was ringing someone, Denny went to buy cigarettes. I was in the front passenger seat feeling tense with Jimmy behind me. I didn’t know what he was like or what he might say. As soon as the adults were out of the car he took the opportunity to speak.
He leant forward and tapped my shoulder, as if he needed to grab my attention. “Hey, what are the birds like here in Portland?”
“Most are all right.”
I must have sounded aloof.
“Yeah?” he persisted, wanting more information, probably details I was unable to provide.
“Magpies and cockies are all right. I’m not that fond of seagulls or plovers.”
“You’re kiddin’ me,” he snorted. “How do you get on with the other sort of bird? Sheilas?”
So I lied about my popularity with the opposite sex, exaggerating the true state of my romantic liaisons. But to avoid a cross-examination I quickly headed for neutral territory and asked him where he was from.
He told me he grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne but had shifted to Perth and more recently to Brisbane, criss-crossing the continent. I waited for him to explain. Maybe his father was a travelling salesman like my father had been. But before he had a chance Denny returned with some ice creams.
The gratuitous gesture made a favourable impression on Jimmy. And the smokes that Denny shared with Barry were equally well received, even if the brand he offered was short on quality.
On the way back Denny asked if they needed anything while they settled in: groceries, linen or blankets, household cleaners, tools?
Barry looked Denny over, grinned and availed himself of everything on offer.
My mother was peeved, to put it mildly. She resented Denny’s sudden bouts of generosity.
“Charity begins at home,” she said to me. “It’s hard enough without him giving everything away. I work bloody hard to buy that stuff. And you saw that fellow, love. You only need to take one look at him to know you’ll never get one thing back off of him.”
When one of the youngest Woods’ boys knocked at the door the next day, thrust a bowl towards her and demanded salt, she refused, telling him to come back after he had learnt some manners.
Word of the incident got back to Denny.
He was furious with her, taking the antagonism she had shown towards the new neighbours personally. Why did she always try to undermine and embarrass him? Why had she disapproved of every friend he’d ever had?
Pat ignored his spurious claim to friendships and responded with a retort that was on the lips of everyone on the estate. “How come they jumped the queue to get a house? They don’t even come from Portland. And what Graeme tells me, they don’t even come from the state. If you’re worried about the needy, giving away our blankets and groceries, then what about all the needy locals who haven’t got a roof over their heads?”
Denny was cagey, giving a dismissive gesture, as if he were already privy to information that explained the Woods’ preferential treatment.
He began to spend a lot of time with the Woods, helping them settle in and taking them shopping. He even chatted, something I’d never seen him do, at their kitchen table.
As for my friendship with Jimmy, after my initial wariness, we got along well. I didn’t trust his father but Jimmy was different. He was straightforward and honest. And even he was capable of a few acid remarks about his ‘old man’, as he always called his father.
“Don’t let him get to you. He’s a bullshit artist.”
“Yeah, mine too,” I admitted.
It didn’t take long before Barry was bragging to me about something, about his brilliant memory (a photographic memory he claimed) or what poor cuts of meat he had bought, and how he could do better than all the Portland butchers, being a qualified butcher himself, or how liberal-minded he was about sexuality, making jokes about Jimmy’s virginal state, and guessing at mine, and telling us of the myriad girls he had already had ‘sexual intercourse’ with by the time he was our age, as if to say, you’ll never be the man I am, boys, you’ll never catch up to me. He kept asking me about my eyesight.
Jimmy enrolled in my class at Portland High at the start of the school year. We were both fifteen but he could have passed for someone older. He wasn’t tall, but able to shave meaningfully every day, and muscular enough for football. I thought he’d be an asset to the team I was going to play for in the local junior competition, once the new season began. In the meantime I hoped some of the respect given to a virile, untested new classmate would rub off on me.
His impatience to meet some of my female friends was finally placated when on the first day of the school year, much to my astonishment and relief, two of the most popular girls in our class, Kathy and Dawn, approached and requested to sit beside us at the back of the room. They handed us a biro each and asked for our autographs. Kathy was the girl I had given a brooch to in primary school for St Valentine’s Day. She had long since lost interest in me and gained a reputation as a girl who ‘did it’. Sidling onto the desk pew next to me she pulled up the hem of her uniform and pointed to the part of her thigh she wanted me to sign, not very far from her panties, which caught my eye inadvertently. My heart beat like a kettledrum. I don’t know how many notebooks I had filled over the years, practising my signature, trying to perfect it for just such a moment, but any calligraphic ability I’d gained deserted me the moment I touched her soft flesh.
“Jesus,” she muttered. “Not so hard.”
I had finished in a few seconds. But Jimmy, being a slow writer, apparently, took twice as long to sign Dawn’s thigh.
Later when we were alone Jimmy put his arm around my shoulder. “Sparkesy,” he said, “for a while there I thought you were crapping about all the
m pretty birds you knew. I reckon I owe you an apology.”
“I was just waiting to get back to school,” I murmured, blushing.
He gave me a grateful squeeze. “Things are definitely looking up.”
Ashamed of my shyness, I realised I was trying to create a myth about my virility to hide the truth that girls like Kathy and Dawn intimidated me. In fact I found most girls intimidating. Suddenly it occurred to me I ought to start climbing out of the deep hole I was digging before I made a complete fool of myself.
“You don’t want to get too carried away with those two,” I said. “They’re just mucking around, testing you out. Dawn’s got a boyfriend who’s already got a car. She’s not going to be interested in you that way. She only wants you to be interested in her. If she’s got a string of blokes walking around after her with their tongues hanging out, it gives her some bargaining power with the guy she really wants. But you and me, Jimmy, we come from the wrong side of the tracks. They wouldn’t go out with anyone from the Housing Commission, no matter how good looking he was. It’d be beneath them.”
Jimmy chewed on his cheeks and pursed his lips, impressed with my insight. “Jesus, Sparkesy, you’re right. You’re not half as dumb as you look.” He burst into laughter and punched my shoulder affectionately. “Only joking.”
I wondered which part he was joking about.
My logic was as effective as a cold shower on Jimmy. He studiously ignored Dawn and Kathy, much to their confusion, and turned his attention to girls that I knew were working-class. But they were a lot harder to impress. To my relief, if not Jimmy’s, the attractive ones had their eyes fixed firmly on bigger fish than us. We had to content ourselves with observation.
At a discreet distance we followed them home after school. We mooned about, channelling most of our frustrations into sport. With money I earned as a lolly boy at the Star Theatre, money I had started to hide from Denny, I bought myself a cheap, portable record player. Then Jimmy and I fell into the habit of listening to records in my bedroom.
The first single I bought wasn’t anything by the Beatles or Rolling Stones, who had started taking drugs and putting out weird albums, like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Instead it was The Green Green Grass of Home by Tom Jones. Another I bought was Release Me by Engelbert Humpeldink. Jimmy’s favourite was Johnny Preston’s Running Bear. The poignancy of the lyrics honed our virginal angst.
When March came around pre-season football training started. Jimmy hadn’t played much, not competitively at least, but I was gaining a reputation as a possible future champion. Oddly enough, despite my slight stature, football was the one aspect of my life to which I was committed recklessly. On the field I was fearless. It was as if some intrepid being inhabited my body for the duration of the match but vanished as soon as I walked off. Knowing my sporting prowess would impress him, I took Jimmy along.
I was confident that someone with his build, regardless of ability, would make a half-decent ruck-rover, which just required a bit of muscle and tenacity, attributes he had plenty of.
On the first training night I noticed a few of the more senior boys huddled together, occasionally looking at him. Off the playing field, I was wary of every one of them. None of them still went to school. A few were already fishermen and well on the way to earning their first million. A couple had well-deserved reputations for toughness, even delinquency. I had played against them in previous years and copped a few blows to the kidneys and knackers, an aggression they were quite happy to display beyond the football field, in the streets whenever our paths crossed, although so far I had been spared a belting. So I knew it was unwise to aggravate them.
Once the training was underway, each one made a point of passing by Jimmy, at my side, to ask him if he knew a ‘Mr Lee’. Their behaviour baffled me. Jimmy became tense. Then one of the fishermen came around again and asked him if he knew of ‘any fences’.
In an instant Jimmy decked him.
Notwithstanding my mettle on the football field, my legs turned to jelly. The other toughs, taken aback momentarily by the unlikely turn of events, were sure to advance on us. I could see myself unwittingly and unwillingly targeted, outnumbered and outgunned. I felt sick in the stomach. I watched the fisherman struggle to his feet. Jimmy braced himself, waiting for the logic of his actions to unfold.
Then an amazing thing happened. The fisherman, cradling his jaw, emitted a nervous chuckle. “Fair enough,” he said and started to back away. His mates retreated with him.
“What was that all about?” I asked as soon as we were left alone. I glanced sideways at him in admiration and incredulity. To have as a friend someone unafraid to take on one of the town’s delinquents and have him retreat without so much as a scowl was a development I needed time to absorb. I wasn’t totally convinced the capitulation I’d witnessed was due just to Jimmy’s audacity. There seemed to be something else behind it.
Jimmy shrugged, reluctant to enlighten me.
During the rest of the training session, they steered clear of him.
“Come on, who’s this ‘Mr Lee’, for chrissakes?” I badgered later as we walked home, lugging a footy bags and boots, but with a touch of levity in my voice to make him think I didn’t care one way or the other for an explanation. “And what was he going on about bloody fences for?”
Jimmy, his shoulders hunched in thought, refused to answer for a while. He dropped behind me. I realised something worried him and let him be.
He eventually spoke. “Does your old man get Th e Truth?” His face was grim.
I nodded. Denny bought The Truth for the form guide but it contained a lot of salacious material, which is why I browsed through it, and scandalous stories of crime and corruption in high places.
“You know what a fence is, don’t yer?”
I patted the one we were walking past. “Here, mate.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, disgusted.
I was completely baffled. It didn’t seem the topic you’d find in The Truth. Nor did it seem a good enough reason to deck someone.
Jimmy walked in silence for a while, sucking in his gums and chewing them in thought. I dared not interrupt his reverie. He kicked a stone along the path. He sniffed profoundly, drawing snot down into his throat, which he ejected on an accurate trajectory towards a lamppost.
“I might as well fill you in, Sparkesy, since you’ll find out sooner or later. Better you hear it from me than them pricks.” He twisted his mouth like he had a toothache and looked at me sideways. “My old man was a fence.”
“What kind? Barbed wire? Electric? Cyclone? Picket?”
Jimmy snorted. “A receiver until he ran out of favours with the pigs.”
His father, I learnt over the next few days, was a crim, a fully paid-up, card-holding member of the Melbourne underworld. He had been a fence, a receiver of stolen goods, and to be a success in his line of business required doing favours for the police, mainly in the form of bribes. Police would come around to his house in Yarraville with a search warrant and find the garage full of stolen TVs, fridges, washing machines. Barry would slip them a pre-arranged amount and they would leave with an apology for the intrusion. “I understand. You’re just doing your job, boys,” he would say. Occasionally the police walked off with a TV or stereo, anything that would fit in the back of their paddy wagon. Jimmy had witnessed it often enough. But eventually the police started asking for more—information on crimes and other criminals—under the threat of arrest. Eventually he was an informer to some of the top detectives in Melbourne. For Barry, and most likely the rest of his family, it was a dangerous development. If the underworld found out, he was as good as dead. Or his wife, or kids, could be targeted. For a couple of years he managed to avoid suspicion. He became quite good friends with two or three members of the major crime squad, who were corrupt. But after some of his closest associates were convicted and imprisoned, he was ostracised at his local pub.
Terror gripped him as he contempla
ted possible reasons. Shortly afterwards he was arrested himself and held in remand. He phoned one of his contacts in the force who told him he was on his own. Somehow he had lost favour. He realised his cover had been blown. All the proof he needed soon arrived. An attempt was made on his life. Someone tried to put him in one of the large ovens when he was on duty in the prison kitchen. He fought ferociously and survived but knew it was only a matter of time before the underworld would have its revenge.
In a desperate bid to save his life, he managed to contact the Attorney-General’s Department to reveal all he knew about police corruption. He named several ‘bent coppers’. He was shrewd enough to insinuate that someone in the press already had the details and would release them if anything happened to him, a lie he used to pre-empt any official manoeuvres to silence him. The Attorney-General swiftly secured bail. Barry then did go to Th e Truth, whose editor-in-chief, fond of a good scandal decided to cover the story. An inquiry was held, not a Royal Commission as Barry had hoped, which would have had the power to summons suspects, but a Police Discipline Board Inquiry with limited scope. His name was suppressed. He was known in the court as Mr X. He was the star witness, in fact the only witness as it turned out because the inquiry ran into a wall of silence. And the few police that were charged had brilliant lawyers, who successfully discredited much of his evidence with withering marathon cross-examinations. Most charges were dismissed.
In desperation Barry requested and received protection. His family took an assumed name and disappeared, around the country at first, at each stop their cover being blown, until they reached Portland where it appeared their identity had also preceded them.
“We’re staying this time,” said Jimmy. “We’re getting sick of moving.”
“Know what you mean.”
You Never Met My Father Page 19