by Tony Birch
‘Michael, why don’t we catch the tram into town, just the two of us, and go and see the Father Christmas? Do you think he’d be back yet?’
I was angry and wanted to take it out on somebody.
‘Give up, Katie. Fuck Father Christmas. He’s not fucken true. You know that. Jesus, grow up, we’re not kids any more. It’s too early yet, anyway.’
Katie turned and ran into her bedroom. I could hear her sobbing. I thought about saying sorry, but I couldn’t do it. So I ran out of the flat, slamming the heavy steel door behind me. I ran downstairs and over to the basketball court, looking for somebody, anybody, to hang out with.
I found Charlie Noonan, a kid who lived in the block of flats opposite our place. His mother worked the same shift at the crumpet factory as my mum, so I sometimes stayed over at his place, while he looked after his younger sister, Alice. She did not really need any looking after though, seeing as she was not much more than a year younger than he was. They were close in age, but nothing else. They never so much as spoke a word to each other whenever I was over at their place, so I didn’t speak to her either.
Charlie was hanging from the steel basketball ring, which along with the backboard was leaning precariously towards the court. It looked as if it was about to collapse on top of him.
He looked across at me. ‘What you doing?’
‘Nothing. You?’
‘Nothing. What you want to do?’
‘Don’t know. You?’
He jumped down from the ring, landing like a cat, on all fours. ‘You want to strip the roof at the rope works before they knock them down?’
‘Yeah, why not.’
I followed Charlie to his flat. He grabbed a hessian bag and a crowbar from behind the kitchen sink.
The rope works were behind the estate. They were about to be bulldozed so that more flats could be built. Competition for the scrap lead and copper was as fierce as it had ever been, so it was important to get in early.
Charlie was quick. As soon as we got to the factory he wedged the roller-door open with his crowbar, getting us into the factory yard. He then scaled the wall via a drainpipe and got onto the roof where, after a quick site inspection, he began tearing the pipes away from the old sprinkler system and throwing the lengths of copper down to me.
When he had finished with the piping Charlie moved onto the skirts of lead around the chimney bases and the capping of the roof pitchers. I looked up for him while following the beat of his footsteps on the corrugated iron.
I heard the first rock smash into a window to the side of me, just seconds before another bounced off the concrete floor directly in front of me, sending out a flash of spark before ricocheting into the factory wall. I looked around.
The Lawrence brothers were standing on the other side of the factory. The three brothers were feared across the estate and beyond. And they never lost a fight because they hunted together and fought together. And they were psychotic.
I did not know what to do, whether to run or stand. I hated stone fights but they were hard to avoid. There was little point in running from a stone fight either; taking your chances by attempting to duck a missile was always more sensible than turning your back and getting hit.
A stone fight is not like a fistfight. There is not a lot of skill involved. By throwing rocks into a crowd of kids somebody has to get hit, eventually. And it’s random. You can never be sure whether you will be the one to cop it.
The Lawrence brothers looked as if they were about to commence hurling missiles at me. Each of them was holding a handful of broken bricks. The eldest of the three brothers, Arthur, pointed at me.
‘You fucken little prick! This is our fucken factory! Fuck off! Leave the scrap on the ground and fuck off!’
The middle brother, Rex, hurled a rock in my general direction in order to give emphasis to Arthur’s demand. I had to duck to be sure that it missed me. The rock shattered another pane of glass in the window behind me.
I looked around for Charlie, but I could no longer see or hear him. He may have seen them coming and escaped over the back of the roof. The only way out of the factory yard appeared to be the same roller-door where they were now standing sentry. Leaving the scrap for them wouldn’t be enough. They’d give me a belting anyway, just to add to the enjoyment. The three of them began to walk across the yard towards me.
Arthur called to me again. ‘Are you fucken deaf, you little cunt? Leave the scrap and get the fuck out of here or take a kicking. It’s up to you.’
As they walked closer I thought about trying to dodge around them and run out through the factory door. It was all that I could think to do, until I heard Charlie’s voice coming from somewhere behind where I was standing.
‘Michael! Michael!’
I turned around. I could just see Charlie in a darkened corner, holding an escape door open for me.
‘Run, Michael, fucken well run!’
I hesitated. My father always told me, ‘Never run, never run!’
The Lawrence brothers charged at me, hurling rocks and screaming at me as they did so.
Charlie was screaming as well. ‘Run, fucken run!’
I decided to take Charlie’s advice over my father’s. I turned and ran towards the narrow opening of the door. Rocks and stones were bouncing off the walls around me. And I could hear Arthur bearing down on me.
‘You fucken little bastard! You’re fucked, cunt! You’re fucked!’
I felt the rock hit me in the back of the head, followed by the taste of vomit in my mouth and a ringing in my ears. I tumbled forward, scrambled on all fours and then got to my feet again. I reached the doorway. Charlie grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me through, snapping a metal lever behind us.
I could feel the sensation of something warm oozing down the back of my neck. I put a hand to my head and then looked at it. It was blood. We ran across the factory floor and out through an open door on the other side. Charlie led me along a laneway that separated the rope works from the Victoria Street shopping strip. I had to stop. I leaned forward and vomited into the gutter. Charlie tried hurrying me along.
‘Come on, Michael! It’ll only take them a couple of minutes to catch up with us. If they get hold of us, they’ll fucken kill us.’
I could feel dampness against the neck of my T-shirt. It was soaked in blood. Charlie noticed it for the first time.
‘Fuck! Look at you. You’re bleeding.’
My legs wobbled under me. Charlie knew that I would not be able to run too far. But he also understood that we could not stay where we were without suffering a lot more pain than I was now in.
He looked along the laneway. ‘We’ll have to hide somewhere. We can’t get back to the flats from here.’ He pointed a little further ahead of us. ‘Come on, we’re going to hide in here.’
We ran across the laneway and stopped at the back of the derelict Victory Theatre that fronted on to Victoria Street.
‘Come on! Come on! In here.’
Charlie pushed me through a hole in a cyclone wire fence. We climbed over piles of rubbish and made our way along a narrow path on the side of the building. The ground was littered with rusting canisters, spilling entrails of old film. Most of the windows into the theatre had been boarded up. Charlie moved along the path until he found a broken window high above us. He stopped.
‘Michael, come on! I’ll bunk you up. We can get in here. We can climb through the window. Come on. I can fucken hear them coming.’
I was still feeling groggy and wanted to be sick again. I felt the back of my head, and the warm blood caked in my hair. I watched Charlie as he knelt forward against the side of the wall and created a stirrup by knitting his fingers together.
‘Come on, Michael, let’s go.’
I put my foot into his hands and reached up for the win
dow ledge at the same time that he lifted me. As I grabbed hold of the ledge one of my hands was pierced by a piece of jagged glass. I would have stopped and given myself up to the Lawrence brothers there and then if it were not for Charlie’s strength driving my body forward.
I poked my head through the window space, catching an immediate whiff of the musty breeze of the theatre. It was the familiar smell of damp plaster and rotting wood that I had grown up with. It was as if I had been transported back to our old place in Fitzroy. All of the seats in the theatre had been removed. A heavy red velvet curtain remained draped across the stage and the walls were decorated with old movie posters and advertising signs promoting brands of ice-cream and sweets. I could see that there was a chandelier hanging from the domed centre. Large drifting cobwebs also hung from the roof and downward to the floor. I could also see that there were cardboard boxes stacked against the walls.
A single large object dominated the floor of the old theatre. The light was poor, but I was immediately able to recognise the familiar figure resting on the ground in front of me. Although I could see him clearly I had to shake my head a couple of times before I was satisfied that I was fully conscious.
I took another look, scanning him from head to toe.
‘Wow. Fucken wow.’
Charlie was still supporting my body.
‘Come on, Michael. Hurry it up. What is it? What is it?’
I did not get out of the hospital until quite late that night. The doctor had to put twelve stitches in the back of my head and another five in my right hand. Mum had waited with me in Casualty and took me home in a taxi.
While we were on our way home she told me that we had received our Christmas card from Aunt Billie in that afternoon’s mail. When we got out of the cab, I looked up to our flat high above the street. I was surprised to see that not only was Katie’s bedroom light on, but that she was there at the window, smiling down at me and waving.
As soon as we got into the flat I went to her room. I wanted her to know that I had found him. She had decorated her bed frame with different coloured tinsels — red, green and silver. Hanging over the bedpost was a drawing that she had done, of Father Christmas.
I pointed to the drawing. ‘Katie,’ I told her, ‘we can’t go and see him yet. He’s not back.’
She looked at the drawing and then at me. She immediately understood who I was talking about but seemed puzzled as to how I knew that he was yet to reappear at the Woolworth’s building.
‘What do you mean, Michael? You haven’t been into town today, have you? You’ve been getting in trouble, and you’ve been to hospital. Mum told me.’
I sat down on her bed. ‘No, I haven’t been into town. But I’ve seen him. He’s still resting, getting ready for the season.’
Katie thought that I was making fun of her, I’m sure.
‘You seen him, Michael? Where? At the North Pole? Sure.’
‘No, not at the North Pole. Nan was wrong about that. I saw him at the Pictures. He was at the old picture theatre around in Victoria Street. That’s where he goes after he’s finished at Woolies for the year. He goes to the movies.’
I reached over and brushed the hair from her face with my bandaged hand. ‘But he’ll be back soon. It’s the only work he can get. Remember that?’ I stroked her forehead. ‘I’m sorry about what happened this morning, Katie. I hate it here. But I’m really sorry.’
She did not say anything at first. She just smiled at me.
I stood up to leave.
‘Michael, do you miss the old house?’
I did not have to think about her question.
‘Yeah, I miss it a lot, all the time.’
‘I miss it too.’
She moved down to the end of her bed and touched the face of her drawing.
‘Can you take me on the tram to see Father Christmas? When he gets back there, that is?’
‘Of course, Katie. He’d be lost without us. Looks for us every year, with that mad finger of his.’
‘And Michael, can you take me down by our old house, and the old street? Show me where it all used to be, Michael? You think you’d remember? Even with all the places now gone? Can you remember?’
‘Of course I can, Katie. That’s what I’m here for. That’s my job — to remember.’
The Sea of Tranquillity
Charlie Noonan fell in love with cars that summer. And if he wasn’t lazing along the banks of the Yarra River with me, smoking cigarettes and concentrating on blowing the perfect smoke ring as we watched the water ease by, he was out stealing them.
Most of the cars he stole were from our housing estate. But he also took them from the supermarket car park, behind the football ground; anywhere he could get his hands on one. He even broke into the Kevin Dennis showroom on Bridge Road and drove a car through the front window, a brand new Falcon. The showroom was right next door to the police station, but Charlie didn’t care. He had an addiction. It was stealing cars.
I couldn’t drive, but was more than willing to joyride with him. We would cruise around Richmond, showing off to the other kids from the estate, who all admired what we were doing but were either too afraid or too sensible to take the ride. We would then take off, to one of the new freeways that had just been built both to the north and to the south of the city, so that we could push the motor to its limit.
When Charlie got tired of a car that only days before he had been so attached to, I would help him to get rid of it. We would burn the car or roll it over the cliff at the National Park into the river and watch it slip gently below the surface of the water.
Driving cars was for the night. During the days of that dry and warm summer we rarely left the river. From the break-up of school in the week before Christmas and all throughout January, the heat did not let up. Most other kids from the housing estate hung out at the public swimming pool. But not me and Charlie. We spent all our time at one of the swimming holes skirting the river from Richmond and all the way through Collingwood, and on into the east; the Cat Walk in Burnley, Skipping Girl in Abbotsford, or Collins Bridge, the Convent and Deep Rock, all in Collingwood.
There wasn’t a day when the sun didn’t bake our skin, working it from a brick red into brown. And we never saw so much as a single drop of rain. The river began to slowly lower in the heat as the sun soaked up an increasing amount of water. Quicksand-like mudflats soon appeared and spread along the edges of the river bank, from the Catwalk and all points beyond.
Charlie and I would sink our bodies into the warm, stinking mud, light another cigarette, and stare up into the empty blue sky for most of the day, planning a shared future of emptiness.
On the really hot nights we would stay down at the river all night. I would tell mum that I was sleeping over at Charlie’s place while he would give his mother the opposite story. While they both thought that we were tucked up in bed, we were actually floating through the warm waters of the river in old tyre tubes. Or we would be asleep in the soft long grass under Collins Bridge. We even bridge-jumped in the darkness, at the Skipping Girl Bridge, a steel-girdered seventy-foot drop from the ledge of a narrow brick pylon to the surface of the water below.
Charlie and I increasingly dared each other to take greater risks. The bridge-jumping scared the shit out of me, but the feeling was exhilarating just the same, falling through the pitch-black night while waiting and waiting to hit the water.
When the new school year started we decided we weren’t going back. And the weather was with us all the way. We stayed on the river, lying in the mud and willing the summer to remain with us just a little longer.
By Easter the weather had begun to cool, although the ground remained bone-dry. When it was no longer warm enough for a swim we held our boredom at bay by exploring the streets on the other side of the river, on the high side, up through Kew and Hawth
orn, before returning to our own place late in the afternoon.
As we walked back down Studley Park Road, I would look across to the neon sign above the factory where my mother worked, and further on to the housing estate towers, high above the ring of factories that surrounded them. Walking the streets on the other side of the river was like walking into an American television show. I half expected to run into ‘the Beaver’, or any one of ‘my three sons’ playing on the lawns of any one of these very expensive houses. Houses that had big cars parked in the driveways.
Charlie desperately wanted one of those cars, particularly a maroon Mercedes that we had walked past more than once. He could not stop talking about that car. He drove me crazy about it. And once he had taken a shine to a car, Charlie couldn’t help himself. He would not be happy until he was behind the wheel and racing through the streets.
In the end I grew tired of his endless nagging and said, ‘Fuck it, Charlie, take the car. Just leave me alone, Charlie, and take the fucken car.’
So he did, that same night.
We crossed the river and took a short cut through the golf course that we were always being kicked off during the day. We walked until we reached the house with the Mercedes in the drive.
It was a big car. Reclining into its deep, red-leather seats reminded me of sitting up in a club lounge that my grandmother had once owned. That chair had taken up half her lounge room. Charlie could hardly see over the steering wheel. Once we were safely out of the street and driving back down Studley Park Road I stretched out my legs, switched the radio on and found something loud and heavy to listen to. I began playing air guitar. Charlie laughed.
We drove to the boulevard, heading for the twists and turns of Snakey Bend, a narrow road that led down to the boatsheds. Charlie looked over at me and let out one of his mad squeals. He was about to perform one of his favourite driving tricks.
‘Good night, Michael, it’s lights out.’