by Peter Twohig
He gave me a sour look. I could get away with murder with Granddad.
‘Granddad, what’s the co-op?’ I asked him, on the way back.
‘Your ears are too big for your boots.’
‘Okay then, what’s the Volga when it’s home?’
‘It’s a passenger ship, but I don’t want you to mention that name to anyone. Okay?’
‘Okeydokey, daddy-o.’
Granddad looked at me.
‘77 Sunset Strip.’
He didn’t get it.
‘It’s a TV show. You know.’
I started singing and snapping my fingers.
‘77 Sunset Strip (snap, snap)
‘77 Sunset Strip (snap, snap)
‘77 Sunset Strip (snap)’
I did the voice:
‘Starring Efrem Zimbalist Junior! ’
I was glad he let me get as far as the voice: I’d been practising it for months.
‘Just don’t mention the ships.’
‘Okey—’
‘And don’t call me daddy-o.’
‘Cool, man.’
Anyone else would have donged me by then.
Lucky Martello had frightened me, and I didn’t know why. The way she had reacted when I mentioned the Larsons was just the way Granddad reacted when some geezer mentioned that he knew where certain things could be found in unmarked crates, should a bloke happen to be interested, not that we were. In other words, I felt that I was in the presence of a beautiful young female version of Granddad, not that I’d put it that way in front of him.
I remembered what he told me: to forget all about the Larsons, and get on with being a budding superhero detective (or superdetective hero — take your pick), but I was never one to take the advice of the first person who came along (and that advice came from Granddad too). I would have liked to ask him about it in person, but he had as promised made himself scarce, for business reasons. I therefore went back to the Sandersons’, where it had been decided by the mysterious powers that organised my life I could spend Saturday night.
There are some things a superdetective should never do. I had to learn these as I went along, so of course I was bound to make mistakes. But had I known the complete procedure, had I had a manual of some kind, for example, the conversation that took place the next morning would have been cunningly avoided.
The Sandersons were having a leisurely day when I returned after Mass and, despite it being nearly lunch time, were still recovering from the effort of pouring milk on their corn flakes and finishing Saturday’s papers, Mr Sanderson at the classifieds, and Mrs Sanderson at the comic strips because she was an enormous fan of Bluey and Curley.
That was how I found the two of them, sitting around like a couple of walruses watching an ice-skating contest, and drinking tea, probably their seventeenth cup for the day. They nodded to me as I settled in with them on the front verandah, their favourite spot, and showed them the comics I had got from Lucky, as I had decided to join them in a bit of a quiet read. They took a great interest in comics, those two, what Mum would call a morbid interest, one of her favourite words, especially in relation to some of my uncles, though really I suspected that the Sandersons were just trying to stay informed about what their comic-loving guest liked to read. I won’t deny that I never tried to talk them out of this. It is a well-known fact that old people need something to keep them busy, and to stop them from wandering off. In Richmond there were a lot of wandering people, and I had seen Dad, and even Granddad, ask one or two of them if they needed a hand, and even put them on a tram, which I suppose they eventually got off.
It was but the work of a moment to adopt the super-identity for which I would one day be famous. In a flash, I had become:
The Spirit of Progress! Who gets chucked out of churches, forges Declarations of War, eavesdrops on Russian bastards, and (sort of ) falls in love with beautiful Italian girls.
Without my super-identity, I would have been like so much baker’s dough in their hands when they interrogated me in their fiendish way.
‘So, young man. What kind of superhero are you being at the moment?’
I was not upset at the way they spoke to me, as they weren’t taking the mickey, but simply asking a civil question that they knew I’d have an answer for.
‘Superspy. It’s easy on the feet, and doesn’t require long periods underground, not that I’d be bothered. It’s Zac I’m worried about. He needs to be above ground to see what’s going on, sniff people ’n’ stuff. Otherwise he’ll think everything’s terrific and everyone’s your friend, which is definitely not true, in my experience.’
‘I think if you spent less time hanging around with that Barney person, you might see things in a different light,’ said Mrs S.
‘That’s what Mum says.’
I didn’t want to talk about Barney, because he was one of those blokes that no one could say anything good about, and I couldn’t say anything bad about. Besides, Nanna Blayney often invited him to her house for morning tea, and she was a pretty normal kind of person, apart from having more husbands than the CWA.
‘My nanna likes him, you know.’
‘I’m sure he’s got his lovely side,’ said Mrs S, but using her speaking-to-kids voice. ‘So what does being a superspy involve? Nothing, um …’
‘Illegal?’
‘Oh no, dear. We know you’d never do anything like that. No, I was going to say dangerous.’
‘Danger is my middle name, Mrs Sanderson: Spirit of Progress Danger Blayney.’
‘Now, you do know there’s a train called the Spirit of Progress?’
‘Not anymore. They’ll have to find a new name for it, like the Cannonball Express, or something. I happen to know that name is up for grabs.’
I was being especially chatty on this day, because I wanted to bring up the subject of Lucky Martello knowing about the Larsons, to see how the Sandersons took it. I wasn’t expecting them to spit out their tea, like Lou Costello, but I did expect some additional information for my intelligence collection. I was just about out of clues. But I remembered what they had said, so I wasn’t expecting to get off that easy: it was going to cost a few seconds of their disapproval. So, as casual as a koala, I changed the subject.
‘So what d’ya think of the comics? Pretty cool, huh?’
I was using some of my 77 Sunset Strip talk on them, just trying it out.
‘Yes indeed. You did well there. Even I can tell these are a good swap. Who did you swap them from?’
‘John De Coney’s aunty. Her name’s Luca Martello, except she likes to be called Lucky.’
‘Martello … that name rings a bell.’
‘Funny thing: it turns out she’s heard of the Larsons. I mentioned them by mistake. It’s a small world.’
As soon as I said it a chill ran down my spine, changed its mind, and ran back up again. I had gone too far.
‘What did we tell you about that? Oh, well, what else did she say?’
‘Um, sorry. It just slipped out. I was telling her about my new club … She knew they used to live over here. But I don’t think she knew them.’
‘Yes, well, that was ages ago, and it was just a visit. In fact, we don’t even know what happened to them, do we, dear?’
‘Haven’t heard a peep out of them,’ said Mrs S, looking bored stiff.
‘So how did you meet this Martello woman?’ said Mr S.
‘She lives across the road from Mona; and Mona told me she’d like to swap comics with me, because she’s got hundreds of them.’
‘Then you must keep in touch with her; she could turn out to be a gold mine.’
‘Yes. She invited me back when I’ve got something to swap.’
‘Sounds like you’re both in luck. But mind, no more talk about our business, please. We trust you.’
‘I’m sorry; I won’t.’
‘Good. However, should she ask you any more questions that aren’t about these matters, we’d like you to tell us, just us, an
d nobody else. All right?’
‘All right.’
But as much as the Spirit was keen on being interrogated by flabby old people and beautiful women from the Gestapo, he had other fish to fry. With no new fires in the area, and Flame Boy off somewhere frightening the locals, I was able to turn my attention to school.
25 The education of young Blayney
There are some things you can never remember not having, like your navel, your teeth, and your teddy; feeling both good and bad at the same time about going to St Dominic’s is another. It would be good because most of my friends would be going there. On the other hand St Dominic’s was a De La Salle College, and I’d heard that the brothers were not like the nuns at all, but were impossible to con, trick, charm or get around in any way unless you had either been canonised, or knew Archbishop Mannix personally. I mentioned my fears to Granddad when I first found out that my entry into the St Dominic’s stakes had been accepted.
‘Then you’re halfway there, boy.’
‘What are you talking about, Granddad? Are they going to make me a saint?’
‘I doubt that very much, with your family background — you’d never get past the application form. No, it’s Mannix I’m talking about. Me and him are like that.’ He crossed his fingers. ‘We’re like Amos ’n’ Andy.’
‘’Cept they’re black.’
‘All right, like Batman and Robin.’
‘So which one are you?’
‘Starve the lizards! And they say you’re the bright one.’
I didn’t mind this reference to Tom, and Granddad would have known that.
‘Okay, so you, being the bantamweight, would be Robin, I guess.’
‘Right you are.’
‘Who’s Daniel?’
‘His Grace. ’Cept I call him Daniel. We met way back in my fighting days, inside St Dom’s Church. He was a bit of a fighter himself in those days, a real tearaway. He would have made a great boxer. He would have scared his opponent out cold.’
He laughed a coughing kind of laugh, and I had to bang him on the back a few times to settle him down.
‘Thanks, boy. Saved me life. Where would I be without ya?’
‘Prob’ly next door having a shandy with Mrs Morgan.’
He scratched his chin.
‘Yeah, well, that’ll have to wait for a little while. Your mum and her never did see eye to eye on the matter of the care and feeding of Archbold Taggerty. Ancient history.’
‘The Archbishop …?’
‘Ah, yes. If you have any trouble with those brothers just tell them your grandfather is Mannix’s mate. That’ll make ’em think twice.’
‘And if that doesn’t work?’
‘Then you’re buggered.’
Basically, the only good thing about Tom being dead was that he had got out of going there.
The Olympians had agreed to meet on the first day of school at St Dom’s and stick together all day. We could see no flaw in the plan, and that should have told us something straight away.
All the kids at the school, or college as they called it, were divided into these things called houses, and the new kids were placed in different ones, though, owing to some things I might have said about God in the past without properly thinking it all through, I found myself in the same house as Matthew Bloody Foster. Matthew thought it was ‘wonderful’, and said he could hardly wait to tell his father, the baked bean tester. However, Charles was also in my house, so I had a friend and ally to help me cope. During the morning break (they did not call it play lunch) Charles told me secretly that as far as he was concerned, if he couldn’t be in the same house as me, he didn’t want to be in a house at all, which I thought was a very nice thing to say.
The only good thing about day one was it was so busy there was only time for one lesson, and that was the first one, Christian Doctrine, though it was really just a short history of the Brothers themselves, who sounded like a cross between the Mafia and the police, which in Richmond are practically the same thing. Brother Gabriel, who took the class, took the opportunity to tell us about the horrible tortures and deaths some of the Order’s members had endured so that we, ungrateful little buggers that we were, could sit there enjoying ourselves that morning. In other words, he was one of those blokes who called a spade a bloody shovel. After that came various administrative things that had us filing from one room to another and having things done to us, like being divided into houses. By the time the Olympians met at lunch I was ready to call it a day.
As it turned out, the first thing that happened to me after lunch was also the last thing. My name was called out at assembly, in front of the whole school, and I was told to report to Brother Ignatius in the office. The office was a busy place that day, and there were blokes dressed in black, and people who generally got in the way of these blokes, all over the place. It was a bit like looking at a Collingwood versus St Kilda grudge match.
Brother Ignatius had his own office, to which I was taken.
He was a big bloke, and looked a bit like Ward Bond in Wagon Train, but without the horse, gun and moustache. Even his voice sounded like Ward Bond’s, with one difference: he was obviously Italian. I didn’t know what to make of this bloke, who had asked to see me for some reason — I hoped to congratulate me on my smart marching into class earlier in the day. But no.
‘Blayney.’
I started shaking. It was my experience that people who skip ‘hello’ and go straight to ‘Blayney’ are usually on the way to an unfair accusation or two. I could hardly believe I had been at St Dominic’s long enough to get into trouble. It just shows how messed up my beliefs were.
Brother Ignatius sat down, leant back and put his feet on his desk, so that the soles of his shoes were pointing towards me.
‘I have here a letter from Mother Sylvester at St Felix’s.’
I had his number: he was a smart-arse. Granddad and I had come across a few of these blokes, mostly losers at the track, and tough-guy coppers. This was another one. He produced a sheet of paper and proceeded to read:
‘Dear Reverend Brother,
First, let me congratulate you on your appointment to the position of College Disciplinarian. I am sure you will have the boys eating out of your hand in no time.
This note is just to introduce to you a lad from our school who I understand will be joining you this term.’
He fixed a Sicilian eye on me.
‘That boy is you.’
He continued to read.
‘Mmm, let’s see: … disturbing background … death of his brother seems to have had a deleterious effect on his attitude … has a tendency to lie and feign illness … has destroyed school property … should be in an institution … comes from a criminal family …’
He read on in silence for a minute, then carefully folded the letter and put it in a secret black pocket.
‘The Reverend Mother says your family have a long history of association with the worst elements of Richmond society, and that an example should be made of you. And that is just what I intend to do.’
He got up and slowly walked around the desk and stood close to me. He was breathing deeply, and his breath smelt of corned beef and pickle sandwich — on any other day it would be an automatic six.
I thought this was all a bit stiff, a bloke’s past following him from one school to another. I felt that I should say something in my defence, especially as I had not been invited to.
‘Some of that isn’t really tr—’
That’s as far as I got. I know he hit me, but I didn’t see it coming. There was a loud noise, darkness, then nothing. Then the smell of the dusty floorboards, and another smell that was inside my head somewhere, which I realise was the same smell you get when you think the Big Dipper has come off the rails, and you’re going to see God. It was terror.
A beefy hand grabbed me by the clothes and wrenched me to my feet. The world was definitely on the move. I thought I’d had one of my turns, but I didn’t feel nauseo
us, and that was always the case. As the feeling of general numbness was replaced by pain in my face, I managed to refocus on the man in front of me. Brother Ignatius was now breathing loudly — it was definitely corned beef and pickle.
‘You were not asked to speak, Blayney.’
He grabbed me by the shirt and marched me out into the quadrangle. It turned out that the boys, hundreds of them, had not gone inside but had been kept waiting in the stinking hot sun for the public execution of your pathetic narrator. He dragged me, still half stunned and barely able to walk, up onto a rostrum and made the following short announcement.
‘I am going to make an example of this boy.’
He then produced a strap made of layered lino, about half an inch thick, grabbed me by the wrist, and said, ‘Hold out your hand.’
I paused, in the hope that I might have a seizure or a heart attack — anything in that line would have done. He smacked me hard across the back of the head with the strap. With my head ringing, I opened my hand. His first blow was so fast, the air whistled. When the strap landed, I couldn’t believe that so much pain could be caused so suddenly without a lot of blood being involved. My hand closed all by itself, and his next stroke was upwards against my knuckles and designed to force my hand to open. And so on. After a while I lost count, and after a few twitches, which were ignored, I disappeared.
When I woke up I was in hospital. I knew it was the Epworth, as I’d been admitted so many times in the past year I was practically famous. I knew where I was even before I opened my eyes: there were the distant clatters, the funny smells, and the bed itself, into which I had been sealed in a way that only a nurse can achieve, as if she’d used a soldering iron. I opened my eyes and found Mum sitting next to me. She was unhappy, and I knew why without asking: she’d had to leave work early for the umpteenth time to see what it was now. She didn’t say anything for a long while, just looked at me with hard eyes.
I didn’t ask any questions. I had got into so much strife over the last year that conversation was pointless.
‘I hope you’re happy,’ she finally said.