by Peter Twohig
But the sight of those trains took my mind back to the day when I actually started one up and drove it all the way from City Boys High to a place called GH, which I now know to be the basement of Government House. In fact, I’d give eight to five that all these railway lines ended up in somebody’s basement. This particular basement, for example, was the basement of HQ, which was probably someone’s headquarters.
That time, I, or rather Railwayman, was King of the Rails: I figured out how to work the train, drove it like a bat out of hell, and parked it at GH. That was where I knocked off the grog that made me sick all over Mum. When you’re a superhero you will eventually stand on other people’s toes, and you therefore have to learn to take the good with the bad — one of Aunty Queenie’s.
At Christmas and New Year, Mum reminded everyone in the family about that incident, predicting that I would end up like all the other Blayney men, which was unfair, as Uncle Frank, Aunty Betty’s husband, did not drink, because alcohol did something to him that Aunty Betty did not approve of (sorry, I don’t know what). But the family were not entirely disgraced, as Aunty Betty put away enough of the stuff for the both of them.
That day the year before, in the little train, I was flying, I was crazy, and I was living two lives, one for me and one for Tom. But something eventually snapped in my head and I had to stop being two people (more, if you count my superhero identities, and I did), simply because it was stopping me from being the best that I could. I was sorry to let Tom go, but there it is. Tom died that day, really.
Now, I was no longer trying to be Tom. Something new had happened to me instead: I had felt a kind of pain inside me. I knew it was my Tom pain, and that was all. It always felt worse when I was alone, like when I looked into the Myer’s window, and spoke to Tom; and it always felt less when I did kid stuff, like messing around with the Olympians. But it felt least when I was helping Flame Boy. And now I had lost him again.
However, James, having seen the trains, and getting probably his greatest thrill since his mother told him that he had a baby sister — I made that up — now voted that we close this meeting of the Mole Patrol, and go home.
‘James, James, James,’ I said, with a sigh. ‘Your true superhero sees a train parked unattended beneath the streets of Melbourne, a train that has probably been sitting there for years, and says to himself: “I wonder if this little ripper still works?” That’s your superhero. But your little bunny wabbit wuns away, hippety hop, to his’ — I was going to say mummy, but thought that would be unkind, as Wonder Woman was not really the mummy type — ‘toy train set.’
As I said this last bit, I reached in to the nearest train, and flicked the power switch to ON, hoping that my vast and mysterious experience of underground railways wouldn’t let me down. After all, it is God who dishes out life’s little successes and failures, and he owed me for nothing, if you don’t count killing my brother. Well, when I flicked that switch, red, white and green lights appeared all over the dashboard, and on the front of the train, like Santa’s sleigh. Once more I was … Railwayman!
Yes, Railwayman! Who lives in the drains and tunnels deep beneath the city, and drives his lovely green train around from one secret station to another, spoiling the plans of firebugs, police and beautiful women, who are only after him for his Briefcase of Mystery. Railwayman! Who, armed only with a pinch bar possessing strange powers, which he found in a railway shed, and sometimes accompanied by his faithful companions, Secret Agent Palmer and Zac the Wonder Dog, has taken a solemn vow to explore underground railways everywhere, and to see where they end up, in the hope that he will be able to use them to find his nemesis, the Traitor Fergus Kavanagh, and pack him and Flame Boy (popularly known as the Torch) off to Albury, the most boring town in Australia.
James’s eyes nearly fell out onto the tram tracks. Actually, so did mine, as I was only half expecting the old ON switch to work.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ said James.
‘First we have to see if it goes.’
‘Someone will come.’
‘We will say we were lost.’
He couldn’t think of an answer to that, so I pushed on.
‘We’ll say our father has one just like it.’
He looked as me as if I was loony.
‘We’ll say it started by itself, and we were just trying to stop it.’
While I was talking I had hopped into the loco, and pushed the pedal down a little. The whole train moved forwards a foot. James, who had one hand resting on it, nearly dropped dead. He had led a sheltered life over in Chapel Street, that’s for sure. A couple more months with the Olympians and he would be a new boy, and his mum would be sending me a thank-you card and awarding me the Wonder Woman Medal, Second Class. Or not.
But I had gone too far in the education of young James, who was within an ace of wetting his pants in terror. One step at a time.
‘I’m proud of you, Secret Agent Palmer. Time you got that Olympic Cross, I think. Now, no need to overdo things.’
I switched off the train.
‘Let’s go for a walk. We can take the train another time.’
We walked down the tunnel in the direction of VB, which was dimly lit as far as we could see, with James now hanging on to my explorer’s bag and me having to drag him along. I was just thinking that if the next station was Victoria Barracks, this was going to be one hell of a walk, when we suddenly came to a little tunnel to our left. As the tunnel we had been following was descending like mad, probably to go under the river, and as James was practically in tears, I gave him a yank as if he was a draught horse, and we took a left turn.
We walked right under Swanston Street, and trams banged and whined overhead, like a bunch of short-tempered monsters, and I felt that I was at home. Once across the street the tunnel turned left again and went off in an odd direction and ended up at a steep staircase. At the top was a door, not iron but wooden, with no lock, just a latch. On the other side of the door was a room, pitch dark. I turned on the torch. We were in a neat stone room with no furniture. It contained only a staircase and a door. I opened the door to the outside, and looked out. It was a lane.
‘Come on, young James. Time we found out where we ended up.’
We stepped into the lane, or rather, James pushed me out into it as if he had a Bengal tiger chasing him.
We were behind St Paul’s Cathedral, as it turned out, and just a quick stroll from Ryrie’s Gym, down on River Walk, and close to the tram terminus for Richmond. The day had started well for me. It was harder to tell with James, as he was still in shock. I reminded myself to scratch him from the fixture for my next trip down there, when Railwayman was planning to go for a longish train ride.
But first things first. We crossed over to Downyflake and bought a doughnut each — mine was pineapple, and James’s was chocolate. We tried to sit at a table but were thrown out, and had to be content with eating our victuals while sitting on the steps of Flinders Street Station.
‘So, Secret Agent Palmer, let’s play Spot the Plainclothes Copper. It’s a game my granddad taught me.’
‘What’s a plainclothes copper?’
I had a hard look at him to see if he was having me on, but he wasn’t.
‘It’s a policeman who doesn’t wear a police uniform, a detective.’
‘I don’t think detectives are police.’
Now I was confused. I mean, Granddad knew more about detectives than Bob Skilton knew about playing footy.
‘Some are: the really rotten ones, the ones who bash blokes, and kill them.’
‘Why do they do that?’
‘’Cos they’re bent.’
‘Then why don’t they get arrested?’
‘No one knows who they are, because of their plain clothes. That’s our job: to try and spot ’em.’
‘Fair enough. Wait till I tell Mum.’
‘Listen, Secret Agent Palmer. If you tell your mum that I taught you this game, she’ll murder you, then she’ll
murder me, then I’ll murder you.’
Being the head of a secret society is no picnic. Sometimes you have to be firm with the men.
I had been formulating a fiendish plan the whole time I had been with James, one which I could not carry out with him around. I wanted to explore the tunnels a bit more, but James was practically a nervous wreck, and needed a rest.
‘James, my boy, I have just remembered that I have to go over to St Francis’s to attend Mass for my Aunty Win, who’s having a big operation — several, in fact — ’cos I promised Mum. I clean forgot. Sorry. I’ll have to leave you to catch a tram back by yourself.’
Kids accept anything religious without question, and are trained not to ask questions about operations, so he just nodded, like a Shetland pony who has just had a five-year-old kid plonked on top of him. Besides, I was sure that young James had had enough excitement for one day — possibly for one year.
After saying goodbye, I was back up to Darrods, and within one minute flat had disappeared into the earth like a rabbit. This time I took the tunnel marked LA TROBE. I was aware that I had stopped thinking, and was being pulled along by some kind of magnetic light in my head, not one that I could see with my eyes. It was that longing I had felt on my first visit to Raffi’s place. I had been aware of it from time to time. And now the time had come again.
I walked along a little railway tunnel full of dull echoes of the streets above, and passed signs and side tunnels: LITTLE BOURKE ST, LONSDALE ST, LITTLE LONSDALE ST, and an arrow pointing right: MUSEUM, which I took. After a short distance, I came to steps marked MUSEUM, and stopped. The rails disappeared up a slight hill. I wondered what could be up there. What did any of it mean? Mr Sanderson had once explained to me that the tunnels under South Yarra were old war-time tunnels. But these tunnels were full of little trains carrying bags and things. My mind stopped working again, and I climbed the stairs, opened the door at the top, and walked through.
Straight away the smell of the place I was in changed from cold concrete to warm wood. More stairs, more doors, more stairs, more doors, until I opened a door into a large room full of the sorts of things that were on show in the museum, only these were not. And there were thousands of them. I wandered among them, in the soft light of the whitened glass windows that faced Little Lonsdale, and wondered why they were not in the museum, where it seemed to me they deserved to be. There was no movement or sound in that room, apart from me, and I was not worried about being found, as there were about fifty thousand things to duck behind, from Aboriginal shields to antique aeroplanes. At the far side of the room was a work area and a wall that could be folded back, like a concertina, and in that wall was a door, which I now opened.
On the other side of the door was the Australian History Room. Apart from a lot of old clothes and a few little aeroplanes the main thing in it was also the latest addition: the Melbourne Olympic exhibit. I stepped through the door and closed it behind me. I immediately felt as though I was home, and with old friends, not that I had a lot of those at home. I looked at the Torch, and it looked at me, and I got a taste like when you stick a Matchbox car in your mouth. There was a giant picture of Ron Clarke carrying it along, with sparks going all over the place, and lots of people in the background, blurred. I looked at every face carefully in case Tom was one of them. I decided that if I saw my own face, I would tell myself it was actually Tom’s. But Ron must have been in front of another bit of crowd just then. I wanted to touch the Torch, because I knew that Tom would, but I heard people in the adjoining gallery, so I decided to go out the way I had come in, the way the Phantom does. But touch it I knew I must.
39 The Brush People
The clippie on the Windsor tram seemed to be happy to hear that I was taking Zac to the blind people’s home to be trained as a guide dog. I realised that as long as I never got the same clippie twice, Zac could get away with murder. I stayed aboard all the way to Prahran, then hitched another short ride up High Street.
The people at the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind seemed pleased to be getting a visitor, and even happier to see Zac, who immediately started laughing like mad as if he owned the place. I had correctly guessed they were used to having Labradors around, and didn’t raise the usual objections of adults who come across dogs: you know, they’ll frighten the baby, they pinch things, they do stuff on the floor, and so on — sometimes you can’t shut them up. I had been worried about it being a Saturday, but the place was open for business and doing a brisk trade in helping blind people. The lady who met us, a nurse of some kind, took me and Zac to Mrs Kavanagh by a very mysterious route, sometimes up stairs, and sometimes down, sometimes up windy corridors, and sometimes outside for a moment, then back in again from one building to another. In view of Mrs Radion’s statement that the blind people weren’t prisoners, it seemed to me that the place was clearly designed to prevent them wandering off like baby ducks and being run over by the St Kilda Road traffic. We went past rooms full of blind people doing things I didn’t quite get, and at one stage a room full of girls who were all typing with a vengeance, even though it was a Saturday arvo.
In most of the rooms, there were wall to wall blind people. All kinds, shapes and sizes, and all ages. And they were quiet. They were like ghosts. They were all busy concentrating really hard on doing something or other, a different thing for each room.
When we eventually found Mrs K she was sitting in the middle of a huge pile of wooden brush handles and brush hairs, making brushes. It looked as though she had made about fifty thousand of these brushes since breakfast, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that she was a contender for the Middleweight Brushmaking crown.
The lady who was with me made me wait at the door and went over to Mrs K to tell her I was there. Meanwhile, I went over to the broom section and watched a bloke putting straw into brooms. It did not look very exciting, and he seemed to have figured out how to do it. I looked around the big room, which was apparently the broom and brush factory. I was glad those blind people couldn’t see what was being done to them. I would have gone nuts, and I was willing to believe a lot of these people did just that. There was no Eddie Cochran, no Buddy Holly, no music at all. There was hardly a sound, just a lot of swishing and knocking noises.
While I was standing there, watching a youngish bloke make brooms, he suddenly piped up.
‘Come to visit Mrs Kavanagh, have you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good on ya. She’s been having a pretty hard time since she’s been here.’
‘Has she been missing her son?’
‘I don’t know about that. No, mate, I’m talking about the grog. This place is totally dry.’
Barney had once told me about places like this. (‘Don’t ever let the bastards lock you up, young Blayney,’ he said. ‘Those jails are dry as a nun’s bath mat.’)
‘Sounds horrible. Is this what you do all the time?’
‘Yep, brooms. I wouldn’t mind so much, but they’re all the same bloody colour.’
I looked at the brooms, then at the bloke, who was only a few years older than Gazza Turner. His hair was combed the same way as Gazza and his mates: straight back at the sides, like James Dean. I looked at his socks, hopefully. They’d given him plain grey. I was embarrassed: he deserved better; he deserved Day-Glo.
He stuck his hand out.
‘Weedo Huxtable. Call me Huxy. Or better still, Weedo. Just don’t call me late for dinner.’
I introduced myself.
‘See they let you bring ya dog in. How’d ya manage that?’
‘He looks like a guide dog.’
I introduced Zac, and Weedo patted him.
‘Fair enough.’
I was getting the big hoy from the Blind Institute lady.
‘They want me; I’ll see you later.’
I took Zac over to Mrs K, and the lady put her hand on my shoulder.
‘Here is your young man.’
‘Hello,’ said Mrs K.
&nb
sp; ‘Pull up a chair.’
I sat down beside her.
‘How’s Keith doing without me? I hope he’s not being a nuisance.’
I could see that Mrs K was as sober as a seagull, so I knew she would be perfectly well aware of how Keith was doing, news of her family having lately replaced the cricket scores.
‘I’m keeping an eye on him. I’m trying to get him to go with his Aunty Daphne up to Wodonga, but he’s not keen.’
‘That makes two of us. But we will, I suppose.’
‘Mrs Kavanagh, if I can find Keith and bring him to see you, will you tell him it’s okay to go up to Aunty Daphne’s? He doesn’t know what to do.’
She sighed. Already, she was running out of steam. She was having a hard time without the grog.
‘Yes, all right. Look, I really appreciate you coming all this way. Tell Keith I love him, will you? And tell him I’m off the bottle.’
‘Yeah, I will.’
She reached out a hand. ‘Hello, Zac.’ She patted Zac, who remembered her quite well — it’s all a part of the training. This was the reason I had brought Zac: he was the dame softener, though Mrs K looked like she’d already had the stuffing knocked right out of her.
I was pretty amazed that she had remembered Zac’s name, as she had met him during the Great Kavanagh House Fire of 1959, when she had a few things on her plate, to say nothing of being full as a tick. For a second I thought I caught a glimpse of the Daffy in her. Then it was gone.
‘Mrs Kavanagh, there’s something else — it’s important. It’s about Mr Kavanagh.’