by Peter Twohig
‘What kind?’
I had heard from Aunty Betty, the person who Tom and I thought might have started World War II, that ladies always know what kind of baby they’re going to have.
‘I don’t know; whatever God gives us.’
God again. I didn’t like where this was going already, and felt like telling Mum that messing around with God could only bring bad luck and probably heartbreak. But she was off with the fairies, and smiling at me as if I was Princess Panda and had just told her that she had won a set of luggage on the Darrods Wheel. I had a thought.
‘Mum, what if he gives us twins?’
Mum kept smiling, but now her dial looked like it did the day Aunty Betty found an earring in her pavlova.
‘You would have to say that.’
Granddad came in just then, and kissed us both on the hair. I’d never seen him do that before and I was impressed, as everyone knew that was how people got hair-lips.
‘So, you’ve been eating Italian food, have you? What was it like, then?’ said Mum.
I wanted to tell Mum that it was only the best food I’d ever tasted in my life, bar none, that’s all. But she was still smiling like Loretta Young introducing a guest, so I decided to tell a white lie, which is always okay when you tell it to a copper, a fireman, or your mum.
‘It wasn’t a patch on yours, Mum.’
Aunty Daffy spilt some of her grog — a confessable sin in Richmond.
Mum made her mouth into a straight line, and turned to Granddad.
‘I wonder which side of the family he got that from. Now, ice-cream?’
‘You bet. What flavour?’
‘Neapolitan.’
‘Bewdy.’
After school on Monday, I went down the hill to Raffi’s place, to see how he was getting on. I took the tram I would have gone home on every day if I hadn’t moved. My best friends were on it, and MBF was also there, telling some kids from our school how I broke Oby’s nose, as if they hadn’t already heard it a dozen times.
‘So then Oby says: “Oh really?” And Blayney says: “Yeah, really.” And Oby says: “You wanna try it?” And Blayney says: “Yeah, I wanna try it.” And Oby says: “Ten quid says you can’t beat me.” And Blayney says: “Let’s make it twenny quid — or are ya gutless?”’
And so on. It was sickening, and I could tell that the others were just as embarrassed as I was. Suddenly, one of the other kids, who were all older than us, said: ‘I suppose you think you’re a big man, Blayney. Well, my old man reckons your old man pissed off because he couldn’t stand the sight of you anymore, and your grandfather’s a jailbird, and was put in prison for killing some bloke, and your mum’s up the duff to the garbage man. And —’
As curious as I was to find out what came after ‘And —’ I was not going to sit there and take that, especially as I’d had to pay fourpence of my hard-earned cash to get on. I got up slowly, mainly because the tram was rocking like mad, and lurched over to the kid, who was a lot bigger than me, and was sitting down with his mates. He stopped and looked at me, thinking he was safe sitting down. I kicked him in the shins as hard as I could, as Granddad had told me that kicking doesn’t usually achieve much unless you hit a vital spot, and I was hoping the shins were a vital spot.
The boy let out a mighty scream and bent double, so that I could have had my pick of vital spots. But I was thrown off the tram, which the conductor stopped between stops, just for me. In fact, we were all thrown off, plus a few kids from Abbotsford Tech who happened to be sitting with us. I was the last to go. The conductor grabbed my arm and asked for my name. I said: ‘Matthew Foster.’ He told me he was going to be in touch with our principal.
The kids were impressed with the way I had kicked the big kid, and agreed that he deserved it. I said I was sure that everyone would see it that way, especially Brother Timothy.
I was still wearing my St Dominic’s uniform when I knocked on the back door of Raffi’s place. Raffi’s mum hadn’t arrived home, but Raffi was there, still wearing his high school uniform.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. You?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I heard from Tina that you went over to her house.’
‘Not exactly. Mario met me down the street and took me back to his place.’
‘It’s the same place.’
‘I know, but I didn’t go over there because it was Tina’s place.’
‘I know that. Your girlfriend’s Mona De Coney.’
‘Yeah, how did you know that?’
‘Mona told Tina, and Tina told me. And she told me what happened over at her place.’
‘I was upset.’
‘I know what it’s like. I cried all night when Chrissy died.’
‘What, Chrissy your cousin?’
‘Yeah, she lived next door.’
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Yeah. Sometimes. Do you miss your brother?’
‘Yeah. Sometimes. Am I allowed to come in?’
‘Yeah, why wouldn’t you be?’
‘Because …’
‘Because your mum kicked me out of your place.’
‘Yeah. It’s because you look like me. I think it reminds her of Tom … my brother.’
‘That’s funny, you don’t remind my mum of Chrissy.’
We looked at each for a minute and started laughing and wrestling. We were still wrestling when Mrs Radion came home. She grabbed hold of us and started wrestling the both of us and laughing.
‘So what are you doing here? Gabbie Camponi told me you shot through to her place. My cooking not good enough for you? Or was the attraction the lovely Tina?’ She grabbed Raffi in a headlock. ‘Eh? Eh?’
‘Neither, Mrs Radion.’
‘Oh, I know. I’m just having a lend of you. Raffi told me what happened at your place. I’m terribly sorry for you both. I s’pose you’ll have to give your mother time to get used to the idea.’
I had no idea which idea she was talking about, because there were a lot of them going around just then, and I’d lost count. But I knew the appropriate response.
‘Yeah.’
‘Now, who’s for a beer? No one? Fair enough, I’ll have one meself. It’s the quick and the dead around here. You two will have to be happy with Vegemite on toast.’
We looked at each other. In that moment, I saw what Mum had seen, what Mrs Radion was talking about, not just a kid who looked a hell of a lot like me, but the reason that kid looked a lot like me, the thing about him that I’d never been able to put my finger on, the Tom thing. I saw it, but Raffi did not. I know he did not because his gaze was one of calmness, like Audie Murphy before he took on a whole company of Germans. He was staring at me because he could, because we knew each other well enough to do it.
But I was looking at him with a feeling in my stomach, like the lift just went down, but the lift driver didn’t say ‘Going down’ first. Raffi had only met Tom once, for a few minutes, but I had spent weeks with Raffi. And my brain had finally made the connection. Raffi broke the staring thing, and ran off to the fridge to organise a snack. I was paralysed, and became aware that my gob had opened all by itself, which Granddad says you should never let the punters see. The connection had electrocuted my brain. Slowly, I turned towards Mrs Radion, who had been watching the whole thing. She sighed and made the frog mouth, only gently.
My conversation with Mum made it easier for me to be at home, and I also noticed that Granddad was home to stay. I wondered if this meant that the briefcase had been safely stashed and Granddad and Uncle Seamus were home and hosed and had finished their secret stuff. So I asked him.
‘Granddad, did you manage to stash the briefcase in a safe place?’
‘I don’t want to hear about that flamin’ briefcase again … unless Sanderson or someone else mentions it to you. Then I need you to give me the whisper.’
‘I’m worried, that’s all, because now that Keith hasn’t got it, his dad might shoot through without him.’
‘That’s something that neither of us can do anything about. We’ll just have to see how things turn out. Either way, it’s not your business. Besides, it looks like his aunty’s in charge now.’
‘What about those blokes who followed me?’
‘I’ve had a word in the proper quarters and put a stop to that. Providing you keep your nose clean you should be okay.’
I was always amazed at how many people Granddad knew. Mr Sanderson had told me a few months before that I was like the hub of a wheel, because I was connected to so many other local people. But when Granddad said that, I saw that it was really him who was the hub of the wheel, though he was keeping his mouth closed about what it all had to do with him and Uncle Seamus, who I’d always thought had a screw loose, but now wasn’t so sure.
‘Granddad, I have to find Keith, aunty or no aunty.’
‘Do you think I haven’t had a look around? He’s got to come to the surface some time or other. And when he does, we’ll be waiting. Then he’ll be safe.’
‘I don’t think he wants to be safe. I think he wants to be with his dad.’
‘I doubt whether that’s going to happen. Why don’t you concentrate on being twelve?’
‘Because I’ve got to save him.’
‘You should stop all this: you’ll only make yourself sick.’
This was the new way everyone had of telling me to stop doing something, instead of the usual ‘stop it or you’ll get a sore’.
‘Granddad, I know why I look like Raffi.’
He looked away and had a little think.
‘Who told ya?’
‘No one. I just suddenly realised it.’
‘Fair enough; I suppose it was staring you in the face. And you were never slow off the mark. Best keep quiet about it.’
‘Dad knows too.’
‘Yes, yes. Just say nothin’ to nobody. What does Raffi think about it?’
‘He doesn’t know.’
‘One day he will. In the meantime, keep it to yourself.’
42 D-Day
Some days are light, and some are heavy. That Friday was heavy. It shouldn’t have been: there was no school for any of the kids in Melbourne, as the temperature was expected to top a hundred and five, and people were dying like flies all over the city. In fact, earlier that morning I served at the Mass of a visiting priest, Father Green, an old guy who was about the same age as the temperature that morning, who couldn’t wait to cark it as soon as he got back to the presbytery. I could see him sort of melting during the Mass. By the time Communion rolled around — I was the only person in the church apart from Mrs Vassalo, who didn’t really count, as she went to Communion every day of her life, and was planning to make the Pope look like a wimp — he was legless, not from the grog but from the heat, and I had to lug him around like a sack of briquettes. We didn’t even give Mrs V Communion, as Father was unable to talk, so I helped him from the church, vestments and all, not really giving a bugger. Mrs Moran and I laid him on his bed, and, after mumbling something about Brunswick, he dropped off the perch.
Now I sat at the table and thought about corn flakes and the fact that they tasted better as you got closer to the bottom of the box, and wondered if it had anything to do with the footy cards they put in there. It was no good: the heaviness kept creeping into the kitchen, which was weird, because the monster who roams our kitchen doing evil things to food — I call her the Creature of the Green Enamel Oven — had got up early and gone into work for a shift and a half, a bit of overtime. Those shifts only came along once in a blue moon, so she was keen to make a few extra quid, even though Granddad told her they didn’t need the money. But while having Mum out of the house felt good, it didn’t make the heaviness go away.
Granddad was always flush. When he was young he lived in America — in Hollywood — and started a stunt-riding company, because he knew all about horses, from the war. Anyway, the stunt company sort of grew, and was still growing. He told me that his company had cornered the movie horse market, and I would never see a movie with horses in it that he didn’t make a quid from. Hence the dough. This was something he hardly ever talked about, like his adventures in the war, and you practically had to torture him to get him to cough up any intelligence. But Mum liked to pay her own way.
Plus, Aunty Queenie had been in America with him, and it had something to do with her. I found this out by grilling Aunty Queenie when Granddad once left me at her place while he went to see a man in Balaclava about a load of something nobody wanted anymore.
‘Aunty Queenie, can I ask you a few questions about the old days?’
‘Hello, here’s trouble.’
‘No, really, nothing serious.’
‘Why don’t you wait till your Granddad comes back from … um —?’
‘Aunty Queenie, I know where he’s gone.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing to you.’
‘Barney says I’m getting a rounded education.’
‘Yes, well, Barney could do with a smack in the ear.’
‘Anyway, what I was wondering about was the time you and Granddad were in America.’
‘Hah, those were the days. We went to every decent boxing match in all the big cities: New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St Louis. Then we went to the West: that’s where the real money was.’
‘What was in the West?’
‘Hollywood! That’s where I got married, you know.’
‘Wow, Hollywood!’
‘Yes, but it never took. I haven’t seen him since.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Bit of a stickybeak today, aren’t we? Rollo Brik.’
‘You mean you were Mrs Brik.’
‘They have some very strange names in America. Hey, you like movies, don’t you?’
‘You mean pictures?’
‘That’s right. Well, Rollo used to make them.’
‘Wow! Which ones?’
‘None you would have seen — it was a long time ago.’
‘Did you have any kids?’
I had once seen an old picture Granddad had of her and a kid. For a second I thought I was onto something, but it was no dice.
‘Too many questions.’
So what I knew on this heavy Friday morning were the following things: one, it was as hot as Johnnie Ray; two, something exciting was going to happen; and three, I was going to solve the problem of what to do with Flame Boy once and for all. I felt like one of those ladies who could tell the future. All I needed was a crystal ball and a voice like Valentine Popovich’s mother and I was away. It was the same feeling I had when South beat the crap out of Collingwood — at Collingwood. I thought: Hello, I’ve got the funniest feeling. It’s like just before you chuck. You think: I don’t reckon I could get odds against heaving right now. So my brain, which has let me down more times than a sideshow spruiker, now felt like it had just had a grease and oil change and was cruising for once.
All this occurred to me as I stepped out of the front door and was hit by the Friday heat, which any kid will tell you is the worst heat of the week. But the hotness of it blasted my brain into gear, and took some of the weight out of the heaviness.
I walked up to Church Street, and looked up at the spire of St Dominic’s, once the tallest structure in Australia, Brother Gabriel said. He told us the Archbishop built it that way to put the wind up the Proddies — and it worked like a beauty. He said they still haven’t got over the shock. And then, just for good measure, they built St Patrick’s Cathedral, which was as big as the South Melbourne footy ground. Tom and I had been baptised in there. I wondered which of us they poured water on first, because he would have been the first one to qualify for Heaven. Probably Tom, because he ended up there first. Suddenly, as I looked up, I was inspired: I suddenly realised that being inspired was a holy experience, from God, and that was why they were always putting ‘spires’ on churches and forever going on about it in Mass. That was the true light that l
ighteth every man who cometh into the world. That was me. I was here, but where was the bloody light, for God’s sake? As usual, I realised, I would have to do everything myself.
Raffi and I had a plan for the day, and it was too good to waste on worrying about the temperature. Basically, we didn’t care how many people dropped dead right in front of us, clogging up the footpaths and tram lines: we were on a mission. First, we were going to the pictures in the city, to see The Shaggy Dog. We knew that the picture theatre would be the coolest place in Melbourne. Then we were going to the City Baths, to get cold, wet and full of lollies. Then for Raffi it was home you go; the Spirit of Progress had his own secret mission.
Today was no ordinary Friday: it was the day of the Volga’s departure. And I had got Barney to show me how to find out what time it was leaving, and sworn him to secrecy. I would have made him swear on my cat’s skull, but I didn’t want him to think I was weird or anything, so I took his word. Besides, I had the funniest feeling he didn’t know much about the Volga Caper, Granddad being a pretty secretive bloke himself, and having a rule about secrets: that if more than one other bloke knows it, it might as well be on the front page of the Sporting Globe.
I knew from Granddad’s conversation with the wharf boss that Mr Kavanagh wasn’t going to board until the last minute. The general view was that he would shoot through to Russia without his son, and I was inclined to agree, even though I’d led Flame Boy to believe that his old man was absconding with him to Albury. Still, I was prepared to give Mr K every opportunity to prove everyone wrong. The Daffy Plan may or may not have been a good one: Daffy may have been an aunty, but she was still an adult, and capable of letting us down wholesale. As far as I was concerned, my Albury plan was probably going to be the one adopted.
But in the meantime, it was off to the Globe. The way I looked at it, a secret agent is no good to anyone if he’s half dead from dehydration, thirst and heat exhaustion, not to mention boredom — and boredom was a monster that was always ready to jump out and bite your average kid. On the way in, we counted cars — Raffi counted Holdens, and I counted Fords — and spat on any car that tried to pass us, unless we liked the look of it, and providing it was close enough. But it turns out that it’s bloody hard to spit on anything at all when there’s a heat wave on, let alone moving cars.