The Winning Side Page 10
‘I’ll get the farm’, he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Charlie, come on. What’s the matter? Did you lose on me? I’ll fix you up.’
‘Get stuffed.’
‘Charlie, it’s a racket. I just got on the winning side for a change.’
‘I know, I know. I just thought this was different.’
‘No’, he said. ‘Not different. Just the same.’
FIGHTING CHARLIE
1
I still had nearly £900 in the bank a year after Speedy Kinnane dissolved our partnership. I was healthy and fit, I had a good Austin A40 and I was sick of Sydney. Under pressure from the deputy editor, I wrote an article on boxing for the News that was so full of lies I resigned my job when it was published. When I went in to pick up my pay a week or so later they handed me a letter along with the money.
The letter was from Allan Benton, a cousin. I’d met him once when I’d gone travelling after the war, and we’d got on well. Allan was about my age, the oldest son of one of my mother’s sisters. He’d been in the army. The letter was short: he was running a fishing boat out of Coburg Heads and he needed a partner.
Coburg Heads had been a special place for me ever since I spent a weekend there during the war. The ocean rolls in and the hills rise up behind, and there are so many trees it feels as if the town has grown up in the middle of a forest. I gave Allan’s offer about half a minute’s thought. A friend at the paper took over the flat; I packed my books and clothes into the car, filled up with petrol and headed north.
I made Port Macquarie, about halfway between Sydney and Coburg Heads, in the late afternoon. Being out of the city felt good and staying in New South Wales felt safe. I was uneasy about going as far as Queensland—too many memories, too many knocks. It was October, getting warm but before the real heat set in with the flies and mosquitoes and fires. I made camp beside the car off the road a bit north of Port Macquarie. I had basic camping gear—a groundsheet, blankets, tin plates, water in a jerry can, tea in a jar. I made a fire and ate beans and sausages, drank tea with rum in it. After the meal I smoked in the dark and listened to the sea. The bush buzzed and squeaked around me but the sound of the sea was strongest. I felt good about going to work on the water.
I started early, sailed along in the A40; and drove into Coburg Heads in the middle of the afternoon. All the trees I remembered were there; there was an avenue of cedars on the way in, trees along the main street, trees in the back and front yards of the houses. It was Wednesday and the town was quiet. I drove to the pub and felt the old, tender feelings when I got out of the car. A group of men were sitting and standing near the doorway; a couple of them moved over closer so I couldn’t walk straight into the bar. I locked the car carefully; it was dusty but a good car. I’d shaved and my clothes were clean. I took off my sunglasses, polished them on a clean handkerchief, put them back on and jumped up over the gutter on to the footpath.
‘Afternoon, gents.’
Two of them looked down into their glasses, one gazed out past me to the road. The oldest of them, a wide block of a man with sparse red hair and a flaming drinker’s face, looked at me as if I had a bone through my nose. He wore an RSL badge on the lapel of his tweed sports coat.
I looked directly at the badge. ‘Charlie Thomas’, I said. ‘Sergeant, Seventh Infantry—Egypt, Greece, New Guinea. I’ve driven up from Sydney and I want a drink.’
He was still hostile, but he moved aside.
‘We don’t serve Abos’, the barman said.
I put a fiver on the bar. ‘I’m not an Abo, mate, I’m an Indonesian student. Give us a beer and I’ll tell you about the whores in Jakarta.’
He looked puzzled but he pulled the beer. I drank it quickly and ordered another. Two men standing on the other side of the bar watched me as I pocketed my change. There was a sign over the bar advertising Craven Filter cigarettes. I’d never smoked a filter tip. I beckoned the barman over and bought a packet. He watched me light up; the smoke was dry but smooth.
‘By the way’, I said. ‘Can you tell me where I can find Allan Benton?’
He snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it! That’s who you reminded me of. More trouble.’
‘Why trouble?’
He wouldn’t answer that, but told me I could find Allan on his boat about half a mile up the river.
‘What’s the boat’s name?’
‘Koori.’
‘Up the river ? Not at the town jetty?’
‘Right.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll see.’
The Koori was a beaten-up old fishing smack that had had a lot of loving care recently. The fresh paint, the new rope and the polished metal couldn’t disguise her old timbers though, or her old-fashioned lines. A longer name had been painted out and her new one stencilled in big and bold on both bows and across her stern. She was tied up at a small jetty along with some other old boats, less well-cared for.
‘Allan! Allan Benton!’
He came up on to the deck from below and when I saw him plainly I got an enormous shock. We hadn’t met since a couple of years after the war, twelve or thirteen years back, and we’d both changed. The result was that we were like twins. He was a bit taller and heavier than me but about the same colour and with very similar features—broken, flattened noses and heavy eyebrows. He stopped wiping his hands and stood with the rag flopping loosely.
‘Shit’, he said. ‘Charlie.’
‘Got your letter.’
‘You didn’t waste any bloody time.’
‘You got me at the right moment. Can I come aboard or whatever you call it?’
‘Shit. Yeah, sorry. Come on. Gawd, do you know we look like bloody twins?’
I hopped down on to the boat and we shook hands. The deck was almost fussily tidy, which worried me a little, I wondered whether a working boat should look like that. There was only a faint smell of fish.
Allan seemed a bit tongue-tied as he showed me over the boat, and we got settled in chairs near the stern.
There was a makeshift canvas awning over the rear section and I could see nets tidied away, gaffs and other equipment neatly stacked. We sat for a minute without speaking, and then Allan muttered something about tea and dived below. I climbed back on to the jetty and went to the car. When Allan came back with two mugs of tea I had the rum bottle ready. I put two good slugs in and we touched mugs.
‘Up the ninth divvy’, Allan said.
I gave him one of my Craven Filters and he took it warily.
‘Let’s skip all the shit about how well we look and how the aunties are doing, Allan. Why aren’t you out fishing?’
‘Can’t.’
‘Why not? Licence trouble?’
He shook his head. ‘Can’t get into the co-op. Can’t get the fuckin’ fish processed, iced-up and all that.’
‘Why?’
‘No Abos.’
‘How long’ve you been at this game?’
‘Few years.’
‘Get along all right before?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well?’
‘Changed the name of the boat, took on a few of our blokes as crew.’
‘Shoved it up them you mean?’
‘If you like.’
I shrugged. ‘You’re a mug. Give it away. You won’t do any good.’
He finished the cigarette, and stubbed it out carefully on a much-painted metal fitting. He set it down beside his mug, all very stubborn and deliberate.
‘No’, he said quietly. ‘I’ve got to make a go of it this way. I reckon we can do it. Just take a bit of time and some fucking brains.’
And that was it. Allan’s idea was that I could put up some money to tide him over and work on the fishermen to accept him.
‘Use influence’, he said. ‘Get something going with the local rag.’
‘Allan, I was a sub-editor in Sydney. I wrote a bit of sports stuff occasionally.’
‘You know the game, speak the lang
uage. Politics.’
Just before dark the two crewmen came on board carrying dinner—a big tailer that they’d caught up river. Colin and Bob were in their early twenties; fifteen years younger than Allan and me. Colin had had a year at a teacher’s college on an Aboriginal scholarship and he was full bottle on the Aboriginal struggle.
‘It’ll be the issue of the sixties’, he told me.
‘More like the eighties’, I said. ‘If then.’
‘The war’s been over a long time’, he said. ‘What did you blokes fight for anyway?’
I looked across at Allan, who was cleaning the fish, tipping the guts over the side. He slid the knife expertly through the flesh and I was thinking that this was why I’d come, to fish and talk like middle-aged men. Allan said ‘Good point’, and my temper went up.
‘What’s good about it?’ I snapped. ‘The war was something else, international.’ I felt the weakness of my position. ‘These things take time.’
Bob was fat, and had already drunk more than his share of the rum. He seemed keen to back Colin up on everything.
‘Thought you said this bloke’d help, Allan’, he growled.
‘Thought he might’, Allan said quietly.
Allan fried the fish on a primus stove, and we ate bread with it and drank more laced tea. It got dark, the river slapped the boat and she rocked gently.
‘What do the people in the town reckon?’ I asked Allan.
‘Not that many of them. Fishing people are against, butter factory people don’t care. The rest run the holiday side of things — boats, shops and that.’
‘What about them?’
‘They don’t mind a few boongs around for local colour’, Colin said. ‘But they don’t want us to be part of things.’
‘Right’, Bob said.
‘Have you got anyone on your side at all?’
‘School teacher’, Allan said. ‘Good bloke.’ They exchanged looks, and I sighed and felt irritated. It was a familiar situation. They knew things they wouldn’t tell you. You were supposed to prove yourself by guessing or finding out. Mostly, I couldn’t be bothered. But it was a wonderful night, mild and filled with comforting sounds and smells. I couldn’t go back to the city and I still wanted to work with Allan.
‘I’ll snoop around’, I said. ‘Might come up with something. Can I sleep on the boat tonight?’
‘You can’, Allan said.
I spent several frustrating hours the next day in Coburg Heads and the bigger town across the river, Bustard Bay. I used the telephone to get appointments with the editor of the local paper, the head of the fisherman’s co-operative and the top man in the union that covered the fishermen. I described myself as a journalist from Sydney, and got a polite reception until we came face to face. Then I got the freeze.
I was unlocking my car in the main street when a policeman approached me.
‘Is this your car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s see the registration papers.’
I showed it to him, along with my licence. He scrutinised the papers and then dropped them on the bonnet. The licence slid off on to the ground. He ignored it and walked around the car. He lifted one of the windscreen wipers and twisted it around.
‘That looks crook’, he said. ‘Let’s see your spare.’
I opened the boot and he looked in at the tyre.
‘Bit bare. I’m putting an unroadworthy order on this vehicle.’
‘Can I drive it to a garage?’
‘I don’t think you’ll find a garage here with what you want.’
‘What do I do then?’
‘Suit yourself, but if I see you driving that crate around here I’ll arrest you.’
I stood in the street tossing the keys up in my hand. It was rougher than the other things, the slow service in the shops, refusals in pubs, the looks. I realised how little I came up against the problem since my days in the army, mainly because I kept my head down. In Bondi, where I lived, there were lots of Maoris and Greeks, I worked in a tolerant trade and I had no kids at school. I felt angry and vulnerable, and a long way from the safety of home.
A man walked across the street towards me; he was coughing and looking at the ground. This’ll be the schoolie, I thought, and reluctant isn’t the word.
‘Mr Thomas?’ It was the first ‘Mr’ that day.
‘Yes.’
He held out his hand. ‘Ian Harry, I’m …’
‘School teacher’, I said.
‘Right. How’d you know?’
‘Guessed.’ I put the keys away, and looked at the twisted windscreen wiper.
‘Thought I might be able to help.’
‘If you know somewhere a man could get a bloody drink that’d be a big help.’
‘Football club’, he said. ‘My car’s over here.’
I followed him across the street to a Morris Minor. He was tall, about six feet, and thin. His hair was wavy and he wore it pretty long for a man of about thirty. It had a reddish tinge. His clothes were the standard school teacher’s gear—slacks and a sports coat. They were gingery like his hair and the general effect was of a man trying to tone himself down.
He was a bad driver, like me, and couldn’t spare any attention for talking. Near the edge of the town, fringed by trees, was a football ground. The season was over but the posts were still up. Harry drove to a low, wooden building with peeling paint like the goal posts and fence.
‘Serve darkies here, do they?’
He flushed. ‘Some. Have to.’
There were a few cars parked around, a couple of utes and two or three motor bikes. The building held the meeting rooms, a rough gym and the watering hole.
There was a trestle table with a bench seat under the window and I sat there while Harry went to the bar. The men nodded at him and concentrated on their beer. They were all leaning in the traditional way; a couple of them studied a racing form guide pinned to the wall, the rest looked out over the greying football ground. Harry came back with a jug and two middy glasses. He poured the beer and I gave him my last Craven Filter.
I studied him while we drank. He had deep-sunk, worried eyes, a broad nose and a good suntan with odd-looking white flecks across his face, like freckles in reverse. He drank fast, nervously.
‘How did you go at the newspaper?’ he asked.
‘Not interested.’
He nodded. ‘Thought not. What did Collins want—the copper?’
‘To see the last of me I reckon. Warning.’
I drank some beer. It was a good keg; cold, with the gas just right. ‘I don’t see what I can do. I think Allan’s going about it the wrong way.’
‘What’s the right way?’ He sounded bitter and hostile, involved.
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Take it quietly.’
‘Allan took it quietly for years. He was everyone’s favourite Abo.’
I shrugged again. ‘What’s it to you?’
He didn’t answer and we kept on drinking. It went on like that for over an hour. We talked about Allan in short bursts; I got rude and he went quiet. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and by the third jug I was suddenly drunk. He got drunk too, and when we staggered out of the club it was dark and he crashed into me.
‘Black bastard’, he slurred. ‘Can’t see you. You see me, Charlie?’
‘Not clear.’
He let out a bellow of drunken laughter. ‘That’s right’, he roared. ‘I can’t see you, you can’t see me. Too bloody black to see.’
He was too drunk to drive, but I was too drunk to stop him. He told me his house was only a mile away. It was a long mile; he wove through the streets like a man who’d forgotten the way. I wondered why I was going to his house.
He missed the driveway, and I bumped my head on the car roof as we jumped over the gutter. He missed the fence though. We sat in the stalled car and laughed and then a light came on in the house.
‘Ian! Ian, is that you?’
‘The wife’, he muttered.
Harry said, ‘Mary …’
Her voice sliced through the still night like a bird shrieking. ‘You bloody boong’, she screamed. ‘Oh, you dirty boong.’ I turned to look at Harry who stood still, dark and hunched just out of the light. A child came out of the door and she clutched it against her legs. ‘What about the children?’ she yelled. ‘How dare you bring your darkie mates here, you bloody boong.’
2
I was sitting in the bar of Young & Jackson’s Hotel in Melbourne when Ernie Evans came in with the news.
‘Rose is fighting a Jap’, he said.
I bought him a beer. ‘So what?’ I said.
‘Harada’s a Jap, it means they’re setting Lionel for the world title.’
I laughed. ‘They’ll have to hold it in Drouin.’
‘Ah, you’re a knocker, Charlie, always were. You be goin’ to the fight?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got my hands full just now.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Fair.’
We had another beer, and then Ernie hunched his shoulders up inside his jacket and tramped off into the cold Melbourne night. I nursed my dregs and thought back over the downhill slide that had got me there—the riot in Coburg Heads and the three months in gaol had started it. Allan lost his boat and I lost all my money. Back in Sydney I got involved with one lost cause after another. I was drinking hard, and confused a lot of the time. Finally I heard that the police had lined me up for a solid receiving charge. I hardly knew who or what was in my flat from one day to the next—crims, ex-crims, would-be crims, black, white and brindle. I had to get out of Sydney, and when the chance of a job in Melbourne came up I jumped at it.
It was the old army network that produced the job. An officer I’d served under spoke to someone who spoke to someone else. There was still an interview to get through after I arrived in Melbourne. I presented respectably and the desk man looked me over critically.