Читать книгу: «Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar»
Julian Corkle
Is A Filthy Liar
D.J. Connell
To my mother Marion, who first got me interested in funny
business, and to my sister Jocelyn, who’s never stopped
laughing at me.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Author’s Note
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Authors Note
Dag: 1. Australian for the dung that collects on a sheep’s backside. 2. An unfashionable, unappealing person. 3. A fool.
‘Look at that dag with the mullet cut!’
1
Ulverston
Colleen Corkle knew her son had star quality from the moment he appeared. She was straining forward on the delivery bed when his head popped out. The baby’s eyelids flicked open, and in the instant before the nurse scooped him up, his eyes locked on hers. Colleen recognised the spark in the murky depths of the new irises and smiled. As the baby was whisked away, he started wailing.
‘Listen to those lungs!’ The doctor finished examining the newborn and handed him back to the nurse. ‘Another Sinatra!’
The baby continued to wail as he was carried to a room down the corridor where the nurse wiped him clean and dressed him in a muslin gown.
‘For goodness’ sake, shut that baby up!’ A nursing sister poked her head in the doorway. She was frowning. ‘We’ve got a woman in labour next door.’
The nurse hurriedly wrapped a blanket around the baby and carried him back to the birthing room. Colleen was still on the delivery bed being cleaned up. She was exhausted but the hormones surging through her system made her smile when she heard the baby’s cries. He was thrust into her arms.
‘Will you be breastfeeding?’ The nurse had to shout to be heard.
‘No, there’ll be none of that. Formula like the others.’
‘Right then, I’ll get his bottle.’
The nurse scurried out of the room. Colleen held the baby up and looked into his eyes again. The spark was still there. Something hot and liquid stirred behind her ribs. She pressed her lips to his forehead and drew in the new animal smell of him. With expert hands, she placed him face down on her chest and began rubbing his back. He kept crying.
‘That’s my boy.’ Colleen giggled. ‘You show them.’
The nurse reappeared with a bottle of formula and the baby was flipped over into the fold of his mother’s arm. Colleen tested the warmth of the liquid on her wrist and then thrust the teat into the open mouth. The baby’s lips moved against the rubber and encircled the tip. They tugged tentatively. The cries stopped abruptly and he began to feed.
The nurse wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and let out a sigh. ‘Thank goodness he’s a strong sucker.’
Jim was at the sports desk of The Bugle when the nurse called to say he was the father of a healthy baby boy. In 1965, a new father’s place was not at the side of his wife. His place was down at the King’s Arms. Jim made an announcement and was patted on the back by his colleagues. He arranged to meet them later at the pub and knocked off work early.
He was standing at the bar studying the Punter’s Gazette when a small, elderly woman eased herself on to a barstool beside him. He hadn’t seen her in the King’s Arms before. She was dressed in a floral frock and multicoloured hand-knitted cardigan. The knitted hat on her head resembled a tea cosy. Jim was idly looking for spout and handle holes when the woman spoke.
‘If you buy me a drink, I’ll tell you something interesting.’
The woman’s voice made him smile. She had an Irish accent. He wondered if she was from County Cork, like his parents.
‘My pleasure. I’ve just had some good news.’
‘Ah, that’d be your baby.’
Jim had just told the barman about the new arrival. He looked over at Midge and winked. The barman shrugged and claimed the Gazette.
‘What’s your poison, madame?’ Jim said it the French way to make the woman laugh.
Her expression didn’t change. ‘Oh, I could take a whiskey, yes I could.’ She turned to the barman. ‘I’ll be having an Irish drop. None of that bilge water from the Tay of Dundee.’
Midge reached above the dispensers and took down a bottle of the Spirit of Cork. He shook two nips into a small glass and placed it gently on a Tickworth Ale coaster in front of the woman.
‘To your health, sir, and to that of your son.’ She lifted the glass to Jim, then pushed her head back and let the whiskey run down her throat. She banged it down empty and wiped her lips with the back of a hand. ‘Nothing like a rare drop of Irish sunshine.’
‘Anotherie?’ Jim was feeling generous. He turned and nodded to Midge who refilled the woman’s glass. ‘So, how do you know I have a son?’ He hadn’t told the barman it was a boy.
‘You now have two sons and, by the look of you, there’s also a girl.’
Jim felt a prickly sensation along the band of his Y-fronts. An electric current ran from the elastic up his spine and did a circuit around his shoulder blades.
‘Do I know you?’
‘Depends what you mean by knowing. There’s things I know that I can tell. I know your son’s not what you expected. You’ll try to change him but you can’t. This will give you heartache.’
‘He’s only an hour old and he’s already giving me grief. Ha, ha.’ This was Jim’s way of changing the subject, making a joke and rounding it off with a forced laugh.
She either didn’t understand or chose to ignore him. ‘You’ll think he’s against you but he’s not. The boy’s different, that’s all.’
Jim shifted in his seat. The woman made him uncomfortable. She looked directly into his eyes without blinking. He’d only known one other person to do this: Father Donahue. The priest had been the most feared presence in the school dormitory. The boys had called him Father Doneafew. The thought of the crusty old priest made Jim shiver. Father Donahue had kept his fingernails perfectly manicured.
‘You’ve got to learn to forgive. You don’t forgive for what happened in the past. This is a bitterness that eats at you.’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Try to accept your son. For your sake and for his.’ The woman got off her stool, gave him an abrupt nod and left the bar.
Jim stood completely still. The electrical feeling in his spine had spread to the outer edges of his body. He felt as if the membrane separating him from the rest of the world was dissolving. He knew he would be slapped on the back before Trevor Bland’s hand fell between his shoulder blades. The force of the gesture made him feel solid again. Bland was a typesetter at The Bugle and Jim’s oldest friend.
‘Congratulations, Corkle. I’ll have a Tickworth on the new baby girl, thanks, mate.’
‘It’s a boy, Trev.’
Colleen was placed in an empty six-bed room in the maternity ward. She’d slept a few hours and was feeling wonderful when the nurse carried in the baby and placed him in her arms. He’d been fed and was quiet. She counted his fingers and toes and was peeking inside his nappies through a leg hole when another new mother was wheeled in. The woman had given birth to her fourth daughter. This was not a good gender ratio for a Tasmanian woman of the sixties. A husband needed sons for cricket and other purposes. Colleen now had two boys and a girl. Pushing aside her pride, she tried to console her new neighbour.
‘Don’t worry, love, you’ll have a boy next time.’
‘There’ll be no next time. We can’t afford another mistake. I’m having the tubes done on Tuesday.’ The woman flattened her lips and crossed her arms over her chest.
‘Oh? I’m sure it’s for the best. Would you like to hold Julian?’ In Colleen’s universe giving the woman her baby boy to hold was good juju. It was also very satisfying. Two boys to one girl was an excellent ratio. She slipped out of bed and held him out to her.
The woman didn’t unfold her arms.
‘That’s a mistake for a start. Julian sounds like Julie.’ The woman nodded for emphasis. Her face was still mottled from the birthing process. She looked tired and unhappy. ‘You’ll regret it.’
‘The name has religious significance.’
‘We’re not religious.’ The woman unfolded her arms and took the baby from Colleen. ‘He’s a heavy little thing.’
‘He’s a healthy boy. Boys are more robust than girls. You should hear his lungs.’
‘His lungs disrupted my Debbie’s crowning. They couldn’t get him to pipe down. The sister was at her wits’ end.’
‘Frank Sinatra has fantastic lungs.’ Colleen crossed her arms.
‘Sinatra’s more of a crooner than a screamer.’
‘That’s just voice training. Julian’s got the right lungs. Lungs and personality. My boy’s got star quality.’
‘What a shame.’ The woman pointed to the baby’s mouth.
Colleen’s eyebrows shot skyward. ‘What a shame, what?’
‘He’s got a cupid’s bow.’
‘He’s a good-looking baby.’
‘Brigitte Bardot has a cupid’s bow but it’s a curse on a boy.’ The woman sucked air between her teeth. ‘Odd really. The father’s not French?’
‘My husband’s one hundred per cent Australian, a real man’s man. This is my second son. Two healthy boys.’ Colleen pointed to the baby’s top lip. ‘That’ll come right once he’s off the bottle.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘He’s really taken to the bottle. He’s a very strong sucker. All the nurses say so.’
‘I suppose that’s one good thing.’
‘Let me take him off your hands. Boys are heavy.’ Colleen reached out for the baby.
‘He’s quite pretty.’ The woman hesitated. ‘Like a little girl, really.’
‘That face is made for the small screen.’
The woman looked doubtful. ‘Possibly, but you’ll be forking out a fortune on voice training.’
‘Here, pass him over to me.’ Colleen yanked the baby out of her arms. ‘You need to rest up for your big operation on Tuesday.’
The woman gave a start.
‘I’m heading down to the TV room. The Dick Dingle Hour is on soon.’ Colleen eyed her opponent over the baby’s head. ‘May as well give the boy his first taste of culture.’
2
I was born in Ulverston, a small town on Tasmania’s north coast. I know all about my arrival at Blue Gum Central Hospital from my mother. She even told me how I was conceived. I could’ve done without that information but there’s no way to censor Mum. She’s always known what’s best for me. Ours is one of those exclusive mother-son relationships. We even look alike. Mum says we’re Black Irish which means we’re more attractive than the rest of the family. We have thick dark hair and green eyes. Dad and my siblings are the other kind of Irish: gingery with freckles. It’s not a good look.
It was Mum who bought me my first Celebrity Glitter magazine. It’s important to keep up, she says, star quality is not enough in the dog-eat-dog world of show business. Mum should know. She was the Tasmanian finalist in the Golden Microphone Contest and would’ve gone on to the nationals if disaster hadn’t struck. She still has the newspaper clipping in the back of her recipe book. Her hair is big and wide and she’s holding a bunch of dahlias next to a microphone. She looks beautiful – like Elizabeth Taylor, only thinner.
Mum calls me the Songbird of the South and says I’ll win trophies one day. If it’s not the Golden Microphone then it’ll be the Tassie Wallaby which is the highest entertainment award on Tasmanian television. Dick Dingle has won the Wallaby twice. He’s our local television icon and does a lot to promote Tasmanian youth. Mum says he will be promoting me one day. She says I’ve got small-screenability.
‘One day we’re going to see your big face on the cover of Celebrity Glitter magazine, Julian. You’re my own little star. Twinkle, twinkle.’ The magazine in her hands had Liberace’s face on the cover.
‘Is my face big, Mum?’
My father does not share my mother’s ambitions for me. I became aware of this at the age of four when I overheard a conversation from under our house in Kangaroo Crescent. We lived in a buff-coloured brick bungalow on a rectangular quarter-acre. The house sat on raised foundations which were hidden from view by a white weatherboard trim that skirted the bottom of the bricks. A trapdoor at the back provided crawling access to the area under the house. It was designed for plumbers and electricians but used exclusively by children.
It was my neighbour Raymond’s idea to crawl under there. He was two years older than me and should’ve known better. He should’ve known not to leave our clothes beside the trapdoor for my brother John to find. John had immediately alerted my father to our whereabouts. Raymond and I were directly under the dinette. I could hear the transistor and muffled voices. Someone switched off the radio and the voices of my mother and father became audible.
‘Jim, for goodness’ sake, they’re just little boys.’
‘Little boys? Colleen, they are naked underneath this house, probably under our very feet.’
I heard the shuffling of Dad’s leather-soled shoes on the linoleum above me.
‘I know exactly where this sort of thing leads and I don’t want a Catholic priest in the family. No thank you very much.’
‘Jim, he’s four years old.’
‘Exactly. We’ve got to put a stop to this right now. If it’s not a priest then we’ll have a hairdresser on our hands. Or a male nurse.’
‘A hairdresser would be handy.’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Hairdressing.’
‘No, your brother Norman. I don’t want his type fluffing up the cushions on my settee.’
‘Don’t be awful.’
‘The man’s as straight as a dog’s hind leg.’
‘Norman’s got a thriving salon in Melbourne. He’s not interested in our cushions.’
‘It would only start with the cushions. Next thing you know he’d be teaching our boys to play leapfrog.’
‘What’s wrong with leapfrog?’
‘There’s a lot wrong with it if you do it without trousers.’
‘Give it a rest.’
‘Not until I sort that Julian out.’
I heard the door slam and then my mother’s footsteps cross the lino. My father’s voice boomed out near the trapdoor.
‘Julian. Come out immediately.’
My father was a stout man but perfectly capable of squeezing under the house and dragging me out. Raymond and I scrambled to the trapdoor where Dad was waiting with our clothes. He handed them to us and stood with his arms rigid at his sides and his head turned away while we dressed. When we were done, he grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me toward him. The shorts I’d just put on were yanked down and I was smacked several times on the bum with his bare hand. Raymond didn’t get touched.
I pointed to my neighbour. ‘What about Raymond?’
Raymond’s lips parted in horror.
‘Shut up!’ Dad didn’t look at Raymond. His face was red and glistening with sweat.
‘But he’s older.’ I jabbed a finger angrily at Raymond who backed away.
‘Shut up!’ Dad reached out and smacked me again. ‘Never let me catch you with a naked boy again or there’ll be trouble.’
He smacked me several more times. I nodded yes with each smack. I promised I would never ever let him catch me again as long as I lived.
I managed to keep my promise until I was eight.
Dad had built us a fort in the backyard out of some old timber and corrugated iron he’d been given by Trevor Bland. This was completely out of character and something he never attempted again. My father generally didn’t invest time in projects that weren’t directly connected to his personal comfort. He wasn’t the type of father to take his kids fishing or help us with homework. He did things like give us bottles of raspberry drink while we waited in the car outside the pub. This was one gesture I appreciated. Some kids weren’t given drinks. We’d poke out red tongues and wave our soft drinks at them while they died of thirst in their Holden station wagons.
It was a war game that got me into trouble. The boys next door were the Allies and we were supposed to be the Germans. I told my brother John I didn’t want any part of it. I’d only heard bad things about Germans. They were swine.
‘I want to be a nurse.’
‘You can’t be a nurse, stupid.’ John sneered at me. ‘Nurses are girls.’ He laughed out loud and began dancing around me, chanting. ‘Julian’s a woolly woofter. Julian’s a woolly woofter.’
The other boys sniggered.
‘I’m a nurse. I’ll do bandages in the hospital.’ I pointed to the fort. The boys turned to admire Dad’s construction. It was the only one in the street. Everyone loved our fort. It gave us the edge.
‘We need bandages if we’re shot.’ It was little Johnny Hawkins from next door. There were five Johns on our street. It was a very popular name in Ulverston.
Eyes turned to my brother. He was the oldest.
‘OK, you can do bandages in the fort, but you’re a doctor.’ John was as proud of the fort as the next Corkle.
‘I’m a nurse.’ I shouted this over my shoulder.
My first patient was my brother. He came inside grimacing and dragging his leg. ‘Za Brits shot me srew za knee.’
I pointed to the pretty makeshift bed I’d created out of the couch cushions. These were laid out in a line under the sheets I’d hung in a decorative way from the ceiling. It was great to have a fort but having a fort with flair made all the difference.
I put some vinegar on a piece of cotton wool and rubbed around the area where there was supposed to be a wound. John groaned like a wounded soldier. I used the hard plastic snout of the vacuum cleaner to examine the wound. John had his eyes closed and was moaning.
‘I have to get the bullet out.’ Taking a stick I’d found under the plum tree, I drove it in hard under the kneecap.
‘Fuck!’ John had screamed the F word. ‘You fucking bastard.’
‘It’s just a flesh wound.’ I jumped out of the fort and stood on the grass below. I called up to John who was rocking on his back, cradling his knee to his chest. ‘If you hit me I’ll tell Mum you said the F word, twice.’
My next patient was little Johnny Hawkins. He came in doubled over saying he’d been shot in the stomach. I made him lie on his back.
‘Take your shirt off. It’s covered in blood.’ Johnny was no stranger to this game. We often played together in his garage. I undid the zip of his shorts and had just pulled them off when I heard someone outside. I knew it was my brother. He wanted to get me back for the knee job.
‘Piss off, you German bastard. I’m not finished with this John.’
The door flew open and my father stuck his head and shoulders into the fort. He looked at Johnny’s naked body, then at me, then at Johnny again. Johnny’s underpants were in my hand.
‘I’m a nurse, Dad.’
My father reached in and grabbed me by the collar, dragging me outside where I was smacked in front of the other boys. He then marched me to the bedroom I shared with John and told me to stay there until dinnertime. I watched from the window as he cleared out the fort and then went at it with an axe and hammer. It took him an hour to reduce it to a pile of splintered timber. I was crying as he loaded everything on to a trailer and drove away.
A couple of days later I saw Mum rummaging in the cupboard where she kept the cleaning things. She then did a room-to-room search, looking under beds and furniture. She was flushed when she came back to the kitchen.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’
‘I must be going mad. I can’t find the extension to the vacuum cleaner. The little plastic end bit. I’ve looked everywhere.’
John took the loss of the fort hard and refused to talk to me for a full month. This was fine by me because I was busy preparing for the end of year pantomime at St Kevin’s. Mum was thrilled. I was to play Joseph which was a much bigger speaking role than baby Jesus who only got to gurgle. My sister Carmel was recruited to work the pulleys and change the backdrops. Several boys had wanted this job but they were no match for my sister who at the age of nine could already run faster and punch harder than anyone I knew.
My stage debut would have been a triumph if Brother O’Hare had not torn the veil off my head at the last minute. It was Mum’s navy blue chiffon scarf and looked fantastic with the pale blue caftan I’d been given to wear. O’Hare had wanted a bareheaded Joseph but this made no sense when the Three Kings had fancy headgear. He’d stopped me in the wings, insisting that a nativity scene was no place for a lady’s scarf. My cue came and went as I was trying to argue my point. By the time we noticed, Mary and the donkey had been waiting on stage for a full minute. She might have stayed there longer if a familiar male voice had not boomed out over the audience.
‘Move that ass!’ Dad thought he was a funny man.
The laughter spurred Brother O’Hare into action. I was thrust from behind and propelled across the stage, running with my head down as I struggled to get my footing. I heard the laughter even before I hit the donkey head-on and broke it in two. Mary toppled off and fell to the side with a squawk and a thud. The audience roared. The hindquarters of the donkey turned and lunged at me. It was Robbie Skint and, despite the handicap of his donkey leggings, he lunged very fast. The audience roared again as he tackled me and clasped his hands around my neck.
I was gasping for air and twisting my head to free myself when my eyes fell on Carmel. She was standing in the back holding a rope above her head. With a smile she let it go. The backdrop of the stable scene unfurled at high speed and hit Robbie’s head with a bonk.
3
At the start of the new school year, I was given a seat next to Paula Stromboli. I was the only boy in the class who had no desire to sit next to old Smelly Pants. She was very bold for a girl of eight. I’d heard all about her and didn’t want to go anywhere near her cotton tops.
Brother O’Hare had written a line from a psalm on the blackboard: ‘Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer.’ Our job was to copy it into our exercise books with as much precision as possible. Erasers were not allowed. The task was one of concentration. I’d done a brilliant job and was up to the ‘prayer’ bit when Paula grasped my knee and squeezed. My leg shot up and banged the bottom of the desk, causing my hand to leap forward with the pencil. I finished the word but it now read, ‘Hear my cry, O God, listen to my player.’ I looked at it for a while. There was no way to repair the damage without an eraser. The clock was ticking. I wedged a small V before ‘player’ and wrote the word ‘record’ above it. At least it now made sense.
‘You think you’re funny, don’t you, Corker.’ O’Hare had gripped my shoulder and was digging his fingers into the flesh.
The other children were looking at me.
‘It’s Corkle, sir. I was just trying to—’
‘—be the class clown. Corker, you’ll stay here during lunchtime and write out the entire psalm.’
Paula squeezed my knee again as Brother O’Hare turned back to the blackboard. I twisted in my seat, ready to drive a pencil into her thigh, but stopped with my hand in mid-air. She had lifted her dress and pulled down her knickers. I was staring at a bare pink mound. I looked up at Paula’s face. She was smiling, oblivious to the frightening non-event in her underpants. It was bad enough watching men and women kiss on television but to have the Stromboli mound at my elbow was more than I could stand. I turned to the front and put up my hand, waving it about until I got the brother’s attention.
‘Yes, Corker.’
The class laughed.
‘It’s Corkle, sir.’
‘Yes, Corker.’
The class laughed again.
‘Brother O’Hare, can I swap seats with Ralph Waters?’
‘No you cannot.’ He turned back to the blackboard and resumed writing.
‘Excuse me, Brother O’Hare.’
‘What now, Corker?’
The class laughed again.
‘Can I swap seats with Robbie Skint?’
‘No. Now be quiet!’
‘Could I just stand then?’
Brother O’Hare marched up to my desk and pulled me out of my chair. ‘You want to stand? Then stand still now.’
He yanked out my hand and hit the palm six times with his wooden ruler. I sat back down cradling what felt like a throbbing baseball mitt at the end of my left arm.
Ralph Waters approached me at playtime. I would’ve run off but I was scraping the hundreds and thousands off a fairy cake and didn’t see him coming. Ralph was one of the toughest kids of my year. He was skinny and sinewy. His blond hair was cut extremely short with barber’s clippers and his nails were chewed to crumbs. Ralph spent the breaks playing with plastic soldiers under the white-painted tyres that some genius had half buried in the playground as a stepping-stone game. No one ever stepped on them because they were placed too far apart for primary-school children. The older kids never went near them because they were in the primary section of the school.
‘I know what you were doing. Thanks for that, Corky.’
I didn’t bother correcting Ralph. He was one of the few people I’d allow to mispronounce my name.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Did you see her keyhole?’
Ralph was standing there smiling, waiting for me to confirm the sighting of Paula Stromboli’s thing. He’d never spoken to me before. I knew I had to prove something or I was going to be in trouble. Ralph was one of those who singled out boys and ridiculed them for being poofters. This was a regular sport at St Kevin’s. Gary Jings was a poofter and everyone knew it. He had a girl’s shiny pink pencil case and drew swirly things in art class. He even folded the hems of his shorts up like fancy trouser cuffs. Gary Jings paid for these crimes at lunchtime when he sat on his own near the caretaker’s shed pretending to read while kids circled and yelled things like ‘bum-kisser’.
I didn’t call Gary names. I watched others ridicule him and felt sick inside. It was fear and frustration. I felt drawn to and disgusted by Gary Jings. He should’ve known better than to display his poofterism. There were several boys who did it at St Kevin’s but we kept our activities to ourselves. There was a place for that sort of thing and that place was the nature reserve behind the bike sheds.
It wasn’t right the way Gary always bore the abuse. He sat passively with his knees pressed together, occasionally looking up with a dull smile and a faint spark of hope in his eyes. This only infuriated thugs like Ralph who would then administer a Chinese burn or half-Nelson. It was awful to watch the torture of Gary Jings. He never tried to run away. He just went limp and took it. He should’ve denied being a poofter and hidden his pencil case but he didn’t. The one thing I didn’t want to be in life was a Gary Jings.
Ralph narrowed his eyes. I had to prove I was as much a man as him. I looked down at the fairy cake and the hundreds and thousands that were stuck to my fingers. When I looked up, I met Ralph’s eyes with a piercing stare.
‘Yeah.’
Ralph smiled. It was a man-of-the-world smile. We understood each other. I was the sort of boy who regularly looked inside girls’ underpants. Ralph liked me and it felt good. I tightened the grip on my fairy cake.
‘Why did you ask old O’Hairs if you could stand up?’
The fairy cake collapsed in my hand, sending crumbs flying over the front of my shorts.
‘You know.’
‘Nah.’
‘I was just, ah, just trying to stir up old Hairsie.’
‘He was so mad. Did he hurt you?’
This was a stupid question. Ralph was only too familiar with O’Hare’s ruler. Being hit over the hand with a slab of wood was incredibly painful. It was a white pain that made your ears go silent with blood pressure.
‘Nah.’
‘Yeah, O’Hairs is too weak. He’s a big fairy. Brother O’Fairy. Ha, ha.’ Ralph bent his wrists like Kenneth Williams and paraded around in front of me. ‘You think he’s seen Stromboli’s keyhole?’
The idea of Brother O’Hare poking around inside Paula Stromboli’s underpants made me want to laugh out loud in Ralph’s face. I controlled myself. Ralph didn’t know a thing.
‘Yeah I bet he has.’
‘She’s a slut.’
I wasn’t going to argue with Ralph but I didn’t think Paula Stromboli was a slut. If anything, she was like me, an entertainer looking for an audience. She’d apologised after the bell went for playtime. She hadn’t meant to get me into trouble. ‘I was just trying to give you a look.’ I hadn’t refused when Paula offered to lend me her Cherish LP. I was a big fan of David Cassidy. He wore very tight trousers and had silky hair that stayed swished back even during vigorous dance moves.
My big day was coming up but like every year Carmel was going to cheat me out of the attention that was rightfully mine. I was a year younger than her but had the misfortune of being born on the day after her birthday. This gave my special day a definite second-best status. Carmel called her birthday the main event. Mine was the repeat performance.
On the morning of her tenth birthday, Carmel got a doll called Nancy. It was made of pony-coloured plastic and had movable limbs and long white synthetic hair. Nancy came with a vinyl make-up kit and an irresistible set of tiny pink hair curlers. I loved curlers and spent hours playing with the set my mother had received from her brother Norman. He’d also given her a portable hairdryer with a floral plastic cap. On the days when Mum had two hours to spare I was allowed to roller and set her hair.
Carmel finished unwrapping the doll with impatience. When she saw what was inside, she said ‘Ugh’ and put it to one side. I swallowed a mouthful of breakfast cereal and reached for the box.
‘Hands off, fat boy.’
‘I just want to touch her hair. It’s so long and shiny.’
‘That’s enough, Julian!’ My father was giving me his don’t-you-start look.
I felt tears building. Carmel poked her tongue out and made a chopper with her hand, a warning not to cross the invisible line between the doll and me. She moved on to the next present. It was a Nancy ‘Evening Fantasy’ outfit in a clear plastic tray. She let out another ‘Ugh’ and tossed it next to the doll. The urge to touch the little pink curlers was almost unbearable. Carmel sighed and felt the other presents through their wrappers. I knew she was looking for a cricket ball and I knew she wasn’t going to find one. At least her frustration was some sort of consolation.
Carmel left her other presents unopened on the dinette divan and went back to her rice puffs. As Daddy’s girl, Carmel was entitled to be ungrateful. My father gave her an indulgent smile, pushed his chair back and stood up.
It was now or never. It would be my birthday in less than twenty-four hours. I had to convince my parents to buy me something practical, a present I could actually use. I tugged Dad’s sleeve.
‘Dad, can I have a Nancy?’
‘No you cannot! Nancy dolls are for girls! You’re a boy and boys want Dinky toys.’
My father’s response was too fierce and too loud. Carmel snorted into her cereal, sending a shower of rice puffs and milk over the Aussiemica tabletop.
‘Not me. I want a Nancy.’ The tears had started and my voice was shrill. I didn’t want junk. I wanted a doll.
‘You’re not getting one and that’s final.’
Dad shoved his empty chair against the table and made a move for the door. I leaped off the divan and flattened myself on the floor face down. I started to kick and punch the lino, wailing.
‘Shut up, Julian.’ It was too much for my father. He hated displays, especially from boys.
‘It’s not fair. Carmel gets everything.’
I reached out and grabbed Dad around an ankle. He straightened his leg and tried to shake me off. I held tight, crying into his trouser leg.
‘For God’s sake, get off and stop being a cry baby.’ He swiped me over the head with the Punter’s Gazette and shuffled toward the door, dragging his leg with me attached.
‘I want a Nancy, Dad. Please, please, please.’ The words came out in shrieks between sobs.
Mum bent down and pulled me off. My father hurled himself out of the house and slammed the door behind him. I was still kicking and flailing my arms as Mum pulled me against her chest. I felt her turn her head toward Carmel.
‘Carmel, go wash your face.’
‘I’m not dirty, Mum. It’s my birthday.’ There was laughter in her voice. She’d been enjoying the main event.
‘Get out of this dinette right now, madam!’
‘It’s not fair. It’s my birthday!’ Carmel stormed out leaving Mum and me alone.
Mum whispered in my ear. ‘Julian, there’ll be a nice surprise for you tomorrow. But you’ll have to be a good boy and wait till dinnertime.’
My tears stopped abruptly. ‘What?’
‘Wait and see. It’s not going to be a stinky Dinky.’
I woke the next morning to a box of Shelby’s chocolates on the end of the bed. Yes, it was my birthday! In our house, a double-layer box of soft centres and a roast-chicken dinner were standard birthday issue. Presents were a different matter. Their quality depended on who chose them and the mood they were in when choosing. If it was Mum, we tended to get one thing of value among junk she bought to please my father. If Dad bought them, we’d get stuff that was completely useless. I had a Meccano set, a rugby ball and several Dinky toys in the bottom of my wardrobe. I knew by now Carmel would have thrown Nancy on top of the manicure set and necklace-making kit she’d hidden at the bottom of hers.
I knew exactly what went on inside everyone’s wardrobes. I monitored them on a regular basis, particularly my mother’s. She was the only one in the house with flair and quality fabric. I spent hours going through her drawers and trying things on. This could only be done when Dad wasn’t home. He didn’t think boys should like nice things and hit the roof if he saw me as much as finger the fabric of a dress my mother was wearing. I tried to explain that fashion designers earned a fortune but Dad didn’t want to know.
Carmel’s wardrobe was dangerous territory for another reason. I only ventured into her room when she was a good kilometre from the premises. It wasn’t worth getting caught. She could punch extremely hard and thoroughly enjoyed practising her Cassius Clay Royale. John and I were forbidden to thump her back, especially below the belly button. This mysterious zone was for making babies. Carmel was only too aware that the same protection did not extend to our testicles.
As soon as I opened the magnet collection, I knew Dad had chosen the presents. His self-satisfied smile told me everything I needed to know. He sat there every bit the happy sadist as I opened the Boy’s Own Annual, the cricket ball and the kit-set model of a German tank. Crap, crap, crap. The only thing I could use was the cricket ball. It would come in handy as a bargaining chip with Carmel. I said thank you through my teeth and turned to leave for school.
‘Hey, Stan McCabe, you’re not taking your cricket ball?’ Dad wore the crooked smile of an insane sports fanatic.
‘I wouldn’t want anyone to pinch it. Far too valuable.’ I spoke through a locked jaw.
When I got home from school, my mother was shoving bread and mixed herbs into the rear end of a defrosted chicken.
‘Where is it?’
‘What about hello?’
‘Hello, darling Mummy, where is it, please?’
Mum pointed to a package on the table.
My heart was thudding as I ripped it open. Inside was a cardboard box with a clear plastic cover. It was a doll and, according to the box, he was called Billy the Back-up Singer. I removed the cover and touched the miniature golden microphone wired to his hand. Billy was wearing a white shirt and black vinyl trousers. I would wait until I was alone before checking inside the vinyl.
‘He’s perfect, Mum.’
I put my arms around her waist and held her tight. She bent down to receive a kiss but I licked her cheek instead. I liked licking my mother. She tasted both chemical and floral.
‘Ugh, Julian. That’s disgusting.’
Mum giggled and wiped her face with the back of a crumby hand. She leaned against the sink and watched me remove Billy from his box. I put the doll up to my nose and breathed in the new plastic smell of his copper-brown synthetic hair. It was cut in a David Cassidy, just long enough to style with tiny doll curlers. Billy came with a change of clothes: a tiny pair of beach shorts and sunglasses. This was an odd outfit for a singer but I didn’t care. I’d make him something new to wear, a snazzy Liberace number for the spotlight. In my hands, Billy wouldn’t stay a back-up singer for long.
‘You know what to do, Julian.’ Mum laughed and ruffled my hair. ‘Go hide him in your wardrobe before your father gets home.’
4
‘Julian, have you seen the Companion?’ My mother was making her way down the hall toward me. She sounded irritated.
I was lying on my bed in my underpants and singlet reading a feature on Christiaan Barnard, the doctor who’d transplanted a heart into a grocer’s chest in 1967. The magazine had a photo of Louis Washkansky before he received the donor heart. He was smiling with a tube up his nose.
I knew the word ‘donor’ meant dead person and was fascinated. The heart would’ve been cold, like one of the defrosted chickens my mother stuffed on birthdays. I put my hand over my heart to make sure it was still beating. There was nothing happening. Panic knocked at the back of my throat as I moved my hand to the left side of my chest. My mother snatched the magazine from my hands and left the room.
Mum and I both enjoyed the Australian Ladies’ Companion. It didn’t have the glamour of Celebrity Glitter but it did keep us plugged into the Australian entertainment scene and even featured Tasmanian celebrities. Dick Dingle occasionally made it into the Companion for his work as patron of the state’s Little Aussie Rising Star awards. Mum told me to keep my eye on Dick Dingle. He was an impresario for talented young Tasmanians like me. The Little Aussie Rising Star was a stepping stone to the Golden Microphone which was an even bigger stepping stone to national television stardom.
Christiaan Barnard was a star even though poor old Washkansky had almost immediately died. The failed heart transplant intrigued me. I closed my eyes and tried to picture what was going on inside my skin. We were currently studying the human body at school. Brother Duffy had started at the top with the brain and was working his way down toward the interesting area. We’d got to the kidneys, which I knew were attached to the important bits. Duffy had more or less admitted this when he said the kidneys were responsible for producing urine. I understood what that meant and was looking forward to the next lesson.
I already knew how babies were born thanks to Ralph Waters. He’d led us into the Ladies’ toilet behind the Whipper Snapper fish-and-chip shop and pointed into the bowl where something brown and enormous was bobbing about in the water. It was three times the size of anything I’d ever produced.
‘The lady who dropped this A-bomb has had a baby.’ Ralph had raised one eyebrow and spoken with authority. ‘See the size of her floater. She’s stretched to buggery from giving birth.’
I hadn’t considered how babies got out from inside their mothers. If they used the same exit as number twos, they had to come out filthy. That meant I’d come out filthy. I asked Ralph the obvious question.
‘Don’t babies smell when they come out?’
‘Nah, they’re inside a kind of bag.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt the baby then?’ I knew nothing about the dimensions of ladies’ bum holes. Female bum anatomy had absolutely no appeal to me. This was not information I needed to share with the likes of Ralph Waters.
‘If it’s a lady’s first baby, the baby’s head gets squashed to the size of a lemon.’ Ralph cast an eye over our heads.
‘And if it’s the third baby?’
‘Normal shape and size.’ I let out a lungful of air. Ralph had two older siblings like me.
My brother was fixing a puncture on his bicycle when I got home. I stood for a moment examining him from behind. His head was definitely pointier than Carmel’s. He was trying to put the tyre back on his wheel by wedging two of my mother’s dinner spoons under the rim. A spoon fell out and clattered on to the concrete of the driveway. John cursed. As he turned to retrieve it, he noticed me. His mouth pulled downward in a sneer. John only had to look at me to get upset. There was something about the way I was put together that disgusted him. I suspected it was the same thing Ralph Waters felt about Gary Jings.
‘What are you looking at, poof?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Piss off then. Go and try on some of Mum’s pantyhose or something.’
There was no use explaining John’s condition. It would just alarm him. I went inside to examine my mother’s bottom.
The heart transplant article haunted me. I thought about it constantly. My version of the operation went something like this: I’ve had a major heart attack on Hollywood Boulevard. Christiaan Barnard is busy so they call in a trainee called Herb to do the job. Herb disconnects my heart before a donor can be found. He keeps the blood pumping through my body with a machine powered by a lawnmower engine, but time is running out. Still no donor can be found. Herb substitutes my heart with a defrosted chicken. The chicken refuses to pump. I regain consciousness with a Tender Choice broiler in my chest, still wet and cold from the defrosting process. Herb attaches electrodes to the chicken and turns on the juice. It jumps but flops back lifeless next to my lungs.
Dad regularly drank with a man called Herb. It was common knowledge that Herb didn’t wear socks. He simply blackened his ankles with shoe polish. This habit had been discovered when Herb crossed his legs and swiped the beige trousers of one of his neighbours. The owner of the trouser leg had then traced the origins of the black smudge back to Herb’s ankle. No one said anything about this habit, at least not to Herb’s face. They just gave him plenty of legroom in the public bar.
It was Herb’s socks that gave me the idea for the fishnets. I tried to tell my father this but he didn’t want to listen. He was too busy shouting at my mother about her brother Norman. I had performed the Olivia Newton-John show to cheer Mum up. Dad wasn’t even supposed to come home. It was race night at the pub. I was singing along to ‘I Honestly Love You’ into the handle of a hairbrush when he burst into the lounge and found me dressed in one of my mother’s frocks. It was when he noticed my legs that he started shouting. They were criss-crossed with ballpoint pen in the fashion of fishnet stockings.
I felt my heart again. It was still ticking, ticking like a time bomb. I could feel tiny ripples of pain each time a tick happened. I went to consult the house physician.
‘Mum, I think I’m going to have a heart attack.’
‘Really, Julian.’ Mum was peeling potatoes over the sink and didn’t turn round.
‘It’s got a funny tick. I think I’d better not do any phys. ed. tomorrow. Can you write a note?’
‘Physical Education is probably the best thing for a dicky heart.’
‘My situation is very delicate.’ My situation was that I hated sports.
‘All the more reason to build up your stamina.’
‘Ralph Waters says he’s going to smash my teeth in if I set foot on the rugby field. That sort of thing could ruin a stage and screen career. I’ll need a good set of teeth if I’m going to be a star.’ Ralph had done no such thing. He’d kept a respectful distance since the Stromboli incident but Mum didn’t need to know this.
‘Go find a pen and paper.’
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