Once a Pommie Swagman

by Thomas, Nick Arden

  The physical culmination of sex — having an ejaculation or a climax — is no more complicated or difficult than going to the toilet. It might be more pleasurable, but it is just as simple and easy to do. The mental aspects of sex, however: love, lust, passion, jealousy, desire and so on, are emotions adults have long found confusing and difficult to cope with, never mind young teenagers. Were it only for these ‘natural’ emotional difficulties, which after all have been with us forever, we would all have been able to cope; they are part of sex, after all. The problem was that for centuries sex had been ensnared in a web of ‘unnatural’ emotional difficulties, shrouded in a blanket of fear, guilt, shame and embarrassment. The two World Wars may have loosened our inhibitions a little, enabling us to cope better with those ‘natural’ difficulties, but in the late 1950s the ‘unnatural’ difficulties were still as powerful as ever, and an act as straightforward and as simple as sex was the most complicated and confusing of all human activities, especially for the young.

  On the one hand, music and Hollywood pictures simply oozed sex, we were bombarded with it; yet our parents, or most of them anyway, rarely mentioned or talked about it, as if it was somehow a taboo subject. Girls may have been slightly better informed, simply because of the physical events that occurred to them; but most boys were frighteningly ignorant. Discussing sexual acts or using words for sexual organs in public was seen as so outrageous, so sensitive, so rude that few teenagers dared mention them to anyone outside their peer group. Looking at erotic pictures was thought disgusting, even illegal, and books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover were still banned. But above all it was the church that so dominated and controlled attitudes, as it had done for centuries, looking down on us with pious indignation and moral superiority.

  Mary Stobbbard was fifteen when she had a back-street, knitting needle abortion out near Bankstown, urged on by some of the other girls from her school who ‘knew’ what they were talking about. Mary was easily persuaded, she was terrified of anyone finding out she was pregnant, especially the nuns. To his credit the child’s father, Simon — who was only a few months older than me — went with her. Both of them wagged school for the day, and a few of us wagged as well so we could wave them off at the station — any excuse! Clinging to each other, they boarded the train, tears of anxiety streaming down her face, he, if anything, looking even more distressed. It was fortunate he was with her, however, because almost as soon as they came out of the ‘clinic’ Mary began to bleed heavily, and Simon said that if she’d had her way she would have just gone to a park and lain down. He took her to hospital and their sorry tale was out, it got into the local paper and a month or so later Mary and her family moved away, lives torn asunder by shame and guilt. For an organisation that espoused love, understanding and compassion, the church sure had a funny way of showing it — and still does.

  It was almost as bad at school. There was no such thing as sex education, no discussion, no pictures of sexual organs or how they worked. We taught and explored ourselves in the playground or behind the cricket dressing sheds. The problem was that the web of ‘unnatural’ emotional difficulties surrounding sex not only confused and frightened people, but created the catalogue of myths, lies and nonsense that always fill the void left by suppression and ignorance.

  Bob Stevenson was adamant you could catch syphilis from a doorknob; Barbara Kratz claimed girls could only get pregnant if they had a climax whilst having intercourse; and Eric Wilson said that masturbation stunted your growth and made your teeth go yellow. With no other advice or guidance, the Bobs, Barbaras and Erics of our world were the only source of information. We may not have always believed them, but we were never completely sure; after all, I was smaller for my age than most! Here we were, bursting free of the past with erotic music, outrageous fashion and a totally new perspective on life, yet in many ways we were as repressed, anxious and ignorant about sex as the Victorians had been. We didn’t know then that our musical revolution was on the very cusp of setting off another earthquake, this time a sexual one.

  The closest I’d come to a sexual encounter happened not long before Glen and I set off. When my father died, my stepmother was distraught. She was still only in her early thirties, and she found it extremely difficult to cope with the loss. By now I, too, was becoming extremely difficult to cope with, and I think things just got on top of her; so much so, that not many weeks after my father’s funeral my stepmother set sail to visit her mother in England. My sister, who was five years older than me, had moved into a flat nearer the city some months previously, so suddenly here I was, living every young teenage boy’s dream. No bossy parents or interfering older siblings, and a house to myself. Party time!

  As might be imagined, things started to go a bit pear-shaped fairly quickly. Several of the older boys liked to play cards, and before I knew what was happening Friday and Saturday became poker nights around at Nick’s place. The music got louder, the players got drunker, the neighbours got angrier and when Peter Thorndike caught Graham Salter cheating, the resulting fight smashed one of my stepmother’s favourite vases and completely demolished the back flyscreen door. Then one night Dave Anderson’s older brother turned up.

  Paul Anderson was twelve years older than Dave. In fact, Dave had three siblings all much older than himself. Dave’s mother used to say he was ‘the mistake of the family’, although if the truth be known it was Paul who was the mistake. Widely known as a bully and a thug, the rumours about him and his connections with gangsters and criminals were rife. He drove a black 1954 Rover saloon in which he used to cruise around Kings Cross most nights. One evening, a few weeks after my stepmother left, the Rover pulled into my driveway.

  At the time I was working in an office in Sydney as a sort of errand boy. I didn’t like the job much, and many days I wouldn’t even turn up. Now Paul Anderson made me an offer that was hard to refuse, as they say. If I would allow poker games to be played in the house two or three nights a week, he would guarantee me five shillings a head for every player, plus any tips from the winners. He would organise everything, oversee the games and supply refreshments and so on. All I had to do was empty ashtrays and fetch beers. To begin with, it would only be five or six men, but he was sure the numbers would increase in time. Two or three quid, two or three times a week was twice the amount I was being paid. What was all the fuss about? Paul Anderson was a great bloke!

  For a few months things went fantastically well. Some weeks I made as much as £25, and I strutted about like I imagined well-heeled casino operators did, buying new clothes, catching taxis everywhere, tipping the drivers and shouting the milk bar. Some nights a dozen or more men turned up, playing at two or three tables, which at times were weighed down with more money than I thought existed. Occasionally there would be a disagreement or argument, but Paul Anderson controlled things fairly rigidly and there was very little trouble, save from Mrs O’ Halloran, our neighbour, complaining about the noise at three in the morning when the games usually finished. Then one night Paul turned up with a girl.

  I knew Judy Laverton more by reputation than anything, although I had seen her around town from time to time. Her father had been killed in the war when she was only two or three years old, and she lived with her mother in a council house in Carlingford. I don’t know what I expected but she was nothing like the gang-bang tart and slut many called her. Quiet and reserved, she had dark red hair, milky pale skin, freckles and a lovely smile. She reminded me of Pier Angeli the actress, and it was impossible to believe that anyone as beautiful as her could ever be involved in such behaviour. Not that I’d ever met a gang-banger before; but gang-bang Judy did! I know Paul paid her a few bob to be available every card night. Any ‘ jobs’ she got were her business, although I think she would have come for nothing.

  For several weeks we sat on the back veranda together on game nights, smoking and chatting and listening to music as we waited for a call on our respective services. Then one night I asked her with boyish blun
tness, “Do you like doing what you do, then?”

  “Oh yes,” she said unashamedly. “I love being with men. I just like being held in their arms,” and she shrugged and gave me a funny little smile. Suddenly I was consumed with emotions I had never experienced before. Here I was, sixteen and completely inexperienced, and there was she, twenty-one and vastly experienced, yet I felt the positions were reversed. She was like a child and I found myself wanting to hold her in my arms, to protect her. Above all it was her smile that got to me. It seemed to say something that I couldn’t explain or understand. We sat in silence for a bit, smoking and looking up at the stars, as if she was giving me time to come to terms with these new emotions; Ferlin Husky providing appropriate backing. (That can’t possibly be his name! Surely!)

  “On the wings of a snow white dove, he sends his pure sweet love …”

  Then Judy asked, “Have you ever done it?”

  “Done what?”

  “Made love.”

  “Well … no.”

  “Would you like to? I won’t charge you or anything, and I’ll show you what to do. We could just do it as friends; that would be nice,” and she put her hand gently on my knee.

  “… a sign from above, on the wings of a dove …”

  “Jude!” Paul’s voice shattered the magic moment. And then it struck me. Desperate loneliness, that’s what her smile said.

  Is it possible to fall in love in twenty minutes? I don’t know. All I do know is that the next night I waited for Paul, and especially Judy, to arrive with great anticipation. But they didn’t come, nor did they come the next night, or the next. Then, late in the afternoon a few days later a car did pull into the driveway, but it wasn’t a black Rover.

  For half an hour the two detectives grilled me, initially asking me about why I was there on my own, but their real interest lay with Paul Anderson. How long had I known him? When had I last seen him? Who had been with him? They wanted detailed descriptions of the other men and what make and colour cars they drove. At first I was a bit truculent, but the sergeant very quickly jumped on me. “Look, son, we don’t want any bullshit. We know you know him. We know he’s been coming here. Now just answer the questions.” Satisfied I’d told them all I knew, the other detective went out to the car and returned with a fingerprint pad. “We just need to eliminate you,” the sergeant said, grabbing my finger when I tried to object. Eliminate me from what?

  “Where is your mother now?” he asked, just before they left, and he and his partner exchanged raised eyebrows when I told them. “Okay, now you listen to me, son! Paul Anderson and his mates are very unpleasant people. Get caught up with them and you’re going to get into serious trouble … understand me?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “If he or any of them come here again, or get in touch with you, you ring us straight away, okay?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” If it had been his intention to scare the shit out of me, he’d succeeded beyond my wildest nightmares.

  Fortunately I never saw Paul Anderson again, although I missed the money. Two weeks later I learned from Dave that he and several of his gambling friends had been arrested for the armed robbery of a factory in Glebe some weeks earlier. The robbery had been on the news and in the papers. The factory made microscopes and other scientific equipment, and the thieves had got away with thousands of pounds’ worth. Worse, they’d bashed a night-watchman over the head, and although he hadn’t died he was badly wounded, so the charges were serious. Dave thought they were probably going to get at least six or seven years in gaol. Unfortunately I never saw Judy Laverton again, either. I missed her, too.

  SIX

  Jerky Joe and Kangaroo Point

  Carlo told us trams didn’t go over the Story Bridge, so our plan was to get off on the south side of the river at Woollongabba and walk over. As soon as we did, and I saw the sign to ‘The Gabba’, I knew I had to go and have a look. Glen wasn’t so keen, but I was determined and reluctantly he followed me down Vulture Street. Just six months earlier one of the greatest test matches ever played had taken place at this ground, and by the last day the entire nation was riveted; the Melbourne Cup of cricket matches. Listening to the commentary of the thrilling and dramatic partnership between Benaud and Davidson, it felt like the destiny of the world rested on them surviving. Fantastic!

  The tied test of 1960 was one of those events where, as Richie Benaud says, “The capacity of the ground could not have accommodated a fraction of the number of people who claimed to have been there.” I wasn’t, but I heard it all on the radio and I am certain I was just as excited and drained by it as those lucky enough to witness it. As we neared the ground I could feel my excitement rising, and I just knew I had to get inside somehow. There was obviously nothing on that day, and all the gates and doors on Vulture Street were firmly closed. We went around the block to the Stanley Street entrance, but still nothing. I tried to scale the fence at one point.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Glen pulled me back. “It’s only a bloody cricket ground!” Retracing our steps, I was just beginning to despair when a man emerged from a gate opening on to Vulture Street and he began replacing a poster advertising a forthcoming event on the wall.

  “Excuse me!” I yelled, running up to him. “We’ve come from Sydney. Can we go inside to have a look, just for a minute? Please … I just want to see the place!” There was obviously something in my breathless enthusiasm that appealed to him, and he grinned expansively. True cricket lovers always recognise one another.

  “Of course you can, son,” and he looked at his watch. “You’ve got twenty minutes, then I’ve got to be somewhere else,” and he stood back and let us in. We walked around the dog track and sat in the iconic old stand on the western side of the ground, so often depicted in paintings and photographs with its distinctive red corrugated iron roof. I shut my eyes and could actually hear Alan McGilvray: “Davidson taps his crease as Hall turns at the Stanley Street end, shirt billowing as he thunders in once more.” When I opened my eyes, I imagined I could see Sobers scoring his fantastic, fast and elegant century and big Norm O’Neill clubbing his way to his grinding century, refusing to be intimidated by the thunderbolts of Hall and Griffiths. Suddenly I found tears welling up behind my eyes and I could see someone else, my father, whose love of the game I had inherited. In fact, one of my last memories of him was listening to the broadcast on that final day with him, his excitement matching my own. And then another image came vividly to me.

  In 1954 I had my second memorable encounter with a person who made me all too aware I was a Pom, and as such was viewed as, well, a Pom. I’d arrived in Australia in 1947 so I didn’t feel like a Pom, talk like one, or even think like one. Arthur Morris and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie were my heroes, and I knew all the words of My Country.

  My father had taken me to the Sydney Cricket Ground for the second day of the second Ashes Test. He was walking with the aid of crutches at the time, and the most comfortable place for him to sit was on the hill. It was a lovely hot day, the crowd buzzing with expectation, and I was beside myself with excitement as we entered the ground, dragging him around to the hill, frustrated he was so slow. England had lost the first test by a mile at ‘The Gabba’ a few weeks before, and they’d been bowled out on the first day of this second one for a derisory score. The stage was set.

  Arthur Morris came out to open the innings, bristling with nuggety determination and the crowd roared. “That’s Arthur Morris, Daddy! That’s Arthur Morris!” Frank ‘Typhoon’ Tyson was the world’s fastest bowler, the atmosphere was electric and I wanted to go to the toilet. Tyson was bowling from the M.A. Noble end, beginning his run almost back at the fence, and it seemed to take an age for him to tediously plod back there after each ball.

  “Get on with it, ya mug!” bawled a shirtless man sitting on the grass not far from us, as Tyson made his way back for the third or fourth ball.

  “Yeah,” quipped his mate, “we’re only here for the bloody day!” The
hill convulsed with laughter.

  Hero Arthur survived the ferocious over, Tyson hurtling in and sending down balls so fast the naked eye could barely see them, many of them forcing Morris to duck and weave. The last ball, however, he deftly, almost disdainfully flicked off his legs for two runs and virtually the entire ground stood to applaud and cheer, and the hill went delirious. It was spine-tingling stuff. “Good on yer, Arthur! Give it to the bastards!” bellowed our shirtless neighbour.

  The over finished, Tyson came slowly down towards the hill to field at long off, his face crimson with effort, his chest heaving as he mopped his brow with a handkerchief, seemingly oblivious to the jeers and hoots accompanying him.

  “Thought you was supposed to be fast, Tyson!” Shirtless yelled mockingly.

  “Yeah!” chimed in his mate. “My mother could have faced that over, and she’s been dead for a month!” The hill erupted again. So did my father.

  Hefting himself to his feet as fast as his legs would allow, he raised his arms above his head and applauded vigorously, his crutches clattering to the ground behind him. “Well bowled, Mister Tyson! Well bowled, sir!”

  The hill erupted even more vigorously. “Siddown, ya Pommie bastard!” and my father, roundly booed and hissed, slumped to the ground again. Of course he was as big a hero to me as Arthur Morris, but Arthur was an Aussie to his bootstraps, my father an Englishman to his socks; and I didn’t know where to look.

  Initially the reaction was just good-natured banter, but then Shirtless suddenly came barging through the crowd towards us and things became much more tense and ugly. Screaming obscenities at my father, the shirtless man’s face was contorted with rage and hatred. I had never seen such vicious anger before and I was truly frightened, as I’m sure my father must have been, although he stayed remarkably calm. I don’t know if it was the sight of the crutches or because others intervened, but the man stopped several yards from us, chest heaving, and he pointed his finger at my father. “You keep your fucking Pommie mouth shut, arsehole! If I hear you again I’m goin’ ta do you, crutches or no fucking crutches!”