Some of My Friends Have Tails

by Sara Henderson

  He put his foot back on the seat and the head turned towards us again. We could see him watching until the car went out of sight.

  I did worry that because Mrs Henderson didn’t like me she might not treat Prince kindly, but I should not have wasted a moment’s thought. Prince won her heart completely. Over the years he had regularly visited Lloyds Landing with us. When the children stayed with their grandmother, so did Prince. So he knew the run of things and the house rules. When staying for the weekend he would be greeted with, ‘Don’t you think you can come into this house, young man; a dog’s place is outside’ by Mrs Henderson or her cook, Nora. Prince would dutifully curl up on a rug out on the closed-in porch in the winter, or on the open porch in the summer. So he was not going somewhere strange; he knew the fields and the woods, the outside of the house and the people. But he soon charmed Mrs Henderson and Nora. It was no time at all before his rug came inside the kitchen door in the winter, because it was a bit cold. Then it also stayed there in the summer. Then he started watching TV with Mrs Henderson at night in front of the log fire in the winter, then in the summer he watched TV in the air-conditioning.

  His trainer, Glen, wrote to me and asked if he could take him on the circuit for the lead-up to the ‘big daddy of them all’, the National Dog Show in New York. I told him Prince was Mrs Henderson’s dog now, so he would have to talk to her. Charlie called her and said Prince was there to guard her and that was the most important thing to consider, and she agreed he did a fine job. But Glen was a great persuader, and Prince took to the road on the show and trial circuit for that season, and ended up Supreme Champion of the National Dog Show in New York, ‘Best Breed’, ‘Best Dog of the Country’! Glen sent me the citation and the ribbon, and Prince London of Lloyds was engraved on the massive cup which he could keep for a year. Of course we always knew he was the best, but now it was engraved on a cup. Prince then stayed home and carried out his job of guarding the treasures of Lloyds Landing and did a superb job.

  He died around the age of fourteen, only six months before I took Bonnie back to Maryland for a visit in 1979. I was so looking forward to seeing him again, but it was not to be. The last photo Mrs Henderson sent me was of Prince having his afternoon nap in the air-conditioned TV room, on a sheet on the antique couch! Not bad from the beginning of, ‘And don’t think you can come in this house, young man; a dog’s place is outside.’

  7

  * * *

  UNCLE DICK’S LOVE LIFE

  It was not long after our return to Australia that Dick entered our lives, when Charlie hired him as a mechanic. Because the children were so young they called him Uncle Dick, the name stayed and it was not long before everyone called him Uncle Dick.

  I have already written about some of Dick’s outrageous behaviour, but regularly I keep remembering more stories. Uncle Dick continued his regular shenanigans and landed in some sort of strife regularly because of his drinking. He had again escaped to town and was on a bender. This time he escaped on the fuel truck. As soon as he saw a new driver, he knew he could get to town. All the regular fuel truck drivers knew not to bring in alcohol for Dick, or give him a ride off the station. It was an exceptionally busy day for me, so the fuel truck driver drove straight past the house unnoticed, and down to the workshop. Dick told the new driver he would sign all the documents, and then said he was off to town so he would hitch a ride back with him. He got into the cabin and away they drove together.

  Charlie and the girls were out mustering cattle; I was cooking or running back and forth to the office, so no-one even knew Dick had gone until Charlie, returning from the paddock, rode up to the workshop to talk to him. He found the fuel dockets in the middle of the workbench held securely in place by a hefty bearing. Charlie just knew, without looking further, that Dick was gone again. We tracked him down in Kununurra, only to find he’d left on the morning bus for Darwin. It was hard enough to find him in Kununurra, but Darwin was at least a week’s long search. So we just had to wait until he could no longer cadge loans. Friends would eventually call and ask us to come and take him home, once he had well and truly outworn his welcome.

  He had been gone a few weeks when I received a call. A woman was desperately trying to speak with a plum in her mouth—that’s how it sounded, as if she actually had a real plum in her mouth, or she was drunk, but it was six o’clock in the morning.

  The story unfolded. She had met Dick in the bar of one of the very seedy hotels in Darwin. He offered to buy her a drink; she told me she thought he was quite a gentleman (maybe she was drunk at six o’clock); they had more than one drink (now why didn’t that surprise me?). Thank heavens I was spared the details of the rest of the night after they finished four hours of drinking, taking more drink back to a motel room, hers. Oh, she was quite willing to continue in detail, but I told her no need, she could leave it up to my imagination. She had taken twenty minutes telling about the drinks in the bar, the first night, and we still had a few weeks to go. I interrupted to ask why she had called me. It was another ten minutes before I was asked to guarantee Dick’s reliability. Dick’s reliability in Darwin with a pub nearly every mile! I said politely, No, not while he was off the station, and again maybe she should tell me why she was actually calling. Dick was involved: there had to be a story. He had been in town a few weeks: there had to be lots of stories. She took a deep breath and started again. I got into a comfortable position, knowing full well it would be long and complicated as all Dick’s stories were.

  It seems somewhere during the first night of drinking, Dick had offered to drive her car to Katherine because she had a broken ankle, in plaster, and couldn’t drive. The plan was he would take the car the next day. She was to leave the following day, by bus. Before I asked the inevitable question, why didn’t she go in the car with him, she said she had to stay in Darwin to see the doctor.

  ‘Just a minute,’ I interrupted. ‘You gave your car to a complete stranger you were having a few drinks with in a pub?’

  Then the big bombshell was dropped. She informed me quite indignantly that it was only after he proposed that she agreed to let him have the car.

  I wasn’t capable of words by this stage, not that it mattered, or she noticed; she was well and truly wound up by this time and on she ploughed. She was calling because Dick had taken the car and that was weeks ago. He never turned up in Katherine and she was tired of waiting for the car, and to get married. Apparently that was to happen in Katherine after she arrived in the bus. She told me she was now going to call the police and report the car stolen and give the police Dick’s name as the thief and also file charges against him for jilting her. I felt I was in a time warp, and had landed in the 1930s. I could see our mechanic in jail for the next ten years on theft at least! I wasn’t too sure what term of incarceration was current for jilting a fiancée after a proposal in a bar four hours after meeting!

  I talked her out of calling the police and said I was sure Dick would turn up soon. Even though he was unreliable when drinking, he definitely would not steal her car … I hoped.

  ‘Give me a few days to find him.’

  ‘And the wedding?’ came the tense question.

  I told her I would find the car, and Dick. She could ask him that question, not me; I only employed him. I finally ended the conversation and sat staring at the phone, wondering what to do.

  The next day I called every possible person in Darwin; it seemed Dick had disappeared off the face of the earth. Charlie said he thought he might be dead. My opinion was that Dick woke up the next morning, found himself in bed with a strange woman, remembered he had proposed, and did a bunk. Charlie didn’t reply to this idea, but his head was nodding in agreement. Two days later, near the end of the week, I still wasn’t any closer to finding Dick. I had spent hours persuading the prospective bride not to lay charges against her prospective groom at least until the following Monday. I assured her something would materialise over the weekend, hopefully Dick.

  I an
swered the phone on Saturday morning and there he was croaking on the other end of the line. He sounded dreadful, on his last legs. He opened with, ‘I’ve got a few problems, Mother.’

  I told him I already knew them. But little did I know. His story left out the four hours drinking and the night that followed and the proposal. He was just driving the car to Katherine for a ‘damsel in distress’ said Sir Galahad. He just happened to take a few mates with him and was dropping them off at one of the stations a few hundred miles down the track. The ‘bomb’, as he described his fiancée’s car, had literally blown up and so he and his mates repaired it at the station. Dick stayed on to do some repair work (and drink endless cartons of beer, and anything else he could get his hands on). He then started out again for Katherine, with a few more newly acquired mates; along the highway he was stopped by a police car. They were very obviously under the weather, and still drinking from a carton in the car … So Dick was booked for driving under the influence. The next problem arose when he was asked for his licence; he hadn’t had a licence for fifteen years … so Dick was booked for driving without a licence. He then told the officer he had to deliver the car because the woman was waiting for it in Katherine and he was a bit late!

  The officer said, No way, Dick punched him … so Dick was booked for assaulting an officer. Dick told him what he thought of him … so Dick was booked for abusive language. When the officer told Dick he had to go with him back to Darwin, Dick told him to ‘piss off’ and walked away … so Dick was booked for resisting arrest!

  He was calling me from jail. He needed help; his fines totalled nearly a grand and he was a bit short! Like a grand! There was also the possibility of a jail term.

  I told him there was also the possibility of car theft and charges for jilting his fiancée. All I heard was a croak.

  I wrote a letter to the judge, telling him we really needed our mechanic, and that it was better to send him back out to the station where we could keep him out of trouble, than to have him in jail at taxpayers’ cost. I would pay the fines, and take the money out of his wages, weekly. The judge agreed. When Charlie picked Dick up the next day, the police wanted to know if we ever got any work out of him, and more importantly, why would we even put up with such a person and take him back willingly.

  The car was sent down to Katherine by truck at Dick’s expense, and when he was sufficiently recovered from his hangover, I put him on the phone to talk to his fiancée. Somehow he talked her out of marriage, without her charging him. After a few more shaky days, he settled back into station routine and started working … until the next time. By the time all the borrowings, charges and expenses were finally tallied, Uncle Dick’s trip to town had put him back a few thousand dollars, and he didn’t have a thing to show for it except a sore head and the big debt.

  Dick kept ‘breaking out’, despite the judge’s order to stay on the property for six months, not to go to town. Dick went to town; he just made sure he didn’t end up drunk in Darwin. He ‘broke out’ on a regular basis every year until his holidays were due.

  Dick was very grandiose when it came to his holidays; they were always planned on an ambitious and magnificent scale. That year he was planning to travel right around Australia, no less. The yearly plan (it usually took a year to perfect it) was what kept him going. I was privy to the master plan because months ahead of departure I had to arrange with the bank to have a certain amount of money transferred to a branch in each town he planned to visit. This was the only way Dick could be assured of having a holiday, at least one that closely resembled his wishes when sober.

  Once he started drinking he would either lose or give away all his money in the first drinking hotel. That usually was the closest pub once he got off the station. Many a time he only made it one hundred kilometres down the road to Timber Creek; then after he had been slumped over drunk, in the corner of the bar, leaning up against the wall for a week, the owner would ring the station and ask us to come and get him. Or if the police were driving our way, they would just bring him back.

  At the beginning of each year he would give me a travel plan, which usually had him flying everywhere. But the debts he accumulated on his regular ‘break-outs’ gradually eliminated air travel. So I would start on the elaborate schedule, and cut out about half the towns, knowing it was an unrealistic schedule even for a sober person. Then the plan would be reduced to a few major cities where he wanted to visit family and a few old mates in towns close by. Many a year, after I’d spent weeks arranging the bookings, transferring funds to banks around the country, he would only get as far as Kununurra, one hundred and thirty kilometres west, and never move out of the pub. The next year it would be Timber Creek, one hundred kilometres to the east, for variety. A few years ago he did make it south, but only to one capital, and at the very best, a few towns.

  I must hold the record for talking long-distance to bank managers. A bank on Dick’s itinerary would have instructions to give him funds of three hundred dollars, but Dick would tell them to change it to three thousand. I would receive a phone call for authorisation to increase the amount. When that failed, he would call. When drunk, Dick assumed he could charm the leg off an iron pot, and nothing could convince him he was wrong. So he would charm away for ten minutes (he was very repetitious), then he’d usually end with, ‘So what do you think, Mother?’ Quite confident I had swallowed the ridiculous yarn he was spinning.

  He would receive a simple ‘No.’

  Dick’s other gem was, ‘Time is of the essence.’

  This was always a dead giveaway. He would try so hard to disguise his voice so he didn’t sound drunk, and sometimes he’d almost succeed, and I would think he was sober, then in would creep that phrase.

  But one particular year he was determined to follow his schedule. He had had a relatively good year with only a few escapes to town, so he had enough money to fly south. This at least ensured, if the flight was direct, that he would reach his first destination. The trouble he had with travelling by bus was that after the fourth stop he was so drunk he couldn’t walk, let alone find the bus. If he was lucky and stumbled upon it, the driver refused to take him because of his condition. Dick has been known to take four and a half weeks to make a three-day bus trip.

  But this particular year we put him on a direct flight to Perth and he made it. What happened after that, no-one really knows, not even Dick. I had many phone calls from assorted types of people, from bank managers to desperate men out of work with starving families, to whom Dick was lending money to buy food for their starving kids. Other guys needing money for an operation for their wife, mother, kid. A few times he even talked a woman into calling: the money was for her desperate operation. He would bombard me for days with these stories, the same each year, all by reverse charge, until even in his drunken stupor he realised he was not going to get extra money. Then he’d stop calling; we would have no idea where he was for, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. Normally it would only be weeks before we’d get a strange or desperate call, reverse charge.

  ‘Dick, speak up, I can’t hear you!’ It was three o’clock in the morning on this occasion.

  ‘I can’t, they’ll hear me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Who will?’

  ‘The mafia!’

  ‘The mafia?’ I screeched.

  ‘Shush, they’ll hear you,’ he whispered in a screeching, strained voice.

  ‘Dick, where are you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, ask someone!’

  ‘I can’t leave my room. They are waiting for me outside the door,’ he whispered desperately.

  ‘Dick, if the mafia wanted to get you, a wooden door wouldn’t stop them.’

  I could hear the fear in his voice, he was terrified, and there was no way he was going to leave the room. I told him to give me the number of the hotel, to look on the telephone; then I would call the police in whatever town he was in and they would come and take the mafia away from his door.
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  No, there was an easier way, he said. He only had to pay them eight hundred dollars and they would go away! He must have met some real sharpies, this was definitely new material.

  I went along with the plot: ‘But how can I send you money if you don’t know where you are?’

  The name of the hotel, the manager’s name, and the town were given to me in a flash; I hung up.

  Two minutes later the phone rang again; I took the receiver off the hook and went back to bed.

  The next morning I called the manager of the hotel in Broome. Yes, Dick had been in the bar daily; no, he did not have a room, he couldn’t afford to pay the bond required (some hotel!). The manager continued, saying Dick was drinking at the bar with anyone who would buy him a drink, and a lot of unsavoury characters who were trying to outcadge Dick.

  When I said Dick had called me from his room, the manager laughed. ‘The rooms in this hotel don’t have phones, they’re lucky to have beds.’ He promised to call me back when Dick arrived for his day of drinking.

  I called the local police and explained the situation. Told them I would arrange a plane ticket and could they put him in the cooler that night and put him on the plane the next day. This was the only way we could get him sober enough for the airlines to accept him. The police were very helpful and agreed; it meant one less drunk in town for them. We picked him up in Kununurra and he was safely home again … until the next time. It took him almost a week to get over that drinking spree. He had the shakes so badly that I had to feed him because he couldn’t hold a fork without doing damage to his face, and a cup of coffee would spill all over the table before it reached his mouth.