‘What about Frank Sinatra?’ I didn’t like the Carpenters and wasn’t particularly fond of Val or Andy. They appeared on Sunday-night TV music specials. I always felt slightly carsick before the start of the school week and associated these singers with a feeling of doom.
Carmel smiled. ‘Once every five years you say something intelligent.’
The chicken stirred again behind my ribs. This meant I’d said at least two intelligent things in my life.
‘Sinatra’s where the money is. You’re Dean Martin and I’m Ol’ Blue Eyes.’ Carmel examined her eyes in the mirror over the mantelpiece. She blew a kiss to herself.
‘No, I’m Sinatra.’ My voice had the whine that preceded tears and a tantrum.
‘OK, OK, we’re both Sinatra. I’m Frank and you’re Nancy.’
Carmel put together a routine of Frank Sinatra songs from Mum’s Sinatra records. My job was to do the harmonising vocals for every song except for a ‘You Make Me Feel so Young’ medley. For this number, I was allowed to sing the Nancy part unaided.
‘You have to sing it even higher and warble the end bits because it’s a girl’s part.’
‘But you sing Frank’s part in your normal voice.’
‘Yes, but my voice has a naturally deep timbre.’
I couldn’t argue with her on that point. People sometimes mistook Carmel for Dad when she answered the phone.
Carmel arranged an evening performance for the family in the lounge. My stomach was fluttery as we dragged the Aussiemica table in from the dinette and draped a red candlewick bedspread over it. Carmel placed three chairs in front of this stage but took one away after John refused to join. He said he had no intention of being showered with disease.
Mum and Dad were quiet for the first four songs, politely clapping at the end of each number and occasionally nodding. It wasn’t until the Frank and Nancy duet that we got the reaction Carmel had anticipated. Dad smiled for the first time in two weeks when I broke into Nancy. He was clapping wildly next to Mum by the time Carmel and I did our final harmony.
At the end of the show Mum handed us each a bar of Shelby’s. She ruffled my hair and whispered ‘Twinkle, twinkle’ in my ear before going into the kitchen to cut a cream sponge cake she’d baked for the occasion. Dad was still smiling when he came up to me. He pounded me on the shoulder in a manly but friendly way.
‘I needed that. The laugh’s done me the world of good.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be funny, Dad.’
‘I was laughing with you. Did you think I was laughing at you?’
‘Yeah, I did.’
‘You think I’m the type of father who laughs at his children?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I was humouring you. It’s a form of encouragement. You’ll understand when you get older.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Don’t worry. In a couple of years you’ll lose that whinny.’ He walked away laughing to himself.
6
The illness was ideal for receiving special treatment and avoiding sports, but it was bad news for Mum and Dad’s relationship. They’d always been a mismatched couple and never had the lovey-dovey sort of arrangement I saw on family TV shows. Mum and Dad didn’t exchange compliments or show open affection to each other. It was more businesslike than that. The arrangement became even less amicable after the beach trip. This lack of warmth transformed into hostility during Dad’s illness. While it had never been acceptable to show affection with children in the room, it was now fine to go at it hammer and tongs in front of us.
As the weeks dragged on, Dad got progressively more miserable and touchy. Even Carmel avoided the lounge where he’d taken up residence. My father spent his days not drinking and glowering at daytime television, which was dominated by cooking shows, farming programmes and reruns of old films. Even Dick Dingle produced boring daytime programmes. It was one of these, a Dingle documentary on the scouts of Tasmania, that finally stirred my father into action. He called John into the dinette and took out his chequebook. John waved the cheque at me to make sure I’d seen the sort of power relationship he had with our father before leaving on his bicycle.
That evening, a van arrived with a load of timber and chicken wire. Dad sat on the back step to avoid passing on his disease and called instructions to the man driving the van. The next-door neighbour started his lawnmower just as Dad began speaking. The bedroom I currently shared with Carmel was located at the back of the house and provided a view of the van and the back step. We watched from the window.
‘Just leave it under the plum tree, mate.’ Dad had to shout over the noise of the mower.
‘What’s that, mate?’
‘Under the plum tree, mate. Plum.’ Dad drew a plum in the air with two fingers but it may as well have been a heart or an upside-down bum.
‘Another bum treat? What the hell are you on about, mate?’
The man in the van had no way of knowing Dad was ill. Bum treat sounded poofy. To the driver, Dad was implying something unAustralian.
‘Under the fucking plum tree, you idiot.’
The mower stopped and Dad’s words hung over the neighbourhood. I imagined families frozen in front of their barbecues, sausages going silent on the grill. The F word had power. A thrill went through me. It was the first time I’d heard it from my father. I had to make the most of it.
‘You want to watch your mouth, mate. I’m not paid to be abused by some queer bastard who’s too lazy to get off his back step.’
Dad stood up and walked over to the van with long, deliberate strides. By the crimson of his neck I could tell that he was sizzling with anger. He poked his head in the van window and shoved it up close to the driver.
‘I’m not queer, mate. I’ve got hepatitis A. You can catch it from saliva spray. A microscopic speck is enough. Makes you as crook as a dog.’
The driver rolled up his window as soon as Dad had pulled his head away. He waited until my father had retreated to the step before hastily unloading the timber and wire. As he drove off, his wheels spun in the grass and left two long brown furrows under the plum tree.
Dad called the chicken coop a boys’ project and expected me to pitch in and help with its construction. He said it would teach us about building things, responsibility, life and death. I reminded Mum about my hepatitis and my father was warned not to let me lift a nail let alone a hammer. It took Dad and John three days to build. John was then sent on a mission to the local poultry farm, returning with ten chicks in an aerated shoebox on his bike carrier. The chicks were past the fluffy stage and had the beginnings of combs and feathers. Dad put them in the coop with some porridge. They pecked madly at the meal, spraying grey missiles in all directions. I ventured out to watch them feed. They were busy, funny things that took my mind off the miserable state of affairs inside the house.
We got the all-clear to rejoin the human race just as school started. The chickens began laying eggs a month later. A few months after that, Dad began introducing new chicks and culling the older girls. He bought himself a large metal chopper and placed a sawn-off tree trunk in the backyard.
I was supposed to take part in the slaughter but Dad ordered me to the back step when I refused to catch a chicken. I told myself that it wasn’t a big thing; chickens got killed every day. Carmel said they regularly got killed crossing the road. Dad put on a barbecue apron and sharpened the chopper. He wiped down the wooden stump and pulled the hose out to the backyard. John took his place next to him with a stupid grin.
Dad had prepared us for the slaughter by solemnly declaring that killing animals for food was natural to mankind. ‘We’re omnivores. That’s why we have molars and canine teeth. In nature, it’s survival of the fittest. It’s either them or us.’
I watched him run his finger along the chopper’s edge and began to sweat. ‘Them or us’ was a stupid idea. The chickens had no intention of pecking us to death.
My stomach tightened as Dad reached into the coop and grabbe
d a bird by the legs, carrying it to the stump upside down with its wings flapping. He asked John to hold the legs while he stretched out the neck. Bringing the chopper down fast, he sent the head flying off the stump at high speed. The chicken’s legs slipped out of John’s grasp as it gave its last jerks of life. Blood sprayed in an arc from the chicken’s neck, showering John and Dad with a line of bright red dots.
My stomach heaved. I ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face until the carsick feeling eased. When my legs felt solid again I went to the kitchen to see Mum. She was boiling water to remove the chicken’s feathers.
‘Mum, I can’t eat that chicken. It was murder.’
‘I’m making a roast-chicken dinner, your favourite.’
‘I can’t eat it for religious reasons.’
‘OK, honey. Carmel can have the drumsticks and wings and John can have the juicy white meat from the breast. I’ll just have those two little flesh oysters from the hollows of its back. They’re probably Elizabeth Taylor’s favourite bits. Your father can have the skin and the pickings on the carcass. There, that’s settled then.’
They were welcome to it. I’d had a religious transformation. It was wrong to eat a murdered chicken. The only chickens I would eat from now on were those from a supermarket. Happy, bloodless things that came in sealed plastic wrappers.
Religion was a non-negotiable subject in our house. We were Sunday Catholics. We didn’t bother practising much of what the priest preached but we went to Our Lady of Miracles every Sunday like the other good Catholics of Ulverston. On the subject of church, Mum and Dad were in agreement. It didn’t matter how crappy things were in real life: once a week we had to pretend to be a normal family.
‘Dad, I can’t go to church today. I’ve had a religious transformation. I had a visitation. Like an archangel, only bigger and shinier.’
Dad was putting on his tie in front of the hall mirror. He looked at my reflection and tightened his lips. I pushed on.
‘I was sucked up into the clouds where I met a man sitting on a large Brazil nut.’
My father raised his eyebrows in the mirror.
‘He looked like Mr Patel from the fruit and vegetable shop but he had long hair.’
Dad frowned and tucked the tail of his tie into his shirt.
‘I’m being called by a higher voice, he said. I should follow the voice, wherever it leads me, even if I have to walk through the valley of death and all that.’
Dad turned from the mirror and gave me one of his looks. ‘I heard a higher voice on the radio this morning. It was Joan Sutherland. Put on your Sunday jumper and get in the car. I’m in no mood for one of your stories.’
Church services at Our Lady of Miracles were a complete waste of time. The priest should have looked good in his glittery frock but managed to completely ruin the effect with a tragic haircut and old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses. Father McMahon wasn’t just a frump. He had absolutely no talent for working a crowd. It wouldn’t have taken much to liven up his sermons: a few ‘A funny thing happened to me on the way to the church this morning’ starters, some audience participation, novelty giveaways. But when Father McMahon talked, people picked lint off their cardigans and dug holes into pews with car keys. The priest lacked showmanship. My mother and I called this quality ‘pizzazz’ and divided the world into those who had it and those who didn’t. Mum and I fell into the first category while Dad and John occupied the second. Carmel was impossible to categorise. Mum said I had so much pizzazz I glowed. This was an exaggeration but I knew what she meant.
A shiny ecclesiastical gown would not have been wasted on me but the priesthood held no appeal. The Catholic Church had too many nutty rules and not enough handsome role models. Father McMahon managed to be even less attractive than the Pope, which was saying something. The best way to get through the hour of what he managed to stretch into half a day was to squint my eyes at the other churchgoers and imagine them without clothes. I’d actually seen my mother naked once when I’d surprised her coming out of the shower and taken in a few crucial points. Ladies had the Stromboli mound, only it was covered by a thatch of what I now knew to be pubic hair. Carmel had explained the mechanics of this anatomical oddity. ‘It’s like Velcro. It helps keep your underpants up.’
I’d done more research and come a long way since the Ralph Waters field trip. I knew for a fact that women had something called the lady hole, hidden away below the Velcro line. Where John got the point on his head, however, was still a mystery.
My father had done nothing to help my research. I’d shared a bathroom and towels with him for over a decade but had never seen him naked, not a pubic hair, not once. I’d seen him with his shirt off a handful of times but no Velcro. The mystery of the adult male had been cleared up by Greg Bean, a boy with Down Syndrome who visited the Ulverston Municipal Baths every Saturday in summer. Greg had the body of a teenager but the smiley temperament of a six-year-old. He had absolutely no concept of modesty and walked around inside the changing shed without clothes, singing, while his brother Denny tried to get him to step into his bathers.
The only times I considered God was when I wanted something expensive or when I was touching myself. If it was the latter case then I preferred to think that God didn’t exist. It made no sense that a higher intelligence would’ve provided such excellent equipment then forbidden me to use it. Masturbation was a key theme at St Kevin’s. We constantly heard about the perils of it from the Christian Brothers who ran our school. I might’ve taken notice if the message had come from another source, but I had no confidence in these particular men of the cloth. For the most part, they were a miserable bunch of failures. They’d given up the worldly joys but didn’t have what it took to become priests. Brother Punt was the school’s anti-wanking fanatic. He gave the religion class twice a week.
‘Masturbation is dangerous, boys. It’s a very difficult habit to break.’
Brother Punt turned his palms upward and spread his hands in front of him with a sweeping gesture. I’d seen a magician on television do the same thing to prove he had nothing to hide. Thomas Owen put up his hand. He was the tallest boy in the class and had permanently chapped lips.
‘What about in the bath, sir? I mean how do we wash ourselves down there?’ Thomas pointed to the hot zone below the belt of his trousers.
That question would’ve been a joke from anyone else in the class but Thomas didn’t have a ha-ha sense of humour. His mother came from somewhere in Germany.
‘Good question, Owen. I have two keywords for washing yourself. Be fast and be sure. Soap your flannel into a lather and clean your privates with a brisk rubbing motion.’
‘I tried that, sir, but I’m having problems.’
We all knew what kind of problems Thomas was talking about. These were not problems as far as I was concerned.
‘Be brisk, Owen. Do not linger.’
Poor Owen. His problem wasn’t masturbation. His problem was that he thought it was a crime. I knew he had it wrong. If there was a God and he didn’t want us to touch ourselves, he would’ve given us something useless like the joyless mound of a girl. Thomas was making a Gary Jings of himself. He wasn’t supposed to attract attention to himself. His job was to get on with business and keep quiet about it. Someone had to come to his rescue.
‘Do you think Jesus had a problem with…you know?’ I looked Brother Punt in the eye and shrugged knowingly. My question seemed to throw him off balance.
‘What sort of question is that?’ The brother’s hands clamped the edge of the desk.
‘Well, I mean, did they have flannels in those days? When Jesus Christ took a bath and all, do you think he—?’
‘No! Jesus was the son of God.’
The brother was firm on this point. He lifted a hand and brought it down hard on to the desk. Thomas Owen jumped and let out a squeak.
‘But he had a man’s body.’
This I knew for a fact. I’d admired it every Sunday in its shiny
plaster form on the wall of Our Lady of Miracles. I imagined Jesus had quite a Thermos flask inside the old tea towel wrapped around his loins. I’d spent many services redesigning the sculpture in my head, with and without the loincloth. My Jesus was clean-shaven with sexy little sideburns. He had a yellow brocade scarf slung around the hips, just low enough to reveal a hint of pubic hair. My scarf wasn’t tucked between the legs like Our Lady’s tea towel. In my version, the long tassels dangled cheekily in front of the groin. My design was a definite improvement on the original. It certainly would’ve encouraged more people to attend church and look up to Jesus.
‘He wouldn’t have done anything impure with his body.’ Brother Punt was leaning forward over his desk in a threatening manner.
‘But maybe he touched himself by mistake sometimes.’
‘He wouldn’t have.’ The brother’s word was final. The look on his face made that clear.
‘But he might have, you know, bumped against something accidentally. Maybe a chair or a goat.’
‘Shut up!’
I wasn’t sure if it was the mention of the chair or the goat that inflamed Brother Punt, but he moved toward me with the speed of a great white shark. I knew these particular sharks moved very fast because I’d just read an article in the Australian Ladies’ Companion about a man who’d lost a leg at Bondi Beach. I’d read it through to the end because it featured a photo of the surf lifesavers who had pulled the victim from the waves. The lifesavers wore tiny nylon bathers and little multicoloured caps that did up under the chin. The story inspired me to add surf lifesaver to my list of possible careers. But I wasn’t going to be one of the lifesavers who actually went in the water. I was going to provide cold drinks and suntan lotion, and speak to television cameras.
The teacher grabbed me under the armpit and dragged me to his desk. Reaching into the drawer, he pulled out a long, thick, leather instrument of torture. Punt had his own peculiar style with the strap. He brought the base down hard on to the palm, leaving the length of leather to slap at high speed across the delicate inner part of the wrist and forearm. I imagined it wasn’t too different from having nails driven into the wrists then being hung from a wooden cross. The brother’s technique made the veins stand out and left huge red welts on the skin.
Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar Page 4
