‘You know, in the bottom.’ He tapped the diagram of the penis then twisted around to point at his bottom.
‘Oh, that? Yeah, that happened to Ralph Waters.’ I said this quietly for effect.
‘This Ralph character was a party to this business?’
I lowered my voice even further. ‘He asked for it.’
‘In the bottom?’ The youth was moving his hands about in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot.
‘It happened in the showers.’
‘You boys shower together?’
‘The prefects make us share the nozzle.’
This was too much information for the youth. He groaned and moved off rapidly without saying goodbye.
Back at the club, I relayed the information about ejaculation to the others. We’d now all mastered the climax except for David Perk. I was sure he was giving himself hell at home but he was a painfully slow developer. Even his ginger pubic hair was sparse. David was shy and always sat in the darkest area of the club after removing his clothes.
Pubic hair was an obsession for me. It was like panache. You either had it or you didn’t. I watched mine develop with impatience and monitored the hair growth of all the boys at school. Most of my research was carried out on Saturdays with Jimmy Budge at the Ulverston Municipal Baths. There were no partitions in the pool’s changing room, which made it difficult for boys to undress in a modest manner. Jimmy and I had a name for the room: the Pubic Hair Hall of Fame. The one boy I desperately wanted to see naked was Peter Grubb. He was a footballer with a deep voice and hairy legs, one of the most well-developed boys in our year. Peter Grubb had glamour.
‘Grubbsie’s climbing on to the diving board.’ I pointed to the deep end of the pool.
Jimmy and I were in the middle of the pool where we’d been practising back flips. I still couldn’t spin backward without getting water up my nose and a chlorine-perfumed sinus headache. Jimmy could do two flips in a row without coming up for air. He was sure to achieve the punishing triple backward flick-roll by the end of summer.
‘So what?’ Jimmy was treading water yet somehow managed to shrug his shoulders. He reached out underwater and playfully pinched my bum. I pushed his hand away and pointed to Peter Grubb.
‘Look at his hairs.’
‘Others have got hairs.’
‘Yeah, but Grubbsie’s got real ones. The hairs frill out from underneath his bathers.’
‘Mine do that, too, if I pull my bathers up.’
‘I’d like to see him without his bathers. I bet he’s huge.’
‘A huge wanker.’
‘I’m going over to the diving board.’
‘But you can’t even dive.’
I dog-paddled to the deep end and clung to the side for a moment. With one hand under the water, I tugged the front of my bathers down. As I climbed up the ladder, they sagged below my abdomen to expose a moustache of pubic hair. I walked casually up to the diving board and stood to the side, watching the boys run and dive off. Jimmy had followed me to the deep end and was in the water near the diving board, close enough for his voice to ring out like the Sunday service bark of Father McMahon.
‘Look at Corkle trying to show off his new pubes!’
All the boys waiting by the diving board turned and laughed. Grubbsie hesitated. He looked down at me and smiled before diving off the end of the board and slipping into the water with a perfect plop. I ran to the side of the pool and jumped in, hugging my legs to create a pocket of air under my knees. My bomb sent a wall of water over Jimmy’s face. I loved Jimmy Budge but sometimes he was just too much. He was like my mother. He knew me too well.
11
Singing was part of the Catholic way. You had to do it in church and religion class but it wasn’t meant to be enjoyable. There was nothing original about the hymns we had to sing, no glamour and no entertainment value. Mum called church singing ‘a foundation’ and liked to remind me that Frank Sinatra was a Catholic. But Ol’ Blue Eyes had lost some of his gold dust for me since I’d discovered David Bowie. Bowie was my new god, a passion I shared with Jimmy Budge. We’d both bought turntables with paper-round money and both owned all his albums. I played Hunky Dory at least thirty times a day. I sang his songs out loud on my bike in the mornings and performed them for the boys at the club in the afternoons.
St Kevin’s had a choir but it wasn’t something a sensible person would join. Thomas Owen had actually auditioned for it and been rejected. The choir was led by the most sadistic of all the Christian Brothers, Brother Dooley.
I was surprised to bump into Thomas coming out of the music room with the red cheeks of a chorus girl. He was such an earnest loser.
‘Hi, Thomas. I thought you didn’t get into the choir.’
‘Brother Dooley said I could still participate.’
‘You sing?’
‘Brother Dooley says I’m tone deaf. I’m allowed to follow the words with my lips as long as no sound comes out.’
‘Dooley’s a bastard.’
‘I don’t think you should use that word.’
‘I think Dooley is that word.’
‘What word would that be, Corker?’
It was Brother Dooley. He’d sneaked out of the music room and was standing behind me with a smug expression. Dooley loved catching criminals in the act. He crept around the school corridors collecting swearers and chewers and then marched them off to his special cloakroom for a hiding. In the real world, Dooley would’ve been a laughing stock. His shoulders were almost non-existent and his pelvis jutted out like a dinghy’s bow, a body shape that earned him the nickname of the Human Question Mark. Despite these obvious shortcomings, Dooley enjoyed the status of God in the Catholic school environment where he could pick and choose among hundreds of boys to beat and humiliate.
‘That word would be impresario, sir, but Thomas doesn’t think I should use foreign words to describe you.’
‘Is that right, Thomas?’ Dooley’s left eye blinked like a camera shutter.
Thomas looked at me, then at Brother Dooley, then back to me. He silently opened and shut his mouth in choir-practice style, and then nodded. The brother lingered, looking at me through narrowed eyes, before moving off to the toilet block. He didn’t like me and the feeling was mutual. I hated his weekly hour of religion. The hymns were old-fashioned songs that had been written by madmen.
The next time I crossed Brother Dooley was in religion class. I should’ve known he had it in for me and simply mouthed words like Thomas. But I was too much a showman to do something sensible and Dooley happened to choose the Prayer of St Francis: ‘Make me a channel of your peace; where there is hatred let me bring your love.’ I’d created my own version of the prayer and performed it whenever I had an audience: ‘Make me a flannel for your penis; where there is mayhem let me bring your rub.’
Jimmy elbowed me but I could tell he was proud. All the boys around us were laughing. I had them eating out of my hand.
‘Corker, get to the back of the class.’ Brother Dooley’s left eye blinked dangerously. He couldn’t hear what I was singing but he knew by the boys’ reaction that I was up to something.
I moved near the back but was too fired up by the boys’ response to stop. Even Ralph Waters was sniggering. I sang louder. ‘Make me a flannel of your penis…’
Boys turned, snickering. Jimmy looked back at me and shook his head. Brother Dooley called out again.
‘Corker, get outside.’
From the doorway I sang even louder, driving the boys into a frenzy. I was laughing so hard I didn’t see Brother Dooley until he was standing in front of me blinking and twitching. He grabbed the back of my shirt and, half lifting, half pushing, hurled me into the cloakroom where he kept his strap.
The walloping I received should’ve put me off singing forever but I was too deeply involved with David Bowie to let a killjoy like Dooley silence the Songbird of the South. I’d pinned a life-size poster of Ziggy Stardust in a leotard to the ceiling of
my bedroom. Every night, I removed this leotard in my mind’s eye and ran my hands over his pale, hairless body. I knew Jimmy did the same thing every time he climbed into bed. He had the same poster pinned to his ceiling. David Bowie was our official mascot, ten out of ten on the panache scale. We used him as a yardstick to measure the value of anything male.
Carmel had no idea of my close relationship with Bowie but she did share my enthusiasm for his music. The one thing we still did together was listen to Port Sounds every Friday when the radio station ran a pop quiz. I was grilling two pieces of cheese on toast when the DJ asked listeners for the birth names of Elton John and David Bowie. I ran to the phone.
‘Grooving Port Sounds radio. Your name is…?’
‘Julian Corkle.’
‘Mr Corker. If you can tell me the names correctly, you’ll receive two tickets to the big concert in Ulverston.’
My chest felt as if it was going to burst. David Bowie and Elton John were coming to Ulverston!
‘It’s Corkle.’
‘Sorry, that’s not correct.’
‘No, that’s my name. I’m Julian Corkle. Their names are Reginald Kenneth Dwight and David Robert Hayward-Jones.’ I hoped every kid at St Kevin’s was tuned into Port Sounds.
‘Mr Corker, you’ve just won yourself two tickets to the Ulverston Town Hall this Saturday.’
Carmel looked over at me as she removed the smoking cheese toasties from the grill. There was new respect in her eyes.
Jimmy Budge agreed that the Port Sounds studio was the Paramount Studios of Ulverston as we pushed through the main doors. It was the perfect place for someone with my kind of panache, he said. I put on a swagger and approached the plump blonde receptionist. She was looking at herself in a pocket mirror and didn’t acknowledge our presence.
‘My name’s Julian Corkle and I’ve come to pick up my tickets to the big concert.’ I turned to wink at Jimmy. ‘I won them.’
The young woman stopped applying lipstick with a sigh and vaguely consulted a list on her desk.
‘No tickets here for Corkle.’ She looked back to the mirror and resumed her make-up business.
‘But they told me they’d be at reception.’ My voice went high at the end.
‘They’re not.’ She said this without looking our way.
‘I have to get my tickets.’ Panic was making it hard to breathe.
The woman began applying blue eye shadow with a small fluffy stick.
‘Try looking under Corker.’ Jimmy Budge’s adolescent voice started as a growl and ended high. He moved to the side of the desk and glared at her.
The woman gave a squawk of surprise and raked her make-up into a pile with her fingertips.
Jimmy didn’t move. ‘I said look under Corker.’
Her eyes darted from Jimmy to the list. They widened. She removed an envelope from a box and threw it in my direction. It fluttered to the floor in front of me. ‘Why didn’t you say Corker in the first place?’
‘Why don’t you learn some manners, you stupid mare.’ Jimmy snatched up the envelope and pulled me out of the studio.
I ripped it open and held up the two tickets, dancing around him and waving my fists in the air.
‘Hang on, Julian, I thought you said it was an Elton John and David Bowie concert.’ He’d taken the tickets and was examining them.
‘I had to give their names.’
‘It’s a Rolf Harris concert.’ Jimmy glanced back at the glass doors with a frown.
There it was in black and white: ‘Rolf’s Big Aussie Sunset Spectacular’. I wanted to cry. A Rolf Harris concert was not something for boys our age. Rolf was too friendly, too much like family-approved fun. Jimmy put his arm around my shoulders as we walked away from the station. He didn’t say anything until we reached the bus stop.
‘It’s a funny thing but Peter Grubb will probably be at that damned concert.’ Jimmy turned to read the bus timetable.
‘Peter Grubb the footballer?’
‘He’s a big Harris fan. You wouldn’t expect it from such a hairy bastard.’ Jimmy said this without looking at me. He was running a finger down the timetable. ‘You could probably give the tickets to Perkie or Humdinger.’
I hesitated.
‘They’d love a freebie.’
‘Nah, they wouldn’t appreciate it. We should probably go ourselves. I won those tickets fair and square.’
Mr Budge dropped us off at Jubilee Park in his Ford Cortina. Jimmy had dressed up for the event in a pair of baby-blue Grouse cords and a clingy turquoise stretch shirt. He looked very French with his perfect hair slicked back and a hanky in his pocket. The woman in the ticket window raised her eyebrows as she clipped the tickets. I could tell she was impressed.
Jimmy smiled as we sat down in the front row. ‘It’s just like a real concert.’
The lights dimmed and a hum began. Rolf emerged in front of a faint orange glow and started singing ‘Sun arise, she bring in the morning…’
I gripped Jimmy’s hand as a spotlight fell on Rolf.
Jimmy squeezed back and moved closer in his seat.
The concert was magic, better than colour TV. We were so close we could see the zips and buttons on the outfits of the musicians. One of these was a trumpeter who moved his hips as he tooted. He had the lithe body of a dancer and a beautiful face with large soft lips. These he licked between blasts on his instrument. Rolf Harris didn’t have the trumpeter’s panache but he was an excellent showman. Near the end of the concert, he looked directly at Jimmy and me and announced: ‘Listen to the music in your blood. Your heart has rhythm.’
We came away from the concert buzzing, pushing through the crowd until we hit the park grass and then started running. I was ahead of Jimmy with my chest out and arms pumping when he ankle-tapped me, sending me tumbling forward into a bed of municipal begonias. Jimmy fell on top of me with a thud. He pulled his face up from the fresh soil laughing. He had dirt up his nose and in his eyebrows. He looked stupid and adorable. I was sandwiched beneath him bucking with laughter when I heard three sharp blasts of a horn. Our new second-hand Holden Torana was parked on the other side of the flowerbed. Dad rolled down his window and called out.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Get in this bloody car at once!’
I went to see Mr Turtle after school on Monday. He taught the school band and wore plastic-soled suede shoes that squeaked on the parquet floor of the school hall. He was the father of the school’s only accomplished musicians, Neville and Kelvin. The Turtle brothers were gangly and awkward like Thomas Owen but got away with it by playing the cornet like demons.
‘Mr Turtle, I’d like to learn an instrument and join the band.’ I arranged my hands and played a little air guitar for his benefit.
‘How old are you, Julian?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘That’s quite late to pick up an instrument.’
‘There’s music in my blood. I can feel it. My heart has rhythm.’
‘Were you at the Rolf Harris concert?’
‘What Rolf Harris concert?’
‘Playing an instrument requires dedication. It’s not as easy as it looks.’
‘Dedication is my middle name.’
‘Your middle name’s Sidney.’ It was Neville Turtle. He’d been lurking behind us, listening. I gave him a sharp look and turned back to the teacher.
‘You’ve done a fine job with your sons, Mr Turtle. You can make something great out of me.’
He nodded and smiled modestly. We headed to the instrument room, squeaking our way across the school hall.
‘For your first instrument, I suggest something not too ambitious.’
I pointed to the enormous bass tuba leaning against the wall. It was constructed like a factory smokestack. If I was going to play in a band, I wanted an instrument that said player.
‘You think you can manage it, Julian? It’s quite an ambitious choice.’
The instrument hadn’t been used for a very lo
ng time and smelled of oxidised metal and pee. To get it home, I had to curl it over my shoulder and push my bike with one hand. Once there, I laid it in the bath and used toilet cleaner and John’s Jethro Tull T-shirt to give the brass a shine. When I put the mouthpiece to my lips again, I tasted oxidised metal and toilet cleaner.
Mr Turtle shrugged indulgently and let me swap the tuba for a cornet. It was smaller than a trumpet but to an audience seated in front of a stage it would have the same sex appeal. I screeched away on it for two band sessions until Neville and Kelvin threatened to quit. Mr Turtle took me to the storeroom one last time, warning me that it was the last exchange. ‘I’m not running a pawn shop here, young man.’
As soon as my eyes fell on the fancy cloth case, I knew I wouldn’t be swapping again. I’d found my Golden Microphone instrument: a spanking new trombone made of shiny musical brass. The instrument had never been used. Mr Turtle had led a vigorous fund-raising campaign to buy it and was very proud. He handed it to me with a tight smile.
The band practised in the school hall two evenings a week. For a month, I attended faithfully, riding my bike to the practice with the trombone balanced across my handlebars. I could’ve put the instrument in my newspaper saddlebags but no one would’ve seen it. The whole point of playing an instrument was to be a showman.
One evening I was running late and took a treacherous shortcut across the sun-baked lawn of the cricket pitch. I’d been at the club with Jimmy and Grant when I realised the time. We’d been talking about the defection of David Perk, who’d surprised us all by getting a girlfriend. She wasn’t just any girl either but a stocky member of Carmel’s hockey team.
I’d made it midway across the cricket pitch when I hit a wicket hole and the trombone slipped out of my grasp. It twirled around on the handlebars and fell forward. The bike came to an abrupt halt as it caught in the spokes and I was hurled forward at great speed like a slingshot missile.
When I got up, my knees and elbows were already starting to bleed. My bottom lip was numb and rapidly swelling into something enormous. The front wheel of my bike was bent away from the forks. The trombone lay in a clump of grass a couple of metres away. I walked over with fear banging inside my chest. The cloth case was bent like an old turned-up shoe. I didn’t need to unzip it to know that its beautiful brass arm was bent at a forty-five-degree angle.
Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar Page 8
