by Max Howell
“I am not really a wowser. My old man drinks like a fish, and I swore I would not touch it.”
“Just joking, mate. Every man to his own torture. Just go easy on the ginger beer. You can get addicted. What is worse, it can bugger your teeth. I am a dentist, mate!”
“What is an Aussie dentist doing in Tahiti?”
“Well, it is a long story. After getting out of high school I was a reporter for a few years, then I had to go into the Royal Australian Air Force, the famous RAAF, at the tail end of the war. They trained me as a bombardier, and I found all that navigation stuff easy as pie, and never forgot it. Anyhow, after the war they paid my way to University, and I decided to take dentistry because the pay was pretty crash hot and dentistry was pretty easy too. A lot depends on your hands, and I was blessed with good natural dexterity. Shows in sailing, too.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Mark, intrigued by the obvious intelligence of his new-found acquaintance. “What school did you go to?”
“Sydney High”, replied Bill.
“My girl-friend went to the Sydney Girls’ High School,” said Mark.
“Well,” said Bill, “your girl-friend might have been different, but in my day they were the sorriest looking lot that Christ ever saw. You would not give a bloody bottle top for the lot. No sheilah could look any good with those horrible bloody outfits they wore.”
Mark laughed as he recalled Faith in her school uniform. “Yes,” he said, “I have to admit you have got a point there. One had to be possessed of a good imagination.”
“Too bloody right you did. But I tell you, I got a good bloody education at Sydney Boys’ High.”
“How did you do in the Leaving Certificate?” enquired Mark.
“I did all right,” Bill replied.
“How all right was all right?” mimicked Mark.
“Well,” said Bill, “I got all A’s, and was top of the state in English and third in history. I heard it was the first time it had happened in the two Arts subjects.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Mark. “That is really a bit of all right.”
“The joke is I could not go to university, there was no dough in the family, so as I said I became a reporter. It was being in the air force and the government scheme for those in the service after the war that got me to university. Otherwise I would still be scratching out a living working for Packer and his miserly lot. I got a bit tired of the Police Courts and the obituary notices, I can bloody well tell you.”
“Did you get into any sport at school?”
“Too bloody right,” Bill exclaimed emphatically. “Not up to your standard, but I was a pretty fair sprinter, in athletics, that is. Was school champion, won the CHS 100 and 440 yards, and won the GPS 440 and was second in the 100. Was also in the school rugby team as a winger. I did not keep up with it, however, work and the war interfered. Played a few games with the Flying Greens, but found my best training was done in the pub.”
“That is pretty good going, Bill.”
“Well, as I said, it is peanuts when compared to what you have done.”
“Not at all. I concentrated on one sport and dedicated myself to it.”
“Maybe, but it is like dentistry. You can work as hard as you like, study till your eyeballs fall out, but there is no substitute for talent. Some have it and others have not.”
“Anyhow,” said Mark, intrigued by this extroverted Australian, “we got side-tracked. I was asking you what an Aussie dentist was doing in Tahiti?”
“Oh yes,” laughed Bill, “so you were asking me that half an hour ago. Let’s see, where was I? Yes, I know. I made it easily through dentistry and realised that there was no money to set up a practice in Australia. I had read there were opportunities for Australian dentists in England and by the way, just between you and me, mate, the standard is piss-poor over there. Australian dental schools have got them beat by a country mile. Most should not be let loose on the bloody public. Anyhow, then I realised I did not have the dough to get to England, so I got a job as a steward on the P. and O. line and quit with a few bob in my kick after we landed. Am I boring you, mate?”
“No,” said Mark, “I find it quite interesting.”
“Well, here I was in London, a young boy from Randwick with nothing but an inordinate amount of intelligence, great natural talent and a scrap of paper from Sydney University proclaiming to an anxious and eagerly awaiting English populace that I was a graduate dentist. I honestly could see it did not create much of a ripple, so what would any country boy do in such circumstances?
“You have got me,” said Mark, cooperating in the dialogue.
“I went to the pub, that is what I did. Being a non-drinker, you might not realize that the world’s greatest problems are discussed and solved, not in the parliaments and halls of justice, but in pubs, good old pubs. See what you learn when you travel, Mark?”
“I am getting the general idea, Bill, I am getting the general drift.”
“Good, mate. So there I was, lost and forlorn, deep in the suds, and I struck up a conversation with the bloke next to me at the bar. Silly bastard could not even understand me at first. He thought I was speaking a foreign language, and then cast some aspersions about Australians sounding like Cockneys and our convict past. I was not too amused with this imbecile, and then he asked me what I did for a crust. I told him that at this moment in time when I was pouring this lousy warm English beer down my throat, that I was temporarily unemployed, but had a certificate announcing that I could pull them out and fill them up in the best traditions of the dentistry profession. You would not read about it, but he called over to a mate of his at the end of the bar, who happened to be an ex-Australian and a dentist. This joker had a spot open in his surgery, and I was hired on the spot. You would not read about it, would you?”
“But you were going to tell me how you got to Tahiti.”
“In a bit of a hurry, aren’t you? Non-drinkers always try to get to the point in a hurry, whereas drinkers realise that conversation is an art form, to be handled with patience, delicacy and care.”
Mark started to laugh. “You have not got another ginger beer, have you? That might help.”
“Yes, I do mate. But watch out, as I said they are addictive, but I may have another one of the real stuff for myself while I am about it”, and he opened up not one but two more bottles. “But I will hurry this along just to please you. In no time I had my first practice and later owned four dental surgeries, hiring young blokes like myself from Australia and South Africa short of money but high in ability. I had more money than I knew what to do with, and one day a bloke asked me to go sailing. I found I had the knack for it, just like dentistry. It is one of the art forms, sailing. I could feel the wind on the sails and fell in love with the sea. I sailed with other blokes for a while, then bought this boat you are on now from a very famous sailor, Eric Hiscock. He has written lots of books on sailing, and if you read up on them you’ll see Wanderer I, II and III mentioned. He went round the world on this beauty, it is Wanderer II, and I found I had another amazing gift, navigation! I have never missed a land-fall in my life. I use air force navigation techniques at sea, and I am one of the first to do so. I also was one of the first to pick up on Colonel Hasler’s self-steering device. That way, when you are a single-handed sailor, you can sleep at night and the boat remains on course. Sailing, as I said, is an art, but the sea is not to be trifled with. Just when you think you have it beat, it belts you in the jaw. Sailing, my boy, requires intelligence and planning. I never drink when I am sailing, and I plan for every emergency. It is not a mug’s game.”
“I would not have the guts to set off alone on a 24-foot boat,” said Mark.
“It is like anything else, in sport or life. If you want to do well you have to do your apprenticeship, learn your skills, and be honest with yourself as to your abilities. When you are alone and in trouble you can only fall back on your own skills and intelligence. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, which is d
ifficult for me as you may appreciate, I came across the Atlantic, one of the fastest crossings in history for a boat this size, went through the Panama Canal, an experience in itself, and then followed Darwin’s route around the Galapagos Islands, then visited the Marquesas Islands and Penryhn. Having read Mutiny on the Bounty and all that stuff, and various journals of Pacific explorers, I decided I should see Tahiti, and here I am. Told you it would be a short story. Now how about I show you about town?”
“That would be great, Bill, if you have the time.”
“It is about all I have got. Wait until I get dressed.” He emerged a few minutes later with a loose shirt and sandals and still wearing his lei. He waddled off with Mark, exchanging pleasantries in French with a few of his fellow skippers - “picked it up at Sydney High under a bloody good French teacher,” and Spanish - “picked it up at a London restaurant” and maintaining Mark’s interest with a range of seemingly never-ending yarns. Stories of sharks and whales and flying fish and storms abounded, and at the same time he filled Mark in with the highlights of the town.
“It is a beautiful spot,” Bill said, “but the bloody Frogs will kill it. They have some of their Foreign Legion here, and they will ruin the bloody joint. All the films I saw in Australia, ‘Beau Geste’ and that ilk, were all in the desert, and the characters were all supposed to be a dispossessed lot with murky pasts. Something like a lot of the sons who had blotted their copybooks by putting the local virgin up the duff in the old country and were sent to Australia in the early days where they would keep out of the way and literally burn themselves to oblivion in the out-back. Anyhow, the Frogs are already ruining the port. Look at the oil in the water, as an example, and they have buggered the beaches, torn down the trees. Read Nordoff and Hall. Does Papeete resemble their descriptions in the present day? It is heading post haste towards rampant commercialism. Some silly bastard is even talking about an airport. Can you even imagine what that will do? And the Tahitians? Their land is going to the bloody French who are buying up everything they see. The Tahitians could exist in the old days without a care in the world, eating the paw paws and mangos and other tropical fruit, catching a wild pig when it suited them and pulling in fish by the bucket full. They had it beat, mate, they had it beat. The whites buggered them up, in more ways than one. They gave them syphilis, gonorrhoea, smallpox and influenza, and it decimated them. They did not realise that they would be virtually exterminated by their own innocence. Blokes like Gaugin came here and rooted himself silly. He left two things, beautiful pieces of art and wooden sculptures displaying innocence and naivety, and syphilis to those he rooted. Read the right bloody books, Gaugin died of a rare tropical disease. Rare is right, but tropical disease it was not. He died of syphilis, do not let anyone kid you otherwise.”
“How do you get to know all these things, Bill?” asked Mark.
“Well, I will tell you. I read voraciously. When I sail alone, I take a hundred or so books with me. Not crap. I read Shakespeare alone on the high seas. Name me any of his plays and I will quote you fifty lines. I have Gibbons’ Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, philosophers like Hegel, bloody-minded idiots like Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. They were not all mugs like Hitler. Most would spend their whole lives writing one book, and would die paupers in the process. But they are remembered, more so than I ever will be, and maybe you. You see, mate, it is the written word that is important. The spoken word, the physical act, means virtually nothing unless it is recorded. Do you realise Jesus Christ would have amounted to nothing if his disciples had not written down his sayings? As the Americans put it, he would never have got promotion in an American University. Great teacher, no research publications, one book and that written by his students. The spoken word is important at a moment in time, but loses meaning over time. So I read, mate, I read and it is not simply reading, you have to think about what was written, analyse it, put your own interpretation on it. Education has nothing to do with degrees. The educated man is the one who reads and thinks, and there are not many, mate!”
“But enough of this ranting and raving. It is a beautiful place, isn’t it? The shops are a bit run-down. But have a good look and you will not see any Polynesians running them or working in them. The French and the Chinese! That is all you see! Aren’t those Chinese amazing? They pop up everywhere. They arrive without a bloody pot to pee in and you look around and they own the joint. But give them credit. They are willing to work. They scared the hell out of Australians in the gold rush days. They swarmed in to the North Queensland fields, for example, and showed our miners a few things about work, and how to clean out a field properly. There were race riots because of it. Frankly, we could not stand the competition. So we brought in the White Australia Policy to keep them out. Of course, Australians are not prejudiced. Oh yeah! We decimated our own indigenous population and refused to let other races in and we have got the guts to criticise the Yanks and the South Africans about their racial attitudes. What a bloody joke!
“Anyhow, the poor bloody Polynesian has not a hope in hell. Too bloody nice. They are used to living off the land they thought they owned. Now somebody else owns it, and the fruit and fish are not as plentiful and freely available as they once were. Come back here in fifty years and you will not find one living the old life-style, and more is the bloody pity. Which of us had the better way of life, I ask you that?”
“Yes,” said Mark earnestly, “I just saw the same thing in Fiji. The Indians are taking over.”
“You are right, mate. Same bloody problem. It is what they term the advance of civilization. In my opinion, however, the Melanesians and the Polynesians were more civilised than those who appeared later on the scene. Anyhow, what are you up to to-night?”
“Nothing, Bill, just having dinner on the ship and maybe a walk about the town.”
“Well, look, if you want to know what this place is all about, come with me to Quinn’s Tahitian Hut. It is famous throughout the Pacific. Quinn was an old trader who set up a bar here, and everybody visits it. You may not have seen much action around the town, but it all happens nightly at Quinn’s place. The girls come down from the mountains, it seems, the most beautiful girls you will ever see in your life.”
“Well, I am not interested in girls, I have a girl-friend in Australia.”
“That’s okay, but you do not have to taste what they have to offer. Just come along and see the local colour and atmosphere. I have a girl-friend here, a ravishing beauty, and you can sit with us and drink ginger beer if you must. It will be the first time anyone ever ordered one in the place. Quinn may have a heart-attack. Come on, mate, you will love it. How about a night out with a fellow Randwickian, if there has ever been such a term?”
“Why not? It sounds like a lot of fun.”
“Then meet me at Wanderer II sometime after eight o’clock, when you feel like it. Time does not have the same meaning here.”
Mark wandered off along Pomare Boulevard again, taking in the view, smelling the flowers, and he felt perfectly relaxed. It certainly was not Australia, but he felt strangely at home here. He wondered if the Pacific peoples, and he included himself among them, had a certain affinity. Life was more easy-going, and there was a love of fresh air, the sun and the surf. It was a pretty good life-style. I am going to miss Australia, he thought, and he enjoyed talking to Bill Howell. He felt however a little inferior talking to him. Bill had read and done so much, but he admitted to himself that it was nice to hear the Aussie accent again.
When he got back to the Lakemba he took his letter-pad out, went to the ship’s lounge and wrote a long letter to Faith. Even with this very limited travelling, he could see his personal perspective of the world getting broader. There was more of a world view that he was getting, and he liked the feeling. He felt a very long way from Church Street, Randwick, yet he wanted to tell Faith of all his impressions, so that she would also fully benefit from his trip.
After dinner, he went ashore and
met Bill again. This time Bill was armin-arm with his Tahitian girl-friend, with whom he was talking fluent French. Her name was Mere, and she smiled openly at Mark. She had long, black and lustrous hair, and a sinuous figure.
“She is a bloody beauty, isn’t she? You can see how Fletcher Christian and the Bounty crew went berserk when they hit these shores. Look at her! A beauty, that is what she is! May marry this girl, but I know she would wither away and die in England. Look at her beautiful brown skin and wonderful body. She is meant for the sun and light clothing. Could you imagine her in big boots and a heavy overcoat? No, it would bloody well kill her. They love their country, though it is in the process of being taken away from them. And they love it for a good reason. You cannot help loving the place, though the isolation would get to you after a while. Mind you, we are pretty bloody isolated in Aussie, except our country is bigger, the population’s greater, and there are more things to do. I would go mad here without good books. You cannot let your mind stagnate, mate, it is the most important possession you have and it is the last bloody thing to go usually if you keep using it. Your dick will go before your mind.”
Mark started to laugh. He had not heard the word dick for a long time. “You are a real character, Bill,” he said.
“Character nothing,” Bill went on. “I learned early in life that no-one gives you anything. You have to bloody well work for it and if you come from the other side of the tracks, like I did and I gather you did, then you have to be twice as bloody smart to get ahead. You are really pretty naive, Mark. I do not mean to criticise you, but frankly you do not know your arse from a hole in the ground.” Mark burst out laughing, enjoying the tirade. “No, mate, I am bloody serious and I am trying to do you a favour. You have to read up on Marx and Engels, mate. It is a bit deep, however, and you have to think about it. There is a class war going on, mate. No, do not bloody grin. It is a death struggle, mate. They are not going to let mugs like you and me take over their proprietary rights without a struggle. They are pretty clever how they do it, and unless you use your nouse you will not even see it happening, but they keep you in your place, the bloody upper class. They are not about to share their privilege and position. No bloody fear. Listen, mate, just think about this. They listed IQ’s in Australia and I have one of the highest ever recorded. That is one bloody thing, and I received one of the highest passes from high school ever recorded. Top in the state in English and third in History. First time it had happened. Did I go to bloody university? No bloody fear, mate, because my old man did not have a pot to piss in and I had to go out to work. But the poofters from Shore and Grammar went, without half my bloody brains, because their old men had money. Simple as that. The only reason I got through University was I had to get in the Air Force and the government paid my way because I served my bloody country. And listen, mate, how come you are leaving Australia to go overseas to study? Where was all the help you received, and you are a double bloody gold medallist.”
