Facing the Music

by Brian Smith

  Returning to the lift for the car park, they bypassed the fruit and vegetable stalls.

  ‘Come on,’ she said cheerfully, ‘we still have to pick up my order from the Palace of Georgiou.’

  For Mike, the wide expanse of these stalls lacked the magic he still encountered in his father’s shops. After stowing their purchases in the back of the Forester, it took only a short time to reach the shop in Bay Street where she pulled into the only vacant spot – one marked in red letters as LOADING ZONE. ‘I would like to have made my own selection but your dad rang yesterday to ask what I wanted and said he’d have it all ready for me. If you go in and collect it, I’ll stay here and watch out for the parking narks.’

  On entering the shop Mike immediately enjoyed the pleasure of returning to well-loved territory. As a young child he had seen it as a magical cave abounding in treasure: golden bananas, ruby plums, polished apples, amber grapefruit, silky green cucumbers and zucchini, lush tomatoes. The mingling odours of earth, spice and sweetness enriched the atmosphere of the cave, presided over by the antique figure of his grandfather. How could anyone not be enchanted? It was in his blood and among his earliest and most indelible memories – nature and nurture working together.

  All other fruit and vegetable shops or stalls were drab in comparison with the richness of his memory. There had been changes over the years. Customers were no longer attended by the staff but served themselves. They took their red plastic baskets to the front counter, where modern technology removed the need for suspended scales to weigh their purchases or mental arithmetic to calculate the bill. But Mike unconsciously ignored these changes. When he rebelled in his teens, it was not to reject the shop – he would never do that. What he rejected was the idea his life should follow exactly the same path – the same rut as he thought of it then – as his grandfather and his father. As if his memories had taken on a present reality, his father stood in the middle of the shop, where memory said his grandfather stood to chat amiably with the customers, assist them to make their selections and encourage them to feel the shop existed only to serve their needs.

  A small queue stood at the checkout where Gail, the most recent of his father’s assistants, was billing and packing. Demetri was bent in conversation with a tiny old lady in a black coat and headscarf, who obviously came into the shop for more than fruit and vegetables. He winked at his son and tilted his head to signal he should go to the back of the shop. Mike pushed through the curtain of plastic strips to find Peter Roberts, Demetri’s longest serving employee, busy opening cartons of apples.

  ‘G’day, Peter,’ Mike said. ‘I thought you were running Albert Park.’

  ‘He wanted me back here to give a hand. Didn’t he tell you?’ This time it was Peter who sounded surprised.

  ‘We don’t talk much about the business,’ Mike replied.

  ‘P’raps you should,’ Peter said and then bent to pick up a tray of apples. ‘I’d better get these out in the shop. Your stuff is over there.’ He pointed to a collection of boxes in the corner.

  ‘Yeah. I’d better get moving too. Lissa is illegally parked. I’ll catch you tomorrow.’

  On the way home Mike thought about Peter Roberts’ brief comment. It was odd his father hadn’t mentioned Peter’s return to Bay Street. Some five years older than Mike, Peter was the eldest son of a woman abandoned by her husband, who left her with five children. Knowing her plight, Demetri found a need for a part-time position that Peter was able to fill after school and at the weekend. By the time Mike was spending some time in the shop, Peter was working full time and became a friend and a hero to the younger boy. Though they rarely saw one another these days, Peter was always keen to know about Mike’s successes from Demetri, who passed on to Mike any news of Peter.

  After they had unpacked the food, Lissa said, ‘Thanks for coming with me. It makes it so much easier for me to concentrate on what I’m buying when there’s someone else to look after the trolley. As your reward I’ll make you a coffee and allow you to sample some of the walnut cake I made yesterday. It’s a new recipe I’m trying. Then you can return to normal duties. Leila is due at ballet at eleven and Chris has a match at two. I’ll be busy preparing the marinades and baking some of the pastries for tomorrow. Don’t dare ask me to provide any lunch for you or the tribe. Without Mary I’ll be flat out.’ Lissa sounded pleased, though.

  The ballet classes were held in a dusty hall attached to what had once been a Congregational church. The classes were taken by Mrs Johnson, a short, sturdy woman in her late fifties who remained remarkably flexible and light on her feet. She also had a voice and manner with the children which reminded Mike of an army sergeant-major. She was assisted by a mousy woman known to all as Elsie, who banged out the required pieces on an out-of-tune piano in a manner Mike found hard to bear. There were twelve children, all girls, and an equal number of parents, only two of them men. After the girls in their pink leotards and ballet shoes were assembled, the parents were banished to a corridor where they could listen but not watch the lesson proceed. It was Mike’s opinion that most of the students, like Leila, were sufficiently lissom to meet the requirements of Mrs Johnson but showed few signs of the special aptitude required to become a dancer; before long they would move on to other pursuits like netball or cello or boys. His favourite two were a couple of ugly ducklings destined to turn into ugly ducks, who could be heard clomping their way through the moves prescribed by Mrs Johnson. They were the type who in later life would insist on wearing the shortest of skirts above their chubby thighs. He admired their refusal to be inhibited. For Mike, the least favourite were the pair with a natural talent that marked them as possible future stars of the dance, and knew it. He shouldn’t blame the girls; their self-important parents were even harder to take.

  Carla looked as though she might have been a dancer. He had no idea what she was like as a person. The music at the restaurant last night, suggested she favoured his kind of jazz. John Coltrane had moved in after Thelonious Monk was done and Miles Davis dropped by later. There had been others, more recent performers, perhaps, he did not recognise, but all were interesting. Did Carla choose them? To judge by the whole atmosphere of the place, she had very good taste. But maybe when she got home the calm reserve dropped away and she became as bitchy with her husband as Lissa could be at times. Unlikely, he would say, but you never know. And that was it – he would never know. The chances of them meeting again must be close to zero, although she and Angelo might turn up at one of those bunfights the industry ran from time to time. He hated them but perhaps should try a few more now he was more senior – with Lissa of course. What he should do, though, was forget all about Carla and get on with his life; he had plenty to occupy him right now. He rose to his feet ready to go but found the ballet lesson was not yet over. The curious eyes of the other parents followed him as he sank back on to his seat.

  Mike was relieved the clouds that built up during the morning had not yet led to rain. If the ground became wet and muddy, Chris’s matches lost any appeal as a spectacle and degenerated into a closely-packed swarm of twenty boys surrounding a sodden ball as it meandered up and down the field while at either end the goalies stood trying to keep warm. Today his team won 2-1 and Mike thought Chris did well – not that his opinion mattered to Chris. The trouble was that Demetri loved to regale his grandson with tales of his glory days at South Melbourne Hellas, the stories becoming more mythical in their content and plausibility with each telling. Chris loved them and saw himself as heir to a great family tradition. He pitied his father, the son of a champion, born without any ability at football, and saw Mike’s praise as merely the opinion of someone who was neither a student nor a hero of the game. A pity for Demetri that Chris was not his son – he probably would have stood a much better chance of persuading him to go into the business.

  It occurred to Mike that his father and Jim Findlay had that much in common. He had not before thought of them as being at all alike, but both desperately
wanted their sons to follow them. Initially both had failed, but Jim prevailed at a cost that had yet to be calculated. Perhaps he should use this as a cautionary tale the next time his father raised the topic. No, it would do no good and only prolong the awkwardness.

  Still, it had been a good week for Mike’s standing with his son. Lissa told him that when she had explained to Chris why his father had been moving so gingerly at breakfast on Wednesday morning and wasn’t willing to talk about it, he had said. ‘What? Dad caught a thief at the site? And they had a fight? He must have won. Cool!’

  When they returned home they were greeted by delicious smells from the kitchen. A note from Lissa informed them she had gone to Demetri’s house to check it out. Demetri had a woman who cleaned for him, but Lissa was unconvinced she would have the house the way it should be for tomorrow’s feast. As a postscript she reminded Mike he needed to pick up the drinks. This was no big deal as all he needed was a range of good quality beer and various soft drinks – Demetri insisted that only the wine from the well-stocked cellar he had built up over many years would do for his name day.

  Mike and the children combined to suggest to Lissa, who normally provided all their meals and had a righteous hatred for all forms of fast food, that fish and chips would give her an opportunity to rest after all the work she had done.

  When they had finished their fish and chips, Mike took the drinks he had bought over to his father’s house. Sitting in the darkening back room, each with a beer in hand, Mike glanced at his father and said, ‘You never told me you were an old pal of Mario Mancini.’

  Demetri shifted uneasily in his chair and frowned. ‘We are not pals. Never pals.’

  ‘He seemed to think so, and you do go back a long way, together.’

  Again Demetri wriggled uncomfortably and then he sighed. ‘Perhaps I should tell you. I am getting old and he will not go away.’

  ‘What?’

  Demetri took a long draft of his beer and sat forward.

  ‘Alright, I will tell you.’

  He stared straight in front of him and spoke as if to himself.

  ‘I was very young when I first went to the wholesale market. I went with my father who was convinced only he had the knowledge and the skill to make the right choice of fruit and vegetables. As I got older he insisted I continue to go with him but would never let me do more than hump the loads on to our van. I was resentful and I was bored.’

  Demetri came out of his reverie to glance across at Mike and give a gentle smile.

  ‘A dangerous time, the later teens. A time for rebelling against your parents. Christos is not many years away.’ He turned away to resume his monologue. ‘I got into bad company, and there was plenty of it at the market in those days. Still is, I s’pose, but it was much worse back then. All kinds of rackets were run out of the market and there were standover merchants who extracted money by threat. Mancini was one of them. That’s how he got his start.’

  Again Demetri turned to Mike, but there was no gentle smile this time, his face set as though Mike had interrupted to disagree with him.

  ‘He might be a respectable businessman now, but back then he was a merciless thug. I saw that eventually. But, at the start, I was stupidly impressed by him and wanted to thumb my nose at everyone the way he did. Fortunately, I came to my senses after I’d had a few run-ins with the police – nothing too bad but the kind of thing which can lead on to serious crime. To tell the truth, I didn’t so much come to my senses as get scared of what I saw Mancini do. Anyway, I broke away from him and we saw little of one another for a few years. Perhaps he spent time in jail or was away somewhere else. I can’t remember now. I was just happy to be shot of him.

  ‘When he returned to the market I was in my twenties and doing all the buying, while my father looked after the two shops we were running by then. Mancini now had his own gang and ran various scams where they fleeced the growers unmercifully. They also continued to demand protection money from many of the traders. Anyone who tried to ignore them, or worse still reported them to the police, was very likely to end up in hospital. One man was killed. No one was tried for the murder although the word was Mancini had fought with him and killed him.

  ‘Mancini didn’t threaten me at first but tried instead to recruit me for his gang. I knew that when I refused to join him there would be hell to pay so I prepared for it. When he started to sound off about how he was going to treat me I led him on, suggesting he was more hot air than a real threat. It was a risky thing to do, partly triggered by my embarrassment at ever having been impressed by him. But it paid off. Well, I thought so at the time. He became more threatening and more boastful, telling me he had killed the man I mentioned. I don’t know if he was telling the truth or whether he was making it up, but it sounded real and was damning. These were the old days, long before every kid had an iPod hanging off their ears. It never occurred to Mancini that I was recording every word he said. After he was done I made some copies and gave one to him, telling him I’d arranged for another copy to go straight to the police if I or anyone associated with our family or our business was hurt.’

  Demetri sighed and bowed his head as if apologising for what he had done.

  ‘It worked, but with every passing year I become more ashamed that I protected myself, and continue to protect myself, by letting a murderer go unpunished. Now you can see why I want nothing to do with the man.’

  Mike was still adjusting to a new version of his father, a father with a troubled past that until now he had kept secret.

  ‘Dad, why didn’t you tell me earlier? Did Mum know?’

  ‘No one knew. I told you. I was – I am – ashamed.’

  ‘Mancini cut an impressive figure last night. Do you think he’s reformed, or is that just a pose?’

  ‘I have no idea but I wouldn’t trust the man a millimetre.’

  Mike wanted to ask, ‘And what do you think about Carla?’ But he did not, keeping to himself the questions of whether the businesses she ran were legitimate or if she also had criminal links.

  Demetri broke into Mike’s thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry I told him you are involved in the business. That was foolish. It was just the way he gloated about his daughter running some of his.’

  ‘You did more than that: you told him I would be taking over.’

  ‘I’m sorry. He has that effect on me.’

  ‘Please give it up, Dad. You know it’s never going to happen and pretending to others that it is makes it embarrassing for us all.’

  Demetri shook his head sorrowfully and Mike thought he had not seen his father look so sad – even defeated – on the many occasions they had this discussion before.

  ‘But what am I to do? I made a solemn promise to my father that the name of Georgiou would always be maintained in Bay Street. He made the same promise to his father and he kept his promise. You have your career, I know that. Christos is too young; I cannot wait for him. But how else can I keep my promise if you will have nothing to do with the business?’

  8

  This time when Mike awoke, his head was no longer fuzzy and the light streaming in the window did not hurt his eyes. But again there was no sign of Lissa. Already she was in the kitchen packing boxes with the food she had prepared and the ingredients she would need at Demetri’s house today.

  ‘Ah Mike, my love, could you see to the kids, get them some breakfast and dressed. They know what they’re wearing today. At least the girls do. Will you have a look at Chris and see he’s respectable. Then come over and give a hand laying out the place for the feast. I thought Mary might be here by now. Probably she’s gone straight to your dad’s.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with these boxes. You really have been busy.’

  Lissa gave him a grateful smile.

  ‘Lots more to do yet, but I reckon it’s going OK. A good start.’

  It was another hour before Mike arrived at his father’s house with the children. It was not Chris who delayed him;
Jacinta kept changing her mind over what she would wear. Mike was used to such to-and-froing; Lissa often displayed uncertainty over her choice of clothes, but he had not seen Jac like this before – an inherited trait he had no hope of arresting. Then the balloons for the front veranda had to be found. When Mike tried to maintain these were unnecessary – everyone who was coming had been before and well knew where their grandfather lived – the children were unmoved.

  Mike first sought out his father, who was at the rear of the house, to give him name day greetings. The day was surprisingly warm and perhaps the heat, or an acceptance that these occasions no longer required such formality, had led Demetri to forgo his suit coat. Mike had gone even further, wearing a broad-checked, open-necked shirt and moleskin trousers. His father seemed rather ill at ease and Mike wondered whether it was concern over his attire or the memory of last night’s confession that had unsettled him. Lissa had been intrigued when he told her about his father’s early links with Mancini and he made her promise not mention it to him. The arrival of Christos spared him the need to create a conversation.

  ‘Christos, how good to see you.’ Demetri embraced the boy and hastened to say, ‘Sorry I couldn’t be there yesterday. Opening on a Saturday afternoon is a real pain we didn’t have when I played, thank goodness. How did you go?’

  ‘We won 2-1,’ Christos replied cheerfully before frowning. ‘I didn’t play too well, though.’

  ‘I thought he was good,’ Mike interjected.

  Demetri waved his hand as if dismissing the views of an unreliable informer and draped his arm around his grandson’s shoulder. ‘You must tell me all about it. Did you take your chances? That was always the key question when I was at Hellas.’