by Tony Birch
Her resourcefulness also led to the growth of an unusual collection in our hallway. It started with just the one roll of lino held together by a length of twine that I noticed leaning against the wall when I arrived home from school one afternoon.
I pointed to it. ‘What’s that, mum?’
‘What’s what?’
‘That?’ I again pointed to the roll.
‘Nothing. That’s nothing. Don’t worry about that, it’s just an idea.’
When my father came home from work that night and the roll of lino fell across his path as he tried to get into the kitchen, he asked the same question as I had and received a similarly evasive reply.
Over the next weeks additional rolls of lino appeared at the house, gathering in the hallway alongside the initial arrival. I dared not ask mum about them, and she offered no explanation. So we left them to accumulate. Although the rolls of lino eventually blocked any clear pathway to the kitchen, opposition to her hoardings would have been pointless.
At the same time that she hoarded second-hand rolls of lino my mother also sat at the kitchen table of a night poring over a paint colour chart. She had decided that the outside of the house would have to be repainted if she was going to placate my father. The weatherboards had faded and some of the paint had peeled away after years of baking in the sun and getting lashed by rain. So it would have to be redone soon anyway. Although the chart claimed to contain ‘121 vibrant colours’, she struggled to find anything that attracted her eye.
‘What colour, then?’ she suddenly demanded of my father one night as he sat eating his tea.
He looked down at the chart and made his choice without informed consideration. He pointed his knife at one of the coloured squares.
‘Brown.’
‘Brown? Brown?’ She was disappointed. ‘Not brown. Jesus. Something a little brighter, maybe?’
He stabbed a fork into the end of a lamb chop. He lifted the fork and examined the piece of meat. ‘I don’t care then. Any colour but that fucken red. The blokes at the pub think it’s a joke. A fucken joke. Just paint it.’
I had a small bedroom off the hallway, behind my parents’ room. It overlooked the side yard. Each morning, when I woke, I would pull the curtain across and survey the back swamp before staggering out through the kitchen and into the cold for a pee. Although the rain had finally stopped, the water in the yard was yet to subside. It was a dull green in colour now and smelled like a wet dog. My mother had found some lengths of timber paling in the street and used them to lay a pathway to the toilet. But most of them had either become submerged or had floated away.
I had the house to myself on Saturday mornings. I would lie in bed with the curtain open, a book in my lap, while my mother was down the street with her shopping trolley and my father was doing a half-shift on the road. I had brought a box of second-hand books with me from Clunes, favourites that I had collected whenever I went into Ballarat with my mother. I had unpacked the box, and lined the books along the windowsill.
It was not until I went looking for my illustrated Tom Sawyer one Saturday morning that I realised that I’d misplaced it or, perhaps worse, had not brought it to Melbourne with me. It was not on the window shelf, or in the empty box that now sat in the corner of the room.
I went searching for the book throughout the house, starting in the kitchen, and then the outside laundry, before ending up in mum and dad’s bedroom. I looked in every drawer of the old dresser and through the wardrobe. I could not find the book anywhere. Mum had unpacked everything from the tea-chests and thrown them out as they had fallen apart under the strain of the move. But she had kept one smaller wooden box with odd stuff in it. I had seen it around the house somewhere, but I could not remember where. I began the search again.
Eventually I found the box in the kitchen. Mum had covered it with a floral-patterned piece of material and sat a vase on top of it. I took the vase from the top of the box and placed it on the kitchen table. I neatly folded the floral cover and took the lid off the box. A familiar scent escaped from it and lifted into the air. I knew what the box contained without having to look.
I sat for a while, staring down into the box, unsure of what to touch first and of whether I should disturb its contents at all. Eventually I put my hand in and picked up her first pair of booties. They were made from soft cream-coloured wool and had pink satin ribbon threaded through them. And they still smelt of Velvet soap. The box also contained a rattle that had a small mirror inside it. May used to hold it against her face in an attempt to catch her reflection. I picked up a small, smoothly varnished jarrah ball that dad had shaped for her on the lathe at the timber mill. It was the only thing he had ever made. And in the bottom of the box, the pillowcase that mum had held to her heart when she left Clunes.
I heard mum at the door, struggling with the shopping trolley. I sat at the table, gripping the wooden ball in my hand. She came down the hallway, steering the trolley with one hand while carrying a bag of groceries in the other. I had put the photograph of May on top of the box. She did not see it at first. She began to quietly unpack the trolley. She had her back to the framed picture as she put the bag of groceries on the table and removed a box of flour and some tinned fruit from the trolley.
‘How’s your morning been?’ she asked with her back to me.
As she turned towards me she noticed the photograph. She froze for a moment before taking a step forward and bending over. She looked into May’s eyes. May looked back at her from behind the glass. She was wearing a cream knitted suit and the same booties that I had just retrieved from the box. Her dark curls were sitting on her shoulders.
Mum leaned closer until she was almost touching the glass with the end of her nose. She began whispering to herself, ‘May, May.’ Realising my mistake I jumped up from the table and reached over to remove the photograph. My mother’s hand grabbed hold of the frame before I could reach it. She held it towards her and pressed her face against the glass.
I didn’t know what to do next. The two of us stood watching each other. She occasionally glanced back towards the front door, knowing that he would be home soon, and he would not want to see the photograph sitting on the kitchen table. She leaned across the table and took the jarrah ball from my hand. She kneaded the grain of the wood between a thumb and forefinger before placing it next to the photograph.
She took my hand. ‘We can’t leave this out, Michael, not yet. Not her picture, none of this stuff. He’s not ready yet.’
She was right, of course, although I know now that she also understood that he would never be ready to confront the memory of May again.
We sat at the table with May until we heard him at the side gate. She hurriedly packed everything away before he had removed his work boots at the back door. When we got up from the table and moved into the other rooms of the red house, mum and I carried that image of May with us.
As the winter left for the year, the yard began to dry slowly. But it looked even drearier now, with nothing growing in the garden. Mum persuaded Mr Carboni to put some drainage in, hoping that the flood would not return next winter.
Later, in the spring, on what would have been May’s third birthday, my mother provided both my father and myself with a series of surprises. When he got home from work she asked him to follow her into the yard.
‘Come out back. I’ve got something for you to see, both of you. You too, Michael, come on, into the yard.’
She opened the door and stood back so that she could follow us into the yard. I was struck by the beauty of what she had created. The previously barren square of dirt was now covered in a patchwork quilt of lino pieces, dressing the yard in brightly checked patterns and wild swirls of colour.
If my father was impressed he did not offer a comment. So she demanded one. ‘What do you think? What do you reckon, Mick? It’s an improvement on the
mud, isn’t it?’
He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the yard. ‘Well, I suppose it’ll go with the colour of the house. Yeah, it’s just as bad as that. Won’t be for long though. I’m going to paint it. Paint it fucken brown.’
With that he turned away from her and walked towards the kitchen. What she said next stopped him dead.
‘I’m pregnant, Mick. I’m having a baby.’
He spun around and moved towards her. I thought that maybe he was going to hit her. But he didn’t. He stopped in front of her. They were toe to toe.
‘You what?’
‘Pregnant. I’m having a baby, Mick.’ She looked over at me. ‘Michael, you’re going to be a brother.’
He looked across at me. ‘No, he’s not. What are you going to do? What are we going to fucken do?’
She moved in to him, as close as she could get and stared into his face. ‘I’m going to have a baby, Mick, a baby. It’s too late, Mick.’
He looked at me again and then back at her, looking suddenly weakened, as if imploring her to help him. But she would not help him. She did not say another word. He turned around and marched into the house and then out through the front door, slamming it behind him. She watched the empty doorway for a moment before walking over to me and ruffling a handful of my hair.
‘Hey, Michael, I’ve got another surprise for you.’
With that she went into the laundry and came out with a tin of paint and an old brass spoon. ‘It’s for the front of the house. I’ve decided to redo it.’
I looked down at the can. ‘What colour is it?’
‘I’ll show you.’
She shook the can vigorously, put it on the ground and placed the handle of the spoon under the lid. I talked to her as I watched her attempts to lever the top from the can.
‘You really going to have another baby, mum?’
‘Yep, I am.’
‘A boy or a girl?’
‘I don’t know, love. I don’t know.’
She chopped at the handle of the spoon. The paint lid flipped into the air. We watched as it spun like a brightly coloured tossed coin. The metallic top of the lid caught the light of the sun as it turned over and over and over, while the underside of the lid spread a splash of colour against the clear blue sky.
It was a deep red splash of colour.
The Lesson
There is sometimes a great distance between what you ask for and what you get. For two or three years in succession I had wished for only the one birthday present. I wanted a bicycle. And not just any bicycle. It had to be a racing bike.
I could save for a second-hand bicycle out of my paper-round money, if I was desperate enough to purchase one from Soft John, but I did not need a bike that badly.
Soft John was a loner who lived in a disused shed on a railway siding next to the old inner-circle line that passed through North Fitzroy and Carlton. He wandered the streets picking up bits and pieces of old bikes that he then re-assembled and sold to local kids. But a Soft John special was only good for about a week of smooth riding before those same bits and pieces began falling off again.
But maybe it would have to be a Soft John. I was just about the only kid on the street approaching his thirteenth birthday who did not have a bike. I would have to buy one soon to avoid embarrassment.
My father had his own ideas about my birthday. He usually left both the gift buying and the money to pay for them to my mother, but on the occasion of my thirteenth birthday he had decided that he was going to surprise me personally. And he did. He bought me boxing gloves, and not one pair but two; one for each of us, I assumed. In the weeks before my birthday he had commented to me more than once, ‘I reckon we’ve had enough of this shadowboxing.’ I dreaded the prospect of going even one round with my father, although it seemed likely that I would soon have to.
My mother looked distressed as she watched me take the gloves out of the brown paper bag that dad had carried them home in. She did not say a word about it, knowing, as I did, that he had made up his mind. He was going to train me to be a fighter. He had increasingly talked about me having a career in the ring, just as he had done when he was younger.
He had wanted me to box from a young age, and had taught me to spar bare fist to open hand with him in the backyard soon after we moved here. He quickly discovered that it was one of the few things that I did well. Whenever his mates came around for a drink he would encourage me to put on an exhibition for them.
‘Look at his jab, look at it. Now watch the right cross, the cross, Michael, throw the cross. Show it to them. Good boy, Michael, good.’
He would then look at them and grin with real pride. ‘Now don’t tell me that he’s not a fucken natural.’
From the day that he presented me with the gloves my training rapidly intensified. I skipped for half an hour of a night after school before using the gloves on a makeshift punching bag that he had constructed by stuffing an old Army duffle bag with rags, which he had strung from a rafter in the back shed.
As my technique and fitness improved, I could see him mapping my boxing career in his head as he watched me work with the bag. He soon decided that it was time to put the second pair of gloves to use.
I had just got home from school on a hot and steamy Friday night. I had taken my time, scavenging through the empty and half-demolished houses that had been left behind by those who had moved on from the suburb. Mum was sitting on the verandah holding a glass of water. Katie, my younger sister, was skipping on the footpath, ignoring my mother’s warnings that it was too hot for so much exercise. I went into the kitchen and poured my own glass of water from the tap and joined them on the street.
‘Where’s dad? At the pub?’
‘No, he’s in the yard. He’s been out there waiting for you to get home.’ She wiped a hand nervously across her face as she heard his footsteps moving along the hallway, in our direction.
He walked out onto the verandah. He had changed out of his work overalls and was wearing an old pair of grey pants and a blue singlet. Although he had developed a gut from drinking so much beer, the muscles in his arms and shoulders remained rock hard from swinging a heavy shovel day after day. He had a pair of boxing gloves in each hand and whacked them together as he spoke.
‘You home, Michael? Good. You’re late. Come on, we’ve got training, in the yard. Now.’
Mum looked at me uneasily when she saw the gloves. She stood up from her chair.
‘He hasn’t had his tea yet. It’s getting too late to train, anyway. And it’s hot. Let it go for tonight, hey? I’ve got a salad for him and I’ve cut some meat off the leg, for the two of you.’
He was not having it. ‘Bullshit, he’s training tonight.’ He looked at me. ‘You’re training. You can eat later. Come on, up you get. Let’s get on with it. Strip down. I’ll meet you in the yard.’
With that he walked back through the house and out into the yard. I stood up from the chair and went to walk into the house. My mother pulled me gently by the back of the hair towards her before taking hold of my arm.
‘Just do what he says, Michael — for now at least. I don’t know what it is with him, but don’t muck around with him, not tonight; he’s all on edge. I’ll have your tea ready for you when you’re finished.’ She pushed me towards the door. ‘Go on, don’t keep him waiting.’
My father was standing in the centre of the yard holding one pair of gloves at his side. A single square of lino, previously rolled up in the corner of the shed, had been laid out under his feet. The second pair of boxing gloves was sitting on an upturned wooden fruit box that had been placed in one corner of the ring. I could see mum at the kitchen window watching us, about to witness a scene she had been dreading for some time. He lifted the gloves into the air as he called me over to him.
‘Come on, Michael. I
t’s time. Put these on and we’ll start with a spar. We haven’t got time for a skip tonight. Get your shirt off, hold your hands up and I’ll lace them for you.’
I took my shirt off and threw it over the wire clothesline. He slipped one of the gloves over my right hand. It felt snug, comfortable. He began to thread the laces as he spoke to me.
‘You know I never had my own pair of gloves. Never. Had to borrow a pair every time I got into the ring. Never even got to spar with proper gloves. First time I put a pair on was the night of my first bout, three two-minute rounds at the Police Boys Club in Brunswick Street.’
He looked away, over the fence into the side street, as if he was thinking about another time and place. ‘Had never worn gloves before. But still, I knocked the little cunt out in the first round. A left hook. Not many blokes going around, then or now, can knock you out with a left hook, not so early in a fight, at least.’
He fitted the second glove over my hand. ‘Right. Now you’ve got to get the feel of them, not hitting the bag from now on but hitting flesh. It’s nothing like fighting bare fist. A whole different feel to it. And we’ve got to get you used to it here.’ He pointed down to the makeshift lino-floored boxing ring.
‘We’ll sort it all out here before you have to front up down at the gym. All them fucken show ponies, down there. They love getting hold of a novice. Punch a few holes in him. Send him home, crying like a girl. But don’t worry. I’ll get you ready here. Put it all in order here and you’ll be the one doing the damage down there.’
I looked over my shoulder to see if my mother was still watching us from the kitchen window. I could not see her. He grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around to face him.
‘Come on, Michael. Pay attention. Look at me. You’ll be down there at the gym pretty soon. If you don’t listen here, and don’t learn here,’ he pointed down to the square of lino again, ‘if you don’t learn here, all you’ll end up doing is getting yourself knocked out. You’ll be fucked before you start.’
