Hoi Polloi

by Craig Sherborne

“A ladies’ woman is a ladies’ woman, son.”

  “He means a lady who prefers the company of ladies in a closer way than usual,” Heels reluctantly explains.

  “The way you two natter I wonder sometimes,” Winks mumbles.

  “That’s a disgusting and terrible thing to say.”

  “She likes to hold your hand when you’re walking. What’s that all about?”

  “How dare you! Girls holding hands is as innocent and natural as men playing their sweaty games together and hugging and putting their heads and hands in all sorts of places in scrums. You don’t say they’re men’s men in that disgusting, terrible way.”

  Aunty Dorothy will know whether the term is christened or baptised because she’s Catholic and Catholics are a churchy kind. We don’t want to get to church and make fools of ourselves and look like ignorants.

  “Am I going to be a Catholic?” I ask.

  No, I am not to be made into a Catholic, says Heels. A compromise has been worked out between being a Catholic and the fact that Winks’ mother, my grandmother, was a Baptist and Winks himself has been baptised, or christened or whatever it is, a Baptist, and Heels’ mother was a Presbyterian. “At least I think it was Presbyterian,” she says, chewing her lip.

  This is the first time I’ve heard them mention religion.

  “Are we religious?” I ask.

  Winks screws up his mouth to one side as if biting back laughter.

  “Of course we are,” Heels answers sternly. “We just don’t make a song and dance about it.”

  “Do we really believe in God?”

  “That’s a terrible question. Of course we do. Everybody believes in God.”

  “We don’t go to church,” I say.

  She blinks and admires the blazer, smooths it with her fingers. “It’s what’s in the heart that counts. Sunday is a diffi-cult day to get to church because it’s the day when I relax.”

  “Do you pray?” I cannot ever recall her praying. I’ve never seen her kneel down and put her hands together or say “God” or “Jesus” except as a curse.

  “Of course I pray.”

  “What do you pray for?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “Like what?” I sense the possibility of catching her out.

  “Oh I don’t know,” she sighs, fed up with the conversation. “When we’ve had one of our horses racing or backed a horse I pray for them to win.”

  “But they don’t always win.”

  “Maybe they’d lose a lot more if I didn’t pray.”

  “But that’s not real praying. It’s not praying for forgiveness and peace and love like praying is meant for.”

  She holds up her hand, sucks the air for me to stop pestering her with ridiculous questions. I say I don’t want to be baptised or christened because it’s for doing when you’re a baby. She says I’m still a baby to her and I will be made a Church of Englander because with the Church of England you get a lot of good old-fashioned ritual and the long robes and organ music like the Catholics and plenty of rules and dos and don’ts for life but without having to become a Catholic. To be a Catholic is to be another type of person altogether. No one can say exactly how being Catholic makes you a different type of person. They, Heels and Winks, are not experts on the ins and outs of religion and don’t pretend to be. But Catholics believe in all sorts of strange hooey and have to eat fish on Friday and have a king called a Pope. Being Church of England is in the middle of being Catholic and being Presbyterian or one of those Baptists who hold their services in halls for goodness’ sake. What’s the point of going to church if you’re not going into a nice church but into a common hall?

  I am going to be christened or baptised or whatever it is and that’s that. There will be no arguments on the matter. No ifs and buts. Aunty Dorothy is quite right when she says, What can you expect of a child who has not been received into a church? It’s like jinxing them, setting them up for trouble. “You’ve certainly been proof of that,” says Heels.

  What’s more, if I’m to get into a top school in Sydney, somewhere with genuine class that will open doors for me in the world, how will it look if I’m asked what religion I am and I can’t tick any box. They’d show us out the way we came in. I should have been done years ago but time just slipped away and besides, there were no nice churches in Heritage. None like the Church of England church up the road in Kensington, St Martin’s. It’s nice in there. It’s not too grand and not too gloomy as to make the whole occasion depressing. We want it to be a happy affair. There’s a lovely garden out front to take photos in. So I must look smart in my new blazer, and if the Minister fellow or whatever he’s called, the Father, the Reverend, asks if I’ve done Sunday School lessons and studied the bible I’m to say, Yes, because that’s what he’s been told. Now go try on the new blazer.

  Greeks are pakehas but not quite, I decide. I inspect their skin, mine versus theirs. The pink-white-tan of mine on my forearms has no oily colour in it as in theirs. This effect on the skin, this oily colour, creates a grey misty smear under the surface where the dark hairs sprout, each hair spaced wider than the fine, red-blond hairs on my forearm. This grey misty smear makes the skin on Stephen Papadopoulos’s arms appear transparent for the first few layers like Vaseline or Vicks VapoRub. “Olive,” Stephen says. “The colour’s olive.” It’s a cloudy, grey-blue tinged whiteness that surely is close enough to pakeha to pass for pakeha. Winks’ skin is darker than Heels’. It has a permanent light tan but would never be mistaken for hori because it’s merely his tendency to go brown instantly a ray of sun touches him. “I wouldn’t have married him if it was anything else,” says Heels. But Stephen’s darkening, his “olive”, is certainly a different kind of pakeha tint.

  “European,” says Stephen when I ask him, What’s a Greek, and where does a Greek come from? He’s as good as pakeha, definitely, I’m sure of it. Heels wants me to tell her about my new school. She hopes I’ve made a nice friend, someone nice and suitable that I can bring home to meet her and Winks and play with as long as we’re not too rowdy and can keep to ourselves because there isn’t much room. I answer by making a joke about trying to say Stephen’s name, how it’s just as well I don’t stutter anymore because how would I be able to attempt the name Stephen Papadopoulos if I stuttered. I can’t even pronounce it anyway and have to settle for Stephen With The Name No One Can Say. Stephen has been assigned by the teacher to be my guide and new friend at the primary school at Randwick until I can look after myself. He’s my Clean Slate Friend, I’ve decided, the first friend of my new, clean life. He’s my best friend because he knows nothing about me and therefore I don’t have to dislike him. For all he knows I’m equal to him. When I ask him slyly, just slipping it casually into conversation, what kind of bad things he has done in his life he doesn’t really know what I mean. His brown bulgy eyes dart left to right, right to left, confused by the question, by the idea of bad things. I asked him the question to make sure he isn’t like me. He’s better than me, and therefore he makes me better, he keeps my clean slate clean by his presence. If he knew about bad things, if he had done them himself I would have to find another friend whom I could look up to. I even single out particular bad things for Stephen to consider, a test, shrugging and sticking out my bottom lip as though these particular bad things, by complete chance, have only now leapt into my head: “Getting drunk for instance. Or thieving. Thieving from your parents.”

  His bug-eyes stare blankly from their sockets at nothing, then close in a frown, a wince of distaste as if even thinking about those sorts of questions is a dirty act. He makes me feel dirty. I should hate him for that, but how sweet it is to know and be considered by him and everyone else at school his equal, the boy he is helping be orientated and settled in at school.

  Stephen’s ugliness makes him even more wholesome. His mouth is upturned in a constant smile because his two front teeth poke out and down and across his bottom lip. His top lip appears thicker than it really is becaus
e it is stretched over those teeth like over a mouthguard. His lips can’t close. The gap between his teeth is so big he can almost jam his tongue through it as a trick. He smells of the boiled vegetable fart smell of Randwick. The air of the place, the streets, the stairs and passageways where I live reek at night of cabbage cooking. With Stephen the smell comes through his skin and his breath. If he speaks up close to me I gag from what he calls garlic. His fingertips have a sticky, rubber texture— when he was first made to shake my hand in introduction by the teacher this odour, this garlic, rubbed off onto my skin.

  “We didn’t come to Australia to mix with Greeks,’’ says Heels. I explain to her that I have looked really closely at Stephen’s skin and as far as I can tell it’s pakeha skin. Different colour arm-hairs, yes. But olive is just a greyer tint of my own arm colour. And anyway, Winks’ skin is darker than Stephen’s.

  She doesn’t want an argument on the matter. “Look at this gizmo,” she says to change the subject. “Have you ever seen the likes?” It’s a cardboard box. “Somewhere in here, if I can work out how to get to it, is a bag.” She peers for the place to tear the box open. “It’s called a wine cask.”

  I persist with reporting on Stephen’s skin colour, how he doesn’t have a single freckle. I have freckles everywhere on my skin but he has perfect, undark skin.

  “It’s not just about skin,” Heels responds, digging at the wine cask with her thumbnail.

  “What is it then?”

  “Well, you know …” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “No I don’t know.”

  “They’re, you know, different.”

  “How?”

  “They just are.”

  “Different in the way Catholics are a different type of person?”

  “Yes. No. Even more so.”

  “How?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “How?”

  She takes a deep exasperated breath and says it’s hard to put into words exactly all of what she means but it has something to do with standards. It’s to do with standards of basic things such as how one presents oneself, one’s clothes and one’s grooming. One’s hygiene, one’s tidiness. All that plus if you don’t speak the same language as them you’re not on the same wavelength. You can’t blame them for that, for their language, it’s just the way it is. Not that she’s saying this Stephen person and his family and his type of people are down there with horis.

  She tugs and twists the wine-cask teat into position to pour and says she can’t be bothered talking about the subject anymore. She’s made herself quite clear on the matter and wants to relax with a glass of cold white wine and a cigarette. So no more talk about this skin colour or that skin colour and freckles. It’s enough to put her off her drink. And no more using the word pakeha now that we’re in this country. And do get a proper friend, one of our kind. This school I’m currently in, I’ll just have to grin and bear until they can get me into a decent school. I’m to consider where I am now as a holding pattern where I must do as well as I can with my schooling, obey the teachers and impress the right people at the right schools for next year. In the meantime, yes, I will have to mix in circles that I can’t avoid but I don’t have to bring them home and have them in her house.

  Stephen is what’s called a Greek Cypriot. He lives in Australia because his parents couldn’t live where they come from, Cyprus, because they feared they’d be harmed by the other kind of Cypriots, the Turk Cypriots. These Turk Cypriots lived in slums and were no better than dogs, he sneers. They would kill him, his parents and all his relations at the drop of a hat. The Turkish Cypriots want to take over Cyprus and have it as theirs, even though there was only a fraction of them in Cyprus compared to the Greek people. His father came to Australia with nothing, nothing, but now he owns a fruit and vegetable shop and house and a car and trailer. Stephen tells me this very proudly.

  Another boy, Jonathan Jonathan—his last name the same as his first for some reason that is never explained—is a long way from being pakeha, yet for all his brown skin he has fine pakeha features, a sharp end on his nose and a square chin. He escaped from Iraq because the new President there, Bakr, led a coup which his father opposed, and his uncles too, three of whom were killed. Jonathan Jonathan and Stephen seldom smile when they’re together. They talk about how they wish they weren’t in Australia but at home on their ancestors’ soil where their blood is, the blood of their kin which has been spilt and should be avenged and one day hopefully will be by them. Stephen and Jonathan Jonathan say I couldn’t possibly be expected to understand what they are talking about—leaving a country because you fear you’ll be killed; having to live there in the first place among people who are no better than dogs as their families had to live.

  Stephen seems much older suddenly, grown up, his lips pursed over his protruding teeth, one end of his top lip curled in a sneer. He’s no longer the wholesome boy who considered me his equal. He’s behaving as if he’s superior to me. Who is he to think he’s superior to me as he clearly does with his “Anglos like you know nothing,” spitting the word “nothing” just as he spits the words “dogs” and “Turks”? I want him back as my equal, his arm around my shoulder, mine around his, secretly wanting to kiss his bucked mouth in the way it feels good to imagine pecking the mouths of girls I get a crush on.

  I do understand what they mean, I say, putting a higher pitch in my voice to create the effect of being a little offended. My family had to escape the Maoris who were dogs as well and were taking over even though there was more of us than them just like with the Turks. I don’t mention the sale of the Heritage Hotel for $400,000. I say my family left New Zealand with nothing, nothing, just as Stephen’s family and Jonathan Jonathan’s family had left their countries with nothing.

  They nod their understanding of my understanding. They nod their sympathy and sit silent on the playground bench. Jonathan Jonathan says he would invite us both over to his place on the weekend but his father only allows Iraqis in his house. Stephen says it’s the same for him at his house with Greeks. I say there’s no such rule at my house. Both of them would be very welcome there. They say they envy me that. Very welcome, but the problem is our flat is too small for visitors because we’re so poor. Perhaps the best thing to do would be for us to meet down at Coogee and do something together, though not this Sunday. This Sunday I have to be baptised or christened because in New Zealand there were no churches or religion. Religion was banned by the Maoris which is another reason my family and I came to Australia, to stop being persecuted for our religion.

  So many lies in just a few seconds. All of them black marks on my clean slate. I vow to start my clean slate again, from this very moment. I worry how many times I can start a clean slate over.

  TO BECOME A SOLDIER OF CHRIST you don’t wear a soldier uniform. It’s a different war from Vietnam on the news with its burning trees, its Americans. Very different from the World War II of drinkers at the Heritage Hotel, rows of medals across their suit fronts for Anzac Day, merry and drunk as if at the races. Christ’s war is a war against being a bad person, Aunty Dorothy explains. It’s yourself at war with yourself. It’s a war of souls. What is a soul? A soul is something, well, no one can say exactly. Think of it as a tiny pocket of air or gas made up of information about you that gets stored up inside you, all the information about your life, what you’ve done and should not have done. When you die this tiny pocket floats away, up, up, into space, past the stars, across to what we call The Other Side. There the information can be deciphered by angels to see if you’re a fit and proper person to enter Heaven.

  Can it ever be wiped clean, this information? Can bits of information be scrubbed out to give you a second chance, a third chance, fourth chance, fifth, sixth?

  Yes they can. When that happens it is called God’s mercy letting you off the hook if you promise to change and you pray. The start of this war is called the baptism and for this occasion you must wear your best clothes, those n
ew clothes of yours, the blazer, the white shirt, white socks from the brown packages. No bow-tie though. I beg for no bow-tie and am granted a compromise to wear my collar buttoned up instead. My hair is slicked to the side. My black shoes glow from Heels’ elbow grease.

  Aunty Dorothy’s church uniform, every bit of which is white except the gold chain with a t hanging from it at her throat, includes a big-brimmed hat turned up at one side in what she calls a slouch-hat arrangement. A lace handkerchief is tucked inside her watchband for weeping. Just as well, for her eye corners are welling up and mixing with mascara as she leads me into the church’s dark, wood cave where daylight is like twilight—orange and blurry red through the picture-book windows.

  This is my first time in such a place and she, who knows about religion, has the privilege of leading me forward. The honour of feeling my hand press around hers because I’m scared of the horror-movie organ music. I have a shivering sense of being watched, not by some single pair of human eyes, or the human eyes of families in rows of benches, but by God-eyes, Jesus-eyes, Angel-eyes invisible in the air with the power of x-ray judgments that make their owners angry and offended to see me in this place, me with my clean slate dirty.

  Along the rear bench, the shiny board-seats Aunty Dorothy calls pews, a baby wrapped in a white shawl begins bawling in its mother’s rocking arms as if being hurt. Beside it another baby joins in with a shriek like a screamed warning. I refuse to take another step. I pull away from Aunty Dorothy to run back into the bright outside. Winks blocks me, grapples my flailing arms until he fastens them in his grip out in front of me. Heels shuffles away from the scene pretending to search for something in her purse, letting Aunty Dorothy smooth my hair down with lick-spit as if my real mother and hush me with “Here’s the Minister. Straighten up. Be a good boy.’’ She twists in the direction of the altar’s gold crucifix and apologises to it with a flick of fingers across her breasts, “Forgive us.”