by Peter Twohig
My work was interrupted by a nasty voice outside.
‘Get out of there!’
Tram bloke. I grabbed my stuff and jumped down.
The bloke raised his hand as if to cuff me across the head, but changed his mind. If he’d known that I knew Blarney Barney, he wouldn’t have even gone that far.
‘Whaddya think you’re doin’? This is private property,’ he growled.
Granddad always says honesty is the best policy.
‘My dog ran in here and I think he probably jumped on one of the trams because when we brought him home from the lost dogs home we took the Camberwell tram, and he liked it a lot.’
‘Well, when I see him I’ll put him on a Camberwell tram and send him home. Now piss off.’
Funny bugger.
I headed for the entrance, leaving the bloke to board the tram, to see if I’d nicked the seats or something, and keeping an eye out for a dog — you never know. Just inside the main gate was the guard’s room, and I ducked in for a quick squiz. I’d been in a few guard’s rooms, and this one was typical, and even had a few really nice pens and pencils just lying around. On the desk was a newspaper. I could tell the bloke had been looking up the race information, because he had folded the newspaper back in the middle and that was what Dad always did with the Saturday paper, and Granddad, and Mr Platte, down at the shop, and Mr Curran, who always had jam on his chin, and who lived down the corner. There was also a packet of Juicy Fruit on the desk, so I helped myself — both explorers and detectives think best when they’re chewing. The guard had a nearly full packet of Viscounts, too, so, as I have been known to enjoy the odd puff, I fossicked around in the bin for the empty packet I knew I’d find there, slipped in one — make it two — of the weeds, and stashed them in my bag for later on, with his matches. He’d have no trouble getting more matches, as there was a whole match factory next door.
As I walked out of the room I noticed a bin with an umbrella in the Tramways colours sticking out of it, and, as it was still raining lightly, I grabbed it and put it up. Just then a tram swung into the driveway and trundled past the guard’s room. The trammie couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be there, and I couldn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be driving a tram, so we just waved at each other and said ‘G’day’, and I kept on walking.
I crossed the main drag, as everybody calls Church Street, and went straight down the first lane I came to, Kupsh Lane, with its entrance almost invisible between John Guffey and Sons, a small factory that did chrome-plating and smelt sharp, and a motorbike repair shop called General Air-cooled that smelt like a cross between Dad’s Triumph and Uncle Noel’s Matchless, only paintier. Down the lane were the backs of the small factories that fronted onto the street further over. Some factories came right up to the lane, and had a rail sticking out of the side, for hauling things in through a door high up in the wall. Others had back yards full of junk. I made a mental note to investigate these yards one day — I’d been avoiding them, as junkyards usually have dogs in them, large ones that are deliberately starved by their drunken owners and allowed to smell kids’ hats.
Further down the lane I came to a grove of peppercorn trees leaning over old fences and I knew I was back behind houses. Houses have far less glamour about them than factories, there’s no doubt about it, but they have something else: true mystery. In someone’s house you can’t find out what things do or why they are there just by asking. Unlike the men who work in factories, adults in houses do not welcome kids, and don’t want to explain why their houses are the way they are. You have to find out these things by yourself, and that means you have to explore.
When I came to an intersecting lane at the bottom of the hill, I sat on a crate and took out my notebook. I recorded my progress, and had a breather. The intersecting lane had no name, but it had a shallow drain in the centre filled to overflowing with fast-moving water, much more water than could be accounted for by the drizzly rain. I went upstream and came to a corrugated-iron gate with a three-inch space underneath, through which a wide wash of water gracefully laminated the grey stones and tumbled into the central drain outside.
The gate opened easily, revealing a small green Bedford van that looked familiar. Behind it was the back door of the place and from under it flowed the water. I opened the door and immediately my shoes were drenched. I whispered Shit! to myself and pressed on into the passage on the other side. The floor had a long red carpet, which was soaked. Slowly I walked upstream, expecting to come to a burst water pipe, because water pipes were always bursting around our part of town.
It was impossible to tell whether I was in somebody’s home or a business of some sort. The whole place had a rough, grimy look about it, and the doors off the passage were all closed. I followed the water towards a side room and opened the door. Inside was a laundry and toilet and lying on the floor was a man. The laundry tap had been turned on, and the sink plugged, and water was flowing over the top in a glassy ribbon. I stepped over the man, turned the tap off and pulled out the plug.
The man was old and looked like he was made of papier-mâché. He was wearing a striped long-sleeved shirt, and had expandable silver bracelets on his upper arms. His glasses had slipped and were sitting on his face at an odd angle. It was Mr Garnet, who delivered our groceries. Once he’d let me sit in his van.
At first I thought he was dead and that the murderer might have killed him, too. I nearly passed out with fright when it dawned on me that he might have started killing people who knew me, to find out where I lived.
So I nearly laughed out loud when I saw that Mr Garnet was not dead at all, but had something wrong with him, though he seemed to be in one piece. He looked at me without speaking, and though I tried to help him up, he was too heavy. So I went out the front door and asked the bloke in the shop next door to ring for an ambulance. Then I went back to Old Man Garnet, and told him what I’d done, but he couldn’t say anything. Not like him at all.
I liked Mr Garnet because he had tips for everyone. For me it was kids’ tips. One time he told me that the way to keep bubble gum soft was to put it in malt. I managed to keep my next bubble gum alive for a month, then one morning I looked in the jar and it had turned to mush, and Mum threw the lot out.
For Mum it was cooking tips — Mr G must have known she needed them like bullies need kids to punch.
Mum’s sweets had been the first thing to go. That happened last summer. One day, Mum started making her rum balls with real rum, which was a bit strong for yours truly, for whom a limit of one a day was set, but seemed to suit Mum down to the ground. Then the coconut ice, one of my favourites, began to get soggy, the kind of soggy that refuses to dry, even if you put it out in the sun, which was not a good idea, as our cat, Abbotsford — yeah, I know — was always on the lookout for kids leaving sweets lying around. I mean, soggy is better than soggy and inside your cat. The toffees then began to turn out either permanently stuck to the patty papers, like labels on a poison bottle, or with an explosive quality that caused them to disintegrate into sugary atoms when you bit them. Her toffee apples began to lack that ruby glow that tells you all is well with the world within, and the chocolate crackles did not set, but beat the fridge one-nil. The apple pie was not all pie, and not, for that matter, all apple, and the snowballs lost the springiness needed to qualify as balls, and ended up looking like wobbly powder puffs. The sponge became unspongy and the meringues began to taste like fish and chips and vinegar. By mid-autumn, Mum’s ice-cream, which had been last year’s hobby, had taken on a hardness somewhere between shoe polish and kippers, regardless of the weather.
As winter arrived, so did the soups and stews, resembling the kind of concoction you might get from prising your watercolour tablets out of their pans and giving them a bit of a stir in a bowl of tepid water. As for anything whose first word in life was moo, baa or cheep, it was simply burnt. I thought Kipling might have had something to say about that — something under the heading ‘If you can
keep your head’. There was nothing. I guessed his old man was not an elbow bender. Or maybe his mum was Doris Day — I don’t know.
The last thing to go was my school lunch, the low point being reached one freezing morning when I discovered that Mum had forgotten to pack my play-lunch, while seriously short-changing the lunch bag. It was only Johnno Johnson’s donation of a cheese and pickle sando that saved me, as I was able to swap it for a fair to middlin’ Beef German and dead horse from Douggie Quirk.
Mrs Carruthers told me Mum had been having a hard time — and nodded slowly while making her chin disappear into her neck, which meant that I wasn’t going to get any more out of her unless I stuck burning bamboo shoots under her fingernails. But she had told me enough, as the rot had not set in until months after Tom died, so I knew it was all about someone else. That left Dad and me, and I was offering eight to five on me, but what did I know? I did know that the roly-poly pudding, which on Australia Day had been passable, if chewy, had by Anzac Day pretty much lost its poly.
Mr Garnet had tips for Granddad, too — racing tips, which was a bit like giving Biggles tips on how to fly a Sopwith Camel. Granddad always listened politely, and said: ‘You don’t say, young George. I’ll owe you one for that.’ After I first saw him do that, and how pleased Mr Garnet was, I went home and stood in front of the mirror and said, about thirty-five times: ‘You don’t say, Matthew. I’ll owe you one for that.’ That would come in handy.
I fretted about Mr G’s connection with our family all the way home. I kept telling myself that, whatever happened to Mr G, it probably had nothing to do with the murderer — or me. But the more I said it the more I imagined bad things. Mr Garnet might have been a harmless old man, but Granddad once told me that when he was young he used to be a real tearaway, a crazy bastard, and one of Squizzy Taylor’s mates. Jesus.
5 The Dead-end Kid
Finding Old Mr Garnet was all I needed, even though I was able to help. I already felt bad about going back to the Murder House to get my bag. I had risked my life, the only life left to us, now that Tom was gone. I had to be more careful. I decided not to tell Granddad about finding Mr Garnet. Nothing spoils an evening at home listening to the radio faster than some kid turning up and telling you he found a half-dead bloke practically on your doorstep. Stands to reason. And Mum was definitely out. She already thought I was a liar, or crazy, or both. Granddad was always telling me to let well enough alone, so I thought I would.
When I got back home I found the two of them having a cuppa, which was a common occurrence on Saturdays. I grabbed a slice of Madeira cake, to make Mum feel better. I hoped Granddad was going to ask her if he could take me out for the day. I never knew where we were going to end up till we arrived, because he’d always spin Mum a yarn about where we were off to.
‘So where are you taking him this time?’ she asked, once Granddad said the magic words. ‘Off to see one of your crooked mates, I suppose. You know what I think of that, Dad. He’ll just pick up bad habits.’
‘Now, love, some of my cobbers are straight blokes.’
‘Name one.’
Granddad wasn’t falling for that one.
‘Look, all I’m sayin’ is, don’t jump to conclusions. We’re off to Ryrie’s to visit a few old boxing mates, then I thought we’d drop in at Vic Market: I have to see a man about a dog.’
‘See a man about a dog, eh? Just mind he doesn’t come home swearing like a wharfie.’
‘God’s honour, love.’
I don’t like standing next to Granddad when he says things like that, in case he gets struck by lightning. Sister Benedict says every time lightning strikes, a blasphemer gets killed, and the weather had been pretty dodgy lately.
Mum didn’t smile, but she didn’t put her foot down, either. She knew how much Granddad loved to keep in touch with his old mates in the fight game, and she knew I loved to hang out with him. Also, she didn’t want to stop Granddad coming home from the market with a ham, which was always a possibility when someone owed him money and had to cough up something else instead.
A part of me thought Granddad might have been telling the truth about where we were going, but another part of me knew from experience that we could end up anywhere, and usually did.
Often, on these trips, we’d visit Aunty Queenie, over in South Melbourne, or sometimes we’d visit some aunt I’d never heard of. Either way, he’d say to me: ‘Best we don’t tell anyone where we’ve been today,’ which really meant: ‘Best we don’t tell Mrs Morgan or Mum.’ Sometimes we’d go down to the wharves and go onto one of the ships to pick up a parcel or down to the beach to watch the racehorses paddling around before the races. It was always an adventure, though it seemed to me that, although Granddad’s and my adventures coincided, they did so only geographically.
Usually, when we got to where we were going, I’d take off and do a bit of exploring. And there is no doubt at all that when it comes to places to explore, ships win hands down as they are full of secret tunnels and passages, and hatches that open to ladders, and ladders that lead to hatches. The inside of a ship is like a snakes and ladders game made of steel, that you are actually inside. Although we only ever went onto three ships, I never did memorise their secrets, which is probably just as well. I was drawing one of those ships on the map while Granddad and Mum were talking, and he came over to have a gander at the map, and gave me one of those looks you give another kid when you think he’s going to touch your lunch. He got my rubber and started to erase it, while looking at me and shaking his head seriously. I’d been around long enough to know what that look meant, and I finished the rubbing out for him. A nod’s as good as a wink.
And speaking of winks, only recently we had been visiting the back of a hotel and we had been stopped by a policeman who did not have to wear a uniform — a ‘plainclothesman’. A few minutes later we were allowed to go, though not until Granddad handed him two quid — that was the fine that day — and got a wink in return. Never a dull moment.
The last thing Mum said as we were leaving was: ‘Mind you just go to Ryrie’s, and nowhere else,’ which I thought was fair.
Of course Granddad had no intention of being pushed around by his own daughter — just as the women in our family are tough, the men are, I would say, sneaky. So while we did catch a tram into the city and drop into Ryrie’s, we weren’t there for long. But the tram ride itself was a beauty.
The clippie turned out to be an old friend of Granddad’s and called him ‘love’, while he called her ‘dear’ and enquired about her family. This was not like one of those racecourse conversations, where ‘How’s your father?’ really meant something like: ‘What do you like in the third race?’ This was an honest conversation. As I heard them so seldom, I listened to everything they said. But all they wanted to talk about was Granddad coming over to visit one of these nights. The meeting was not a complete waste of time, however, as Granddad talked Dulcie — that was her name — into giving me some used ticket pads for my collection — there were still a few colours I didn’t have. She even threw in a couple that still had tickets on them.
When we got to Ryrie’s, which was down by the river near Princes Bridge, Granddad caught up with some mates who were good for a few tips on some upcoming fights, as Granddad had once been the Australian bantamweight champion and had a lot of friends in the boxing world. On the wall there was a picture of him in his boxing stance, with a look on his face like he was going to have someone for breakfast, and underneath it said: ‘Archie “Tinny” Taggerty, The Richmond Terrier’. Granddad told Tom and me they called him Tinny because he once was a tinsmith, but Barney said there was more to it than that, but wouldn’t say just what.
I got a chance to put the gloves on and try my luck with a couple of the blokes, and Granddad said he’d give me ten bob if I could lay a glove on Jeff Dougherty. But all I got was knackered. In the end, Dougherty let me get in a left hook, but it didn’t count as he wasn’t really defending himself at the time. S
o after everyone had a good laugh and Ryrie said that I’d probably make a decent lightweight one day, we shot through to our real destination, and the reason Granddad was dressed to kill, and wearing his favourite brown fedora.
We caught a tram down St Kilda Road to South Melbourne to visit my favourite aunty, Aunty Queenie, who, as I said, wasn’t my aunty at all but just someone who liked to be called Aunty Queenie. In fact, I think Granddad and me were the only two members of the family who knew about her, and I had only known her for the last few years. She was a very happy kind of person, the only truly happy person I’d ever met. I think it helped that whenever we turned up, she’d usually had a snifter of Gilbey’s — I could tell gin was her poison from the number of bottles in her rubbish bin. Every time I saw those beautiful square, frosted bottles, I understood why my Aunty Dell’s hobby was bottle collecting.
Aunty Queenie had blonde hair and very few wrinkles where they were supposed to be, except at the corners of her eyes, and I could see why, because she laughed a lot. She had a terrific shape, definitely better than Mum or my real aunties, and I noticed that she liked to smooth her dress whenever she spoke and always sat up straight in a way that showed her shape off. She didn’t sit like a lady, as Mum would have said, but crossed her legs, which always made me look at her shoes, the prettiest ladies shoes I had ever seen. In spite of the way she sat, and the fact that she always uncovered most of her chest, no matter what time of the year it was, I considered that she was definitely a lady, especially compared to the other women I saw around: the clippies, the shoppies and the women down at Victoria Market.
