There used to be a large country town in Western Australia called Perth. It doesn’t exist any more, because the country town – sleepy, small-minded and conservative (but kind of nice, for all that) – has been transformed. The country town started to disappear in the early sixties, and within ten years it had become a city; but in 1967 it was neither the one nor the other.
This is the story of some young people who in 1967 set out from Perth to seek their fortune.
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A song about cars and girls
Published by Simon Black at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Simon Black
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~~~~~
A song about cars and girls
by
Simon Black
Rock and Roll has traditionally been about cars and girls…
– Peter Garrett
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~~~~~
Chapter 1 : Scarborough, Sunday
David Martin makes his way down through the dunes to just above the tide line. Amy is already there, stretched out on a beach towel on the sand. She raises an eyebrow at him. ‘Not going in?’ she says.
‘No,’ David says. He’s wearing old faded jeans and a shirt. The sand burns his feet and he digs them in to where it’s cooler. He hasn’t brought a towel with him. ‘I came down to protect you,’ he says. ‘From the Scarborough bodgies.’
‘You’re a good boy, Dave,’ Amy says. ‘But you do talk such crap, sometimes.’ She smiles. ‘It’s been a few years since the last bodgie hung up his bike chain.’
He drops down to sit beside her on the sand and takes a packet of Drum from his shirt pocket. ‘Well you should know, Amy,’ he says. ‘You’re a lot older than me.’
‘Yes. Older and wiser – that’s me, buddy. Anyway, they call themselves rockers, these days.’
David is silent while he rolls himself a cigarette. Then he says, ‘So what’s new?’
‘Not a lot,’ Amy says. ‘I’m on afternoon shift, later, and that’s a bugger.’ She looks up at the sky to the west. ‘And there could be a storm coming, by the look of it.’
The sky overhead is a brilliant blue, but on the horizon, over Rottnest, there’s a line of dark cloud. ‘I reckon you’re right,’ David says. ‘There won’t be a lot of sunbathing going on when that lot comes over.’ He gets up to fish about for a box of matches in the pockets of his jeans, and cups his hands together to light up. He sits down in the sand once more and there’s a companionable silence, while he smokes and she sunbathes.
Amy eventually disturbs the peace. ‘I’ve thought of a name for you,’ she says. ‘White boy.’
God, what next, he thinks. Amy can sometimes be a bit hard to keep up with. He looks at her. ‘Come off it,’ he says. ‘White boy?’ He holds out a brown arm. ‘You call that white?’
‘I’m not talking about your skin, Dave, it’s your hair. I just happened to notice the sun shining on it. You’d make a great advert for hydrogen peroxide.’
‘Well that really is crap,’ David says. ‘Sun and salt water is what’s done it, not bloody peroxide.’
They fall silent again until Amy says, ‘So how would you like to do something useful, and untie my strap. I’m trying to tan out the mark.’
David gingerly unties the strap of her bikini top and lets the two ends drop onto the sand. ‘God, how nerve-racking,’ he says. ‘Just stay lying on your front, Amy, and don’t move suddenly, whatever you do. Or you’ll give me a heart attack.’
‘Don’t be silly – you’re much too young to have one of those, Dave.’
David is about to reply when he hears the hiss and slap of someone walking in thongs, down through the sand. He looks up. ‘Hello,’ he says, ‘it’s my mate James.’
Amy looks up too. ‘God, that’s all I need,’ she says. ‘Bloody Jimbo.’
Jim Corrigan drops down into the sand beside them. ‘Well who’d have thought,’ he says, ‘that I’d find David Martin loafing about at the beach.’ He looks at Amy and grins. ‘And in the company of a half-naked sheila, at that.’
‘You’ve got even more crap in you than young Dave,’ Amy says. ‘I’m trying to get a tan, Jimbo, if you don’t mind.’
‘And very nice, too,’ Jim says. ‘You’ve got a pretty neat bod, Amy, for an old lady.’
‘You stinker – old lady?’ Amy props herself up on her elbows to give him a scowl. ‘My God, you’ve got a nerve.’
David quickly looks away. ‘Christ Amy!’ he says. He can feel himself going red. Jim doesn’t look away, he just laughs.
‘Bugger,’ Amy says. She drops back down to lie flat on her towel and hurriedly adjusts her top. ‘Sorry, white boy, I forgot. And I’d better be careful, or they’ll have me up for corrupting young boys.’
‘Knock it off, Amy,’ David says. ‘We’re not that young. I’m nineteen, and Jim’s twenty, already.’
‘Yes, well I don’t think anyone could corrupt Mr Corrigan,’ Amy says. ‘They’d be too late.’ She gives Jim a stony look. ‘And twenty-five isn’t old, alright? It’s just that you, Jimbo, are still a boy.’ She smiles grimly. ‘So if you give me any more lip, I’ll get my man to beat you up.’
This makes David and Jim both laugh. ‘Yeah, sure, Amy,’ Jim says. ‘You married the wrong guy, if that’s what you want. Big Ron might be big, but he isn’t nasty enough for that sort of thing.’
The clouds have moved over and covered up the sun, and the air is muggy and hot. Occasionally a small grey wave lands with a crump on the sand, and every now and then a low rumble of thunder provides some bottom end to the traffic noise up on the road.
Amy looks at David and says, ‘I might as well go and get ready for work, white boy, now the sun’s gone.’
‘Maybe I’d better tie your strap,’ he says. ‘Before you get up.’
‘Perhaps you’d better. I expect you’ve seen enough of my boobs for one day.’
David works at getting the strap tied in a bow. When it’s finally done Jim says, ‘So you’re off to Graylands, Amy. To sort out the loony buggers.’
‘I certainly am, Jimbo,’ Amy says. ‘And they’re a lot nicer and smarter than certain people round this part of the world.’
ii
They watch as Amy makes her way back up through the dunes towards the house. Jim has a speculative look on his face. ‘Now if she’d just keep her mouth shut,’ he says, ‘Amy would be very nice, I reckon, to hop into the cot with.’
‘Come off it,’ David says. ‘I like Amy, a lot. But she’s married. And what about Ron?’
‘That’s no big deal, you just make sure he doesn’t find out. That way, there’s no harm done, and everyone’s happy.’
‘Well I don’t reckon I’d do anything like that,’ David says. ‘But I guess it doesn’t matter a whole lot, because I don’t think Amy would, either.’
Jim grins. ‘She will one day, Dave. If I get my way.’ He watches Amy’s retreating figure until she disappears behind a dune. ‘So throw us your tobacco, old son, I’m dying for a fag.’
David sighs, audibly, and hands over his packet of Drum.
‘Now don’t get narky, Davey boy,’ Jim says. ‘When I’m a big rock star you’ll be boasting about how I used to bum cigs off you.’
David laughs. ‘Yeah sure, Jim. So the Hip-Notes are going to be rock stars.’
Jim rolls himself a cigarette, then searches about in his pockets for his lighter. ‘Well the thing is, Dave,’ he says as he lights up, ‘I’m no longer in the goddam Hip-Notes. I quit.’
‘Jesus. Since when?’
‘Last night, mate. I finally told them to shove it. At the St Pat’s show in Freo.’
David frowns. ‘What did you go and do that for?’ he says. ‘You guys were great. I reckon you were the best damn thing that ever came out of Mount Lawley High, by a bloody mile.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Jim says. ‘And they’re still carrying on like a bunch of schoolboys, Dave, that’s the trouble.’ He takes a drag on his cigarette and flicks ash onto the sand. ‘No, mate, it’s about time I got a serious outfit happening. With guys who really want to get somewhere.’
‘They’ll be guys who want to get the hell out of Perth, then.’
‘That’s right, old son, and that’s the hard part. But first up I need to make some dough, so I’m not scraping along on the bones of my arse. And that’s what I came here to talk to you about.’
~~~~~
The clouds are darker and heavier now, and tracks of lightning flicker over them. A Cessna is heading down the coast, flying low. A hundred yards or so to the north it turns sharply and starts circling just out from the main beach. The siren on the roof of the surf club starts up a raucous howl, and the few swimmers still in the water start moving towards the shore.
‘Goddam shark,’ Jim says. ‘Bugger that for a joke.’
Big drops of rain, slow and heavy, are starting to thud down into the sand. Each flash of lightning is followed closely by a crackling bang of thunder. ‘Bloody hell, that’s getting close,’ David says. He stands up and brushes sand from his jeans. ‘We’d better get back to the house, before we get soaked to the skin.’
The bottom end of the yard is marked by the remains of a fence, and there’s a gap where some of the pickets have fallen. David climbs through first. ‘Anyway, James,’ he says, ‘come in and have a beer. Big Ron’s out, and there’s a good chance he’s left a bottle in the fridge.’
The back door doesn’t open easily. The house is old: asbestos and corrugated iron on a sagging timber frame, and the doors and windows are all inclined to jam. David gives the door a kick and heaves at it to get it open. ‘So the way I see it,’ he says, ‘we’ll just be helping old Ron to lead a sober life.’
The main room of the house serves as both kitchen and living room, and the back door opens directly into the kitchen area. David goes to the old Kelvinator and takes out a bottle of beer. ‘Grab a couple of glasses,’ he says to Jim, ‘and I’ll try to find the bottle opener.’ He searches around in one of the kitchen drawers. ‘Bloody thing’s vanished again.’
‘Give it here,’ Jim says. ‘I’ll open the bugger.’ He takes the bottle, places the neck against the top edge of the wooden table and presses down carefully. The cap lifts cleanly off and he hands the open bottle back to David. ‘Open sesame,’ he says.
iii
Jim stands by the open window and watches the rain. David is reclining in one of the threadbare armchairs, rolling a cigarette. Their beer glasses look like they might once have been used to hold cheese spread or peanut paste.
Jim wonders why the sight of steadily falling rain is so depressing. Though there’s been a few things, just lately, for him to get depressed about. The main one was getting his call-up papers.
The day he got the news was pretty much like any other day, to start with. He’d been getting out to the letterbox early, so that when the letter came he’d be sure to get to it before his parents did. He was convinced he wasn’t going to be called up, and that his luck would get him through, like it always did. He fully expected the letter to tell him he had been indefinitely deferred, but when it finally arrived his luck seemed to have taken the day off.
He walked slowly back up the path and around to his room by the mulberry tree at the back. He tore the papers into small pieces and burnt them in the ashtray, setting fire to them with his cigarette lighter. He tore the envelope into pieces and burnt that, too. Then he sat on his mattress on the floor for a while and tried to think. And the main thing he thought was this: If they want Jim Corrigan in their bloody Army they’re going to have to catch him first.
In the end he decided to keep the whole thing to himself and make out he had been deferred. He wouldn’t tell anyone; not his mum or his dad, not Dave, no one. So if no one knew he’d been called up there’d be no reason for anyone to dob him in, and if he could simply disappear for a bit the Army would eventually give up looking for him. A few months, he thought, should be enough.
The papers had burned down to black embers and gone cold in the ashtray, and he broke them up with his finger and stirred them around. When he had finished with them there was nothing left but a small heap of black powder.
~~~~~
Jim takes a swig of beer and stares out through the window. The rain isn’t as heavy as it was – and with a bit of luck, he thinks, it might let up altogether. He’s got no idea how long it might be before the Army comes looking for him, but it can’t be too much longer. So now he’s out of the Hip-Notes it’s time to head for the hills. Well, perhaps not hills, exactly. He’d heard somewhere that workers were needed out in the wheat belt; something to do with wheat bins. It sounded nice and remote. So he’d clear out and head for the plains, then, and hide in some little town in the West Australian outback. They’d never find him there. And if he can talk Dave Martin into going with him, so much the better. It might even be fun.
iv
‘Alright, then,’ David says. ‘So about this wheat bins idea of yours.’
Jim turns away from the window. ‘Well, Dave,’ he says, ‘it’s pretty simple.’ He sits on the floor by the wall and sets his glass down on the carpet. ‘A bit of hard labour out in the bush, is all it takes. With lots of overtime, free board, and no expenses. So we come back carrying bags of dough.’
‘Sounds pretty grim to me, James. Christ, hard labour? I do enough of that already, at the brickworks. Can’t you think of an easy way to make money?’
Amy comes into the room from the hallway, dressed in her nurse’s uniform. ‘You want an easy way to make money, Dave?’ she says. ‘Well join the club, buddy.’ She goes over to the kitchen area and starts searching through the pile of odds and ends on the bench. ‘Now if I could just remember,’ she says, ‘where I left my purse…’ She looks at David and grins. ‘What about your counterfeit dollar idea? That was pretty good. You could give that another go.’
‘Yeah right,’ Jim says. ‘Bugger that for a joke, Amy. Phoney money might be easy, but it also happens to be against the bloody law.’
‘And that’s why we never really tried it properly,’ David says. ‘On account of us both getting cold feet.’ And just as well we did, too, he thinks.
David’s career in forgery had been quite brief. About a year earlier he’d come up with the idea of making a counterfeit copy of one of the new dollar notes; he carefully traced each side of the note onto thin paper and coloured the drawings using a set of watercolour paints. Then he glued the two sides together with flour paste. It didn’t look too bad, either, in a dim light.
‘That barmaid at the Playboy Club thought it was okay,’ Jim says. ‘Reckon we were in more danger of getting done for being under-age than for passing a dud note.’
‘And if I hadn’t chickened out and asked for it back,’ David says, ‘on account of it being my special lucky dollar… Well, who knows where we might be now.’
‘Yes,’ Amy says. ‘That’s right.’ She pulls a drawer open. ‘There it is, the bugger. Right where I left it.’ She drops the purse into her bag. ‘Okay then, I’m off. Before the rain starts up again.’ She goes over to the doorway and turns to look at them. ‘Of course,’ she says, ‘there’s a pretty good chance that where you might be now is in Fremantle Gaol.’
v
The weather has taken a turn for the worse in the half hour since Amy left to catch her bus, and it’s raining again. A Volkswagen pulling into the front yard briefly drowns out the sound of the rain on the iron roof.
‘Now you’re sprung,’ Jim says. ‘That’ll be Ron’s Kombi.’
David jumps up. ‘Bugger!’ he says. He fishes about in his pockets. ‘Good, I’ve got forty cents.’ He looks at Jim and grins. ‘For goodwill insurance.’ He goes over to the kitchen bench and slaps some coins down next to the fridge.
They hear the screen door slam open. Ron and Amy’s room is at the front, and they can hear Ron banging about, followed by the slap of his thongs as he walks down the passage.
‘Hello lads!’ Ron says as he slaps into the living room. ‘Keeping busy, then, eh?’ He’s carrying a beer carton under one arm, and as he heads for the fridge he notices the open bottle of Emu Bitter on the table. ‘Right, then,’ he says. ‘I thought you two were Swan Lager drinkers.’ He pulls open the fridge door and peers inside. ‘You thieving bastards. Lucky I got another bloody dozen, last night.’
David puts on his best innocent look. ‘There’s forty cents, Ron, on the bench,’ he says. ‘And you can keep the change, mate.’
Ron glances at the coins and starts transferring bottles from his carton into the fridge. ‘Nah, keep your dough, Dave – but thanks. I can’t take money from the young and destitute.’
‘Jesus, what a guy,’ Jim says. ‘Not bad for a drummer.’
Ron pours himself a beer from the open bottle. ‘Ah, lads, am I a goddam saint, or what?’ he says. ‘So I hope you don’t mind,’ he adds, ‘that I pinched some of me own bloody beer.’ He collapses with a thump into the sagging armchair closest to the fridge. ‘Steal my beer if you must,’ he says, ‘but by God, don’t nobody dare sit in my favourite chair.’ He pulls a cigarette from the squashed packet of Rothmans he keeps in his back pocket and attempts to strike a match. The flaring head snaps off and drops down between his thighs. ‘Holy shit!’ he bellows. He leaps up and starts beating at the front of his shorts.
‘Jesus – careful, old son,’ Jim says. ‘You’ll damage the family jewels.’
The match head drops onto the carpet and Ron stamps on it. He flops back into his armchair and cautiously strikes another match. ‘Well, Christ,’ he says. ‘Family jewels, you reckon. I could have ended up with barbecued nuts.’
vi
Ron’s Kombi van is parked in the middle of the front yard, and David is trying to manoeuvre his A40 around it. He finally gets through the gate and turns left onto the road. It’s now almost dark. The windscreen wipers flap back and forth and the inside of the glass is starting to fog up.
Jim is in the passenger seat. ‘Thank Christ the rain’s eased off a bit,’ he says.
‘Yeah, maybe it has,’ David says. He tries to wipe the windscreen clear with his hand. ‘But I don’t reckon there’s much chance you’ll get a lift. Not in this weather.’
‘I’ll give it a go, Dave, and see what happens. I’ve got a couple of bob for the bus fare, if I need it.’
‘I’d give you a lift all the way home,’ David says. ‘But take a look at that.’ He points to the petrol gauge, which is below empty. ‘And the nearest roster is miles away.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Davey boy,’ Jim says. ‘I’ll manage. And you never know, maybe one day I’ll get the old Norton back on the road.’
‘The Norton?’ David says. ‘God, how long’s it been – six months? You’ll get crapped on by a bunch of flying pigs, when you get that thing running again.’
‘Bullshit. All I need is a bit of cash, Dave, and the Norton will rise again, mate.’
‘Yeah, right,’ David says. ‘Like the phoenix from the ashes.’ He turns into Scarborough Beach Road and pulls up outside the fish and chip shop. ‘But just at the moment, James, it’s time for my Sunday dinner. You want some chips, or anything?’
Jim opens the door to get out. ‘No, Dave, I’ll be right – the folks’ll have dinner waiting at home, when I get there.’
‘Okay,’ David says. He gets out of the car and notices the right-hand trafficator arm is still extended. He taps the arm and it drops back into its recess in the door pillar. He sighs. It’s always the one on the driver’s side, and so far he hasn’t been able to fix the damn thing. A thought occurs to him as he slams the door. ‘But hang on, Jim,’ he says. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Your call-up papers – they should’ve turned up by now, shouldn’t they?’
Jim is standing on the footpath. He glances sharply at David over the top of the car. ‘Well yeah, they did,’ he says. ‘Got them a while ago. Indefinitely deferred, old son. So there’s not going to be any Army shit for me, mate.’
‘Jesus, that’s great, Jim! Why didn’t you say?’ David has to jump over the flowing gutter to reach the footpath, and he puts out his hand. ‘Congratulations, matey!’ They shake hands and David says, ‘But I’ll tell you what, Jim, when I get my deferment I’ll be celebrating, for sure.’
Jim looks away and frowns. ‘Yeah, well,’ he says. ‘But it’s all just a load of old shit. And I’d better get a move on, old son, if I’m going to get home before midnight.’ He turns and starts to walk up the road.
Chapter 2 : Maylands, Monday
David is already half-awake when the alarm clock starts up. He fumbles about to find the cut-off button, throws the sheet back, and gets up awkwardly from his mattress. A proper bed, he thinks, would be a lot easier to get out of. He pulls on his work clothes – baggy trousers and a shirt with the sleeves torn out – and he drags an old pair of desert boots out from under the chair.
Amy is already in the kitchen when David stumbles through on his way to the back door. She’s got her nurse’s uniform on but even dressed like that, he thinks, she’s still pretty nice to look at.
‘Morning, Dave,’ she says. ‘I’ve got water on for coffee. Want some?’
‘That’d be great, Amy, thanks.’
When he comes back into the kitchen his hair has been damped down and combed back, and he’s looking more awake.
‘Dave, about yesterday,’ Amy says. ‘I’m afraid I embarrassed you.’
‘Bloody hell, Amy, I wasn’t embarrassed.’
‘Well. I might have been mistaken.’ She smiles faintly. ‘Perhaps it was just sunburn. But anyway, I’m sorry.’
David laughs. ‘You don’t need to be sorry, Amy. After all, I’d have to say, you’ve got a very…’ He’s afraid he might go red again, and he stops. ‘Well. Never mind.’
Amy gives him a sideways look. ‘Watch it, buddy,’ she says. ‘I get enough of that from your mate Jimbo. And just remember, it was an accident.’
David drops two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘So,’ he says. ‘You’re back on day shift, then?’
‘Yep, normal days, for once, thank God,’ Amy says. ‘From today, and for the next two weeks.’
‘And Big Ron’s still asleep, I’d reckon.’
‘He sure is, Dave. And the Pope’s a catholic.’
‘Good on him. Ron, I mean, not the Pope. Makes it easier to go to work, knowing Ron’s going to be here, belting the crap out of his drums all day.’
The toaster pops up with a clang, and David drops his two slices onto a plate and takes them over to the table. On the way he reaches across and flicks on the radio.
‘ – seven o’clock in the sunny city of Perth,’ says the radio. ‘You’re with the Good Guys and we’re expecting ninety-eight fabulous degrees on this bright and sunny Monday morning.’
‘Bloody great,’ David says. ‘Ninety-eight. Just what you need for pushing truckloads of bricks around.’ He switches the radio off again.
Amy brings the two coffee mugs over. ‘Here’s your coffee, white boy,’ she says. She sits down across from him at the table. ‘My God. Ninety-eight fabulous degrees. But at least the rain’s gone, so it’s going to be a lovely Perth summer’s day.’
David is spreading Vegemite on a slice of toast. ‘It’s a bit early in the morning for irony,’ he says.
‘So that was irony, was it?’ Amy says. ‘Aren’t I clever.’ She frowns. ‘Or maybe it’s irony that’s supposed to be the lowest form of wit.’
‘Come off it, Amy. That’s sarcasm.’
‘Oh, is it, now. So what’s the difference, then, smart boy?’
David looks at her. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Now that I think of it, I’m buggered if I know…’
~~~~~
David drives out of the service station and turns into West Coast Highway. He heads south, past the house, with Ron’s Kombi parked in the front yard, and on towards City Beach. The Indian Ocean is on his right: a wide blue plain, smooth and flat. On his left there’s nothing but sand dunes and low scrub.
At City Beach he turns left and heads in through the suburbs that lie to the north of the city, and after ten minutes or so he takes a right turn into Peninsula Road. He winds along the outskirts of Maylands down towards the river.
The square chimney stacks of the brickworks loom into view. He’s early for once; Lumley has warned him several times for getting in late, but today he can afford to take his time.
He strolls across the pot-holed road and turns to look back at his car. The Austin is the first car he’s ever owned, and he’s proud of it, regardless of it being old and a bit dented. He’s pleased to see the right trafficator is safely in the down position. He continues along the track by the wire fence and goes in through the gate.
ii
A bright red Morris Mini takes a sharp left into Victoria Avenue and heads south. It comes to a stop almost immediately, at the end of a line of cars waiting to cross Hay Street. The girl behind the wheel is looking mildly worried. She pumps the accelerator a little, which causes the muffler to emit a satisfyingly loud growl. This, she hopes, will encourage the cars in front to get moving. The dashboard clock is saying two minutes before nine and the cars in front appear to be deaf.
Her brother Derek is in the passenger seat. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Janie,’ he says, ‘Bunbury was good for traffic. There wasn’t any.’
‘Yes. But there wasn’t a whole lot of anything else, either,’ she says.
‘So you don’t regret making the big move, then, to the city?’
‘God no. I don’t regret getting out of Bunbury, not at all. It’s just that…’
‘It’s just what?’ Derek says.
‘Well. Maybe I didn’t move far enough, that’s all. Perhaps I’d be better off in Melbourne. I could go to art school there, instead.’ She looks across at him and adds, ‘Sally doesn’t think Perth’s up to much, either.’
Derek is starting to look defensive. It was his suggestion that Jane should move to Perth in the first place. ‘Well our dear sister doesn’t know everything,’ he says. ‘And this is a pretty big town, you know.’
‘Oh, it’s big, alright. Compared to Bunbury, anyway. But the thing is, it’s still a town. Just bigger. That’s what Sally says. Pretty much the same, only more of it.’ She frowns. ‘Plus traffic jams.’
The dashboard clock is now saying one minute before nine. ‘God, I hate Mondays,’ Derek says. ‘I’m going to be late if these buggers don’t get out of our way.’
They finally get across the intersection and cruise down the hill towards St Georges Terrace, looking for a spot to pull in. ‘And who was it, exactly,’ Jane says, ‘who told you to stop reading the paper and get a move on?’
‘I remember very well who it was. It was the irritating young lady – a certain Miss Cooper – who is now very privileged to be driving my car.’
Jane spots an empty loading zone and dives into it with a brisk blatt from the exhaust and a squeal from the tyres.
‘But I seem to recall,’ Derek adds, ‘that same young lady wasn’t always so clever. Who was it, for instance, who left her transistor sitting on the roof while she drove all the way to the milk bar, hmmm?’
‘That was two weeks ago,’ Jane says. ‘I’m now much older and wiser.’ She pulls a face at her brother. ‘And anyway, when I got to the milk bar it was still sitting on the roof, so pull your head in. Now get a move on or you’ll be late.’
Derek opens the door. ‘Well, Miss Smarty,’ he says, ‘just make sure you take better care of my beautiful little Mini than you do of your rotten little radio.’ He gets out and comes around to the driver’s side, and Jane blows him a kiss through the open window.
‘Don’t be such an old grump,’ she says. ‘You know perfectly well your beloved Mini is quite safe with me.’
‘You’d better be right,’ Derek says, and he weaves through the cars to get to the footpath opposite. Once there he looks back and waves. ‘See you at five then, Janie,’ he shouts over the traffic noise. ‘And no Stirling Moss stuff, okay?’
Jane smiles and waves, and pulls out quickly into a break in the traffic. She executes a snappy U-turn and catches a glimpse of Derek in the rear-view mirror, standing on the footpath watching as she drives back up the hill.
~~~~~
Jane has been living in Perth since late December. After finishing school at Bunbury High in November she stayed long enough to spend Christmas with the family, then headed north to join her brother. She’s grateful to Derek for offering her the spare room in his duplex, but it’s a long way from the bohemian pad she’d been hoping for. She always envisaged herself suffering for her art in some impoverished but exotic garret, so it’s something of a let-down to find herself in respectable Maylands.
She parks the Mini in the driveway, lets herself into the house, and goes down the hall to her room. And her room, she has to concede, is a bit of a mess. Just about everything she’s ever done is in there: drawings in crayon and charcoal, pencil sketches, paintings. Stacked on the floor and leaning against the walls. Jane looks at it and sighs. What she needs to do now is sort through it all and make up a folio of her best work, and throw out all the rest.
She doesn’t have an easel so she makes do with the table by the window. When Derek had asked Jane what furniture she would need it seemed unreasonable to ask for an artist’s easel. So all she said was, ‘An old table, under the window. To work on.’
‘Right. What else?’
‘Well, a bed would be nice, though a mattress on the floor would do. And a chair. But the table’s the main thing.’
Jane goes into the kitchen, where the breakfast dishes are still waiting to be done. It’s only twenty past nine but already she can tell it’s going to be hot. Later in the morning she might think about going down to the river to cool off.
iii
‘You take him away, Dave,’ says Mario, who’s in charge of the brick cutter. ‘Is all yours, mate, maybe last load we do before the siren. And I tell you this, mate, is too bloody hot.’
David heaves at the rail-trolley to get it moving and the load of soft clay bricks sways from side to side. The trolley gathers speed slowly and gives out a clunk as it crosses each join in the narrow-gauge track. He continues to push on the handrail, and as the trolley’s speed gets up he eases off pushing and steps up onto the iron foot plate to ride with it. The trolley grinds and lurches along the track, down past the rows of stacked bricks in the drying shed.
His attention starts to wander and he finds himself thinking about how, as kids, he and his friends used to ride their bikes down past the brickworks on their way to the river. Sometimes they’d stop to stare in through the wire gates at the men working in the hot, dirty gloom, sweating and heaving like lost souls in hell. The fiery glow whenever the door of a kiln was opened added to the effect. It never occurred to David that one day he would be one of those tortured, sweating souls.
He’s dragged back to the present with sudden alarm, and he curses himself for daydreaming. There’s a turn to the left up ahead where the track heads down into the brick stacks, and the trolley is going too fast this close to the bend. He jumps down off the foot plate and drags his boots in the dirt, and the load of bricks sways violently. He gets the speed down, but it’s not enough. He’s flung to the ground as the trolley hits the bend and goes over. Soft clay bricks thud down around him in the dirt and all over him, and he’s pinned down by their weight. He hears the shouts of Mario and the others as they shut down the machines and come running.
~~~~~
The lunch orders have been delivered, large trays filled with white paper bags dumped on the bench by the door with a name scrawled on each bag. David grabs his as he goes past, then he’s out and walking quickly to his car. What he needs, he’s decided, is to cool down and get away from bricks for a while. Before he goes barmy. And it’s a pity bloody Lumley happened to be right there to see him tip the trolley over, it’ll mean another black mark against his name, for sure.
There’s a swimming place they used to go to after school. He’s been there before in his lunch break, and if he eats his pie while he’s driving it’ll give him time to splash about and cool off before he has to head back to work. He slams the car door, starts the engine, and throws a spray of gravel in the air as he accelerates onto the road.
iv
Jane turns right into Guildford Road. It’s just gone twelve, so if she goes for a swim now she can spend the afternoon getting her folio together.
She’s been speaking to her sister Sally on the phone from Melbourne, and this has left her feeling unsettled. Sally says if she’s serious about her work she really needs to be at RMIT, in Melbourne. She’ll be wasting her time, she says, if she stays in Perth. Jane has been in Perth now for just over a month, and what she has seen so far isn’t encouraging. She’s starting to think Sally might be right.
She turns off the main road and is halfway down the hill to the river when she suddenly wonders where her radio is. Oh God, not again, she thinks. She slows down and pulls over carefully onto the ragged grass on the side of the road. Her radio is supposed to be safely rolled up in her towel, on the seat beside her, but she can’t remember actually putting it there. She quickly unwraps the towel and is relieved to find her precious radio tucked away inside it. ‘Thank God for that,’ she says, out loud. She wonders if she’s going to spend the rest of her life worrying that she’s left something on the roof of a car.
An old sedan zooms past. Well bugger you, mate, she says to herself. If an old bomb can go flying along down to the river, so can a Mini, especially one with Jane Cooper at the wheel. She plants her foot on the accelerator and takes off after it.
v
David speeds down the hill, trying to make up for time lost in the traffic on Guildford Road. He brakes heavily as he enters the parking area at the end, and the car starts to slide. He pulls the wheel hard over and laughs as gravel and dirt spray out. The A40 careers around to the left, and at the same instant a blast on a car horn blares into his ear. A red Mini is hurtling towards him on his left, with its brakes locked and horn blaring, and the two cars shudder to a stop in a shower of dirt. The front bumper of the Mini comes to rest just inches from the Austin’s left front. The driver of the Mini immediately leaps from the car, her face white with shock. ‘You maniac!’ she shouts. ‘Don’t you know how to drive?’
David is stunned. He had no idea another car was following him into the car park, and anyway, what was it doing on that side? ‘Since when do you overtake on the bloody left, then?’ he shouts back.
The girl is almost beside herself. She points a shaking finger at the A40’s right trafficator. ‘Look, you idiot! You were supposed to be turning right!’
David gets out of the car and slams the door. The trafficator is fully extended and he bangs it down with his fist. It drops obediently into its rightful place. ‘Jesus!’ he says. ‘The bloody thing was stuck.’ He turns to look at the girl, but she’s gone. He sees her walking along the path down to the river bank; she’s obviously decided he’s not worth talking to. ‘Jesus!’ he says again.
When he gets to the river bank there’s no one else there, apart from the girl, but David can see a couple of young guys fooling about in the mud on the opposite bank. They both have very white skin and he wonders if they’re recent arrivals from somewhere cold, like England. They look as though they might be getting ready to swim across the river.
He pulls off his desert boots and socks, and his work shirt and trousers. If anyone happens to look in his direction, with any luck they’ll think his jocks are navy blue Speedos. The girl is sunbathing on the sand fifty yards further along the bank. Her face is turned away and she’s obviously not taking a blind bit of notice of him. Just my bloody luck, he thinks, to stuff that up. And she’s a knockout looker, too. Jesus…
He wades out through the shallows into the deeper water and dives under. The brown river water is wonderfully cool and he splashes it over his arms and face and through his hair, until the clay and dust has all been washed off. One last dive, and he heads back to the bank. He takes his watch from the pocket of his trousers and checks the time: ten minutes left before he has to be back. That means he can spend another five minutes drying off in the sun before he has to go. He lies back on his towel and enjoys the faint prickling sensation of water evaporating off his skin.
~~~~~
Jane is lying stretched out on her beach towel on the river bank, soaking up the sun, with her radio playing softly into her ear. She’s still recovering; just ten minutes ago the young idiot who’s now sunbathing in his underpants fifty yards along the bank came very close to smashing his old bomb into Derek’s precious car, and she’s trying hard to blot the memory out of her mind. The main thing, she tells herself, is that it was a close shave, but in the end there was no collision and no damage done. So now she’s just going to relax and enjoy the feel of hot sun on her skin. And when the heat gets to be unbearable she’ll dive into the water to cool off. It was just another narrow escape, that’s all. She seems to have a talent for narrow escapes, of one sort or another, like the one in Bunbury. She shivers, in the hot sun. She wants to blot that memory out as well.
vi
David is almost ready to drift off into sleep when he hears a distant voice calling out in panic: ‘Can you help my brother? He can’t swim!’ It takes a few seconds for him to register this is a real voice and not just some figment from a dream. The voice cries out again: ‘Help! Help! he’s drowning!’
David is suddenly wide awake and he sits up sharply. Out in the river the two boys are in trouble. The older one is standing with his head and shoulders clear of the water, waving his arms in the air and staring helplessly at the other boy, who is thrashing about wildly in the deepest part of the river. David jumps to his feet and sprints into the water. When it’s deep enough he starts swimming as fast as he can out to the middle.
When he gets there he can see only one of the boys; the younger one has disappeared. He stares wildly around, but there’s no trace of him in the murky water. He was so anxious to get out there quickly that he’s overtaxed his strength, and he’s lost sight of the spot where the boy disappeared. The water is deeper here and he’s over his depth, so he has to tread water to stay afloat.
The older boy’s face is blank with panic. David shouts at him, ‘Where is he? – for Christ’s sake, where is he?’
‘I don’t know!’ the boy screams. ‘Near where you are, somewhere!’ and he points wildly in David’s general direction. David dives under the water and swims down close to the bottom, trying to see through the murk. He finds nothing and comes to the surface gasping for breath. Jesus Christ, he says to himself, the kid’s going to bloody drown, and it’ll be my fault… He’s close to panic now himself, and he’s desperately trying to think of what he can do when a large air bubble bursts through the surface several yards away to his right. ‘Christ, yes!’ he says, and he swims frantically to where the bubble came up. He dives down again and the missing boy is there, lying face down with arms outstretched, hanging motionless in the haze just above the silt of the river bed. David claws his way down, gets his arms around the boy’s chest, and pushes violently down with his feet on the mud to propel them both back up to the surface. His head breaks through into the daylight and he drags air into his lungs in great gasping breaths.
The boy’s body is limp and inert, and David is struggling to keep his own head above the water. He wonders how he’s going to get the boy back to the river bank; he can feel himself starting to sink down, and water slops into his mouth and he starts to cough. A girl’s voice right behind him says, ‘Here, let me help.’
David is startled. He looks over his shoulder and sees it’s the girl, the driver of the Mini, just a couple of feet away in the water. ‘Keep hold of him,’ she says, ‘and I’ll try to support you.’
The boy starts gasping and coughing as they get him up onto the sand. He writhes about, spitting out water and retching and dragging in loud rasping breaths of air. David is too exhausted to do anything but sit, a few feet away, with his eyes closed and his head on his knees. When he recovers enough to notice what’s happening the boy is sitting up, and the girl is sitting close beside him with her arm around his thin white shoulders.
David gets up and stumbles over to where he left his clothes. He’s going to be bloody late getting back, he thinks, and Christ knows what’ll happen. All he can do is get back as soon as he can, but there’s a good chance he’ll get the bullet.
The older boy has managed to get himself to the bank and he’s shaking as he kneels down next to his brother. David hurriedly pulls on his shirt and trousers, and he shakes his desert boots to get the sand out of them. He looks at the shivering boys and says, ‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you two guys learnt how to swim.’
The boys don’t respond, but the girl turns to look at him. ‘Well if you’re so damn clever,’ she says, ‘maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you learnt how to drive.’ David stares blankly back at her, unable to think of a suitable reply. She shakes her head and turns away.
~~~~~
David roars up to the main road in the A40, slows briefly, and darts out into the traffic. Fifteen minutes late already, he thinks, and at the brickworks that’s bloody late. Guildford Road is four lanes wide; he accelerates and starts ducking from one lane to the other to get past the cars blocking his way. He pulls the wheel over hard to turn into Peninsula Road and gets around with a squeal of rubber on bitumen. He’s about to put his foot down again when he hears the howl of a police siren right behind him.
vii
‘Is he a friend of yours?’ the younger boy asks.
‘Is who a friend of mine?’ Jane says.
‘That guy. Who pulled me out of the river.’
‘No, he’s not a friend of mine. Never seen him before.’
The two boys and Jane are in the Mini and they’re heading back up the hill towards Guildford Road. The younger boy, the one who almost drowned, is in the passenger seat beside Jane. His older brother is sitting in the back.
‘I didn’t get to thank him,’ the younger one says. ‘He saved my life.’
‘He didn’t hang around long, did he?’ Jane says. ‘Maybe he was bashful.’
‘I’d be bashful too,’ says the older boy from the back seat, ‘if my clothes were like that.’
Jane changes down and accelerates up the hill. ‘Yes, he was a bit ragged,’ she says. ‘I grew up in Bunbury, and there’s a lot of them like that down there. I was hoping to get away from guys like that.’
‘Oh. Where’s Bunbury?’
‘Never mind. It’s just this town down the coast.’
Jane’s remark about the men in Bunbury has shifted her thoughts back into an area she would rather stay away from. It occurs to her that she had actually put her arm around the guy’s bare chest, out in the river – a complete stranger – and held him close to her while she side-stroked back to shallow water. She can feel her skin prickling and she’s starting to feel sick. To take her mind off it she concentrates on her driving; there’s a break in the traffic as they approach the main road so she guns the motor and pulls the car sharply into a skidding left turn. The boys are suitably impressed and the sick feeling starts to fade. She hasn’t told them the Mini belongs to her brother.
They’d arrived from London with their parents just three days ago, they told her, and they’re now living in Maylands. Their house, it turns out, is not far from Derek’s duplex. Jane offered to drive them home.
‘But he was right, you know,’ she says. ‘You really do need to learn to swim properly.’ They speed along past Peninsula Road and Jane takes the next left into Fourth Avenue. ‘Though he could have waited,’ she adds, ‘for a better time to say it.’
‘You don’t like him much, do you?’ the older boy says.
‘I don’t know him well enough to like him or dislike him. He might be alright.’
‘You seemed pretty angry with him.’
‘Maybe I just don’t have much time,’ Jane says, ‘for rough young guys who get around in clapped-out old bombs.’ She shivers. ‘Perhaps I was angry with him. I can do without guys like that.’
The younger boy looks at her oddly. ‘I don’t think he was rough,’ he says. ‘And I don’t care how bad he was dressed, he saved me from drowning.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Jane says. ‘He did. And that’s the main thing.’
viii
‘So tell me, old son, who’s this girl, then?’ It’s now three o’clock in the afternoon and David and Jim are sitting on mattresses in the shed at the back of the yard. The shade of the mulberry tree keeps it reasonably cool, even today.
When Jim was still at high school he decided to move out of the house, and he’s lived in the shed ever since. The concrete floor is largely covered with old mattresses, and a collection of carpet scraps fills the spaces between them. A guitar amplifier and two guitar cases are stacked by the wall near the door, and at the far end the floor is bare; on this stands Jim’s motorbike; black and chrome and faintly sinister in the dim light filtering in through the dirty window. David has been explaining to Jim why he’s not at work in the middle of a Monday afternoon.
The cop had been slow writing out the ticket. ‘You lazy young bastard,’ he had said, ‘you should be at work, not going bloody swimming all day.’
‘But I’m trying to get back to work,’ David said.
‘Yeah, and now you can pull the other one. Young shits like you, wouldn’t work in an iron lung.’
David hadn’t heard this expression before, and it didn’t make a lot of sense. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’d be a bit hard, wouldn’t it?’
The cop didn’t bother to reply. He leaned over slowly, spat on the roadway, and went back to his writing. David was looking past him at the traffic going by on the main road and he saw the Mini as it zipped past, heading west towards the city.
By the time he got back in through the gate at the brickworks he was more than thirty minutes late. Lumley fired him on the spot, so he decided to call in to see Jim on his way home.
‘What d’you mean, who’s the girl?’ David says. ‘I told you, I don’t know. Didn’t even get her name.’ He looks at Jim and grins. ‘But she’s got a nice car.’
‘Sounds like a bitch to me,’ Jim says. ‘And I’ve had about enough of bitches just lately, what with bloody Carol.’
‘Carol?’ David says. ‘Last time I heard, you were pretty keen on her.’
Jim takes a drag on his cigarette and blows a plume of smoke into the air. ‘Well, yeah. I thought I was, for a while,’ he says. ‘But that was before I realised what a neurotic cow she is. And I’ll tell you this, Davey boy, it’s amazing how fast you can lose interest in a bird, once you’ve had her in the sack.’
‘Oh,’ David says. He’s silent while he rolls himself a cigarette. Then he says, ‘But anyway, James, I can tell you one thing for sure, this girl’s a real stunner.’ He frowns slightly. ‘Mind you, the only time I got to see her face she was either screaming at me, or she was looking at me like I was cat’s vomit.’ He stops for a moment to light up and adds, ‘Her hair’s cut kind of short, and sort of shaggy.’
‘Right,’ Jim says. ‘I knew a bird like that once, with short hair. The bloody urchin look, she called it. So this sheila’d be the arty type, I reckon, with a lot of black eye make-up.’
‘Well I don’t reckon she had much on in the way of make-up, Jim,’ David says. ‘This was at the river. But I noticed her eyes, alright, and they’re big. And she can give you a very pissed-off look with them too, when she feels like it.’ He takes a long drag on his cigarette and adds, ‘But on the other hand, she’s got a nice little bod.’
‘So she’s a bitch, and she can swim,’ Jim says. ‘But she’s also a stunner, you reckon, and she drives a red Mini. Christ, what a pity I’m right off bitches.’
‘Well. I can tell you she’s got no time at all for me, James. So if you ever run into her, she’s all yours.’
Jim flicks his cigarette butt out through the open door. ‘Now then, Dave, old son,’ he says. ‘Seeing as how you don’t have a job any longer, maybe we should think about this wheat bins idea.’
‘I guess so,’ David says. ‘There’s nothing to keep me here, now – so yeah, at least it’s a job.’
‘Good. The sooner I get away from bloody Carol, the better. Then she can find some other poor bastard to pick on.’
‘And you swear you won’t get bored and pack it in, after a couple of days?’
‘Absolutely,’ Jim says. ‘I won’t get bored.’
Chapter 3 : Bunbury, Friday
Jane was sixteen when it happened.
She was walking home from Laura’s house, heading east towards Wittenoom Street with her books and all her school gear crammed into the blue vinyl TAA bag slung over her shoulder. She was supposed to be home by sunset, but it’s hard to tell how much daylight is left because the grey overcast sky has blocked out the sun. It’s starting to rain; not heavily, but the tiny droplets are being driven by the south-westerly whipping along the street.
Damn the rain, Jane says to herself, that’s all I need. Middle of winter, starting to get dark, and caught in the rain. There’s no footpath so she walks on the grass by the side of the road. The grass is already wet from showers earlier in the day, and it squelches underfoot. She quickens her pace, and for once her clunky school shoes don’t seem quite so objectionable, though her Bunbury High uniform would normally be the number one thing she hates. Two hours earlier, when Jane and Laura walked home from school to Laura’s, it looked like it was going to fine up. She should have known better, she thinks, than to try to predict Bunbury weather.
Laura’s father has a prized possession: a statuette of a woman carved in white marble. The woman stands on a small plinth in the hallway of Laura’s house. Three feet high, smooth and plump, and naked apart from a carefully arranged marble shawl. Jane and Laura spend many of their afternoons drawing her, and they sit cross-legged on the hallway carpet with their books of Spirax cartridge paper and their 2B pencils. This is their very own Life Drawing class.
On this particular afternoon Jane felt she was starting to make some progress, though she still wasn’t happy with the hands. Hands, she decides, are a bugger. Laura’s efforts aren’t in the same class and Jane has to work hard to encourage her. But their model is very patient and doesn’t fidget or chew gum. Jane has heard this isn’t always so with real models. Laura is convinced that Jane is going to be famous one day, but Jane is more realistic. She knows she’s got a lot to learn.
ii
The wind has dropped to almost nothing, but the rain is getting heavier and Jane has been forced to take shelter under a peppercorn tree. It’s not much of an improvement, because all the tree does is turn a million small raindrops into a thousand big ones, but they’re still just as wet.
She could have phoned from Laura’s to let her mum know she was stuck, and her dad would have picked her up on his way home from work. It’s too late now, she’s almost as close to her own house as she is to Laura’s. And her sister Sally doesn’t have a car, so she’s no use. Jane is annoyed that she’s too young to drive herself, and she’s determined that come December, on her seventeenth birthday, she’s going to get her licence. Of course Derek would have come to her rescue, he always did. And he’d have been home by about this time, too, if he hadn’t decided two months ago to up sticks and move to Perth.
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