Four Fires (11 page)

What was left of the money allowed Tommy to shout all his friends at the Shamrock and stay drunk for a month as well as lose a few quid on the horses at Flemington with a clear conscience.

Then, I remember, we invested the last fifty quid on Tatts tickets.

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For the second time we speculated on how we were going to spend the fortune we stood to win. True to form, the Maloney luck held firm and we got bugger-all back. So, there you go, the water from the tap had hit the spoon in the sink as usual. Life on Bell Street continued as before.

My grandpa's funeral was a big affair with Tooley's funeral wagon draped in black crepe and more flowers than the combined floats at the Golden Hills Festival. It was followed by a wake at the Shamrock with several of the town's leading Protestants present. The entire district bushfire brigade attended, some coming from as far as Yarrawonga. Of course, all the town's Catholics were there. Anything for a free piss-up.

At the wake they'd rigged up this tape recorder to a loudspeaker and played a bush ballad which Mr Baloney used to sing when he'd had a skinful. The recording was in his own voice. A bloke at the ABC, visiting the town from Melbourne a couple of years earlier looking for stuff for the wireless, had recorded it in the pub one night. It's called

'The Ballad of Billy Brink' and goes like this:

There once was a shearer by the name of Bill Brink,

A devil for work and a devil for drink,

He'd shear his two hundred a day without fear,

And he'd drink without stopping two gallons of beer. Chores from the people in the pub Arid he'd drink without stopping two gallons of beer.

When the pub opened up he was very first in,

Roaring for whiskey and howling for gin,

Saying, 'Jimmy, my boy, I'm dying of thirst, W hatever you've got here just give it me first.'

Chorus from the people in the pub

Whatever you've got here just give it me first.'

Now Jimmy the barman who served him the rum,

Hated the sight of old Billy the bum;

He came up too late, he came up too soon,

At morning, at evening, at night and at noon. Chorus from the people in the pub At morning, at evening, at night and at noon.

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Now Jimmy the barman was cleaning the bar,

With sulphuric acid locked up in a jar.

He poured him a measure into a small glass,

Saying, 'After this drink you will surely say "Pass".' Chorus from the people in the pub Saying, 'After this drink you will surely say "Pass".'

'Well, 'says Billy to Jimmy, 'the stuff it tastes fine,

She's a new kind of liquor or whiskey or wine?'

'Yes, that's the stuff, Jimmy, I'm strong as a Turk I'll

break all the records today at my work.' Chorus from the people in the pub 'I'll break all the records today at my work.'

Well, all that day long there was Jim at the bar,

Too eager to argue, too anxious to fight,

Roaring and trembling with a terrible fear,

For he pictured the corpse of old Bill in his sight. Chorus from the people in the pub For he pictured the corpse of old Bill in his sight.

But early next morn there was Bill as before, roaring and bawling, and howling for more, His eyeballs were singed and his whiskers deranged,

He had holes in his hide like a dog with the mange. Chorus from the people in the pub He had holes in his hide like a dog with the mange.

Said Billy to Jimmy, "She sure was fine stuff.

It made me feel well but I ain't had enough.

It started me coughing, you know I'm no liar,

And every damn cough set my whiskers on fire.'

Chorus from the people in the pub 'And every damn cough set my whiskers on fiiiiiiiiiiiiire['

'Was it, you know, weird hearing the old man's voice after he already dead?' I asked Tommy when he told me about the song and the funeral one day when we were in the bush together.

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'Nah, they loved it. Brought the old bugger fresh back into the pub like he was attending his own wake.'

Mickey O'Hearn generously donated two eighteens for the wake and the bushfire mob had added a niner and Tommy had somehow scratched up the shekels for another nine-gallon keg. So the joint was awash with grog and, once the collective tongues were sufficiently oiled, just about every man and his dog made a speech or had a yarn to tell concerning the dearly departed, who had grown a dozen inches in stature since he'd hit the deck with a clunk.

There was plenty to tell. Except for the Boer War and once to attend a bushfire conference in Melbourne in 1937, Mr Baloney had never left the valley and almost its whole history was encompassed in his life. Of the Boer War he'd say, 'We should have lost. Them Boers were better than us, ride all day at a half-gallop, shoot the eye out of a potato at five hundred yards, in the end we outnumbered them twenty to one!' Of his only visit to the big smoke: 'Couldn't get 'ome quick enough. Ratbags the lot of 'em, talked about bombing bushfires with water from the air!'

Mickey O'Hearn, who'd made his particular oration fairly late in the day when the crowd sentiment was full to overflowing, mentioned how the dearly departed had sent half a pot of Victoria Bitter crashing to the floor moments before he'd been whisked tap to the great pub in the sky.

'Now, such a waste may be thought by some to bring shame to a drinking man of Mr Baloney's reputation,' Mickey intoned. 'But I assure you I am not among his critics. No, sir! As an Irishman and as a publican of twenty years' standing, I regard myself as an expert in these matters. I'll be after tellin' you now, ladies and gentlemen [there were no ladies present at the wake], the unconsumed ale is a very clear sign if ever I saw one.' He paused to make sure everyone was paying attention. 'It means, Mr Baloney will be back for the other half, don't you bother yourself about that now!'

This sentiment was rewarded with clapping and whistles and banging on the tables. Then, quite possibly carried away by the occasion and no doubt also from the effect caused by having imbibed too much of his own amber liquid in an effort to regain somewhat from his generosity, Mickey made this grand announcement. 'Henceforth, a pot of beer will be left on the main bar of the Shamrock every night to await the dear man's return or until the Second Coming of our Lord, whichever occurs the sooner. God bless you all.'

It was a fine gesture which brought tears to the eyes of several hardened drunks and was loudly applauded by all. Mr Baloney's half finished beer was instantly dubbed 'The Beer of the Second Coming'.

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Except that, after two weeks either Jesus had come and nobody in Yankalillee had noticed (which was not entirely impossible) or Mickey O'Hearn had reneged on his promise. No pot of beer now rested on the polished-cedar bar counter where Mr Baloney had customarily perched.

Tommy waited a week or two to make sure this wasn't an oversight, then he confronted Mickey O'Hearn, 'How come me old man's beer ain't on the bar like you promised, mate?'

Mickey O'Hearn looked surprised. 'Come now, Tommy

that's funeral talk, that's all that is, Irish blarney. I put the beer out the:: first two weeks, fourteen beers. To be sure now, that's not a gesture to be taken lightly.'

'Twelve, pub don't open Sundays.'

'Twelve then.'

'Yeah, and you filled the glass from the slops tray, thought we wouldn't notice, eh?'

Michael O'Hearn, the representative of the town's poor and downtrodden, was clearly taken aback and became somewhat agitated.

Jabbing his forefinger into Tommy's chest, he said, 'Do you expect me to pull three hundred and sixty-five fresh beers a year minus Sundays and let them go to waste! Jaysus, you wouldn't be serious now, would you, Tommy Maloney? I'm not the bloody Aga Khan!'

Tommy shook his head slowly, his eyes directed at the floor. Like most recidivists he was a convincing actor. 'I dunno, mate, seems a real shame. Like you said at me old man's funeral, tradition and all that.

What with him lingering in purgatory, a cold beer might go down real good after a day on the hot coals.' Tommy looked up at the Irishman, his one good eye registering a deep and profound sadness at this insult to the memory of his departed father. Mickey O'Hearn didn't need to be reminded, though Tommy now lost no time reminding him, The old man spent almost his entire Boer War invalid's pension every month at the Shamrock, Mickey. It's just not right what you done, mate.'

Like all his kind, at heart Mickey O'Hearn was a sentimental bloke and, as well, not a stupid one. Most of the lags drank at the Shamrock when they weren't safely tucked away up the hill, and Mickey could ill afford to have Tommy badmouth him among the criminal community.

With seven pubs in the town, loyalty could be a fickle business and, besides, your average crim and ex-con is well known to have a very large thirst.

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'Tell you what, Tommy, I'll meet you halfway,' Mickey said, adopting a reconciliatory tone. 'A pint costs two bob, right? You put down a deaner for the first pint you drink every day and I'll take care of the remainder. That's a silver shilling in your own pocket and you get to drink the pot Mr Baloney left behind when he so sadly departed this mortal coil.' Mickey smiled, 'Can't be fairer than that now, can I, Tommy?'

Tommy's sense of tradition evaporated into the nicotine-fumed air above his head. He grinned at the Irishman, 'Fair enough, mate.

Thanks, Mickey, you've got me.'

'Just the one, mind!' Mickey warned, pointing his finger at Tommy: '

'The first of the day.'

You think there's not a lot you remember about your early childhood, but pictures, words, incidents are constantly coming back to me, scenes reappear in my mind's eye. What returns is always the memory of the two of us, Grandpa and me, enjoying each other's company.

In my fifty-fifth year I seem to be living both in the past and in the present, you must forgive me if at times my voice lapses into childhood, it is an evocation that comes complete with its own small town grammar so that I see and inwardly hear myself speaking as a child. They say this sometimes happens to older people, yet I am not old enough to be included in this category. Perhaps age is more about experience than it is about the passing of the ears. We are where we've been. There is some comfort to me in the fact that I can return to times past that remind me of who I am and help explain why I have become the way I am. The voice of Mole, the little shit-kicker, often becomes as real to me as that of the adult Peter Maloney and so I hope you will go along with me in this.

Mr Baloney and I would go for what seemed to me at the time long walks in the bush, where he'd point out things to me. The names of flowers and, in particular, the various types of eucalyptus. 'A good burner, dangerous bugger,' he'd say of one, while of another he'd remark, 'Fire resistant, loves the flame, burns off all the stringy bark, leaving the trunk green and clean as a whistle.'

He'd show me insects lurking underneath leaves, stick insects so cleverly disguised you'd have to be inches away before you realised they weren't a "knotted twig, or emerald-coloured praying mantis, their front legs delicately touching their long feelers. Codling moths cocooned in nests made of their homespun cotton wool in the old apple tree behind the house and fat white witchetty grubs lurked under bark that curled into a tight smooth circle at a touch. Mr.

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Baloney would tell me the feeding ways of the bright green grasshoppers. He knew the name of every type of cicada and he me that the high?pitched noise that filled every corner of the bush sent the air vibrating was made with their back legs. We'd find webs and nests of the dangerous redbacks and the safe huntsmen the less safe trapdoor spiders, and he'd pull me to safety away nests of bull ants. He'd call out the names of the butterflies as bobbed about in the sunlight or settled on wildflowers, their opening and shutting in slow motion.

Mr Baloney could imitate the song of most of the birds and possum's .den in a hollow tree trunk where there'd sometimes be

possums looking back at you, eyes dark as creek water over pebbles. Occasionally we'd come across a snake sunning itself.

bellied black snake,' Grandpa would say softly, 'don't want nothing do with that bugger, son, nasty bite.'

We'd come across a stand of blackberries, 'Nasty stuff this, takes, a hold of the bush and won't let go, kills everything. Shouldn't be here at all. It's the bloody rabbit of the plant kingdom, this and Patterson's curse. Both brought in by the English. Fancy being homesick for a blackberry bush! Only a Pommie, eh? Took off like smoke, though, loved the place and now neither God nor man can get rid of the mongrel.' He'd reach carefully into the bush for a blackberry and pop it into my mouth, his fingers smelling of tobacco. 'Too much scratch to the bite,' he'd say dismissively, pointing to the thorny stalks. 'Mind you, the blue wrens love it. Small bird, see, prey for the bigger ones out in the open, blackberry gives them a source of food and hides and

protects them. Nasty bloody stuff all the same.'

I guess Mr Baloney told me a whole heap more, because when four years later Tommy started to do the same, a lot of what he said seemed vaguely familiar. Sometimes I'd come across something in the bush, perhaps a small flowering plant tucked away in the undergrowth.

'That's a greenhood orchid,' I'd say, its name simply popping into my head as a gift from Grandpa past. 'Where'd you learn that?' Tommy would say, surprised, 'The old man tell ya?'

There is something else I remember about Mr Baloney. He was a champion farter, though I don't suppose this fact was well known among the general population nor do I believe it was mentioned at his funeral. But as his more or less constant partner on rambles, I was privileged to hear his complete repertoire, from basso profundo to rapid machine-gun fire.

We'd be walking, my hand buried in his big, calloused fist, him shuffling with his bit of a limp and me hopping and skipping, the wind rustling high and fierce in the big old gum trees above us, making a sound like waves lapping on some distant seashore, when, without
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