Four Fires (48 page)

Only thing is, Mike's not his usual self. Coming home in the back of the Diamond T, he, like Nancy, is tired from being up so late Saturday night. He's stretched out on the double-bed mattress at the back of the truck and I can see he's worried about something because there's no quips or sarcastic remarks coming from him. Something's happened but he doesn't say. Maybe because Mrs Rika Ray is in the back with us. We drop her off at Silver Creek and Nancy has a bit of a howl as she hugs poor old Mrs Rika Ray and nearly smothers her to death in the process. I reckon they're gunna be mates forever now that she's got the baby safely out of Sarah.

Then at tea, Nancy, who's slept all the way back and is now awake, says there's a family discussion on. We haven't had too many of these since Sarah left, because it was her who usually got Nancy to hold one if there was anything the family needed to discuss. Mostly it was stuff Nancy had decided on and Sarah felt wasn't the best decision, so she'd persuade Nancy to have a family discussion. The discussions were good, because we all got to have a say and made up our minds sort of together. Well, sometimes, anyway. Unfortunately Nancy could put the kybosh on anything if she wants to, with an overriding vote. But sometimes she's fair.

Tommy is home again and because it's Sunday and the pubs are closed, he can't wet the baby's head neither, so it's also good to have him in on the discussion.

'We've got two things to discuss tonight,' Nancy says, as she's cutting up this strudel cake Sophie's made for us. Mike's sitting next to her and he's pouring out our tea into mugs and still looking worried. 'First one's Mike,' Nancy announces. 'You all know he wants to pack in school and go and work in Melbourne, learn to design frocks.'

'Ladies' dresses, Mum! Frocks are not designed, they're just sewn.'

'Dresses then. As you know I'm not too happy about this, there's been enough stupid Maloneys and Mike should finish school. We didn't make the sacrifices we done so that he could go treadle a sewing machine in a stinking factory.'

'But, Mum, that's what I've been doing all my life, that and embroidery!' Mike protests.

'That's just it! We done that so you could get an education!' Nancy looks around at us, 'Isn't that right?'We all know her too well and we look down at our plates and don't show any expression. 'Pass your plate, Mole, and tell your mother, what do you think?'

She's starting with the youngest, Colleen is too young to get a say, and with me starting off the defence it means she's going to be tough. When I'm asked first, it's because Sarah says Nancy wants to polish up her argument against the motion. You see, Nancy doesn't listen and then comes in at the end, she argues back with everyone on the spot. She's picked me first so she can sort of limber up. It's like Bozo warming up on the punching bag. I'm on Mike's side, of course, because brothers have to be.

'They can't teach him nothing that's gunna help him design dresses here in Yankalillee,' I say, passing her my plate.

'That's not a good enough reason! Learning's not about what you learn about, it's about learning to learn.'

'How's that?' I ask, not understanding.

'It's called being educated, so you'll go on learning all your life, learning how to learn, that's the difference between us and people who are clever. Mike hasn't learned how to learn yet, but Sarah has.'

Sometimes, if you listen hard, Nancy says things that make you think she's not as dumb as she looks.

'A person won't learn if they're not interested in learning stuff,' I say, trying to defend my point of view. 'Mike's only interested in dresses, so why can't he be educated about dresses?'

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Become a stupid dressmaker, you mean? You're right, he could become that!' Nancy can be really bitchy if she wants. I can see exactly where she's heading, she's not going to let Mike go to Melbourne.

She puts a piece of apple strudel on the plate and passes it back to me. 'Thankyou, Mole,'she says. That's another sign. When she's being polite, you know she's not going to take any notice of what you've said. I look at Mike and shrug. I want him to know I've done my best to help him.

'Bozo, pass your plate. And what have you to say?' Bozo doesn't muck around. 'You let Sarah be a doctor, so why can't Mike be a frock, er, dress designer? Doctors only think about cutting people up and dress designers only think about cutting material up, what's the diff?

Why's one more educated than the other? It takes six years to become a doctor, Mike says it will take him longer, much longer, to become a

dress designer.'

Nancy scoops up a piece of strudel onto the knife she's using. The strudel is balanced on the blade of the knife, her thumb holding it safe so it doesn't fall off. Now she holds it in the air.

'Sarah's going to be a doctor, she's going to a university. Mike might be a dress designer if he's very lucky, he's not going to school any more!' She says it slowly so each word is pronounced clear, it's her way of trying to put Bozo in his place, act like he's dumb when it comes to such things. 'Sophie says it will be hard for a boy to get anywhere in the garment trade and he'll have to start as a sweeper in a sweatshop. I don't want my boy sweeping the floor for a Jew! Sophie says if he's lucky he'll learn the steam-presser, that's real clever, I don't think! I didn't bring any son of mine up to sweep floors or iron ladies' frocks!' Then she declares, 'We love Morrie and Sophie, but not all Jews are like them. Jews hate Catholics because they know we know they killed our Lord!'

'No, Mum, it's the other way around!' Mike protests. 'It's the Catholics who hate the Jews! But that's not how I feel, I just want to learn and they're the best at it.'

'Mike ain't dumb, now,' Bozo says, 'He won't be dumb later. Even if he sweeps floors when he starts out. It's better than collecting people's garbage, ain't it? Sarah's got to start by cutting up frogs, she told me so herself. Isn't that the same as Mike starting as a sweeper? What would you rather do, sweep a floor or cut up a frog?' Then he adds, 'Do you know any Catholics in the garment trade who will take him on?' He doesn't say nothing about Jews being Christ-killers. I bet there were plenty of Catholics in charge at the concentration camps. Bozo's doing all he can for Mike, but we know Nancy, she'll close it down any moment now, not even ask Tommy for his opinion because he might agree with her. She wants to be boss of the wash, show us how tough she is. She'll ask us to vote, then she'll use the overriding vote and that'll be Mike, well and truly down the gurgler.

But Tommy comes in suddenly. 'Designing frocks is for nancy boys, poofters! I'm not having no son of mine doing that!'

Oh shit, here we go. I look over at Bozo, who lifts one eyebrow. We both look to see how Nancy's going to handle this! Mike's whole body has gone rigid.

Nancy slides Bozo's cake onto the plate and hands it to him. 'Whose son did you say he is?' she says real quiet, deadly as a king-brown, you can practically see the forked tongue hissing in and out of her mouth.

'Ah, fuck viz!' Tommy says and gets up, sending his chair back three feet before storming out of the room. 'He's a fucking fairy, ain't he?' he shouts from the kitchen door.

Jesus! I can't believe it! Game, set and match. Nancy's going to let Mike leave school, Tommy's just seen to that fair and square.

Nancy puts it to the vote and Bozo and me vote for Mike leaving and Nancy says that's okay, she's talked to Sarah, who's also voted for Mike. She doesn't even mention Tommy's conniption but she says she doesn't agree with us. However she's not going to use her overriding vote, Mike
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can go to Melbourne but only if he can find a job in the rag trade first and he'll have to stay with Sarah, Morrie and Sophie. 'Tommy can go down by train and build a sleep-out on the back porch,' she says, cool as a cucumber, as though what's just happened hasn't happened.

Nancy also said at the beginning that there were two things to discuss, but after what's happened with Tommy doing his block, whatever the second thing was, it doesn't come up.

It's the first time since the night Nancy went ape at the table when she heard of Sarah's pregnancy and had a go at Mike for sticking up for her, that Mike's been lost for words. He should be happy as Larry about the decision, but what Tommy's said has knocked him for a six and he gets up without even having a piece of Sophie's strudel. Then he says, 1 hanks, Mum, I won't let you down,' and he goes to our bedroom.

He's asleep, or maybe pretending, when we come in a little while later. It's garbage in the morning and it's been a bloody long day, I kid you not.

That night Tommy comes into our bedroom after we're all asleep, only I'm not, and I hear him say 'Wake up, will ya, Mike!' in a loud whisper and then he grabs a hold of Mike's shoulder and shakes it. Mike, wake up!'

Mike wakes up suddenly and shoots up out of his blanket, 'What?' Then, 'Oh, it's you'/

Tommy whispers, but I can hear every word. 'Mike, I'm sorry I said what I said, but it was the only way I could think to make sure she'd let you leave school to go to Melbourne to do them frock drawings.' Then he sort of hesitates before he goes on. 'Son, I don't care what you are, I loves yer. I dunno if you're a fairy and it don't matter if you are. There's plenty of turd burglars in the clink and some of them are good blokes. Just because you may be a poofter without even knowing it doesn't mean you can't be a good man.'

Thats Tommy all right, he does the right thing and then he immediately screws things up again.

But I reckon Mike understands Tommy means no harm, because he reaches out and touches him on his crook shoulder. 'Thanks, Dad. Thanks for the help.' he says and then turns towards the wall. When Tommy leaves a little while later, I can hear Mike sobbing.

book

TWO

1961-1964

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Templeton Maloney is five years old. Well, it's actually Lucy Templeton Maloney, the 'Lucy' is named after Mrs Barrington-Stone and the

'Templeton' for revenge. That was the second item in the family discussion all those years ago when Mike got permission to stop school and go to work in Melbourne. Nancy wanted to discuss naming Sarah's baby 'Templeton' so that nobody in Yankalillee would ever forget what had happened. Only it didn't happen at that meeting because of what Tommy said about Mike and so she went ahead with it anyway, using her overriding vote even though there hadn't been a vote in the first place.

She must have known she'd never have got it agreed to by the family.

Father Crosby bloody nearly dropped the baby at the christening when he asked her name and Nancy, who was standing next to Sarah at the font, said, 'Lucy Templeton Maloney'. Naturally he was dead against it. He could hardly speak, but because there were three christenings on that Sunday and St Stephen's was chocka with everyone's relatives and friends, he couldn't make a fuss and was
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forced to go along with the baptism. But that didn't stop him coming around on his bike to give Nancy the usual lecture.

This time it was all about hate, how it was sinful to hate someone even if they were Protestants and Anglicans. 'Revenge to me; I will repay, saith the Lord,' he thundered at Nancy, his fat jowls wobbling.

It seems as though ordinary Catholics, even collapsed ones, aren't supposed to seek revenge. 'Revenge/ said Father Crosby, 'is the Church's prerogative!'

'And what will the Church do?' Nancy asks him tartly.

'We will commend your case to God Himself, if He sees fit to visit shame and humiliation on Mr and Mrs Templeton, then in His infinite wisdom He may decide to shower them with brimstone and ashes. Metaphorically speaking, of course.'

'Can't hang around for God to make up His mind, Father, haven't seen too many cases of brimstone and ashes falling out of the sky around Yankalillee.'

'I've warned you several times before about blasphemy, Nancy Maloney! If you want to find yourself on the path to damnation, you are going the right way about it!'

Nancy flips her lid when she hears this. 'You seem to notify everyone else around here about the sins of the Maloneys, might as well tell the Pope too. And while you're doing all this notifying, Father, could you kindly notify Dora Templeton that Templeton Maloney is here to remind her every day of her miserable life that she's done the wrong thing by us Maloneys. She thinks she's so high and mighty and can just ride roughshod over us because we collect their rubbish! We collect her gin bottles as well, you tell her that! You hear me, Father, I'll not forgive that drunken bitch as long as I live and Sarah's daughter's going to remind her and her fat husband what a lily-livered, gutless little bastard her son turned out to be!'

Father Crosby clenches his teeth and raises his fist as though he is preparing to strike Nancy.

Better not try, he'll be no match for her, she'll slaughterate him and then we'd have the blood of the Church on our hands. But instead he storms out. I'll pray for you, you wicked, wicked woman!' he yells, his fist still in the air. 'Revenge to me; I will repay, saith the Lord!' he shouts out again as he's going through the front door. I reckon he'd fortified himself with the altar wine before coming, because, even for him, saying stuff like that is a bit over the top and his bicycle is wobbling all over the street as he takes his departure. Nancy's going to cause him to have a heart attack one of these days. I must say, she's my mum and all that, but she can be a pretty nasty piece of work when she's been crossed.

If you ask me, even with revenge taken into consideration, Templeton is a pretty weird name for a girl. I guess Sarah must have agreed to it, thinking all the while her little girl would be called Lucy anyway. She'd give Nancy her revenge wish and hide the name of Templeton except for the birth certificate. But it hasn't turned out that way, people just call the baby 'Templeton' from day one. You can look like a Lucy, I suppose, but you can't look like a Templeton, so it's hard to work out how that's happened. But it has. I don't suppose Templeton is an easy name to forget when it belongs to a little girl. But that's the funny thing, at first Sarah tries hard to call her Lucy and when the girl was real small she got away with it, but Nancy's always called her granddaughter Templeton and at two years of age the child insisted on being called Templeton.

Like it was her destiny or something. When people ask Sarah her little girl's name and she says

'Templeton' because she's long since given up, they look blankly at her or they go 'Huh?' or 'Beg yours?' or 'Pardon?' But when they see the child next time, they call her Templeton right off, natural as anything.

Even though Nancy did it out of sheer revenge, naming Sarah's daughter 'Templeton' turned out to have a good side to it as well. The people in our street and the Micks in town see the point and they admire Sarah for not being a victim like most of the other girls who got up the duff and
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ended up having their babies. It also showed Sarah wasn't ashamed. Of course, they don't know it was Nancy's idea. When Sarah comes up from Melbourne on occasional weekends or during the university holidays, she doesn't creep around as though she's committed some sort of mortal sin and has to live with the shame forever after. She's the same Sarah as always, friendly and modest and proud to show her little daughter off, and the townsfolk, except for a few diehards or friends of the Templetons, admire her and are pretty proud of what she's achieved, bringing up her daughter and taking a medical degree at the same time. They say things like 'That young girl has real character' or 'She's a credit to Yankalillee'. They may be from the wrong side of the tracks and Micks, but I tell ya what, wouldn't mind if she was my daughter.'

In fact, with Bozo winning a bronze medal at the Rome Olympics, there's some in town who think of us Maloneys as a family of high

achievers and Bozo as the ultimate hero. There are people who before wouldn't have even crossed the street to say gidday to Nancy who now give her the big hello and want to know about the family. But Nancy's not impressed. When the Women's Auxiliary invite her to work at a stall for the Easter fete, she comes right out and says, 'No thank you very much, I wouldn't work in anything that would have somebody like me in their organisation.' It's supposed to be funny but they know what she's saying, they've ignored her for the past thirty years and now it's too late. 'They can go to buggery!' she tells us, 'I know who our friends are and they'll see me out nicely.'

Then there's the fact that Mrs Barrington-Stone makes no bones about her affection for Sarah.

Having her on our side almost makes us respectable. She finished her full stint on the Country Women's Association even though what she calls 'a reactionary element' tried hard to get her kicked out. But it turned out that most of the members were behind her and admired her for going in to bat for Sarah and winning against enormous odds. They're beginning to feel there's a change in the air for the country women's cause and that Mrs Barrington-Stone has shown the way for the older women and Sarah is the example for their daughters to follow. That is, of course, if you cut out 'the falling pregnant to the high-school footy captain' part. What Mrs Barrington-Stone has shown the outside world is that the CWA aren't a bunch of old chooks baking cakes and making jam for fetes, but one of the most progressive women's organisations in Australia. They have a long history of fighting for just causes, justice and the rights of women everywhere and it was them who started the Land Army during the war so they're no shrinking violets.

Templeton, by the way, is a typical Maloney with flaming red hair. The only thing Murray Templeton gave her is his skin so she doesn't have freckles. Nancy says she hopes it, her skin that is, doesn't turn out as thick as her father's, but otherwise not having freckles is a blessing. Except for that, she's a Maloney from her carrot top to her toenails and looks like ten-year-old little Colleen's younger sister.

There's a lot to tell you and then, on the other hand, there isn't, which is why I've skipped about five years. Television's come, but you know about that. Of course, it didn't come up to Yankalillee properly

until earlier this year. We didn't think we'd be able to afford a television set for a couple of years, if even then. Then in the very first week of transmission from GMV6, the new TV station at Shepparton, a miracle happened.

We got real lucky, some rich bloke in Turnbull Street comes home pissed one night and demands his tea. It seems his wife and three daughters are crowded around the brand-new set watching Bob Dyer's Tick a Box'. He's told his tucker's in the oven, to get it himself. This makes him a bit shitty in the first place but he then finds that his wife must have turned the oven up too high by mistake and his tea is ruined, burned to a crisp or dried out or something. He's had a skinful and comes back into the lounge and goes off his rocker. He kicks the screen in and does what looks like irreparable damage and the set ends up in the garbage.

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Goes to show it isn't just the poor and the Catholics who do irresponsible things like that. Nancy says that those rich blokes can't beat up their wives like us Catholics so he took it out on the television instead, which is our Maloney good fortune. I reckon she's wrong, just because you're rich doesn't mean you can't be a mongrel.

Anyway, there it was when we come around the next morning to collect the rubbish, a television set with a big hole in the screen. Bozo's onto it in a flash. He's since studied up on TV sets and reckons once we've got a new picture tube he has to order from A.W.A. in Sydney, we're going to have TV. Fair dinkum, a television set of our own and an expensive twenty-three-inch one to boot. If anybody else had said it, I'd be doubtful, it looked a heap of shit when we recovered it from the garbage. Bozo wouldn't say it will come good unless he was pretty sure he could repair it. The only immediate problem is that we can't yet afford the new picture tube, but when we can, it's going to be a lot cheaper than a new set. In the meantime we've got a piece of smoked glass fitted to hide the damage inside and keep the dust off and it looks pretty good in the front room sitting up on a small table we also scavenged some time from someone's rubbish.

With Mike gone to Melbourne that left only Bozo and me and occasionally Tommy to do the garbage. The old Diamond T was just about clapped out and towards the end couldn't get out of second gear

even with Bozo's best efforts. The gearbox was history and there was a whine in the diff loud enough to wake the dead, no way we can afford a reconditioned one either. We didn't save anything with Sarah and Mike gone neither. Bozo and me ate like a horse, still do, and Nancy makes us all look like pikers. Only Tommy and little Colleen peck at their food and so, what with the cost of living constantly going up, things were tough. Bozo's having to pay his train fares to Melbourne every weekend meant he couldn't help out that much when we got into a pinch. The truth is the first three years after Sarah and Mike left were the worst ever.

Tommy's attempts at being on the wagon have been reasonably good by his standards, but his health hasn't held up. What with the war, prison and his lifetime of drinking, he's crook more days than he's better. He's not been up to lifting a hundred and fifty garbage cans from three in the morning until seven-thirty, so Bozo and me had to do the lot ourselves. It was hard going, just the two of us behind the truck. Bozo didn't even have the weekends to sleep in. He'd go down to Melbourne Saturday morning on the 9.13 from Wangaratta to train with Kevin Flanagan at the Russell Street gym. Or he'd have a fight on Saturday night. Sunday mornings he'd catch the train again and come back in the arvo on the 3.15 and get home on the bus from Wangaratta by nine o'clock if he was lucky, then have to be up at 3 a.m. again. If it wasn't for the fact that he could usually grab three hours' sleep on the train, he'd have been exhausted all week.

Tommy also had two more stints inside for petty theft, the first for stealing a fifty-pound bag of dog biscuits for Bozo's Bitzers. Silly bugger, got himself tanked at the Wangaratta Agricultural Show and became

carried away on the spur of the moment when he saw this bag of biscuits in front of one of the exhibition stalls at the sheep-dog trials. He upped the bag and humped it towards the entrance fast as he could go. But it was open one end and he left a dog-biscuit trail to be followed and when Tommy ran out of puff he's citizen-arrested by this sheila in pants who frogmarched Tommy to the cops. She turned out to be the 'Good Dog' dog food representative from Melbourne so we couldn't even appeal to her compassion as a local. The real truth was that she might have come around but Tommy, being drunk, told her exactly what he thought of women with moustaches who wear men's khaki pants, and that put an end to any goodwill that might have been going around.

Bloody Oliver Twist, the stipendiary magistrate of ill-fame, gave Tommy six months.

The second time was equally ridiculous and is Tommy Maloney at his all-time stupidest. I think Tommy can't be a real crim at heart, just someone who gets these sudden rushes of blood to the
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head, because nobody can be that dumb. Not even Bobby Devlin, Bozo's old boxing coach, who's served his sentence and gone to live in Queensland. Big Jack says it's a place in the sun for shady people. What's more, I know Tommy isn't stupid because I go out with him in the bush and he's bloody clever the things he knows. It's what the war's done, sometimes he's really fucked in the head and I reckon that's when he commits these really dumb crimes. The second crime that gets him six months from Oliver Twist defies explanation, even for Tommy. What's more, he isn't even pissed when he commits it.

Father Crosby calls around, must have been early November 1958, if I remember correctly, and he's all smiles for a change. It seems there's a convocation of priests to be held by Cardinal Stewart in Bendigo and he's been invited. He's come to see Nancy about a new surplice, he wants all the trimmings and, of course, he wants it for free. 'A donation to the Blessed Virgin, my dear.'