Four Fires (7 page)

'What do you mean?' I protest. 'We couldn't help that it rained!'

'Canvas, we should have wrapped it in the back-verandah canvas, Nancy's going to be cranky as hell.'

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'At least the rain will wipe the squashed grasshoppers from the windshield,' Bozo says. 'The radiator's probably half blocked with the blighters.' After it stopped raining, he banged on the roof and Nancy drew to a halt and Bozo was dead right, the radiator was almost clogged with dead grasshoppers. That's what I mean about Bozo, maybe we didn't get it right with the mattress but the Diamond T was his personal responsibility and he'd taken the spoon out of the sink. The Diamond T could easily have overheated and then God knows when we'd have gotten to Melbourne, if ever.

The Diamond T held up after that and we came into Melbourne just as the lights were coming on. We couldn't believe it, stretching as far as the eye could see were lights dancing like a million fireflies in the dark. We'd dried out a bit in the meantime and fortunately the big old army duffle bag we'd packed our posh clothes into for the presentation had kept them dry. Bozo wasn't all that happy about the duffle bag

being used for our clothes. He'd filled it with river sand and it hung from the back verandah as his punching bag. We had to empty all the sand out so we could use it for the trip.

'What if the Queen gives us the prize, wants to hand it to Nancy personally?' I say, as we're coming in to the showground.

'Better not, if Nancy has to curtsy she'll fall on her arse,' Mike laughs.

Bozo shakes his head, 'Don't think she'd do it.'

'Do what?' I ask.

'Bow and scrape to the Queen,' Bozo replies.

'More than that, she's also head of the Church of England,' Mike says. 'We've got the Pope and they've got the Queen.'

'Nancy has to, it's the law,' I protest. 'She's the Queen of England and Australia, they told us in school, she's higher up even than Bob

Menzies.'

'Still and all, I don't like her chances, Nancy's pretty stubborn,'

Bozo counters.

Mike cuts the argument short, 'Queen's not even in the country, so I wouldn't worry too much, maybe she'll come year after next for the Olympic Games and stay over for the show.'

'What do you mean, not here? Nancy said the Queen likes bush
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blossoms because of what she'd seen before?'

'That's just Nancy, because it's called The Royal Melbourne Show,'

Mike replies. He seemed to be thinking. 'Still an' all, it would've been nice to get the prize from the Queen. Her handing it to Nancy.'

We couldn't believe our ears. Bozo was the first to recover. 'Jesus, what do you mean? The Queen's a Protestant and she's English and head of their church, you said!'

'Yeah, I know, it's not that, it's all the hoity-toity people in Yankalillee, they'd eat their livers.' He spread his hands, like he was reading a newspaper, 'I can see the Gazette, in these big black letters on the front page, there it would be for all to see: MRS NANCY

MALONEY MEETS THE QUEEN! They'd puke with envy. Imagine

Mrs Yerberry in her fox stole hearing the news, she'd have a conniption, maybe drop dead on the spot!'

'Conniption' was a Nancy word and it meant something like 'they'd almost shat their pants they'd be so angry', only it's in polite language.

We laughed at the image Mike had portrayed. It sure would be nice to bring all the town's snooty-nosed bastards to heel for once, make them see they weren't the only ones who could do things around the place.

Mike wasn't like the other blokes his age and he could make you laugh about things you never thought about before. Nancy said it was because 'he was of a sensitive nature'. Stuck on the wall beside his bunk he had these pictures he'd torn out of magazines like The Women's Weekly. They were of dresses. Not like, you know, horny pictures, just dresses. Sometimes, if he didn't like a hat, he'd cut the heads off. Often he would have drawn over some of them with a
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pencil, like he'd make the skirt narrower or change the neck or collar, or put a belt on the waist or take up the hem. 'It's a fashion statement,'

he'd say if you asked.

When I asked Bozo what he thought of them, he said he'd already 50

BRYCE COURTENAY

had a close look. 'Isn't one worth wanking over,' he declared, dismissing the lot.

'One day Mike will be famous,' Sarah said. After we came BAC

from the trip, Mike designed the dress Sarah wore at the end-of-year school social which was held a few weeks later, at the end of the month. Although Sarah was in the fifth form, she had already been told she would be head prefect for her matriculation year and had turned it down.

Nancy had got the material sent from Myers in Melbourne and it was silk shantung and 'cost a fortune'. It was a sort of shiny, smoky peacock-blue but when she moved in it, there was this green colour like a budgie's breast, not shiny like a mirror, a sort of a soft, rich shine Nancy called 'subtle'. Sarah looked very beautiful even though she didn't have a date.

Mike said it was because she was a Catholic and all the blokes were Protestant and their parents would drop dead at the thought of their precious son going to the school social with a Mick.

But Sarah said it was because they were all creeps and

wouldn't be seen dead with any of them, not even Murray Templeton, who was going to be head prefect, and was already the captain of the footy team and a bit of a hero all round, even to me.

This was also the year Sarah should have gone to the debutante ball but she told Nancy she didn't want to go, even though we'd find the money somehow. So the posh dress was sort of Nancy's way and Mike's way to make up for her not being a debutante, which'

secretly we knew she'd have liked to have been.

Nancy burst into tears when Sarah came out of the bedroom on the night of the school social. The skirt of Mike's dress was splayed out like an inverted tulip and ended just above her knees. A broad belt, made of the same shantung material, like a solid band, clipped at the back with press-studs, clasped her tiny waist and then the top of the dress was off her shoulders so that her long neck and smooth shoulders
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sort of grew out of the dress. 'CTRS Olgant!' Mike said, clapping his hands together. He sometimes said weird things like that.

Sarah had on these white shoes she'd been .saving up for, with high heels. She was wearing lipstick and her hair fell down past her shoulders and shone so you almost had to squint to see it properly. I have to say, even though I probably wasn't much of an authority on

girls' looks at ten, nearly eleven, Sarah looked beautiful to me. Bozo, who had recently turned twelve, said the same.

Nancy saw us to the front gate, still wiping her eyes and smiling her big smile at the same time. We boys then walked with Sarah to the Town Hall. It was funny seeing Sarah walk in her new shoes. She was wobbling a bit, teetering, like she was about to fall over any second.

After about a hundred yards, she sighed and took her shoes off and only put them on again when we'd practically reached the Town Hall.

All the way Mike kept pulling at the dress and doing stuff to it, until Sarah told him to stop fussing, that someone might be looking. He stopped then, but you could see he was pleased with what he'd done, and no wonder. We left our sister outside the Town Hall and you could hear her dress rustle when she climbed the steps and turned to wave goodbye to us. Then she said to Mike, 'Thank you for my lovely dress,'

but not so loud that anyone could hear and Mike was so proud he nearly burst wide open. 'enchants!' he said.

But then a nice thing happened at the dance. Murray Templet on, who could have had any girl in the school because the were all falling over him, didn't come with a partner either. So everything was all right in the end, head prefect and vice-prefect for the next year sort of being together but not being together so tongues could wag, if you know what I mean?

As it was a Saturday with a sleep-in Sunday, we all stayed up to see Sarah come home. She wouldn't allow us to go and fetch her and said she was quite capable of walking home on her own. Sarah didn't want us hanging around the Town Hall steps at midnight so that people would think she needed to be protected or anything.

Anyway, then came the big surprise. Sarah arrived home in a brand-new yellow Holder, it was a colour Murray's dad had specially sprayed for his dealership so it would be different from the other Hold ens around. Nancy started to bawl again. 'The Princess has

arrived home in a pumpkin carriage,' she sobbed.

-The Yerberrys' shit-coloured Packard was the best car in town but the Templetons' Holden was the one most of us noticed because of its
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bright pumpkin colour. Murray, the football captain and all-time hero, had brought Sarah home. He was eighteen so already had his driver's licence. They didn't kiss or anything, he came around to her door and opened it and then said goodbye and she said goodbye to him, shaking his hand and holding her new shoes in her left hand. After he drove off, we came rushing out of the house to welcome her home. Sarah looked happy and the lipstick was off her mouth.

That was a big month for us Maloneys with the Melbourne Show also in September. I guess these days everyone's been to the show so knows what it's like. But we'd never seen anything like it. We were country

kids so we knew about animals and stuff and that part wasn't all that different to the agricultural show at Wang, only more of the same.

They had about a thousand types of chicken in the poultry section, some even had feathers sticking out their legs and these plumes from their heads. Weird-looking buggers. Did you know chickens came from China?

Nancy must have saved real hard, because she bought us each a show bag and we spent money like water, going on the Big Dipper and Bozo won a pink kewpie doll with a ballerina skirt for Colleen by knocking down three sets of skittles with three balls. Later we went into the boxing tent, that is, Mike, Sarah, Bozo and me.

There is this skinny-looking Aboriginal guy who challenges all corners within twenty pounds of his own weight. Bozo says he'll have a

go and Mike says not to and Sarah gets mad and says she'll tell Nancy and then she leaves the tent. But Bozo is pretty stubborn and he steps up to the scales and is three pounds heavier than the Abo. The promoter asks him how old he is and Bozo fibs and says sixteen.

Some of the old blokes in the tent, who are full of hops, are shouting encouragement, saying, 'Give the kid a go, yer mug!' and things like that, waving one-pound notes. 'A quid on the kid, what odds?' and everyone laughs except Bozo and me and the bloke in charge. So with all the pressure, the bloke in charge, who had this thin pencil moustache and greasy curly hair like some wog, finally says to Bozo, 'Are you sure you're sixteen?'

'Ask my brother,' Bozo says, turning to me.

The bloke doesn't ask me, but I nod, so it is only half a lie. 'Righto, put the gloves on,' the promoter says. 'Three rounds or a k.o.! I have the right to stop the fight at any time, referee's decision is final!'

'Yeah,' someone yells, 'if the Abo's gettin' beat and you're the ref, the other bloke goes t.k.o.?'

But the wog, who isn't a wog because he speaks proper Australian,
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ignores him and holds up a five-pound note and winks at the Aboriginal boxer. 'Winner takes all!' he shouts.

Well, I suppose it was a good example of not taking the spoon out of the sink and Bozo lasts one round and is no match for the black guy.

After the first round Bozo's nose is bleeding, though only a trickle, and you could see the Aboriginal boxer is toying with him and could have hit Bozo any time he wanted to.

When the bell for the second round comes, the Abo guy stands up, waving his gloves to show the fight is over. Then he walks over and raises Bozo's hand and declares him the winner. The greasy bloke with the moustache doesn't look too happy about it, but the crowd is on our side and so he has to give Bozo the five quid and we are suddenly rich.

All the onlookers cheer and throw coins into the ring, so I reckon they must have nearly got their money back.

Later, when we were feeding our faces on these hot dogs on sticks, Bozo says to me, 'After the first round I knew I was gunna get a thumping, Mole.' Then he looks at me, and there is tomato sauce all over his mouth. 'I'm never going to say nothing bad about the Abos again.'

Bozo's fight worked out for Nancy as well, though at first I thought we were in the shit. We were in the back of the Diamond T later that night, trying to sleep with the mattress taken out and leaned against the side of the truck to dry. Colleen and Sarah were in the back with us boys, and little Colleen was sleeping on the pillows. We'd spread the blankets on the deck of the truck because it wasn't really cold. Nancy was up front trying to kip sitting upright in the cabin when this bloke comes up and talks to her and we hear him say, 'Saw the young bloke having a go in the boxing tent.'

'Shit, we're in for it,' I whisper to Bozo. I know Mike or Sarah wouldn't have dobbed us in to Nancy.

'Boxing tent? What's this?' Nancy says.

'Oh, sorry,' says the bloke, realising he'd made a mistake. 'It's nothing, madam.'

'Bozo, come here!' Nancy commands, sticking her head out the cabin window.

'What?' says Bozo, sounding all innocent, but knowing he is in trouble.

'What's this about the boxing tent?'

'We was in it,' Bozo mumbles.

'And?'

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'Look, madam, I'm sorry,' the bloke says, all apologetic. Then, 'The kid's got guts.'

Nancy ignores him, 'I'm waiting, Bozo?'

'I had a go, Mum,' Bozo says, real soft.

'It's my fault, madam. I've gone and dobbed the lad in.' He turns look at Bozo. 'I'm sorry, son.' Then he has this good idea. 'You sleeping rough, I see. None of my business but...'

'No, it ain't!' Nancy says, cutting him off.

But the bloke keeps on, 'Look, there's the hay room back of stables,' he says quickly. Then he looks up at the sky. 'Rain's forecast I've got the key, how about you all bed down there? Let you have a of canvas to put over the hay so it don't prickle.'