Hoi Polloi (13 page)

Yet there is no yelling talk or even any sorry talk between them. Winks grazes my chin gently with his knuckle. “I had a feeling you’d tell on me so I told your mother everything.”

Heels comes close and speaks stale wine into my face. “And so he should tell on you, shouldn’t you my little baby?” she pouts, pinching my chin and calling me her little baby again.

“I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea, love,” Winks says, kissing her temple.

“I’ll have to watch out for him, won’t I half-man?” she says to me with a faint burp. She topples slightly on her heels. She blows a jet of air out the corner of her mouth to try and get a loose hair strand out of her eyes. “You’re a better catch than I thought,” she smiles blearily to Winks. “I can attract glances too, you know.” She tugs on his tie and attempts a catwalk twirl but trips into his arms halfway through it. He hugs her with a tight jerk around her hips that tips her off balance. He pats her bottom. She lets out a yelp of pretend offence, so he pats her bottom again.

They walk hand in hand to the carpark in the centre of the course, him swinging his binoculars like a rubber walking-stick, her shoes spiking the ticker-tape of discarded betting slips. There’s Uncle Chicka bending down and shouting, his shirt melted on his skin with sweat. He has gathered a dozen punters in a circle around him to play two-up. He wears his doctor’s bag over his bull-nose belly, reaches into it for twenty-dollar notes. He smells them with a grand inhaling and slaps one down on the gravel like a challenge. Winks plays Snap with it with a twenty-dollar note of his own and yells out “Twenty the tails.” The circle-men free their arms from the arms of their wives or girlies and peel twenties and tens from their rolls, hold the money high in the air for all to see, then pat the money to the ground. Other men play Snap on it: “Fifty the heads,” they yell. “I’ll take you on.”

“Go the tails,” Heels barracks, handing me twenty dollars to bet for her so she doesn’t have to bend down and get unsteady. Uncle Chicka nods, acknowledging the bet as I Snap it into place in the dust. “How you going, Digger?” he says as he nods. He calls everyone Digger, even the women. “Man your position, Digger,” he winks to me and makes a clicking with his tongue. “Go on look-out for coppers.” I wink back, not sure if he really expects me to go on look-out, or if he’s playing up to the crowd to sharpen their thrill of doing something illegal like playing two-up. I expect it’s the latter and place my hand above my eyes like a visor, pretending to scour the landscape. “That’s the boy,” he belly-laughs. Other bellies and women’s breasts, including Heels’, join in.

“Oh he’s a good lookout all right,” she announces to everyone. “He’s been keeping an eye on his old man all day. I’ve had a full report thank you very much.”

Uncle Chicka places a twenty-cent coin with a yellow cross on it on his index finger, another crossed coin on his middle fingertip and calls out
Come in spinner
. He flicks the coins heavenward as if giving the world the fingers sign. The coins spin and tinkle across the pebbles. “Tails!”

T
HERE’S NO SUCH THING
as punishment if you believe in God. There is forgiveness, a clean slate granted by God for repenting sins and believing in him. Yet Winks has not repented and his rubbing the girlies’ hollows has brought no punishment, no yelling-talk, no tears. Instead, all Heels goes on about is a new car. We’ve bought a new car, a maroon car, just like the Heritage Mercedes we used to have. When I see it I’m under orders to remark to her and Winks that “Oh yes, it looks exactly like the Mercedes,” because that’s how she is going to consider it, a bit of a Mercedes called a Torana. Who wants a real Mercedes anyway when they cost such a fortune and the money is better spent in the business department at the moment, and the apartment department? Not to mention the right sort of school for his nibs.

And look over there at the man they call Perce Galea. There’s no sign of repentance in him, and him an owner of Sydney’s illegal gambling dens, a briber of politicians and police so the papers hint and my uncles say, though my uncles mean it as flattery.

Saturday. Dawn. I’ve driven with Winks in the Torana- Mercedes to Randwick trackwork. Me to be near God’s athletes as they gallop invisibly out there in the half-dark past the blank, empty grandstands. Him to stand, hand on hips, with other men and their hands on hips, sportscoats parted as if presenting their stomachs like a badge for important, private speaking. In the centre of the course, the place where cars park on race-day and Uncle Chicka flicks his crossed coins, there’s a tin shed where trainers and owners lean out the windows and squint through binoculars into the grey-black morning. A caravan of horses circles the shed until the riders peel them off in ones, twos and threes and Tommy Smith orders them to “do three in thirty-six” or “six half pace, three evens” in the boy-jockey voice of an old racing man. He tilts from side to side, bandy-legged, when he walks and wears a suit, tie and panama hat because this racecourse is his office, he says. How else would you turn up for work in the morning in an office! For other trainers in their gumboots and jumpers and windcheaters this must be their farm, he cackles.

The word goes round: Perce Galea is coming. Here comes Perce Galea. Here’s Mr Galea, the sportsjacket men say. “Good morning, Mr Galea,” I say in the round of shaking hands. His black porkpie hat is tipped to one side on his head, his brown long-coat and suit coat are unbuttoned and billowing like a cloak. His tanned face is glittery with grey morning-stubble. This time of day, morning, is his evening. His dens are closed for this, his night. He’s on his way home to bed but first he wants to pat his racehorse, to shake hands with the sportjackets, to part his coats and point his belly and ask, “What’s the fucking story? Bit of a nip in the air.” He says fuck and cunt two or three times a sentence and says them loudly and nobody hushes him. Winks says, “He never swears in front of women. He’s a thorough gentleman in that regard.”

I take every opportunity to stand next to Mr Galea, to think “I’m standing next to a crime boss, I’m an important person now, someone not to be trifled with.” He tells me to piss off with a jerk of his head and a half-whistle, he wants to talk business with the sportsjackets. I don’t go away so he gives me five dollars and says, Scram. When I refuse to accept the five dollars he gives a half-whistle to Winks to come here and explain what the fuck’s wrong with his son who doesn’t accept five fucking dollars.

“Don’t be rude to Mr Galea. Take it,” frowns Winks.

“A kid’s too fucking spoilt who refuses five dollars. When I was a kid I’d of fucking killed for five dollars. Kids these days don’t fucking know what it’s like to be fucking poor.” He appears to be reprimanding Winks but he’s smiling and patting the side of my face kindly.

Winks follows his lead with a smile and a pat of his own on my back. “He’s gone all religious at the moment, sorry Perce.”

“Is that right? That’s a fucking good thing.” Mr Galea keeps patting me. “There’s not enough of us religious in this fucking world.” He says he never trusts any cunt who doesn’t have a strong belief in God. He’s been recommended for an honour from the Catholic Church, a Catholic knighthood approved by the Pope himself no less. Why? Because he dedicates every spare fucking moment to the Church. They want a new roof, they get a new fucking roof. They want damp coursing at the Cathedral, they get fucking damp coursing at the Cathedral. A man should go to church every chance he gets. Go to Mass. “You Catholic?” he pats.

“Church of England,” I say proudly and so does Winks.

Mr Galea says it doesn’t matter if I’m Catholic or not a Catholic, just as long as I go to church and pray. Because then if I die tomorrow, I’m fucking covered. OK? Yes? Good boy. He says to call him Uncle Perce from now on because I’m a good boy.

What does Winks do for a living apart from pointing his stomach with the sportsjacket men, peeling his roll to back a winner or loser? No hotel has been bought, no business, no apartment. The cabbage-smelling, wine-cask-smelling flat is now referred to as home where once Heels would call it the stopover. Is Winks unemployed? Is he gambling away the family savings? Stephen Papadopoulos’s father is a grocer. “My dad’s a grocer with his own shop,” he boasts. Jonathan Jonathan’s father is a taxi driver: “He works fourteen hours a day.” Winks tells me he’s looking for a business to buy, but no business is bought.

“That’s what they all say,” Stephen insists. “That’s code for unemployed—‘Waiting for the right business.’ You must really be poor. Your father must be on the dole.”

So demeaning to be thought of as really poor, with a father on the dole. I tell them my family is worth $
200
,
000
, and that it used to be $
400
,
000
. It’s an admission that I’d lied to them, that I never did immigrate to Australia with nothing as Greeks and Arabs do, but I don’t care now about being a liar. I prefer to have my pride than their friendship. They guffaw that they don’t believe me and that it’s no shame to be poor with a father on the dole.

“It’s true, $
400
,
000
.”

What are they sniggering at now, out of your earshot? Are they saying their fathers with their can’t-speak-English English and wrong colour skin have done so well in life compared to mine?

“What are you talking about?” I plead them to tell. “What are you saying? I know you’re saying something about me. Don’t walk away from me. Come back.”

They call to me that I should go be with Glenn Shiving-ton. He’s Anglo like me, they say. He’s been following me around for weeks and trying to sit next to me in the classroom. Go be with Glenn Shivington even though he’s a Sniff.

Is Glenn Shivington really a Sniff? He has to be a Sniff with his small girl-face and fleece-hair of yellow curls, his gold-wire spectacles, his gangly flinging arms and wrists when he walks or runs. He’s smart too, the smartest boy in school. The playground girls, the girls who go shoeless at lunch to paint their toe ends, are certain of it—he’s a Sniff, they complain, tucking their skirt hems into their underwear and splaying on the scorching concrete for the sun. They can smell it on him, they sneer. Girls know a Sniff when they see one. Sniffs are like them but are not one of them and that’s enough somehow to make the girls angry.

I won’t allow a Sniff to sit beside me in class. But he has to sit somewhere and eventually comes the day Mr Surridge points him to sit beside me because the seats, all of which are two-seaters, are taken except mine.

“What was the date of Australian Federation?” Mr Sur-ridge nods for me to answer. I have no idea. Glenn Shivington whispers through spidery fingers, “
1901
.”

“
1901
,” I answer. Mr Surridge says that I am indeed correct. He strides slowly between the desks for another child to question. I reprimand Glenn that I didn’t need his help and was going to answer
1901
anyway.

“No you weren’t,” Glenn pipes up. All this time, these weeks of him lingering and staring shyly at me, he’s never said a word. Now he’s not only speaking to me he’s contradicting me in a rapid, excited whisper. “You couldn’t answer it by yourself. If you can answer by yourself then answer this: Who is the Prime Minister of Australia?”

“Leave me alone.” I don’t know who the Prime Minister of Australia is. “I haven’t lived here that long,” is the excuse I give.

“In what year did Captain Cook discover Australia?”

If we weren’t in class, if we were out in the concrete paddock with its jungle bars and cricket nets I’d shove him hard to shut him up. But because I’m trapped into listening to him like this, silence is my only defence. Yet he prods his way through it with “Don’t you want to do well in the exams?”

“I’ve been reading the bible a lot. I’ll start studying tonight.”

“You only have a month. I don’t think you’re smart enough to learn everything in a month.”

“Who cares.”

“You won’t get into Sydney High.”

“Who cares. I’ll go to a private school.”