The Fourth Estate (7 page)

“Enter,” he said
in his sternest voice. He turned to wink at his son.

Neither of the
male Townsends ever let anyone else know that behind her back they called Miss
Steadman “Gruppenfahrer.”

Miss Steadman
stepped into the study and delivered the same words she had repeated every
Sunday for the past year: “It’s time for Master Keith to get ready for church,
Sir Graham.”

“Good heavens,
Miss Steadman, is it that late already?” lie would reply before shooing his son
toward the door. Keith reluctantly left the safe haven of his father’s study
and followed Miss Steadman out of the room.

“Do you know
what my father has just told me, Miss Steadman?” Keith said, in a broad
Australian accent that he felt sure would annoy her.

I have no idea,
Master Keith,” she replied. “But whatever it was, let us hope that it will not
stop you concentrating property on the Reverend Davidson’s sermon.” Keith fell
into a gloomy silence as they continued their route march up the stairs to his
bedroom. He didn’t utter a sound again until he had joined his father and
mother in the back of the Rolls.

Keith knew that
he would have to concentrate on the minister’s every word, because Miss Steadman
always tested him and his sisters on the most minute details of the text before
they went to bed. Sir Graham was relieved that she never subjected him to the
same examination.

Three nights in
the tree house-which Miss Steadman had constructed within weeks of her
arrival-was the punishment for any child who obtained less than 80 percent in
the sermon test. “Good for character-building,” she would continually remind
them. What Keith never told her was that he occasionally gave the wrong answer
deliberately, because three nights in the tree house was a blessed escape from
her tyranny.

Two decisions
were made when Keith was eleven which were to shape the rest of his life, and
both of them caused him to burst into tears.

Following the
declaration of war on Germany, Sir Graham was given a special assignment by the
Australian government which, he explained to his son, would require him to
spend a considerable amount of time abroad. That was the first.

The second came only
days after Sir Graham had departed for London, when Keith was offered, and on
his mother’s insistence took up, a place at St.

Andrew’s
Grammar-a boys’ boarding school on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Keith wasn’t
sure which of the decisions caused him more anguish.

Dressed in his
first pair of long trousers, the tearful boy was driven to St. Andrew’s for the
opening day of the new term. His mother handed him over to a matron who looked
as if she had been chiseled out of the same piece of stone as Miss Steadman.
The first boy Keith set eyes on as he entered the front door was Desmond
Motson, and he was later horrified to discover that they were not only in the
same house, but the same dormitory.

He didn’t sleep
the first night.

The following
morning, Keith stood at the back of the school hall and listened to an address
from Mr. Jessop, his new headmaster, who hailed from somewhere in England
called Winchester. Within days the new boy discovered that Mr. Jessop’s idea of
fun was a ten-mile cross-country run followed by a cold shower. That was for
the good boys who, once they had changed and were back in their rooms, were
expected to read Homer in the original.

Keith’s reading
had lately concentrated almost exclusively on the tales of “our gallant war
heroes” and their exploits in the front line, as reported in the Courier. After
a month at St. Andrew’s he would have been quite willing to change places with
them.

During his first
holiday Keith told his mother that if schooldays were the happiest days of your
life, there was no hope for him in the future. Even she had been made aware
that he had few friends and was becoming something of a loner.

The only day of
the week Keith looked forward to was Wednesday, when he could escape from St.
Andrew’s at midday and didn’t have to be back until lights out. Once the school
bell had rung he would cycle the seven miles to the nearest racetrack, where he
would spend a happy afternoon moving between the railings and the winners’
enclosure. At the age of twelve he thought of himself as something of a wizard
of the turf, and only wished he had some more money of his own so he could
start placing serious bets.

After the last
race he would cycle to the offices of the Courier and watch the first edition
coming off the stone, returning to school just before lights out.

Like his father,
Keith felt much more at ease with journalists and the racing fraternity than he
ever did with the sons of Melbourne society. How he longed to tell the careers
master that all he really wanted to do when he left school was be the racing
correspondent for the Sporting Globe, another of his father’s papers. But he
never let anyone into his secret for fear that they might pass the information
on to his mother, who had already hinted that she had other plans for his
future.

When his father
had taken him racing-never informing his mother or Miss Steadman where they
were going ...

Keith would
watch as the old man placed large sums of money on every race, occasionally
passing over sixpence to his son so he could also try his luck.

To begin with
Keith’s bets did no more than reflect his father’s selections, but to his
surprise he found that this usually resulted in his returning home with empty
pockets.

After several
such Wednesday -afternoon trips to the racetrack, and having discovered that
most of his sixpences ended up in the bookmaker’s bulky leather bag, Keith
decided to invest a penny a week in the Sporting Globe.

As he turned the
pages, he learned the form of every jockey, trainer and owner recognized by the
Victoria Racing Club, but even with this newfound knowledge he seemed to lose
just as regularly as before. By the third week of term he had often gambled
away all his pocket money.

Keith’s life
changed the day he spotted a book advertised in the Sporting Globe called How
to Beat the Bookie, by “Lucky Joe.” He talked Florrie into lending him half a
crown, and sent a postal order off to the address at the bottom of the
advertisement. He greeted the postman every morning until the book appeared
nineteen days later. From the moment Keith opened the first page, Lucky Joe
replaced Homer as his compulsory reading during the evening prep period. After
he had read the book twice, he was confident that he had found a system which
would ensure that he always won. The following Wednesday he returned to the
racecourse, puzzled as to why his father hadn’t taken advantage of Lucky Joe’s
infallible method.

Keith cycled
home that night having parted with a whole term’s pocket money in one
afternoon. He refused to blame Lucky Joe for his failure, and assumed that he
simply hadn’t fully understood the system. After he had read the book a third
time, he realized his mistake. As Lucky Joe explained on page seventy-one, you
must have a certain amount of capital to start off with, otherwise you can
never hope to beat the bookie. Page seventy-two suggested that the sum required
was E 10, but as Keith’s father was still abroad, and his mother’s favorite
maxim was “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” he had no immediate way of proving
that Lucky Joe was right.

He therefore
came to the conclusion that he must somehow make a little extra cash, but as it
was against school rules to earn any money during term time, he had to satisfy
himself with reading Lucky Joe’s book yet again. He would have received “A”
grades in the end-of-term exams if How to Beat the Bookie had been the set
text.

Once term was
over, Keith returned to Toorak and discussed his financial problems with
Florrie. She told him of several ways that her brothers had earned pocket money
during their school holidays. After listening to her advice, Keith returned to
the racecourse the following Saturday, not this time to place a bet-he still
didn’t have any spare cash-but to collect manure from behind the stables, which
he shoveled into a sugar bag that had been supplied by Florrie. He then cycled
back to Melbourne with the heavy sack on his handlebars, before spreading the
muck over his relatives’ flowerbeds. After forty-seven such journeys back and
forth to the racecourse in ten days, Keith had pocketed thirty shillings,
satisfied the needs of all his relatives, and had moved on to their next-door
neighbors.

By the end of
the holiday he had amassed C3 7s. 4d. After his mother had handed over his next
term’s pocket money of a pound, he couldn’t wait to return to the racetrack and
make himself a fortune. The only problem was that Lucky Joe’s foolproof system
stated on page seventy-two, and repeated on page seventy-three: “Don’t attempt
the system with less than Elo.”

Keith would have
read How to Beat the Bookie a ninth time if his housemaster, Mr. Clarke, had
not caught him thumbing through it during prep. Not only was his dearest
treasure confiscated, and probably destroyed, but he had to face the
humiliation of a public beating meted out by the headmaster in front of the
whole school. As he bent over the table he stared down at Desmond Motson in the
front row, who was unable to keep the smirk off his face.

Mr. Clarke told
Keith before lights out that night that if he hadn’t intervened on his behalf,
Keith would undoubtedly have been expelled. He knew this would not have pleased
his father-who was on his way back from a place called Yalta in the Crimea-or
his mother, who had begun talking about him going to a university in England called
Oxford. But Keith remained more concerned by how he could convert his 0 7s. 4d.
into E 10.

It was during
the third week of term that Keith came up with an idea for doubling his money
which he felt sure the authorities would never latch on to.

The school tuck
shop opened every Friday between the hours of five and six, and then remained
closed until the same time the following week. By Monday morning most of the
boys had devoured all their Cherry Ripes, munched their way through several
packets of chips and happily guzzled countless bottles of Marchants’ lemonade.
Although they were temporarily sated, Keith was in no doubt that they still
craved more. He considered that, in these circumstances, Tuesday to Thursday
presented an ideal opportunity to create a seller’s market. All he needed to do
was stockpile some of the most popular items from the tuck shop, then flog them
off at a profit as soon as the other boys had consumed their weekly supplies.

When the tuck
shop opened the following Friday, Keith was to be found at the front of the
queue. The duty master was surprised that young Townsend spent U purchasing a
large carton of Minties, an even larger one of thirty-six packets of chips, two
dozen Cherry Ripes and two wooden boxes containing a dozen bottles of
Marchants’ lemonade. He reported the incident to Keith’s housemaster. Mr.
Clarke’s only observation was, “I’m surprised that Lady Townsend indulges the
boy with so much pocket money.”

Keith dragged
his spoils off to the changing room, where he hid everything at the back of his
games locker. He then waited patiently for the weekend to pass.

On the Saturday
afternoon Keith cycled off to the racecourse, although he was meant to be
watching the first eleven play their annual match against Geelong Grammar. He
had a frustrating time, unable to place any bets.

Strange, he
reflected, how you could always pick winner after winner when you had no money.

After chapel on
Sunday, Keith checked the senior and junior common rooms, and was delighted to discover
that food and drink supplies were already running low. During the Monday
morning break he watched his classmates standing around in the corridor,
swapping their last sweets, unwrapping their final chocolate bars and swigging
their remaining gulps of lemonade.

On Tuesday
morning he saw the rows of empty bottles being lined up by the dustbins in the
corner of the quad. By the afternoon he was ready to put his theory into
practice.

During the games
period he locked himself into the school’s small printing room, for which his
father had supplied the equipment the previous year.

Although the
press was fairly ancient and could only be worked by hand, it was quite
adequate for Keith’s needs.

An hour later he
emerged clutching thirty copies of his first tabloid, which announced that an
alternative tuck shop would be open every Wednesday between the hours of five
and six, outside locker number nineteen in the senior changing room. The other
side of the page showed the range of goods on offer and their “revised” prices.

Keith
distributed a copy of the news sheet to every member of his class at the
beginning of the final lesson that afternoon, completing the task only moments
before the geography master entered the room. He was already planning a bumper
edition for the following week if the exercise turned out to be a success.

When Keith
appeared in the changing room a few minutes before five the following
afternoon, he found a queue had already formed outside his locker. He quickly
unbolted the tin door and tugged the boxes out onto the floor. Long before the
hour was up, he had sold out of his entire stock.