There Should Be More Dancing (9 page)

You'll come to understand why I have good reason to dislike Anita, but at the time I was impressed that she took an interest in me. On that second visit, she was dusting the photos on top of the telly when she got to the personal questions. ‘How old are the kids?'

‘Walter Miniver Blandon is my first-born. He's sixty now,' I said. ‘The talented one. A champion athlete and very musical. Then there's Morris Lancelot Blandon who's fifty-eight, and Judith's fifty in November, though she tends to celebrate six weeks later because she was premature. You can't tell now. She looks quite normal, though she's overweight.' I was working on a tapestry at the time for Pat, and I remember starting the second ‘gossip' in
Who gossips to you will gossip of you
and saying to Anita as I threaded the needle – it was double thread, one of my favourite reds, number 817 – ‘My husband worked at the brickworks for thirty-five years, but my children have all done wonderfully well.' At the time I truly believed they were all successful. They all had jobs, and if you passed them in the street
you'd see they were neat and clean. But cast in the glare of betrayal, I see now that they're not much chop at all, and I'm really trying to understand why.

I bet Pat would have something to say on the subject.

I know for sure Walter's a sweet boy at heart, easily led, especially by loose women, but you don't want to upset him these days. He was always an affable sort of chap but after that last fight Morris started saying, ‘His fists'll go up and you'll go down.' He's broken a jaw or two over the years, but only when he's provoked.

‘Judith, well, she wasn't planned,' I continued. ‘She bawled every day until she went to school. Lance used to put beer in her bottle to shut her up. She and Kevin from over the road were friends with little Sylvia in the wheelchair from around the corner. Sadly, she's dead now. They used to take her to the park, and one day she fell off the swings and landed awkwardly over on the cement path. Kevin and Judith told the policeman they were playing on the slippery-dip at the time and didn't see it happen. The family moved to Queensland after the funeral. These days Judith's very successful. She has a mobile business, a beauty shop.'

Anita stopped dusting then and looked closely at the photo of Judith. ‘
She's
a beautician?'

‘And she's expanding into psychiatric counselling as well,' I said. ‘At the moment, though, she drives to people's places and does their hair and make-up. She got top marks for nail enhancement at the beauty school and her little pink-and-green van says “Judith Boyle – mobile beauty, finesse and panache in all your needs for skin, nails and hair”. Walter says it looks like it's advertising a knackery. When Walter retired from boxing he became a manager of a lodging house and now he's studying as well. He's going to be a chef. And Morris, my second boy, runs a big hotel in Thailand. He lives there. Morris was a boxer as well but Walter was the one with talent, so Lance
stopped Morris doing the boxing. ‘Better to find something you can do,' he said, so Morris decided to be a businessman and that decision has taken him to where he is today.'

Like Walter, Morris had some lost years. I've only just found that out, but I'll get to that.

I didn't tell Anita that selling cigarettes at school was Morris's first business venture, nor did I say that I hadn't actually set eyes on my second-born son since his father's funeral twenty years ago, but at the time I wasn't about to share the family secrets with the likes of someone of her calibre. Nor did I tell her that, if the truth be known, Judith's never really had friends since little Sylvia. There were no bridesmaids at her wedding. Nor mine, now that I think about it . . .

You know, Cecily, I was so excited when I saw I'd given birth to a little girl that I gave her your name, Cecily Judith. Then it became apparent that Judith wasn't going to be anything like you, so I swapped her name to Judith Cecily. When she left school and got a job as the driveway attendant at the local garage, she said, ‘I'm the face of the petrol station,' and Morris called from the sleep-out, ‘That's because you look like a petrol pump.'

Morris was always a bit cheeky, always had a gang of kids following him. He was the first to move out of home, my most independent child. Now that I think about it, I hardly noticed him. Even so, twenty-four years is a long time to hold a grudge over one little fight. I'm talking about the fight he had with Walter at Lance's funeral service. It took me years to pay off the funeral director. They broke the leadlight picture window of Mary with dead Jesus on her lap,
Pietà
, and a few chairs, which may seem remarkable since the entire skirmish was over in less than two minutes, but Morris had been drinking and Walter still held the Middleweight Champion
title, though he was not long out of rehab. Poor Walter. He took up the drink around the time of the funeral. I didn't see him for almost ten years and I haven't seen Morris since, and it pains me. At first I thought, ‘It's normal, they grow up and move away,' but twenty-four years is a long time to be away.

I know why now. Everything's fallen into place.

I nearly lost Walter completely because of the Incident in the Ring, and as I understand it I may never see Morris again, but somehow I've managed to hold on to you.

Nothing was the way I thought it would be, like we planned.

Walter's final championship opponent happened to be a southpaw, which suited Walter's explosive right. But this southpaw, Rocky Wrecker, was five pounds heavier. Even worse, he had a longer reach.

The trainer held Walter's face in his hands, looked him in the eyes. ‘He'll torment you, Walter.'

‘I'm the bull,' Walter said.

‘His right glove is a red rag, he's tryin' to make you fight dirty, lose points. Stay clean, stay calm.'

‘I'm a bull, I'm
strong
.'

Walter stayed strong. He won the first three rounds on points, though his opponent held him with his beady, unwavering gaze, dancing around him, reaching out to the Brunswick Bull, gently touching Walter's brilliant black coiffure.

‘Steady as she goes,' Lance called, hoping his warning words would reach his son through the din.

The corner man pleaded, ‘Ignore the left . . . He's teasing.'

‘Bull, Bull, Brunswick Bull,' the crowd chanted. It was early in
round four when Walter was distracted by the right glove hovering at his carefully curled forelock. Rage erased the fight plan in his brain and his explosive right shot out, his left shoulder dropped, and Rocky Wrecker's hair-trigger left swung, catching him hard in the right temple. Walter fell flat, unconscious before he hit the canvas, landing like a dead man on the side of his head. The ringside crowd erupted – booing, hissing, women screaming – and Festival Hall sounded like the inside of a bass drum on Saturday night.

At the pub, the crowd craning up at the TV above the bar fell silent when they witnessed Rocky Wrecker's first KO, and Walter's last. A sinking dread filled Pat, as though she had swallowed a shoebox-sized iceblock. Things would never be as good again. The scene before her in the pub was like a photograph from a
National Geographic
, everyone so still, so captured. She left her bar stool and went straight to Margery, whom she still hated with a burning fury, hoping she had not yet turned on her wireless.

It was a depressed skull fracture. Walter was kept in hospital almost a year and the pictures he retains from that time remain vivid: the dust building on the air-conditioning vent above his bed, the light around him made pale green by the bedside curtains, and the screeching sound that wrenched him from uneasy slumber every morning when the nurse ripped them back. He liked to see how many millilitres of water the domestic put in the plastic jug on his bedside table each day before she came back the next and threw it out. The repetitive, tortuous beeping of machines made him tense and combative, as did the whine of the floor polishers and the noises made by pain. Before he could speak he longed for someone to throw a doona over him; he cried inside from the cold, antiseptic air. Every evening he gagged when the smell of hot soup in plastic warmed the ward and the stench of infection stayed in his nostrils, along with the acrid odour of cigarette-saturated
nurses, the nicotine on their fingers made stale by cold night air. He bristled at their hollow encouragement; their bright, cheerless voices; the upward, nasal inflection at the end of a statement: ‘We're just going to give you a little injection for the pain, all-roioioiot?' He disliked the carping voices and advertising jingles trilling through the corridors from TVs and radios, but his heart lifted every time he heard the ting of the lift. Sometimes it was his mother. He depended on her voice, day in, day out, low and guiding. His mother's face was the only one he recognised when it appeared over him in the cold, white ward – ‘I wasn't prepared to let you go, son, especially on your own' – but he knew things were missing from his mind. But what? Occasionally, in the physiotherapy ward, stretching and flexing on the low vinyl mattress, a wall of lights, flashbulbs and microphones suddenly appeared. He remembered skipping and sparring, sweat and noise,
ding-ding
, roaring crowds,
thwack, thwack
.
Thwack-thwack
.

The rehabilitation centre was better, things were more straightforward, though at times he found people holding him, tying him down – ‘Steady, steady, calm down' – but he knew he hadn't finished the fight, it was only round four. His bedroom was comfortable and he had a bedspread that seemed familiar. He recognised hot taps from cold, came to understand that doors could swing in or out, remembered green meant go and red meant stop, knew to cut up his own food and, once his legs kicked in with the command centre in his head, he was fast enough to get to the toilet in time. He stayed at the rehab centre for a further year, learned to count, learned the value of money, learned to read, care for his personal hygiene and health, establish a routine to live by, a system to fathom the tram timetables. By the time he got to the community house his mind and body were rebuilding, seemingly alone, and he was cooking simple meals, easing his way back into life. Alcohol was forbidden,
but he'd been a boxer since he was ten, so he'd never been a drinker anyway.

Then, in 1986, when he was forty years old and finally living the independent life of a pensioner (with the help of weekly visits to therapists), the pub exploded and everything changed again.

As usual, Lance was at the pub that day, propped at the bar, his neighbour Bill next to him, Lance's oxygen cylinder tucked in close to his bar stools, a beer and an ashtray each in front of them. Morris was there that day as well, sitting where he always sat – within speaking distance of Lance, close to the rear exit with a clear view to the front door, his back to the wall, a muscly, glint-eyed lout either side of him. Lance called Morris's mates ‘Dubious One' and ‘Dubious Two', and he called his second son ‘Dodgy Morry', but father and son had a trusting relationship – they both trusted each other to keep secrets from the rest of the family.

Morris was in the toilet, handing over a package to an addled customer with Dubious One on watch near the door; the barmaid had just put a fresh beer in front of Lance and Bill before descending to the cellar beneath the bar. Then both Lance and Bill reached for a cigarette. No one's sure which, but one of the men struck a match. First, there was a flash, and the pub and all its contents jumped. Lance's oxygen cylinder rocketed through the ceiling, a gas wall heater popped off its brackets, leaving a live gas hose exposed. Then the windows burst from their frames like splashed water; the glasses over the bar exploded from their shelves, splintering the air with razor-edged fragments. The walls popped out and stood an inch away from their foundations, and all the eddying ashtrays, coasters, bar mats, trinkets, trophies, stuffed animals, framed photos, TVs, chips, peanuts, light fittings, bar stools, tables, chairs and patrons were slammed against the walls or thrown through the empty doorways and windows, landing in the street, on the cars or in the
park opposite, and for a moment a cloud-burst of flames filled the cavity that was once the main bar.

At 253 Gold Street Margery paused in her knitting and said aloud, ‘Gracious. What was that?' In her office at the brickworks Pat stubbed out her cigarette and reached for the phone. When no one answered at the pub, she trotted off along the footpaths in her high-heeled sandals, her big plastic earrings bouncing. When she rounded the corner to Gold Street, there it was, her pub, a smoking shell, black dust billowing from the vacant window frames and flames dancing along the lovely, curved wooden bar.

When the sirens raced down Gold Street, Margery put aside the blue-and-white socks she was knitting and came out to the street, looking for the telltale smoke of a house on fire rising above the rooftops. She saw the pub smouldering, smiled and clapped her hands, then caught herself. Up and down the street, neighbours gathered at their gates, hands on mouths, mesmerised by the black cloud rising and spreading from the hundred-year-old, two-storey brick building.

Bonita came running up the street in her brunch coat, her hair in rollers. ‘Mrs B! Is Lance in that pub?'

‘Yes,' she said, just as Pat stumbled down the smoky street towards them, wailing. Bonita threw one arm around Margery, reaching to Pat with the other.

They say people as far away as Barry Street heard the
whoomph
and felt the ground leap beneath their feet.

Morris and Dubious One both still suffer tinnitus, and it took quite some time for the firemen to find the barmaid. Given that the explosion killed ‘Lance the Lad' Blandon and William Archibald Cruickshank, as well as Dubious Two, there were post-mortems and a coroner's inquiry. After some delay, the respective families were informed the bodies were to be released for burial. Margery stayed
in her bedroom, her radio to her ear, while the Blandon children gathered at her kitchen table.

Judith sat between her brothers, weeping. ‘Dad's the father of a middleweight champion,' she cried. ‘He should have his funeral service at St Patrick's Cathedral.'

Though her father had largely ignored her, he did include her in some things – she was a non-drinker so she often drove for Lance, Walter and the entourage. Happily, when Walter won his first professional welterweight title, Judith met Barry.

‘Mumsy won't come,' Walter said. ‘She doesn't believe in God, hasn't been to a funeral since her sister died.'

‘Well that's just disgusting,' Judith said. ‘What if there's newspaper reporters and photographers there and his wife hasn't even bothered coming?'

Dubious One said helpfully, ‘You could tell everyone she's dead,' which stopped the discussion for one heartbeat. Then Barry snarled, ‘Nobody's interested in us anymore, Judith.' When Walter lost that last fight, his brand-new brother-in-law, Barry, lost his brand-new career as manager–minder of the defending Middleweight Champion of Victoria, 1983, and was forced to ask his sister's husband's cousin for a job in real estate, where, again, success had so far eluded him.

‘We'll have the service at the funeral parlour,' Walter said.

Morris sat back. They eyed him, waited while he composed his words. His gold earrings were burnished like Margery's doorknobs and he rubbed his gold skull-and-crossbones ring. ‘There are people who want a church service for him, people who were very important to Dad for many, many years.'

‘Like who?' Walter said, genuinely intrigued. After that last fight, Lance regarded Walter a bit like a second cousin at Christmas
lunch – someone you were compelled to be friendly to but had no interest in. To most people, apart from his brick-dusted mates and the sodden, addled men on their worn stools along the bar, Lance was just one of those tall, neatly maintained men with an invisible wife and a pub complexion, treading carefully along the back footpaths of working-class Brunswick.

‘His sisters,' Morris said, poking his tongue up into the gap where his front tooth used to be.

‘Faye and Joye? They'll be happy as long as there's food.'

‘There are others.'

Judith snapped, ‘It's not up to a bunch of smelly derros from the pub, Morris.'

Behind Morris, Dubious One sniffed and Walter said, ‘That's harsh, Judif.'

‘We should decide,' Judith continued. ‘Who could a man possibly love more than his wife and kids?'

‘His mistress,' Morris replied.

Walter shot up from his chair like a cork from a fizzy bottle and started swinging – arms
wooshing
, feet dancing – and everyone scattered. Judith followed Barry outside, Dubious One leapt into the bathroom and Morris dropped under the table. Walter's discharge notes stated that he was prone to ‘sudden, uncontrolled rages', but his siblings had never actually seen one, until then.

Lance Blandon's funeral was delayed again until most of his offspring could reconvene and, since a lot of people were still suffering after-effects from the explosion, Bill's send-off at the Catholic Church was a quiet affair.

Again, Margery absented herself from the second Blandon meeting, so Morris was able to explain that Lance had maintained a steady, devoted relationship with a particular woman for nearly thirty years, and he insisted his father's ‘long-time, love-of-his-life
soulmate' wanted a church funeral, and she deserved to sit up the front with Lance's special friends and his sisters. Walter insisted she was most likely merely a drinking companion and ‘a bit on the side' – she shouldn't be there ‘for the sake of Mumsy'.

Judith wanted to know where she lived and what she looked like, but Morris had promised not to reveal anything to anyone because Lance had stipulated, ‘No child of mine's mother should be upset in any way.'

On the day of the funeral, the parlour attendants stood sombrely at the door. Slim Dusty sang, ‘But there's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer' from the portable tape recorder on top of the coffin, its extension cord draped across the wreath. Margery sat on one side of Lance's coffin, calmly unpicking some cheap cross-stitching thread –
Let the punishment be equal with the offence –
which had bled into her white handkerchief. Beside her, Morris sat quietly while Judith and Barry scrutinised the women on the other side of the coffin. Behind them, respectful and stoic, were Lance's mates, ruddy-nosed men with yellow teeth and smoker's fingers. Though the cuts and abrasions of some had healed, others still had bandaged limbs, and one chap's eye was taped over with a great wad of cottonwool dressing.