I spent my lunchtimes in the shade of the gum trees at the edge of the cricket pitch and drifted back there after school to smoke cigarettes and drink wine. All my pocket money went on these items but Paul Lamb and the other louts never bothered me when there was a bottle of Jackaroo. These bribes entailed no small sacrifice on my part. I couldn’t buy new clothes or LPs and never did anything on the weekends. Waratah had destroyed my panache but at least I’d made it through half a year without any new scars.
Trevor Bland told my father that Cobber’s Super Central was looking for schoolboys to stack shelves and pack boxes. Without consulting me, Dad visited the supermarket and put my name down. He’d never done anything like this for John or Carmel. They played sports and in his mind deserved their pocket money. Dad didn’t like me being idle. Neither did he like forking out for me every week. He thought he was teaching me a lesson but he did me a wonderful favour. Cobber’s was a glamour job. The store was big, bright and colourful. The checkout girls wore make-up and nail polish and the deli counter stocked anchovies and capers from Europe. The supermarket even sold my new brand of cigarettes, John Player Specials.
I wasn’t the only Waratah boy at Cobber’s. Frank Burger worked the boxes on the express lane and was renowned for his high-speed packing technique. The checkout girls called him Fast-hand Frankie and gave him packets of broken biscuits to take home. Frank was part of an elite club at Waratah. He was a prefect and wore his prefect’s jacket everywhere, even on the express lane. Prefects were elected by the students who naturally went for good-looking athletes. The most beautiful of these was a high-jumper called Terrence Fig. He was not only head prefect but also worked as a DJ on Youth Hour every Friday at Hot Rocking Radio Hobart. When Terrence strolled around the school grounds looking for smokers or kissers, he may as well have been riding in a golden chariot. Students stopped what they were doing to offer him sandwiches and tinned drinks. The bolder ones asked about his radio work. I would’ve thrown rose petals at his feet but never dared move a muscle in front of Wayne.
Frank didn’t have Terrence’s panache but he was still handsome in a clean-cut, normal sort of way. These pleasant features plus the jacket made him look older than fifteen which was very helpful for purchasing alcohol. Frank agreed to buy Jackaroo for me as long as I paid him 20 per cent commission. This was steep but Frank had an enterprising nature. The other box boys said he got tips from ladies, something unheard of in Tasmania. After a month of packing boxes together, he invited me to his house. I was delighted.
Frank lived in a brick bungalow on a tidy street with late-model Holdens in the driveways. The family was well off by Waratah standards and had a Holden Monaro in the garage. It was green with a yellow racing stripe down the side. Its steering wheel even had a leather cover with little air holes to absorb racing sweat. Mr Burger was the sort of man my father called flashy. He ran his own accountancy firm, which employed the very flashy-looking Mrs Burger as a receptionist. Dad didn’t like accountants. He blamed one for bankrupting his father. He said the accountant had fiddled the books and caused Granddad to lose the pub.
Mrs Burger was cooking something foreign with rice when we walked in. She had blond blow-waved hair and wore a lot of make-up for a mother. Frank led me to the source of the television noise in the lounge. I froze in the doorway. His sister was watching Pretty Pony Pals in colour on a glorious twenty-six-incher. Frank came from one of the lucky families. We knew who they were at Waratah. The arrival of a colour TV was announced and discussed. Those who didn’t have one kept quiet and prayed for a miracle. Frank hadn’t said anything and I’d assumed he was one of us.
‘You want to watch some telly, Julian?’
‘You’ve got a colour TV? Didn’t even notice.’
‘Had it for a while.’
‘Yeah, we’ve had ours a while, too.’ I’d never be able to take Frank back to our house now. The Ensuite would have to remain a family secret.
‘Infinitely better than a black-and-white set.’
‘I try not to watch the box.’ I watched television whenever possible and followed weekly programmes like Pop Stop with fanatic dedication. I sat through cartoons, soapy serials, family programming, police shows and old movies. I watched The Dick Dingle Hour every night and never missed his Sunday Tales of Tasmania feature. I sat in front of anything with movement and sound with two exceptions: sports programmes and war movies.
‘You got your own room, Frank?’
‘Well, yeah, I’d hardly be sharing with my sister, would I?’
Frank’s bedroom was a bitter disappointment. Not only did his curtains have a pop-group pattern, but his bedspread was covered with little spaceships. Above the bed was a larger-than-life poster of Suzi Quatro squatting in leather hot pants. Photos of footballers and car stickers desecrated the other walls. It could’ve been John’s room.
I made an excuse and set off for home, passing Mrs Burger on my way out. She was standing next to the rubbish bin, folding up cardboard packaging. The cardboard had come from a big-ticket item, something with a width of at least twenty-six inches.
I was still thinking about the television when I turned into Echidna Avenue and heard a loud screech of tyres. The screech was followed by a thud and then the revving of a car engine. A moment later, a Tip Top taxi swerved into view, travelling at high speed. As the car flew past, the driver glanced my way and I recognised what Carmel called a ‘Tickworth Flush’. The man’s cheeks were bright red and his eyes were bloodshot.
Mum and I were in the dinette when Dad came home. He was earlier than usual and didn’t smell of beer. His face was serious. He sat down at the table and propped his chin on his fists, clearing his throat before making an announcement.
‘There’s been a hit and run up the end of our street.’ He hesitated and held his bottom lip between the small crumbs of his teeth.
Mum walked over from the sink, drying her hands on a tea towel.
‘A boy’s in hospital with a broken leg. It’s a compound fracture. They say the bone was poking out of his leg.’
‘What kind of animal would leave a boy in that condition?’ Mum pulled up a chair next to me and squeezed my forearm.
‘Probably some drunk idiot.’ This was rich coming from Dad.
‘He could’ve hit one of our kids.’ This was the most I’d heard Mum say to Dad in months. She ran a hand through her hair, exposing a nest of grey hairs near the temple. ‘What time did this happen?’
‘About six or so.’ Dad banged his fist on the table Kojak-style and let out a hiss of air between his tiny teeth. He was doing an impression of a concerned father and clearly enjoying his performance.
‘Dad!’ I’d come home from Frank’s place at six. The screech of tyres and thud suddenly made sense. ‘I saw who did it.’
My father gave me a look. The hit and run had been his moment of glory. He wasn’t about to give it up without a struggle.
‘It was six on the dot when I came home. I heard a thud, then a terrible noise, a blood-boiling scream. A Tip Top taxi flew out of our street with blood on its bumper. I’d swear I saw hairs in the blood. I thought he’d hit a Labrador.’
‘Julian, this better not be one of your stories.’ Dad was frowning.
‘The taxi driver was drunk and swerving all over the road like a maniac. He could’ve hit Carmel coming home from hockey practice. They could’ve been her hairs on the bumper.’
Dad’s eyebrows shot up. ‘All right, all right. We’d better get you down to the police station.’
Information was currency at the edge of the cricket pitch. I lit a cigarette and made sure the usual suspects were assembled before casually mentioning the accident. Someone had procured a bottle of sweet cooking sherry and the boys were passing it up and down the fence. No one else had eye-witnessed an attempted murder. I had them eating out of my hand.
‘The bone of his leg was sticking out like a chopstick. You should’ve seen the blood. Buckets of it. They had to physically scrape him off the road with a butter knife.’
‘A butter knife! Jesus wept!’ Wayne’s face had a rapt expression. ‘Was he an Abo?’
‘Who?’
‘The perpetrator.’
Wayne wasn’t only interrupting a good story but he was also displaying his ignorance. There were virtually no Aboriginal people in Tasmania. The early white settlers had hunted down and murdered nearly all the original inhabitants. Mum called it genocide. She said it made her ashamed to be a white Tasmanian.
‘He was white and stupid.’ The only non-white person I knew was Mr Patel and he wasn’t stupid. People said he’d been a brain surgeon in India before moving to Ulverston.
‘Just asking.’ Wayne looked surprised, even hurt by my answer. ‘You can’t trust them black fellas.’
‘You’ve only ever seen them on TV.’ Christine Kandy was looking directly at Wayne. ‘And your TV’s not even colour so you don’t know what they really look like.’
‘Piss off, Kandy pants.’ Wayne hunched his shoulders and stopped bouncing on the fence.
Christine had gone too far with the TV comment. Showing someone up for being a bigot was one thing. What you couldn’t do was expose someone without a colour TV. Wayne remained silent for a few minutes before leaving with the other boys trailing after him. Cherie said goodbye and headed for the bus stop. Christine sat down under a gum tree and patted the ground next to her.
‘Wayne’s just thick, you know.’
She held out the dregs of sherry to me. I took a mouthful and handed it back. I didn’t think Wayne was just thick. I’d seen a flash of something else when she’d mentioned the TV.
‘Ever kissed a girl?’
‘Yeah.’
Of course I hadn’t kissed a girl and neither did I want to start. I was thinking of an excuse to leave when Christine suddenly leaped on top of me and planted her lips on mine. Her tongue was in my mouth before I could say Jimmy Budge.
‘What did you say?’ She pulled away.
‘Nothing.’
We kissed hard for five agonising minutes, long enough for it to seem normal, before I pulled away. I told her I had to finish a police report and walked home on hollow, shaky legs. Christine Kandy scared me but I wasn’t the only one. I’d seen fear on Wayne’s face when she’d confronted him.
I was still shaken up when I arrived home. The back door was unlocked and I could hear cursing coming from the lounge. It didn’t sound good. Lifting my heels, I tiptoed through the dinette to the lounge door. My heart leaped.
Dad was on his knees next to a pile of cardboard packaging. Next to this was a big fake mahogany box with a twenty-inch screen. I was looking at a brand-new colour TV and it was beautiful, the most beautiful thing I’d seen since Peter Grubb’s frill. I could watch Dick Dingle in colour and invite Frank home. We were one of the lucky families. We had a colour TV and The Ensuite. The Corkle family was on the up and up.
‘Thanks, Dad. You don’t know what this means to me.’
‘What?’ Dad grunted. He was bent over, tugging at the antenna wire.
‘The TV really means a lot to me.’
‘I’ll tell you what it means to me, fifteen bloody dollars a month. That includes the chair, of course.’
I turned and saw a large brown vinyl reclining chair wedged next to the couch. It had a wooden lever to work the footrest. Fifteen dollars seemed an extremely low repayment for two large purchases.
‘It’s worth it Dad. Now we can watch everything in colour.’
‘That’s why I rented it, you idiot.’
‘Rented?’
‘You don’t think I’m stupid enough to buy one, do you?’
I couldn’t believe my father. You didn’t rent colour TVs. You bought them. You were still unfortunate if you rented. I walked over and took a close look at the set. At the bottom of the dial panel was a small Rentascope badge. It wasn’t something you’d notice if you were watching the news or passing through the room to get a cheese sandwich. You’d have to look really hard; squint your eyes and look really, really hard. I heard the back door slam.
‘What’s all this?’ Carmel stood in the doorway of the dinette, removing her muddy hockey boots on the lino.
‘It’s the colour TV you’ve all been whining about since Adam was a cowboy.’ Dad stood up and wiped his hands on the sides of his corduroys. He was wearing his Carmel smile.
‘Ugh, it’s from Rentascope!’ Carmel hesitated for a moment then stalked off to her bedroom.
The smile disappeared from Dad’s lips. He turned back to the TV and pointed to the rusty tools scattered over the carpet.
‘I don’t want to hear another ungrateful word from you, Julian. Clean up this bloody mess and put these tools away.’