Chapters

11

Higgs is the ledger examiner and it is his job to close the doors every day at three in the afternoon and at midday on a Saturday. As soon as the doors are shut we all lope back to the bank mess and eat lunch. It is Higgs’ responsibility to close the doors and he does it, every day, with precision, closing that one first, that one second, as laid down in the Bank Manual of 1937, just as he does everything he does, according to a manual somewhere, including comb his greasy hair. He isn’t a bad bloke, but he irritates everyone in the branch with his pernickety pickiness, except Watkins and Jenson. They like him. He makes them look good. Higgs is saving up to buy a Holden Monaro, with all the extras that can be fitted before delivery and with a firm plan to fit others when the car is his. His bank account is awash with money. He never withdraws. The only entries are deposits. Higgs rarely socialises with the rest of us. He spends most of his time in his room, reading motor magazines sent up from Adelaide, combing his hair and checking his bank balance. I wonder if he’s an Elvis Presley fan, but he never mentions him and neither do I. We live in a world without music. I don’t sing anymore. Tunes are escaping me. I try to whistle my favourite Beatles song, ‘Nowhere Man’, but the others tell me I am tuneless. I miss The Beatles, Manfred Mann, Gary Puckett and The Animals. Where are the Beatles? Have they left India? Have they a new album out? And I miss the beach. There was a beach in the capital but after swimming most of the beaches along the south coast of West Australia from Perth to Esperance, I had arrived knowing it was impossible for the planet to offer anything better.

It’s another Saturday. Higgs closes the doors. Franky and I balance. We walk out of the building, happy, promising ourselves a couple of cold ones from the bank mess beer fridge. Banda Beer is still shit but I’m getting used to it. Drinking it quick helps and sucking it through a mouth full of potato chips.

Franky, I say, tell me more about Wollongong. What kind of a place is it?

It’s okay, he says. There are lots of migrants working in the mines and the steelworks.

You ever go up to Sydney?

Nuh. I’ve got night school during the week and on the weekends I play hockey in the local competition.

I was wondering about that. You don’t look like a rugby player and your ears are normal.

Yeah, those animals would kill me. What kind of a town is Genoralup?

It’s a shithole full of sleazy Rotarians.

Including your dad?

Dad? Nuh. He’s not a sleaze, but some of his mates are.

Someone yells at me from the end of the driveway: Jacky! Jacky!

It’s Hamish Huxley, local coffee buyer and lunatic driver of a Toyota Land Cruiser. I’d met him down at the Moroki Club over a game of snooker. He was good. One night he set up a challenge.

What about the coffee buyers against the bank johnnies, he said. You poofters up to it?

Poofters? I said. Wasn’t it you I saw holding Pete Anderson’s dick in the toilets last week, right after he’d taken it out of your arse?

We all knew it was a joke, although not a very good one, and while Huxley wasn’t a poofter, we all knew Pete Anderson probably was. Huxley had a mixed race girlfriend of spectacular proportions. I’d seen him with her one night in the lounge bar over at the Highlands Hotel. Huxley was a man I wanted to know. He looked like he had everything.

Huxley is on foot, walking in his heavy-shouldered style, the walk of a rugby player.

Hux, where’s the Cruiser?

Down the road. I’m off to Jimmy Irish’s for lunch. You wanna come?

You gotta meet Jimmy Irish. Crazy Irish bastard. You never know what’s going to happen with the Irish.

Hang on, I’ll get changed out of this stuff.

Bugger that. Come on.

Frank has that warning look on his face again.

See you, Frank.

I nod and look back towards the bank mess. Haines stands there, with the ever-ready sneer comfortable on his face. The others have gone inside. Haines looks like a colonial master in his white shirt, white shorts, long white socks and neatly combed hair. Hair is important to Haines, Higgs, Watkins, Jenson, people who have power, or who need to feel powerful. Haines is constantly running a comb through his hair.

Don’t save my lunch, Hanno, I yell.

I’ll give it to Tarbo, Haines yells. He can chuck it at his wife.

Huxley looks at me.

Friend of yours? he asks.

Nuh, I say. Right, what’s this Irish bloke do for a living?

You won’t believe it, says Huxley. He’s a social worker.

I follow Huxley to his Land Cruiser. In no time at all we are on the other side of town and pulling into a driveway beside a house almost hidden by trees and large shrubs that seem to want to swallow it whole.

Inside is a man who has to be Jimmy Irish, and two others. They are drinking, laughing. The man who has to be Jimmy is Jimmy. He is short, not built like an Irish setter, more like a British bulldog. He is one of those blokes you like, even though, as soon as you spot him, you know he is trouble, but you can’t help yourself. Even my mother would like him. I can see him sweet-talking her out of her bedroom after Dad has sent her there with one of his sarcastic comments.

Jimmy Irish scurries over to me and says: So you’re the new bank johnny. Heard about you. About time this town had a bank johnny with balls.

One of the other blokes hands me a stubby. We toss the bottles back. Then another one. We’re men. It’s what we do. After the third they all look at each other, wink, laugh, and Jimmy Irish leaves the room. I can tell something is cooking and it isn’t in the kitchen because that’s where we are and nothing is on the stove.

What’s cooking?

Nothing. Well, something, says Huxley. I told you, you never know what to expect from the Irish. Or the highlands. Up here, my friend, we live our own lives.

They all toss their heads back and I laugh too, without a clue why I am laughing, what I am laughing at, or who. Jimmy is gone about ten minutes and when he comes back his face is flushed and his eyes wink, one after the other. He walks right up to me, takes my arm and leads me to the little portico at the back of his house.

There’s a girl in my bedroom, he says. Lovely thing she is. She’d like you to go in there and stick yourself into her.

Oh, yeah. She’s not a kid. She’s a woman.

My lungs lose oxygen and I gulp air in short bursts. What is Irish saying to me? What did Huxley say he did for a living? A social worker? Are they mocking me? Am I a joke?

Is she a prostitute?

Come on, Johnny, I’m not a bloody pimp. I’m the native welfare officer. Christ Almighty, Mary Mother of Jesus, give me a break.

Jimmy, my name’s Jack. Calling me Johnny reminds me I work in the bank and I have to go home and eat lunch with the wankers.

Okay, Jacky boy, what do you say?

Yes, I’m as serious as an Irishman could be if you held a blowtorch to his testicles and asked him to kiss yours.

I have no idea what he means but I want to believe him because my testicles are stirring and longing for something they have long longed for, an outcome for their big brother the lizard, a result, but not on the outside; I want in, and something more than a random shot over a sheet wrapping a girl who seems to know as much as I do about the sex business, and if Jimmy really is a social worker or welfare worker then it must be all right whatever it is he is doing.

Jimmy Irish is smiling at me.

What was that all about?

You drifted off there for a minute.

Right. Okay. Jimmy?

You know this woman?

Of course. She’s a friend. She often drops in here for a cup of tea, or...

She likes you. She saw you arrive. Thinks you’re cute.

You’re joking.

No, that’s why I went in the room, to check, to see if she saw you.

Why is she in the room and not out here?

Jacky, Jacky, Jacky, so many questions. She’s shy.

Is this right? How did she get in the house? Did Jimmy whistle to her across the street, call out, she smiles, they talk some pidgin talk, then invite her in?

Jimmy’s laugh lines fill his face. You can see he is always laughing. I want it his way, to believe she has seen me, maybe even met me at the bank, is attracted to me, thinks I am cute, wants to be with me. I want to be with her, any her, but this her will do. I am nineteen. My time is passing. I am tired of me, tired of my hand on me, rubbing me, pumping me. I want her to do it for me, a good way, a proper way, with kindness, or even love. Is this her the her? Jimmy is eager. He is the town’s native welfare officer. He can’t be a pimp. He is an official working for the territory’s administrator. He knows everyone. What I am about to do is not against the law. There is no law that says white and black must not enter each other, cannot marry, cannot live in the same house in the same street, not like in America’s Deep South, or South Africa. Here we are free to be in whoever will let us in. Jimmy is a man of the world and he will have heard about Martin Luther King who was surely fighting for this very right. Maybe met him. Jimmy is bringing us together, white and black. Perhaps this is part of his job.

I can feel my pants expand so rapidly I think they will split. This is it. She will be the first. I will wake up tomorrow and know what has happened because I am sober. Whatever it is that should happen when a man enters a woman, will happen, now, for me. Yes. Am I up for it? Am I ready?

I open the door, look in. The room is small. There are two single beds and I can see the girl sitting up on one with her knees up. My mouth dries up. I search for moisture. Not a drop. The blinds are closed but I see her smile. She looks young, not that young, but young enough for me to know she isn’t an old maid. Her teeth are white. She has nice teeth. My mother would like that she has nice teeth. The rest of her is as dark or darker than the room. I smile. I jump. Jimmy is behind me and whispering in my ear, Her name is Mary. Then he is gone. She lifts her dress. I drop my pants, climb onto the bed and shove my entire manliness towards her, lizard first, the rest following and we strike a wall of flesh. The girl shifts, takes me in one hand and moves me into an opening that seems to suck me in, and it is as though I remember it even though I have never experienced it before. This is what I have longed for, the soft moist welcoming. My brain disappears and my body takes over and does the job I had no idea it knew how to do, the moving in and out, the breathing, the building, the urgency, the sudden final thrusts. Everything shudders, shakes, explodes and fills me with a new and wondrous happiness. My brain returns, regains focus and I feel a great relief that it is done, that it has finally happened, that I have entered a woman and she has received me and been nice, gentle and giving, and I have reached a conclusion that clearly pleases my straining testicles. I smile, she smiles, says something in her language, or the local creole, or pidgin, Hungarian, Latvian, I have no idea, or just makes a noise. I pull my pants back on over my dripping, still throbbing, still thrusting penis.

Thank you, Mary, I say.

Masta, she says.

When I turn into the lounge room they are all waiting for me and Jimmy jumps off the settee and laughs.

You want to go again?

Jacky, my boy, you can go as often as you can go.

He walks me to the bedroom door, out of hearing of the others.

Your first, right? he asks.

No, no, there were a couple of girls in the bank, back home.

Better than a wank, aye?

My face fills with red. I turn quickly and enter the bedroom. The girl is exactly where I left her.

Masta, she says.

Just for a second, I think I am in love. Then I remember Margaret Baker and I know I’m not and that what I am doing makes me more unworthy and if Margaret has any sense she will stay well clear of me because even I can feel my filth. I know what I am about to do is not illegal, but is it moral? Is it right? But I can’t escape the joy of the lost virginity, cracked, never to be regained. Not once, or twice, but three times, because I have to go in again. She is there, each time, on the bed, waiting, expecting, and before she leaves the house Jimmy goes back in the room and at the door he puts a hand in a pocket and pulls out some notes. I see this, then reject it, not wanting to know it is true. No, she likes me. She saw me arrive, she thinks I’m cute, she wants to marry me, have my children. Is she the woman I left Perth to find who will lead me into a world where she belongs to an ancient and honourable family, and when I return home triumphant she will show my father what kind of man I am? No, not this woman on the bed, she’s not the princess, Margaret Baker is, but until Margaret Baker comes to terms with her destiny and her royalty and we begin our lives together, I have to become a man, a complete man, a man who can please a woman.

What a day: my virginity lost to Mary, a sweet young woman who allowed me in, helped me, welcomed me. I no longer need the Islands of Love. I am in the Town of Love. All I did was walk into a room, smile, and a woman lifted her skirt. No looking around, walking around, no box of chocolates, no expensive hotel room, no tight squeeze in the back of a Volkswagen. And no questions asked, just a smile and we’re in. There is only one thing left to do, get pissed, it is the only way to celebrate, to prolong the euphoria of the loss. I drink hard, fast, mouthful after mouthful of potato chips, and the harder and faster I drink and eat the happier I get and I go back again to the bedroom but Mary is not there and the others laugh at me when I walk into the kitchen and I laugh with them at my confusion but who cares because I am oh so happy.

Jimmy, you got any more beer? I ask.

Jimmy laughs. We all laugh. I run from the room, stumble out to the back garden in the rain, and throw my guts.

There’s no more beer, yells Jimmy from the back door. This party has no beer. You got any cash?

I wipe myself on my bank whites. Find some notes in a pocket, stumble back to Jimmy, hand him whatever it is I have in my hand, someone gets in a Land Cruiser, drives off in a muddy spray, and returns in no time with more beer and potato chips and beer nuts. The drinking starts all over again and I drink until all memory is obliterated and I wake up on Jimmy’s floor with convulsions underway. I get up and run for the garden where I chuck chips and nuts and whatever is left until the green slimy bile appears and even then I keep chucking until there is nothing left to chuck but air and the memory of the loss. I don’t chuck that, not that memory, that is mine, forever. I am sick with drink and stupid food but I am happy, happier than Larry and I say out loud: Fuck you, Dad, now I’m a man. You see that? Did you? Stand back and let me through.