Robinson turned into the back of the bank, stopped his Honda and said: What do you think so far?
I told you, I said. It’s a great bike.
No, you goose, about this place, the capital, the island.
I reckon I’ll survive, I said. As long as work doesn’t interfere too much.
Yeah, you’ll be fine, just don’t let them real bank johnnies get their hooks in you, or before you know it you’ll be just like them and your life might as well be over.
We were still laughing as we walked in through the main doors. Robinson went off to his desk to do whatever it was he had to do. I had no idea and never found out. I went to Symons’ office. It was a big room in the middle of the building. The only windows looked out into the bank itself. Symons stood up and shook my hand again.
It’s good to have you here, Jack, he said. I’ve been trying to lift the calibre of the personnel on staff.
Thank you, Richard, I said. I only hope I’m up to it. You’re not going to give me too big a challenge, are you?
What I have in mind is the second teller. It has a cash holding of around fifty thousand dollars, so it’s a big responsibility. Have you ever used a pistol?
My mind was racing in a mad fluster of fear and pride and an energy I had not felt before.
No, I haven’t, I said. Who do I have to kill?
Symons looked like he was about to laugh, almost laughed, held back, then allowed a small shift in one corner of his mouth.
Seriously, Jack, we’ll have to send you out to the firing range for a bit of practice. As you know it is a standard regulation that all tellers must have firearms training.
I almost said, look, Symons, I grew up on a farm and my dad put a gun in my hands when I was eight and told me to shoot that bloody kookaburra because they don’t belong here and the sooner the Victorians take them back the better off we’ll all be but especially the native birds and lizards, so I know guns. But I didn’t say a word. One thing I was sure about was that if a bloke came into the bank and tried to get my fifty thousand dollars I would do my best to grab my gun and shoot the prick. There was a war on and I knew lots of people didn’t like it but they were communists and, like kookaburras, if we didn’t stop them where they were they would take over everything. And bank robbers were just the same.
Symons took me around the building and introduced me to all the other bank johnnies, mostly expatriate Australians, but a sprinkling of local mixed race men and women and, of course, pure-blood locals who worked out the back in the storeroom and in the kitchen where they made the morning and afternoon teas and wandered around the bank with brooms and dust cloths. There were five tellers’ boxes and mine was the second, number two, second in command, only one box holding more cash, number one. I was on my way. Finally, someone had taken a good hard look at me and decided I was worth something, worth a risk. I could see the headlines back home after the communist bastard had bailed me up for the fifty grand: LOCAL BOY FOILS ROBBERY ATTEMPT. RETURNS HOMW A HERO.
That night Robbo grabbed me naked from the shower and said: Come on, we’re going to the Bulimbi Bar.
I insisted I put some non-white clothes on and when I got downstairs Robbo had his bike revved and ready. It was another mad and crazy ride out of town and along a narrow road to the bar. When he pulled up in the carpark I fell off to one side, laughing.
When are you sandgropers going to get used to riding passenger? he said.
When are you rock-crabs going to learn how to ride a bloody motorbike?
Rock-crabs? Where did that come from?
I don’t know. What do they call Queenslanders?
Banana-benders? Didn’t you know?
Forgot.
New South Welsh are cockroaches. South Australians...
Yeah, I know them, croweaters.
Victorians are Mexicans. Tasmanians are two-headers. And Territorians? Who gives a shit.
We heard the music pulsing out from the upstairs windows and it got louder as we ran up the stairs. Robbo pushed the bar door open as the band finished a number and stacked its instruments for a break. The lead singer looked up as we entered and I couldn’t believe the face I saw. It was Hugh bloody Bainbridge, an old, almost school chum from Grammar School, Perth’s finest and most expensive private school.
He looked at me and said: Jesus Christ.
I said: Thank you, Bainers. That’s the nicest thing you ever said to me.
What the blazes are you doing here, Muir?
I live here. I’m a bank johnny.
A bank johnny? You? That’s a joke. If I remember correctly, numbers were not your forte.
Or my fifte.
Bainbridge was one of the A students, always in the A Class, up the top, far away from me, but he wasn’t a bad bloke and he once bought me a bottle of sherry, which I threw up out a car window in the centre of Perth.
What are you doing here? I said.
My father was a lawyer, then a magistrate. Last year he was appointed Chief Justice for the island territories and he moved the whole family up with him. I’m taking a year off uni and thought I might fill in time by joining a band.
It was good news. Mum and Dad would be pleased to know I had made contact with Bainbridge, university student, son of the Chief Justice, solid citizen, member of the expatriate elite, solid Anglican and probably Rotarian. Mum’s dream for her boys was that they would all marry girls from Peppermint Grove, Dalkeith or Nedlands, girls who had gone to the right and proper schools. And there seemed to be a time when I almost belonged to Perth’s elite. Given I had gone to one of the city’s most prestigious schools it was not surprising that I was invited to many fine and expensive parties in fine and expensive homes.
Yes, Mum, Fiona Eccleston-Blackburn has invited me to her coming-out party, I would say.
Oh, dear, that’s wonderful, she would reply. Now, do behave and wear your best suit.
No, Mum, I will not.
But you must, darling. These people only wear the best. We don’t want you looking shoddy and unkempt.
Mum, I’m hiring a dinner suit, with bow tie and cummerbund.
Then she’d laugh and I’d love her. I didn’t always love her. Often her affectations, her pretensions, her anxiety about the small things confused and annoyed me. She was often nervous about Rotary gatherings of some sort, and often morose as if she was experiencing some kind of inner tragedy. When she was morose, I too became morose, agitated and diluted. Maybe we fed off each other, the blind taking the blind by the hand to his or her private place of misery.
Before the week was over a letter arrived from Mum with all the local news, the comings and goings that were nice and polite and seemly to mention. When I was in school Dad had often added a note at the end of Mum’s, but not anymore. Maybe he had decided to leave me alone, to see how I would make my way in the world, or what the world would make of me. He did one thing I appreciated, he paid a two-year subscription to every Monday edition of The West Australian, Perth’s only daily newspaper. It arrived once a week, one week after publication. The editor was a revered and feared man in Perth and the father of a boy in my year at Grammar School. When it arrived I took it to my room, unrolled it on the floor, turned it over then rolled it in the opposite direction to make it flat. I read papers like my father. First I flicked through, taking in the headlines and on arriving at the final page I tossed it over to the front for a more thorough reading. Inside it was packed with news from across the globe: the Vietnam War raged on; there was trouble on the Israeli – Jordanian border; students rioting in the United States; John Lennon and George Harrison were in India with an Indian guru.
In the sports pages I learnt that Lionel Rose had punched the wind out of Fighting Harada to become bantamweight champion of the world and Australia’s first Aboriginal boxing champion. I was surprised, given the numbers of Aboriginal boxers in boxing tents around Australia.
Someone said it was printed on rice paper. I wondered if I could eat it.