I couldn’t believe how well everything was going. Everywhere. In Perth, the greatest Aussie Rules footballer ever, Polly Farmer, was back home and appointed captain-coach of West Perth; my brother Thomas was working in Perth as a lawyer; brother Bill was winning races and looking to be a future athletics champion; Dad had opened a new business in the town next door; and here I was straining at the bit, biting at the rope, wondering what to do now I had conquered the second teller’s box. This was turning out to be my best year ever. There had to be more and bigger, brighter, better things out there for me to take on, here in the islands, at home, Europe, America, England. The world was my oyster. Maybe this was where it all started and then I’d move on to even greater success, eventually returning home triumphant: the prodigal son knocks on the door at the end of the gravel driveway, but not alone, he comes with fame, fortune and prestige, a wife, a great bundle of things they never imagined. Mum will cry, of course. Dad will look at me, in disbelief, amazement, stand back, take another look, have a think about it, check out my wife, be very impressed, then he will walk up to me, perhaps give me a traditional Italian greeting, a big man-hug with hands slapping my back. Even Jesus will weep then. What? What’s he got to do with it? Shut the fuck up about Jesus. He doesn’t exist, or maybe he does but not as the son of God, more likely a bloke like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, or Herb Elliott. The longer I lived the more it looked like there was no God, but in a little piece of my brain, somewhere up the back, every so often, a conversation took place and I kept thinking it might be Jesus. Maybe I just needed someone to talk to and he was the only bloke available, even though he wasn’t.
Surely Dad wouldn’t be surprised by my current burst of success; after all he sent me to Grammar School. Grammar boys were destined for greatness, leadership, wealth, that was their birthright, their destiny. And look at me now, surging ahead, things appearing at my feet with very little effort. Even a mixed race girl of astonishing beauty was coming into the bank, eyeing me off, laughing at my little jokes. Maybe it was time to find out her name.
Tom Hallett not only gave me his teller’s box, he also gave me his carpark job at the rugby match on a Saturday night. Rugby League was big in the capital and every Saturday night the match of the day was played out in the city’s major sporting stadium. All I had to do was make sure drivers parked their cars correctly, then, when the park was full, I could go into the stadium, drink beer and watch the game.
One night a Mini Minor pulled up and stopped right in the middle of the entrance. I walked over and looked in. The woman inside was beautiful, a magnificent mix of black, white and brindle. I wanted to grab her arm, catch a plane and take her home to show my racist grandfather, to show everybody, to keep her and have and hold her forever. She was crying. I tapped on the window.
You okay? I said. You want me to park your car?
She got out, still crying. I took her keys and parked her car as close as I could to the entrance of the stadium.
Thank you, she said. Her face was wet but she had begun mopping it with a handkerchief.
Is there anything else I can do? Punch some bloke? Pay off a house? Buy you an ice-cream?
She laughed. Oh, what a laugh. And that face with the laugh on it, I nearly cried. Hang on, it was her, the astonishingly beautiful woman who sometimes laughed at my jokes in the bank, who gave me a certain kind of eye, who suggested I might have a chance and here she was and I had to hand her keys back and as I did I brushed her fingers, lightly, but enough to feel her softness and to notice that she didn’t recoil. She smiled.
What about I change the oil in your car, I said. Or swap your old tyres for the new ones on that car over there?
No thanks, she said. I’d better go in. My boyfriend is playing.
Then she looked at me from under her brow in a way I thought suggested sexy and walked away with a gentle sway and swish. The lizard raised its head. Her body was near perfection. Both her legs had calves. Her shoulders were straight and firm. Her long black hair floated with the swish and sway. And her arms had form, muscle, character. They were the arms of someone who had use for them. They were not limp hanging arms waiting for others to bring, to take, to do. Wouldn’t I love those arms to do things for me, to me. She had a boyfriend? Which one? Which of the big galoots, the big brawny, brainless, beefy brutes?
When all the cars in the world had parked in my carpark – because that was how it seemed that night, as though everyone had decided to park their car, whatever was on, wherever they were headed, to the next town, the next country, it didn’t matter, they were parking in my carpark – when they were in, I headed for the stadium, eyes peeled and burning.
The game was on. It was hard and close, white blokes, black blokes and in-between blokes, all hurling themselves at each other, punching each other, spearing each other into the dirt in a frenzy of male brutality. No finesse, nothing like the mixture of skill, poise and daring of Aussie Rules, but somehow hypnotic. I stopped looking for her, couldn’t keep my eyes off the beasts as they smashed into each other, tore each other’s faces off, punched each other in the neck, stomped on each other’s ears in the pack. It looked like war. This, I decided, must be what it is like to face an enemy you must kill, before he kills you, an enemy, like you, whose only weapons are arms, legs and teeth.
When the game was over, the winners triumphant, the players out of the change room and mingling with the crowd around the bar, I saw her, hanging off the arm of a massive creature, the one who scored two tries by charging through three of the opposition and knocking them aside as though they were puny little blokes about my size.