A space for a bed to lay my body down
A space for a bed to let my body down
Easily, slowly, the silence is deafening
The light low enough to let the gloom
Peer into my mind, don’t feel gladly
Or sadly just got the Rooming House Blues
Yeah, the rooming house blues (oh no).
The bloke next door he groans no lullaby at all
The corridor it sounds like a couple having a ball
Clinking bottles and a smell of piss flows through
The door, land lady singing a dirge, nothing but
The rooming house blues from her to you
Oh yeah the rooming house blues from you to me.
Balga hurried towards The Prince of Wales noticing that even though it was after ten some shops were still open and blokes were hanging out, strolling real slow as if they had the whole night to plod through. Yeah he could understand this even though the cold was giving him the shivers. Ah yes, that sweet feeling of padding through the darkness, black cat on the prowl hit him as he reached the dead front of the pub. A figure separated his shadow from the side door which he had been told to use. ‘’Lo man,’ that still familiar voice called to which Balga replied. ‘Well, it must be that Tommy Cooper that once I knew so well that we even ended up in prison together and now we’ve met up again in this Melbourne town, to wit the suburb of St. Kilda.’
‘Yeah, yeah who else could it be, man,’ Tommy replied somewhat tiredly.
The lad guessed that his turn of duty had wearied him, but this still didn’t make Balga stop the gab. ‘Well, it could be the famous Bill Haley of the Comets,’ he said mockingly.
‘Yeah, yeah, bet you didn’t know that I went to his concert when he came to Melbourne.’
‘You really saw and heard the man live,’ Balga said seriously knocked over by the news. ‘He may be a bit old, but he started the whole rocking thing. Yeah, if he ain’t hep, who is?’
‘Old and wise and going hard at it. He and his band were a gas, a real gas,’ Tommy told his friend using the “gas” word so casually that Balga was jealous having only heard it from a couple of kids in the street. Fast Eddy had been right he really was stuck in the past. Balga became all ears as Tommy went on. ‘We were sitting there and the band came on stage, but no Haley. Where was the boss man? We waited a minute, then two. We were getting restless almost ready to tear up the seats, when the band began the opening bars of that ever famous song Rock Around the Clock, Still no Haley! Then suddenly behind us the doors were flung open and in he came jogging with his kiss curl like glued to his forehead. He got to the stage and without even waiting to catch his breath took up the words. Man, that night he did all the old numbers, flung in a few good new ones like Skinny Minnie and really rocked the joint.’
‘Gee, I wish that I had of been there,’ Balga whispered in awe. ‘I ain’t seen any of them singers, not one rocker. Gee maybe one day Elvis will come to Australia and then it’ll all happen.’
‘That would be too much, man, too much,’ Tommy replied as he lead his mate through the door and along a corridor and up stairs. All was quiet as the den of a mouse. Compared to this empty cavern the street was a hive of activity.
Tommy stopped in front of a door right at the head of the stairs and inserted a key. Balga followed him into a small room holding two beds, a small table between them and a landscape reproduction of an Albert Namajira painting on one of the cream walls. There wasn’t a window and this made him wonder how his mate could stand being cooped up there.
‘This certainly is no place much like home,’ he commented.
‘Yeah, just like a cell in boob, isn’t it,’ Tommy grinned as if it was a great joke.’
‘More like solitary, except there was a window,’ Balga replied.
‘Yeah, but there is one,’ Tommy answered, pointing to the transom over the door.
‘Okay, okay that’ll do, but don’t you even have a radio to listen to some tunes?’
‘Naw, besides why doll it up if it’s only short term? Not worth the bother. I intend to cut out to Sydney soon as it gets warmer or maybe next winter, for it won’t be as cold up there, then on to Brisbane. Work my way right around Australia.’
‘Yeah, gotta keep on moving’ Balga replied, not knowing what else to say. This was a different Tommy Cooper from the old one, though he had always been a self assured little bastard, but square as they come. Now not only had he seen Haley, but he was sporting a hair style that he envied.
Balga watched Tommy fish out a bottle of beer from the big jug that sat on the table along with a basin. He clenched his teeth about the top and wrenched it off. He took a swig and passed him the bottle. Balga took a long pull then shoved the bottle back. They leaned back against the wall and the bottle went back and forth.
‘So do you miss West Oz,’ Balga asked Tommy.
‘What do you mean, Castledare and Clontarf not to mention Fremantle Prison?’
‘Yeah, not much to miss there, I grant you unless you’re into woe and no go. Still I do miss the place a bit, even Clonny where I grew up, though not the country town that came before. Anyway, what was the best place for you?’
‘I suppose Clontarf was. You know they flogged us, but it wasn’t just that, we could elbow a space for ourselves there. I was too young to feel much about Castledare.’
‘Yeah, hey, you know I can still copy Dicky’s signature. You got a piece of paper and I’ll show you.’
Tommy found a pencil and a bit of paper and Balga looped PLOD on it. ‘There Patrick Lawrence O’Doherty, can you remember that? Just like the real thing, perhaps I should’ve kept a Shadow comic with a suggestion of a cleavage in it and thus one which he would not have signed. Compare them and you wouldn’t know the difference.’
‘Yeah, maybe you should have if that’s all you have to remember them by. At least they taught you to write as well as to read those comics.’
‘Yeah, with a leather strap. First Crowley, then O’Doherty and lastly Doyle who used his boots as well. All that’s past, though I can feel the bruises sometimes when I’m in a rotten mood. You know that Dicky taught me religion, perhaps that’s the reason I don’t go to church now.’
‘Naw, you don’t go to Mass ‘cause you too lazy to get up on a Sunday, besides you haven’t even been able to find a church here yet. Why you only made it to St. Kilda today and after, what did you say, weeks?’
‘You so bright and right that you shine like a traffic light,’ Balga answered, then added, ‘but you don’t know that it was the Proddy dogs that got me over here and they mightn’t like it if I became a Mick again, though nothing would stop me if I wanted to.’
‘Ah, it’s all the same heaven and hell especially when you die,’ Tommy retorted. The bottle went back and forth a few times while they contemplated their shitty lives. Finally Balga broke the silence to say, ‘Do you remember that short blonde Bodgie type in our division in FreeO.’
‘You mean Eddy Steady Ready, something like that — you two were pretty thick in there, weren’t you? I was a bit jealous us being old mates and all.’
‘Ah, he was just a Johnny come lately that I found I had to dig. He got me into this Bodgie thing, you know and also into what I thought was his sister, Audrey, a sweet little Widgie who helped me celebrate my seventeenth birthday just before they picked me up, which reminds me my birthday falls down soon and I hope we can celebrate it together. Gee, I hope I get a room near here soon and a doll like that Audrey, man. She really dug me rock steady.’
‘I bet she did and you did the Stroll together, uh, rocking and a rolling the night away.’
‘Yeah and you’d never guess almost the same thing happened tonight. I done Eddy’s moll up against a wall though she was big and slack whereas Audrey was small and tight. He doesn’t know it yet, but who cares if he does. He’s no mate of mine, and so maybe I’ll try for his other moll. You know, I met up with him tonight and he came out like a big lump of hard turd. Yeah, a constipated shit! When he was in W.A. he was happy to call me mate, but over here he doesn’t even want to pass the time of the night with me. Gee and once I thought him to be so cool, but tonight he came over like a big tabby tom whining out his blues to an audience who just don’t dig his kind of rough gruff too sad to be glad stuff. I know that you aren’t like that, you know, a sad sack who can’t have a good time.’
‘Naw, I’m not like that. I do my work and life takes care of itself, though as I told you I’m off to Sydney soon and then straight up the coast and beyond to that new place they have up there called Surfers’ Paradise. I want to see more than a bit of the world before I get too old to dream if you know the song.’
‘Yeah and a bit square it is too.’
‘Be that as it may, but as I said before you find a place to doss in St. Kilda and we’ll have a ball together to celebrate your birthday, right?’
‘Right,’ Balga agreed.
‘Yeah, cast an eye over Dalgety Street, it’s the next one up and lined with rooming houses. You can get a nice big room for a couple of quid a week.’
‘I’ll check it out tomorrow,’ Balga replied, ‘but what gets me is that you could do the same, so why are you living in this little cupboard, why not get into something better say in Dalgety Street.’
Balga said this in the hopes that they might share a place together; but only received the answer: ‘Why, there’s only Tommy Cooper and not only doesn’t he have to pay for this room, but can get free grub from the kitchen. It’s a good lurk and I’m not complaining or changing.’
‘Well, if you like it here, stay; but I’m ready to cut from my place. It’s in Hawthorn which is dead, dead, dead, man and suddenly tonight I just came back to life seeing you and all. Yeah, but then I thought I had to make compromises because they sent me to Melbourne and I felt I had to pay back some of their kindness so I’ve been as cool as ice. Well, I’ve served my time and this cat is ready to stroll.’
‘Yeah, you sound like you are, but as for me, I’ve got to get some sleep. I get up at eight and start work at nine.’
‘Okay, I’ll just stretch out on this bed and drift into slumber land.’
Tommy put the light out and Balga lay on the bed feeling a little woozy from the beer. He floated away into this St. Kilda where he not only had made a couple of quid, but had gotten a shag later. He went to sleep dreaming of that Rita and awoke as Tommy got up. He showed him a communal bathroom along the hall and after he pissed and flung water at his face took him along to the kitchen where a hung over cook filled two plates and slid them in front of them. Balga was hungry from last night and got stuck into eggs, sausages, bacon and chips. When he had finished gulping it down, hot tea was waiting for him. Now he could appreciate Tommy wanting to stay in the hotel.
‘Well,’ Balga said, ‘now I’m ready to check out Dalgety Street to see what, what “digs” I can find.’
‘Digs?’ Tommy queried.
‘Just a term, I picked up,’ Balga smiled, ‘see you Gator real soon.’
‘A while Croc, a while,’ came the old now dated reply.
Balga left the hotel happy and with a full belly. It was a little blowy outside and the sun at nine o’clock hadn’t any warmth in it. He shivered just a little as he went along Fitzroy Street which at this time in the morning was pretty dismal with the pavement wet from being washed by a slow moving water tanker. He wanted to get that coat, but the shop was still closed, so he retraced his steps and turned up Grey Street and yes the next street was Dalgety just as Tommy had said.
The lad wandered from one end to the other, past terrace houses with every third or fourth one having signs in their left or right front windows advertising rooms for rent. It was hard for him to pick one. Some radiated weariness as if having experienced too many solitary blokes with long gone sour dreams tossing and turning the nights or days away. These sad ones, Balga guessed most likely had old men living their lives away in the smell of piss. His Mum had lived in one of them and he still could remember the awfulness of it. He stopped right in the middle of the street daring a square to run him down in his old Holden. His eyes swept the street. First one side then he turned and his eyes fell onto number 28. The front door was wide open to show a length of faded carpet leading to stairs down which descended a blowsy brunette on the wrong side of thirty, but behind her came rocking the sound of Roll Over Beethoven, by the one and old brown eyed handsome man, Chuck Berry. The woman was carrying a broom and she did a dance step with it as she began sweeping the passageway.
Chuck drew the Bodgie over to read the sign in the window next to the door which read in misshapen letters: BUNGALO AVALABLE. That decided him, not the misspelling, but the word bungalo. He didn’t know what one was and so he went through the wrought iron gate which separated a narrow length of concrete from the narrow length of pavement. The woman stared at him without saying a word. Balga saw a bell button, pushed it and she decided to come to the open door. She leant on her broom and stared down the street before turning her eyes on him. Big brown eyes like a cow. He smiled into them and said, ‘The bungalow?’
‘The bungalow,’ she repeated and scratched between her breasts. She seemed to be thinking as her eyes went for a stroll down the street again before returning to examine his well dressed figure that is if one liked the Bodgie garb. Balga thought something was up, but repeated ‘The bungalow.’
‘Ah, yes, the bungalow,’ the woman said. There was a pause before she continued: ‘It’s out the back, but I warn you it’s a bit small. We got four. The others are better, but they taken. The best one, the biggest one is occupied by some sort of dago, but he pays his rent on time and never causes any trouble. The other two, both together are all but vacant. A couple come in to do their business in one and as the in between wall is so thin, they took both so that leaves the last one. It is small, but is by itself so you won’t be disturbed by anyone next door. It’s nothing special, but only thirty bob a week and you can’t get anything cheaper than that unless you go to the St. Vinny’s. You can afford that, can’t you,’ she asked suspiciously.
‘I haven’t even seen it yet,’ Balga snapped, ‘so don’t mention rent until I decide, okay.’
‘Yes, but I have to ask, don’t I, so don’t get niggardly. I only manage the house and I have to lay all the rents on the line every week and so do the tenants.’
‘I’m a public servant and can afford it,’ Balga told her, ‘so let’s see it!’
She took him down the passageway and around the stairway to a back door which opened onto a concrete covered yard around which were the “bungalows”. These Balga saw were small huts made out of plywood or masonite. The one the door of which she now unlocked was just large enough to hold a single bed, a table and chair. A corner was curtained off to serve as a wardrobe. It certainly wasn’t much and was close to being downright awful; but he decided that it could do for starters. He really wanted to escape Hawthorn and well nothing was permanent and one day he would get himself a flat.
‘There’s a kitchen at the back of the house where you can do yer cooking and the bath room’s next to it. You don’t have to come inside at all except to go out. You can see there’s no back gate,’ she informed me.’
The lad stared about the big greasy room with a large table and a couple of old gas stoves in it. ‘This is sadness,’ he mumbled; but Bonny, as she introduced herself, took his words to mean that he wanted the place and before he knew it he was in her flat upstairs drinking a cup of tea while she wrote out a receipt for his first week’s rent. When it was over Balga stumbled out feeling hardly able to face up to anything even Fitzroy Street which had sparked up by now. He thought about the coat, but didn’t have enough money to try for it. ‘What the heck, I had to move,’ he muttered to himself. A tram came trundling along and he ran to a stop, leapt aboard and let it rattle him into his future. ‘Twenty one today,’ he sang mirthlessly as it went along. ‘I’ve got the key of the door and I hate the place all bloody ready.’