CHAPTER 32

Boats, Guns and Sex

Ray was in the air force, but his heart was on the river. Instead of living on the base with the rest of us, he lived in a plywood caravan on the banks of the Murray with a young woman called Jude. The caravan was so tiny it required a little door on the side which opened to form a blister to provide legroom in bed. Ray and Jude would sometimes retreat to this refuge after lunch while I languished in his big army bell tent nearby. I loved hearing their giggles and laughter and the squeaking sounds the caravan made. ‘We’re just having a cuddle,’ they explained.

But, basically, Ray was mine. During my lonely school holidays, I gravitated to Ray’s workshop where he ‘repaired things’ for the air force. ‘He’s just ground crew,’ Mum said, noting that Ray did not fly. However, Ray was my hero. And I loved his full name, Rudmond Raymond Reszche. He made beautiful fishing lures – wonderful gleaming spinners of stainless steel and copper and brass with big hooks to catch Murray cod. Some of the cod were giants – an old codger fishing downstream from the town bridge caught two monsters in a single afternoon. One weighed 120 pounds and the other just over 90. They were hanging in the butcher’s cool room when we saw them and even the smaller one was bigger than me. They were truly monsters. Mum said they had tongues like bullocks. Everyone was impressed, awed even, and a little scared that such fish shared the river where we swam.

Sometimes I would stay overnight with Ray at his camp and this was perhaps the highlight of my childhood. He had built a little boat which was tied at the riverbank by his campsite. We’d pack it with sturdy cord fishing lines, a selection of his spinners, his single shot .22 rifle for shooting rabbits and his double-barrelled shotgun for ducks. Ray took pride that the boat’s little inboard motor started first kick. To my delight, he was happy to sit in the middle with the guns and fishing equipment and let me sit in the stern and steer. I thought Ray was God’s greatest creation.

We’d never go far before Ray shot a rabbit. His really sharp pocketknife would flash in the late evening sun as he cut the elastic flesh from the rabbit’s ribs to bait the fishing hooks. Then over the side our two lines would go with their ends tied securely to the boat. Putt, putt, we’d slowly move upstream against the river’s sluggish current. Just Ray and me. Me steering, Ray looking ahead with the shotgun balanced lightly on his thighs.

Without a sound, he’d signal me to steer right or left to skirt the fallen trees we called snags, or to find a channel through the sandbars. Every bend provided a new scenario and the possibility of a flock of ducks. Ray was a beaut shot. He didn’t even consider shooting ducks on the water, that’s what he called ‘sitting ducks’. No, Ray would wait until they took to the air. And even then, he would never shoot at them as they approached, but wait until they passed over head. ‘The shotgun pellets penetrate their feathers better that way,’ he said.

While rabbits were in plague numbers, ducks were less common but it was not unusual for Ray to nab a pair or two. Then there were his crayfish pots – big traps he made out of chicken wire in which he would secure a sheep’s head to lure the crayfish down the trap’s funnel. One cray was a good meal for an adult or a starving kid like me and they were a common treat. Ray had a hand-cranked forge fire. I would turn the handle and we would quickly boil a 4-gallon tin of water; in would go the crayfish and in a couple of minutes they’d be cooked. Once I caught a cod that weighed 18 pounds. Ray had to help me get it into the boat because it was struggling so hard. He told everyone I’d caught it and I felt so proud.

We never went hungry. If the worst came to the worst, we’d have rabbit for dinner. Not any rabbit mind you; certainly not the milky old does some people ate. Ray would single out a young buck. A single shot through the eye, a clean kill … Ray rarely missed. He was terrific.

Jude always had plenty of potatoes and onions in the camp, carrots too most times. I liked Jude, she had big breasts that were nice and soft against my face when she gave me a hug. What feasts we had. How much wild duck, fish, rabbit and crayfish can a small boy eat? Heaps and heaps sitting on a riverbank by a campfire with gum trees and stars and no-one rousing on you.

I don’t ever remember seeing Ray and Jude drinking or smoking. They certainly didn’t get drunk and have fights like my mum and dad. Yet, they were so happy and they really liked one another. I did love them so. They didn’t even make me go to bed. We’d sit around the fire chin-wagging until I fell asleep and I’d get up later and stagger off to bed. They even trusted me to clean my teeth.

Ray had a night line on the river. It was well disguised and he told me not to mention it to anyone because it was illegal. Now and then we’d be woken in the night by the old jam tin clattering away on a stick that the line was attached to. ‘A nice little cod that one,’ Ray would say as he unhooked a 2-pound fish. ‘That’ll do nice for breakfast.’

I’d go back to bed and dream I was at the helm of the boat expertly following Ray’s signals. He told me I was very good at steering and he’d even let me steer downstream on the way back to camp with the little inboard going flat out. I used to wish Ray was my father.

***

At the convent in Tocumwal, I felt like a foreigner. In the playground, all the ages mixed in together and I felt too little to play football and cricket with the tough big kids. One sport’s day, Sister Veronica appointed the two biggest boys in the class as captains and gave them alternative choice from the rest of us for their cricket teams. Every boy in the room had already been picked except me and I thought it obvious I would be chosen for Bill’s team. But Bill didn’t want me. He said I wasn’t any good and would be better off staying with the girls, who were going to have a sewing lesson. Everybody laughed except me, and though I tried so hard, I couldn’t stop crying, which made the kids laugh even more. Sister Veronica gave Bill a stern look and said, ‘Peter’s on your team.’

About this time, I realised that if I had a gun, I could kill myself. Really, I just wanted to be dead. My only fear was that shooting myself might hurt and I would be left in pain thrashing around like the fish Ray and I caught.

I convinced Mum to let me save up for an air rifle, a real one so that I could shoot ducks and rabbits. She agreed, knowing I was reliant on her for money and she never gave me any – except for Monday’s lunch. But she didn’t expect my enthusiasm for the project. There were dozens of empty soft drink bottles scattered around the base and they attracted a penny deposit each. I began eagerly collecting them, encouraged and assisted by the airmen. In no time, I had a trailer load and the man at the local soft drink factory was grateful for the bounty as he counted 30 shillings into my hands – 360 bottles! The next time Mum went shopping, I entrusted my hard-earned cash to her, and that afternoon I could think of nothing else but the new airgun she would bring home.

It was well and truly dark when she returned. She’d got into a session at the pub, but I didn’t care, I just wanted my gun. I ripped through the boxes and bags excitedly. Where is it? You wouldn’t believe it. I found this little cardboard box containing a popgun. Instead of an air rifle, my mother had returned home with a popgun, a double-barrelled toy with corks in the end, corks that were tied to the two barrels with short lengths of string. The hot tears welled shamefully up; I just could not keep them in. ‘This is a toy gun, a kid’s toy,’ I wailed.

I ran from the house into the darkness. I knew there was no future living with Mum. I promised myself that one day I would get a real gun, but I wouldn’t kill myself, I would kill my mother. I hated her.

***

Black market fortunes were reportedly made at Tocumwal selling the huge cache of petrol stored for the bomber planes. My father wasn’t ambitious enough to be a real crook, but he was capable of modest larceny, like many a good Catholic. One night, Mum and I and another bloke accompanied him on a trip to Melbourne with a 5-ton flatbed truck load of military blankets destined for official warehousing.

They decided the cab was too small for three adults and me, but I could ride on the back on top of the bundles of blankets. There was a tarpaulin over the load that I could get under and be safe. But it didn’t occur to anyone that I would be cold, that I couldn’t free a single tightly packed blanket, or that they wouldn’t hear my cries for help. Fortunately, they finally stopped for a pee before we descended the Pretty Sally Hill coming into Melbourne and I eventually thawed, squashed between the grown-ups in the cab. We kept a bundle of 10 blankets for our trouble. Later, Dad souvenired a huge parachute-folding table and 30 chairs for Grandma’s dressmaking school.

While in Melbourne, we took Nana and Grandpa for an outing in the truck. Grandpa sat in the cab while my father drove 10 miles to Box Hill. I wondered what the Mason and the Catholic said to one another while Nana, Mum and I sat on cushions on the back of the truck. It didn’t occur to us we might fall off, we just hung on tightly to one another as we went round corners. It was fun, and a real outing in the country for Nana and Grandpa.

Back at Tocumwal, not long after my eighth birthday, I had my first sexual experience. One of the men had a visit from his wife and two kids: Tom, who was 10 and much bigger than me, and his sister Carol, who was eight. Mum didn’t like them much because they were ‘common’. She’d be glad when they left, but I was happy to have someone to play with. We liked the huge empty cinema which was dark and cool and out of the sun on the tree-less aerodrome. There were wonderful high red curtains on the stage that we swung on. We had great fun.

Then Tom started talking about sex. He asked me if I knew that men put their dicks in the woman to make a baby. I didn’t answer, I was too stunned. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘they put their dicks in the woman’s hole. Where she pees.’ Yuck. This can’t be true. But it was exciting to talk about and both Tom and Carol said they had done it. And Carol said, ‘Why don’t you try it with me?’ She lifted up her dress and pulled down her pants, but I couldn’t see anything much.

‘Take out your prick,’ Tom said. It might have been stiff when I undid my fly, but I felt a bit silly letting other people see it, particularly since one of them was a girl. But Carol didn’t care. ‘Put it in me,’ she said. But I don’t know where. I don’t know how. I can’t see any hole. ‘It’s here,’ she said and she rolled back her skin. It looked red and sore inside. And what if she peed on me? Tom was reassuring that this was how big people made babies and it was really fun. He used to peek at his parents through their bedroom door.

So, I pushed at her and at Tom’s urging, pushed some more and we all giggled because I couldn’t get it in. We tried it with Carol lying on the floor but still no success. However, Tom made it sound a significant event and not the sort of thing to mention to parents. I still didn’t believe people really did this. I thought Tom had been pulling my leg for a bit of a laugh.

From my hours playing billiards alone in the officers’ mess while the men drank and boasted, I heard stories about wonderful flying exploits: of low-level runs over flooded land in a B-24 Liberator; of machine guns fired into a flock of ducks just for the hell of it; of celebrations where obsolete Boomerang fighter planes were set alight and Very pistol flares used for fireworks. I could tell of flying a DC-3 through a hangar and out the other side without the wheels touching; even driving a Jeep over the curved hangar roof.