The outcasts of foolgara.., p.6
The Outcasts of Foolgarah, page 6
‘Scarper, you wall-eyed mongrel,’ the Old Digger broke off, lunging with his broom handle at a brindle dog caught in the act of pawing at a nearby slung-on-a-post trash can. ‘Scarper, you mangy scavenger. Bad enough having to clean up after the weekend tourists without a four-legged canine man’s best friend scattering the offal.’ He stood up and lunged again, using the broom for all the world like it was a bayonet-fixed rifle. ‘Look at him go, yelping with his tail between his legs. Took the old bayonet to shift him. I never met a race yet, man or beast, who liked cold steel.’
The Old Digger sat down again, brushing his walrus moustache out of his mouth with the second joint of his index finger, a sure sign, as Moss knew only too well, that he was about to launch into his number one, odds-on favourite diatribe, the cold steel theory of warfare: ‘Did you ever notice, Moss, that even the Hun didn’t like cold steel. Oh, I nearly forgot, you never fought the Hun, only the Turk on Gallipoli; you got your blighty there and don’t I know it. The Hun was a good soldier, Moss, say what you like about the Kaiser and Hitler, he was a good soldier—but he didn’t like cold steel. Over the top on a bayonet charge and the old Hun would scarper for his life. Even the Turk, and a better soldier than the old Must-have-a-camel never stuck his head through a bridle; but even the Turk, Moss, didn’t like cold steel. Admit it now, Moss, he didn’t fancy it, not even the Turk, and the World War Two men reckon the Dago didn’t like it either. And, a’course, the Froggie didn’t like it, needless to say; and I met a young fella last Anzac Day who told me the North Koreans didn’t like it. And I suppose, if the truth were known, the Vietcong don’t like it either. No, Moss, it’s no use arguing, they don’t like cold steel.’
Moss didn’t argue, he simply said: ‘You can say that agen.’ It was on the tip of his tongue to ask the Digger how it was the Aussie was so keen on the old cold steel, but he didn’t bother, it would only spoil the Old Digger’s story. It was a funny thing that, Moss could remember all the Old Digger’s stories and pick faults with them, under his breath that was, but keeping quiet not to hurt the old soldier’s feelings so he might stop telling the stories. None of your, stop me if you’ve heard it for the Old Digger and, anyway, he always added new bits every now and again to break the monotony. Moss could remember every one of the Old Digger’s stories, but he couldn’t remember anything before the bomb blast which blew off his leg, with the blood running down the Old Digger’s back as he carried him down to the beach under fire. A’course he wasn’t old then, only sixteen, with his age put up to make the world fit for heroes to live in and shell-shocked ever since (Moss, not the Digger), so he jigged about like a St. Vitus dancer when the turns came on him—and couldn’t remember. Not to worry, the Old Digger had enough memory for both of them and more than enough words. He had come to the Repat. Hospital to take Moss away and fixed him up for a totally and permanently pension for life, not forgetting beforehand to find out the things Moss had forgotten: like his mother dying while he was still a child and his father killed by a bolting horse while he was on the troopship and his sister married and living in Bourke. (Why go there, Moss? Why? Ask yourself, Moss, how would you like it if your only brother turned out to be a man of few words and a shell-shock case? Better to forget what I’m telling you, old mate, that’s if you understand a word of it, which is doubtful; better to forget what you can’t remember and battle on regardless.)
So Moss did battle on, never leaving his benefactor’s side, and wags laughed at the Old Digger and his dumb, wooden-legged mate. And of course they did laugh, especially the Garbos and Sanos (not to go too far and call them shitties), in the public bar of the Foolgarah Hotel. They laughed and reckoned Moss couldn’t remember and couldn’t talk either, except to say, ‘You can say that agen.’ But it showed how little they knew, because Moss could remember, at least the Old Digger could remember for him, and there was many a time he had words on the tip of his tongue ready to say, but the Old Digger would ramble on until Moss forgot the words again. But it didn’t matter; a great talker like the Old Digger needed a good listener and Moss was about the best bloody listener this side of the Black Stump (really listening, I mean, and enjoying every familiar word, not just being polite).
‘Always be grateful to nature, Moss.’ The Old Digger had changed the subject. ‘Pray that she can withstand the poison gas the human beings are spraying on these trees because, if these pine needles cease coming down our numbers will go up, what with the economy drive they brought in at the last Council meeting. And who will clean the north and south toilets and empty the litter bins? you ask, Moss, old mate. Well, I don’t rightly know; maybe the Garbos will do it on overtime, after they’ve sorted their bottles. Anyway, it won’t be us because we’ll be even money, equal favourites for the economy stakes.’
You would think Moss had asked he was so attentive, afraid he might have missed something while he was trying to remember, sitting hunched up now, hands clenched around his broom handle, the tip of his tongue tracing the arcs of the Old Digger’s oratorical flourishes.
‘And Brown Tongue Parker the official starter, I can feel it in me bones, he don’t like us and he’s suspicious,’ the Old Digger concluded, carried away by his forebodings, a bit late in noticing the shiny seat followed by the bowler hat and walking stick creeping out of a council car. ‘Jump to attention, Moss; speak of the devil, he’s descending on us,’ sweeping, and Moss sweeping and the Old Digger muttering aside, ‘If there’s one thing I like less than the officer class, Moss, it’s foremen, worse than bosses as lance-jacks are worse than officers, foremen have been our trouble. Moss, you never meet the real bosses, only the watchdogs who do their dirty work and the savagest watchdog of them all is Brown Tongue Bloody Parker. Good morning, Mister Parker, sir,’ the cunning Old Digger, a crawler when it suited him, greeted the Shire Clerk, ‘all present and correct, sir, the endless war against the pine needles, not to mention the weekend tourists proceeding according to order of battle; we were just taking a slight respite, a bivouac so to speak …’
‘Is that your name and address?’ Brown Tongue interrupted, handing the Digger a long blue suspiciously official envelope.
‘Well, it does appear to be, Mister Parker, sir,’ the Old Digger said after backing away, never having received anything but trouble in blue envelopes, then peering with a pair of glasses minus one ear piece, ‘must be a printer’s error.’
‘I doubt that,’ Brown Tongue persisted. ‘Go on, open it. An old-age pension cheque made out in your name, yes?’
‘It does seem that way, Mister Parker; some mistake at the Social Services Department,’ the Old Digger evaded. ‘You know what government departments are, probably using one of those new-fangled computers.’
‘You deny that you draw the old-age pension?’ Brown Tongue pressed him down. ‘Of course you can’t, you changed your address, or rather your landlord changed it for you, and this cheque came to the Council Chambers.’ Having thus rendered the Old Digger more speechless than Moss, the Shire Clerk continued: ‘Nor can you deny that you gave your age as sixty-three less than a year ago when you applied for this job. Nor could your hapless friend deny that he is a full TPI pensioner. Yet you have each been drawing full award wages as scavenging labourers. There is such a thing as the means test in this country, a wise law to prevent, inter alia, people being pensioned when earning full wages. I’ll report this; it’s my duty as a citizen to report this to the Social Services Department as well as the Council.’ He snatched the cheque back and strode towards the car, turning to say the final fatal word: ‘You are both instantly dismissed from this moment. Leave your brooms and accoutrements and go collect your wages and deem yourselves lucky I have decided not to withhold same.’
Brown Tongue was unlocking the car before the Old Digger found voice: ‘It’s the old men’s home for us, Moss, me poor crippled, infirm mate, the old-frigging-men’s home, no less.’
Moss felt one of his turns coming on but managed to say: ‘You can say that agen,’ and gave the Old Digger a dirty hanky to wipe his bleary eyes, which had filled with crocodile tears, before he began to jig and shake. The Old Digger dried his eyes and led Moss to the seat, laying him down gently: ‘See what you’ve done?’ he called after the safely-out-of-ear-shot Brown Tongue. He upturned a litter bin, scattering prawn shells and Coke tins, reverting to type. ‘Shove yer job up your bureaucratic arse,’ he yelled, ‘and don’t think you’ll get away with stealing my pension cheque, cos you bloody won’t!’ He knelt beside Moss. ‘There, there, Moss, I was only joking about the old men’s home. I’ll put Brown Tongue in charge to the police. If you lie quiet-like the turn will soon pass and we’ll go down to the pub for a schooner, then a pie and peas. How will that be?’
When Chilla and Tich reached home (they had had a second breakfast and a long conference at Cargo’s place on the way), Florrie was hanging washing in the backyard. ‘The pubs can’t be open yet, if you’re home,’ she quipped, not comprehending, a plastic peg in the corner of her mouth.
‘It ain’t that,’ Chilla ventured.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve got suspended again.’
‘Not exactly,’ Little Tich replied.
‘What are you doin’ home?’ Winnie called from the new bedroom.
‘We been sacked,’ Chilla told her, when Tich, already a bit on the henpecked side, failed to reply.
The terrible twins began ranting in tune: ‘And how are we goin’ to pull up the back rent? When you went to the meetin’ last night you said … Oh, I know you can live on beer, but the kids can’t … We’re up to our ears in debt now …’
‘We’re on strike, as well,’ Chilla interrupted.
That really set them off.
‘All right for Cargo to talk about getting the women on side—he’s not married,’ Chilla muttered to Tich, but they knew the terrible twins would stick like turds to a blanket in the crisis.
Chapter 5
And what is it?
This architectural monument to which the Garbos began to repair on the late afternoon of the day the strike began? Well, I’ll give you three guesses, laze and gem, three guesses only and no prompting.
A new headquarters for the United Nations? Warm, admittedly: because there’s quite a few wogs, dagos, yids, refugees, spades, Balts, boongs, Huns, Abos and other foreigners amongst the lily white, Anglo-Saxon dinkum Australians who have foregathered for the only ritual practised in Foolgarah (that’s if you don’t count standing up for Her). Try again. Well, maybe it’s been built because Expo 80 is to be held in Foolgarah. Big enough and vulgar enough in concept, and that’s for sure, but you’re getting cold again. And you’ve only got one guess to go. Think, ladies and gents, just think about Foolgarah Culture. An oil company building or an insurance office? Shrewd reasoning: the biggest and best buildings in the country house the crude parasites of oil and the self-assured bludgers of insurance (there are no big schools or hospitals), but you’re wrong and you’ll kick yourself when I tell you.
It’s a hotel, a hostelry, a beeratorium, a grog joint, a piss-up palace, a wardling place, a technicolor laugh theatre, a licensed to sell intoxicating liquors establishment, in short a fucking pub.
The new Foolgarah Chevron itself: elegant, abstract, expensive, functional, above air fridge, modern, affluent: in fact, the most ostentatious architectural monstrosity in the southern hemisphere.
In fact, the Garbos gathered in the small building next door: the old Foolgarah Hotel, left standing in response to a campaign by the local Progress Association to save historic buildings and the local tosspots to defend their right to drink standing up to their elbows in beer slops instead of sitting up to their ankles in plush carpets—and in response to a laudable desire to keep riff-raff out of the new Chevron. They gathered in the back corner near the Gents.
Chilla and Little Tich, Cargo Collins, Honest Hambone and his mate, Mulga Mumblebrain, who acted as his kind of seeing-eye dog, an ex-pugilist gone to fat, walking on his heels and not very good at remembering phone numbers, you shouldn’t laugh because poor old Mulga M. had something wrong with his mumble-brain, which, if the truth was known, he was born with (the two hundred fights he had as a good game boy didn’t help but——), and he had to be put away occasionally on account of he went a bit berserk if he heard a bell ring, and Sam the Punter, the treader and bottle bagger on Cargo’s truck. They used what little money the women folk had failed to find in a quick search to buy slow beers.
‘Not a very big roll up,’ Chilla understated, ‘the bloody New Australians have gone running back already.’
But Luigi came in to prove him wrong—and Bottle Ho O’Toole (that’s if you could call an Irishman a New Australian).
‘I’ll tell you what worries me, there,’ Bottle Ho O’Toole said, bouncy, breezy and ending every sentence with ‘there’ for reasons best known to himself, ‘it’s that spalpeen, the Black Crow, getting all the bottles and knives and forks, and all the tyres and car radiators, and picture frames, there. Not to mention the zinc and brass fittings, there.’
‘He should be on strike,’ Sam the Punter looked up from his form guides to comment.
‘Well, there’s not quite a quorum,’ Little Tich said after they tired of waiting.
The women might have stopped some of them from coming to the pub,’ Cargo Collins said, and they couldn’t but agree because it wasn’t for the want of trying in their own cases. ‘What we need is a fighting fund to keep the wolves from the door.’
Little Tich recorded it carried unanimous without benefit of a division.
‘We should run raffles,’ Honest Hambone propositioned, ‘chooks or a dozen of beer,’ knowing you couldn’t run anything in Australia—not a club or a hospital, not even a strike, without one-armed bandits, lottery tickets or, at least, raffle books. Running raffles was a sort of side-line with Hambone; he raffled chickens and turkeys, a watch or a dozen bottles in the pub every Friday. The prize one week had been a leg of cooked ham. Throughout the Friday and Saturday, Honest H. and Mulga M. ate most of the ham to supply blotting paper for their beer, then gave the bone to the holder of the winning ticket, so after that it was Honest Hambone so people forgot his real name.
‘We could hire a boat then raffle fish so captured in order to supplement the strike fund,’ said Luigi, whose ambition in life was to buy a fishing launch.
‘First, mate, we’ll have to get someone to touch their kick so we can get our claws on the spondoolicks to hire the giddy goat,’ Chilla cautioned.
‘Yes, Chilla, and as well we will have to persuade someone to pay for the hire of the boat,’ Luigi spoke perfect book English and imperfect slang. ‘Then we could reimburse our benefactor after we raffled the fish, my bloody oats.’
‘A coupla us orta take collection tins down to the wharfies’ pay centre. Wharfies will always dob in for a strike fund,’ Cargo Collins contended and, with a sly Scotch grin hovering ambivalently around his Irish mouth, produced from under his coat two collection boxes replete with handles and labelled UP THE GARBOS. ‘A slogan for the strike,’ he explained, but omitted to explain where the boxes had come from: the Salvation Army Citadel in the High Street.
‘Haven’t I seen those boxes somewhere before?’ Chilla observed. ‘Up the Garbos? It will depend on the emphasis: up the Garbos for the rent.’ This with a vigorous Churchill gesture. ‘Or up the Garbos forever.’ With a raised fist.
‘Well, to set the meeting in order,’ Little Tich said, busy with his dog-eared minute book, licking his moustache. ‘We have suggestions for raffles, as follows: chooks, beer and fish, and Luigi has moved we should raise finance to hire a boat to catch our own fish. A very fine suggestion from our foreign brother, who was a regular striker in his homeland, as it turns out.’
‘First time I ever heard a pommy call a dago a foreigner, there, in all me travels,’ Bottle Ho O’Toole quipped at Little Tich, laughing uproariously at his own dubious joke.
‘And last but not least, Cargo moved that we take collection tins to the wharfies’ pay centre,’ Little Tich continued, and thumped the counter. ‘A bit of order, fair go, Sam, plenty of time to discuss the form for Saturday later. I want a seconder for these motions—order, me hearties, youse have got no money to bet with, anyway—any seconders?’
‘Ah, we don’t want no motions, Tich, what we need is dough,’ Honest H. said. ‘Come on, Mulga M., we’ll send the boxes around.’
Here is your chance, laze and gem, to taste the flavour of Foolgarah civilization, to be taken on a conducted tour of the old pub and the new Yankee-owned Chevron, and observe, in the various vulgar bars and taverns, the finer divisions in the most divided society in the world.
First, the public of the old pub, where now Mulga and Honest H. walked by the toilet to a circle of men isolated in the crowded bar as if surrounded by a moat.
